Freddy Krueger was born amidst a raging fire in the old insane asylum on Elm Street, the
bastard son of a beautiful young schizophrenic who died alone and unattended in the agony
of childbirth. In later years, Freddy would distinctly remember his mother's screams as the
first sounds he ever heard.
Raised from infancy by a succession of ax-murderers, rapists, and arsonists, young Freddy was
adopted by at an early age by a lonely old pimp who hoped that the strange-looking boy
might someday make himself useful by luring curious drunks into the filthy alley in which his
disease-ridden whores earned their meager pay. Whenever the old man would catch his
adopted son enjoying the services of one of his employees, he would express his displeasure
by beating the boy almost to the point of unconsciousness with a razor strop. It did not take
young Freddy long to begin associating sexual pleasure with the infliction of pain.
Occasionally, the old man would punish Freddy for some imaginary offense by drawing blood
from his belly with a straight razor. Refusing to cry out loud no matter how badly his
sadistic father slashed him, the boy began to take a perverse sort of pleasure in fingering
the narrow scars that soon covered the front of his body.
As a young man, Freddy showed no more aptitude as a pimp than the old man showed as a
father. Finding the boy to be of no practical use, the old pimp paid no attention to him
whatsoever except when doling out his daily punishment. After a while, Freddy began
almost to welcome the beatings, which were the only expression of parental interest he was
ever to know. Freddy finally decided to run away after being savagely beaten by his father
and left for dead in the alley. Before he left, Freddy used the money he found in the old
man's strongbox to hire a professional arsonist to torch his house while the old pimp slept
peacefully upstairs.
Freddy never bothered to find out if the old man survived the blaze.
With no formal schooling and no particular skills or aptitudes, Freddy wandered from town
to town doing odd jobs and getting into trouble with the law. He began to drink heavily and
spent many nights sleeping in the gutter. Freddy was sleeping in an alley near the local
schoolhouse when a group of young boys decided to try picking the drunk's pockets. One
boy's hand was still in his pocket when Freddy awoke in a drunken rage and lashed out wildly
with the bottle of gin clenched in his hand. The bottle landed on the boy's head with a loud
crash as his four companions field in terror. Freddy watched the boys run away and then
looked thoughtfully at the child who was bleeding to death beside him in the alley. "They're
scared of me", he thought, strangely exhilarated as never before by the unfamiliar feeling
of power that surged through his body like a shot of adrenalin.
Freddy carried the bleeding boy to a deserted cellar and studied his figure for a long time.
"Children are useless" he thought, repeating a sentiment he had often heard muttered by
the old man who had raised him. "Children are better off dead" he thought, improvising
freely on the theme. He reached into his pocket and took out the straight-razor he had
taken from the old man's closet before leaving home. Freddy roughly tore off the boy's
clothing and studied his smooth white belly for a moment. Then, recalling the four boys who
escaped, Freddy cut four deep incisions into the boy's flesh. He watched for a while as the
blood spurted out, his face flushed with triumph. For the first time in his life, Freddy
Krueger was in control. It was a feeling he did not want to live without ever again.
Freddy continued his nomadic existence until he arrived at the suburban community of
Springwood. There was something about Springwood that instantly outraged him. Perhaps it
was the well-cared for lawns and lovely tree-lined streets that were so much more beautiful
than anything he had even dreamed of as a child. Or perhaps it was the carefree children of
Springwood so blissfully unaware of the suffering and anguish of the real world. Suddenly,
Freddy knew his calling in life. He would teach these smug suburbanites and their children
what the world was all about.
He would teach them the true meaning of pain.
For the first time in his life, Freddy looked for a regular job, and he soon found one
maintaining the boiler in the old generating plant on the outskirts of town. The work was
easy enough, and it left Freddy with plenty of time to devote to his true calling. He soon
decided that his old straight razor was insufficient to do the holy work that needed to be
done. Freddy spent many hours in the machine shop, forging the deadly tool he would use
to carry out his mission. These were among the happiest hours of his life - designing and
then building the special glove with it's four deadly finger-blades. Carefully, with a feeling
akin to love, Freddy cut the gleaming metal, honing it to a fine razor-sharp edge and then
fitting the assembled apparatus into the fingerless leather glove. Then, when it was finally
done, he took a deep breath and slipped the deadly talons onto his hand.
A perfect fit!
And now it was time to put his creation to the test.
The next day, Freddy slipped into his comfortable red and green sweater, donned his
crumpled fedora, climbed into the front seat of his battered Chevy van, and drove into
town. Lovingly, he clicked the blades that gleamed so beautifully on his right hand and
waited patiently in the alley adjacent to Springwood elementary school. He felt his muscles
tense with excitement as the bell rang, announcing the end of another school day. For a
fleeting moment, Freddy wondered what it would have been like to have gone to school
with other children, to have friends and to have played the innocent games of childhood.
For that one brief moment, Freddy wondered if it might not be terribly wrong to interfere
with the normal development of a child, to cut off at the very beginnings a human life of
almost infinite possibilities and potentialities.
Then he saw the children, laughing and skipping as they rushed into their parent's loving
arms, and Freddy knew what he had to do.
There was a little girl standing at the curb not far from the alley. Perhaps her mother had
difficulty starting the car, or maybe a long line at the supermarket had set her schedule
back a few minutes. No matter. The little girl was very much alone, and Freddy felt a
stirring deep in his wicked soul. Squinting into the sunlight, he read the name "Amy" written
in bright pink letters on the girl's lunch-box.
"Amy?" he whispered, but the girl didn't seem to hear him. "Amy," he repeated, a little
louder this time. The girl looked at him with her large ORANGE eyes. "Come here," he said,
beckoning with his left hand. She looked away for a moment, glancing up the street as if
expecting her mother to arrive at any moment. Then she looked back at Freddy, and he
knew in that instant he had won.
"Come here." he repeated. The girl hesitated for only a moment and then stepped into the
alley.
"Who are you?" she asked in a small, sweet voice that set Freddy's teeth on edge.
"Uncle Freddy," he replied, liking the sound of it. "Your mother said I should bring you
home."
The girl shook her head doubtfully.
"I don't have an uncle Freddy." she said.
"You do now," said Freddy, raising his right hand high into the air. Then he brought it down,
his temples pounding as his left hand covered the girl's mouth and his right tore four deadly
gashes in her soft belly.
Freddy looked at the bloodied glove for a moment and felt joy deep in his soul. How easily
the little one had died! He lifted the girl's bloody body and carried it quickly to his parked
van, feeling more alive than he had ever felt before. He stashed the body under some
blankets in the back of the van and drove to the power plant. There he unloaded the body
and hid it in a large unused storage locker in the back of the boiler room. Then he sat back
and breathed deeply of the hot, stifling boiler room air that he had learned to love.
At last, Freddy's life had meaning.
After that, Freddy found it easy to fulfill his self-proclaimed destiny. His methods of
abduction varied, but the result was always the same. He loved to see the newspaper
accounts of the kidnappings, but it troubled him that no one knew for certain whether the
missing children were dead. He began leaving puddles of blood at the murder sites so that
everyone would know that these were no mere kidnappings. It was important to him that
the smug parents of Springwood know that their children were being carefully and
methodically butchered.
Freddy soon learned that leaving evidence around was not the wisest course for a murderer
to pursue. One morning, a small squadron of police led by the intrepid Lieutenant
Thompson burst into the power plant and found the rotting bodies of the town's murdered
children. Freddy was arrested and brought to trial amid great publicity. Fortunately for
Freddy, however, the public defender who handled the case was extremely thorough in his
preparation. He examined the search warrant that had gained the police admittance to the
power plant the day they arrested Freddy and found a technical error in the wording of the
document. The search was ruled illegal, and the case against Freddy was thrown out of
court. Despite public outcry, the Springwood Slasher was set free.
It was time to move on, and Freddy knew it. There would be other towns and other
children. Next time, Freddy vowed, he would not be so easy to catch. That night, Freddy
picked his meager belongings into the back of his van and settled in for one last night's sleep
before hitting the road. He had just settled into a cozy corner of the boiler room with a
bottle of his favorite gin when he heard the commotion outside. The angry people of
Springwood, led by Lt. Don Thompson and his wife Marge, had decided to take the law into
their own hands. It was the Thompsons and their Elm Street neighbours, the Lantzes, who
poured the gasoline around the power plant; and it was the Grays and the Lanes who set the
fuel afire. Never again would their children - Nancy, Glen, Tina, Rod, and all the others - be
terrorized by the wicked Fred Krueger. They smiled grimly as the power plant began to
burn, and someone in the mob applauded when Freddy appeared in the doorway, his red and
green sweater burning brightly in the night. Even as the flames consumed his flesh, Freddy
could be heard cursing the mob and screaming his vows of revenge. Then, with one last cry
of agony, the burning figure turned from the crowd and raced madly into the very flames
that were devouring him.
The body was never found.
"I guess we've seen the last of Fred Krueger," said Marge Thompson that night, breathing a
deep sigh of relief as she examined Freddy's blood-caked finger-knives with a mixture of
disgust and ill-concealed fascination.
But Marge was wrong.
Freddy would be back.
And the nightmare was just about to begin.
Freddy's Story.zip(262kb)