| A Nightmare on My Street |
[25 May 2010|10:56pm] |
In the 1980s, before Blockbuster Video existed in my fragile little mind, I used to frequent a local video joint called the Video Gallery. It was a small video store owned by some mean old coot who used to yell and curse a lot. It was also the home of the best horror movie collection my virgin eyes had ever witnessed. I used to run straight to the horror section and spent what seemed like hours looking at the artwork on all of the VHS cases. One of my favorites of all time was the artwork on the original A Nightmare on Elm Street.
A few nights ago, I was browsing the Netflix instant view collection and saw the original Nightmare on there. I immediately dropped what I was doing and fired that sucker up. It had been at least a good fifteen years or more since the last time I had seen it. I was instantly taken back to the days when my brother and I used to set up traps in our room before bedtime in the same manner Nancy Thompson did to wake her up on the night of her final showdown with Freddy Krueger to lure him into reality.
I also have a scar on my chin that is still there, thanks to these movies. It was late spring in year I was in kindergarten, so that would pinpoint this story in 1987 or so. My mother had taken our dog Finnegan to the vet, and she told my brother and I to stay outside and behave ourselves. The vet’s office was in an old building that looked like Nancy’s house on Elm Street, so naturally my brother and I decided to play Freddy Krueger.
We ended up going out back where there was a giant cement staircase dug into the ground leading to a basement door. Basically, a huge hole in the ground with a small ledge around it. I was standing on the ledge pretending to be a helpless teenage victim and my brother was slowly walking and clawing his way towards me pretending to be Freddy. When he finally approached me several one liners later, he immediately pretended to slash me open with his knife fingers. I ended up losing my balance, slipped and fell a good five or six feet down into the stairwell and smashed my face open on the cold, dirty ground.
As I laid there, I could hear my brother, still unaware of what really had just happened, laughing maniacally in the vein of Freddy Krueger after a fresh kill. When I gathered enough strength to pull myself up, there was what looked like a pool of blood on the ground and it was pouring from my face like a garden hose. I touched my face to assess the damage and felt chunks of rock, cement, and dirt stuck on my face. I started screaming gibberish as loud as I could and ran straight into the vet’s office leaving behind me a trail of blood, and a clueless brother.
I had no idea where my mother was, but there was a receptionist staring at me in shock and awe as I ran up to her screaming and asking for my mother. By this time, blood had begun to drip down my neck and staining my t-shirt. Larger drops had also made its way off my body and begin to stain the black and white checkered floor of the office. The horrified receptionist found the room my mother was in and brought me to her. Without even asking what happened, the vet immediately started cleaning up my face with white cloth that was instantly turning red. The vet took one look and said I’d probably need stitches. I was pretty fucking sure he was going to stitch me up right then and there, but instead we drove straight to the hospital. I remember I could not wait to get home and tell everyone I knew about my exciting trip to the hospital. I’m sure my mother felt otherwise.
As the weeks and months passed, on trips back to that very same vet’s office, I used to look around for remnants of blood and chunks of my skin thinking it would still all be there serving as a memento of my bout with Fred Krueger. I remember always feeling bad for the person who had to clean it all up because I am sure it looked like a murder scene. In a way it was though. For two small children, it was an epic battle of good versus evil that did not bode so well for the side of good. In a strange way, it was somewhat reminiscient to the death of Johnny Depp’s character. Instead of gallons of fake blood pouring out of the recently slayed Johnny Depp’s bed, it was (exaggerated) gallons of blood pouring out of my face.
Approximately one year later, I was also convinced that my school bus driver was Freddy Krueger himself when he drove past our bus stop (à la A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge), but that is a story for another time (or whenever Netflix adds Nightmare 2 to their instant viewing collection).
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