Elm Street Adaptation

My dreams used to be comprised of implausible, violent images. Images of monsters eating children. Massive balloons with teeth. Animated people terrorizing towns. Killer frogs. Child assassins. A perpetual phantasmagoria of horror that lasted for a good part of my childhood. Some of these recurring dreams would inevitably result in my death. Some of these deaths I do not remember, but some of them I do. And I’m not sure which is worse. My latest dream death was a month ago to which I woke up screaming.

I haven’t woken up screaming since I was a little boy.

In this dream I was standing in a clearing, enclosed by a black forest. Within seconds the empty space became a minefield. Thick wooden poles jutted out of the ground, scattered around haphazardly. Dirt flew through the air, brown specks illuminated by the moonlight. And then, subsequently, the tops of the wooden poles spontaneously combusted, becoming big fiery spires. The image surrounding me: a satanic maze. My body propelled itself forward deeper into the maze. The flames burned more aggressively as I passed each pole, creating pockets of continuous suffocation. There was no clear path. All directions became one and offered no salvation. Grasping a pole, a pale hand reached out and laid itself onto mine. I turned and saw this kind-looking blond boy materializing out from the darkness beyond. He guided me through the fiery labyrinth and eventually to a group of faceless people hunched over a makeshift fire pit. The blond boy nudged me to join them. Without looking, two people pulled me into their circle and clasped their hands onto my neck, forcing me to bend over the fire. At first it felt nice. Comforting, even. Like getting into a marinated car on a hot day. But my eyes started watering, so I looked away. Behind me was the blond teenager. He was smiling, with blue thumbtacks holding his lips in place. In a slow motion sweep, the people stood up in unison and rushed toward me and grabbed all of my limbs and pinned me to the ground. Shrouded by a blur of heat, the blond teenager approached me, his shape unfocused. When the blurriness dissipated, I saw that he was now holding pliers, which he used to tear my fingernails off, one by one, until my fingers were naked and bloody. After the denailing, he gave me two options:
1.    Allow him to remove a body part of mine to his liking
2.    Die
I chose option number two. He conjured a gun and shot me in the face.

Though my elaborate nightmares have stopped, once in a blue moon I’ll be graced with horrific presences that embody regular human beings and somewhat believable scenarios. These realistic dreams are unnerving because they assume plausibility. Over the thousands upon thousands of dreams I’ve had in twenty-four years, I’ve learned there are two either/or responses I invoke when a nightmare occurs:
1.    Screaming (either/or)
a. Either I wake up screaming
b. Or I stay asleep and scream until I fall into another dream
2.    Wake up (either/or)
a. Either I wake up abruptly, out of breath and afraid
b. Or I simply open my eyes, unaffected
With age, my response tends to veer toward response number two (b), a jaded indifference, although there will be some expectations from time to time. Ones where I revert to response number one (a), wake up screaming after getting tortured by blond teenagers.

When we’re younger, our nightmares seem much more prevalent and unhinged, with a distinct vividness, don’t they? This can be caused by a lot of external factors (or internal). But it’s usually attributed to our hyperactive imaginations during childhood. Our susceptible penchant for monsters and ghosts and vampires stand out during our early years and typically fade as we segue into adulthood. This transformation is so gradual that some of us may not realize it until it’s a Tuesday morning and we’re in the bathroom, staring at our blurred reflection in the fogged mirror, foamy toothpaste dripping from our mouth, and we contemplate the existence of mirrors and how they’re associated with fear and all things spooky when it suddenly hits us that we haven’t yearned for someone after we wake in a very long while. Sometimes the realization can happen in the form of a question. Maybe someone asks us, “When was the last time you had a nightmare?” And we truly cannot remember. Though in that hypothetical moment we may not be able to recall the last nightmare we had, we certainly can remember the faces that haunted our subconscious.

The faces in question haunted my formative years, which were mostly identified with horror, as were my dreams. Chalk it up to the B-rated slasher films I used to watch late at night while my parents slept. The bloody montages of murder and still images of ghoulish faces seeped into my brain, which quickly materialized into nightmares. These nightmares had extraordinary range, much like an actor, something I remember being unnaturally impressed by. My early years, admittedly, are faded, like overexposed Polaroids. They serve as a reminder that life appears to be one long half-remembered dream. I can think back to a memory and only recall bits and pieces. Sometimes I can piece together a sequence of events, but these events will be out of order. Throughout the years my reality and dreams have switched roles. Commonly, reality would equate solidification and realness, while dreams would equate haziness and fiction. However, a one-eighty has taken place and now reality is characterized as a blurred time lapse and dreams as great tangibility.

With dreams, the beginning does not exist nor does the end. Only the middle, which is the important part, isn’t it? I can’t remember my first nightmare, but thinking back as far as my mind allows me to, there is one that surfaces very vividly, almost as if it demands to be remembered, takes on a life of its own, and will not let me forget.

It started off innocently, so mundane that you’d think it was the opening to a lullaby. I was in a car with my mother, who was driving. We were going down a long bridge over a low, brown river. I did not know where we were going, but the destination hadn’t mattered. Looking out the window at the small clusters of green islands spread across the murky water, I felt the car slow and come to a stop. In front of us an animated woman rose through the concrete, the cement slipping away. My mother then hit the accelerator in a panic and ran her over. My body thrashed around in real time, but my mind was still trapped in the dream. Through the rearview mirror I saw the animated woman rush after us with inhuman speed, the ground vibrating with each step she took. The car stopped again. I looked at my mother. She was opening the door, getting out. I watched her move past the windows and fade away. I tried to go after her, but my hands and legs felt heavy and tired. In the side mirror the animation grew larger, surpassing the words: OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR. Then a jump cut—the cartoonish woman slammed her face against the window, rocking the vehicle. Her face was this mass of wrinkled skin with deep pockmarks and rotten teeth that were loose and green. When she started phasing through the glass, I woke up screaming—response number one (a).

These initially inconspicuous dreams had always veered toward something wicked. After seeing the woman’s macabre face pressed against the car window, faces became a common theme in my dreams, and nightmares, for that matter. I didn’t know it then, but that nightmare was laughably mild. What followed for several years would be so progressively frightening… and tangible that they became a reality. While I inwardly knew my youthful curiosity with horror movies was the cause of my nightmares, I couldn’t stop. B-rated productions—especially of the horror genre—have mass-produced their own brand of hypnotic sweets. And I was addicted.

These intriguing confections always seem to be accommodated to our liking. It’ll either be an average but delicious three-layered cake or faux gold-wrapped coins. Alternatively, there are some of us who are infatuated with the seasonal variety—a Cupid gone rotten; a leprechaun who looks creepier than he should; 3-D large-eared bunnies with sharpened teeth; faded images of headless ghosts and jack o’ lanterns (I’m partial to this one); and uninviting Santa Clauses.

However many different forms, from first glance we’ll know it won’t be the best treat we’ve had—there are better—but to the average human a wild sighting of that sweetness is enough to draw us in. It isn’t really anything particularly remarkable. Nothing we’d see in a standard fairytale, though there is a mist of allurement that seems somewhat ethereal. And each of our experiences is different—personalized, even.

But one common thing remains: These magical sweets always present themselves on a weekday afternoon, with gray skies and a rain that’s beginning. Parents are out. Siblings are at a friend’s house or have locked themselves in their room. Pets are hiding in closets from the sounds of thunder. We are sitting in our room, bored and hungry. We make a decision to raid the pantry, so we exit our room and go down the hallway and into the living room. But before we can enter the kitchen, we notice the television is turned on (for which no one was responsible) and tuned to the Syfy channel, the glow of the screen tunneled onto us. Almost as if it… sees us. There’s a movie playing, the title scrawled in black lettering in the corner of the screen. It’s something we have never seen before, yet it’s uneasily familiar. We become oddly intrigued, so we sit on the couch. The first scene we see: a pan shot of a mid-thirties woman dragging a teenage boy from the trunk of a car into a wooden house. This unconscious teenager joins five others—both boys and girls, an even three/three split. As the movie progresses, our fight-or-flight response briefly appears but ceases as quickly as it came and is replaced with a sense of urgency. For what, we do not know. And then comes the subliminal realization that an invisible paralysis has latched onto us and rendered us immobile for the next two hours, like in a dream, and we like it. Regarding the plot unwrapping before us, we can almost predict what’s going to happen. As we watch a six foot five boy (who has been obviously casted as the dumb jock and whom we grow to understand and love (to an extent)) get stabbed in the neck with a sharpened dish brush, there’s a twinge of sweet pain and sorrow traveling down our throats and pooling in our stomachs. There is a commanding presence about how the scenes are unfolding. The high-pitched screaming, the crying, the hyperventilating (half of these sounds come from the conventional hot girl, who happens to be wearing a cheerleading-inspired outfit and her boobs look like they’ve been enhanced in some type of way). The jock’s violent death is usually followed by additional senseless deaths and the occasional sacrifice of the boy (who has glasses and) whose position in the social hierarchy of academia is so painstakingly obvious that it might just as well be tattooed on his pasty forehead. This sacrifice is always in vain. We are watching recycled clichés and we know from experience—this is not our first time indulging—the ending will happen in one of two ways, another either/or scenario:
1.    Either everyone dies thus resulting in zero redemption for the villain
2.    Or one lone survivor escapes with a formulated plan to defeat the villain, which will result in a poorly executed sequel

The sky, which has grown darker in the last hour, looms over us, accentuating the windows that are lathered in rain. Outside has become nonexistent. We cannot see the blurred shapes of trees or patio furniture. While the gruesome scenes and shaky camerawork have had us paralyzed, we can’t help but feel engrossed, but most importantly, disturbed. Though it is true that these magical appetizers do not equate with mainstream entrées—Julia Robert’s satisfying onscreen confrontation with a cheating Patrick Dempsey; a teenage leprechaun’s quest to retrieve a stolen lucky gold coin from his nemesis; animated rabbits with G-rated appeal; three ancient witches whose resurrection rely on a virgin and a candle (I’m also partial to this one); a boy shooting his eye out—we cannot help but admit we enjoy them. The starters satisfy us in a way the main courses don’t.

Despite the two previous sentences being true and knowing the ending will have one of the two either/or outcomes, there is no hope to be found when the end credits roll across the black screen. We have indulged in a variety of sweet mysticism many times before, but with each unwrapping they feel new and unexplored. When the credits disappear beyond the television, we still see the faces of the dead stamped on the black screen. The paralysis disappears and we are not hungry anymore. After those hundred and twenty minutes pass and there’s an empty wrapper in our hands, the title ceases from our memory and finds a place in another’s mind, but the images stay with us forever. Later, when we go to bed, we keep our nightlight on. The dream we fall into doesn’t matter. It is what happens after we awaken that does. Our eyes open and we can feel something in the room with us. Something that should not be there. We sit up and turn around. There is a head in the darkened doorway of our bedroom. It is without a body and smiling. We don’t sleep again that night. When morning breaks, we still feel it’s not safe to get out of bed.