"Scar Pattern"

Gray matte above the headboard
stretches and crawls with hinted
claws,      living silhouettes
whose shadows perform a
malevolent ballet across
closed lids and darken
the beads of sweat
 clinging to worried brow, as a
  face  joins the nightmare fingers,
   pressing taut until the wall wears
     twisted burns whose contours
       and embossed valleys
          mimic wallpaper.


The original Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) is an amazing film, and though not all movies in the franchise were "created equal", the series as a whole has some amazing visual elements. The quality of the special effects varies movie to movie (most notable in the makeup for Robert Englund, who played Freddy Kruger, of course), but the visual elements do not suffer from a creative standpoint.

Thus, the Nightmare on Elm Street movies are not my favorite horror movie franchise or even my favorite 80's slasher movie franchise, but I imagine they will appear frequently on Aunt Martha's Ribbon. It is amazing what the simple suggestion of those claws do for the films.

This piece was inspired by the behind-the-wall scene. Oddly enough, the scene always reminds me of "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The wallpaper ending is a nod to that famous (and highly recommended) short story.

On a side note, it is interesting that a scene from an 80's slasher, a genre notorious for chauvinism and abuse, would be reminiscent of one of the most famous and influential feminist stories ever written, but then, this is Nightmare on Elm Street! Men never stand a chance against the likes of Freddy Kruger, but the women tend to beat him in the end. And no, I wont mention Alice and the goofy church fight if you wont.