Freddy Krueger's Origin

Short Story Tuesdays

Amanda’s Christmas

by

Rico Lamoureux

As insignificant as it was compared to caring for the less fortunate Amanda couldn’t rid herself of the disappoint she felt for not having been home on Thanksgiving for the Krueger family tradition of decorating the Christmas tree. For the past fifteen years, ever since daddy had first placed the angel in her little three-year-old hand and rose her up above his shoulders so she could affix it to the top, it had been her annual job to do just that.

“Angel to angel,” he would always say with each passing year, Amanda’s character becoming more and more like one. She couldn’t pass a homeless person on the street without giving them at least half of what she had, couldn’t visit a hospital without consoling every ill patient. A natural instinct to help those suffering, it came as no surprise when Amanda declared at the age of ten that she would one day become a nun.

And now here she was, her first year as a novice, serving the Lord by serving the mentally ill inmates of the Westin Hills Asylum. The worst of the worst were housed in The Tower, its crazed residents so far gone that they were left to drown in each other’s madness, looked over by no more than two guards during daylight hours, and no one to watch over them on nights and weekends.

This was an area not even the convent’s Mother Superior dared to go near, yet something in Amanda’s heart told her this is where she needed to be, and so she had put in the request back in September.

Since no one in the church had any experience with these mad men Amanda only ever received one piece of advice from one of the guards.

“Never forget, they’re like wild animals. They can turn on you at any time.”