As my friends started to arrive to my house for the Halloween party, I had a worrisome fear growing in my mind. I had thought it would be funny to invite Freddy Kruger and now I was feeling like it was the wrong thing to do. Most of the people there were my coworkers from my bookstore job, but I told them that I had a few other friends who would be there. Some were from my church, and one girl named Emily James was already friends with Jenn C from work. They were happy to see each other, and my anxiety subsided a little bit as I listened to them catch up cheerfully. Jenn had dressed up as the thing from Nightmare Before Christmas, and Emily was dressed as Dorothy from Wizard of Oz. I had on a dark garbage bag stuffed with newspaper. It was an idea for a raisin costume that I had been using off and on for many halloweens since I first learned the idea in elementary school.
“I should have been one of those abstract costumes,” I said, “like a philosophy idea.” My friend John started brainstorming ideas as jokes but I could not think of anything. I was too worried about whether Freddy Kruger was going to show up.
John’s costume was a devil costume, which was kind of funny because we were both really religious and saw it as him pretending to be Satan.
Another friend of mine named Kathy came in her Harry Potter crystal ball reader costume that she had worn to the harry potter party at our bookstore. It was kind of an honor for her to be there because she was older than us and a famous textbook writer.
Someone answered the door for me and my stomach plunged. It was Freddy Kruger. Or at least it looked like him. I then realized it was actually my friend Ryan who had dressed as Freddy Kruger.
I didn’t know whether the real Freddy Kruger would just show up as himself or if he would wear a costume as something else. I looked around to make sure he wasn’t already there. When I went to the kitchen, I found that Freddy Kruger had actually arrived much earlier and was at the counter chopping up apples with his razor hands. He arranged the apples in a circle with some caramel dip. On his head were some pumpkin deedelly boppers that my friend Mickie gave him.
"Thank you for inviting me,” he said. “I’ve never felt included before and I have decided to accept Jesus as my savior."