This may be the most overthought and under delivered/performed slasher movie fan-fic out there. That being said and read, I've probably already scared off most of those would have read it. I think we're off to a good start! Now, I've watched F13th, NES, IT and a bunch of others but I realized I had never watched 'Halloween' so I gave it a go. The result? A writing prompt of 'What if….'
AU big time set between 2001 and 2016 I believe. Gender swap for Loomis and some crazy ooc for Michael Myers. It has a little of the original 1978 and some ideas from Robert Zombinski's remake. Does it work? I don't know.
Fluff Warning: There's gonna be some stuff between Myers and Loomis...
Another take on this classic story! Thanks for trying it out!
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. All original characters and plot are the property of the author. No copyright infringement is intended.
What happened? Sometimes the past is as deep and tangled as the woods behind your house. It stares at you with midnight in its hollows and fear creeping along dead and forgotten paths. You can keep your secrets there, swallowed up in confusion and guilt; buried under molting leaves of silver. Sometimes you can remember what it looked like in the sunlight when it was warm and two sets of footprints formed together. Then there was only one, pigeon toed, scared and miserable. But the woods were still there, yawning wide to devour what sacrifices would be offered. That is what happened.
How long he had sat there it didn't matter. No one was at home. They wouldn't call until tonight when his mother was home and then he would be quietly scolded and denied his video game privileges. With scratched and dirty fingers he reached to trace the letters in the stone: M-I-C-H-A-E-L M-Y-E-R-S. Long blond hair fell forward into his face as he sniffed irritably at the threatening tears. He tried to block the memories of the woods with his anger and his blame. Tried not to let the tender feelings of safety, trust and love weaken him. He would bludgeon them, slash them so that they could never make him feel abandoned and alone again.
"You shouldn't have left Dad. You shouldn't have ever left." he said through clenched teeth.
Sharp, crystal grey eyes belted by agonizing black blue never left the granite while he grabbed for the wooden handled pocket knife that he kept in his sock. Opening it he started to gouge and dig at the headstone in front of him. The dappled surface sustained only small scratches and chips, most were old.
"Michael, you freak." The amused voice came behind him and smothered his anger with humiliation.
Swinging his head around he saw her standing there with her arms folded condescendingly and shaking her head in mock pity.
"Go away J..." he braved to speak but she closed the small distance between them and kicked at his hand, stomping on it until he dropped the knife and put a hand out protectively. The other hand went for the cheery colored plastic, clown's face mask that sat next to him.
With a final grind of her heel, she smashed the mask, leaving a punctured hole through its cheek.
Moving the freshly curled ringlets that had escaped her high ponytail she scoffed, "He left because of you you puffy-faced baby. He couldn't stand how dumb you were. You embarrassed him all the time you know. That's why he always took you to the woods and no where in public. I think he really tried but to have a fat, stupid, retarded kid like you, anyone would have left."
The words hurt more than where she had kicked him. When he tried to swallow it felt raw and sore but he narrowed his eyes at her and growled, "Shut up..."
"No, you shut up Michael!" She interrupted him, "Do the world a favor and never talk again! In fact why don't you go disappear..."
He went to grab for his knife but she kicked him again in the ear and he recoiled sharply at the pain.
"Seriously pathetic Michael Myers. Oh by the way, mom wants you to come home. She got a call at work from the school. You're dead meat."
Michael could hear her footsteps brushing through the freshly mowed grass as she left and he bit at his lip until he tasted the mineral blood tinge his tongue. "I hate you Judith." He whispered to himself.
It hadn't been a year since his father had passed. It was on his ninth birthday and his mother had set up a Circus themed party for him. There was a clown who made animal balloons, an elephant cake and tickets for prizes like a kazoo or a goldfish. When nobody came, his mother kept saying she was sure they were just late and tried to hide her hurt and disappointment. Michael didn't care so much himself, he ate the candy peanuts and let Boo, his four year old little sister, rub a balloon on his head until his hair stood on end. Wearing a clown mask he had found in the favor basket, he watched his mother cut the cake with her kitchen knife forcefully. He just wanted his father to come home. They were supposed to go camping and his present that year had been the pocket knife, his name inscribed in had always been proud of being named after his father.
He must have waited at the window for his car to pull into the driveway for almost an hour before the phone rang and his mother sank to the floor screaming hysterically. There had been an accident and his father had perished. He had been called out of town by his job and was on his way to the airport. Michael couldn't understand why he had been going there, he was supposed to be coming home! It would have never happened if he had come home like he'd promised.
The counselor at school called it 'juvenile bereavement', his disassociative behavior and the mask, it was all perfectly normal. His grades would recover in time as he dealt with his grief. When things didn't change, they had him talk to a psychologist who was supposed to 'help' him. But they would try to make him talk about his father which felt like prodding a heinous monster inside tearing at his chest with cruel claws and he couldn't respond. It hurt too much.
He had always been quiet and kept to himself. A boy who he had known since kindergarten, Wesley, quit coming over and would ignore him at school. Then they told him he couldn't play soccer with them or ask each other what smelled so awful when he would sit by them in class. Everyone would laugh. Wesley would bring peanut butter M&M's and give them to everyone but Michael. Then it got worse. They hid his shoes or swapped his back pack for a glittery pink one from the lost and found. Once they chased him and held him down on the playground, shoving mud in his underwear and telling everyone he'd messed himself. Then he'd put on the mask even though the teachers told him he couldn't wear it at school. It separated him from the humiliation and the sour looks and the rejection.
At home things were different too. His mother had taken a job at a bar to pay for their bills. She worked afternoons and evenings until late, so he never saw her accept in the hussle of the mornings. She was different, sad and bitter; she yelled a lot. Their babysitter would promptly drop off Boo, Angel was her real name, and Judith was supposed to be there to watch them. But she hardly ever was. She went to high school and stayed out with her friends. Michael was glad when she did or when she stayed in her room. The two of them had never gotten along. Judith and he didn't have the same dad. His mother had her in high school. To get a rise out of Michael Judith would say horrible things about his dad and he would lose control and run for her. She was bigger and stronger and would hit him or push him back.
"I hate you Judith! I'm going to kill you!" He'd scream at her through the slit of the clown's augmented smile. Angel would cry and Judith would laugh.
His older sister started to bring home a boy named Steven and Judith would taunt Michael, telling Steven he was a loner and a psycho. With a weasel-faced grin, Steven would agree and join in. While Michael fed Angel, Steven told him he'd make a great mother in a dress and they would force him into his mother's clothes and stuff rolled socks into the chest area. Michael tried to fight them at first earning him only bruises. He couldn't stop the two of them so he stared. He burned them with his piercing glare, taking care to note each offence for revenge in the future, when he was big enough.
One day he told his mother what Judith had been doing, taking Steven upstairs and about the strange, chemical smell that would come from under the door. That they would be in there hours. Judith did get into trouble; no allowance and grounded, but this made life much worse for Michael.
When his mother found his pet rat dead, cut up and mutilated she tried to brush it off and promised him a new one. That one suffered as well. Other animals were found in the yard, all in gruesome states. One time with his knife found nearby. It made his mother cry and she began to look at him strangely sometimes. With disgust and distance in her eyes. Boo didn't though, he could trust Boo.
But his Mother stopped trusting him with Angel after finding him carrying her in the middle of a busy road at a city park.
"What is wrong with you Michael!?" She cried hysterically. He didn't know, he couldn't explain it.
Halloween was coming and Michael loved Halloween. At school, they promised a plastic pumpkin full of candy to the person who could donate the most books to the school library. Every day Michael looked at the pumpkin prize in the office window, knowing he had hardly any books at home to bring. It wasn't fair and the resentment built up like heavy sand, weighing his already languishing spirit down further.
One day at recess he went into the office when no one was looking and took it then ran for the woods that bordered the playground. In the thicket he slid the mask up on top of his head and sat to eat the candy greedily.
"Hey Mike-o the psycho!" It was Wesley.
Michael said nothing but pushed the pumpkin behind his back in a lame effort to hide it. It made Wesley laugh.
"You stole it!? Oh man I'm going to tell on you. They're going to lock you up!" threatened the boy.
For some reason this sent a chill from between his shoulder blades up his neck and to his jaw.
"Don't." he said with small voice.
Wesley picked up a stick and swung it fast, just in front of Michael's face, "Got to. Are you going to run home doll face?"
For a moment Michael thought of it. No. He didn't want to run anymore. He wanted to try being the one who chased and hurt for once. Standing up he lowered the laughing clown's face and lunged at Wesley who hesitated, caught in surprise but he brought up the stick again, hitting Michael in the side of his head. The pain sent fire rushing through him and Michael stumbled backward. But instead of pathetically cowering or retreating he loved it. He came again, the stick hitting him but this time it didn't stop him.
He knocked the stick away and tackled Wesley, pushing him backwards over a fallen tree trunk. In the crackling leaves he began to swing his fists. Over and over again, Wesley's pleads to stop driving him all the more. He would hit him for all the things he had ever done to him, he would hit him for Judith and he would hit him for his father dying. Soon there was blood gushing from Wesley's nose and mouth as the boy burbled and coughed. Michael froze looking at the warm, sticky red that coated his knuckles. Suddenly he stood and turned around and walked away.
Wesley died. They found his body later that day. The fire trucks and police cars had all the children lined up at the windows, all but Michael.
Then they called him to the office where he sat and waited for his mother. The women all whispered and stole disturbed gances at him from their desks. He had taken off his hoodie and there was blood all over his shirt and up his sleeves, he did not try to hide it. They had taken his mask away.
But Wesley had died of an allergic reaction from a bee stings. There was a hive in the old log that they had disturbed and Wesley had been unable to get up for help. So, in a way, Michael had killed him.
From then on, it was always him and always them. The other kids and even the adults. Looking at him with abhorrence and even fear. And, despite a twinge of some dying need to be accepted, he finally acknowledged that he craved it. The fear.
His mother yelled at him, she pleaded with him, she cried and cried. He told her he was sorry.
A man came to the house for his mother, his name was Ronnie. Michael didn't like him. It was worse than having Steven over. He would tell Michael to take his mask off and to do other things like he had authority to do so. He told Michael's mother that Michael had problems and needed discipline. And he did strap Michael, pants down right in front of Judith and Steve. His mother said nothing. But he didn't want to cry and no tears came this time, he just waited numbly, letting it happen.
On another Halloween he took Boo trick or treating. His sister was supposed to take them but she had made other plans with Steve. His mother went to work and when Michael realized no one cared enough to take them, he led his little sister out the door, holding her candy basket because she had her favorite toy bunny in hand.
He dressed as a clown, the mask and a ballooning silk jumpsuit. Angel was of course an angel, as she had been every year with some tweek to it. An angel princess, and angel kitty cat, an angel fairy, this year it was an angel pilot fish. Kids in other costumes moved aside for him now but he caught their hushed words: crazy, freak, murderer.
As the town anathema, he found if he stayed in the shadows of the yard and sent Angel, she'd get twice as much candy than if he were there to make the distributor nervous.
As he waited he watched, not just 'them'-everyone else, he watched the leaves roll in a throng, flipping over end to end making the ground look alive. Sometimes the wind would stir it up into a twisting, chattering cyclone. They stayed out late, only to return home when Angel began to complain of the cold. Michael never was cold.
At home Ronnie chided them lazily from the couch for being too loud and waking him up. He hadn't even noticed they'd left the house.
Michael put Angel into pajamas and checked to see Ronnie asleep again, head flung back and snoring. Then he watched halloween cartoons and ate candy with Boo until she drifted off to sleep. He could hear Judith upstairs, she and Steve yelling and screaming at each over something. With chocolate smudging his fingers, he turned up the volume on the television, switching it to a horror movie. Soon his mother came home looking tired and sick. The hollows of her cheeks sunken in like a skeleton and her hair stringy and hanging in her face. In his mind he painted jack-o-lantern eyes and a bowing, semi-toothed smile on her face and started laughing.
Shaking her head, she came and picked up Boo, "Don't stay up late. And don't watch anything gross. -Oh, and don't eat too much candy." she carried the little girl upstairs.
He could hear his mother yelling at Judith to keep her voice down and he turned up the volume on the TV again. Ronnie could sleep through anything.
Later the police came to find Michael at the top of the stairs holding Boo. Blood covered his hands and smudged up his arms, splattered his clothes and his mask. Around him on the ground lay his mother, Judith and Steven draining and still. Ronnie was where he had been all evening, but he was dead also.
Michael held in his free hand a long, blood-wet kitchen blade.
Boo simply looked from Michael to the shocked officers and said, "Michael did it."
And he admitted it. There was no reason not to. The world was of little bother to him now, there was no changing it and his numbed mind had rooted out any sense of sorrow in his heart.
He lived in a small, closet like cell for months. It took a team of lawyers to plead not guilty for him despite the fact that he continuously confessed. They told him to keep his mouth shut. They said Judith hadn't died, her wound was a shallow one. She vowed wouldn't be in the same room with him ever again but gave a written testimony. Little Boo sat the stand. She pointed at him with a sweet, childish innocence and said, "Michael did it!" She smiled at him and he smiled back at her.
So he was given a verdict of guilty and evaluated as unable to serve his adult attuned life sentence in a juvenile detention center or prison. He was obviously deranged, and dangerous so was sent to a secure mental hospital.
Again they had swarms of psychologists, psychiatrists and case workers interview him and 'work' with him as he separated himself behind masks that he would make in the stretching spaces of time alone. A nurse died one day and they sent him away. To Smith's Grove Sanitarium. It was a place they put people who couldn't be helped and the future held nothing for them. Little publicity or even acknowledgement kept the facility humble, aloof and drab. For policy and formality reasons he was interviewed periodically by a staff shrink who would prescribe him pills they would force him to take until he was too big to force. Here Michael grew up.
