Disclaimer: I don't own Halloween.
Summary: On many levels, the nightmares are much worse than the scars he left etched into her skin. MichaelAnnie, pre-H2, oneshot
In honor of Halloween and the fall season in general, here is a Halloween fic! Ha. Well, this is based on Rob Zombie's characters yet again. I prefer the original, but I just can't get enough of the way he molded the characters in his own version of the classic. Anyway, this is…well, I'm not sure what it is. Different, I guess I could say. It was fun to write, though! I haven't written for this fandom in forever, so I hope that y'all enjoy this! I'd love to hear your thoughts and everything. Thanks for reading!
And She's Gone, Gone
Annie runs.
She's in a nightgown - one of those girlish white numbers - and it gives her an innocent appeal. Quite the dose of irony there, considering the content of the nightmare she's currently inhabiting.
Her feet are bare and she can surprisingly feel each and every twig and pebble as it digs into the arches and soles of her feet. The pain is a part of the nightmare, which is just as shocking as the material itself.
The cold fall wind nips at her figure as she runs. She's screaming, but the sound is mute and doesn't even reach her own ears. She screams and screams but there is nothing. No sound. Just eerie, still silence. She can't even hear the leaves rustle as she runs. Can't feel the twigs snap beneath her eager feet. The whole thing plays out like a silent movie, which makes it almost more terrifying.
She can't even hear her heart thrumming in her chest. She can feel it, though, battering against the cage of bone that contains it.
Screaming, screaming, screaming. It never stops. There is never a lull in which she realizes that it's useless to try to make noise when nothing in this strange gray world makes a sound.
Annie doesn't look behind her, she doesn't have the courage to. She needs to get away from him. He is stalking her, like some kind of deadly cat, and his very presence is enough to take the breath from her lungs.
She pants, her breath leaving her body violently as she runs. She has exhausted herself, and the feeling is again very strange in and of itself. Aren't nightmares supposed to be different? The pain isn't supposed to hurt in nightmares, but there it is, like a big slap to the face. Everything else in this dream is completely dull except for the pain. That is a constant reminder.
Her legs are screaming at her, her lungs and heart labor. She can't stop running, though, she just can't.
Annie falls, trips over some silly tree root - oh, how cliché it all is - and skins her knees and hands. The pain is fresh now, stinging and breaking into her terror-induced trance. She watches as the blood flows down her wrists and legs in ridiculous proportions. Finally, some color seeps into the place. The gray world has become tinged with red.
She scrambles to her feet, trying to snap out of the shock of finally seeing color in the place she's in, but it's too late.
A hand, large and imposing, grasps onto her nightgown and throws her back down. The scream that erupts from her throat should be blood-curdling, but the place still has no sound.
And she's looking up into the face of her murderer.
Mammoth and uncaring, Michael Myers stares down at her, his head cocked to the side like a curious dog. Chills run down her spine. She's frozen to the spot where he has thrown her, and she can't bring herself to even move a muscle. Her face feels malformed in terror and she finds that she can't even scream.
This goes on for an agonizing amount of time. Annie isn't sure how much time has passed, but it feels like a physical assault. He just stares, and she can do nothing but tremble in fright.
The mask that hides his face is the most chilling thing she's ever seen, and she can't ever escape it. The dead eyes stare at her from behind the emotionless mask, and she finds her fingers gripping the dirt and leaves around her as if to keep a hold on her rationality.
Run. It's one word, whispered on the wind, and she takes its advice. Launching herself onto shaky feet, she runs as fast as she can. Surprisingly, he lets her go - or maybe not-so surprisingly - and she finds that she is again running. The gray world hasn't changed, except for the red blood that drips down her arms and legs and leaves a trail behind her.
She runs like a deer from a hunter, this time leaping over fallen logs and creeping roots that would otherwise disarm her. She's stunned at her surprising coordination at a time like this, and keeps on with this.
Then, he's in front of her. She screams - no sound, never any sound - and stumbles back, knocking her head on the fallen trunk of a tree. Leaves swirl around her head as liquid seeps down her face, marking that too as red.
He approaches her now with purpose. She tries to scoot back, to get away from him as quickly as possible, and ends up falling over the log, legs splayed every which way, her upper body supported by her forearms. Every inch of her screams with pain.
She sees the knife in his hand, and - oh, that's just sick - she feels every muscle in her body tense up, as thought she was ready to coil and spring away like an animal, but she can't find the will to. She's panting, her chest heaving with every attempt at drawing air into her lungs. The whole place is dull, but the knife is gleaming, glinting in light that just isn't there.
He approaches her until he is standing in between her legs, staring down at her with a look that just screams nothing. He feels nothing, nothing can stop him from his goal, but please can't you just leave me alone!
Then he's kneeling, his large frame causing the log to creak beneath his weight, and his face is right in front of hers, looming and causing her to shake uncontrollably. For a moment, she forgets he has a knife, forgets her current situation, and just is.
A sharp, wet sound, and pain is all she knows. She screams out, screams so that the tendons in her neck bulge, closes her eyes so tightly she's sure she can never open them again. And the pain comes again, and again, and again, until she can't feel anything at all but that. Her eyes, unfocused and bleary, see that she is coated in red. She is now the sole, gory beacon in this colorless world. Her blood coats his hands, which are softly touching her throat, almost caressing. One of his hands holds the blade, so red that it cannot possibly be any other color, and he moves the blade along her jaw line…
Suddenly, Annie jolts from her bed, her heart thrumming in her chest, the sheets twisted all around her legs.
A nightmare. Just a nightmare. The thoughts immediately come, a coping mechanism that she has built up after all this time of dreams and nightmares - each one involving the Shape.
She can't calm her breathing. Panting like she had just run a marathon, she untangles herself from the sheets and almost falls off the bed, unable to support herself on those shaky limbs. She manages, though, and stumbles to the bathroom.
Annie arrives at the sink and presses her palms into the sides of it, as if bracing herself. This has become a nightly ritual, somewhat. Going into her bathroom, dodging Laurie's various messes as she does so. She takes in several fast breaths before staring at herself in the mirror.
Raising her head, she meets the excited eyes of herself. Large and brown and flickering with something that Annie doesn't want to admit she's feeling, she stares and stares and contemplates thrusting her fist into the mirror.
Her skin is on fire, tingling with something that she doesn't want to feel. Adrenaline pumps through her veins, thrilling her and making her feel more alive than she does on a daily basis.
Her eyes trace over the scars on her face, visible and jarring against her pale skin. She's gotten used to them - even learned to like them. In some sick and twisted way, they give her a rush whenever she manages to stare at them.
People say, "Oh, that Annie sure has coped well with this whole thing. Better than Laurie…"
People are wrong.
Annie, if anything, is worse. Laurie may be visibly self-destructive, hanging with the wrong crowds and popping pills and out at all hours of the night, but that is more overt than all of this.
Annie craves the rush, the adrenaline now. It seems as if everything that she went through last year has scarred her, and she can feel excitement in nothing else.
Nothing else besides her dreams. Nightmares. Whatever.
It's sick, she knows, that she can only feel anything if she's having an awful - or, not-so awful, according to her - nightmare, or watching some kind of sick thing about the man himself on television. Documentaries have been released, people have talked about doing a movie on the murderer. And it all fascinates her.
Every time she sees his face on television, or recreated by her nightmares, it's like a shot of thrilling adrenaline straight through her heart. It buzzes around in her veins, taunting her and mocking her at the same time. Shame, yes, she can feel shame, too.
Her eyes are bright and lively, something that they haven't been in the longest time (without the aid of certain fantasies, she admits). Her lips are parted, and the breath that is exhaled is something that is akin to the sounds of breathless joy. The corners of her mouth are twitched in a mocked interpretation of glee.
Annie takes several more breathes and her fingers clench tighter around the edges of the sink, wanting to dig in and stay there. She waits for the adrenaline rush to leave her body, waits for the dull feeling to return. Almost as if she is coated in red again, and the gray is leeching back into her body, leaving her lifeless and bored.
She then realizes her hands are shaking, as is her whole body. Shaking and wracked with the sinful feeling that she is experiencing. Her being aches with it.
She's a junkie, and not in the sense that Laurie is, but a whole other kind of sick and depraved individual. One that is excited by violence, one that craves it to feel something.
Maybe the bastard and I are more alike than I originally thought.
Annie finds that musing a disturbingly comforting one as she is anchored back to dull reality.
End.