Today, Carmen warily reminded herself, was still Halloween. And, in little less than three days, she had seen four corpses. One of which was her doing.

Never had she wanted so badly to take a blade and scrape her fingers of the taint that she couldn't see but still felt. Dr. Wynn's blood was on her hands — she was no less innocent than her brother and this realization made her sick with grief.

If she could take back the last three days, she'd have let Michael kill her— if it meant saving that girl, and Officer Deeney, and even that obsessed doctor— she'd have let him kill her…

But, as she considered this— something as simple as a knife through her stomach, a quick snap of the neck, a shot to the heart— she found death didn't appeal to her. It never had. If in the situation to flee or die, she imagined to still be running if she weren't in the hospital —(if her leg wasn't casted) — and guarded by armed men who hadn't let her leave the room since she awoke. Funny, they were poised outside her door not as though to keep people out, but to keep her in...

It occurred to Carmen that Dr. Loomis could've been lying to her and the jury would rule her guilty of first degree murder. Or, maybe she was hallucinating these last three days and Dr. Loomis who probably mastered deceiving children just as he was good at assuaging them, as was the art of his trade in psychiatry, said those things in order to fool her into compliance.

Or perhaps, he was measuring her sanity, to see if she was fit to stand trial because she might be guilty after all.

Carmen rubbed her — what she could only see as her filthy and murderous— palms together, feeling the sweat accumulate from ever-growing anxiety.

"Certain acts can become adopted into behaviors, become traits, and can often be encoded into our DNA and manifest without a catalyst," as were Dr. Wynn's words, a haunting echo in her mind, but all the more reason she pondered.

If Michael Myers was a sororicidal maniac because it ran in his blood, was her brother's gullibility which has led him to kill also something of an inheritance from a psychotic ancestry?

Could Carmen be susceptible to that as well— culpability of sharing a psychotic disorder?

Is that why she had killed Dr. Wynn?

Hadn't she wanted to kill her brother? Voiced them to his face?

As much as she hated dwelling with these questions, Carmen found sleep to be no more forgiving, because when she had closed her eyes a couple times throughout the afternoon and submitted to the snatches of oblivion, she heard only the klaxon of crying infants.

Now, it was well into the evening and the nurse had forgotten to draw the blinds. And in her dark, stale, hospital room with moonlight leaking in, spilling across the floor, she felt never more the prisoner than when she was in the basement of Smith's Grove, a taste of what might possibly be what she could call home, depending on the court's verdict.

Because if she wasn't innocent, then she was either insane or guilty.

Carmen focused on what was her only viewing of the night sky. If she jumped out of the window, could she survive the two story fall and escape in an ambulance? That was if she could leave the bed to begin with even with her leg, and decided it would be impossible. How would she escape through a window safely, and not let the guards know?

Oh, yes, if her confinement didn't mean she wasn't innocent, she didn't know what did.

Since her stay, Carmen rarely ate even when the opportunity presented itself, finding that food gave her little pleasure and it left her in a vulnerable mood. She'd alternated between sleeping and sulking. And, now that she'd sulked, she was prepared to sleep. Once more hoping for unconsciousness to relieve her of her living nightmare, in the hopes that her mind would this time bestow upon her a dreamless rest, Carmen snuggled beneath the blanket, her head sinking into the pillow.

And the clock on the wall opposite of her ticked. The minute hand half past nine twitched a fraction upward. In her mind, there was a pendulum, swinging from left to right, and each thought dissolved with drowned sounds.

Then, Carmen slept while the police officers abandoned their stations for what would be an overdue "lunch break". They'd been instructed by Dr. Loomis— the kindly old man who'd retired for the evening and returned to his hotel room on the other side of town, to keep careful watch on the girl— since her brother and Michael Myers were yet to be found, and having been the only living witness to the massacre at Smith's Grove, she would also be a likely target.

But, alas, even with such a beseeching request, the officers knew they'd met the end of their propensity to guard— and decided that a quick visit to the trucker's diner on the other side of town, wouldn't hurt them or the witness finally sleeping soundly inside the room.

And as they walked down the quiet hall, which was largely idle since the nightshift nurses have ducked out on the roof for a smoke break, and most of the house call physicians have mostly returned home, the stairwell door opened, and a gaunt man entered the floor with an injection of .5 mg of midazolam cradled in his hand, while the other reached for the knob of his sister's room.

XXX

In her dream, she flew over a river of tar, and the wind growled in her ears, but no harsh a sound to stir her flight. Carmen let fireflies scattered throughout the night guide her eyes to the silhouette of her mother, turned away from her. She poised her arms to be pinned at her sides, to reduce air resistance so that she could propel forward, towards mother. But, the faster she advanced the farther away the woman seemed. With an outstretched hand, Carmen reached for her mother and cried out to her, but there was no response. Only her mother's silhouette disappearing in the light of a dying firefly.

This was a good dream. As good a dream as Carmen could remember before she woke to grey cloth over her eyes, silk tying down her hands to the arms of a chair. Her upper body jerked upwards, a test against her restraints, and found that she could tip herself over in the chair if she had the strength to do so. But, her limbs felt weighted. Her mind sluggish and her thoughts languid. Panic didn't seem to come easily to her, even while registering her situation and coming to the unfavorable conclusion that this might be her brother's doing.

And, if the remnant of fear in her was fully renewed and closer, she'd have screamed but she also heard the cock of the gun, an intentful warning, and all her voice could muster then was a whimper.

She thought she felt a presence in the room

"Scream, I dare you. But, I'll shoot you too," her brother said.

She could feel his eyes like pinpricks on her skin. She guessed he was looking at her leg. He'd done great work on her leg, she'd give him that— of course he'd admire his efforts. It was probably the best he could ever do.

As he approached, his footfalls audible, feeling less like an apparition and more human, she could hear tiredness in his voice. The sound of a man who was well approaching the end of his enthusiasm.

"If you think you've survived Samhain, think again," he said.

"Why don't you just kill me?" she asked.

Footfalls stopped.

She didn't see the touch of regret hit his eyes. "I can't."

"Why?"

Almost shyly, he admitted, "Because you're for him. He'll kill you instead. And he'll make it painful after what you put him through…"

She told herself she wouldn't cry anymore, because she didn't think she was capable of it, but somehow there were tears escaping the corners of her eyes, and moistening her blind-fold.

"I don't want to die anymore, Adam," she pleaded, and heard the echo of her voice resound off the walls in the room. She smelled the stale semi-dark and imagined her father to have smelled of this.

Adam looked upon his sister in mock admiration.

"Too bad," he said, just as she expected. Dispassionate as ever, he tucked away the gun into the waistband of his pants.

"You love him? You did this all for him?"

If only Carmen could see it, Adam let his face color with emotion. Genuine. At the very least, she heard it in his voice. Perhaps, he wasn't so heartless after all. He might have murdered their mother, ruined his sister, but Adam had a weakness—Carmen noted.

"Since we were little, I knew I would be there for Michael," Adam said, "I knew it was my destiny to serve him. I was jealous at first, but I knew it was always him. Especially, after he killed his slut sister, and everyone feared him, that was when I began to love him.

"Why does he need to kill me?"

"Because it satisfies him," Adam answered.

"Why?"

He stood stiffly and his lips formed around the words with less movement. "Because I couldn't find Laurie for him, so I have you in her place."

"I don't understand. I'm not his sister."

"But, you're my sister. And I'm giving him to you."

"As what? A sacrifice? Those aren't real."

Somewhat harshly, Adam refuted, "It's because you don't believe." For a second, she thought his breath was upon her lips, his scent — a dirty musk— wafting up her nostrils, and then her mouth was wet with his tongue and his lips. Carmen jerked away with an enraged yell and her brother stumbled away. There was silence, spoken in place of Carmen's outrage and her brother said remorsefully, "If you were me and I were you, I don't think things would be much different, Carmen. I think we still would've come to this."

But, Carmen knew that to be false. To have another's blood on her hands, this was a feeling she'd wish upon no one. Guilt almost cloying, it was and would be what haunts her— even if she avoided thinking about killing Dr. Wynn, it would be his face, his glassy eyes, which would find her with vengeance— because his death marked her becoming a monster— the very thing she loathed.

After feeling this guilt, how could she kill for a man that was more a machine driven purely by impulse? How could Adam love that machine? She wished she knew why Adam would go to such lengths— such depths— for Michael Myers, who was unlikely, as unlikely as a lion to not devour a dying lamb, to return the love Adam had for him.

There was nothing in Michael. But, bloodlust, the need to destroy and cripple—

She had seen him capable of defiance and strength.

If he was not a machine, then he was at most an animal— a cold blooded predator. That was all he could be—

Even as he had elected not to kill her in the back of Officer Deeney's cruiser and…

At Smith's Grove, under the onslaught of rain…

How could Carmen forget?

With him on her, he could've strangled her if he wanted to. But, he didn't, as though to toy with her— refuse her when she begged for him, while fatigued yet hysterical, having committed murder herself, to kill her.

Why would he do that? Why spare her if Adam promised her to him? If it seemed that she was always promised to him since the night the six year old boy killed his sister?

And then, Carmen heard them— another pair of footsteps coming from the south end of the room.

And, finally, the fear that was resting on the horizon loomed over Carmen.

Michael had come to take his harvest.

For if not Laurie to satisfy, then he'd taketh another.

"I just regret not being there to see you walk," her brother said as though choking on tears, "Or see you ride your first bike, and drive you to your first dance. Maybe even watch you as you get married. But, I can just imagine that, can't I?"

Even with knots in her stomach, twisting around, Carmen couldn't will her arms to pull against her restraints hard enough.

"I still love you Carmen." Her brother said, and Carmen saw what her brother wistfully spoke of. She saw a fabricated future, another life with Adam, the Doe family in the glow of an angel's halo, at a distance. Envisioning what wasn't tainted, Carmen cried openly and perfectly. It marked the first time she cried for her brother. Who was as much a victim as she.

Yet, unlike her, he was dealt a worse fate, he tried to become...Not a murderer, or a sister killer— but a boy who was admired by his family, who received attention whether it was good or bad, attention all the same to know someone cared enough for him that they'd spare him the time.

But, her mother couldn't give that, and her father had nothing to give. Adam was the discarded child and even though he always posed as a good boy to the townsfolk of Haddonfield, they never truly cared about him— it was why he looked so sallow and thin, bearing little resistance to the autumn wind. He hardly cared for himself. To live, he had to care for another— even if that person killed for the sake of killing and thrived from it.

Carmen cried because she pitied Adam or maybe because the anger had drained out of her, and she was feeling wholly sorry for everything. She didn't know now, and she didn't know if she was even herself. She didn't even know if she was crying because she reached her end— or rather her end reached her. Michael was standing behind her, and there were few options as to what might happen next.

"You'll still be my baby sister," Adam said above his sister's weeping, "And you deserve to die. Better you than me...Better for you to be a dream."

Then, the footsteps were heavy, and all Carmen could hear was a hollow, terrible thunk and the strangled gurgling of her brother, trying desperately to keep his blood from spilling out of the top of his sternum onto the living room floor.