-4-
REVENGE AND REGRET
She attacked the punching bag, with no sign of slowing down, while the bag's chain thrashed and swung to its limit. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't wind down; not after the call.
Damn that pompous little bald bastard. How DARE he? Did he honestly think she would sit back complacently and stay out of it once again, after what he had to tell her? If that was the case, then he was a fool to call her. This time she was going back, and there was nothing he could do to stop her. She was going BACK.
And by God, she was going to get that son of a bitch.
She focused on the white of the bag, seeing that ridiculous mask he had cowardly hidden behind. Her fists flew like missiles into the bag, impacting with a hard thump. She imagined herself destroying him in a thousand different ways, each way more merciless and painful than the last. Her hate was a never-ending fuel tank, which deterred her fatigue, and she kept at the bag, as the perspiration began to drown her clothes. Her hate. It was all she had left, and it was enough. She was ready. After years of training as well as physical and mental preparation, her resolve was unshakable, and she yearned for the moment to see him scream.
Her hate. It was all she had left. Her hate, and beneath that, something far more harrowing; a mother's regret.
With one last decapitating slam, she punished the bag once more, then walked away, frustrated.
Easy Laurie, she cautioned herself. You're going to work yourself into a heart attack. Save it for him.
How could she have let the Doctor talk her out of going back when the trouble started again in 1988? Well, the fact was that he hadn't. But then again, she wasn't really given a choice, now was she?
After her brother Michael Myers' attack back in 1978, Laurie Strode would have fallen to pieces, had it not been for discovering the love of her life, Jimmy Lloyd. He was the young paramedic that was there for her, after Michael had nearly got her the first time. It was utterly ironic that something good had come out of the most horrifying night of her life. He was her hero, her knight in shining armour, the one who had stood by her side and faced that dark night with her. However, that hellish night had almost claimed him, as well.
When Laurie had wandered out of her hospital room fearing Michael's pursuit, Jimmy had searched the halls looking for her. To his horror, he had found the head nurse, bled dead like a stuck pig, with an I.V. dangling from her wrist, her blood soaking up the entire floor in a crimson shimmer of death. He had turned to run and get help, when he had slipped on the floor. Jimmy landed head first, on the floor's bloodstained surface, and he lied there unconscious, in the throes of a concussion. The accident had likely saved his life, keeping him out of danger, in the form of Laurie's brother Michael.
Once during that night before the paramedics had found him the next morning, Jimmy had made it to his feet, and out to one of the cars in the hospital's parking lot. He remembered seeing Laurie in it, and telling her everything would be all right. Then he remembered no more, as the concussion had taken him into its dark depths again.
When he awoke, he was in the ambulance with Laurie. She cried at the sight of him, and the two embraced, and drove away with the cool mist of the November morning fogging the town in a vapour of white.
The next few months were particularly rough for Laurie. But rather than bail, like most any other man would do, Jimmy stayed by her side all the way through, and shortly after, they had married.
Then came Jamie. Sweet Jamie. The joy she had brought to their lives, was immeasurable, and for nine years, they were happy. However, Laurie had never truly recovered from Michael's attacks, and the very fact that he was still alive in a coma locked away somewhere played on her psyche.
She cursed herself, telling herself she was foolish, in an act of trying to heal, but it was no use. She couldn't stand to be alone. She couldn't bear to even turn the lights off at night, worrying like a child that the bogyman would once again be under her bed. And she positively freaked during the summer storms, during the blackouts. If it wasn't for Jimmy, she would have never held it together. Jimmy. Her rock. Her world.
Fate was truly an ugly thing, as Jimmy's life hadn't been spared that night back in 1978. It had just been prolonged.
Laurie had just come back from her first day as a grade school teacher. Now that Jamie was older, she had resumed her studies and had graduated from college as a fully licensed teacher. She had always liked kids, and her first day on the job felt like a career in the making.
When she got home, she took quick note that Jimmy's car was in the driveway. This struck her as strange, since Jimmy was working the night shift at the hospital, and usually had just gone into work about a half an hour before she had got home. She had seen less of him over the last couple of months with their conflicting shifts, and the nights were hard without him, but she was slowly building back her strength, and she also had Jamie. It was convenient that the little girl was as scared as she was in that lonely house in the dark of the night, and most nights her mother and her would share the same bed, in the comfort of each other's company. Little Jamie had thought the entire thing was her own idea, which served the pride of her mother well. They were like a couple of girls having a sleepover, 5 days a week, and it never got tiresome.
Laurie pushed back a tear, and continued to remember.
"James Christopher Lloyd, are you playing hooky, again?" Laurie made out in her best schoolmaster/truant officer voice as she entered the house, uneasily. She had started out into the house with a joke, in order to take the tension off her own irrational fears of entering that old house alone. Usually she had directed the jokes at herself, taking the edge off of her anxiety with a self-depreciating slight. Usually it had worked, but today her paranoia and anxiety couldn't be sated. In the end she had known something was wrong, but that didn't change the horror of what she found at the top off the stairs, when she opened the bathroom door.
"Maybe you think you're going get lucky before you go into work late. Is that it, Mr. Horny-man?" Laurie swung the bathroom door open gently, and her sanity gave away.
The weight of the shower curtain's bar was buckling in the center, as it strained to support the dead weight of Laurie's husband. The tight knots of the rope suspending him to the bar were fraying his broken neck with friction burns. His face was flushed purple, having taken his last breath hours before. A strange marking, like an arrowhead was carved into his chest, and on the wall above the sink, something was written in blood. Laurie screamed and dropped to her knees, sobbing and wailing, shaking back and forth.
On the wall, the blood's message was simple and direct as it told its story in one simple word...
Sister.
It was Loomis that had found her.
After emerging from a two-year coma as a result of the fire at the hospital, Loomis had taken it upon himself to aid Laurie in her recovery. The very fact that he was even alive was incredible to Laurie. It would seem that the good doctor was as indestructible as his most infamous patient. The gods had somehow seen fit to deliver him from the ashes of the fire. It was, in itself, a grand mystery.
Perhaps it was because he had saved her life twice from Michael, or perhaps it was due to the fact that he had felt somewhat responsible for allowing the whole thing to happen to her to begin with. Whatever the reason, he stopped by her house regularly to check up on her condition. He encouraged her to confide in him in order to work through her problems, and even though it was his profession, he never charged her a dime. In truth, the Doctor had been a sort of a Guardian Angel to her, which probably explained why she had misplaced her trust in him.
Laurie broke away from the memory, temporarily preoccupied with her renewed frustration and anger towards the Doctor. The hell with him and his pretentious condescending tone. He wasn't going to stop her this time. Not a chance. Don't get in my way, Loomis, she thought quietly to herself. I'll go through you too, if I have to, to get to him. Michael Myers was a dead man, nobody was going to get in her way. No one.
Again, her mind switched gears, and returned to those hurtful memories. It was important to remember, to keep it fresh in her mind. As painful as it was, it kept her focus of purpose intact. After all, the pain fueled her rage, and she had to feed off it if she intended to accomplish her mission of vengeance.
Loomis had found her in hysterics. He could hardly blame her. At the site of the grisly murder, Loomis' paranoia and obsession with Michael had refueled itself. One thing was for sure. Laurie Strode Lloyd had had a nervous breakdown, and he had to get her the hell out of Haddonfield. Loomis had to take her away; far away.
So, fearing for Laurie's mental condition as well as her safety, Loomis made arrangements for her to be taken to his homestead in London, England, where she had taken up residence in his parents' house. He had inherited the place after his father had passed away 4 years before. He convinced Laurie as only he could, with his warm and re-assuring words. He convinced her it was for the best, and once she was better, he would bring Jamie to England for them to be reunited, and start their lives over. However, first she had to get better. The road was going to be a long one.
Thus, Loomis had taken care of everything. For the sake of avoiding a public scandal and to keep the little girl Jamie safe, both Laurie and Jimmy were reported dead as a result of an automobile accident. Nobody was told otherwise, with the exception of the local authorities, Jamie, and Laurie's friends the Corruthers, whom took Jamie into their family as one of their own.
Things had quieted for 6 months, and then again, all hell had broken loose.
Suddenly, Michael had awakened from his long sleep, as Loomis had always feared he would. He did his best to stop him before the terror had started again, but in the end, a lot of people died. And Michael came after Jamie, Laurie's poor, defenseless, little girl.
When Laurie had heard, she pleaded with Dr. Loomis to let her come home. Jamie needed her. She wanted to hold her in her arms and make it all right as she, her mother believed only she could. The doctor, however, was stubbornly insistent.
"Laurie, I'm so sorry. But there's nothing you can do, my dear. What you need now is to concentrate on your own recovery. For your daughter's sake, listen to reason. You're no use to her in your present state. Besides, Michael Myers is dead, in Hell."
Laurie hadn't bought it. She had sensed great apprehension masked beneath Loomis' words, and she was sure that there was something that he wasn't telling her; something gruesome, that he was protecting from her from. Laurie didn't care. She wanted to see her daughter.
"You son of a bitch," she screamed over the phone at him. You have no right! She needs me! You've got no GOD-DAMNED RIGHT!!"
Unfortunately, in the end, she was wrong, as Loomis and his fellow associate doctors had every right in the world, it would seem, in the eyes of the law. She was seen as a danger to herself, and they had invoked a court order to detain her in London until the doctors saw fit to judge her adequately recovered. They weren't about to let her set one foot in Haddonfield in the state she was in, let alone while Haddonfield had turned into a battlefield for survival.
A year later, Michael had resurfaced again. When was it ever going to end? And worse yet, once the police had finally caught up with him, the station was attacked by some unknown party. Michael was gone, and with him, Jamie.
The stress of her daughter's disappearance once again took a toll on Laurie's recovery. Her nights grew insistently sleepless, and day by day she had hoped in vain to receive some word. Anything, anything at all. She prayed to God for her daughter's safe deliverance, a prayer that apparently had fallen on deaf ears.
Six long years had gone by. Laurie died a little inside, inch by inch, day by day.
At last, the day had come when Laurie received the closure she was in desperate need for, although it wasn't the closure for which she had hoped. Michael had returned once again, and Jamie was dead.
Laurie never forgave Dr. Loomis for letting it happen.
After 4 suicide attempts, Laurie decided to play the doctors' game. Slowly, she regained her confidence and control, and she had even eventually begun to work with children again. However, working with the children at the school had proven to be increasingly painful, as many a time she would look into their small faces and see the face of her daughter, looking up at her accusingly.
How could you leave me to die, Mommy? The phantom visage of her daughter seemed to say to her. Why didn't you save me?
Laurie's growing guilt proved to be too much, and she found, bitterly, that she was no longer able to continue her job at the school.
With the passage of time, her grief turned into rage. Her focus turned towards Michael, and he became an obsession. He was still out there, and he had not answered for his crimes. He had taken everything from her, including her hope. And a person without hope was a person without fear. She was no longer afraid, and she was ready to lie down her life in order to see him dead.
Her hate for him continued to grow, and so she had trained in silent meditation, and she had waited. There was no doubt that he would turn up; he always did.
And today, Loomis had delivered the news. It was time.
Laurie walked over to the table, picked up her cellular phone, and punched in the numbers. "Hello, I'd like to speak to Lee Brackett, please."
REVENGE AND REGRET
She attacked the punching bag, with no sign of slowing down, while the bag's chain thrashed and swung to its limit. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't wind down; not after the call.
Damn that pompous little bald bastard. How DARE he? Did he honestly think she would sit back complacently and stay out of it once again, after what he had to tell her? If that was the case, then he was a fool to call her. This time she was going back, and there was nothing he could do to stop her. She was going BACK.
And by God, she was going to get that son of a bitch.
She focused on the white of the bag, seeing that ridiculous mask he had cowardly hidden behind. Her fists flew like missiles into the bag, impacting with a hard thump. She imagined herself destroying him in a thousand different ways, each way more merciless and painful than the last. Her hate was a never-ending fuel tank, which deterred her fatigue, and she kept at the bag, as the perspiration began to drown her clothes. Her hate. It was all she had left, and it was enough. She was ready. After years of training as well as physical and mental preparation, her resolve was unshakable, and she yearned for the moment to see him scream.
Her hate. It was all she had left. Her hate, and beneath that, something far more harrowing; a mother's regret.
With one last decapitating slam, she punished the bag once more, then walked away, frustrated.
Easy Laurie, she cautioned herself. You're going to work yourself into a heart attack. Save it for him.
How could she have let the Doctor talk her out of going back when the trouble started again in 1988? Well, the fact was that he hadn't. But then again, she wasn't really given a choice, now was she?
After her brother Michael Myers' attack back in 1978, Laurie Strode would have fallen to pieces, had it not been for discovering the love of her life, Jimmy Lloyd. He was the young paramedic that was there for her, after Michael had nearly got her the first time. It was utterly ironic that something good had come out of the most horrifying night of her life. He was her hero, her knight in shining armour, the one who had stood by her side and faced that dark night with her. However, that hellish night had almost claimed him, as well.
When Laurie had wandered out of her hospital room fearing Michael's pursuit, Jimmy had searched the halls looking for her. To his horror, he had found the head nurse, bled dead like a stuck pig, with an I.V. dangling from her wrist, her blood soaking up the entire floor in a crimson shimmer of death. He had turned to run and get help, when he had slipped on the floor. Jimmy landed head first, on the floor's bloodstained surface, and he lied there unconscious, in the throes of a concussion. The accident had likely saved his life, keeping him out of danger, in the form of Laurie's brother Michael.
Once during that night before the paramedics had found him the next morning, Jimmy had made it to his feet, and out to one of the cars in the hospital's parking lot. He remembered seeing Laurie in it, and telling her everything would be all right. Then he remembered no more, as the concussion had taken him into its dark depths again.
When he awoke, he was in the ambulance with Laurie. She cried at the sight of him, and the two embraced, and drove away with the cool mist of the November morning fogging the town in a vapour of white.
The next few months were particularly rough for Laurie. But rather than bail, like most any other man would do, Jimmy stayed by her side all the way through, and shortly after, they had married.
Then came Jamie. Sweet Jamie. The joy she had brought to their lives, was immeasurable, and for nine years, they were happy. However, Laurie had never truly recovered from Michael's attacks, and the very fact that he was still alive in a coma locked away somewhere played on her psyche.
She cursed herself, telling herself she was foolish, in an act of trying to heal, but it was no use. She couldn't stand to be alone. She couldn't bear to even turn the lights off at night, worrying like a child that the bogyman would once again be under her bed. And she positively freaked during the summer storms, during the blackouts. If it wasn't for Jimmy, she would have never held it together. Jimmy. Her rock. Her world.
Fate was truly an ugly thing, as Jimmy's life hadn't been spared that night back in 1978. It had just been prolonged.
Laurie had just come back from her first day as a grade school teacher. Now that Jamie was older, she had resumed her studies and had graduated from college as a fully licensed teacher. She had always liked kids, and her first day on the job felt like a career in the making.
When she got home, she took quick note that Jimmy's car was in the driveway. This struck her as strange, since Jimmy was working the night shift at the hospital, and usually had just gone into work about a half an hour before she had got home. She had seen less of him over the last couple of months with their conflicting shifts, and the nights were hard without him, but she was slowly building back her strength, and she also had Jamie. It was convenient that the little girl was as scared as she was in that lonely house in the dark of the night, and most nights her mother and her would share the same bed, in the comfort of each other's company. Little Jamie had thought the entire thing was her own idea, which served the pride of her mother well. They were like a couple of girls having a sleepover, 5 days a week, and it never got tiresome.
Laurie pushed back a tear, and continued to remember.
"James Christopher Lloyd, are you playing hooky, again?" Laurie made out in her best schoolmaster/truant officer voice as she entered the house, uneasily. She had started out into the house with a joke, in order to take the tension off her own irrational fears of entering that old house alone. Usually she had directed the jokes at herself, taking the edge off of her anxiety with a self-depreciating slight. Usually it had worked, but today her paranoia and anxiety couldn't be sated. In the end she had known something was wrong, but that didn't change the horror of what she found at the top off the stairs, when she opened the bathroom door.
"Maybe you think you're going get lucky before you go into work late. Is that it, Mr. Horny-man?" Laurie swung the bathroom door open gently, and her sanity gave away.
The weight of the shower curtain's bar was buckling in the center, as it strained to support the dead weight of Laurie's husband. The tight knots of the rope suspending him to the bar were fraying his broken neck with friction burns. His face was flushed purple, having taken his last breath hours before. A strange marking, like an arrowhead was carved into his chest, and on the wall above the sink, something was written in blood. Laurie screamed and dropped to her knees, sobbing and wailing, shaking back and forth.
On the wall, the blood's message was simple and direct as it told its story in one simple word...
Sister.
It was Loomis that had found her.
After emerging from a two-year coma as a result of the fire at the hospital, Loomis had taken it upon himself to aid Laurie in her recovery. The very fact that he was even alive was incredible to Laurie. It would seem that the good doctor was as indestructible as his most infamous patient. The gods had somehow seen fit to deliver him from the ashes of the fire. It was, in itself, a grand mystery.
Perhaps it was because he had saved her life twice from Michael, or perhaps it was due to the fact that he had felt somewhat responsible for allowing the whole thing to happen to her to begin with. Whatever the reason, he stopped by her house regularly to check up on her condition. He encouraged her to confide in him in order to work through her problems, and even though it was his profession, he never charged her a dime. In truth, the Doctor had been a sort of a Guardian Angel to her, which probably explained why she had misplaced her trust in him.
Laurie broke away from the memory, temporarily preoccupied with her renewed frustration and anger towards the Doctor. The hell with him and his pretentious condescending tone. He wasn't going to stop her this time. Not a chance. Don't get in my way, Loomis, she thought quietly to herself. I'll go through you too, if I have to, to get to him. Michael Myers was a dead man, nobody was going to get in her way. No one.
Again, her mind switched gears, and returned to those hurtful memories. It was important to remember, to keep it fresh in her mind. As painful as it was, it kept her focus of purpose intact. After all, the pain fueled her rage, and she had to feed off it if she intended to accomplish her mission of vengeance.
Loomis had found her in hysterics. He could hardly blame her. At the site of the grisly murder, Loomis' paranoia and obsession with Michael had refueled itself. One thing was for sure. Laurie Strode Lloyd had had a nervous breakdown, and he had to get her the hell out of Haddonfield. Loomis had to take her away; far away.
So, fearing for Laurie's mental condition as well as her safety, Loomis made arrangements for her to be taken to his homestead in London, England, where she had taken up residence in his parents' house. He had inherited the place after his father had passed away 4 years before. He convinced Laurie as only he could, with his warm and re-assuring words. He convinced her it was for the best, and once she was better, he would bring Jamie to England for them to be reunited, and start their lives over. However, first she had to get better. The road was going to be a long one.
Thus, Loomis had taken care of everything. For the sake of avoiding a public scandal and to keep the little girl Jamie safe, both Laurie and Jimmy were reported dead as a result of an automobile accident. Nobody was told otherwise, with the exception of the local authorities, Jamie, and Laurie's friends the Corruthers, whom took Jamie into their family as one of their own.
Things had quieted for 6 months, and then again, all hell had broken loose.
Suddenly, Michael had awakened from his long sleep, as Loomis had always feared he would. He did his best to stop him before the terror had started again, but in the end, a lot of people died. And Michael came after Jamie, Laurie's poor, defenseless, little girl.
When Laurie had heard, she pleaded with Dr. Loomis to let her come home. Jamie needed her. She wanted to hold her in her arms and make it all right as she, her mother believed only she could. The doctor, however, was stubbornly insistent.
"Laurie, I'm so sorry. But there's nothing you can do, my dear. What you need now is to concentrate on your own recovery. For your daughter's sake, listen to reason. You're no use to her in your present state. Besides, Michael Myers is dead, in Hell."
Laurie hadn't bought it. She had sensed great apprehension masked beneath Loomis' words, and she was sure that there was something that he wasn't telling her; something gruesome, that he was protecting from her from. Laurie didn't care. She wanted to see her daughter.
"You son of a bitch," she screamed over the phone at him. You have no right! She needs me! You've got no GOD-DAMNED RIGHT!!"
Unfortunately, in the end, she was wrong, as Loomis and his fellow associate doctors had every right in the world, it would seem, in the eyes of the law. She was seen as a danger to herself, and they had invoked a court order to detain her in London until the doctors saw fit to judge her adequately recovered. They weren't about to let her set one foot in Haddonfield in the state she was in, let alone while Haddonfield had turned into a battlefield for survival.
A year later, Michael had resurfaced again. When was it ever going to end? And worse yet, once the police had finally caught up with him, the station was attacked by some unknown party. Michael was gone, and with him, Jamie.
The stress of her daughter's disappearance once again took a toll on Laurie's recovery. Her nights grew insistently sleepless, and day by day she had hoped in vain to receive some word. Anything, anything at all. She prayed to God for her daughter's safe deliverance, a prayer that apparently had fallen on deaf ears.
Six long years had gone by. Laurie died a little inside, inch by inch, day by day.
At last, the day had come when Laurie received the closure she was in desperate need for, although it wasn't the closure for which she had hoped. Michael had returned once again, and Jamie was dead.
Laurie never forgave Dr. Loomis for letting it happen.
After 4 suicide attempts, Laurie decided to play the doctors' game. Slowly, she regained her confidence and control, and she had even eventually begun to work with children again. However, working with the children at the school had proven to be increasingly painful, as many a time she would look into their small faces and see the face of her daughter, looking up at her accusingly.
How could you leave me to die, Mommy? The phantom visage of her daughter seemed to say to her. Why didn't you save me?
Laurie's growing guilt proved to be too much, and she found, bitterly, that she was no longer able to continue her job at the school.
With the passage of time, her grief turned into rage. Her focus turned towards Michael, and he became an obsession. He was still out there, and he had not answered for his crimes. He had taken everything from her, including her hope. And a person without hope was a person without fear. She was no longer afraid, and she was ready to lie down her life in order to see him dead.
Her hate for him continued to grow, and so she had trained in silent meditation, and she had waited. There was no doubt that he would turn up; he always did.
And today, Loomis had delivered the news. It was time.
Laurie walked over to the table, picked up her cellular phone, and punched in the numbers. "Hello, I'd like to speak to Lee Brackett, please."