Michael Myers exiting a burning house, brandishing a halligan bar and driving it into the stomach of a grown man in full firefighter gear, lifting him over his head and holding him in the air for two, three seconds – now that was difficult. But far from impossible. Those few scenes were what triggered his obsession in earnest. Perhaps the power to enter people's dreams was inaccessible, but here was something much closer, much more achievable. What pleasure of inconceivable purity there was in knowing that you could snap in half anyone who crossed your path! Again, like ten years ago, Marcus Simeon tossed himself headlong into the newest project, using any means at his disposal to get stronger, taller. He was only five foot seven, when he needed to get to 5'10 at the very least, the height of Michael Myers in the original, played by Nick Castle.

Besides, such physical strength would come in very handy indeed in his everyday life. Back in 2021, he had been working in a warehouse, dragging around heavy furniture, refrigerators, you name it, for eight, nine, ten, eleven, sometimes twelve or more hours a day. The absolute most he had ever worked in a day was thirteen hours.

But that was back in 2021. Little over a year later he'd quit that job. What happened was that in July 2021, one of the higher-ups asked him if he could work the late shift, which would at the earliest begin at 9am. Marcus had worked the late shift for one week already. He disliked the idea of working there again but accepted anyway, thinking people of his nationality would also work with him, like the last time. But they were wiser than him and would soon quit their jobs, leaving him alone to work with all kinds of unsavory people. When he first began work in that company, the manager was an amiable man who'd unfortunately retire a couple of months later, replaced by a far more irritating, incompetent, unpleasant manager. Marcus disliked the man from the moment he saw him. He was even shorter than himself, and his puglike face, his bulging, dull eyes, they made Marcus want to do things to the man. The guy was lucky Marcus didn't know his place of residence.

From July 2021 to May 2022, Marcus's frustration would begin to pile up heavier and heavier. It felt like all the responsibility was suddenly on his shoulders. Four trucks would arrive at 4pm and they needed to be unloaded and at the same time four more trucks would need to be loaded in and an entire corridor was filled with pallets that Marcus had to leave on the right shelf despite not having a license to use a forklift and the stuff coming in and the stuff going out all had to be scanned and processed and lists had to be printed out and goods had to be moved around according to said lists and Marcus was often alone in all this because his one other colleague would just disappear for hours on end to talk on the phone and if he made any sort of mistake or forgot to do something that asshole manager would tear into him mercilessly and if he had no reason to chew him out he would find one like why a trashcan wasn't emptied out or why some discarded furniture hadn't been loaded into a trash container and Marcus was beginning to grow sick of it and he wanted to work first shift again and he foolishly thought the higher-ups would understand him if he told them his colleague was useless but instead they moved the colleague into the first shift and kept Marcus in the late shift and sent him a guy who was even worse and...

Oh...

And the late shift began at 9am, at earliest. It ended when the day's work was done. Not eight hours; when the day's work was done. The managers, the bosses, everyone had said so. And nearly every day two trucks would arrive at 7pm, sometimes later, to be loaded with goods for tomorrow. Loading them would take two hours each. So, from 9am to 9pm Marcus would work. There was no set time for a pause, so often he would be starving. One time he couldn't handle it and went away to eat. That cunt of a manager followed him and berated him for it.

The straw that would break the camel's back were the ropes. These trucks had no metal poles that could be placed inside to secure the goods; they had to be tied together with ropes, using a specific type of knot. Marcus did not know how to tie this knot, but anyway it did not matter; he was doing half the work at the warehouse, surely someone else could do this one small thing instead of him? And then the next day the manager attacked him over this. Normally this new attack in a long list would not matter, Marcus was learning to maintain composure under pressure.

And then the manager said, „Are you here to work or not?"

That was when darkness filled Marcus's vision. His anger was choking him, his reply came out as a low hiss. „What the hell have I been doing this entire year?" He would've said more, he would've started screaming, but the manager was already turning his head from him, walking off as if he had suddenly remembered something that had to be done right that second. „Are you crazy?" was the last thing he threw at Marcus as he retreated.

It pissed Marcus off so badly he punched the nearest thing he could find: a metal support beam. The resulting bruise was still faintly visible, over a year later.

Frustrated as he was, Marcus still tried his best to learn how to tie this knot. A few times he almost had it. Too bad that his teacher was the new guy they had sent in to help him. An irritable, arrogant, ignorant old fart. In other words a guy just like Marcus, except also a drunkard and a domestic abuser with zero contact to his family, his children all grown up and scattered to the far sides of the world, as far away from him as possible. It took an hour of working with this guy to make Marcus want to tear his head off; the guy had zero spatial awareness and, as he was working, he bumped hard into a piece of metal sticking from a pallet. The old guy's reaction was to angrily thrash the pallet and blame it on Marcus for not moving the offending object out of his way, as if he somehow knew the old guy would walk backwards and impale himself on it.

It got worse. The moment he got a car, he had to drive this old guy to and from work, them living in the same building. One time he pulled Marcus away from something important just to show him a refrigerator he had left in its proper place, as if transporting a fridge was nuclear science. If the guy did not have his alcohol he would start shaking, and Marcus would have to take over for him. The guy neither understood nor wished to understand the language of the country they were in, so again Marcus would have to take over, even though he understood very little himself. He had to speak for him, read for him, write for him, think for him...

And this guy still had the audacity to grab him by the collar of his jacket one time when Marcus misunderstood some non-verbal command. The young man tried to bury it within, as he did many other things, but he remembered this old fart telling him once, „I oughta start beating ya, then maybe you'll listen". If he dropped this matter, then he would indeed start getting beaten. So an hour or two later he told the old guy in no uncertain terms not to ever do what he had done that day. The old man got pissed and told Marcus he didn't need to drive him anymore. Marcus had laughed at that, loudly and spitefully.

Four days later, Marcus quit his job. He still had to work the late shift with this fucker. They spoke very rarely, but now Marcus had no one to tie the knots in trucks for him. So he tried his best to do it himself because he did not want to beg this guy for help but it just wasn't working the rope was slipping from his fingers shaking with a day's worth of anger and he was twisting and turning the rope in every way conceivable even inventing some knots along the way but they all got unraveled and then that shithead walked in and Marcus could not hold it in anymore and he started punching and kicking at everything in the vicinity and ran off to the boss and told him he was quitting.

It was over. The very next day, it was over. There was a brief period of uncertainty, but within less than a month Marcus landed on his feet, cat-like, in Hugo Boss no less. He hoped sincerely that his guardian angel would be acknowledged in Heaven for the numerous ways he had saved Marcus's dumb ass. He thought his almost-year of overtime work was bad, but that guy had been working overtime ever since Marcus was born.

But that was all trivia. Irrelevant to Marcus now. He would often have to calm down his dad from trying to do something to the old guy, and his own dad would often have to calm down his uncle from trying to exact revenge. But Marcus no longer cared about that warehouse, or the people who worked there, or the manager who sought in him a replacement for the guy he had put through the similar torment before him. Marcus Simeon, Hugo Boss employee... his world was nothing to be kept so small. He felt there was more to this life, and in the Shape he saw it embodied, the glimpse of that higher world, purity of purpose, of power. The thing of legend. The thing fit only for killing and getting killed, his conscience would often tell him.

Maybe, he wrote an answer in his journal. It was only a journal in the broadest sense; he didn't bother with writing the time and date, something he had picked up from Se7en. It gave his writings a schizophrenic quality, going strong for several days and then getting put off for months, until some hidden impulse triggered Marcus and he began writing again, no context to any passage, no correlation, at times delving into magic or disclosing his dreams. Or debating himself, as he was doing now. Maybe Michael Myers is a monster. Or maybe he can be a gargoyle. Maybe the demon can be put to some purpose. Something beyond. Something greater. Something like-

He trailed off then. He could not say what. What greater purpose? Oh, to be sure, there were many uses for such strength, but he could not think of a single one that would benefit someone other than just him. Whatever selfless goal he imagined – helping others, becoming a vigilante and fighting the local criminals... tedious. Boring. Nothing compared to putting on a mask and costume and standing on the lonely part of the road, in darkness, car drivers hitting the gas pedal as they take notice of the creepy figure watching them.

Marcus had read a book on secret societies, a long time ago. In a section regarding the Ku Klux Klan, he learned that society had begun as a circle of young men whose single solitary goal was confounding and unnerving the public, all for their own amusement. It wasn't until later that the members began to convince themselves there must be something more to it, the bizarre rituals and attires and whatnot. Marcus supposed this was the case with him. The initial goal was to create an urban legend. He imagined, three years from now, people would have a spook story to tell their kids at night. There would be theories on the internet. The forest is haunted... is it the Shape? Has the attention of millions around the world manifested in our world as an egregore? Did we bring him into reality? Or is someone just messing around? Well, Marcus thought, why not both?