Marcus had only smoked once in his life; when he was six. He had only gotten truly drunk once; when he was thirteen. He never recovered. He felt some part of his intelligence was lost, and from then on he only ever drank alcohol when he absolutely had to, like when the would-be fiance to his childhood friend demanded that he join in the toast. They broke up not too long after, but that was irrelevant. What mattered was that Marcus was trying to preserve what little neurons he had left, exercise his brain. Right now he was trying to multiply the number 1667 by two. Why? Doesn't matter. Seven plus seven equals fourteen... carry the one... six plus six is twelve, plus one is thirteen... carry the one... again thirteen, carry the one... one and one and one is three. Three thousand three hundred thirty four. He checked the calculator on his watch. He was correct. Another battle against the constant haze in his mind; another victory.
Of late he had been paranoid about his intelligence. Was he truly as smart as he thought? Or was he just surrounded by dullards? He had taken an IQ test once, he could not remember now whether the result had been 108 or 118. Now that he thought back, it probably wasn't a proper IQ test, but he did not care either. If he started boasting about his IQ, he'd be even more of an ass than he already was. He could, perhaps, be characterized as highly knowledgeable, but only because the things he normally researched fell far out of the scope of an average human being. Even his little brother, to whom he was the closest and to whom he had tried to communicate the purpose behind his fascination with Michael Myers, could only utter a 'thank God' when Marcus informed him he had deleted all four Halloween movies he had illegally downloaded from the internet. But he hadn't done that because his fascination had faded away; on the contrary, he felt it fading, and decided to maintain the flame by actively pushing away anything even remotely related to Michael Myers or the very holiday with which he was associated. Last year and the year before he went out for Halloween in the costume of the Shape. Not this year.
But only because he had something else in store.
The Fibonacci sequence. One and one and two and three and five... with these numbers he mapped out how the encounters with the Shape would unfold, on which day. The first incident was scheduled for February 19th 2024. The second, March the 2nd 2025. The third, October 21st 2025. The fourth, March 14th 2026. From the fourth incident to the third, 144 days. From the third incident to the second, 233 days. From the second incident to the first, 377 days. 144 plus 233 equals... 377. It was perfect. It would appear random to anyone on the outside looking in, but if anyone mapped the incidents to a calendar they would discover – and hopefully be as amazed as Marcus was when he discovered this – that the incidents in October 2026 formed the Fibonacci spiral. Marcus always sought to incorporate the Fibonacci sequence into whatever he was doing. His way of bringing beauty into the world, he supposed. Was that bad? Sure, he was a little unhinged, but was he bad?
Nineteenth of February, 2024. He had less than a year to prepare the best Michael Myers cosplay ever seen in these parts. There were complications, though – the exact coveralls and boots worn by Michael Myers in Halloween Ends could only be ordered in the United States. He would have to make friends with an American, convince them to order the stuff for him. That would be the most difficult part. Then, the mask. He could get that one online, but maybe through a VPN. Then gloves that looked like human hands. They cost over a hundred euros the last time he'd looked them up, they would have to be painted, fingers on the left hand cut off, made to look like the hands of a 60 year-old who had been dwelling in the sewers for years. A prop knife, fake blood, those would be easier. Then something for self defence. He had just the thing – a multifunctional pen that was also a flashlight, screwdriver, bottle opener, and glass breaker. It was Chinese made so he didn't trust its quality all that much, but he would have to make do. He didn't want to be caught by the cops with an actual knife on his person. He still had a camera from his previous Halloween. It could record in infrared and store up to 128 gigabytes of data. Maybe he would bring it along to record everything. Risky, but at least he would have a way to relive the experience until next time.
Or maybe...
Now that he thought about it, best not. Not just because it was risky, but because he feared if he could relive his experience, then he would not be up for it next time.
The most recent addition to the list of things he required was an Aztec death whistle. It stared at him whenever he opened the Etsy app, skull shaped. If he could get this one, undetected, and simply blow in it on February 19th the next year, well... he doubted anyone in the ten mile radius even remotely shared his thought processes. They would not know what a death whistle was and what it did. They'd be convinced that something terrible had happened that night, that someone was screaming in the woods, getting murdered probably. And if someone got scared enough to report a masked figure lurking on an isolated stretch of the road, it would not take long for the public to connect the dots.
Not just the public, though. The police.
He hated the police. Even the guys back in his home country, slightly chummy, got on his nerves. They once found him suspicious because he was taking a walk and just so happened to turn around to go home at the same time that they were passing by in the patrol car. Marcus understood that to them, it appeared as if he had turned around because they were there. Did they understand that it was purely incidental? Did they understand that he was taking an evening walk along the river, in the snow? He wouldn't bet on the intelligence of an average cop.
The cop is not your friend, he wrote in his journal, again a culmination of his thoughts with no connection to the previous passage. He fancied sometimes that someone would find it after a nuclear apocalypse, live out his or her life by the principles he had set forth in it. He hoped he could be a source of guidance for someone, guidance that he never had in his life. In his life, he was only ever controlled. But how, when his writing was barely legible? One time, he had been looking through his old school notebooks and could barely decipher his own handwriting. The situation hadn't improved much since then.
The cop is not your friend. The cop is not a hero. The cop is a worker like anyone else, waiting for his shift to be over. The cop is only interested in money, and he is more than happy to take it from you if you give him an excuse.
Marcus didn't consider this to be a political statement of some sort – he just didn't like people telling him what to do. He didn't consider himself an anarchist. He had a fascination with authoritarianism, but did not consider himself one, either. He quickly got bored of that bunch. His interest in control lay not in the material, in the politics of this world. He knew himself very well. After all this time, there was some small victory in that.
Two tarot cards of the Major Arcana had helped Marcus understand himself better than any psychiatrist, aside from maybe the good doctor Jung. The method was simple: add up the numbers in your birthday until you get a single digit number. The final number was one tarot card. The number before that was the other. These were called birth cards. Marcus was born on April the 4th, 2000. Four plus four plus two was ten, one and zero was one. Tarot cards one and ten – The Magician and the Wheel of Fortune. The goal of the Magician was mastery, self-fulfillment, perception, and he was at risk of megalomania, impractical fantasies of omnipotence, charlatanry... sounded about right. The goal of the Wheel of Fortune was transforming the base into something higher, mastering the lifework, becoming whole, and the risk here was fatalism and misunderstanding of one's tasks... again, quite right.
Maybe this whole thing was a misunderstanding. A fantasy. Most likely. Often times Marcus thought about abandoning the project altogether. What does it matter if some kid in the middle of nowhere, Europe, thinks Michael Myers is lurking in the woods? And to that the other part of him, the part that wanted to go through with it, replied: „You will forever wonder what could've been".
Marcus Simeon had a real talent for not being noticed, either by his coworkers or his extended family or women... just people in general. His taste in clothing was quite dark, muted. It was only recently that he bought two bright pink t-shirts which, according to his mom at least, suited him and his dark skin tone far better than the stuff he normally wore, all faded, low-quality black t-shirts. One with the omega symbol and one with the statue of Perseus and one with the album cover for Meshuggah's Contradictions Collapse album. Only the last one of those had something that even remotely approached quality, seeing as the image wasn't cracking and coming off of the t-shirt in little chips of paint. Whatever, the point was that because of his choice of clothing, because of the general vibe he emanated, because of his demeanor, Marcus did not stand out. He worked five days of the week, came straight home, occasionally took his little brother to fast food restaurants, but he himself rarely, if ever, felt the desire to go to a club, or just a bar. He had no friends of his age, not in his homeland and not here. He spoke only when spoken to. You could meet Marcus Simeon in the street and never even realize.
Except on the Halloween night of 2021 and 2022. People took videos of him, people took selfies with him, people were actually scared of someone who was, in real life, not physically intimidating at all. No one cared who I was until I put on the mask, he thought. A reference to Tom Hardy's rendition of Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. No way in hell was he writing that down in his journal, he thought, grinning at himself slightly for even entertaining the idea, however briefly.
If he gave up on this, if he lived to a great old age without any incident in his life, without anything out of the ordinary, if he were made to stand before all his previous selves to be judged, how would he feel? How would they all feel if that young man, that boy who saw so much further than anyone, the boy who had figured out for himself the seven hermetic principles when he was eleven, eventually got broken by life, reduced to number e120064 Marcus Simeon, Hugo Boss employee?
That question, and many other questions of similar nature, were enough to convince Marcus to continue with the preparations whenever his mind began to stray. It was very hard for him to persist in anything if he did not obsess over it. And he was certainly still obsessing over the strength of Michael Myers. By God, he would have that power. For control was the right, the destiny of the Magician. He felt this in his bones to be true.
He felt refreshed now, as if by this declaration alone he already possessed some small amount of power of the world, power to carve his spirit into the universe. Already his little cell of a room which he shared with his little brother seemed a little less of a cage. Even so, the ultimate why continued to elude him, the reasoning behind his actions that a sane human being could support. No matter, no matter, it would realize itself eventually. Right now he had more pressing matters. The varicocele, left untreated for five years. He had done some research into what was wrong with him, initially fearing hernia, but it wasn't that, it wasn't that at all. That was the good news. The bad news was, he still required surgery. With those and similar worries on his mind, he decided enough was enough. He closed the journal which had been laying nearby, open for more thoughts. Then he turned down the volume on the television set – Denis Villeneuve's Prisoners had been playing in the background for maybe an hour. His routine in the evenings was to stuff what he needed into his work pants, ready for him in the closet, pour himself water into a bottle for the night (he dehydrated easily), take a leak so he doesn't have to get up later, and by 10:45pm he was dozing off, a hard pillow between his legs. It helped somewhat with the constant heaviness he felt down there.
But when he woke up the next morning, the heaviness was gone.