Chapter Text
I think I made a mistake choosing you, Michael.
Even as Michael Myers was faintly aware of being salvaged from the fire, the voice of the Man in Black echoed in his head, no different from Wynn’s usual tirades. No different whatsoever, actually. Why should he flinch at Loomis’ colorful rants about how evil he was when Wynn was so much scarier than Loomis could ever be? Loomis at least couldn’t psychosomatically inflict pain on Michael. There was that. Even if he wanted to, he wouldn’t.
Despite better judgment — Michael wouldn’t say that he was fond of Loomis. Not really. But Loomis was the lesser of two evils. He didn’t enjoy cruelty. Then again, after Jennifer Hill’s death, it seemed that he didn’t really enjoy anything. Not really.
Loomis wasn’t evil, not truly. Michael could suppose they had similarities, just in terms of the near-endless supply of anger and depression that they had. They just used it differently. That much was clear. Loomis channeled it into martyring himself for a town that didn’t even bother to say “thank you". Michael channeled it into killing people.
As little pleasure as Michael felt in anything, he could still say he had it better than Loomis in at least some ways. You had to work for other people’s love, and no matter how much endless empathy you had for others, they could still think nothing of you, whatsoever. You could give them everything, and they gave you nothing.
At least being feared and hated — nobody really disappointed you there. Farewell for now, Doctor, Michael thought. I should hate you, but you’re too pathetic for that. Not really.
He tried to think of Loomis’ stupidity, his obliviousness to Wynn’s true nature (his colleague, his friend, Michael thought, and he made sure to inject as much venom as possible into his thoughts. Age was no measure of intelligence), his utter reluctance to notice anything was wrong. Bizarrely, it was hard to remember.
***
”It’s you.”
Michael would have gone “Who are you” if he could even talk. But he thought he could remember him. Hawkins. Little Hawkins from next door, whose mother tried to set up play dates between the two, before things went wrong. Not that Michael minded, not really. Hawkins was a good kid. And…well, they weren’t children anymore. Not really.
Hawkins didn’t even seem to be angry, just dismayed. "How did this even happen?”
Wouldn’t you like to know, Michael thought darkly.
“Wait, what the hell is that on your wrist? You haven’t been hurting yourself, have you?”
Is that what you think, Michael thought, too dumbfounded to even be any kind of venomous.
It wasn’t self-injury. If anyone actually did it to themselves, Thorn would unquestionably see it as blasphemy. Mrs. Blankenship, for example. "Thorn is not a tattoo,” she once said. “Our religion, our purpose, is not a costume. It is not a mark to brand yourself with in the name of self-injury. The only one who can mutilate your flesh is the one giving you the curse in the first place.”
So Hawkins was wrong. But maybe the self-injury aspect was more plausible than actually knowing about the Thorn curse.
“Officer Hawkins, I don’t think it’s a good idea you touch him,” Doctor Hoffman said. Hoffman. Sour, officious little pretentious ass. The only thing Michael would agree with him on was Loomis being an imbecile. “He’s unconscious right now, but I wouldn’t tempt fate like that."
”Sorry about that, Doctor,” Hawkins said.
”Don’t apologize; just don’t wake the boogeyman,” Hoffman said. “Plain and simple."
Michael could at least say that “don’t wake the boogeyman” was a surprisingly clever turn of phrase.
***
You disappointed me, Michael, the Man in Black said. I’ll deal with your failure later, as I see fit. For now…I think I need to pay Sam a visit.
It was while wearing the Halloween mask that was Terrence Wynn, Michael knew. Much like the Sawyer family of the infamous murders in Texas, only Wynn had perfected what the Sawyers hadn’t, or the Firefly family: he had perfected the art of making the mask look realistic enough that nobody would question it. The Sawyers and the Firefly family had no interest in that. Wynn did. He had perfected making sure nobody noticed the ice that lay behind that friendly, agreeable smile, that Loomis trusted him. That Marion Chambers did. That none of them ever thought that he was repaying their faith, their trust, their worship of him, with treachery.
And Michael wondered if Wynn had gotten too used to wearing the lifelike mask. Too used to it, to the point he deluded himself into thinking he’d gotten some humanity in him. Because he actually sounded…human, talking about Loomis. Just for a moment.
Michael already hated Loomis. Wynn — he was playing Loomis like the fiddle, but at least he gave a damn about him. At least Loomis could make him proud. Make him act close to a human being, able to usually calm Loomis’ angry rants with a gentle touch to his shoulders and a reassuring, logical-sounding word. Michael only ever seemed to make Wynn angry. The only part where Wynn was proud of him was when Wynn got to show off how much control he had over Michael, like a triumphant scientific achievement.
Loomis…Loomis was the only one to really make Wynn seem human. Seem. Beyond the general affability and friendliness that nobody would ever believe if they knew Wynn as Michael did. How did Loomis do that? Perhaps Thorn wasn’t solely to blame. Perhaps Loomis was right, that he was unsolvable. Purely and simply evil, but in the sense of being drastically out of sync with the rest to the point of the “norm" seeming strange and inexplicable.
Steinbeck had been something Michael was assigned when Loomis had pretended at least to give a damn about him. East of Eden. The character of Cathy Ames had felt like a kindred spirit to Michael: born with a mental quirk that made the “norm” seem absurd, functioning as well as she could, but Steinbeck had been surprisingly even-handed when it came to the subject. Having an empathy deficit didn’t mean that you were necessarily irredeemable, and it wasn’t something you could help any more than a physical oddity.
A strange thing, to anchor him after yet another for-a-change-accidental cruelty of Wynn’s. But here he was.
Steinbeck, in another life, would have been a flawless therapist.
***
That was the last of what Michael saw of physical contact for quite some time. Being locked in a morgue or something like that did that to you. There was nothing quite so existentially uncertain, unsettling, as resting there. Away from Laurie. They probably saw it as not only karma, but also a necessity, and necessity always took precedence over even karma: he wouldn’t be able to hurt Laurie again.
There had been a moment, just a moment, where Michael had heard her voice, and it had felt like he had temporarily been jolted out of a nightmare — a waking nightmare, but nonetheless. It wasn’t just the fact that she somehow knew his name when he was just a seemingly nameless, identity-less boogeyman relentlessly stalking her for reasons unknown. It was just that it was Laurie. That he could remember her as a small, kindly child, even if he didn’t know how her hair had gone from dark brown to light brown when she hit her teenage years. A riddle for the ages.
But she had stopped him. Briefly. One of many reasons Wynn no doubt thought Michael failed, even if Michael had fought that momentary impulse as to wondering what would happen if he just put the scalpel down and loved her like she deserved. It was good that he resisted, he thought. He didn’t want to love her, as wonderful as the idea seemed. He didn’t want her to love him, as wonderful as the idea seemed.
At least being shut away there would free him of both those fears. And her. She could go on hating him. He could wait. It all turned on Halloween, after all.