One Night In Haddonfield

[Crow McMorris]

Haddonfield A.D. 2018

He watched from the outskirts of a southern New Jersey town, a thin yet muscular figure wearing torn jeans and a worn out leather jacket, human camouflage that offered little protection from the brutal night air. Above, as the sky darkened across fields of empty promise, a shroud of heavy mist descended, icing over porcelain flesh. Not that the sensation bothered, Crow McMorris, for he did not feel the cold, nor heat, nor discomfort of any kind. ‘The Scarecrow’ did not feel because the lingering tendrils of a life once lived had long since departed from his grasp. Crow was undead. A zombie to his rotten core. Perhaps more so than his coked up father, for at least ZMAC had Ruby Red by his side now, a warm, living tether back to the mortal world. Crow had no such luxury though, just the night, a purring Harley Davidson, and a rusting axe.

The topography that surrounded Crow was flat and endless, dying crops that had wholesale succumbed to the season of the witch, an endless stretch of land that withered endlessly beneath the wind. Above, a full moon hung low in the sky, it’s beams scarcely able to define a single soul for miles around.

Except one.

A huge, hulking figure dressed in a dull grey boiler suit and a mask of some description. Humanoid, but not human. A monster with a cold impassive face, with eyes seemingly omitted. Two black pools oozing dread that scoured the land for signs of life it could mercilessly extinguish.

This was Michael Myers.

Forty years ago on Halloween night, Myers murdered five people in cold blood; plunging Haddonfield into chaos. It was a night of terror that only six rounds from Doctor Loomis’s revolver could silence. By dawn’s early light, ‘The Shape’ was once again incarcerated and committed to a mental asylum. Wounded and shackled, Myers seemed a contained beast. Days passed, days that became months, that became years. Loomis died without seeing Michael depart first; they say even on his deathbed, Loomis fought to hang on, as if his demise would unlock the door to Michael’s cell; that complacency for their most dangerous patient would set in. And Michael would roam once more.

Loomis was right.

No one was quite sure how it happened; police reports mentioned later that Michael was being transported across country to a new facility that could best cope with Myers’s unique ‘sensibilities’; but the hospital itself refused to comment, stating that Myers was instead being transported by the FBI for profiling. The bureau, of course, refused to comment on that themselves. In the end though, it didn't matter. The guards remained bludgeoned. The gas attendant was still crucified.The family that once rode inside an SUV that smelt of pumpkin spice and candy were strangled and dissected just the same. In the end, blame was secondary, Michael being free though, that was everything.

And that’s when Crow received the call. Send a monster to stop a monster. The pay was decent, the rules were simple. Kill or be killed. For an man out of time like Crow, a man who didn’t give a shit about toxic masculinity or manspreading or any of the infantile hang ups that preoccupied a modern neurotic America, this ‘life’ was the last free frontier.

Michael stopped in his tracks; dropping the twitching corpse of a brain dead farmer who he was preoccupied with smashing to bits against a tree trunk, turning to face the sound of a cigarette being lit.

“Ya know what ya problem is, fucker?”

Michael never answered.

“Ya problem, is me.”

Crow waved Michael on, dodging the slow, lunging swipes from his enemies scythe. No wrestling moves would save this day. This was old school, biblical brutality. They fought instead like rabid samurai. Bone snapping, limbs rendered and torn apart. But in the end, Michael is just a man. A man in his seventies. As inhumanly strong as he is; when the final arching blow came from Crow’s axe, ‘The Shape’s’ gurgling exhale could only sound like a release. But for Crow? He simply healed...and moved on. An immortal with places to be.

A plume of nicotine smoke rose towards the stars as on a hilltop far away, a wrestling show was about to begin. Crow smirked; men in tights would now be free to squander their lives over petty straps of leather and twenty pounds of gold.

“Happy Halloween, Ladies.”

Crow decapitated Myers. The blow was simple, efficient. With his bounty collected, ‘The Scarecrow’ gunned his Harley and drove away.

FIN.