The Scorpion

The Shape

There was a chill in the air. The wind rustled the crunchy, dead leaves that had fallen onto the wet sidewalks. Autumn had settled over the small town of Haddonfield. The cold, overcast air had caused the entire neighborhood to fall into silence. Like buried under a thick pile of snow, the world had calmed and quieted itself. No sound could penetrate it. Except for one. His breathing.

It was rhythmic and strong. The deep intake of breaths that slowly let themselves out, currently muffled behind thin, white plastic.

It was somewhere behind you now but you were not sure exactly where. You just knew that it was there, ever-present.

You were on your walk home from visiting a friend's house. You had stayed longer than you planned to, but your laughter and jokes kept you hooked in his home and time ran laps around you. As soon as you realized how long you had stayed, you excused yourself politely and left. Your pace had quickened as you left his porch and started the short trip back to your home.

The breathing had now turned into panting.

The shift in breathing caused your heart to jump and chills to run through your entire body. You didn't dare to turn around, but you knew that the breathing was getting closer. You walked a little faster as you turned onto your street. You could see the house in the distance, partially obscured by trees and dying leaves.

There was another slight change in breathing and your upper body tensed up. You had started to breath heavily as well from adrenaline and the amount of control you held towards your legs to make sure you didn't start sprinting.

Now at the doorstep, you fumbled with your keys as you heard the breathing growing closer, with barely discernible footsteps behind it. Your keys jingled in your hand as you found the correct one and inserted into the front door's slot. You pushed the door open and stepped past the threshold. The instant sense of security that involved being around familiar surroundings entered your body and your turned your entire body to face the street behind you.

The world fell into silence once more.

The breathing had stopped. As did the footsteps. The hush had fallen once more on your empty street. Whoever, or whatever, was behind you, was nowhere to be seen. You looked up and down the street, but nothing revealed itself to you. You let out the breath you had been holding, and the tension in your shoulders began to relax. You shook your head and closed the door behind you.

With your keys now resting on their appropriate hook, you headed through the living room and into the kitchen.

The back door was open.

Your heart skipped another beat and you hurried to close the door. As it clicked into place, you heard it again.

The goddamn breathing.

You backed up slowly, forcing yourself to take slow breaths. Both your steps and your breathing stopped once you backed into something large. It was warm, but you could've sworn nothing was there a minute ago. You carefully turned your head until you were facing the obstacle you had backed into. It was the chest of a person wearing old, slightly tattered dark blue coveralls. The chest was slowly rising and falling to the rhythm of the breathing that was growing louder in your ears. You looked up. Up the strong, sturdy chest. Up towards the small sliver of exposed skin of a neck. Up to a lifeless face. And although it was a face, it was not his own. His face. Him.

Michael.

Underneath the white plastic mask was a man. But inside of that man was nothing at all. Or so people thought. He was a nothingness that killed. An all-consuming void. Senseless and without reason. A void that had killed many and would most likely kill again. The Boogeyman himself. The thing of nightmares that every child of Haddonfield feared and the name they would use to torment one another.