Disclaimer: I do not own Nightmare Before Christmas, no matter how much I wish to take over Tim Burton's life...however, the plot and a few unique characters and settings are my original work!
"Ah!" Lifting a pricked finger, a young woman known as Lenore placed her slender finger in her mouth, frustrated. From the knee down she was surrounded by acres of a pumpkin patch, now sporting scrapes and pricks from their leaves and stems. It had been four hours now, and still she hadn't found the pumpkin to her liking.
"Have you picked one yet?" Lenore looked up, finger still placed in her mouth.
"No! None of these are good!" She shouted, mumbling with her digit being encased with saliva to heal the pain.
"Ugh." Her friend sighed, slumping back down on a plastic patio chair. Helen had now since had enough of Lenore's pet peeves about Halloween, from picking good, honest horror movies down to finding the perfect bag of assorted sugary goodness. Looking at the prick, Lenore was satisfied with her work on it, continuing to search the extensive array of pumpkins. Lifting up her flowing black skirt, she continued stepping over patches of orange vegetables, unbalanced on her black lace-up boots.
"Would ya hurry it up! Alan expects us to help with the invitations sometime today!"
"Okay, okay! Keep your eyeliner dry, crybaby!" Lenore shouted, leaving Helen to pout, crossing her arms over a fish net shawl, beneath a black shirt displaying cold, yellow wolf eyes.
"Aha!" Helen looked up, hearing a good sound from Lenore's mouth.
"Found it?"
"No, I found the skeleton charm I lost from my bracelet last Halloween!"
"UGH!" Helen groaned. At this rate, it would be Halloween when Lenore picked a pumpkin.
"What took you so long?" A scrawny, tall awkward boy of fifteen looked down at the two girls who entered, he perched atop a ladder, decorating the ceiling with some rubber bats.
"Little miss Lenore the Pumpkin Queen over here happened." Helen gestured to Lenore, looking at her with a glazed look in her blue eyes.
"Fine, just blame me for all your problems." Lenore retorted, picking up a bag of spider-webs and laying them about the railing of a small staircase. Helen just sighed, plopping down in a chair and dragging over black invitations, beginning to write with an orange jell pen.
"You inviting Annabell this year?"
"Yes." The boy, Alan, replied, struggling with some tacks.
"What! After the fiasco of the last masquerade!"
"So she dressed in something less flattering..." Alan spoke, tacks in his teeth, sighing as he finally pushed one through to the wall.
"She put on a mask of you, with circulating blood!" Helen exclaimed. Lenore just rolled her eyes, placing fake spiders on the web just so. Everyone knew Annabell merely had played a joke, knowing Alan was a horror movie junky almost as much as Lenore, and thought the mask would be amusing. Having a crush on Alan always provoked those actions too. But no, Helen had to go and be a bitch about it, taking the plastic ax out of someone's head next to her and chucking it at Annabell, calling her a sick, twisted psycho.
"Just send the invitation." Alan sighed, climbing down the ladder, sighing in relief when his feet touched the ground. Lenore looked to her friend, he dressed in tight blue jeans, the studded belt making the denim follow his flattering figure even more. He wore a sleeveless Black Sabbath shirt, jean jacket over it with a patch that read "Of Fangs and Scary Things" on the back. Lenore sighed, always wishing that Alan looked at her the same way she looked to him. But no, her black skirt and tight-fitting black bodice shirt wasn't all that attractive to him. Shrugging matters off her mind, Lenore returned to the Halloween madness she always got.
"Lenore, did you get those tombstones I wanted?"
"Yep. I'll go get them out of Helen's car." Placing one last spider on the webbing, she exited Alan's large house, entering the frigid October air. Above her shone an almost full moon, bearing the imminent predication of a full moon on Halloween. Sighing, Lenore watched as her breath crystallized before her. All Hallow's Eve was her favorite time of year, full of darkened mystery and ancient lore. It was her frightening Christmas, her one time a year when she, quote un-quote, "fit in". Opening the door to the beat up station wagon, Lenore grabbed the plastic tombstones, reading the classic "R.I.P.". Turning, she kicked the door shut.
"CRAWW!"
"Huh?" Lenore looked up, met with black feathers and a blur. Struggling, she felt the tombstones lift from her hand. Vision finally clearing, she caught sight of a raven making off with the tombstones in its claws.
October 24th...To Be Continued