Disclaimer: I do not own Nightmare Before Christmas or any of Tim Burton's characters. I also failed to receive the NBC DVD for Christmas this year, so I am currently holding the Blockbuster copy hostage. Don't try to stop me! I'm a teenager on the edge of the insanity cliff!
Musically: Ah, a fresh new story. Thanks to all my reviewers from "A New Girl in Town", and for new readers, I highly suggest you read that before you read this, mkay? Goooood.
Lock/Shock/Barrel: Where are we?
Musically: In my new story! Have fun...Muahahaha! (disappears in a puff of smoke)
Shock: She has problems.
Musically: (pops in briefly) Do not. (leaves)
Laughter came from inside the old, rickety tree house, along with high-pitched voices that echoed throughout the graveyard. If one were to get a closer look, they would see two children. They played a twisted game of tag as they came after each other with rusty, sharp weapons and cackled as they kept missing their targets. The boys were dressed as a skeleton and a devil. As they scampered through the house like a couple of rats, their female companion sat on the bed, feeling troubled.
The skeleton boy, Barrel, was it. He swung his pitchfork wildly at Lock, who slid under a loose pipe that jutted out from the wall. Barrel wasn't as lucky. The pipe caught him in the stomach as he ran forward, and pain begin to well up in his gut in the form of a terrible ache. He moaned. The pitchfork fell out of his grasp and landed with a clatter on the wooden floor. Barrel reeled around for a second or two, and then he managed to stagger to the old, broken couch that rested against the wall. His devil counterpart strolled up beside him. Lock, who had stopped running as soon as he realized that Barrel wasn't chasing him, looked his comrade over with an expression of mock concern.
"What happened?" Lock inquired. Barrel groaned pitifully, and Lock rolled his eyes.
"I ran into the pipe," Barrel wheezed. The devil snorted, and he shoved Barrel onto the floor where he landed with a thud.
"Baby," Lock scoffed. Barrel, who had partly recovered, prepared to lunge at him, but Shock interrupted them both with her words.
"No. Only a kid," she said quietly. Barrel seemed to stop mid-jump, falling to the ground with a crash, and Lock simply stared at her in question. The devil strode over to her with his tail twitching.
"What do you mean by that?" Lock asked. Shock looked at the rafters that were barely supporting the roof above them, not wanting to look at the youthful faces of her friends.
"You don't know?" she snapped. Lock scowled, but Barrel simply stared at Shock while he, ironically, climbed up a system of rusty pipes that protruded from the wall in a ladder-like fashion. He scrambled to the top. Shock and Lock were suddenly turned upside down as Barrel hung off of the pipe from his legs. The witch glanced up at him for a moment, and then she looked back at Lock.
"See what I mean?" Shock said, pointing at Barrel. Barrel stuck his tongue out at her and dropped down to the couch.
"What did I do?" Barrel asked defensively. Shock shook her head in frustration.
"We shouldn't be acting like that. Not if he's really gone," she told him. Lock cocked an eyebrow in confusion, and one of his auburn curls seemed to come undone slightly.
"I'm glad you're being specific here. Would have been really confusing if you had been vague or something," he muttered. Shock thrust her foot in his direction, but he managed to evade the pointed heel of her boot. Barrel ambled over to the two of them. Shock eyed them both with utmost disgust, and then she flopped back down on the unsteady bed on which she was laying.
"Do I have to spell it out for you?"
"It'd be nice."
"You know I'm not nice."
"Come on, tell us!" Barrel exclaimed. Shock lifted herself back up to a sitting position. Her brown eyes seemed to be aflame with agitation, and her untidy black hair seemed to crackle with electricity. She seemed to simmer down in a few moments, though. Shock strode over to a corner of a room, where something was shrouded by a large, moth-bitten blanket that was damp and odorous. She swept it away, revealing an empty cauldron.
Lock and Barrel watched in mild interest as Shock gathered some items from a cabinet and proceeded to mix them in the pewter pot. Then, a blinding flash of light came from the cauldron. The boys held up their hands to shield their eyes, but the green light faded in a matter of seconds. Shock beckoned them over to her. Dutifully, they trotted over to the witch and peered into the cauldron. All of the ingredients had somehow turned into a chalky yellow powder that lay at the bottom of the pot. Shock looked over at the two of them with wary eyes.
"Why tell you when I can show you?" she asked mysteriously. Before Lock or Barrel had a chance to ask any more questions, Shock scooped some of the golden powder out of the cauldron. She tossed it up into the air. It sprinkled down onto the three of them, and as it all landed on them, they began to feel very strange. Lock and Barrel gawked at each other as they both began to disappear. Shock, on the other hand, seemed very bored. In a few seconds, all three of them had vanished into thin air.
They materialized at the front entrance of the tree house. Something about their environment was strangely unsettling, but the boys didn't seem to notice this as they turned on Shock.
"Oh, this was useful. We could have walked out the door ourselves!" Lock told her. Shock gave him a cold look.
"Shut up and follow me. Don't bother asking questions, I'll tell you on the way," Shock explained. Then, to Lock and Barrel's shock (sorry, couldn't resist!), their friend walked through the front door as if were air. They both exchanged bewildered glances. Barrel extended a shaky hand to the door, and like Shock, it went straight through it.
"I couldn't even feel it," he breathed. Suddenly, Shock's head protruded through the door. Both Lock and Barrel yelled out in surprise, and they stumbled backwards. Shock rolled her eyes and took their hands, pulling the boys through the door.
"Come on, we don't have a lot of time," she said sternly. Shock released their hands as soon as they were inside the play house, leading the way as they traveled deeper into the dark and abandoned building. She explained the situation as they walked.
"I took us back in time, seven years, give or take. Remember when we first met Mr. Oogie Boogie?" Shock asked. Barrel and Lock shook their heads, eyes wide as saucers. None of them had mentioned the boogie man since Jack Skellington had defeated him about a few weeks ago. The mental image of his large, bulging figure had always symbolized true fear for the children, and his death wasn't about to change that. They inwardly shuddered.
"Come on. After you see this, I'll tell you everything," Shock said shortly. Lock and Barrel followed her without a word as she guided them through the dark and musty halls of the house. An old, tarnished chain swung slowly above them. It held a sharp-edged battle axe that glinted dangerously in the dim candlelight of the house. The chain snapped suddenly, and the axe dropped down onto Lock's foot and made him gasp. Though he felt no pain, he quickly removed his foot from under the blade and hurried to join his comrades.
Shock whispered, "Shh." She motioned for the boys to come to a door that she stood by. They did as they were told, both running to meet her as she disappeared into the door. Lock walked through the door before Barrel. When they were on the other side, their expressions were exactly the same: blown away.
There, crowded together by the wall, were the children themselves. They had the same clothes and faces, except the past kids wore expressions of terror as they were spoken to by a disembodied voice.
"Well, well, well. What have we here?" it bellowed. It was a male's voice, one that Lock, Shock, and Barrel knew all too well.
"What are you kids doin', running around my house like this?" Oogie Boogie boomed furiously. His silhouette was flickering on the wall, but his angered face was quite clear as it raged down upon the children of the past.
"Who are you?" past Lock asked bravely. He had always been the unofficial leader of the terrible trio, no matter what Shock or Barrel had to say about it. Oogie Boogie cackled in a deep voice. A pair of red dice shot out towards the devil, and they hit him squarely on the head. Past Lock winced, rubbing the sore spot.
"Who am I? I'm Oogie Boogie, or in other words, the boogie man, owner of this fine household upon which you're currently trespassin'. And believe me, I ain't gonna stand for it," Oogie threatened them. Past Shock glared at the shadow.
"This dump is yours? It doesn't have your name on it," she spat. To her surprise, Oogie laughed coldly.
"You've got some kind of attitude, missy. It's not gonna save you this time, though," Oogie said. The shadow seemed to advance on the children, but past Barrel unexpectedly jumped forward.
"Wait!" he cried. Oogie froze, and his companions stared at him as if he were crazy. Past Barrel stood still for a minute, shocked by the fact that the boogie man had actually listened to him. Past Lock prodded him in the back. That seemed to restart past Barrel's mind, so he kept speaking to the monster in a calm and forcibly even voice.
"Can't we come to an agreement or something?" Past Barrel pleaded. Oogie's shadowy hand brushed his chin as he pondered over the proposal.
"What kind of an agreement?" Oogie asked interestedly. Past Barrel seemed to gain a little bit of confidence, so he continued in a louder voice.
"We don't have anywhere to stay. Maybe, if you let us stay here, we could work for you or something," he trailed off. Oogie appeared to contemplate this for a second or two before nodding his floppy head.
"Yeah, I catch your drift. You scratch my back, I scratch yours, am I right?" the boogie man said amiably. The children grinned nervously and nodded their heads. Oogie chuckled in a deep voice, putting his hands to his shaking, round belly.
"Looks like I won the jackpot this time! However, I won't let this act go unpunished," he stated. Past Lock, Shock, and Barrel's faces fell simultaneously. They all exchanged anxious glances until past Lock spoke up.
"What are you going to do to us?" he asked with a trembling voice.
"Nothing that bad," Oogie said loftily, "How's this? Until the day that I die, you three will all be cursed with eternal youth. You won't get a single second older until the boogie man croaks! I need my workers to stay small, anyways. Sound good?"
Before they had a chance to answer, he boomed, "Good! I'll be seeing you later then…" His shadow slipped off of the wall, leaving the three children huddled in the corner. White lightning flashed in through the window with a blinding light, and the future Lock, Shock, and Barrel all began to disappear.
Soon, they were all back at their exact same spots around the cauldron, all feeling a bit disoriented from the time travel. Lock and Barrel's faces had turned a pale white. Shock, though, looked even more irritated than she had been before.
"I'd forgotten about that," Barrel said quietly. Shock glowered at him, and she went to go sit on the bed again.
"I knew that you had. Why else would I have taken you there?" she asked bitterly. He gave her no answer, but instead went to go stand in front of her at the foot of the bed. Lock trailed behind him.
"So, why are you so angry all of a sudden?" the devil questioned. Shock looked him square in the eye, and then she shook her head.
"I'm not angry. I'm confused. You don't get it, do you?" Shock explained, her voice raising with each word. Lock backed off a bit while she kept talking.
"If Oogie had really died, then we would each have gotten seven years older by now. We're still the same age. What does that tell us?"
Lock and Barrel exchanged puzzled glances. Shock held back the urge to slap both of them in the face.
"It means that Oogie's not dead yet! God, why am I the only smart one around here?"
The boys didn't argue at her last statement, rather, they gave her blank stares in surprise.
"She's right," Lock whispered. Barrel lifted himself off of the bed.
"Then where is he?" he asked innocently. Shock shrugged.
"He could be anywhere right now," she replied flatly, "but I personally don't feel like looking for him right now."
A sort of shadow appeared to glide across the wall behind her. Sensing something disturbing, Shock twisted around to see what the matter was. Deep, echoing laughter rang through their ears and lingered in their minds as a pair of dice rolled onto the floor.
"Don't worry," Oogie Boogie bellowed, "You don't have to go looking for me now!" The children all looked fearfully up at his silhouette on the wall.
"M-m-mr. Oogie Boogie Man!" they stammered. He laughed evilly as he looked upon the terrorized faces of Lock, Shock, and Barrel.
"That's right, kids," Oogie chuckled, "Ready to play a new game?"
Oogie: Hey, now! Where am I?
Musically: Huh? What?...Oh, I didn't see you there. You're in my new story.
Oogie: You tried to kill me off in the last one. What makes you think I'm going to do another?
Musically: I know things, Oogie. Things that might have something to do with the embarrassing alternative music incident at the Japanese casino last fall break.
Oogie: I'll do anything you want! Just don't tell!
Musically: (to Lock, Shock, and Barrel) Come on, kids. Time to hear a very entertaining story about when Uncle Oogie visited Japan!