For as long as they could remember, the Boogie Man had been their master. They figured that must be the way it had always been and always would be, that it was their lot in this existence to serve him and that it was his duty to take care of them in return when he wasn't off frightening humans and they weren't off trick-or-treating. When Oogie Boogie was nice, he was fun and spoiled them rotten with gifts of candy and dangerous toys: weapons, explosives, poisons and evil-looking bears and dolls. He taught them gambling games and laughed with approval when they told him of the pranks they pulled. Often he fed them and when he did, it was always delicious. But the Boogie Man was also mercurial and his good moods never lasted. The children could never fully predict which way his mood would swing from one moment to the next, and eventually they learned just how vicious he could be.
It had started out relatively minor at first: harsh words and an occasional slap when they failed to please him. The first time it happened it had startled them – they hadn't sent him as many bugs as he apparently expected and when he called them down to stand before him he slapped Shock across the face without warning. "You're the smart one, ain't 'cha, princess?" he growled. The children were completely shocked and Lock and Barrel stared at her with wide, frightened eyes as she rubbed her cheek, her pale green skin flushing an ugly pink where Oogie had struck her. She didn't say anything, too stunned and confused to reply and too distracted by the sharp, stinging pain. Shock never cried, but to her horror and shame tears now began to well up in her eyes and she fought desperately to keep them from spilling over. Oogie squinted menacingly at her and snarled, "So you'd better come up with a better plan to send ol' Oogie what he's due, because I know these two are too dumb to do it." He pointed to the boys, who hung their heads in shame and embarrassment as well as fear that maybe he might slap them next. That very night they had gone to town and stolen many more traps and sedating poisons so that their offerings would never fall short again.
But it didn't stop there. One time Barrel had tripped over his ungainly feet while carrying a bucket of black-light paint and spilled it all over the floor as he fell. Shock and Lock laughed at him – it was always funny to watch someone fall down, but Oogie Boogie was not amused and he stomped over to where Barrel was sprawled in the paint and kicked him in the side with one massive foot, causing him to yelp in pain and curl into a ball. Lock and Shock instantly stopped laughing – it was one thing when they kicked or tripped him, but he was so little and the Boogie Man was so enormous that this particular act of violence wasn't funny at all. Oogie berated Barrel for his clumsiness, calling him a stupid, useless little ghoul and threatening him with worse if he didn't clean up every last speck of paint. When he turned back towards his chair Lock and Shock put down their own paint buckets and rushed to check on their friend, but before they could even reach him the Boogie Man turned around and shoved both of them away from Barrel and they landed painfully on the floor. "What do you two think you're doing?" he boomed. "You ain't done with your work yet and you don't stop until I say so! Understand?" They nodded fearfully and scurried back to their stations, throwing worried glances towards their littlest cohort as he sat up and sniffled, wiping away a few tears with one paint-covered hand while holding the other against his side. That night they didn't fight or even draw straws for the bath, they just let Barrel go first and he sat in the tub for a long time and cried a bit as he scrubbed the paint out of his hair and off of his hands, feet and face, trying to avoid touching the painful bruise on his side. When he left the bathroom in his grey-striped pajamas he found that Shock had a big plate of food ready and Lock had washed the paint off of his costume for him, and he smiled a little bit despite his misery because it was the nicest thing they had ever done for him.
….…
Things were okay for a while after that. The children stayed on their very best behavior and worked hard to keep Oogie Boogie satisfied, and their efforts paid off. For the most part he was jovial and generous and kind, and they carried out his orders with pride and looked forward to each reward that they earned. They vented the undercurrent of fear and anxiety that was always running just below the surface of their minds by pulling even more destructive and obnoxious pranks in town and on Halloween, and by beating up anybody smaller or weaker than themselves – just as Oogie did to them. Their reprimands from Jack increased but they didn't care, and all his punishments really did was teach them to be even sneakier. Occasionally he would unleash his full Pumpkin King scariness and it would terrify them into obedience for a time… but Oogie scared them more than Jack did, so Oogie's orders always won in the end.
Having skin of burlap made Oogie Boogie impervious to pain, but it also made him vulnerable to rips and tears. Sometimes he would come apart at a seam or a new tear would form, usually from snagging against a sharp point on one of his instruments of torture. When it happened he would call Shock to him with sweet and flattering words and entreat her to fix him up with her sewing kit, which always made her feel useful and proud. When he was pleased with her work he'd pat her on the head for a job well done and maybe give her an extra candy bar, but if she got sloppy or careless he would shame and sometimes smack her so she spent many hours practicing her sewing when they were at home in the tree house so that he would always approve of her repairs. But one day she made a terrible mistake: Oogie had a particularly large tear that needed mending and some of his bugs and snakes had wiggled out of the gap and were squirming and scurrying around on the floor. The trio started collecting them, Shock picking up the ones near where Oogie was sitting in his chair and the boys hunting down those that had crawled farther away. As she had her eye on one of the errant bugs she stepped forward and accidentally squished a different one beneath the sole of her black leather boot. She instantly raised her foot but the roach was completely smashed and quite dead and she looked up fearfully. "I'm sorry! It was an accident!" she pleaded, but the Boogie Man looked more furious than they had ever seen him and before she knew what hit her he grabbed her by the neck and started shaking her like a rag doll, knocking off her hat. He yelled in her face, accusing her of trying to kill him, of being an ungrateful, spoiled, clumsy child and then he lifted her right off the ground and pinned her against the wall. She struggled and kicked, grasping at her throat and trying to free herself from his grip but he was overwhelmingly strong compared to a tiny, seven-year-old witch and her efforts were futile. It was the most violent he had ever been with them and Barrel watched in horror from across the room, absolutely certain that Oogie was going to kill his oldest cohort right there in front of them, but Lock's horror was quickly overtaken by another emotion: anger. With a surge of protectiveness he didn't know he could feel, he dropped the bugs he was holding and leapt to his feet from where he'd been crouching on the floor.
"Stop it!" he yelled, clenching his fists and swishing his tail, his whole body starting to quiver with terror and rage. He didn't know what he was doing, he just knew that he had to do something, that he couldn't just sit there and watch his bossy, bratty friend being shaken and choked by anyone other than himself or Barrel – not even by the Boogie Man – without at least attempting to make it stop. Barrel turned his terrified eyes to Lock now, both aghast and impressed that he would defy their master and now absolutely certain that Lock would be killed, too, and Barrel would be left all alone. Lock's words had the desired effect: Oogie looked over his shoulder in disbelief at the little devil and let go of Shock's neck and she slid down the wall and dropped to the floor, coughing and gasping as she rubbed her throat.
"What did you just say to me?" Oogie Boogie said, and instead of yelling his voice was low and sinister and somehow that was even scarier than when he yelled.
Lock was positively shaking now, but even as he began to cower he held his ground – there was nowhere he could run anyway. "I said, stop it. Stop hurting her." he mumbled, his rage rapidly melting into fear and the ground quaked as the Boogie Man stomped towards him, leaned right down as close to Lock's face as he could get and growled:
"Well, well… looks like you're as brave as you are stupid, devil boy. I'm almost impressed. But we can't have any of you gettin' too uppity so ol' Oogie is gonna have to teach you a lesson you won't forget." He turned his angry glare towards Barrel and Shock and said, "Pay attention, you two, and next time think long and hard before you try to talk back to me." And with that he grabbed Lock by the collar of his shirt and punched him right in the side of his head before he could even react at all. His vision blurred and he gasped, completely stunned for a second, then Oogie hit him again before he could fully recover, this time in the face. Lock managed to bring his hands up to his head, instinctively trying to defend himself or even fight back, but then Oogie let go of his shirt and punched him in the stomach instead and he doubled over as it knocked the wind right out of him. But it didn't stop there – Oogie grabbed him by his hair and threw him several feet away onto his back, then stomped over and grabbed him by the front of his shirt once more to pin him to the ground and begin pummeling him ruthlessly all over his head, face and body. The hits came so fast and so hard that Lock couldn't even cry out in pain, he was too disoriented and couldn't catch his breath, flashes of white bursting behind his eyes every time a hit landed against his head.
Barrel scrambled backwards into the nearest corner as far away as he could get and covered his face with his hands, tears leaking out of his eyes and he flinched at the sound of every blow that Oogie gave his middle cohort. Shock was too horrified to even cry and her own pain was forgotten as she watched helplessly while the Boogie Man gave Lock a worse beating than she could have ever imagined. "No… no…" she whispered, so quietly that it was barely audible even to herself. She saw Lock's tail, arms and legs flailing uselessly, but then they went limp and his head slumped back and she knew that he had either died or lost consciousness. Only then did Oogie Boogie stop his onslaught and he released Lock's shirt and the little devil flopped onto the floor and lay still. Shock's heart was beating so fast that she thought she would faint, desperately hoping that he would wake up and guilt welled up inside of her because it was her mistake that had made this happen. Well, her mistake combined with Lock's inability to not be a rash, impulsive moron. Why hadn't he kept his big, stupid mouth shut? She was oddly touched that he had tried to defend her, but she was mostly angry with him because if he went and got himself killed on her behalf she would never forgive herself, and therefore she would never forgive him and she would have to visit his grave every day just to tell him what a colossal idiot he was.
"Now then. You've still got a job to do, princess." Oogie said while dusting off his hands, and his voice was calm and even almost friendly, which was more disturbing than if he had shouted. Shock got shakily to her feet, unable to tear her eyes away from Lock's limp body sprawled on the floor and waiting for him to show any signs of life as she walked slowly towards Oogie, who had taken his seat in his chair once more. "Hurry it up, now." he said, now sounding a little impatient. "Ol' Oogie's bleedin' all over." He gestured to the tear in his seam that had widened a bit from pummeling her and Lock and even more bugs and snakes were trickling out of it. Barrel was still crammed into the corner with his knees tucked up beneath his chin and his hands still covering his face, too scared to look and see if Lock was now just a bloody pulp on the floor. A snake slithered right over his feet but he didn't even notice, and he only moved when Oogie Boogie said to him sharply, "Quit your sniveling, little man, and help your friend here round up all my bugs or you'll get it next." Barrel scrambled to his feet, trembling violently and his lip quivered and fresh tears welled up in his eyes when he finally forced himself to look at Lock, and while he wasn't just a bloody pulp on the floor, Barrel still couldn't tell if he was alive or dead. He and Shock wordlessly collected all of the bugs and snakes that belonged inside of Oogie's coarse burlap skin and just as they had carefully replaced the very last one and Shock had threaded her needle they heard a groan from the floor. Relief flooded through both of them because at the very least, Lock was still alive. Shock wanted to run to him and see if he was okay, but she didn't dare – she just started sewing up the ripped seam as quickly and neatly as she could, but it was difficult because her hands were still shaking a little. Barrel also wanted to see if he was okay but he didn't dare, either – Lock had gotten this beating because he came to Shock's aid, and Barrel didn't want to risk getting beaten black and green himself for going to Lock's aid so he just stood sheepishly by Oogie's chair and looked at his cohort, who groaned again and rolled his head just slightly to one side. It felt like it took forever for Shock to finish up her sewing, but it was absolutely crucial that she didn't mess it up. Finally she snipped the thread and tied the knot, then stepped back and waited nervously for her master's verdict. Oogie Boogie looked down to appraise her handiwork, then stretched and twisted to check that the stitches would hold. Barrel and Shock both held their breaths and then released them when he smiled and patted her on the head and said, "Such a talented little witch, ain't ya', princess? Now you just gotta be as good as watching where you're stepping as you are at sewing." He chuckled as if her squishing that bug had been just an amusingly harmless mistake instead of the rage-inducing offense that it had actually been.
"Yes, Mr. Oogie Boogie." she said, still glancing at Lock out of the corner of her eye. Oogie looked satisfied and leaned back into his chair and gestured to the nearby footstool, and Barrel hurried to push it over so he could put his feet up on it. "Well, I was plannin' to have a little game of poker with you kids but since ol' Lock over there had to go and mouth off, he's down for the count. And poker's no fun with only three, so as soon as his brains ain't scrambled anymore you all come back down for a game or two. Ol' Oogie gets lonely without his little henchmen." His tone was jovial and Shock felt sick to her stomach at the contrast between what he had just done and how cheerful and friendly he sounded now. Barrel was just confused and scared, still expecting the Boogie Man to hit him at any second since he was the only one of them who hadn't gotten punished this time. It seemed like they were dismissed, but they weren't sure so they stayed put until Oogie said, "Well, go on now!" Then they hurried over to Lock and winced at what they saw: his face was swollen all over and a significant amount of blood was running from his nose and mouth, and there was even some blood coming out of his ears. Barrel looked down and saw two of Lock's pointy teeth on the floor and even though he knew they would grow back like always, he still nearly threw up at the sight of them.
"Hey, stupid…" Shock murmured, shaking Lock's shoulder gently. "Wake up, moron." Fortunately her words seemed to get through to him and he cracked open one eye and blearily met hers.
"Shut up," he mumbled, and he was barely intelligible through his puffy, bleeding mouth but his cohorts grinned in relief at his response.
"C'mon, get up, we gotta go." Shock urged him, taking hold of his arm to help him off of the floor. Barrel followed her example and took hold of Lock's other arm and together they were able to get him to his feet and drape his arms around their shoulders and support him as they all three shuffled towards the door. Normally they backed out of the lair with their heads bowed, but they could barely keep moving forwards let alone backwards this time. Thankfully it didn't seem to upset Oogie, he just sat at his card table dealing himself out a game of solitaire and right before they reached the exit he called out cheerily:
"Be good now, you three!" and they didn't know how to respond. At last they made it through the saloon-style doors and into the cage, then ascended to their tree house as fast as the rickety old elevator could go.
...…
They were barely able to get Lock to the sofa and when he slumped onto it with a moan Shock and Barrel stood back and looked at one another, completely at a loss of what to do. Finally Shock said, "We need to get all the blood off of him."
"Get me in the bathtub." Lock mumbled, still barely intelligible through his busted-up mouth.
"Are you sure?" Barrel asked nervously.
"Yes, I need to get clean." Lock insisted, and held out his arms for his cohorts to help him back to his feet. Shock and Barrel looked at one another again – Lock usually tried to avoid taking a bath whenever possible so him actually insisting upon one was disturbing in and of itself. But he was so bloody that a bath would really be the only way to get completely clean so they helped him up and staggered to the bathroom. Once Lock had both hands on the side of the tub he turned his swollen, bloody face to them and said, "Okay, I'm fine now, get out of here." The others looked at him dubiously, but his tone clearly meant that there was no room for negotiation so they left the bathroom, trusting that he was tough enough to be okay.
Shock went to the kitchen to start dinner and Barrel followed her, too antsy and anxious to figure out another way to amuse himself. She put him to work cleaning an enormous jar of dried beetles. The beetles had actually been cleaned already, but Barrel didn't know that and Shock knew that he clearly needed something to focus on other than worrying about Lock. She did, as well. They continued prepping dinner for what must have been at least an hour before Barrel could no longer ignore the fact that he really, really had to go to the bathroom. "I gotta pee." he said.
"Thanks for sharing." Shock replied sarcastically.
"Lock's still in there!"
"So go pee out the window or something!"
Barrel frowned. He really didn't like peeing out the window, though he and Lock had been known to do it on occasion when Shock locked them out of the bathroom.
"Then just go see if he's finished yet!" Shock snapped at him. Honestly, couldn't Barrel ever think for himself?
Barrel stuck his tongue out at her back as he left the kitchen, then knocked on the bathroom door. "Lock, you done?" There was no response, so he knocked again. "I gotta pee!" There was still no response, so Barrel pounded on the door as hard as he could. "Lock, I really gotta go!" he hollered desperately, holding his crotch and hopping from foot to foot outside the door and feeling like he was only seconds away from peeing his pants. Finally he decided that he didn't care if Lock saw him go and he pushed open the door and made a bee-line to the toilet. He sighed in relief as he emptied his bladder and waited for Lock to tease him or throw the soap at him or something, but when his cohort still didn't say anything Barrel looked over his shoulder at the tub and just about missed the toilet: Lock was slumped down so low that only the very tips of his curled-up hair were showing over the rim of the tub and Barrel barely took enough time to stuff himself back into his pants before hurrying over to him. "SHOCK!" he screamed, panicking completely and absolutely certain that Lock had drowned in the bath somehow. He stood up on his tiptoes to look in and had never felt so relieved in all of his existence to see that Lock's nose and mouth were still just barely above the waterline, but Barrel still couldn't tell if he was breathing or not and he had no idea what to do. "SHOCK, GET IN HERE!" he screamed again, but before he even finished the sentence she came running through the door, her eyes wide with fear. When she'd first heard Barrel calling her she'd been right in the middle of adding some particularly fussy ingredients to the cauldron she had bubbling on the stove, trying to make a particularly fussy recipe that she knew was Lock's favorite – it was the least she could do for him after he'd taken that beating on her behalf. The stew would be ruined if she didn't do it just right, but the panic in her littlest cohort's voice made her drop the entire bottle of herbs right into the cauldron as she ran to the bathroom as quick as her legs would take her. "I don't know if he's alive!" Barrel wailed as Shock came up beside him and stuck her own face over the rim of the tub.
"Lock!" she shouted, unsure of what to do herself. Normally if she wanted to wake him up or get his attention she smacked him, but his face was already such a mess that she didn't want to add to it. But she really had no ideas other than physical violence so she tried pulling his hair instead of hitting him. "LOCK!" she yelled again and tugged his hair, and thankfully he finally cracked open one eye at that. He looked extremely foggy and confused and didn't seem to be able to focus on her face for several moments, but eventually he grumbled:
"Quit pulling my hair, you jerk."
Barrel giggled in relief and Shock rolled her eyes. "What happened?" she asked.
"I dunno, I just wanted a nap, I guess." Lock shrugged weakly and shivered a bit, trying to cover himself up with both of his hands beneath the water as best he could.
Shock frowned at him. "You wanted a nap in the tub for the last hour? The water's all cold!"
"Whatever, it doesn't matter, I'm fine now!" he snapped, but then made a mental note to keep his voice down because speaking too loudly made his head pound even worse. He knew that he had apparently passed out rather than making the conscious decision to have a nap, but it was too embarrassing to admit that he wasn't in control of his own body.
Shock glared down at him and then turned to her littlest cohort. "Help him out of the tub!" she ordered.
"I can't do it by myself, he's too heavy!" Barrel whined.
"Well I can't do it, he's a boy and he's naked!" she said shrilly. The idea of seeing Lock without any clothes on was too gross to contemplate.
"Just keep your eyes closed!" said Barrel, struggling to pull Lock out of the tub by his arm.
"Yeah right, Shock, you know you wanna see…" Lock snickered and even managed to grin a bit through his battered face. Secretly he was mortified at the idea of her seeing him naked, but his mortification was outweighed by how much he wanted to get dry and warm and go to sleep. But he was simply too dizzy to get out of the tub on his own and clearly Barrel wasn't going to be able to help him by himself, so the best way Lock could think of to deal with this embarrassing situation was to make a joke and try to embarrass Shock even more than himself.
"Yeah, right! Disgusting!" she spluttered, but took hold of his other hand and arm and then scrunched her eyes tightly closed as she helped him struggle out of the tub. "Let's sit him on the toilet." she said. She was too disoriented to know which direction it was anymore so she barely opened one eye just long enough to find it, then the three of them shuffled over and Lock slid out of their arms and onto the toilet seat with a groan.
"Gimme a towel and get out of here." he muttered, and Shock heard a rustling as Barrel found one and handed it to him.
"You can't be by yourself, how do we know you're not gonna fall off the toilet and hit your head some more?!" she demanded, and now that her hands were free she brought them up to put over her still tightly-closed eyes to give herself an added layer of protection against Lock's nakedness.
"I won't, I'm fine now!" he insisted, but it was one of the biggest lies he had ever told because in reality his head was pounding and the room was still blurry and he was so dizzy that he felt like he could barely keep sitting upright let alone try to get dried and dressed. Unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately – for him, Shock was unconvinced.
"You're such a liar." she sneered. "Barrel, you stay right here and help him get his pajamas on. And don't let him fall over!" she ordered, and with that she turned away from them and cracked one eye open just enough to find the door, which she hurriedly walked through and slammed shut behind her. She returned to the kitchen to find the stew burning and boiling over the lip of the cauldron and she groaned in frustration as she turned off the stove and used a ladle to fish out the bottle of herbs that she had dropped in earlier. She set the cauldron aside to deal with later – food was too precious to waste even when it was ruined, so she would pull out the various chunks of meat and vegetables and put them in the traps for bait before bedtime. But for now dinner still needed cooking so she got a fresh cauldron and started making a new batch as close to his favorite as she could out of the remaining ingredients, angry that it wasn't going be as good as it would have been before she'd ruined all the special herbs.
Back in the bathroom, Lock made Barrel stand facing away from him while he dried himself off and Barrel was quite happy to oblige – he didn't particularly want to look at his cohort naked, either. It took forever for Lock to dry himself completely because his vision was still rather fuzzy and he was too sore all over to move very quickly, plus he was shivering with cold, which was a foreign sensation to him – he was normally hot-blooded and energetic and almost never felt cold, but he also normally never sat in a cold bath for half an hour, either.
"Throw me my pj's." he said, and Barrel picked them up from the ground and tossed them to him. He was able to get his shirt on reasonably well, but he could only get his pants up to his thighs before he needed to stand up to get them over his butt and hips, but when he tried to stand his head swam and he feared he might fall down. After a few failed attempts he cursed inwardly and relented. "Get over here." he said angrily, frustrated by his body's lack of cooperation, and he leaned heavily on Barrel's shoulder as he got to his feet and pulled his pants all the way on and threaded his tail through the hole in their seat that accommodated it.
"You okay?" Barrel asked, and Lock got even angrier, misdirecting his rage onto his littlest cohort.
"I'm fine, quit asking!" he snapped despite his headache. "Just get me to the couch." He couldn't bring himself to use the world 'help'. They shuffled out of the bathroom and into the living room, and Lock groaned again when he sank into the soft cushions of the sofa and pulled the tattered throw blanket around himself, finally starting to warm up a bit. Barrel flipped on the T.V. and sat on the floor, but kept himself angled in a way that he could shoot glances at Lock out of the corner of his eye and make sure he didn't pass out again. After some time Shock came out of the kitchen holding two steaming bowls of stew. She handed one to Barrel and the other to Lock, but he didn't take it.
"I don't want it." he muttered.
"Eat it! You need your strength, dummy!"
"I'm not hungry!" he hissed, and it actually wasn't a lie. His mouth and jaw hurt too much to even think about chewing and even though he could tell that the food she was offering him was (almost) his favorite, the idea of eating anything made him want to puke, no matter how tasty it was.
"Fine!" she snapped, secretly feeling a little bit hurt that he was refusing the meal she had worked so hard to prepare just for him. "If you want to starve to death, that's your problem!" and she roughly sat down next to him on the couch and started eating it herself. Barrel was feeling pretty miserable about everything that had happened already, but the idea of Lock refusing to eat made him feel ten times worse. How could anybody turn down food? Even though Lock wasn't dead, Barrel thought that he might as well be if he didn't want to eat. But then he realized that maybe Lock's mouth hurt too much to chew, which he supposed made sense. He sat there thinking as he ate and suddenly he was struck with an idea: maybe if Lock couldn't eat, he could at least drink?
"You want some tea?" he asked, fully expecting a refusal but to his surprise Lock was quiet for a moment then replied:
"Sure."
Barrel grinned, feeling proud that he had thought up a way to help his friend. "You go get it, shrimp." huffed Shock, still pouting over her wasted effort in the kitchen. "I'm sick of making all the food around here. And make some for me, too!" she yelled after him as he went to the kitchen. He fixed up three steaming mugs of worm's wart tea because he knew that was Lock's favorite, then carefully took them back to the living room using extreme caution to avoid spilling the scalding liquid all over the floor or himself. They spent the evening watching T.V. in relative silence and Shock and Barrel each kept an eye on their middle cohort. Lock had only gotten about halfway through his tea when he started to feel so tired he couldn't keep his one eye cracked open anymore – the other one was too swollen to open at all.
"I'm going to sleep." he mumbled, and the only reason his friends didn't worry too much was because at least he'd been able to articulate that he was making the decision to sleep and didn't just lose consciousness involuntarily. He started to stand up, but then stopped. "I'm just gonna sleep here." he said, and Shock took his half-empty mug and scooted away from him so he could lay down fully on the couch. By the time the nightly horror movie was over Lock was fast asleep, snoring loudly and drooling profusely. He normally wasn't much of a snorer or drooler, but with his face busted up so badly it was a miracle he was able to breath at all so his cohorts gave him a pass this time. Shock and Barrel turned off the T.V. and headed to bed themselves, but after tossing and turning for only a few minutes Barrel got back up and dragged some of his blankets and pillows out to go sleep on the floor in the living room – he just didn't want to leave Lock all by himself. When he got there he saw that Shock had the same idea: she was already setting up a spot for herself in the corner of the living room to sleep and she shrugged when she saw Barrel.
"Just in case." she said, and he nodded in understanding before setting up his own little bed and crawling into it. It took some time to fall asleep thanks to Lock's noisy snores, but at the same time it was comforting to have that reminder that the Boogie Man hadn't taken him away from them. 'Two of a kind' just didn't have the same ring to it as three.
…...
Lock had trouble with dizziness and headaches for about a week after the beating, and his healing was no doubt hampered by his inability to keep still and rest as much as he probably should have – but staying still was just so boring. He kept trying to get back to his normal mischief, but he couldn't aim his slingshot or throwing knives very well with his fuzzy vision and one eye swollen shut, and if he tried running and jumping too much the vertigo got so bad that he felt like he might throw up. He even tried to start fights with his cohorts but they ignored him, still shaken up by how badly he'd been injured and not wanting to add to it. But eventually the headaches and dizziness started to decrease and then the weeks started passing by without too much more excitement, and in time everything was pretty much back to normal. While Lock getting beaten up by Oogie Boogie hadn't been fun, they all thought that the various stages of his injuries were pretty interesting and cool-looking. The three of them were always getting cuts and bruises, but none of them had ever gotten it this badly before and they were fascinated by the progression of colors as his bruises healed, all the various shades of black and green as well as blues, purples and reds. Eventually his missing teeth grew back in just as they had the other three times he had knocked some out: once when the rope swing they built off of the tree house broke and he went careening face-first into the ground, and again when Shock had thrown a rock at his face for making fun of her, and finally when Barrel had accidentally hit him in the mouth with a stick while they were breaking open a piñata. Whenever Shock or Barrel knocked out a tooth they had to have Dr. Finkelstein put it back in, so none of them knew why Lock was able to grow his back on his own… until Shock read about sharks in a book of deadly predators that she'd stolen from the town library so they figured that he must have teeth like that, too. Lock had bragged about his awesome teeth for days until Shock threatened to hold him down and knock every last one of them out of his head at once to see how quickly he could grow them all back at the same time, so he'd finally shut up because he knew she would do it and he didn't want to be stuck eating mashed pumpkin for weeks while he had no teeth.
Then one day while he was lighting the ceremonial candles around Oogie's shrine, Lock looked up and saw an enormous cockroach sitting in the mouth of the chute and his heart sped up – Oogie Boogie wanted to see them. He was mostly healed by now but the idea of getting beaten up again so soon after finally fully recovering terrified him. But he had no choice, they couldn't ignore being summoned by their master. "Guys!" he yelled, hurrying into the kitchen where Shock was frying up some bat bacon and Barrel was already eating some Beetle-Crunch cereal with marshmallows. "He wants to see us." The other two stopped what they were doing and looked at their middle cohort, knowing exactly who he meant by 'he'. They could also tell how frightened he was, and Lock hardly ever got scared so that made them scared, too. Shock took the bacon off of the heat and they all three just ate a quick bowl of cereal before hurrying down, and they looked at one another nervously for a moment before taking a deep breath and pushing open the doors with their heads bowed. Normally Lock led the way but this time he let Shock go in before him. He was ashamed of his cowardice, but he just couldn't help it… he didn't want the Boogie Man to think he was being 'uppity'.
"Well now!" said Oogie once the trio had knelt at his feet. "I was startin' to think you'd forgotten about our game date. Ol' Oogie's missed his little buddies." His voice was cheerful and he smiled down at them as he expertly shuffled his pack of cards. The children stood up and Oogie narrowed his eyes on Lock, then said in a slightly sharper tone, "I reckon you three have had some time to think on things since our last little visit. You wanna tell us what you've all learned, devil boy?"
"Not to talk back." Lock mumbled, looking at the floor.
"Look me in the eye when you say it, kiddo." Oogie said menacingly.
Lock forced himself to look into the frightening black shadows that made up the Boogie Man's eyes and repeated, "Not to talk back."
Oogie then looked expectantly at Shock and Barrel. "Not to talk back." they both said in unison, also forcing themselves to meet those terrifying black shadows.
"That's right!" Oogie said approvingly, then got out of his chair and lumbered towards the card table to start dealing out a game of poker. "I knew you could learn! Ol' Oogie's always said he's got the smartest little henchmen in all of Halloween Town."
The children glanced at each other once more and then followed their master to the card table. They learned it the hard way, but they had definitely learned.
...
**Author Note** This one's dedicated to rathernotmyname, who suggested I write this moment that was referenced, but not explained, in my other story "Kidnapping the Sandy Claws". Thank you for the idea, I hope you enjoy this one! :)