AN: I don't own The Nightmare Before Christmas or any of its characters, songs, etc.
My life was unsatisfactory.
All my friends went off to college with promises to keep in touch. Those promises were broken.
My father and I had minimum interaction.
I got a job working at our town's theatre as a makeup artist. It was fun, but not the job I wanted.
I kept trying to find schools with affordable degrees in cosmetology, but even the cheapest schools I could find was too expensive for me to pay without my father's help.
After several weeks of working at the theatre, I got enough money to rent my own place. It was tiny and disgusting, full of termites and rats. It was very different than the giant mansion that my dad had built, the home I had grown up in. Still, it was better than living in the same house with him.
September sucked. I was alone. I had no hopes of ever getting somewhere other than where I was now, working at a small-town theatre and living in a horrible apartment. All my neighbors were grungy and filthy. There was no way that I was going to get to know them. The actors at the theatre where I worked were too stuck-up to notice me, and the other behind-the-scenes workers like me had been working there for so long that they had formed a little community, almost. They were intent to make outsiders, aka me, feel unwelcome.
It worked.
October was almost the same. It wasn't until Halloween that anything changed.
At the end of every week I was sent out to throw away the leftover makeup from the theatre. None of the containers were completely empty, but there wasn't enough left to get any use out of them. Instead of throwing out the makeup, though, I held on to it, creating a small stash of useless makeup. But it wasn't useless, because by Halloween, I had gathered enough makeup to create a realistic-ish zombie costume.
No, I wasn't going to go trick-or-treating. At least, there would be no treats. I wanted to go from door to door, scaring each of the residents of my apartment building. I didn't expect it to be very convincing, maybe just scare them for a moment before they realized that it was just their friendly neighbor.
So, after I got home from work, I got out my stash of makeup and began to zombify myself. I made my skin look pale, added fake bones over my ribs so that it would look like they were sticking out, made dark shadows under my eyes, and put fake blood around my mouth. When that was done, I grabbed the nightgown that I had bought just for the occasion. It was a simple white gown that went down to my ankles, but I had splattered it in fake blood the night before.
I slipped into the nightgown, careful not to smudge my careful makeup, before turning to look at my completed costume in the mirror. It was probably just a trick of the light, or maybe the fact that the mirror was grimy and cracked, but for a moment I looked like a real zombie. I shook the thought off. I wasn't that good at makeup.
I waited until it was dark out and almost all my neighbors were in their rooms before I snuck out into the hallway. I slowly tiptoed down the hall to Bernie's door. Bernie liked to watch zombie movies in the middle of the night. I knew this because he also liked to watch the movies really loudly.
I took a deep breath, holding back a nervous laugh. Trying to do my best impression of the sounds I sometimes heard from Bernie's room in the middle of the night, I made a low moan. I waited a moment before groaning louder, this time hitting the door.
"Wh-wh-who's there?" came a Bernie's terrified voice. I grinned to myself. I knew he would be scared.
I groaned again.
I heard the sound of Bernie's heavy steps slowly coming closer to the door. I moaned again as Bernie slowly opened the door a crack.
I attacked, lunging at his scared face. I made a sound somewhere between a groan and a roar, trying to push the door open. I heard a little girl scream, then realized that it was Bernie making that high-pitched squeal. The realization almost made me brake character, and I tried desperately not to burst into hysterical giggles.
"Bernie!" came a woman's irritated voice from down the hall. "Keep your zombie movies at a reasonable volume!"
I groaned as loud as I could.
"BERNIE!" said the irritated woman again. She threw her door open, and I recognized Gladys, another one of my fabulously friendly neighbors. She was dressed in a bathrobe, had her hair up in curlers, and had green goop all over her face. She stopped dead in her tracks as soon as she saw me.
I began to shuffle towards her, trying to mimic a decent zombie walk.
Gladys didn't move. For a moment, I was scared that she saw right through my disguise, but before I could give up and tell her I was sorry for dressing up like a zombie and trying to scare her (it suddenly hit me how immature I was being), she snapped out of her frozen stance and began to scream.
"HELP!" she cried. "ZOMBIE! CALL 911! HEEEEEEEEEEEELP!"
"Everyone started to open their doors, and I could see the annoyance on their faces turn to shock, then disbelief, then horror as they saw me, wearing a tattered, blood-stained nightgown and shuffling slowly down the hallway.
There were probably only eight rooms, with one or two people in each. But when everyone screamed at the same time, I was honestly surprised to find that the windows didn't shatter.
I decided to become I fast zombie, and boy, I gave those people a workout chasing them out of the building. For some, I had to barge into their rooms and corral them out. I was surprised that nobody tried to kill me. I mean, come on, if you really believe that I'm a zombie, shouldn't you want to kill me? Stop it from becoming a worldwide epidemic?
Once everyone was out, I stopped chasing them all. The entire building (all two floors of it) was empty, and it struck me that I had really scared these people. But, instead of feeling guilty, I felt proud. My makeup, done with nothing but a bunch of leftover theatre junk, had convinced everyone that I was a zombie. My makeup was that good.
Suddenly I heard sirens in the distance. Wonder what that's about, I thought.
Instead of fading away, though, the sirens got louder and louder, until I could tell that the police cars were right outside the building. And they didn't drive by. The cars were parked right outside the building.
Call 911, is what Gladys had said.
Fuck.
I started to panic. There was nowhere for me to go. I could try to scare the police, but they would probably shoot me. I could wash off my makeup, change into pajamas (preferably non-bloodstained ones), and pretend that I had slept through the whole thing, but there wasn't enough time. The cops were starting towards the building. I could just stand there and get sent to jail, but if my costume was really as good as it seemed, the police would think I was a zombie and shoot me on sight.
I was screwed.
Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.
"You seem to have gotten yourself into quite the mess," said a voice from behind me.
I whirled around, expecting to see some person who I'd missed while chasing everyone away. Instead, I came face-to-face with a skeleton in a fancy suit.
I used to hate roller coasters. They used to terrify me. When I was on one, I would wrap my arms around the bar and stare straight forward, not moving a muscle. Eventually, I grew to like them, and now I always scream my head off. Roller coasters taught me something abut me and fear.
If I scream, then I'm enjoying myself and I'm not really scared. If I don't move and remain dead silent, then I'm terrified.
When I turned around and saw the super tall skeleton just standing there, I froze. I didn't move, and I remained dead silent.
"Don't worry, I'll get you out of here," said the skeleton. "I just want to congratulate you. That was quite the scare. I don't think any of those people are going to be able to sleep for weeks, maybe even months!"
I barely heard what he was saying. I was too scared to comprehend anything except that there was a skeleton talking to me.
"Um, no offense, but you zombies are awfully slow," continued the skeleton, not noticing my fear. "I don't want to have to do this, but if we're going to get back home before Halloween's over, I'm going to have to carry you back. Is that all right?"
He didn't wait for me to answer. In one smooth, effortless movement he scooped me up into his bony arms.
"What–" I started, but the skeleton leaped out of the window before I could finish my sentence.
The skeleton was unbelievably graceful. Especially for not having any muscles. He stayed in the shadows, careful not to let anyone see us. I don't think the cops even noticed our departure. We raced down the street, out of the town, into the woods.
Where are we going?
We raced past the small forts that the children liked to build. We flew past the river that the teenagers liked to jump in. We zoomed past the huge, ancient tree that couples liked to carve their initials into, encased in a heart. The skeleton ran faster than any Olympic racer, farther into the forest than anyone had gone for ages. There was no litter, no light, no sound of anything but nature and the wind whooshing past my ears. There was no trace of human life here, and it scared me even more than the skeleton did.
He could have been running for hours; he could have been running for minutes. Whatever the case, the skeleton eventually stopped at a clearing. In the middle of the clearing was a circle of trees. Each tree was identical to the next, except for one (glaringly obvious) thing: on each tree was a door, shaped like something that had to do with a holiday. I saw a heart for Valentine's Day, a decorated tree for Christmas, and a jack-o'-lantern for Halloween.
"All right," said the skeleton. "Here we go." He walked to the tree with the jack-o'-lantern door, and, careful not to drop me (I felt my dignity being depleted every second he held me like a baby), opened it. My shock was poorly contained when I saw that the door opened up to nothing but darkness. I was about to ask–no, demand–to know what the hell was going on, but before I could open my mouth, I was tossed into the tree.