POUND POUND POUND.
Maleficent opened one eye. She surveyed the dusty, dark room she had been forced to dwell in ever since she'd been exiled to Lost. The pounding had come from the door.
She rose from the bed, where she had been laying with her arms tightly folded (a habit she had caught from hanging around vampires). She walked across the room, her bare feet hitting the cold, creaking floor, and opened her door.
"Ah, Oogie. Just the bug-beast I needed to see. I have something to tell you."
Oogie's face made a movement that would've been raising an eyebrow, if he'd had any eyebrows. "And I got something to tell you, M."
Maleficent waved her hand airily. "You can go first. Best for last."
Oogie shrugged and said "So, M, me and the bugs have found a way to get off this stinking island!"
Maleficent blinked. "What?"
"Well… only for me. Me and my bugs. We'll sneak out though the sewers one bug at a time, see, and the flying ones will carry the rest over the water to the mainland. It'll take some time, but we'll do it. Then, when my bugs are all across and I'm all together again, it'll be back to Halloweentown and revenge against Jack Skellington, baby!"
Oogie cackled, then sobered up. "Of course, that means I probably won't see you again, M… but, well, you never know, and anyways, it was fun while it lasted." He looked at her. "Now, what was it you had to tell me?"
Maleficent stared at Oogie. He frowned. "What? What is it, M?"
Her gleaming green eyes held his empty dark ones. "Oogie… I'm pregnant."
"…what?"
"I'm pregnant with your child, Oogie."
Oogie, for once in his unnatural life, was speechless.
"We're… I'm… going to have a child."
They looked at each other, and if anything passed between them, it was known to them alone.
Oogie cleared his throat, causing a few grubs to fly out of his neck in the process. "Oh …do you know what it'll be?"
"I have a feeling it'll be a girl, but I don't know."
"…I meant whether it'll be a bug or humanoid."
"Oh. I don't know …probably a fairy, like me."
Oogie grunted. "I'll be gone."
Maleficent exhaled. "Unless you stay."
Oogie shrugged. "Yeah. I guess."
Maleficent raised her eyebrow. "Do you want to?"
Oogie said nothing for a while. Finally "…no."
"I didn't think so."
More silence.
"Are you asking me to?"
Maleficent bristled. "No. I'm not. I don't need you, you know."
"Oh, you don't?"
"Absolutely not."
"…fine." Oogie turned and started to walk out. He turned his head back. "Maybe I'll see you, before I go."
Maleficent turned away herself. "Maybe you will."
Oogie brushed a spider off his head. "Well… see you around, M."
"Yes."
Oogie looked at her for another moment, turned back, and walked down the steps to the ground floor. Maleficent watched him go.
When he was gone, she closed her door. Then she lay back down, crossed her arms again, and tried not to feel.
The banana-yellow beetle scuttled across the mucky street, dashing between rocks and loose bits of pavement. It dodged the feet of the occasional passers-by. Its goal was the sewer entrance at the end of the street.
It had almost reached its destination when a foot came down quite near it, almost crushing it. It jumped away and squeaked.
Maleficent looked down at the beetle she had almost smashed. She bent down to get a closer look. There was no mistaking it. It was one of the many bugs that made up the body of the being that was Oogie Boogie.
Maleficent spoke to it. "So… I take it you're executing your plan?"
The beetle looked up at her, and the part of Oogie's mind that was inside it made it nod.
Out of the corner of her eye, Maleficent saw a few other bugs hiding in a street corner, waiting for their turn to make a break for it.
Maleficent hesitated, then said "It will be a girl. I'm certain now."
Oogie Boogie's tiny voice came out of the beetle's mouth. "And she'll be the worst little abomination you could ask for."
Maleficent stood up. "Goodbye, Oogie."
"Goodbye, M," said the beetle.
And they both went their separate ways.
Maleficent, panting, looked down at the baby she had just delivered. Its skin had an ever-so-slight greenish tint to it.
The baby stared back at Maleficent. It had stopped crying, and was looking up at her with big, inquisitive eyes.
"What will you name it?" asked one of the Three Fates- possibly Clotho, though Maleficent could never keep their names straight. Since the strings of mortals' lives had been taken from them, they had taken up helping deliver babies. No small irony.
Maleficent hesitated at the question. When she had first found out she was pregnant, she had considered the name "Oogeficent." But she decided against that now. She was the child's parent, and she alone. The child had no father now, not really. And as such, Maleficent would not give any part of his name to her child.
"Mal," she said, "I'll name her Mal."
