Author's Note: Hello, friends! I apologize for the long gap between updates. It's finals week at the university and I've had lots to do. But fear not, for here I present you with the next chapter in our tale.

p.s. Thank you dearly once again to BJXCBFOREVER (and of course Maverick) for reviewing! Feedback is always coveted. Remember that you can submit a review regardless of whether or not you own an account on this website. Notwithstanding, I still see the rest of you in my traffic stats, so…I suppose I am satisfied.

"Sometimes you believe a thing that isn't true because in the world you wish to live in, it would be true."

– Robert Brault

"Sally? Is that soup ready yet?"

"Coming!"

Stirring the massive black cauldron vigorously, Sally Finklestein let out a long sigh and wiped the beads of sweat off her forehead with a dishrag. She chuckled to herself…it was almost like she was dabbing herself with a piece of her own flesh.

A delicate, meek, soft-spoken ragdoll woman, Sally was Doctor Finklestein's prized creation of twenty-two years. She was composed entirely of rags, wore a patchwork dress, and all the way down to the small of her back cascaded a fountain of long, sleek auburn locks. Although she had been told by the few others with whom she'd ever been in contact that she was exceptionally beautiful, Sally didn't feel that way all of the time. Well, any of the time, to be completely honest.

Her entire life she'd acted as a milquetoast servant for the Doctor in exchange for food and shelter. She'd tried to escape several times, knowing the Doctor (being bound to a wheelchair) probably wouldn't be apt to catching her, but due to her hindering anxieties and limited knowledge of the outside world she always ended up returning to the lab to fix her creator's meals, press his lab coats and resume with other maidly duties of the sort. It was the only way of life Sally knew, after all.

The soup was almost ready; she could tell by the scent. The trick to this delicate recipe was to add just a pinch of witch hazel so that it mingled aromatically with the nutmeg and paprika, thus creating a harmony of spices to accent the bog's brain that had sat for precisely two hours simmering in worm's wart broth. Sally smiled…she'd really outdone herself this time. She bent down and rifled through the utensil drawer beneath the stovetop until her fingers enclosed around a plastic ladle. She withdrew the device, her nose crinkling upon examination of the handle. It was covered in messy bite marks.

"I guess Igor found a new chew toy," she mumbled spitefully to herself.

Oh, Igor, that poor, unfortunate soul…he was the Doctor's meth-addicted lab rat. Sally wasn't exactly sure where Igor came from, nor did she know how he developed an addiction to methamphetamine (a laboratory accident, perhaps? But then again, what would the doctor be doing with such an illicit drug? Sally was never that motivated to ponder these things extensively; she merely resorted to accepting them for what they were). She did know however that Igor had been around her entire life and she'd always regarded him as sort of a pet…albeit regretfully, the pitiable thing.

"Hurry it up, Sally! I'm not getting any younger!" The echo of her creator's whiny, guttural voice made Sally tense resentfully.

"Almost done, Doctor!" she called up the winding stairwell. "Condescending old windbag…"

"What was that, Sally?"

"I'm sending you a gift bag!" She cringed at her horrible save.

"Oh, how nice," Dr. Finklestein croaked from aloft. "I hope the gift is a bowl of soup. Chop-chop, missy!"

Rolling her eyes, Sally dunked the chewed-up ladle into the cauldron and took a light sip of her culinary masterpiece. Just as she expected: it tasted as divine as it smelled. What little credit she received for producing such art! The only time anyone ever praised her skills was when she'd prepared a business lunch for both the Doctor and Jack Skellington. Jack was so nice, a true gentleman…with every dish she brought out he'd just go on and on about how talented a cook she was and how lucky Dr. Finklestein was to have her around…and the Doctor, being the two-faced kiss-ass that he was, even forced out a few compliments of his own for fear of relaying his true crotchety, demanding, ungrateful self under the judgment of the Pumpkin King.

That wasn't the only reason she liked Jack, however. Whenever Sally did happen to be let out in public (which, sadly, was a rare occasion that almost always involved running errands for the Doctor) Jack went out of his way to approach her and kindly inquire as to her state of being. Plus, Sally had to admit, he was without a doubt the most handsome man in all of Halloween Town. Oh, what she would give to learn more about him…

Another shrill, obnoxious call from the Doctor startled Sally out of her daydream and she scrambled across the room to the spice cabinet in pursuit of just a tad more witch hazel. She flung open the cupboard doors and pushed several jars aside until at last she encountered the witch hazel and…a beet?

Raising her brow in perplexity, Sally reached for the foreign object hesitantly and brought it out into the light. Indeed it was a crimson-colored beet; there was no denying that. But what was it doing in her spice cabinet? Sally never bought beets anyways, for neither she nor the Doctor cared for them much. It was quite odd indeed…

"Hmm, I don't remember putting that there," she mused quietly. She shrugged and carried it with her back towards the cauldron, still staring at it in bewilderment. "Ah, you know what? It's probably Igor's. I recall that he has a taste for these strange vegetables." She felt like a madwoman talking to herself, but it always seemed to help her sort out her anxieties. That, and writing in her journal.

"Sally, this is the last time I'm going to tell you," Dr. Finklestein shouted down the stairs yet again, "Bring me that damn soup already! I've got lots of work to do and you're throwing my entire day off schedule!"

"Alright, already!" Sally spat in response. She clenched her fists in frustration, squeezing the beet so hard that it dripped a deep burgundy liquid down her forearm. Great, that was sure to leave a stain. Scowling bitterly she tossed the beet into the cauldron, ignoring the fact that she'd just destroyed the fragile balance of all the ingredients she had selected and combined with far too great a care, and marched up the stairs to deliver lunch to her gruff and unappreciative master.

Meanwhile…

Shock sat upon the faux leather couch in the tree house living room with an E.E. Cummings poetry compilation she'd checked out from the library. Okay, fine; she didn't possess a library card and had no motivation to acquire one, so instead she snuck into Jack's study while he was out with the Mayor and stole the book from his extensive collection. Like he'd notice the absence of one stupid piece of literature…what was he trying to prove with all those books anyways?

At that moment, Barrel approached her from the kitchenette across the room and plopped down in a finely crocheted armchair (the only well-kept accent in their rather shabby dwelling). He crudely scratched his armpit, staring at Shock with a confused expression plastered upon his greenish, ovular face.

"Shock," he began slowly, "are you actually reading a book?"

Shock flashed him a brief, narrowed-eyed glance. "What's it to you, Tubby? Do me a favor; I got half a fifth of vodka left in my room. Go sip on that quietly in a corner 'til I'm done here."

"Geeze," replied Barrel, taken aback. "It must be that time of the month…"

"I'm eight years old, you Dipstick."

"Alright, alright, I'm out!" Barrel abruptly rose from his seat, taking a few steps back toward the kitchenette before Shock suddenly grabbed him by the arm.

"Whoa there, I actually need to talk to you about something," the little witch interjected, her eyes fixated on the page to which she'd just turned.

Barrel paused and looked at her warily. "…I thought you just told me to beat it."

"Yeah, and I say a lot of things," Shock muttered, waving her hand lightly. "Look, it's about the crypt Oogie found the other day…I've been trying to figure out how to decipher the strange writing that was on it."

"What made you think to look in an E.E. Cummings book?" inquired the troll child who, putting their sibling rivalry to bed for a moment ensconced upon the couch cushion next to Shock.

Running her finger over the crisp, sun-faded page, Shock replied, "I don't know. I just remember that there was this one poem we learned about in school last year that, now that I think about it, reminds me a lot of the inscription we found on the tomb." At last she pressed her index finger firmly upon a queer set of letters clustered in the far right corner of the open page. "This…" she said softly. "Do you know what this says?"

Cocking his bulbous head to the side, Barrel scooted in closer to the little witch and scrutinized the bizarre text. It read:

l(a

le

af

fa

ll

s)

one

l

iness

Shock watched her playmate intently while a smug little half-smile crept onto her narrow cheeks. She could sense Barrel's growing frustration as he wrestled with the letters, accompanied by the unsettling air of mystery that had first encompassed the group when they spotted such a prose embossed on the strange iron door at Spiral Hill.

"It says, 'a leaf falls on loneliness,'" Shock whispered at last, closing the book.

Barrel glanced up at her oddly, his expression hard to define. He leaned back in his seat, crossing one leg over the other, and finally he said, "As interesting a breakthrough as this is…have you tried using that to go back and decipher the message on the crypt yet?"

Shock sighed, feeling suddenly crestfallen. "No," she lamented. "Oogie covered the iron door back up so I don't know where to find it."

"Why don't you take his metal detector back out there and search for it again?"

"Ha! Yeah, right."

"I'm serious! I mean, why not?"

Snorting contemptuously, Shock patted the befuddled troll child's shoulder. "Oh, Barrel. I think it's cute how you're still a little naïve."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"You're Oogie's favorite, his 'star pupil,'" Shock grumbled, her voice sharp with bitterness. "Of course you don't understand. See, if you were to snag his metal detector and run all the way out to Spiral Hill with it, you'd probably get what…a spanking? Maybe a slap to the head? But me, if I were to do the exact same thing under the exact same circumstances, well…it would most probably be the last thing I ever did. And I'm not exaggerating."

Barrel, quite obviously aggravated, opened his mouth to respond when suddenly the front door of the tree house swung open. Into the domain stepped Lock and Oogie Boogie, both clad in pea coats, wool scarves and those hilarious little recycled-yarn beanies with the silly balls on top.

"Damn, it's freezing out there!" announced Lock as he kicked off his boots. He draped his scarf and beanie over the hat rack and stuffed his pea coat into the hall closet. Oogie silently followed suit, looking oddly disturbed.

Shock craned her neck over the backboard of the sofa, glancing at her fellow companions apathetically. "In spite of the fact that I don't really care, I'm obligated to ask: how was your day at the race track?"

Lock's face lit up in haughty pleasantry. "Ha, well actually –"

"That's great," replied Shock as she retracted her gaze in disinterest. However much money he won, he'd better use it to pay me back for picking up his "prescription" from Billy this morning, she thought wryly.

At that moment Barrel, who had been watching the sullen Oogie across the room disconcertedly, piped up, "How was your day, Oogie? Did you win any money?"

The boogeyman said nothing but he merely lumbered into the kitchenette, proceeding to open the icebox and rifle through its contents.

"Um, hello?" said Barrel as he rose once again from his seat on the couch.

Still unresponsive, Oogie continued digging through the icebox, his motions becoming increasingly frantic until it was as if he'd dropped a fifteen thousand dollar diamond. The three demon children exchanged bewildered glances and Lock even threw in a shrug.

They all gasped in unison when they finally witnessed their leader extract a large, rufescent beet from the cooler. What was extremely puzzling aside from the unexpected presence of this vegetable itself was that it bore not a single shard of ice crystal…like it had been placed inside the freezer mere minutes ago.

Shock cleared her throat awkwardly. It was as if time froze for a moment, and while she continued to stare at the beet in Oogie's burlap grip she finally dared to speak, "So, um…what's that?"

Almost immediately, Oogie collapsed at the foot of the icebox, sending the blood-red culprit rolling perfidiously across the floor.