Disclaimer: Disclaimed.

Music in the Night

'Why thank you kindly,' Sarah was saying to a little blue worm in her dream, 'I'd love to meet the missus, as long as you buy my books for your many, many children.'

Just as the worm reluctantly began writing a cheque, a deafening crash threw Sarah out of her bed and onto the floor. Something rumbled in the distance.

She yawned, staring blankly out of the window before realising that the thunder sounded oddly like the baseline to a familiar song. Another crash came, and Sarah was convinced that someone had violently attacked a drum kit.

She could now quite clearly hear a backing track, starting and stopping, and the experimental wails of a saxophone. Such musical escapades were much too inappropriate for half past three in the morning. She wondered if any of her neighbours could be blamed for the racket, but her gut feeling told her that neither the forty-year old divorcee next door nor the whisky-loving granny downstairs was responsible. There was only one thing for it, not that she particularly wanted to go to the Underground in the middle of the night. She put on her dressing gown and shut her eyes.

When she opened them again she was, by the looks of things, in the basement of the Castle Beyond the Labyrinth.

'Blast it, Jareth was yelling, 'Keep up, Hogbrain!'

'I's keeping up! You're the one who keeps changing tempo!'

'I am improvising!'

'And I'm sticking to time!'

Neither Hoggle nor the King had noticed her arrival. As they were still bickering, Sarah struck the cymbals next to her as hard as she could to make her presence known. Several goblins, deafened by the sound, staggered out of the drums.

'Oh it's you,' Jareth said, briefly glancing up from his guitar, 'Would you mind keeping it down?'

Sarah had to restrain herself from breaking the drumstick. 'Have you no shame?'

'I am composing!' Jareth explained dismissively.

'You're keeping me awake!'

'You can hear us?' Hoggle asked.

'I wouldn't be surprised if the whole of London can hear you.'

'You shouldn't be able to hear us,' Jareth muttered, 'My Labyrinth and your airy little Hoggle-hovel ('Hey!' Hoggle said) shouldn't be so connected by now.'

'Yeah, well, they are. So connected, in fact, that it's like I have my own private rock band tuning up in my bedroom at the a.m. kind of twenty to four.'

'I can't just stop composing,' Jareth protested, 'You know how it is, you yourself get so angry when you're interrupted. You don't just stop writing when you've hit upon something good!'

'Jareth,' Sarah said, 'The only thing you've hit upon is a thinly veiled cover which you insist on calling "Who Let the Goblins Out".'

'It's an arrangement,' he said, 'A step, if you will, towards something great, if Hoghands here ('Hey!' Hoggle said, louder this time) can get his act together on the sax. I will look into this thin wall problem. But in the meantime I will give you these.'

He placed a pair of earplugs in Sarah's hand.

'We wear 'em all the time,' Hoggle said, 'Or them cymbals really get to you.'

'No kidding,' Sarah said, lamenting her lack of sleep but placing the earplugs in her dressing gown pocket. Just as she was about to leave, she felt particularly vindictive, covered her nose with her hand, and said,

'Eww, what is that awful smell?'

'What smell!?' Jareth asked, with an undertone of panic.

Sarah slowly looked around the basement before resting her eyes on Jareth.

'There can't be any smell!' he said, paling, 'I got it all off, tell her, Hoggle!'

Hoggle said, 'Don't you be bringing me into this.'

'There is no smell,' Jareth said, smelling himself, 'Is there?'

Sarah sniffed the air cautiously.

'Is there?' Jareth asked, on the verge of desperation.

'No...' she said, trying her best not to crack up, 'At least, I don't think so...'

'You don't think so?'

'Goodnight Hoggle, Jareth,' Sarah said, 'Smell you later.'

-FIN-