Since I've been torturing Lock pretty much nonstop, Jewelled-.-Manga suggested I "pass the pain baton" to Barrel or Shock. So here you go, I hope you're proud of yourself! ;D
The Time Bomb
"Look what I made!" Shock said proudly, marching out of her room to show off her masterpiece to her cohorts, who were having an arm-wrestling match on the living room floor.
"What is it?" asked Barrel, and Lock took the opportunity to slam Barrel's arm into the floor while he was distracted.
"It's a bomb!" Lock said when he looked up at it. Barrel might be a dummy, but Lock knew a bomb when he saw one. He grinned evilly and instantly thought of a million different things that would be excellent to blow up. How were they ever going to choose just one?
"Not just a regular bomb, it's a time bomb!" she said proudly, showing the alarm clock that she'd jury-rigged onto it with wire and duct tape.
"Where'd you learn how to make that?" Lock said eagerly, getting to his feet and rushing over to have a closer look. He tried to grab it out of her hands but she held it up out of his reach and said snottily:
"I read about it, stupid. Maybe one of these days you'll finally grow a brain and learn to read and you can make your own!" Lock was tempted to punch her in the stomach so she'd drop it and he could look at it better, but even he wasn't reckless enough to try that and risk blowing up their treehouse – and himself.
"Reading is dumb!" he sneered.
"But bombs are awesome!" chimed in Barrel, who was equally excited to blow something up. "What are we gonna explode?" He rubbed his hands together excitedly.
"I know just the thing." Shock said slyly, and a malicious grin spread across her face.
"Okay, here's the plan." she said as they approached town. "Everyone's at a town meeting…"
"How do you know?" Lock interrupted.
"I checked the schedule last time we were here, idiot. So we're gonna sneak into that stupid Mayor's house and blow up his toilet!" Her cohorts giggled evilly, fully on-board with this plan because they'd been wanting to do that forever. "I'm gonna set the timer for a little bit after the meeting's supposed to be done, so hopefully he'll come home just in time for it to blow up! And maybe if we're really lucky he'll be sitting on it!" They all laughed loudly at that thought, then quieted down as they passed the town hall where all the grown-ups were talking about whatever boring grown-up stuff went on at town meetings. The Mayor lived right downtown and they had broken into his house so many times in the past that within minutes they were inside and knew right where to go. "You two keep watch in case he comes home early!" Shock ordered her cohorts. She knew that it was highly unlikely he would come home early unless the meeting was cancelled, but it was always a possibility. Plus she wanted to enjoy the privilege of being the one to set up the prank all by herself – she had done all the work so she figured she'd earned it, after all.
Once the boys had gone to the living room to peek out the front windows and make sure the coast was clear she knelt by the toilet and put the bomb on the floor behind it, then carefully set the timer for an hour and five minutes. Then she pushed the button to start the countdown… and then she heard a deafening boom and felt a powerful rush of air for a split-second before everything went black.
The house shook and Lock and Barrel immediately jumped up from their hiding places at the unmistakable sound and feeling of an explosion, and they looked at one another with wide, shocked eyes before they both tore down the hall to the bathroom without a word. "Shock!?" Lock hollered, and when they reached the bathroom they saw a truly terrible sight: she was on the ground slumped against the wall facing the toilet with her hat blown off, covered in dust and debris and bits of porcelain as what was left of the toilet gushed water all over the floor.
"Are you okay?" Barrel asked as he hurried over to her, but she didn't respond and when he and Lock got right next to her they saw that she was either out cold or dead. She had small cuts all over her face and dress and there was a little trickle of blood coming out of her mouth.
"SHOCK!" Lock yelled again, and he shook her shoulder but she only flopped over more to the side.
Barrel started to panic. "What do we do? What do we do? What do we do?" he whimpered over and over, but Lock was completely stunned, staring down at her limp body, cut face and bleeding mouth and he realized he had no idea what to do, either. He couldn't even tell if she was alive or not and he had no clue how to check, and he started panicking as well.
"SHOCK!" he practically screamed, shaking her again, but it was just as ineffective as it had been the first time. He wracked his brain for what to do… and the only thing he could come up with was to get help. "You stay here, I'll go get Jack!" he said shakily and Barrel nodded as tears started to stream down his round little cheeks, then Lock tore out of the bathroom as fast as his legs would take him. He had decided that he should be the one to go for help because he could run the fastest… but also because deep down he didn't think he could handle it if she died in his arms. On that unspeakably awful thought he felt tears welling up in his own eyes and by the time he reached the town hall he was crying openly.
"Jack!" he screamed as he ran into the hall, and he was so frantic that he actually tripped and went sprawling right down the aisle. Everyone turned to look down at him but he didn't care – he just had to get Jack's attention. "Shock needs the doctor!" he cried desperately from the floor, and the townspeople murmured and many rolled their eyes. So now the little pranksters were faking illness and injury in order to get attention? Nearly everyone was convinced that Lock was crying wolf or that this was some sort of set-up for a joke, but a few noticed his tears and wondered if he was actually telling the truth. He was a good – and frequent – liar, but as far as they knew he wasn't able to fake tears. Fortunately, however, Jack saw the fear on his face and the panic in his voice and immediately believed him.
"Where is she?" he asked, bounding off of the stage and picking the little devil right up off the floor, for it took Lock at least ten steps to go the same distance that Jack could walk in one.
"The Mayor's house!" Lock said, clinging tightly onto Jack's neck.
"WHAT?!" shrieked the Mayor, his head quickly swiveling to distress.
"We'll deal with it later, Mayor, I promise." Jack called over his shoulder as he strode through the door without even bothering to close it behind him, and it took only a moment to reach the scene of the accident since Jack could run so incredibly fast.
"In the bathroom. I don't know if she's alive!" Lock wailed, smooshing his little face against Jack's shoulder and crying into his suit, and Jack wasn't sure if he should tell him it would be alright or not… because it was entirely possible that they had finally done something that was just too dangerous even for their relatively tough little bodies to take. They entered the bathroom and Jack saw the tiny witch on the floor, slumped against the wall and covered in dust and debris with Barrel crying next to her and holding her limp hand. Water was flowing from the destroyed toilet onto the floor and it was very obvious that a significant explosion had taken place – and that Shock had been far too close to it. Jack set Lock down and quickly knelt to put two bony fingers against her neck, trying to feel for a pulse.
"Is she dead?!" Barrel sobbed, looking up at Jack with huge, red-rimmed, watery eyes. He'd been crying so hard that his nose was all runny but he hadn't bothered to wipe it. Lock was absolutely beside himself, he'd never felt so powerless and he couldn't make up his mind between pacing around, standing still, sitting down and sobbing or punching the wall. Jack leaned down even further, trying to feel her breath against his skull but he couldn't feel anything. He was on the verge of panicking himself when he finally felt a very weak pulse – Shock was alive, at least for now.
"She's still alive, but we need to get her to the doctor immediately." Jack said as he very, very carefully picked her up, not wanting to cause any more damage in case there were injuries that weren't immediately apparent. "Both of you climb on my back, you'll need to tell the doctor exactly what happened." Lock and Barrel both scrambled onto him piggy-back style, one on each shoulder, and they held on for dear life as Jack stood up to his full towering height and sprinted out of the house.
"Doctor!" Jack shouted as he pushed his way into the laboratory foyer. "It's an emergency!"
Sally hurried out of the kitchen wiping her hands on her apron, and while this time she didn't see much blood and there were no detached body parts in Jack's hand she could still tell that Shock was in a bad state.
"Take her to the top floor, he should be in his study on the fourth!" she said, and followed behind them as Jack could move, much quicker than she could. Dr. Finkelstein had heard Jack calling him and wheeled out of his study to see the Pumpkin King dashing up the ramp with a clearly-unconscious Shock in his arms and the boys hanging onto his back like two little monkeys.
"Now what have they done to themselves?" he said grumpily as began ascending to the top floor. It seemed like it hadn't been all that long ago that he'd had to reattach that annoying little devil's tail, though at least this time it wasn't the middle of the night.
"We blew up the Mayor's toilet!" Barrel cried over Jack's shoulder as they entered the operating room.
"Shock made a bomb and it wasn't supposed to go off until the timer was done but it didn't and it blew up too soon at her and now she's dead!" Lock blurted out, and even though his sentence wasn't exactly grammatically correct he'd gotten the point across.
"Blew up the Mayor's toilet, eh?" Dr. Finkelstein said as he wheeled over to the large worktable where he kept many of his medical supplies, and he couldn't help but be a tiny bit amused because that two-faced politician had always irritated him a bit. "The next time you kids want to make a bomb, come to me. I'd rather teach you how to blow up toilets properly than have to keep patching you up every other week." he grumbled, though there was just the slightest hint of dry humor in his voice. Jack carefully set Shock on the operating table and then bent down so that Lock and Barrel could slide off of his back a bit closer to the floor just as Sally and Igor entered the room. The boys got as close to the operating table as they could – and Lock just about climbed onto it – but Jack and Sally gently pulled them back.
"I know you're worried, but you need to give the doctor some space, please." Jack said.
"Maybe we should leave the room?" Sally suggested quietly, but Lock planted his curly-toed shoes, crossed his arms and said firmly:
"I'm staying with her!"
"Me too!" said Barrel, mimicking his older cohort's stubborn posture.
Jack scrutinized them carefully for a moment. "Very well, but you need to stay quiet and out of the way, otherwise we'll need to leave. Can you do that?" he said, and they both nodded.
Dr. Finkelstein meanwhile had put on a stethoscope and was listening carefully all over Shock's chest. "I've got a heartbeat and respiration," he murmured, then he listened to her stomach and abdomen. "Sounds like there could be some damage here, and I'm concerned about her lungs as well. I'll need to take some radiographs to rule out abdominal hemorrhage and pulmonary barotrauma."
"What does that mean?" whispered Barrel. He had no idea what those words meant but they sounded scary and bad – and not in a good way.
"Shhh!" Lock shushed him and elbowed him in the side. Jack had told them to be quiet and there was no way Lock was going to screw up and get kicked out of the room. Plus if it hadn't been his friend who was on that table it would have been really interesting, so he tried to pretend that it was someone he hated and not Shock.
As Igor starting hooking Shock up to some sort of weird machine the doctor got a different instrument and looked in her ears. "There's some tympanic rupture, but nothing that I can't fix." he said casually, then he peeled back each of her eyelids and shone a light into them. "Fortunately her eyes seem to be unharmed. Those are a bit trickier to repair, but still easily within my capabilities. Though she probably gave herself a concussion when she hit the ground."
"We think she hit the wall." Barrel said, and Lock glared furiously at him for talking again but the doctor said:
"That's good information to have. She most certainly has a concussion in that case, and possibly some dorsal orthopedic trauma as well." He began injecting her with various needles while Igor placed a mask with some tubing over her mouth and nose and hooked the tubing up to a spigot in the wall. Then the doctor wheeled over to a very large, very creepy-looking machine, pushed a button on the control panel and a huge arm unfolded from the wall and began slowly scanning down the length of her body from head to foot, making weird clicking noises as it went. Lock and Barrel pressed close together anxiously and once again Lock wished that it were anybody other than Shock (or Barrel… or himself) on that table because the creepy machine looked so awesome.
Dr. Finkelstein then moved the machine arm back to its place against the wall and began wheeling towards the exit. "Igor will get those radiographs developed and then we'll have a better idea of what the damage is. If she begins to deteriorate she may need to be intubated, but for now I'll keep her sedated and on oxygen and she'll need close observation."
"I'll do it!" said Lock, deciding to risk speaking up.
"Me too!" added Barrel.
Jack opened his mouth to tell them no, but Sally gently touched his arm and said, "I'll stay with them, Jack, it's okay. You get back to town hall. I'm sure they'll behave themselves."
The boys both nodded frantically and said in unison: "We'll behave!" Normally Jack wouldn't have trusted them, but considering their best friend's life was on the line he decided to chance it this time.
"Alright. But you MUST listen to Sally, Dr. Finkelstein and Igor and obey them, no exceptions. That is the best way that you can help Shock, do you understand? I'm trusting you. If you cause trouble I will be extremely disappointed."
The children couldn't care less about disappointing Jack, but they'd heard the part about their behaving being the best way to help their friend so they didn't cross their fingers this time when they promised to do as he said.
After standing around and just watching Shock for several minutes Sally said quietly, "I'll be right back. Please don't touch anything while I'm gone."
"Do you think we're stupid?" Lock snapped, but then he remembered what Jack had said about behaving so he shut his mouth. Sally gave him a sympathetic smile before leaving the room, and after a moment she returned with a chair, and then another, and then a third. She pulled a pack of cards and a bag of candies out of her pocket and beckoned Lock and Barrel to come sit on the chairs beside her, and they did. The candy looked good and it was getting boring just watching Shock laying there not doing anything.
"Do you know any good card games?" Sally asked. Once again while she wished it were under better circumstances, deep down she was excited to have company, even if it was just two anxious, naughty children and one unconscious one. She wished that Jack could stay, too, but she knew he was busy so she pushed her disappointment to the back of her mind.
"We know poker." said Lock.
"And blackjack." added Barrel, and Sally raised her eyebrows in surprise.
"Where did you learn how to play those games?"
"From Oogie Boogie." they answered together, and while Sally didn't know much about the Boogie Man, she had heard about his propensity for gambling.
"How about go-frog? Do you know how to play that one?" she asked, and the boys shook their heads. "I'll teach you." she said, dealing out the cards.
It felt like hours passed… they had played numerous games and eaten all the candy by the time Dr. Finkelstein wheeled back into the room and over to Shock, and Sally and the boys put down their cards and watched as he retrieved another needle full of some sort of drug and said:
"Good news, the radiographs showed no life-threatening injuries. She does have a mild concussion and some alveolar and gastrointestinal trauma, but no extensive hemorrhaging. She also sustained a mild skull fracture and cracked several ribs, but it appears there is no damage to her brain." Lock kind of wanted to make a joke about how she already had brain damage, but he didn't quite have the heart for it right at that moment so he decided to save it for later. "I'm going to keep her paralyzed but attempt to wake her up now that I know there is no cranial edema." the doctor continued, and once again the children wished that he would use normal words, but as long as it was good news then they were satisfied. Dr. Finkelstein looked back at them and saw how they were just barely clinging to their seats and looking extremely anxious – it was clearly taking every ounce of self-control that they possessed to stay put, so he decided to take pity on them. "You can come over here if you like, it may comfort her to see her friends. Just don't touch her and stay out of my way!" Lock and Barrel were off their seats in a flash and peering over the edge of the operating table, which Barrel was just barely able to rest his chin on top of. They watched as he inserted a needle into a vein in Shock's arm and injected some sort of green liquid, and within seconds her eyes cracked open and she started to cough. A little bit of blood splattered against the clear oxygen mask as she coughed and it freaked the boys right out, but the doctor didn't seem concerned. Once her eyes focused they darted around wildly until she saw her friends and then the doctor.
"What happened?" she mumbled, and then she looked even more terrified. "Why can't I hear anything?!" she mumbled louder, her speech slurring a bit and she started to cry. "Why can't I move?!"
"Ah, I was worried this may happen." the doctor murmured. "Does she know how to read?"
"Of course she can read!" Lock said, feeling very offended on Shock's behalf.
"She's super smart!" piped up Barrel.
"Well, at least one of you is…" muttered the doctor, and if they hadn't been utterly dependent on his mercy right now the boys would have tipped his wheelchair over right then and there. He took a notepad and pen out of his lab coat pocket and wrote something down and showed it to her, and she seemed to calm down a tiny bit, though she still looked incredibly afraid. He showed her several more notes and she answered yes or no to each of them, except for one:
"Everything hurts!" she moaned, tears running down her pale green face and her friends felt incredibly bad for her. Eventually the doctor seemed satisfied and leaned over to turn a crank on the wall next to where her oxygen mask was hooked up… and soon her eyes drooped closed once more.
"Why's she falling asleep again?" Barrel asked nervously.
"I'm just putting her out for a little bit so I can repair her tympanic membranes." When the boys looked up at him blankly he clarified: "Her ears. And you two definitely can't be around for that, it's a delicate operation and I don't care how quiet and out of the way you try to be. So off with you." He waved them away grumpily and Lock was on the verge of arguing… but then he remembered that he'd promised Jack to obey and he started to feel extremely angry with himself for making such a stupid promise without crossing his fingers. But then Sally put a hand on his and Barrel's shoulders and guided them gently out of the room.
"Come along, you saw that she'll be alright. And once the doctor has finished the surgery you'll actually be able to talk with her and she'll be able to hear you, won't that be nice?"
"Yeah…" Lock grumbled. "Then we can tell her that she screwed up on her stupid bomb."
Sally held in a chuckle. "I think she probably knows that by now, Lock."
Sally had her hands full keeping the two little trick-or-treaters occupied. First she fed them an enormous lunch and the massive amounts of food combined with all the stress they'd been under that day made them quite sleepy, so she led them upstairs and put them both on her bed for a nap. When they woke up they were extremely hyper – way too hyper to sit and play cards quietly – so Sally had to get creative. First she let them race one another up and down the entire ramp from the second-to-the-top floor to the bottom of the lab, but it wasn't much of a race since Lock was much faster than Barrel. She was a little worried that they might tumble all the way down it and both of them did trip a few times… but clearly they were very tough and they just laughed at one another when it happened and kept going so she relaxed a little. After it became clear that Barrel didn't have a chance at winning a race she got a stopwatch and timed them so they could try to beat their own personal best. After they had thoroughly exhausted themselves – at least for the moment – she took them back to her sewing room and found some scraps of fabric and handed them each a seam ripper, which they used to shred the fabric to bits. Then she grabbed two pillowcases and her travel sewing kit and took the boys outside to let them make mud pies, and soon they were slinging mud at one another instead. Sally had been expecting this so while they were getting absolutely filthy she sat on the steps and made rough little tunics out of the pillowcases so they would have something to wear while she washed the mud off of their costumes. Then Barrel took a direct hit of mud to the face so he tackled Lock and pushed his face right into the ground, which started a much more violent fight that Sally then attempted to break up – but between her unsteady bearing and the boys' roughness she ended up slipping and falling in the mud as well. That at least stopped the fight, however, because then Lock and Barrel pointed and laughed at her instead and Sally had to laugh as well. Despite it being absolutely ridiculous she couldn't remember the last time she'd had so much fun and she actually threw a few handfuls of mud back at the children, which sent them into hysterical peals of laughter – they'd never had a grown-up actually want to play with them like this before.
After it didn't seem like any of them could get any dirtier they finally went running back inside, leaving muddy little foot and handprints all through the laboratory until Sally finally managed to direct them up to the bathroom. While she got a bath going the boys started snapping one another with towels, getting those muddy as well.
"Alright, who's going first?" she asked, making a grab for each of their weaponized towels.
"Not me!" they said in unison, and Sally couldn't help but chuckle a little. They settled the matter through a game of rock, paper, scissors and Lock had to go first.
"FINE, get out of here!" he pouted, and Sally left his makeshift tunic on the toilet and fetched him a new towel out of the cupboard before ushering Barrel out of the room before he could get mud on them. She got the little ghoul a pencil and paper so he could draw while they waited in the hallway for Lock to finish his bath. It was really taking Lock much longer than Sally was expecting considering how reluctant he'd been to take one, and she was about to knock on the door to check on him but Barrel said casually:
"He always takes forever. It takes him a hundred years to do his stupid hair."
"I heard that!" Lock yelled from the bathroom and he flung open the door. Barrel immediately started giggling because Lock looked so stupid in the nearly ankle-length pillowcase and Lock frowned at his cohort, but at least he knew Barrel had to wear one, too. While they waited for Barrel and Lock drew pictures of the bomb exploding in Shock's face, Sally began to worry about how to occupy them while she cleaned up herself and she could only hope that Dr. Finkelstein was finished fixing Shock's ears and that he could keep an eye on the trick-or-treaters while she snuck a quick bath and hurriedly washed and dried the boys' costumes.
Fortunately that was indeed the case. When they poked their heads into the operating room they found Shock awake, wearing a neck brace and a bandage around her head with a lot of padding at the back of her skull and band-aids all over the cuts on her face. The doctor begrudgingly agreed to keep an eye on them for a few minutes and now that Shock could hear again the boys wasted no time in telling her what an idiot she was.
"I can't believe you messed up the bomb! You always think you're so smart, but you're just as dumb as Barrel!" Lock sneered.
"I'm not dumb!" Barrel frowned, but Lock ignored him.
Shock glared at her middle cohort and snarled, "Shut up, I'd like to see you make anything! All you can do is hurt yourself!" She was in a lot of pain and she was still quite tired, but the doctor had just given her some sort of injection and she felt sort of okay at the moment – certainly well enough to fight with Lock.
"Look who's talking! You just about blew yourself up!" he taunted, and Shock had to admit to herself that he had a point this time.
"Well, at least I still blew up the Mayor's toilet! So mission accomplished!"
Lock and Barrel had forgotten about that and suddenly all three of them were laughing together about how hilarious that was, and their only regret was that they didn't get to see how upset he'd been upon discovering the damage.
Jack returned to the laboratory just before dinnertime to see how everything was going. By then Shock felt okay enough to be moved off of the operating table so Jack very gently picked her up and carried her to Sally's bed – Sally would just sleep on the floor with the boys that night. They all ate in the bedroom together and Sally could barely keep her food down from all of the moths fluttering around in her stomach at having Jack in her bedroom and eating the soup she had made. He was very complimentary of her cooking and it took monumental effort for her to keep from blushing. Shock managed to eat a little bit even though her stomach was still rather painful – just about everything was painful, actually. "I gotta go to the bathroom." she said after she'd finished her soup, and the boys giggled because bodily functions were always hilarious. Sally helped her to the bathroom next door and after a moment they heard Shock shriek, "I'm crapping blood!" and Lock and Barrel started laughing.
"Gross!" Lock said delightedly and Barrel laughed even harder, completely undeterred by Jack's disapproving look.
"It's okay, Shock, Dr. Finkelstein told me that might happen. Your stomach got hurt a little bit but you're alright, really." Sally reassured her from just outside the bathroom door, and Shock felt extremely embarrassed that she'd yelled that loud enough for Jack and her cohorts to hear, but had been truly scary in the moment.
"Shut up!" she screamed as Sally helped her back to the room and Jack put her back into bed, and she wished she had the strength and wasn't too sore to beat them both up. "Just wait till I feel better, I'm gonna punch both of you in the gut so hard that you crap blood, too!" she hissed at them, but the boys only laughed harder.
Jack noticed how exhausted Sally looked and he had seen the mud all over the laboratory floor and walls. He could only imagine what Lock and Barrel had put her through, so he made a decision: "Lock, Barrel. Why don't you two come stay with me for the evening. It's much closer than going all the way back to your treehouse." It wasn't a question or an optional invitation, but Lock wasn't going down without a fight.
"Aww, do we have to? We wanna stay here with blood-butt!" he snickered and Shock found the energy to throw her spoon at him.
"No, I don't think that's a good idea." Jack said sternly.
"Jack, it's alright. They can stay here, I don't mind." Sally said, though deep inside she had to admit she would be grateful for the break. If today had taught her anything, it was that there was such a thing as too much company. "You must be far too busy."
"Not at all, your time is just as valuable as mine!" he smiled at her, and while Sally personally didn't feel that was true at all, it was still a kind thing for him to say. He was the Pumpkin King and she was just some cranky old man's creation and servant. There was nothing valuable about her time, she thought somewhat sadly.
After several more minutes of whining Jack had to make a very scary face to get Lock and Barrel to comply, and as they trudged behind him out the door Lock looked back at Shock one last time and called, "See you later, blood-butt!" He and Barrel laughed raucously at her furious expression and Jack sighed, beginning to wonder what he'd just gotten himself into.
Author Note: So I went back and rewatched the movie because something was eating at the back of my mind… and it turned out I was correct: it appears that there aren't steps in Dr. Finkelstein's laboratory, but rather a ramp. Which makes sense because it would be much more logical for him to just wheel around instead of taking the time to use one of those chair-lift things. So now I feel the need to go back and edit the previous story to fit this reality because it's bothering me. WHOOPS.
Also, rathernotmyname, I'm not ignoring your terrific story ideas! I just haven't come up with any ideas for how to write them yet. But believe me, I'm thinking about it often and hopefully will come up with something in the not-too-distant-future! :D That being said, however, it may very well be awhile till my next chapter on any of my stories. I've had the time and energy to crank them out lately, but the deal on the house I was trying to buy fell through (long, frustrating story) so now I have to start all over again and house hunting takes a ton of time and energy, which will cut into my free time for writing. UGH.
