Five Fails and a Win

Part 1 of 5

Lock, Shock and Barrel were the finest trick-or-treaters that all of the worlds had ever known, human and holiday alike. When they weren't playing or fighting they were thinking up and pulling all sorts of pranks on anyone and everyone who was unfortunate enough to attract their attention. More often than not they succeeded in their quest at scaring - or at least annoying - their targets, but there was still one Halloween Town citizen that they had yet to scare: the Master of Fright himself, Jack Skellington. To finally succeed at doing so would be the pinnacle of their achievements as trick-or-treaters, the crown jewel in their long list of accomplishments and victims, and they never stopped trying to find some way - any way - to frighten him.

One pleasantly bleak and dreary spring day the children sat in the living room of their treehouse, rummaging through the big trunk where they kept many of their prank devices. Jack had scolded them the day before for putting Pop-Its under the Mayor's toilet seat and nearly giving the portly politician a heart attack when he sat down, so the trio were determined to get back at Jack for being such a mean, boring, party-pooper. Lock pulled out a large balloon, a sharp thumbtack and some tape, then said to his friends: "I have an idea! Let's put these behind his door and when he opens it it'll pop and scare him right out of his skin!"

"Skeletons don't have skin, dummy!" Shock corrected him, but she was grinning excitedly. It sounded like a pretty good idea to her.

Lock waved his hand dismissively at her. "You know what I mean!" He shoved the balloon and tape in his pocket but kept the thumbtack in his hand, not wanting to risk poking himself through his clothes.

Barrel giggled and rubbed his hands together eagerly, his perpetual grin spreading even wider than usual. Successfully scaring Jack would be the best thing ever and he couldn't wait to see if Lock's idea would work. The trio grabbed their masks and requisite slingshots then hurried into their elevator cage and headed off to town, chattering about how funny it was going to be to see the mighty Pumpkin King shriek like a little baby.

It was the middle of the day so unless the children were very much mistaken, Jack should be in his office busily working on plans for next Halloween. They strolled casually through the town square and tried not to look like they were getting up to any trouble, ignoring the suspicious and hostile looks the townsfolk were giving them as they made their way towards the Pumpkin King's office. Just as they were beginning to wonder how they were going to manage to sneak in to put their prank into place, Jack and the Mayor came walking out of the building, chatting about some no-doubt boring grown-up stuff. The children tried to look innocent when Jack and the Mayor caught sight of them, but neither adults were fooled and the Mayor's face instantly swiveled to one of anger and dislike when he saw the trick-or-treaters.

"Good afternoon you three." Jack said pleasantly, though he was scrutinizing them carefully. "Not up to too much mischief, I hope."

"Of course not, Jack." Lock said in his most innocent voice, though he still sounded naughty no matter how innocent he tried to appear.

"We're just playing." chimed in Barrel, putting his hands behind his back and shuffling one foot in an 'aw shucks' sort of gesture.

"Yeah, we were thinking about maybe playing some hopscotch." finished Shock, although she had no intention of playing such a dumb game for babies.

"Well that sounds like a very fun idea, don't you agree, Mayor?" Jack said lightly, but the Mayor only grumbled a bit under his breath. "Just please use chalk this time instead of spray paint, understand?" Jack added in a slightly more stern tone, and all three of the children nodded. In truth they hadn't brought any chalk or spray paint with them even if they had actually wanted to play hopscotch - which they didn't. They watched as Jack and the Mayor headed off towards the market, no doubt intending to have lunch, and it was just the opening that they needed to sneak in and plant their trap. Once the grown-ups were out of sight the trick-or-treaters hurried to the office door… and found it was locked. But that didn't matter one bit to the trio because Lock was extremely skilled at picking locks. He pulled out his handy lock-pick that he always carried with him and got to work while his cohorts kept watch. Within only a moment he had it open and all three of them crept inside when the coast was clear, locking the door behind them so that hopefully Jack and the Mayor would notice nothing amiss.

They went straight to Jack's office - which was the largest one at the end of the hall - and snuck inside, giggling wickedly to themselves. Lock and Shock made Barrel start blowing up the enormous balloon while Lock taped the thumbtack to the back of the door and Shock strolled around the office looking for anything interesting to take or break. She stole a shiny silver fountain pen off of his desk and unscrewed the lightbulbs in the desk lamp and threw them in the trash. Then she tied an enormous, gnarled knot in the pull of his window blinds and dropped a bunch of loose staples on the floor and ground them into the carpet with her foot. Finally Barrel got the balloon fully inflated and Lock took it from him and taped it to the wall behind the door, lining it up perfectly to the thumbtack so that when Jack opened the door it would send the sharp point of the thumbtack right into the balloon and result in a loud 'POP' that would hopefully give him a good fright. All that was left to do was watch and wait.

Waiting was one of their least favorite things to do, so they took a bunch of papers off of Jack's desk - most of which had writing on them already - and began drawing ugly, unflattering portraits of everyone in town with the fancy pen that Shock had stolen. They kept quiet, their keen ears listening for any indication of his return and after awhile they finally heard the sound of footsteps coming closer. They ducked behind the desk and poked their heads out just enough to watch Jack walk into their trap, putting their little hands over their mouths to muffle their giggles. The doorknob turned and the door creaked, then Jack stepped all the way into the room and pushed the door open far enough to send the thumbtack right into the balloon. It popped with a loud 'BANG!'… but Jack didn't even blink and the children couldn't remember the last time they'd felt so let down.

"Nice try, you three!" he said cheerily, for as far as the trick-or-treaters pranks went this was a relatively harmless one. "What happened to playing hopscotch?" he teased, and the children groaned in disappointment.

"That didn't scare you at all?" Lock asked in disbelief, his tail drooping sadly on the floor.

"Obviously it didn't scare him, he didn't even jump, bat-brain!" Shock sneered at him, and Lock gave her a dirty look.

"Really? Not even a little?" Barrel asked sheepishly, feeling so depressed that all he wanted to do now was go home and eat candy until he fell asleep.

"I'm afraid not." Jack said with a wide, bony grin. "You're going to have to try a little harder than that!" He knew it was probably a mistake to encourage them, but playing tricks was part of their job, after all, so far be it from Jack to squelch their hopes and creativity entirely. The children grumbled and trudged towards the exit, but before they could leave Jack said, "Please clean up your mess behind the door!" and they did so as quickly as they could, wanting to get out of there before Jack noticed that they had scribbled all over his important papers.

Back at the treehouse the trio sat around and pouted over their failure, eating candy and wondering where their prank had gone wrong. "Maybe it wasn't loud enough?" wondered Shock, tossing Jack's fountain pen into the air with one hand and eating a chocolate bar with her other.

"Maybe…" Lock conceded, laying on his stomach and scratching a skull and crossbones into one of the floorboards with a knife. He had a neat stack of chocolate-peanut-butter cups beside him and he popped one into his mouth after scratching each bone.

"Can we use something louder?" asked Barrel, his voice muffled around the lollipop he was sucking on.

"Like what?" Lock said crankily. He was still annoyed that his idea hadn't worked.

"I think we have an air horn in the trunk." said Shock with her mouth full of chocolate, and at last a devious grin spread across Lock's face. The balloon failure was instantly forgotten as he considered Shock's idea. Air horns were so loud that surely they would scare Jack right out of his pants this time! He threw a peanut-butter cup at his younger cohort and ordered:

"Go look and see!"

Barrel immediately crawled over to the trunk and poked his head inside, then rifled through the various firecrackers, hand buzzers, whoopee-cushions, fake vomit, mousetraps, dead bats, shrunken heads and other such things until he found what he was looking for. "Ta-da!" he announced happily as he held the air horn aloft, and his friends both cackled wickedly. Tomorrow was another day, and another chance to try and get a reaction out of boring old Jack.

...

Author Note: Hey rathernotmyname, I'm finally getting around to writing the kids pranking Jack, as you'd requested quite some time ago! The problem is that I'm not much of a prankster myself and I have a very hard time thinking of tricks for them to play at all, let alone good ones (like I've said before, I'm the most similar to Barrel, lol). So apologies what I come up with is super lame, but I hope you liked (and will like) the chapter(s) ok anyway.

Also, I wanted to address your review on the last chapter regarding Shock being a meanie to the boys: personally I don't think she's quite that bad, really. After all, she does basically apologize to Lock and felt bad after she knocked out so many of his teeth with that rock. And 99.9% of the time the boys bring injury and embarrassment upon themselves despite her warnings, so I think she's entitled to feel a bit smug when things go wrong! In contrast, the incident with the wart serum was directly brought about by Lock being mean to her for no real reason other than that he was bored - plus the damage to her face was quite terrible and they didn't yet know if it was reversible - so I felt it was only right for him to feel at least as bad about that as she did for knocking out four of his teeth (which they knew would grow back by that time, so Lock wasn't as scared about his disfigurement as Shock was about hers). However, that being said, I do imagine that she can be a bit of a hypocrite as well as a little bit more mean to her cohorts than they are to her. In 'Kidnapping the Sandy Claws' Barrel notes that while Lock can punch the hardest, Shock tends to say much, much meaner things. I also imagine that the boys don't tease her quite so badly or for so long due to a certain amount of respect she commands and power she holds over them as the oldest and because of her role as somewhat of a caretaker to the both of them. As Barrel says, he doesn't like it when Shock is so mad that she won't cook anything decent for them, so it's in their best interest not to tick her off too badly, haha! :D Anyway, I hope that all makes sense and kind of clarifies how I'm thinking about Shock and her relationship to her cohorts.

I also enjoyed having Helgamine give Shock a little bit of a pep-talk, and I'll try to figure out a way for the boys to get a little bit of that sort of praise/affirmation and comforting from someone sometime in the future because I agree that those two little kiddos deserve it, too. :) I'm trying to find the balance between the townspeople's dislike of the trio and their understanding that trick-or-treating is part of Halloween, so they have to at least try and tolerate the children, difficult as it may be! I think I might have overdone it in the guillotine chapter by having no one else come to Lock's aid, I think if I wrote it now I would probably have at least some citizens try to help him at least a little bit.

Oh, and I have quite a lot of ideas for future chapters written down on my little list, though most of them are very vague, one-sentence kind of ideas that will require lots of time and thinking to flesh out. Things like the little stuff I'll mention here and there in chapters, like Barrel's fractured arm or Shock's exploding cake. I've also got an idea for a way to have Shock screw up that is completely not Lock or Barrel's fault whatsoever and that is actually brought about by her trying to be a jerk to them for no reason other than boredom, so they will be completely justified in teasing her for much longer than they did about the warts because this time she'll definitely deserve it! :D