A/N- Well, I guess I may as well finish. I didn't really get as much feedback as I would have liked for the last few chapters, so this chapter is dedicated to Locked and Ninkira, who have been very, very kind in their reviews. Thanks so much, guys, I very much appreciate it. Now go read their excellent stories, damnit!
Also, for those who are interested, Ninkira, the best artist in the world and quite possibly the universe, has drawn a picture of one of the scenes in this story. It can be located at:
Please give a huge round of applause to Ninkira and her breathtaking work! Now, on with the last installment of this shitty little story.
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"Sally! Sally, where are you, you wretched girl!?" A lone voice cut through the silence of the peaceful night as a metallic whurr, sounding as though the purring of a robotic kitten, resided about the dark that enveloped the figure. Doctor Finkelstein, with a face of pure thunder rounded the hill on his electronic wheels, head turning frantically this way and that in search of his newly-stitched creation. His head pounded; he knew that he was suffering from what was the after-effects of Deadly Nightshade poisoning, something she had obviously unwittingly added to his meal while preparing it. He couldn't be certain as to how long he had been under it's enticing effects, or how long it had been since Sally had snuck out of her home and wandered the streets of Halloween Town completely unsupervised.
"Here I am!" a giggling female voice proclaimed; peering down the gentle curve of the hill below him the Doctor breathed in a sigh of relief as the form of his creation came into full view. She looked a little worse for wear, autumn leaves knotted in her thick hair and the stitches at her knees hanging loose and wobbly from such overexherted use on her new feet, but overall it was not nearly as disasterous as he had prior imagined. The relief in his mind melted rapidly after a moment of silence, and a new found anger bubbled over the Doctor's features.
"What were you doing out here, Sally!" he cried, wheeling his way toward her to save the walk. Her infectious grin dissolved into a confounded stare in a matter of seconds as the Doctor took hold of her arms, legs, face, checking and rechecking, poking and prodding for any damage that had been done. "I specifically told you that you were not allowed to go outside without me to supervise you, didn't I?"
"Yes but-" she started, but her lips were pinched shut by the cold hands now examining the slight scuffing to her face.
"No buts!" he cried. "You snuck out without my permission, which in my books is a punishable offence." Her lower lip quivered lightly as it was released from it's vice grip, but the Doctor merely turned away. "We'll talk about your punishment when we get home. It's very late and you need your rest more than anything."
"But I wasn't being bad, Doctor, I promise! I was being very good!" she protested, twisting away from his death grip at her wrist. "I helped a little demon and a witch and a skeleton find a home that wasn't in the icky graveyard where they was." She nodded knowingly to the cemetary that propped itself smugly by the base of a hill in the far distance. "The witch didn't like it, she just kept yelling and being mean and yelling and stomping around and-"
"The Cemetary? New tenants," the Doctor murmered bluntly to himself, referring to the strange, customary way that newcomers were introduced into the World of Halloween. People would simply show up in the graveyard under their own tombstones or inside their own crypts. In a matter of days any memory held in their minds from before the moment they opened their eyes in Halloween Town evaporated from their heads like water on a hot stove and merely formed a forgotten chunk of knowledge clogging the backs of their minds. But they always remembered that something had happened before Halloween Town, that there had been something there, like an unbearable blank space in an otherwise completed puzzle. Nobody knew for certain what this strange custom was, or how it had formed, all they knew was that it happened, and that it should be praised.
"-actually, I didn't really like her all that much. She was kinda too loud and-"
"That's enough," he cut in thoughtfully, whirring his wheelchair around to face his creation. She ceased her inane babbling immediately, standing tall and upright as he had taught her to. "Now, what did you do with the new people?"
"I found them a house," she repeated dully, eyes cast downward as she kicked lightly at the dust with her booted foot. "The demon asked me to. I liked him. But he was small, Doctor, I've never seen people so small! They were like... like little dolls..." He continued to stare in his passive manner as she racked her limited vocabulary for a way to explain the phenomena she had seen that day.
"They were probably children, Sally, like a miniature version of you or I," he added quietly in signature matter-of-fact tones. "There are not many children in Halloween Town for you to have seen before, but it looks as though the population has just been upped slightly."
"If they were children, I wanna be a children too!" she cried suddenly, a grin of glee flooding across her facial features. She overbalanced in her eccentric hopping motion, and sent herself toppling to the ground. A troubled frown playing on his face, the Doctor offered her a hand.
"No Sally, you can't be a child. You're a grown up, and one of these days you're going to have to start acting like one." He brushed the dust vaguelly from the hem of her dress as she shakily pulled herself into a standing position with the help of his hand. "Honestly, what would Jack think of you in this state? You're a mess, and you know how Neurotic he can get... you have to impress your Pumpk-"
"But they were children and they get a house in the trees! Grown ups don't get that, that's not fair!" she retorted in what could have easily passed for sardonic tones laced through her voice had she known what sardonism was. The Doctor's lecture immediately ceased. His back stiffened like a board and his face turned white.
"A house in the trees?" his heart sunk three notches merely saying it. "The treehouse? What about the treehouse?"
"Well they get to stay there, and-"
"You took them to the TREEHOUSE?!" he cried disbelievingly, turning in his wheel-laiden legs and shooting the girl a look of utter and hopeless despair. Her words faultered slightly in her throat. Had she done bad?
"Well.... well yes, but-"
"Sally, do you remember what Jack and I told you about that treehouse?" his voice was that of poison, and spat through tightly clenched teeth bitter and calm. Her lip quivered.
"No," was her small yet utterly truthful reply.
"It's a bad place, an evil place," his eyes turned to the lopsided structure that was visible down the path. There was a flicker of light, a sole sign that life was prowling beyond the abandoned walls, yet he could not make out a shadow nor silhouette of the so-called children that had been led inside. "Oogie Boogie lives underneath that house. I've told you about him before, and so has Jack, on numerous occasions... he is not a person you want to know, Sally, or have know you." He snatched her arm as he spotted a small contusion on her left elbow. "The people that live above him, he always makes them do his dirty work, makes them his.... his helpers," he struggled to use basic words for the ragdoll's very limited vocabulary to be able to understand. "Do you remember when I brought you out last?"
"Yes, there was a parade! And lots of slow music and people all talking very quietly...."
"We were doing that because the people that previously lived in that house and worked for Oogie Boogie were... well... eaten." His eyes lowered to the ground as his grip loosened around Sally's wrist. She bit her lip fearfully. "I fear to think what lies he filled their heads with, and how twisted and exaggerated those lies are going to become in a child's mind."
"Well... Well you're a grown up, Doctor, you can help them," Sally reassured the man simply, patting him awkwardly at the top of his bald head. He swatted her hand away, clearly unbemused and shook his head sadly.
"Pardon my intrusion, but who exactly are you to be helping on this fine night, Doctor?" A extremely familiar voice sounded from behind their turned backs, startling them both immensely as they turned to face the lank figure.
"Jack!" Sally cried, extatic, leaning foward and crashing into her friend in an unbalanced hug. He patted her back once rather awkwardly, his mouth twisting into a strange mixture of amusement and repulsion to the act. Sally was like a child to him; unable to feel more than one emotion at any given time, hard to hold attention, and overenthused at the smallest of gestures. "Oh Jack, Doctor's gonna save some children! They-"
Doctor Finkelstein had spent many, many years attempting to convince his Pumpkin King that he could bring an intelligent being into their world using nothing but his scientifice methods and scrap material. He'd spent seemingly a lifetime attempting to convince him that his creation would have no flaws when it was made, would do no mistakes and therefore was fit to be created. That had been the sole reason Jack had allowed the experiments to go on in his town, his pleading promise that his creation would be perfect, and wouldn't make any trouble. After using his scientific deductions he had come to find that his promise hadn't exactly been all that truthful, or to the point that he had prior expected. When Sally had come into the world, she had not been perfect at all. There had been numerous and seemingly infinate mistakes ranging from broken glasses to... well... poisoning him with deadly nightshade and sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night. But the Doctor would gladly confess all of these things to Jack if only to keep the thing she had done that night a steady secret. He could never let him know that his creation had done something so deadly serious! And after all the promises he had made, Jack would order the girl disassembled immediately on the grounds that she was simply noo mischievious to keep, and that was simply something he could not let happen after all the hard work he had done. Hastily, he threw a hand over Sally's mouth, immediately overpowering her sentence.
"Don't mind her, Jack, she still hasn't grasped the meaning of childhood yet. There was some baby bats that fell out of their nest in the graveyard, I intend to put them back where they rightfully belong," he lied swiftly and expertly with not a kink nor knot to get snagged on. Sally muffled aimlessly in his grip, arms flailing in wild gesticulations.
"I see," Jack replied, "how very noble of you. Would you like some help? With my height I can get them back up in that tree before you can say 'Boo'." He stretched, flaunting his full height.
"No, no, that's quite all right, my boy, but you can do us another slight favour if you will?" As Jack nodded, he reluctantly removed his hand from it's position clamped tightly about his creation's mouth and thrust her foward. She grinned stupidly, yet to his relief did not say another word. "It is very much past Sally's bed time, and I do not intend to keep her awake for another minute. If you are heading that way at all, would you mind taking her home for me? I'll only be a little while longer."
"Of course, I was heading home anyway, it's only a short detour," Jack replied swiftly, eyeing the ragdoll woman nervously as she jumped to her feet in glee.
"That's wonderful, just wonderful," The Doctor seemed preoccupied to the Skeleton man as he conjured his sentence, executing swift glimpses behind his shoulder, as if he were attempting to hide something.
"Is there something wrong, Doctor? You seem a little-"
"No, no nothing's wrong, everything is perfectly marvellous. See that Sally goes straight to bed, no detours to the kitchen, and don't ask her about what happened on our... walk... tonight, she'll only get overexcited and never leave you alone." As the Doctor hastily wheeled away, the proceeds of his sentence, that hung about the duo like heavy fog in the permanent Autumn breeze, dragged into one another and formed a giant, unstructured clump of words. "Word of warning my boy do not leave her alone with poisons or sharp objects and never accept any tea she brings you must dash Sally be good for Jack or else the consequences we were talking about earlier will become a reality," and with that he was gone, dashing as rapidly down the gravelled and uneven path that his electric legs would take him, looking rather comical with his head slightly tilted to the breeze and his fleeting retreat, in reality, barely exceding a few miles an hour. Jack, slightly flustered at the swiftness of the Doctor's escape, turned to Sally, bewildered.
"So.... why aren't you allowed to play with sharp objects, Sally?" He faultered, almost afraid to ask as he turned in the direction opposite to the one in which the Doctor had sped off in, toward the town, toward the warmth and civilisation and away from the cold of the fleeting loneliness. She grinned mischieviously, instantly forgetting all that had happened, merely letting the knowledge slide to the back of her mind while another slid foward; her brain was not yet intelligent enough to juggle two thoughts at one given time.
"Well... ever wondered why the Doctor's in a wheelchair?"
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"As soon as we got up to the treehouse, Boogie.... er.... extended a very warm welcome to us," Shock's mocking voice permeated through Sally's own internal thoughts of the night in question. Sliding back into reality, she took in a part of the story she never intended to hear before. "It wasn't very long after Boogie threat-... I mean coaxed us into becoming his little cohorts when Doctor Finkelstein showed up."
"He had to be one of the funniest things we'd ever seen," Lock added, grinning with a mouthful of cavity-lined teeth. "But his offer seemed pretty good at the time."
"Offer?" Jack piped suddenly, stepping foward as a discerned look hovered across his face and his arms crossed tightly over one another. The Trio grinned between themselves, a look of utter bemusement etched in all thee pairs of eyes.
"Yes, offer. An offer never to tell you-" the little witch girl poked her finger importantly in his direction, grinning madly, "anything of what happened that night, and how Sally messed up real bad. Unfortunately, we forgot to mention to him that we don't keep our promises." The threesome fondly named the Terrible Trio giggled insanely, matching and bettering the animate hand and mouth gestures produced by the Doctor, present at the meeting and currently stationed in the centre of the aisles, having no other place to park his hefty machinery.
"You promised!" he cried, clear and distinct outrage shining transparently through his features. "You promised that you wouldn't tell if I brought all that candy to you!"
"Oh please," Lock grinned, a rather nonchalant yet smug satisfaction present on his face. "What are ya gonna do about it? Run over us?" The remaining two that made up the trio giggled insanely at his infuriatingly sing-song voice. There was utter silence bar the chalky, squealing giggles. The room was divided like a freshly sliced peach. Some still dwelled on Sally's misfortunes of the night in question, hypocritical eyes bearing down apon her with the weight of a thousand diapprovals, while others had already raised their voices to the Doctor's outraged shouts, defending the groups choice to bring the secret out into the opens. What Jack had so desperately hoped would be a civil meeting, a civil gathering had shattered before his eyes, and now seemed nothing more than an aimless screaming match with no clear cut sides and no clear cut beginning nor end. A small moan rumbled in the back of his throat; it was going to be a long night.
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It was a sigh of relief that was the first thing the Terrible Trio heard protrude from their Pumpkin King's mouth, much less than what they had prior expected from him. They had expected an explosion of yelling, of abuse, of anger, but none of that was present in the small, aching sigh. He was leaned against the cold stone exit door with all of his weight, eye sockets cast upward toward the tall cathedral ceiling and ears pricked as he took in the last icy remnants of the townspeople's argumentative shouts from beyond the door, the hall. It seemed that the ordeal of adjourning the meeting was harder and less civil than he had ever imagined it to be, and it had taken him every last ounce of energy in his body to remove them from the room before the progressively more heated arguements could elongate any further. He look tired, drained, disappointed. But they did not care.
Sally hadn't moved at all. She was still seated silently at her spot in the center rows, only now she had more room to move after the burly demons beside her and broken into a scuffling fist-fight and had been the first ones asked to leave. She looked pointedly downward at her boots, swivelling the toe around and around on the floor like an imbalanced ballerina. Her mouth pulled taut into a frown, testing the forbearance of the stitches that held them tightly in place. She let out a small sigh. It was very different from Jack's.
"Jack... I was going to... I didn't mean to... to..." she began suddenly in the silence, her words stumbling over eachother as they seemingly fell from her mouth in a long and barely coherant string. She stuttered, rubbing her shoulder distractedly as she turned her head gravely to face behind her, to face him. He had a strange look on his face. One she hadn't seen before. She couldn't tell whether it was bad or good, or somewhere horribly stuck between in a hellish limbo.
"Later, Sally. Maybe later." His voice sounded weak, blunt as he failed to meet her apologetic gaze and centered his weight, proceeding to trudge back up the long isle between the door and the stage in long, defeated strides. The empty pews on either side stared back at him mockingly. The walk of shame, he'd jokingly knighted it to Sally once. She'd giggled vaguelly, nodding in agreement and leaning in and allowing him to kiss her for a second time. The walk of shame, back then he'd been joking. But now he found horrible truths in the words.
"That was an awful thing you did." Jack muttered as he reached the stage, climbing apon it effortlessly and gazing accusingly at the threesome, of which were standing in the centre, grinning from ear to ear. "That was an awful thing you did to Sally, and to the Doctor, and to me."
"I know, wasn't it ingenious?" Lock snickered. Jack's eyebrow raised quizzically and his cohorts nodded in enthused agreement to his words.
"I tried." Jack sighed, turning away from the trio, honestly unable to look them in the eye anymore. "Maybe it's true what they say about you. Maybe you just don't want to be helped. Maybe you really do just want to make trouble all the time and do nothing else with your lives." Barrel inserted a small 'Duh' of which set off the group into peals of squealing, unstoppable giggles. Jack shook his head, lifting his hand and vaguelly pointing to the curtain to the left side of the stage. "Your candy's behind the curtain. Take it and go home. Eat it, throw it at people, I don't care..." He'd now begun the walk of shame once more. Remembering the captivated, curious audience that had once followed his every move as he told them whom of which were to be attending the meeting that night was almost too much to bare. To think that the meeting could have all been well, and to think of what Sally had so stupidly begun despite of his infinate warnings to her had sunk his bony heart down a notch in his chest and disheartened him immensely. He sighed as his skeletal fingers curled around the doorknob of the stone exit door. He could hear the rustling of candy papers and the little squeals of glee from the Terrible Trio's mouths.
"Jack... Can I still..." Sally also did not turn to face him. She twirled a strand of her red hair around her finger like a tourniquet. This one did not supress the flow of blood, albeit would if she'd had any. "Is it still okay that I..."
"For now. The door will be open. You can sleep downstairs if you want to." He pulled open the door with considerable effort and slipped through. Although he was disappointed beyond belief with her, he did not have the heart to send her back to the Doctor and his unbearable new creation, even for one night. "Please don't come upstairs. Tomorrow we will talk." He eyed the back of her head. It had dropped. The Terrible Trio had awful, mocking smirks on their faces. He could only imagine what they were planning next. "And you three stay out of trouble. You've already done enough damage for one lifetime."
"Oh, you know we will, Jack." Shock 's sugar-coated voice murmered, her hands folded obediantly behind her back. He inwardly smiled sardonically, knew their trick inside out. Coyly, he held up his left hand and twisted the pointer over the index finger. They grinned in approval, removing their own hands from behind thair backs. They all held the same gesticulation he did. He raised an eyebrow, mouthed 'be good' and then the slam of the stone door sounded, causing Sally to jump in her seat in fright. He was gone.
Three minutes. Three long, silent minutes passed before Sally stood painfully, brushing down her dress and sniffing in distaste, preparing to leave her place of humiliation. Lock had been waiting between mouthfuls of Jack's finest candy for her to stand, to make any movement, and with that he also stood (Much to the pleasure of his comrades, who immediately proceeded to split his share into equal shares for themselves) and strided toward her. She shot him a withering glare as he came near her and proceeded to move away, but he held his hands palm up as a sign of peace.
He reached deep into the pocket of his red tracksuit, digging around between heaven knows what resided in it's depths to finally pull a long, intricate silver chain from it. Sally's eyes flashed in remembrance as the pretty feline charm popped out last. It was still in perfect condition, despite what she could only imagine being in the pocket of a member of Boogie's Boys was like. He let out a tiny smirk, one that she had come to despise and immensely distrust.
"We don't need Jack's gratitude anymore," the awful smirk continued as he thrust it out before him. It dangled furiously on the thin silver chain. "Maybe it'll help you get back into his good books again. Or maybe not." She took it from him with the utmost of care, looked down apon it like it were a precious stone, stroking it lovingly with her thumb before pushing it hurriedly into her dress pocket as though before he changed his mind and took it from her again. With a small sigh pushing itself up from the back of her throat, she took Jack's forgotten coat-jacket from the back of her chair (He'd forgotten it in his haste to leave) and proceeded to make the walk of shame herself. Halfway between the rows apon rows of pews she stopped, put her hand to her mouth apprehensively before turning back to the Trio, whom of which were arguing about who had the most candy. The look in her eyes was furious.
"Nobody likes a snitch, you know," she muttered vehemiously, her nails digging into her shoulder so hard they were sure that in the morning she would find five crescent moons of torn fabric in her skin and wonder how it happened. Shock swallowed down her last mouthful of candy before snidely replying.
"And it's obvious no one likes you much, either, so we're even." Sally's mouth gawked furiously like a fish pulled screaming from the water. Although the anger inside of her was flaring so high that she could barely see anymore through the hate, she could not think of a single comment to send herself on her way with. And with that she turned in a huff, a slight jangle from the treasure in her pocket resounding about the silent room before the heavy slam of the exit door announced her absence.
"Make sure to tell Jack that you're awfully sorry!" Barrel cried in a meek, mocking way, putting on the airs of Sally's voice as he cried the last of his sentence. Giggles resounded about the once empty hall as they pragmatically piled the candy into their pockets and shirt-fronts as they left, leaving a trail of manic giggles and destruction in their wake.
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A/N- Ah, took me AGES to finish this, and I still don't like the way it's finished. Maybe it's screaming out for a sequel to me, I don't know. What do you think? Would you like/read a sequel? Please R/R, it's the last chapter! You'll never have to do it again. I'm begging you!
Lastly, a big thanks to the following people: Locked, Ninkira, Dark Destiny (Because I always do), Viv, Heather and Truddi. Thanks you guys, you're wonderful.
Also, for those who are interested, Ninkira, the best artist in the world and quite possibly the universe, has drawn a picture of one of the scenes in this story. It can be located at:
Please give a huge round of applause to Ninkira and her breathtaking work! Now, on with the last installment of this shitty little story.
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"Sally! Sally, where are you, you wretched girl!?" A lone voice cut through the silence of the peaceful night as a metallic whurr, sounding as though the purring of a robotic kitten, resided about the dark that enveloped the figure. Doctor Finkelstein, with a face of pure thunder rounded the hill on his electronic wheels, head turning frantically this way and that in search of his newly-stitched creation. His head pounded; he knew that he was suffering from what was the after-effects of Deadly Nightshade poisoning, something she had obviously unwittingly added to his meal while preparing it. He couldn't be certain as to how long he had been under it's enticing effects, or how long it had been since Sally had snuck out of her home and wandered the streets of Halloween Town completely unsupervised.
"Here I am!" a giggling female voice proclaimed; peering down the gentle curve of the hill below him the Doctor breathed in a sigh of relief as the form of his creation came into full view. She looked a little worse for wear, autumn leaves knotted in her thick hair and the stitches at her knees hanging loose and wobbly from such overexherted use on her new feet, but overall it was not nearly as disasterous as he had prior imagined. The relief in his mind melted rapidly after a moment of silence, and a new found anger bubbled over the Doctor's features.
"What were you doing out here, Sally!" he cried, wheeling his way toward her to save the walk. Her infectious grin dissolved into a confounded stare in a matter of seconds as the Doctor took hold of her arms, legs, face, checking and rechecking, poking and prodding for any damage that had been done. "I specifically told you that you were not allowed to go outside without me to supervise you, didn't I?"
"Yes but-" she started, but her lips were pinched shut by the cold hands now examining the slight scuffing to her face.
"No buts!" he cried. "You snuck out without my permission, which in my books is a punishable offence." Her lower lip quivered lightly as it was released from it's vice grip, but the Doctor merely turned away. "We'll talk about your punishment when we get home. It's very late and you need your rest more than anything."
"But I wasn't being bad, Doctor, I promise! I was being very good!" she protested, twisting away from his death grip at her wrist. "I helped a little demon and a witch and a skeleton find a home that wasn't in the icky graveyard where they was." She nodded knowingly to the cemetary that propped itself smugly by the base of a hill in the far distance. "The witch didn't like it, she just kept yelling and being mean and yelling and stomping around and-"
"The Cemetary? New tenants," the Doctor murmered bluntly to himself, referring to the strange, customary way that newcomers were introduced into the World of Halloween. People would simply show up in the graveyard under their own tombstones or inside their own crypts. In a matter of days any memory held in their minds from before the moment they opened their eyes in Halloween Town evaporated from their heads like water on a hot stove and merely formed a forgotten chunk of knowledge clogging the backs of their minds. But they always remembered that something had happened before Halloween Town, that there had been something there, like an unbearable blank space in an otherwise completed puzzle. Nobody knew for certain what this strange custom was, or how it had formed, all they knew was that it happened, and that it should be praised.
"-actually, I didn't really like her all that much. She was kinda too loud and-"
"That's enough," he cut in thoughtfully, whirring his wheelchair around to face his creation. She ceased her inane babbling immediately, standing tall and upright as he had taught her to. "Now, what did you do with the new people?"
"I found them a house," she repeated dully, eyes cast downward as she kicked lightly at the dust with her booted foot. "The demon asked me to. I liked him. But he was small, Doctor, I've never seen people so small! They were like... like little dolls..." He continued to stare in his passive manner as she racked her limited vocabulary for a way to explain the phenomena she had seen that day.
"They were probably children, Sally, like a miniature version of you or I," he added quietly in signature matter-of-fact tones. "There are not many children in Halloween Town for you to have seen before, but it looks as though the population has just been upped slightly."
"If they were children, I wanna be a children too!" she cried suddenly, a grin of glee flooding across her facial features. She overbalanced in her eccentric hopping motion, and sent herself toppling to the ground. A troubled frown playing on his face, the Doctor offered her a hand.
"No Sally, you can't be a child. You're a grown up, and one of these days you're going to have to start acting like one." He brushed the dust vaguelly from the hem of her dress as she shakily pulled herself into a standing position with the help of his hand. "Honestly, what would Jack think of you in this state? You're a mess, and you know how Neurotic he can get... you have to impress your Pumpk-"
"But they were children and they get a house in the trees! Grown ups don't get that, that's not fair!" she retorted in what could have easily passed for sardonic tones laced through her voice had she known what sardonism was. The Doctor's lecture immediately ceased. His back stiffened like a board and his face turned white.
"A house in the trees?" his heart sunk three notches merely saying it. "The treehouse? What about the treehouse?"
"Well they get to stay there, and-"
"You took them to the TREEHOUSE?!" he cried disbelievingly, turning in his wheel-laiden legs and shooting the girl a look of utter and hopeless despair. Her words faultered slightly in her throat. Had she done bad?
"Well.... well yes, but-"
"Sally, do you remember what Jack and I told you about that treehouse?" his voice was that of poison, and spat through tightly clenched teeth bitter and calm. Her lip quivered.
"No," was her small yet utterly truthful reply.
"It's a bad place, an evil place," his eyes turned to the lopsided structure that was visible down the path. There was a flicker of light, a sole sign that life was prowling beyond the abandoned walls, yet he could not make out a shadow nor silhouette of the so-called children that had been led inside. "Oogie Boogie lives underneath that house. I've told you about him before, and so has Jack, on numerous occasions... he is not a person you want to know, Sally, or have know you." He snatched her arm as he spotted a small contusion on her left elbow. "The people that live above him, he always makes them do his dirty work, makes them his.... his helpers," he struggled to use basic words for the ragdoll's very limited vocabulary to be able to understand. "Do you remember when I brought you out last?"
"Yes, there was a parade! And lots of slow music and people all talking very quietly...."
"We were doing that because the people that previously lived in that house and worked for Oogie Boogie were... well... eaten." His eyes lowered to the ground as his grip loosened around Sally's wrist. She bit her lip fearfully. "I fear to think what lies he filled their heads with, and how twisted and exaggerated those lies are going to become in a child's mind."
"Well... Well you're a grown up, Doctor, you can help them," Sally reassured the man simply, patting him awkwardly at the top of his bald head. He swatted her hand away, clearly unbemused and shook his head sadly.
"Pardon my intrusion, but who exactly are you to be helping on this fine night, Doctor?" A extremely familiar voice sounded from behind their turned backs, startling them both immensely as they turned to face the lank figure.
"Jack!" Sally cried, extatic, leaning foward and crashing into her friend in an unbalanced hug. He patted her back once rather awkwardly, his mouth twisting into a strange mixture of amusement and repulsion to the act. Sally was like a child to him; unable to feel more than one emotion at any given time, hard to hold attention, and overenthused at the smallest of gestures. "Oh Jack, Doctor's gonna save some children! They-"
Doctor Finkelstein had spent many, many years attempting to convince his Pumpkin King that he could bring an intelligent being into their world using nothing but his scientifice methods and scrap material. He'd spent seemingly a lifetime attempting to convince him that his creation would have no flaws when it was made, would do no mistakes and therefore was fit to be created. That had been the sole reason Jack had allowed the experiments to go on in his town, his pleading promise that his creation would be perfect, and wouldn't make any trouble. After using his scientific deductions he had come to find that his promise hadn't exactly been all that truthful, or to the point that he had prior expected. When Sally had come into the world, she had not been perfect at all. There had been numerous and seemingly infinate mistakes ranging from broken glasses to... well... poisoning him with deadly nightshade and sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night. But the Doctor would gladly confess all of these things to Jack if only to keep the thing she had done that night a steady secret. He could never let him know that his creation had done something so deadly serious! And after all the promises he had made, Jack would order the girl disassembled immediately on the grounds that she was simply noo mischievious to keep, and that was simply something he could not let happen after all the hard work he had done. Hastily, he threw a hand over Sally's mouth, immediately overpowering her sentence.
"Don't mind her, Jack, she still hasn't grasped the meaning of childhood yet. There was some baby bats that fell out of their nest in the graveyard, I intend to put them back where they rightfully belong," he lied swiftly and expertly with not a kink nor knot to get snagged on. Sally muffled aimlessly in his grip, arms flailing in wild gesticulations.
"I see," Jack replied, "how very noble of you. Would you like some help? With my height I can get them back up in that tree before you can say 'Boo'." He stretched, flaunting his full height.
"No, no, that's quite all right, my boy, but you can do us another slight favour if you will?" As Jack nodded, he reluctantly removed his hand from it's position clamped tightly about his creation's mouth and thrust her foward. She grinned stupidly, yet to his relief did not say another word. "It is very much past Sally's bed time, and I do not intend to keep her awake for another minute. If you are heading that way at all, would you mind taking her home for me? I'll only be a little while longer."
"Of course, I was heading home anyway, it's only a short detour," Jack replied swiftly, eyeing the ragdoll woman nervously as she jumped to her feet in glee.
"That's wonderful, just wonderful," The Doctor seemed preoccupied to the Skeleton man as he conjured his sentence, executing swift glimpses behind his shoulder, as if he were attempting to hide something.
"Is there something wrong, Doctor? You seem a little-"
"No, no nothing's wrong, everything is perfectly marvellous. See that Sally goes straight to bed, no detours to the kitchen, and don't ask her about what happened on our... walk... tonight, she'll only get overexcited and never leave you alone." As the Doctor hastily wheeled away, the proceeds of his sentence, that hung about the duo like heavy fog in the permanent Autumn breeze, dragged into one another and formed a giant, unstructured clump of words. "Word of warning my boy do not leave her alone with poisons or sharp objects and never accept any tea she brings you must dash Sally be good for Jack or else the consequences we were talking about earlier will become a reality," and with that he was gone, dashing as rapidly down the gravelled and uneven path that his electric legs would take him, looking rather comical with his head slightly tilted to the breeze and his fleeting retreat, in reality, barely exceding a few miles an hour. Jack, slightly flustered at the swiftness of the Doctor's escape, turned to Sally, bewildered.
"So.... why aren't you allowed to play with sharp objects, Sally?" He faultered, almost afraid to ask as he turned in the direction opposite to the one in which the Doctor had sped off in, toward the town, toward the warmth and civilisation and away from the cold of the fleeting loneliness. She grinned mischieviously, instantly forgetting all that had happened, merely letting the knowledge slide to the back of her mind while another slid foward; her brain was not yet intelligent enough to juggle two thoughts at one given time.
"Well... ever wondered why the Doctor's in a wheelchair?"
* * * * * * * * * *
"As soon as we got up to the treehouse, Boogie.... er.... extended a very warm welcome to us," Shock's mocking voice permeated through Sally's own internal thoughts of the night in question. Sliding back into reality, she took in a part of the story she never intended to hear before. "It wasn't very long after Boogie threat-... I mean coaxed us into becoming his little cohorts when Doctor Finkelstein showed up."
"He had to be one of the funniest things we'd ever seen," Lock added, grinning with a mouthful of cavity-lined teeth. "But his offer seemed pretty good at the time."
"Offer?" Jack piped suddenly, stepping foward as a discerned look hovered across his face and his arms crossed tightly over one another. The Trio grinned between themselves, a look of utter bemusement etched in all thee pairs of eyes.
"Yes, offer. An offer never to tell you-" the little witch girl poked her finger importantly in his direction, grinning madly, "anything of what happened that night, and how Sally messed up real bad. Unfortunately, we forgot to mention to him that we don't keep our promises." The threesome fondly named the Terrible Trio giggled insanely, matching and bettering the animate hand and mouth gestures produced by the Doctor, present at the meeting and currently stationed in the centre of the aisles, having no other place to park his hefty machinery.
"You promised!" he cried, clear and distinct outrage shining transparently through his features. "You promised that you wouldn't tell if I brought all that candy to you!"
"Oh please," Lock grinned, a rather nonchalant yet smug satisfaction present on his face. "What are ya gonna do about it? Run over us?" The remaining two that made up the trio giggled insanely at his infuriatingly sing-song voice. There was utter silence bar the chalky, squealing giggles. The room was divided like a freshly sliced peach. Some still dwelled on Sally's misfortunes of the night in question, hypocritical eyes bearing down apon her with the weight of a thousand diapprovals, while others had already raised their voices to the Doctor's outraged shouts, defending the groups choice to bring the secret out into the opens. What Jack had so desperately hoped would be a civil meeting, a civil gathering had shattered before his eyes, and now seemed nothing more than an aimless screaming match with no clear cut sides and no clear cut beginning nor end. A small moan rumbled in the back of his throat; it was going to be a long night.
* * * * * * * * * *
It was a sigh of relief that was the first thing the Terrible Trio heard protrude from their Pumpkin King's mouth, much less than what they had prior expected from him. They had expected an explosion of yelling, of abuse, of anger, but none of that was present in the small, aching sigh. He was leaned against the cold stone exit door with all of his weight, eye sockets cast upward toward the tall cathedral ceiling and ears pricked as he took in the last icy remnants of the townspeople's argumentative shouts from beyond the door, the hall. It seemed that the ordeal of adjourning the meeting was harder and less civil than he had ever imagined it to be, and it had taken him every last ounce of energy in his body to remove them from the room before the progressively more heated arguements could elongate any further. He look tired, drained, disappointed. But they did not care.
Sally hadn't moved at all. She was still seated silently at her spot in the center rows, only now she had more room to move after the burly demons beside her and broken into a scuffling fist-fight and had been the first ones asked to leave. She looked pointedly downward at her boots, swivelling the toe around and around on the floor like an imbalanced ballerina. Her mouth pulled taut into a frown, testing the forbearance of the stitches that held them tightly in place. She let out a small sigh. It was very different from Jack's.
"Jack... I was going to... I didn't mean to... to..." she began suddenly in the silence, her words stumbling over eachother as they seemingly fell from her mouth in a long and barely coherant string. She stuttered, rubbing her shoulder distractedly as she turned her head gravely to face behind her, to face him. He had a strange look on his face. One she hadn't seen before. She couldn't tell whether it was bad or good, or somewhere horribly stuck between in a hellish limbo.
"Later, Sally. Maybe later." His voice sounded weak, blunt as he failed to meet her apologetic gaze and centered his weight, proceeding to trudge back up the long isle between the door and the stage in long, defeated strides. The empty pews on either side stared back at him mockingly. The walk of shame, he'd jokingly knighted it to Sally once. She'd giggled vaguelly, nodding in agreement and leaning in and allowing him to kiss her for a second time. The walk of shame, back then he'd been joking. But now he found horrible truths in the words.
"That was an awful thing you did." Jack muttered as he reached the stage, climbing apon it effortlessly and gazing accusingly at the threesome, of which were standing in the centre, grinning from ear to ear. "That was an awful thing you did to Sally, and to the Doctor, and to me."
"I know, wasn't it ingenious?" Lock snickered. Jack's eyebrow raised quizzically and his cohorts nodded in enthused agreement to his words.
"I tried." Jack sighed, turning away from the trio, honestly unable to look them in the eye anymore. "Maybe it's true what they say about you. Maybe you just don't want to be helped. Maybe you really do just want to make trouble all the time and do nothing else with your lives." Barrel inserted a small 'Duh' of which set off the group into peals of squealing, unstoppable giggles. Jack shook his head, lifting his hand and vaguelly pointing to the curtain to the left side of the stage. "Your candy's behind the curtain. Take it and go home. Eat it, throw it at people, I don't care..." He'd now begun the walk of shame once more. Remembering the captivated, curious audience that had once followed his every move as he told them whom of which were to be attending the meeting that night was almost too much to bare. To think that the meeting could have all been well, and to think of what Sally had so stupidly begun despite of his infinate warnings to her had sunk his bony heart down a notch in his chest and disheartened him immensely. He sighed as his skeletal fingers curled around the doorknob of the stone exit door. He could hear the rustling of candy papers and the little squeals of glee from the Terrible Trio's mouths.
"Jack... Can I still..." Sally also did not turn to face him. She twirled a strand of her red hair around her finger like a tourniquet. This one did not supress the flow of blood, albeit would if she'd had any. "Is it still okay that I..."
"For now. The door will be open. You can sleep downstairs if you want to." He pulled open the door with considerable effort and slipped through. Although he was disappointed beyond belief with her, he did not have the heart to send her back to the Doctor and his unbearable new creation, even for one night. "Please don't come upstairs. Tomorrow we will talk." He eyed the back of her head. It had dropped. The Terrible Trio had awful, mocking smirks on their faces. He could only imagine what they were planning next. "And you three stay out of trouble. You've already done enough damage for one lifetime."
"Oh, you know we will, Jack." Shock 's sugar-coated voice murmered, her hands folded obediantly behind her back. He inwardly smiled sardonically, knew their trick inside out. Coyly, he held up his left hand and twisted the pointer over the index finger. They grinned in approval, removing their own hands from behind thair backs. They all held the same gesticulation he did. He raised an eyebrow, mouthed 'be good' and then the slam of the stone door sounded, causing Sally to jump in her seat in fright. He was gone.
Three minutes. Three long, silent minutes passed before Sally stood painfully, brushing down her dress and sniffing in distaste, preparing to leave her place of humiliation. Lock had been waiting between mouthfuls of Jack's finest candy for her to stand, to make any movement, and with that he also stood (Much to the pleasure of his comrades, who immediately proceeded to split his share into equal shares for themselves) and strided toward her. She shot him a withering glare as he came near her and proceeded to move away, but he held his hands palm up as a sign of peace.
He reached deep into the pocket of his red tracksuit, digging around between heaven knows what resided in it's depths to finally pull a long, intricate silver chain from it. Sally's eyes flashed in remembrance as the pretty feline charm popped out last. It was still in perfect condition, despite what she could only imagine being in the pocket of a member of Boogie's Boys was like. He let out a tiny smirk, one that she had come to despise and immensely distrust.
"We don't need Jack's gratitude anymore," the awful smirk continued as he thrust it out before him. It dangled furiously on the thin silver chain. "Maybe it'll help you get back into his good books again. Or maybe not." She took it from him with the utmost of care, looked down apon it like it were a precious stone, stroking it lovingly with her thumb before pushing it hurriedly into her dress pocket as though before he changed his mind and took it from her again. With a small sigh pushing itself up from the back of her throat, she took Jack's forgotten coat-jacket from the back of her chair (He'd forgotten it in his haste to leave) and proceeded to make the walk of shame herself. Halfway between the rows apon rows of pews she stopped, put her hand to her mouth apprehensively before turning back to the Trio, whom of which were arguing about who had the most candy. The look in her eyes was furious.
"Nobody likes a snitch, you know," she muttered vehemiously, her nails digging into her shoulder so hard they were sure that in the morning she would find five crescent moons of torn fabric in her skin and wonder how it happened. Shock swallowed down her last mouthful of candy before snidely replying.
"And it's obvious no one likes you much, either, so we're even." Sally's mouth gawked furiously like a fish pulled screaming from the water. Although the anger inside of her was flaring so high that she could barely see anymore through the hate, she could not think of a single comment to send herself on her way with. And with that she turned in a huff, a slight jangle from the treasure in her pocket resounding about the silent room before the heavy slam of the exit door announced her absence.
"Make sure to tell Jack that you're awfully sorry!" Barrel cried in a meek, mocking way, putting on the airs of Sally's voice as he cried the last of his sentence. Giggles resounded about the once empty hall as they pragmatically piled the candy into their pockets and shirt-fronts as they left, leaving a trail of manic giggles and destruction in their wake.
* * * * * * * * * *
A/N- Ah, took me AGES to finish this, and I still don't like the way it's finished. Maybe it's screaming out for a sequel to me, I don't know. What do you think? Would you like/read a sequel? Please R/R, it's the last chapter! You'll never have to do it again. I'm begging you!
Lastly, a big thanks to the following people: Locked, Ninkira, Dark Destiny (Because I always do), Viv, Heather and Truddi. Thanks you guys, you're wonderful.