Now That's Scary
Chapter 6: Live and Let Die, Already!
Disclaimer: I most assuredly do not own The Nightmare Before Christmas. Why would this be classified as a fan fiction if I did own it?
Boogie Boys will return from the gloomy depths of Chapter 3 in this chapter, and Oogie Boogie will be returning. Well, he'll sort of be returning. Knowing me, nothing's ever certain in regards to fan fiction.
(By the way, the Lindsey mentioned in Chapter 5 wasn't Littlewitch1899—just some other Lindsey.)
ADVANCE APOLOGY: Please don't feel insulted by this chapter if you write Lock/Shock fanfics. Well, don't feel insulted even if you don't write Lock/Shock, but especially if you do.
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As one of the characters in the film observed, "You can't kill the bogeyman." But does anyone really want to?
--David J. Skal, in his book Death Makes a Holiday: A Cultural History of Halloween, on the movie Halloween (or at least one of the movies in that series)
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The authors from the first chapter had come back to the auditorium, although some were missing, and a few new ones had arrived. Another change from the previous meeting was the fact that no one was standing on the stage. The people in the audience had taken advantage of this by talking noisily to themselves.
A blonde girl with blue eyes said to the person seated beside her, "So, in this new fic I'm gonna write, Shock beats Lock with a baseball bat, and then confesses her love for him. Isn't that cute?"
The person next to the blonde girl was a brown-skinned girl with similarly colored eyes. "What are you talking about? No one's gonna beat her true love with a baseball bat, not even Shock. Are you crazy or something?"
"Oh my gosh!" gasped the blonde girl. "You disagreed with me!"
"You bet I did," the other girl responded, fully aware that she was the only audience member written about thus far who showed dislike for a clichéd idea.
Before the blonde girl could protest, everyone heard the padding of small footsteps on the stage floor. (Well, everyone heard it except for a few sleeping kids in the back row.)
Focusing their attention towards the front of the room, the members of the audience saw three trick-or-treaters walk onstage. But these weren't just any three trick-or-treaters. These were Barrel, Shock, and Lock (also known as Boogie's Boys.)
Most of the authors applauded, but the brown-skinned girl clapped more loudly than anyone.
"Hey, Lock! They like us!" said Shock.
"Uh-huh," Lock observed.
"Do I get to do any talking?" Barrel asked.
"Shut up. Let me go first," responded Lock.
"Why?" angrily asked Barrel.
"'Cause my name comes first."
Barrel climbed up to the seventh paragraph in the story text and switched his name with Lock's, changing the phrase that had previously read "Lock, Shock, and Barrel" to "Barrel, Shock, and Lock."
"Not anymore!" Barrel gloated to Lock. "Besides, my name comes first alphabetically."
Shock ignored her fellow trick-or-treaters and cleared her throat. "Attention, everyone! My 'friends' and I have some problems with you."
She saw the angry expressions on the authors' faces and smiled. Getting people riled up was one of Shock's favorite activities.
"For one thing, who—except you—decided that Lock an' Barrel were my brothers? I know it's just one of those fanon things, but it's still ridiculous."
Lock shoved Barrel to the floor, then turned to face the audience. "Yeah! I wouldn't be Shock's brother for all the candy in Halloween Town."
"I wouldn't wanna be your sister, either," Shock snapped, stepping on Lock's right foot.
"OW!" Lock exclaimed. To retaliate, he slapped Shock across the face, causing just about every author in attendance to gasp.
"You hit a girl!" shouted a boy.
Shock yelped in pain as she felt the stinging sensation on her cheek. Lock waited for the outraged shouting from the audience members to die down, then spoke.
"An' what's with all these stories where Shock 'n' me are in love?" he asked, a look of disgust on his face. "She an' I are, like, nine years old. We're not into that sort of thing yet."
"But you will be!" piped up a female redhead.
Lock shook his head.
"If we're dead, like many o' you people say we are, then we can't really grow up, can we? And even if we could get older, what are the chances that we'd fall in love with each other? 'Scuse me, but yuck."
"And it's soooo overdone," added Shock.
Barrel saw this as his chance to speak. He stood up from where he had been shoved.
"Yeah! Speakin' of us getting older an' Lock 'n' Shock falling in love"—Boogie's Boys all shuddered—"those kinds o' stories, and even other kinds of stories, tend to assign specific roles to me 'n' Lock 'n' Shock. It always works out like this: Lock's the charming and super-handsome guy, Shock's the grouchy crank, and I'm either the dumb little kid of the group, or in the case of Lock/Shock stories, conveniently out of the way. O' course, when I'm not out of the way in Lock/Shock stories, that's even worse."
Guilty looks crossed the faces of the audience, just like in the first chapter.
"That reminds me," Shock said. "What's with making Lock an incubus?"
Lock angrily stomped his foot.
"I'm glad you brought that up, Shock! It seems like people are obsessed with making me, a human kid, into an incubus. Do you even know what an incubus is?"
A girl raised her hand. "Um…a seductive demon?"
Lock stomped his foot again and growled with frustration.
"NO!" Boogie's Boys shrieked in unison.
"An incubus is a devil who rapes sleeping women," Lock explained. "Even if I'm in my late teens or twenties, I'm not gonna do that!"
"It's disgusting," agreed Shock, her brow wrinkled in repulsion.
"An' a succubus is an inkybus's female counterpart," pointed out Barrel.
"That's 'incubus,'" corrected Lock.
"Whatever."
"Oh!" Shock clapped a hand to her forehead. "Speaking of demons and sleeping, that reminds me. Allow us to reintroduce you to the most nonsensical Nightmare Before Christmas fanfic plot device there is."
"That's right," continued Barrel. "He's the guy who is now obviously dead, and not in the undead way, but people keep using him in stories anyway."
"It's…Boogie Woogie!" Lock finished.
Oogie Boogie crept out from behind a curtain, a hideous rictus upon his face. The audience members all cowered, except for the ones who shouted vile insults in the direction of the stage.
Oogie turned to look upon Lock. Said trick-or-treater whimpered and attempted to hide behind Shock, but Oogie had other ideas.
He tugged on Lock's tail, forcing the devil-costumed child to fall prone onto the floor. Lock yowled as his belly slammed onto the wood beneath, making the dull sound of a thud.
After hearing his fallen henchman's exclamation of pain, Oogie opened his mouth to yell. "That's 'Oogie Boogie!'" he thundered. "And when you quit your bellyachin', write down somewhere that I hate bein' such a one-dimensional character! Heck, I hardly even got a personality in the frickin' movie!"
"He sure is loud," whispered a female brunette to her friend.
Oogie overheard this and turned to look at the aforementioned female brunette.
"Well, you're right, missy! I am loud! You can tell by the way I've been usin' exclamation points to end all my sentences up until now. Ain't that annoying?"
Virtually everyone in the audience nodded.
"I wasn't askin' you! I was bein' rhetorical! Aw, shoot; there I go with them exclamation points again."
"It's 'those exclamation points,'" corrected Shock.
Oogie threw a die at Shock, which hit her square on the forehead.
"YEOW!" Shock squealed, clutching her forehead and leaning against the right wall.
"Good thing I had a die on hand," Oogie remarked to himself. "Now that I think of it, why am I a gambler? Sure, the dice and toys and junk are pretty cool, but why are they there? Not that I'm complainin'. Anyway, what's the deal with you guys bringin' me back to life? I seen all the stories where some author makes up whatever ludicrous idea she can think of to make me alive again, just so the author won't have to make up another antagonist. And isn't coming up with those revival ideas a lot more work than making a new bad guy?"
"Well…yeah," admitted a redheaded girl quietly. "But how did you come back to life in this story, Oogie?"
"I dunno!" Oogie shouted, shrugging. "That's what gets me. Now, if you'll excuse me, I got some disappearin' to do."
"Goodbye, Googly Moogly!" said Barrel.
"My name's 'Oogie Boogie!'" Oogie reached into his eye socket, pulled out a scorpion, and hurled it at Barrel. Just as the scorpion was about to land on Barrel's body, a giant eraser came out of the sky and removed Oogie from the story.
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Maybe that chapter wasn't as funny as some of the others, but that's okay, right? The next chapters will be funnier, although one (or more) of them will probably end up being a miniature horror story with satirical elements, like Chapter 5 was.
I wish I had more to say this time, but I don't.
NEXT TIME: You'll hate me for saying this, but it's a surprise.