Now That's Scary
Chapter 7: Don't Let This Happen
Or: We Did NOT Need to Know That
Or: Wait! The Sky is Actually Blue for Most of the Time!
Disclaimer: Tim Burton doesn't know that I'm writing about his movie. Poor him.
Before reading the actual chapter, here's an important note: I do not have a crush on Jack Skellington. Many other girls in this fandom, however, do. I've noticed that some of the authors like to pretend that Sally isn't important, if you get my drift. This chapter makes fun of that. If this offends you, click on the back button and read something else.
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The jack-o'-lantern Sun was shining, the grass wasn't green (because there was no grass), crows were cawing, vampires were delicately sipping blood, wolfmen were hunting, and people were dropping dead. In other words, it was a perfectly normal day in Halloween Town.
Jack Skellington was in a graveyard, which (oddly enough) was empty. The ground was littered with the red, gold, brown, and orange of fallen leaves. It was enclosed by a white picket fence, a direct contrast to the high black fences with points so sharp that it looked as if one could be impaled on them. In fact, it wasn't really a graveyard at all. But it could conceivably be made into a graveyard, and this was Halloween Town, dang it.
"Yeah, I'll dang it," said Jack, swinging his arms. He felt that he had struck something, judging from the way that he heard something behind him cry out in pain. Jack turned around to see…
"Human girls?" Jack wondered aloud.
"That's right!" said the one in the front of the group of girls. She had green hair that reached to her waist, sparkling sapphire eyes, and a low-cut purple blouse that matched her short skirt. "I'm Suzy. These are my friends, Brittany and Tiffany. But I'm more important than they are."
Upon hearing these names, Jack had to clutch at his throat to avoid vomiting.
A blue-eyed, brown-haired girl (Jack correctly assumed this was Brittany) shoved Suzy aside and looked Jack in the eye. "Hiiii, Jaaack! You're sooooo CUTE! El-oh-el!" She latched onto Jack's right leg.
"Could you please get off of me?" Jack requested.
"Yeah—I'll make 'er do it!" replied Tiffany, the brown-eyed blonde. She wrapped her hands around Brittany's waist and tugged, but Brittany hardly budged. Tiffany kept pulling and pulling, but nothing happened. So, Tiffany kicked Brittany's right hand.
"OWWWWWW!" screamed Brittany, letting go of Jack's leg.
"Ha!" shouted Tiffany, pushing away Brittany. Tiffany wrapped her hands around Jack's rib cage.
"You're a HOT BISHIE!" she declared.
Jack decided not to say "I know you are, but what am I?" (although he was sorely tempted.)
Suzy glared at her companions. "That is it. No one gets to spend more time with Jack than me. Begone!" Suzy snapped her fingers, and the two other girls instantly vanished into thin air.
She slowly circled around Jack a few times, then grabbed his hand. Suzy hopped up and down, giggling.
"You're freaking me out, to put it bluntly," Jack said.
"So what? You're hot!"
"But I'm just a puppet, for Pete's sake. I just don't see the sense in falling in love with a puppet if you're a human."
Suzy stopped hopping. She put on a downtrodden, disappointed facial expression. "But you're so HOT!"
"You just said that. Besides, I already love Sally."
Suzy stomped her foot. "I hate that rag doll! Why do you like her, anyway?"
Jack pulled his arm out of Suzy's grasp. "Because she likes me in a non-superficial way. Didn't you listen to the dialogue in the movie? There were clues that suggested that Sally and I were friends before."Suzy looked at the ground and shuffled her feet. "Uh…no. I wasn't really listening. I was mostly looking at you."
Jack sighed and clasped his left hand to his forehead. "Like I said, I'm a puppet. A skeleton puppet. A dead skeleton puppet. Please leave me alone." Jack fled from the scene, grateful that he had such long legs.
"Wait! Come back!" called Suzy. "You're really HAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWT!"
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In order to get over the unpleasant feeling he previously experienced in the encounter with Suzy, Jack had invited Sally over for a pillow talk. Like (almost) always, they were in the tower room.
"And then her friend said I was a 'hot bishie,' he sobbed. "What's a 'hot bishie,' anyway?"
"'Bishie' is short for bishounen, which is the Japanese word for 'pretty boy,'" explained Sally. She was obviously angry, as was evidenced by her dry tone.
"That makes it worse!" cried Jack.
"Then what happened?" asked Sally, who had become morbidly fascinated.
"Well, Suzy snapped her fingers, and her friends vanished. Just like that," Jack said, snapping his fingers. "Then she grabbed my hand, giggled like a maniac, and bounced up and down."
"Didn't you tell her to stop?"
"I said that she was freaking me out, but she just said I was hot."
"But she's a human."
"I know. That's what I told her. It makes sense for us to be in love with each other, because we're both puppets. But Suzy's a human from the Real World. I explained that to her, but she told me I was hot again."
"The nerve of her!"
"Yeah, exactly. Then I told her that I love you, not her."
"Good for you, Jack!"
"Thank you. She got really angry and stomped her foot. Then she said she hated you, and asked why I liked you. I said I like you because you like me for non-superficial reasons."
Before Jack could finish talking to Sally, a rock came through the window.
"What the…?" Jack wondered aloud. He went to the window.
Outside, a girl was standing below the window. She was wearing a patchwork dress that looked as if it had been hashed together at the last minute. On her head was a wig of long, reddish-brown hair. The girl had taken the time to draw stitches on her skin.
"Hi, Jack!" called the girl.
"Hijack what?"
"Aw, don't be silly. I'm Sally, come to visit you."
Sally came to the window and looked at the other girl. "That's impossible. I'm Sally."
"No, you're not! I am!"
"This is getting ridiculous," said Jack. "You're obviously Suzy in disguise. You're not the first person to do this, either."
Suzy began yowling. She flung herself upon the ground, pounding her fists while kicking and screaming.
"I want Jack for my own! It's not fair that Sally gets him all to herself! I want him, I want him, I WANT HIM!"
"Get rid of her for me," Jack said to Sally.
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(This section of the story will be written in the Dick-and-Jane format.)
Sally looks at Suzy. Suzy is throwing a tantrum. Sally is annoyed.
"Whine, whine, whine," Suzy whines.
See Sally take out a bat. Look! The bat is stuck full of nails.
"Look, Suzy, look," says Sally. "Look, look, look."
See Sally swing the bat. See the bat hit Suzy's back. Hit, Sally, hit!
"Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! WAAAAAAHHHH!" says Suzy. Bleed, Suzy, bleed!
"Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham!" goes the bat.
See Jack. Jack is in his tower. Look, Jack, look. Sally is hitting Suzy with a bat full of nails.
Hear Jack laugh. Jack likes this.
"Hee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee MWAHAHAHAHAHA!" says Jack.
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Okay, that's the end of this chapter. I bet most people haven't seen Dick-and-Jane writing for a while, but it was perfect for the Sally-beating-up-Suzy scene.
Now, to be serious: I actually support the Jack/Sally pairing, not the Jack/me pretending to be Sally pairing. I suspect that many writers who claim to support Jack/Sally actually support Jack/the writer pretending to be Sally. Why else would they keep writing Jack as being the more amorous one?
I also dislike the disenfranchised girl who comes to Halloween Town and finds a boyfriend in one of Jack's children. It's obvious that the writer is pretending that the child is actually his father, as evidenced by their physical similarities. (If he's a skeletal boy, he'll grow up to look like a skeletal man.)
Then there are the girls who come to Halloweenland and steal Jack from Sally. Please, stop raping canon.
NEXT TIME: I'm split between two topics. The first is Jack taking charge of other holidays, and the second is Skellington children. (I don't hate the idea of Jack and Sally having children, just the theory that they (Jack and Sally) reproduce the same way as humans.)