Jack decided to bring Pogey home with him for the time being until the town meeting to introduce him to everybody else to settle him with a permanent residence was to start. While the two of them were walking up to Jack's front porch, the Mayor was elsewhere, driving around in his loudspeaker vehicle to announce to everyone in Halloween Town about the meeting's scheduling. Most of the citizens were indoors or doing otherwise mediocre activities, many preparing for the upcoming Halloween that would not arrive for over nine months.
Jack finally approached his front door, setting down the toolkit that he had brought to the lair earlier. Pogey stood a few steps behind him and watched carefully. As he did so, he paid very close attention to his situation at hand and analyzed the biggest details:
I'm standing near someone taller than I am. We're alone. He's in front of a closed door with a lock—uh oh, now he's taking out a key. He's putting the key in the lock. He's turning the doorknob while the key's still there…Oh, no! He's going to throw me in there and leave! RUN FOR IT!
Pogey turned quickly and dashed down the front steps in sheer terror just as Jack turned around to address him. "Pogey?" he called out. Seeing that Pogey was starting to run away, Jack acted reflexively. He hustled down those few steps after Pogey and grabbed the medium-length, dangling end of the chain that was cinched underneath his head. Pogey stopped abruptly, making a brief gag.
"Pogey!" Jack exclaimed, surprised. He hated to manhandle like that, but he would have had to go on a sudden chase otherwise, and who knows how far they would have gone?
Pogey slapped Jack on the metacarpals. "LET ME GO!"
Knowing that Pogey would just try to flee again if this was done, Jack instead loosened his grip on the chain and slid his hand all the way down to the last link, hooking a manual phalange inside of it. He was still gripping the chain, but by literally only a finger.
"Pogey, it's harmless!" Jack explained cheerfully. He walked Pogey the few steps back to the door and pushed it further to open it. Making sure that Pogey was seeing this, Jack then removed the key from the lock, closed the door, and reopened it. He then closed and opened the door once more to emphasize that it was unlocked and let go of Pogey's chain. "See? You can open it yourself."
Pogey finally got the message that Jack was not going to abandon him in there and walked to the ajar doorway to peer inside. On Jack's part, he picked up his toolkit again and, excusing himself politely and avoiding accidental contact, contorted past Pogey to enter. Pogey followed him in but was still too scared to close the door, so Jack had to do it for him. Pogey then stepped aside for an instant to set his stick with the bundle attached to it beside the wall.
Sally was sitting in a lounge area, reading a book on the horticulture of pumpkins. Upon hearing the several instances of the front door opening and closing, she paused what she was doing and headed towards the front hallway to solve the mysterious noise.
"Sally, I'm home!" Jack called out. He set his toolkit on a side table shaped like a coffin. "The Mayor and I ran into a sort of…well, complication. I believe this to be a higher priority for now. Don't expect the party house to be finished anytime soon."
"Complication?" Sally asked. She was now turning a corridor that led to the main entrance. Upon seeing her fiancé's guest, she stopped in her tracks and stared directly at him.
"Uh, Jack…" Sally asked nervously, "…where did you get him?"
"The Mayor and I found him locked in Oogie's extra basement bedroom. His name is Pogey. Apparently, Oogie shut him up in there for goodness knows how long. He wanted out of the lair for good, so now I've switched priorities to introducing him to the townsfolk in hopes of establishing a home. The Mayor is scheduling a town meeting for tonight as we speak. Don't worry; I'm quite sure that Pogey isn't malicious. If anything, he seemed glad to be free of his father."
Sally walked over to Pogey and extended an open hand to him. He came up to about her lower chest in height. "Well, it's nice to meet you, Pogey! I'm Sally Finklestein. Jack and I got engaged last Christmas, so I'm set to become Sally Skellington pretty soon."
Jack made a startled face and shook his head wildly the instant Sally started to introduce herself. Finally, he intercepted. "Sally, please don't! He has an aversion to touching. I think he's afraid that anyone who offers to do so might hurt him."
Sally retracted her hand quickly. "Oh, dear!" She looked towards Pogey. He was standing with his eye holes squinted and his mouth open partway. The snake that served as his tongue could be seen curling downwards inside. "I am so sorry!" Sally apologized. "I won't try that again."
Pogey calmed down. Looking Sally in the eyes, he explained, "Nearly every instance of Dad making physical contact with me resulted in a beating or worse. I'm sorry, but when I see anyone trying to touch me, I'm worried that it might happen again!"
Sally looked at Pogey in surprise. "Oh, you poor thing! Your father was worse than I realized. Don't worry about us; we never, ever would hurt you. Ever."
"When someone extends a hand like that when meeting for the first time, it's nothing more than a friendly greeting," Jack explained further. "The worst that could happen is your hand possibly getting squeezed too tightly. We won't do a retake if you don't wish to shake hands, though."
"Well, okay," Pogey replied reluctantly. Seeing how skinny both of their necks were, Pogey gripped the dangling end of his chain and pulled as if to tighten it to mimic their looks. The chain would not budge, though; his sack was too stuffed for that. The very slight cinch was the tightest that the chain was ever going to get. He frowned in disappointment.
Sally noticed the haphazardly-fixed broken spot on Pogey's long body seam. She imagined, from the appearance, that Oogie had probably caused the tiny area to rip, with Pogey having to fix it himself. As could be evidenced, he had not done a very good job; a pinch of burlap was sticking upwards at the bottom of the repair, and there was an ending knot tied over the stitches, which were themselves spaced out just enough that one could see the bugs squirming underneath if peering at the area from mere centimeters' distance, which Sally wasn't. The sliver of seam looked like it would burst open again at the slightest bit of indirect pressure.
"Pogey, I am an expert seamstress," she noted, pointing to his side slightly. "Would it be okay if I just helped to fix your side stitch really fast? It should take only a moment."
Pogey covered it quickly. "No! No touching! Leave me alone!"
Sally nodded in understanding.
"I always fix it myself!" Pogey continued.
Both Sally and Jack had further doubts about Pogey's well-being, as the "always" implied a constant need to restitch, hence also implying that he wasn't very good at healing himself. They were better than to make someone relive possible trauma, though, so they let this go for now.
"All right, then!" Jack smiled at Pogey. "Do you mind if Sally and I have a quick conversation? It's important, but it shouldn't take long."
"Go ahead," Pogey answered, taking a few backward steps subconsciously.
"Okay," Jack said. Turning to Sally, he began, "The Mayor and I called a meeting for this evening to deal with him. Our objective goal is to give him a warm welcome and possibly let him see that the townsfolk aren't as bad as Oogie was, and we're hoping also that somebody might want to take him in."
"I have a few ideas—for after he's had some time to let his trauma heal, of course," noted Sally. "Mr. and Mrs. Covina have been in want of children for a long time. You know, that witch couple who live near the pumpkin grove? They haven't been able to get one in the oven for a few years, so I'm sure that Pogey would delight them immensely."
"That wouldn't work," Jack replied, cringing. "They have a free-range pet raven. Do you remember what Oogie's anatomical composition was?"
Sally cringed back. "Oh, yes, thank you. That would be a problem! What with Pogey's little weak spot, too, that raven could peck its beak inside the burlap much more easily! So, no Covina family." She put a hand to her chin in further thought.
Jack spoke up his idea. "Could Dr. Finklestein possibly be interested in adopting? I know that he now has Jewel for company, but—"
Sally shook her head. "The last thing an abuse victim needs is someone who is extremely overprotective, even if Dr. Finklestein means well."
While Sally and Jack were talking, Pogey had wandered towards the doorway just beside the front entryway and had spotted Zero floating around the corridor, towards him. Quickly, Pogey ducked where Zero wouldn't see him, grabbed his runaway bundle to untie it, and pulled out the pair of dice.
Pogey squatted at the entryway's coffin-shaped side table and gave the pair of dice a good throw on it. He examined the result. Three and four. Seven.
The sound of the two plastic pieces rattling on the wood interrupted Jack's and Sally's conversation. When they turned to look, they immediately became uneasy.
"Pogey, what are you doing?!" Sally called out, alarmed, as she and Jack rushed to Pogey. He was now crouching on his arms and feet, like an animal ready to pounce. From Jack's angle, he could see that Zero was around the corner in the next room, just hovering in place.
"Be quiet!" Pogey snapped in a whisper. Before Jack or Sally could stop whatever he had in mind, he pounced towards Zero through the doorway, hollering a loud "BOO!".
Pogey landed about a meter in front of Zero. Zero immediately yelped in terror at the jumpscare but then began laughing hard, his nose glowing audibly in lieu of the actual sound of laughter. Being a Halloween Town resident, Zero lived for harmless scares and took this as a friendly joke.
Pogey started to laugh along with him. Unlike Oogie's sinister cackle, this laugh was the benign kind that one would hear coming from a friend.
"Uh, Pogey…" Jack asked, confused. "What was that about?"
Both Pogey and Zero stopped laughing. The former turned to Jack and Sally and froze up.
"Come on, you can tell us," Sally coaxed gently.
"But—but…what are you going to do to me?"
"Nothing," answered Sally. "We promise."
Pogey squatted in silence for a few seconds. Finally, in a soft voice, as if frightened that he was going to be hurt for his answer, he replied, "I saw your ghost—dog—thing in here, unsuspecting, so I decided to bet on how to scare him. Even total, I would toss my packing bundle's stick in front of him and make growling noises; odd total, I would pounce in front of him and holler, 'BOO!'."
"I see," remarked Jack. "That's good to know."
"We're sorry for being alarmed," Sally added. "Whenever Oogie got out his dice, it was to bet on ways to kill his targets. I almost fell victim myself recently."
"Yeah…yeah, I can imagine," Pogey said quietly.
Sally turned to Jack uncertainly. "I have a bad feeling about this, Jack, just like I had a bad feeling about your Christmas plan. I know that this situation in particular is hard to find an alternative to doing, but if you introduce Pogey to everybody at once, then they might panic and assume that he is just like Oogie! He was known for being the token dangerous resident, you know."
"Mayor actually warned me about that, to a lesser extent," Jack replied, "but I think that there might be a hope spot. We can have him do familiar, harmless tricks like that pouncing one, and when everybody sees them, then they'll know that he's one of us."
Sally shrugged. "I hope you're right."
Pogey and Zero had now split up, Zero having floated upstairs to the observatory while Pogey was in the main living room. They never got close enough for cuddles or other physical contact.
...
"Okay, okay; places, everyone! Are we all ready to begin?" Jack was standing in the main room of Town Hall, the Mayor standing beside him with his happy face at work. Pogey was standing out of view behind a corner that was somewhat secluded from anybody in the seating area. Jack and the Mayor had convinced him to come if he stood in the middle in a single-file line and they never touched him, which was a difficult task to bargain all on its own.
Jack scanned the room to make sure that everybody was seated and quiet. "Are we ready? Yes? Good. Now—" He lifted a hand to clear his throat. "—we shall begin."
He sighed softly. "Residents of Halloween Town, as you all know, we have been undergoing a project to turn Oogie Boogie's old lair into a hospitable party house that everybody may be able to enjoy safely. Clearance started today on the traps."
In the audience, Lock, Shock, and Barrel were seated together. Barrel crossed his arms at this speech's opening and pouted. "Hmmph. And why waste it like that?"
Shock shushed him. "Shut up!" she whispered.
This went ignored by Jack, who continued his speech without pausing. "Unfortunately, though, I am here to report that this project will be delayed until further notice, due to an unforeseen complication. Mayor and I feel this issue to rank more highly in importance."
Lots of agape mouths and surprised, disappointed looks could be seen dispersing through the audience. The three trick-or-treaters, however, perked up to hear more.
"Now, I know that Oogie had close to a zero percent approval rating when he was with us—" Jack noticed Lock, Shock, and Barrel a few rows back in the audience and gave them a gentle but firm glare, putting vocal emphasis on the italicized words. "—and deservedly so. However, I must ask that you remain calm and welcoming anyway. It's for the greater good."
He stepped aside to let the Mayor talk. Sally gave Jack a wink for good luck. Noticing her in the closest spot of the front row, he winked back.
The Mayor stepped to the center for his part of the announcement. "We found out that somebody whom we didn't know existed is in fact residing right here in Halloween Town. We're looking for a home for him, hence why we called you all here. Now, please don't lose your heads, but while—"
"What if it's too late for that?" a Headless Horseman called out from the audience. All of the monsters who were sitting near him turned to look.
The Mayor paused his speech to address the interruption. "That was an idiom, Irving."
Irving leaned back in his seat, embarrassed.
"As I was saying," the Mayor continued, "we don't want any of you to panic, but while this new member of our community may bring about some déjà-vu, he enjoys just the scares that we do, and absolutely nothing more sinister. Jack can attest to that."
"It's true," Jack confirmed, stepping next to the mayor. "I observed it myself but hours ago. Now, he hasn't been treated very well by Oogie at all, as you probably can imagine, so we all will have to be very patient with this resident, in this welcome and for the foreseeable future."
Lock, Shock, and Barrel exchanged stunned looks. Was Jack talking about whom they thought?
Jack headed to the secluded corner where Pogey was standing. "Pogey, you can come out now!" he beckoned, smiling for good measure.
Pogey stepped very carefully towards the open space. He had his runaway bundle retied to the stick and was holding it beside his head.
"Everybody, please give a warm welcome to Pogey Boogie!" the Mayor announced, still standing at his place for the speech at hand.
Finally, Pogey was in plain view of everybody. Jack, the Mayor, and (from the front of the audience) Sally were expecting some sort of warm response, but all that persisted for a moment was stone-dead silence. A few monsters who had mouths opened them slightly.
A naked skeleton with slimy, black hair broke the silence abruptly after about six seconds. "Heaven help us! It's Oogie's demon spawn!"
The werewolf sitting directly next to him gave him a hard slap on the humerus. "No, it's NOT! Don't you ever pay attention?!" he scolded.
Jack felt relieved. So far, this collective response was going somewhat well.
That was, before the werewolf continued his dialogue to his acquaintance.
"It's Oogie's demon larva! 'Spawn' refers to fish, you literal numbskull!"
As if this was the start of a chain reaction, a bunch of rioting remarks against the poor sack started to erupt all over the town hall.
"LIAR! You're bringing another threat into our undeaths!" a witch screamed, pointing an accusing finger at Jack and the Mayor.
"Who has a seam ripper handy? I wish to avenge my cooked niece!" a mummy yelled as he looked frantically around the room.
"Let's strangle him! He obviously wants to be; just look at the chain on his neck!" a scarecrow with a jack-o-lantern where his head should be called out.
Oogie's ex-assistants, meanwhile, had outlier reactions amidst the din. "Say, isn't that the total failure we were recruited to replace?" Lock asked his friends quietly in confusion.
"I think so, but what's with the chain?" asked Barrel in response.
The Mayor switched his head to the unhappy side. "No, no!" he attempted to raise his voice above the commotion. "He's not evil! We'll prove it!"
The crowd decreased in volume, with only a few members shutting up completely.
Jack finally took the reins again. "Mayor's right! Pogey is completely benign!"
On hearing this, everybody stopped their ruckus. They turned to look at Jack and were surprised to see Sally having gotten out of her seat and nodding as she walked up to him.
"I can testify to this," Sally added. "When Jack came back from—"
"Oh, the ragdoll who almost became stew for the original Boogeyman honestly expects us to believe that?!" a skin-patched, Victorian-era teenage girl with her right eyeball missing interrupted. "Last I checked, it was during Jack's very recent mistake of mixing Christmas and Halloween! If you're trying to integrate killing and scaring this time, even within our holiday, Jack, it won't work!"
"But I'm not involving killing!" Jack protested. He thought hard to come up with an example to present Pogey properly to the large crowd.
"Pogey, can you laugh?" Jack asked finally.
Pogey had tensed up during this whole ruckus and looked like he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. "What for? This isn't funny at all!"
"We just need to show them what it sounds like, that's all," coaxed Sally gently.
Pogey looked down and managed only a soft, fake chuckle that barely got anything across.
Within the crowded audience, Shock crossed her arms. "I remember his laugh, all right," she groused quietly to Lock and Barrel. "It was embarrassingly more cheerful than ours!"
Jack, Sally, and the Mayor needed another example quickly, and the Mayor hadn't spent enough time with Pogey to think of one. Jack came up with the only other one he could.
"Pogey," he requested, pointing hastily to the sack's little runaway bundle that was still being held, "see if you can get out your dice!" Obviously to Sally, this request was to show the townsfolk that the result would be a Halloween trick instead of torture and maiming.
Everybody not in the speaking area, though, misinterpreted this immediately.
"He has DICE?!" exclaimed an apelike monster with fangs and purple skin. "He likes to use them, like Oogie?! Cancel the party house! Lock this kid back up in there!"
"And risk him continuing Oogie's old games?! Are you nuts?!" exclaimed a different werewolf sitting beside the apelike monster. "I like my skin intact, thank you very much!"
Immediately, Jack knew that he had said the wrong thing. As a save, he tried to reach out to Pogey's bundle to retrieve the dice himself, but Pogey immediately rushed several steps away.
"Pogey?" Jack asked in concern.
Pogey turned to look back at Jack.
"Pogey, could you come back here, please?" Jack asked softly, now beckoning.
This was a trigger to Pogey. Immediately, while still standing in place, he saw his surroundings changing into a flashback. It didn't help that Jack's current pose hardly needed adjusting.
Jack was now replaced by Oogie Boogie, who was making a batch of snake and spider stew. He was standing slightly in front of the pit, leaning forward, with his arms by his sides. He looked angry beyond measure. The whole view was about thirteen feet away.
Oogie lifted up a pointed arm and flopped the stub towards himself a few times, his version of beckoning. "Pogey, could you come back here, please?" he barked.
"No! I'm not boiling an innocent child in there!" exclaimed a first-person voice in defiance, obviously Pogey's from his perspective. As if on cue, the muffled noise of a kid zombie could be heard, and she stuck her head in protest around the sliding board where she was bound.
"Dang it, Pogey!" Oogie exclaimed. He began to stomp towards Pogey. "I told you to come back here! Why, if you defy me one more time, I'll—"
Pogey's brief flashback finally ended on its own when Oogie had nearly made his way to Pogey. He snapped back to present time. As only a few seconds had passed, Jack had not gotten any closer to him, and in fact, nothing at all had changed in the town hall.
"No! I don't WANT to come back!" Pogey called out. He was beyond terrified by this point. He darted past the crowd of angry Halloween Town residents and hightailed it out of the building.
Jack, Sally, and the Mayor hustled down his path. They overheard a witch remarking, "If we find him, we'll treat him like a witch hunt! He's more qualified than I am!"
"Nah, he's not worth it!" a nearby vampire replied.
The trio peeked sideways out of the building's front door. "Pogey?" Jack called.
Pogey had now dashed a distance from the town hall. Had this been daytime, he would have been much easier to see, but as it was shortly after sunset, the burlap that formed his exterior blended in quite well with the darkened colors of everything else, leaving the faint sound of his neck chain rattling with his quick motions as the only immediate clue to his whereabouts. Normally, the blending would be a perfect adaptation—to sneak up on people to scare on Halloween night—but right now, it was forming an unsuitable obstacle for the three townsfolk who had brought him in.
Being annoyed himself by this rattling sound of the chain before too long, Pogey soon paused for a moment to grip the hanging end in place, with both arms. He tightened his grip on his stick bundle as well. Then, he continued to run. He wanted to be completely alone.
"How are we going to find him?" the Mayor asked Jack and Sally, still peering out of the town hall's front door. "Nobody is going to want to join in a search party—you saw how they reacted—but this town is too expansive for the three of us to search it efficiently!"
Jack sighed in discontent. "I guess it'll have to do for now. Sally and I can recruit Zero from home as a flashlight. He was especially useful when lighting my way through fog, remember?"
Meanwhile, Pogey finally paused his run, fairly confident that he was away from everybody. He sat down on a log that was by a large crypt.
The emotional torment that was the town hall meeting came back to Pogey in full detail. Victim blaming, victim blaming, victim blaming, all after a period of abuse. Would things ever improve?
Pogey choked up, now completely upset. A lone, tiny slug emerged from the inner circumference of his left eye hole and crawled slowly down his face, leaving a slime trail that resembled a human tear's path. Pogey lifted an arm to let the slug glide onto it and then lifted the stubby end to his socket to get the slug back inside. Then he smeared away the slime trail.
He decided to rest in order to block this new imprint as much as possible. He kneeled in front of the log and squinted his eye sockets shut. Heck, he probably was going to sleep poised against the crypt tonight if need be. At least he still had his dice with him for entertainment should he see an opportunity to use them, though the reassurance of that was presently nullified.