*author note* - There is brief mention of killing small animals for food in this chapter. The reality is that these kids have to eat, and I imagine that they know how to do this themselves. I did just mention it quickly and it's not drawn out or graphic, but just a heads-up if you're especially sensitive to that.
Shock woke up rather later in the morning than she usually did - they had been so exhausted that she didn't even remember falling asleep on the couch the other night - and the only reason she even woke up now was because Lock's tail brushed against her face. He had fallen asleep sprawled on his stomach like usual, with one arm and leg hanging off the side of the sofa. Shock had fallen asleep on her side and somehow ended up using his butt as a pillow, and now his tail was draped over her shoulder and twitching a bit - clearly he was dreaming. When she realized where her head was she pulled a face and quickly sat up. "Ew," she muttered out loud, and he stirred a bit at her sudden movement. Barrel was using her butt as a pillow as well, laying on his back and crammed in-between her legs and the back of the sofa with his feet up on the arm of the couch, snoring softly. Shock wriggled free and Barrel didn't even react when his head slid off of her butt and hit the sofa. She swung her feet over and onto the floor, then cursed loudly when she stepped on one of their empty bowls. Lock startled and woke up right away, but Barrel only murmured a bit in his sleep and rolled over onto his side.
"What's your problem?" Lock muttered and snuggled back down into the cushions when he realized that it wasn't actually an emergency.
"I stepped on your stupid soup bowl."
"How'd you know it was mine?" He closed his eyes again.
"Because your only purpose in life is to annoy me."
Lock smiled a bit wickedly at that and chuckled. "You wish. I have way better things to do then pay any attention to you." Shock considered smacking him for that, but it would probably give him too much satisfaction so she just snorted and turned off the T.V. before heading to the bathroom. When she got to the kitchen she opened up the cupboards and remembered that they didn't have any food except for the leftover chowder, which didn't sound particularly appealing first thing in the morning… although it would be better than going hungry. She sighed and went to go check the traps - maybe they'd gotten lucky and caught something other than bugs. By then Lock was sitting up on the sofa and stretching. "What's for breakfast?" he asked, scratching himself a few times through his red pajama pants and white t-shirt.
Shock glared at him. He was so lazy, always trying to smooth-talk her into doing all the cooking and Barrel all the cleaning, though they were able to strong-arm him into helping with the cleaning, at least… and when she really thought about it, she probably wouldn't want to eat anything he'd manage to cook anyway. It was still annoying, though. "Same nothing we had yesterday, unless you want soup again." she said, and he frowned a bit and stood up, then made his way to the bathroom. She knelt down and pulled the loose board off of the wall where they hid several of their many traps. Jackpot! In addition to several roaches they had caught a very large, very fat rat that would be perfect to cook up for breakfast, it just needed a little seasoning and maybe a vegetable. She picked up the traps and headed back to the kitchen, but first she stopped at the sofa and kicked Barrel in the shoulder. "Wake up, lazy!" she shouted, this time loud enough that he woke up.
"What?" he mumbled, looking at her groggily.
"Get up and go outside and get a pumpkin. And get some henbane or whatever other herbs are growing out there. And take Lock with you. I'm gonna cook this rat for breakfast."
"I'm not even dressed - our clothes are still all fishy!" He looked down at his grey-striped pajamas.
"You wanna eat or not?"
That got him up and off the sofa just as Lock came back from the bathroom. They grabbed a beat-up old basket and headed into the cage elevator and down through the trap door to go do some foraging while Shock started boiling a big pot of water to wash their fishy clothes with. Then she opened up the trap with the rat and quick as a flash she grabbed it by it's long, naked tail before it could bite her and smacked it hard against the wall, killing it instantly. She skinned, boned and gutted it, then put it in the icebox and took the hot water off the stove and carefully put it on the floor, then sprinkled in some cleaning potion until it got all sudsy. They didn't use cleaning stuff very often at all, but there were times when it was definitely good to have around - when washing off stinky rotten fish guts, for instance. She pulled the clothes line in and dropped all of their costumes into the wash water, then scrubbed her own dress clean. She drew the line at washing all of them - the boys could wash their own clothes, thank you very much. She hung her dress back out on the line to dry and then collected all of the other traps, lit the ceremonial candles, and sent all of the bug offerings down the chute to Oogie Boogie while she waited for the boys to get back. Finally they returned, Lock carrying a medium-sized pumpkin and Barrel holding the basket full of herbs. "Guess what? We found some snake eggs, too!" Barrel said happily, plopping the basket on the kitchen table.
"Nice work, pipsqueaks!" she said, rifling through the basket to see what else they'd found. "Cut that pumpkin up." she ordered Lock, and he furrowed his brow at her.
"You're so bossy." he grumbled, but he put the pumpkin on the floor and pulled a hatchet out of the wall to start hacking it into manageable pieces. Barrel saw the wash basin and scrubbed his costume clean, then stood on his tiptoes to hang it on the line while Shock started cooking up the rat and some of the pumpkin once Lock had chopped enough for one meal. She finished a rather impressive snake egg omelette with rat, pumpkin and herbs by the time Lock had finished washing his costume and he and Barrel had dumped the dirty wash water down the tub.
"What are we going to do today?" asked Barrel with his mouth full as they sat on the couch and ate their omelettes. Just then he remembered that there was still a candy bar underneath the sofa and he made a mental note to eat it later when the other two weren't around.
"I don't know about you guys, but I'm tired of being hungry and I don't wanna get caught stealing again anytime soon, so we should find some more food and stock up." said Lock, and while Shock didn't really like the idea of putting off their Sandy-Claws-capture research she had to agree that living hand-to-mouth the last few days had been the pits. The problem was that their clothes were still wet and out on the line, and unlikely to get dry anytime soon because it was a rather bleak and cool day and the orange sun was hidden behind heavy grey clouds. As if he'd read her mind, Lock said casually, "We still have twenty-five days till Christmas, quit worrying."
"I'm not worrying." she lied, and they finished up their breakfast and did the dishes before flipping the T.V. back on and trying to find something to do that wouldn't get their pajamas too messed up. Lock settled for sharpening his knife collection while Barrel continued constructing the evil-looking mask he'd been working on and Shock practiced her sewing - she'd swiped various fabric scraps from town and was trying to put them all together into a creepy doll, but it was slow-going without any pattern to follow. She thought that maybe once she got a little better at it she might try to make a pretty patchwork dress like Sally's, and maybe even a new hat if she could find and steal the right kind of stiff fabric that would stand up on its own.
"Christmas Town looks better than that stupid place that made us sick was." said Barrel after a while, threading a string through the holes in his mask.
"How do you know?" scoffed Lock. "Did you go there in the middle of the night when me and Shock were sleeping or something?" he said sarcastically, then flung one of his knives at the target on the wall to see how well it would stick and how good his aim was. "Because it was in that book with the train that I read. It still looks dumb, just not as dumb."
"If you say so." Lock threw another knife at the target and got it even closer to the middle than the first knife. He was really getting good at knife-throwing, he thought proudly to himself.
"It didn't have any of those really ugly, light, soft pinky-greeny-yellow colors." Barrel continued, then he bit off the loose end of his mask thread and finished up the knot. "It was mostly blue and white, with some green. And red."
"Still sounds ugly to me." said Lock, throwing the next knife into the ceiling.
"You like red." said Shock. "And nice job, dummy. How are you gonna get that down?"
Lock just shrugged. "Mind your own business."
Shock rolled her eyes. "Anyway, there were drawings of Sandy Claws in that book and he doesn't look anything like whoever we captured so no wonder Jack thinks we're all stupid. He's just a big, fat old man with a big white beard."
"Yeah, he didn't look too scary." said Barrel, now holding up his finished mask to admire it.
"Who thought he'd be scary in the first place? You're such a baby." Lock snickered, though he was secretly glad to hear this more detailed description of their target. How hard could it be to bag some old fat guy?
"Still," Shock cautioned, "Better safe than sorry. If Jack wants to catch him he must be powerful no matter how dumb he looks. And it seemed like in the book that he might be magic, so we need to be careful." While kidnapping Not-Sandy-Claws had been fun, bringing the wrong holiday leader to Jack had embarrassed her deeply and there was no way she was making that mistake again - nor was she going to let these stupid boys (especially Lock) talk her into doing anything dumb like that again.
"Yeah, what if he turns us into one of those snowman things?" said Barrel with wide eyes. He'd looked at a book called 'The Snowman' and even though it didn't have any words, it was about some living, walking monster made out of the white stuff on the ground and it had eventually melted into nothing - Barrel didn't want the same thing to happen to him and his cohorts. Lock had to agree that sounded pretty terrifying so he kept his mouth shut. Maybe being a little more prepared instead of just plowing ahead recklessly wasn't such a bad idea after all.
The morning and afternoon passed in much the same way, chatting about this and that, watching T.V. while working on their indoor projects and occasionally checking the clothesline to see if their costumes were dry yet. Then Lock tried to get his knife out of the ceiling, but didn't have much success. First he tried jumping off of the sofa several times as high as he could, but he still couldn't reach. Then he took two other knives and tried to use them to climb up the wall like he was mountaineering, but it was precarious and once he finally got to the top of the wall he was stuck - he couldn't defy gravity and stab his way along the ceiling while hanging from the knives, they would just slip out. So then he leapt away from the top of the wall like a flying squirrel and made a wild grab for the knife but missed and fell face-first into the side of the sofa, giving himself a black eye. Shock and Barrel laughed hysterically, holding their stomachs and pointing at their friend as he sat up, holding one hand over his eye and grimacing. "You're such an idiot!" Shock cackled, and Lock bared his pointy teeth angrily and lunged at her, starting another fight while Barrel just pointed and laughed at the both of them. By the time they were worn out Shock had a black eye as well and they both had plenty of bruises and scratches. When Shock finally shoved him off of her she saw a 3-inch long tear in the hem of her lavender nightdress. "You ripped my pajamas, you turd!" she shouted, and picked up the brand new mask Barrel had made and threw it at Lock.
Barrel stopped laughing. "Hey!" he said, then scrambled over to retrieve his mask and check it for damage. It seemed to be okay, but he still frowned at Shock and then picked up her partially-constructed doll and threw it across the room, unraveling almost the whole spool of thread attached to it. "How do you like it, huh?" he grumbled at her. She was pretty tired from her fight with Lock but that made her mad enough to attack Barrel anyway. She stuck two of her fingers right up his upturned nose and yanked his ear with her other hand and he yelped in pain and grabbed her long, wiry hair and started pulling. Not wanting to miss out on the action, Lock rallied his energy to join the fray and the three of them wrestled around for another few minutes until everyone was completely exhausted and rolled onto their backs on the floor, panting for breath. "I'm ready for lunch." said Barrel after a few minutes, staring up at Lock's knife in the ceiling and wondering if he would ever figure out a way to get it down.
"You know where the kitchen is." Shock said irritably, and Lock snickered a bit. Barrel was disappointed, he had really hoped to convince her to go heat up some of the chowder but clearly she wasn't interested in doing that - and he wasn't good at charming and manipulating people into doing what he wanted like Lock was so he just sighed and turned his head to the side. Then he brightened up: he was within reach of the candy bar under the sofa! He checked to make sure that the other two weren't looking before he tried to subtly reach his arm under the couch to take it, but once he actually had it in hand he didn't know what to do next. Surely they would notice if he started unwrapping and eating it, and not only would they either make him share it or take it away from him completely, but they'd beat him up for not telling them about it. He lay there pondering this conundrum for several minutes but then he heard Shock start to snore softly. Barrel snored all the time, but Shock only snored if she fell asleep on her back. Barrel listened carefully - Lock hadn't shoved her or started making fun of her - in fact, he hadn't moved or made any sound at all for several minutes so that could only mean he'd fallen asleep, too. His moment had arrived and Barrel happily ate the candy bar and threw the wrapper back under the couch before letting himself doze off as well.
They woke up from their nap in the evening just as it was barely starting to get dark. They checked their clothes on the line and decided that while they were still damp, they were at least dry enough to wear for a little while to go look for some more food before it got too dark to see properly. They got dressed and brought a lantern and matches with them since there wasn't a full moon tonight to light their way once the sun set, and they each grabbed their slingshots, a net, several sacks and baskets and headed down the trap door to see what they could scrounge up. It was a fairly successful venture: Lock whooped in triumph when he managed to shoot a raven and an owl out of the sky with his slingshot, then he quickly broke their necks and stuffed them into his sack before using the net to catch five bats and a plethora of moths. Barrel collected many slugs and lizards, and even found another clutch of snake eggs and an absolutely enormous tarantula. Shock had filled up one basket with mushrooms and a variety of herbs, and another with various roots and tubers. Then she and Barrel picked several more pumpkins while Lock shimmied up a tree and collected half-a-dozen crows eggs. Finally they had as much as they could carry or drag along behind them so Shock lit the lantern and they made their way back home. While she was the best at actually cooking a decent meal they all knew how to work together to get the food put away so it wouldn't rot too quickly. The eggs, mushrooms, pumpkins and tubers could just be stored in the cupboard, and Shock boiled the slugs and put the moths in a jar while Barrel knocked the bats, lizards and tarantula on the head to kill them. Meanwhile Lock got some wood chips burning in the oven and started plucking the feathers from the owl and raven. They put the herbs, tarantula and boiled slugs in the icebox with the chowder, the jar of moths in the cupboard next to the tubers and pumpkin, and then Lock and Shock sliced the owl and raven meat into thin strips to smoke in the oven along with the whole bats and lizards. Barrel watched them carefully - he was still learning how to prepare meat and use the oven properly. They were all quite hungry by the time they were done and the delicious smell of the meat smoking in the oven made their tummies growl. Shock fried up some mushrooms and bloodroot with some of the slugs and a little bit of hemlock for flavoring, then they all changed back into their pajamas and hung their costumes out to finish drying before sitting down to eat dinner and watch the nightly horror show on T.V.
"Our clothes should be dry tomorrow and now that we have plenty of food, we need to get back to business." said Shock between bites. "We gotta get those books we left on the roof and finish reading them."
"You're right." said Lock, and Shock was surprised he actually agreed with her. "We're gonna show Jack that we know how to get the job done right. Nobody's as good as us Boogie Boys!" He grinned evilly at her and she grinned evilly back.
"Stop talking, I like this part." said Barrel. Lock threw one of his fried slugs at him but Barrel only picked it out of his lap and ate it, his eyes never leaving the screen. It was late into the night by the time they were all sleepy and Lock forced himself to check on the smoking meat one last time while Shock and Barrel went to bed - it looked like it would be fine until morning so he closed the oven door again and went to his own room and flopped down on top of his mattress, yawning loudly. He wasn't really looking forward to doing more reading, but even though he had been getting frustrated with it the day before he thought that surely it would start coming to him easier next time - after all, if Barrel could do it, so could he. And he'd meant what he said to Shock about showing Jack how good they were at doing top-secret, top-priority missions. Their pride was on the line, not to mention their reputation, and few things meant more to Lock than his pride and reputation. He fell asleep thinking about how pleased Jack would be when they brought that fat old man back to him, how everyone in the town would admire them and tell them how important and clever and crafty they were, and how Oogie Boogie would reward them and be extra nice to them… and everything would be perfect.