"Yeah, maybe, if you stop talking long enough for me to actually concentrate." I started to say, but Jack didn't listen to me.
"Splendid! You know, I've never actually been inside his house. I wonder what kind of stuff he has in there. Hm, you haven't gotten up yet? I know a faster way to do this. Let me get Sally and her older brother Hybrid..." I was only genuinely interested when Jack mentioned the small girl. Why didn't Jack get some other of his countless admirers to help him? Sally was just an awkward little girl who broke into pieces a lot, sort of like me. In fact, why did Jack want to be friends with an outcast like me? He obviously couldn't be lonely with all those people crowding around him and praising him over and over again.
Jack had ran off somewhere, but it didn't take him long to come back, this time with Sally stumbling behind him and two large shovels and a wheelbarrow. Sally was much shorter and most shy than anybody her age. She brushed the stiff reddish-brown hair out of her large eyes and looked curiously at Jack and then at what she knew to be me. Sally didn't really catch everything and was extremely confused as she tripped along behind him, once falling and losing an arm which she held now. Looking at me, she realized that Jack wanted to make friends with me, but couldn't, for the life of her, figure out why. Hybrid, who you'll find out about later, didn't show up.
Jack stopped and set the wheelbarrow down, but picked up one shovel that was in it. I peered curiously up, wondering what kind of idea the kid had. Sally just tried to quickly sew her arm back on, but she cried out with me when Jack started to shovel all of my bugs into the wheelbarrow.
"What are you doing?!" The individual bugs themselves started up a wild chattering and for once, I sounded panicked.
"Don't worry, you'll be fine," Jack simply replied before sticking his shovel back in and taking more bugs away. But it was not fine. Couldn't he see? He was separating my body! Taking it apart in small bits!
"Jack, wait. I think..." Sally started to protest in her small voice, tottering over to the occupied skeleton, but she was only given the other shovel. She looked up at Jack, who hadn't even spared her a glance, and then looked down at me, who was shouting at him to stop and shouting at her to do something. And so Sally did something. She started shoveling.
It actually didn't take long to transport every bug into the wheelbarrow, I wasn't that big, and no bugs had died as far as they could tell. I had ceased to protest and was reduced to grumbling as they finally scooped up the "head" part of me and pushed me over to Dr. Finkelstein.
The doctor had his head opened when they knocked on the door. His eyes were apparently small, as you couldn't see them behind the ridiculously tiny, black, round glasses perched on his beak-like lips. He always traveled around in a wheelchair. He shut the head quickly when he realized the people at the door were guests and coughed, a little embarrassed.
"My, my, it's Jack. How nice to see you! I didn't expect you to come," the scientist looked behind him. "Did Sally invite you over?"
"No, father...um..." Sally started, but Finkelstein had then laid eyes on what was in the rusty wheelbarrow Jack was pushing. I had, by then, pulled together enough willpower to at least form my head again, so my head just seemed to be floating on a sea of bugs. It sort of looked like the severed head on a dinner platter trick.
"You!" The doctor jerked a gloved hand up in surprise but mostly in anger. I didn't seem to really care and just stared back coolly as if saying, 'Yes. Me.' He looked like he was about to jump out of his wheelchair and just stomp on the head, but Jack stepped in between both the mad scientist and my head of bugs.
"Please, sir, wait. I'm aware that there seem to be a lot of people who bear ill will..." I would have rolled my eyes at Jack's manner of speaking if I could. How old fashioned. How well-mannered. I settled for groaning instead.
"You're darn right I bear ill will! That boy is no good I tell you! Why've you brought him here? I hope it's to ask me for ways to teach him a lesson he'd never-"
"No, Dr. Finkelstein, Oogie's my new friend." Jack proclaimed. My eyes widened at that remark.
"Never agreed to that," I piped up but was ignored. Jack just kept talking.
"It's just that he has a problem of holding himself together and when I was thinking of a way of solving this problem, I instantly thought of you, doctor. You're a genius, after all. I figured you could help us."
"Alright. Well we do what we can do. Ha. I am a genius, aren't I? There's an easy solution to your problem, though. We'll need a lot of glue-" Finklestein started to say when I piped up.
"No!" I snarled from my perch in the wheelbarrow.
"That was a joke! Do you think a genius like me would seriously suggest that?!" Finkelstein growled back. "Well, I think I've already gotten an idea. I can just take a corpse and we can just fill it up with him. Of course, it may take a while to take out all those unnecessary parts...bones...some organs...tell me, do you need muscles by chance?" I seemed to be rather happy at the idea of not having to fall apart but still snapped at the mad scientist.
"Do you think I need muscles? I have my bugs. Why would I need those things?"
Dr. Finkelstein sniffed disapprovingly but continued, "Yes, yes, I suppose so."
"How much time will it take again, doctor?" Jack asked.
"I'd say around a week or two at least," replied the short man, which led to a rather rude outburst from me.
"A week? Old man, I'm not gonna wait, ya hear?" Another disapproving sniff.
"But you see, this takes time. Ripping out all the bones and muscles and cleaning out the inside...and especially if you want to keep the eyes and nose bones intact...of course that depends on what type of corpse...well, I can cut the time down by simply skinning the corpse, but," Dr. Finkelstein observed my wriggling bugs in the wheelbarrow from behind Jack. "I'd say...it's only my opinion of course, but the skin would rip from...all the contents that would be put inside."
"You saying I'm fat, old man?" I growled in response. "Listen, I said I don't wanna wait. Get it ready in a couple of days at the most."
"In a hurry, are we? I don't think you're in the position to speak to me in such a manner. I can turn you down, you know, because of what you did, you rotten brat. Or maybe worse." I didn't like being threatened. It got on my nerves, especially when it was some old geezer doing the threatening. I was the Boogieman! Who would dare threaten me?!
"What did he do?" Jack inquired.
"Oogie once snuck in when father was making something and moved the Electric Striker a bit so when father pushed the button to animate his creation...he was electrocuted," Sally replied softly. Even so, Dr. Finkelstein heard.
"My glorious brain was fried for three weeks! Paralyzed from the waist down, and it's all his fault! Years ago, I could walk, and now I have to travel around in this stupid thing! I could have been killed!" Finkelstein thumped his wheelchair. Jack nodded slowly.
I had been shaking from the time I was threatened (a rather weak threat too), but it turned out I was shaking from laughter. It rose into a deep throaty laugh.
"But you aren't dead, you're alive and walking...well, rolling. Why are you making such a fuss?" This only angered Finkelstein even more.
"Doctor, are you sure you can't do a faster job of it?" Jack spoke quickly, but calmly, hoping to sooth the doctor.
"If he wants some sort of container so that he wouldn't fall apart so often, then he has to realize that suitable containers take time to prepare! I can't just whip one out of nowhere, you know!"
"Actually, father..." Sally looked down and kicked shyly at the stony floor, but the seams around her ankle threatened to snap so she stopped. "You can make a much simpler one..." There was a long silence. "W-well...I mean, you don't need a corpse, do you? You can make something more quickly...sew together something, maybe..."
"Yes, yes..." Finkelstein nodded his beaked head thoughtfully. "Good thinking, Sally. Not like I expected anything less from you. Well, I have an idea now, and this time I can probably finish it in a few days." I started to say something but was stopped when Jack kicked the wheelbarrow loudly.
"At least I'll finally have a use for those, anyways. Come on in." The doctor maneuvered the wheelchair jerkily around and back inside. Jack followed eagerly.
It was rather disappointing at first. The scientist's home was cold, stony, tall, and there were a set of winding stairs off to the side that led up somewhere and also circled below the floor, but nothing else; the first floor was practically bare. The wheelbarrow clacked and jerked as it rolled, showing that the floor had not been laid evenly. Jack looked despairingly around at the very plain room, ignoring my cries of...
"Watch out, idiot!" I screamed, about to fall flat first onto the floor. Jack tilted the wheelbarrow slightly in order to get to the elevator.
