The trip didn't take long and when the elevator rumbled to a stop and Finkelstein opened the doors, Jack was grinning wildly. Well, he's always grinning, being a skeleton, but he was grinning more than usual. Counters with vials and microscopes everywhere with mysterious labels on glass flasks and interesting machines procuriously placed. There was an especially huge intriguing one that was propped up on the ceiling that was very black, round, and menacing with a little stick and a smaller red ball at the end pointing to a large table with straps on it. There was nobody restrained in it... Yet.
I chuckled when I saw the familiar machine, the image of the doctor's surprised and shocked (no pun intended) face back then was always enough for me to start chuckling, and Finkelstein glared at me through his small glasses again.
"I can still refuse, you know, or hand you over to those blasted witches to turn you into a toad," he warned, and then Sally came up with a bunch of what looked to be brown, coarse sacks. Very dusty brown coarse sacks. Sally was sneezing as she pushed aside a clear area on one of the counters and set the load down.
"...You're going to shove me in a sack?!" My tone was somewhere in between anger and disbelief.
"Don't worry, Oogie. It'll be fine," Jack said, and I really wanted to punch him then.
"Yes, technically, I'm going to 'shove you in a sack' as you so delicately put it. Now how many bugs are you made of?"
"Hundreds." I replied. Finkelstein scoffed.
"No, that won't do. Give me the exact total, so I can figure out the measurements. You don't want me to give you something too big or too small, do you?" That one sort of sounded like a threat. Three strikes, you're out, right? I made a mental note to do something later to Finkelstein. I was silent for a bit.
"I'd say higher than a thousand. Can't be sure."
"Can't you be more exact?" Finkelstein huffed. "I don't want to have to count all of them myself!"
This was starting to remind me of those games. 'Guess the number of eyes in this jar!'
"Um. Four thousand six hundred nine?" I guessed it was one of those few times I sounded unsure, but Dr. Finkelstein accepted that answer with a small nod and jerked his way to the counter where the bags lay. He sat there, muttering calculations under his breath.
"Good, if that's the case, we have enough." Jack silently applauded Finkelstein at how quickly he had figured it out.
"Sally, get the scissors and the ruler." Finkelstein ordered. The short girl hurried to obey.
"How long did you say it would take again, doctor?" Jack asked.
"This job is laughably simple. I think now I can get it done by tonight. Now I don't want to see your face again," Finkelstein pointed accusingly at me, still in the wheelbarrow, "until it's ready. I'll send Sally to get you then," the doctor rasped before snatching the two objects from Sally. Jack realized he was being dismissed and started to wheel the wheelbarrow around.
"Do you really think I'm going to stand being rolled around by you all the time?" I grumbled. Bugs flowed out over the edges and then I was standing beside it. Jack didn't seem to mind I was out anymore. The wheelbarrow was now lighter anyways. He continued to wheel it to the elevator and I followed after realizing I really didn't want to slither down the stairs.
And then I found myself with Jack, hanging out on a hill whose top twisted into a small spiral. I had no idea how that happened. I stared at the pale skeleton sitting next to him incredulously, then realized that indeed we were sitting next to each other, and a little close too, and scuttled away a little to the side. As much as the hill would allow me anyways.
While I was thinking the past few moments over and over again, trying to figure out what had gone on in the time lapse that I couldn't quite remember (I didn't want to think that for a moment there, I had been overwhelmed and fell for Jack's charisma; there must have been a different explanation), Jack spoke up. He didn't appear to notice that I had moved away.
"I don't think we can do anything today, but what do you want to do tomorrow?" He was already talking like we were friends. When I had expressed told him that I never agreed to that. I glared up at the night sky, into the full moon. In Halloween Town, nights always came early and there was always a full moon.
"I was planning on doing something to the old man," I replied casually.
"Oh, you mean Dr. Finkelstein?" He sounded so...cheerful. I cringed. "Yes, I would want to thank him too, you know? It's really nice for him to do that for you." He couldn't be farther from the truth. I would have laughed, but I was too busy being annoyed by Jack. The boy beside me was just...so...off.
Everybody called him scary, admired him, praised him, and hell, it probably wouldn't be a stretch to say they worshiped him. And he was so polite. Good manners. Gentlemanly. What kind of scary guy was that? He gathered mobs of fans without effort. And I was stuck alone, just as scary –no, even scarier– but stuck with the short end of the stick.
Yeah, I could probably admit it right now. I was envious. Alright, alright! I was envious and I hated Jack because the skeleton guy was somebody to be envious of.
"You say something?" Jack asked.
"No. Nothing at all."
"Okay then." Halloween Town that night was very silent. It usually was silent anyways, to build tension and then break it when you pop out from your hiding place to scare whoever came by, but this was the awkward kind of silence. The bad kind of silence.
"So." I wanted the silence to stop.
"So."
"What made you think you could make friends with The Bogeyman?" I emphasized 'The'. It made me feel better. People knew those who had a good 'The' was very important, and, of course, I was definitely important enough to have that kind of 'The'.
"Well, you seem the kind of guy who wouldn't just praise me all the time, you know," Jack replied carelessly. He didn't seem to realize that I had just worded his question as if we weren't friends.
"Ha. Of course not. I'd never do that," I shot back disgustedly.
"It's boring just being praised. They're only interested in doing that, you know, and then I don't get to do anything fun. It'd be nice to be left alone once in a while." I wondered why Jack was now telling me all this.
'Could it really be that he already trusted me? After only just meeting me? What an idiot.' I thought. Then I wondered again where the usual flock of admirers was. Then I realized the irony of it all and started chuckling, which turned into outright laughter, making bugs quiver and fall off and scuttle back again. Jack turned to me in utter bewilderment. Somehow his eye sockets widened, and his skeleton grin changed slightly to look like a mix between worry and confusion. It made me laugh more because Jack hadn't realized it.
"...Are you alright...?" Jack asked. I still laughed my head off.
"Y-yeah. Don't worry. Just a joke I remembered. Hehehe...Hang on, I'll stop soon..." my composure was still on the verge of breaking. I was snickering through my closed mouth and my voice kept cracking as I lay a buggy hand on Jack's shoulder. The skeleton didn't know whether to feel reassured or disgusted as the bugs wriggled.
"Ya know, (giggle) I re-re-really think (haha) we had more in common (snort) than I thought. I really hated (har) you before, but now I think I can ac-actually (guffaw) tolerate being around you." It would have been a rather touching scene if I didn't stutter from restrained laughter and paused in my soulful speech to chortle over my shoulder every so often. Actually, it wouldn't have been very touching even if I wasn't laughing because of all the crawling gross bugs and stuff on my body that sometimes wriggled into Jack's shirt. Jack stared back, expression still frozen in bewilderment, but he broke into a grin.
"That's great!" Jack said happily.
And I, Oogie Boogie, and Jack Skellington became partly-sort of-hardly-not really close-friends and hung out only-from-time-to-time-not-so-frequently from then on. Okay, I know what you are thinking. How can a villian like me become the hero's best friend? You'll learn later on.
