A Godawful Small Affair -- The Nightmare Before Christmas Fanfic
Fandom: The Nightmare Before Christmas
Rating: G, or K
Summary: "Sally's first awareness was a feeling of being bound; not only by the restraints at her wrists, but of feeling trapped inside a world too small." Sally's first night of existence in Halloween Town.
Genre: Drama, Friendship, Character Study
Disclaimer: Halloween Town and its citizens belong to Tim Burton and Disney. The title of the fic is taken from the opening line of David Bowie's "Life on Mars," which I was listening to pretty much nonstop whenever I've gotten the urge to work on this story over the last 4 years.
A/N: Not altogether happy with the way this fic turned out, but that's mainly due to the fact that I've been in love with it since it came out when I was six years old, and I've always been hesitant to touch it for said reason. I haven't managed to do justice to the film in any way, shape or form, but I wanted to do SOMETHING for it since this year was its 20th anniversary, and the movie has meant so much to me for most of my life. Hopefully it's not as awful as I think, and you can get SOME enjoyment out of it.
A Godawful Small Affair
It is a sad state of affairs indeed that most living beings in the universe have no memory of their first thoughts upon entering that universe. By the time one is old enough to appreciate the intricacies of such thoughts, one's mind is too developed and desensitised to both the Earth's wonders and its horrors to think of how strange it must have seemed at first. The citizens of Halloween Town, on the other hand, had no such quandaries about remembering their embarkation into the world. Why, most had never even been born at all! They had simply existed, born from the minds of people both fascinated and terrified of the unseen things skulking in the dark. If one was to ask them what their birth experience had been like, they would merely stare at the inquisitor in confusion. Most could remember their death, or their first time scaring a mortal being, and what had gone on the Samhuinn Celebration in the days of the Druids (or, at least the vampires claimed to remember, and none of the others felt the need to argue with them.) To the beings of Halloween Town, birth was synonymous with life, and life was something long lost and forgotten by them.
That is, of course, except for one.
When the girl in question opened her eyes for the first time, she was immediately cognisant of two distinct emotions. The first was a mild bemusement at the sight of a short man in a wheelchair sitting by her operating slab with the top of his head hinged open, one gloved hand scratching his brain. Nothing about this first image struck her as odd, for she, having never been aware of any instant before this one, had no knowledge that people outside of Halloween Town would shriek at the image of a man standing with his head wide open. No, the far more pressing moment for the girl was the strange sense of imprisonment she felt. It was not merely the physical bondage of being strapped to an operation table, but the sense of being trapped inside a world too small.
The creation knew of no world outside of the lab she had been created in and could only think, with a sort of embarrassed disappointment, that existence would be quite tedious indeed with such a small world to explore. Later, when her creator (whom she later discovered to be named Dr Finklestein) would let her explore her home on her own, she would be further nonplussed to discover that even though the world extended beyond the lab and even her creator's home, she still felt cramped. In the future, the girl would spend many hours musing to herself about the reasons behind her feeling of discontent and claustrophobia. However, on her first day in Halloween Town, she merely acknowledged the feeling as a mild discomfort to herself and moved on. After all, small as her world appeared to be, that didn't mean that there were not interesting things to explore.
The first thing the creation spent time looking over was her own body. She was, she noticed, not whole. She was completed, of that she was certain, as she saw no gaping holes to convince her otherwise. However, unlike her creator, she seemed to lack a uniform colour. The man in question was wearing a white lab coat, and the only changed colour was that his hands were covered in black gloves. The girl, on the other hand, seemed to be made of so much colour that she was at a loss to name them all! And between the patches of colour were large stitches drawn very tight. She gave an experimental bend at her knee and felt an inward joy when it moved -- she was a success! She could feel it! -- but noted that the movement itself was a bit stiff, a side effect of the stitching.
In the future, she would blame these stitches and patches for her discontent. Eventually, the creation would come to realise that she was a nothing more than an amalgamation of many different fabrics and materials from all over numerous places in Halloween Town. Being that all these materials came from a different place and had a different home, the girl eventually settled on the feeling that her discontent came from all these patches wanting to return to their own home, and all their homes were in different directions. The girl then decided she would either have to learn to live with the discontent or come apart at the seams (quite literally) and let herself fall apart. However, by the time the girl will allow herself to have this thought, she will have found something worth staying for and falling apart in a permanent sense will become quite the opposite of anything the girl will want for herself. On the day of her creation, all of these epiphanies and conclusions are in the future, and she can put no names or descriptions to her feelings other than the single term of "unpleasant."
Being confined as she was by the restraints at her wrists, she did not immediately hop up and explore as her first intuition told her to do. Instead, she merely lay there and stared at the scientist, unsure as to what he expected of her or if she was even meant to do anything at all. She watched in a keen fascination as the man's mouth began to move, and she marveled at the sounds coming from his mouth, speech being foreign to her until that moment.
"Hello, my dear," the man began, "I am Doctor Finklestein." He pointed to his chest to signify the meaning of his words, and continued on. "You," (he pointed to his creation as he said this), "are my first major experiment and scientific breakthrough, my dear." The man must have taken her silence as a mixture of befuddlement and awe because he then gave a gloating smile and raised his hands up in the air in front of his own face, exclaiming loudly, "I created you with my OWN two hands!"
The man went silent after saying this and stared at the girl as though he expected a specific reaction. The girl, being clueless on these things and not yet understanding the concept of what it was to read body language, merely stared at him listlessly. After a few moments of silence, it became evident to the scientist that he was not going to get the desired reaction from his current audience and he merely gave an exasperated huff and used his wheelchair controls to better maneuver the chair so he could get close to his creation's face.
"What would you like me to call you, my dear?" he asked, his mouth coming disconcertedly close to his creation's ear. She fought the urge to move her head further away from him. "It will need to be something easy to remember, I think," he muttered to himself, removing the top portion of his head and scratching his brain again. "Something plain and gentle... How about Sally, eh?" he asked her. The girl, not yet knowing any method of response, merely stared at him. He must have read her silent nonchalance as an affirmative to his question, for he quickly smiled and then moved his wheelchair away from the operating table. He hit a switch on the wall as the chair approached the door to the room (or the end of the world, as Sally --as she was now called -- thought it to be), and the restraints on the patchwork girl's wrists sprung loose and she began to slide off the table.
When her feet hit the ground, she stood for a few moments, her legs wobbly beneath her. The room before her had very little to offer in terms of entertainment. There was merely the table she had been reclining on, a table full of sewing instruments and tools she could not identify with her meager knowledge, a large window that showed nothing but blackness beyond it, and a bookshelf full of large tomes that she could not understand. And of course there was the door to what she believed was the end of the world.
She wrestled with the problem in her mind for a few moments: stay in the room or venture beyond the reaches of her small, yet known, world. It turned out to not be too hard of a decision. After all, she had been graced with the transplanted portion of a genius’ mind, and she had (thankfully) received the rational portion. Despite the darkness beyond the door and the “unknown” she couldn’t help but feel anxiety over, she reasoned that there must be something beyond the end of the world as she knew it. After all, Dr Finklestein had left through that area, and he had given no sounds of distress to indicate that he had fallen off the edge of the world. Therefore, there must be more to everything than what her new and unaccustomed eyes had yet to see.
Also, she was bored and curious. And there was little else to occupy her interests at that moment.
She cautiously positioned her head outside the door, bracing her patchworked weight against the doorframe and the slightly opened door. From her position she could see that the world was much bigger than she had initially assumed. She saw that she was on the second storey of what appeared to be a tower, and that there was a ramp to the lower level, and yet another door on that floor, leading out to an unknown location. She was both frightened and excited to see what lay beyond even that door. ‘Just how big is the world?’ she wondered. She found she couldn’t wait to find out.
She placed one small foot outside of the door, pausing to listen for any sound of the return of Dr Finklestein’s wheelchair. When she had maneuvered herself beyond the safety of the operating room, she began a slow but steady descent down the ramp. The sound of her soft, fabric muffled steps made a dull but audible repetitive sound against the weathered stone of the tower. From beyond the doors she could hear the sounds of shrieking and cackling, and she wondered vaguely about the world beyond the front door - if when she reached the door she would be brave enough to venture beyond it.
She never had a chance to test her bravery because just as she reached the lower level, the door in question opened and Dr Finklestein propelled his chair through the door. Sally had just enough time to glimpse what she later discovered to be the town square before the door closed behind her creator’s chair. To his credit, Finklestein did not appear surprised to see that she had found her way down through his home, but he did take special care to warn her against her inherent curiosity. “You’re not to go outside, Sally,” he told her, one gloved finger pointing at her ominously. Sally was fairly certain he would have been poking her on the chest in emphasis if she had been standing close enough for him to do so. “There is much still for you to learn before you have free reign over Halloween Town, my dear.”
Disappointment appeared on her face, despite her best efforts to hide it. “I know you’re curious,” he continued, beginning to direct his chair toward the ramp, gesturing vaguely for her to follow him, “but it’s a phase, dear, and it will pass. This world is an interesting place, but you’ll soon see that what I’m saying is for the best. Your mind was made to be as great as mine, and there’s no one else near our mental calibre in this town, Sally. No one but you and I.”
When they got back to the door of the operating room, he grabbed her hand for a moment. It was a gesture borne of fondness, and it brought a small smile to Sally’s face. Finklestein gave her hand a small squeeze, and Sally took that as her dismissal from his presence and disappeared back into her room. The massive metal door closed behind her, and Sally was once again alone and imprisoned in her too small space.
She walked to the window on the opposite side of the room and peered out through the panes. It was too dark for her to see much, but she could see strangely distorted figures in the distance, surrounded by a haze of semi-luminous light. She couldn’t make out any individual appearances, but the group en masse (and of a decent size) appeared to be moving in the direction of her tower. If she had known the concept of a parade then that would have been the description she would have given it. As it was, she allowed herself to be swept away into the light sounds of cackling and shrieking she could just barely hear and into the sound of organ music played just slightly off tune. Her eyes drank in the shadows, the shifting lights and the masquerade of ever changing discordant voices.
When she finally convinced herself to turn away from the lively undead of Halloween Town, she saw a set of books on the opposite wall of her room. The tomes, dusty from disuse and full of theories that she only halfway understood, were heavy and written in so didactic a language that she couldn’t focus on them for overly long. One was a history of Halloween Town, which appeared to mainly focus on a character known only as the Pumpkin King. The other book, even dustier but of the same thickness, was a book about herb lore. Lacking in anything more interesting to study, Sally took this book to her operating table and opened it up. She spent about three hours reading through information on Lethe’s bramble and its effect on memory; deadly nightshade and its effect as a natural sleep enforcer; belladonna and its influence on intense dreaming; hemlock and its gift of everlasting rest. She was unsure how much she would need to use these items in the future, but it at least occupied her mind in her otherwise lifeless tower. She tried not to feel like a prisoner, but the lack of amenities made it feel as though she was being punished, and she had not even been alive long enough to have done anything wrong.
Just as she was about to close her eyes and rest - the darkness outside beginning to gain a faint purple tint that was the first precursor to early dawn - she heard the front door open on the lower level, and the sound of a cacophony of voices; the vociferous nature of the voices making it impossible to distinguish one identity from another in the raucous din. The echoes reverberating off stone walls and metal tables only exacerbated the awful clatter. Earlier in the evening, Sally had longed to see and hear the source of the carnival-like sounds outside her known world. Having that same atmosphere in her home space, however, gave her the opposite yearning. Now she wanted nothing more than to hide on the upper floor and watch what was promising to be a large party from a safe distance. Unfortunately, such a wish was not to be granted.
Dr Finkelstein opened the metal door to her room, the already loud noises becoming yet impossibly more deafening as he did so. “Come, my child,” he beckoned, one hand trying to back his wheelchair out of the door without backing into the wall of the stairway behind him. “It’s our special Hallowe’en celebration night, and being the newest addition to our town, everyone is anxious to meet you. Why, even Jack Skellington has come by to have the honour!”
Sally was struck with the strongest feeling of indecision she could imagine ever having about anything. On the one hand, she was desperate to know more of the world she had yet to be able to see. On the other, she was unsure about meeting so many new faces. She knew she would be made into a spectacle - being one who shared minds somewhat with Dr Finklestein, she knew he was secretly awaiting the many accolades he would receive on creating life from a ragdoll - and she was dreading being the centre of attention.
There wasn’t really much of a decision to be made, however. Dr Finklestein started his way out of the room, and left her door open, obviously with the belief that she would follow. With not a little trepidation and many misgivings, Sally advanced out of the door and down the ramp toward the mass of beings that made up Halloween Town.
There was so much to see that Sally wasn’t quite sure what to look at first. The witches oohed and ahhed over her; the trees followed her around, the criminals hung from their branches telling her how beautiful she was; three trick or treaters -- Lock, Shock, and Barrel - tried to pull apart her stitching as a trick when her back was turned, but the Mayor swirled his head around from a nice face to his angry one to off-put the children. The clown with the tear-away face kept riding his unicycle around her, tearing his face off and holding it behind him to keep his eyes on her at all times. Sally was under so much scrutiny that she wasn’t certain whether to be flattered, panicked, frightened or bored.
Thankfully, before she gave in to the urge to run back to her room, people began to realise just how ordinary Sally actually was. She could not tear her face off, she was not filled with bugs (only sawdust), she could not drink blood and there was nothing particularly scary in her visage. She was merely alive when she shouldn’t be and there was nothing particularly awe-inspiring about that. It wasn’t even anything she had done herself. People quickly turned their attention to her creator instead, which made both she and Dr Finklestein happier about the situation. There was a brief moment about 45 minutes into the party when a child ghoul tried to hold onto her arm and wouldn’t let go, and she discovered that even if she pulled apart her stitching, she could control the movement of her arm. She managed to get her dismembered arm to repeatedly slap the boy until he dropped it in boredom and ran off. Sally nonchalantly picked her arm back up, grabbed a needle and thread from the cabinet at the base of the ramp and ran off to find a quiet corner to “operate” on herself.
Earlier in the evening, she had spotted a small alcove, which was a viewing point for a large window on the ground floor, hidden by a curtain. She thought to hide herself there and spend the rest of her first night alive in solitude, but was only just barely able to contain her cry of surprise when she pulled the curtain aside to find someone else already hiding there.
The citizen in question was a tall skeleton dressed in a pin-striped suit, the hollowed out eyeholes of his skull raised up in surprise at her sudden appearance, and long gangly limbs scrambled in multiple directions to keep himself from completely falling over. Sally was both envious and impressed that he made even this clumsiness have a certain gracefulness. She was quite certain she would never have been able to manage it. He finally managed to right himself by grabbing onto the large circular frame of the window.
“Hello there, Sally,” he said, the rich baritone of his voice catching her slightly off guard. Her dismembered left hand waved hello in response. The line of his mouth quirked slightly to one side in a smirk.
“My name is Jack -- Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town, at your service,” he announced, complete with a bow. Sally was taken aback a moment at the sheer amount of theatrics she had been subjected to so far, and she wondered briefly if she would eventually become that way too. Or maybe everyone just played a melodramatic part on Hallowe’en. She was very much excited to have the chance to find out.
“Nice to meet you, Jack.” Her voice was soft, her head bowed. She wouldn’t be surprised if he had not even heard her make a response. She sat down next to him on the window ledge, trying to manoeuvre her arm in such a way that she could sew her other arm back on. However, the dismembered arm wasn’t cooperating, preferring instead to continue waving at Jack. Sally rolled her eyes. Two minutes in the company of a kind man and already her body was acting in a ridiculous manner.
She heard a deep huff of amusement and suddenly Jack’s long, skeletal fingers were grabbing her dismembered arm and holding it at the proper place of her shoulder. She looked up at him and gave him an answering smile and began to thread her needle. When she had tied a knot at the bottom of the string, she gave him the needle to start to stitch her.
“I’m not particularly great at this,” he confessed, his deft fingers stitching her up quickly in a way that defied his statement. The stitching may have been a bit jagged, but it worked and when he was finished she gave her arm an experimental twist and nothing came out from between the seams.
“Thank you.” She placed the spool of thread back in the pocket of her coat, and stuck the needle in a safe spot behind her ear, hiding it away in the confines of her yarn-like hair. They sat quietly together for a moment, both listening to the party going on behind the curtain; they were a world away in their little alcove, separated from the world of the dead and undead by a wall of silence.
“I must confess, Sally, that’s it’s nice to have you be the centre of attention this year. Usually, I have to make up something really theatrical that makes everyone scream - that will live on forever in the terrified dreams of children. And I’m starting to run out of ideas. It was nice not to have to plan this year.” Jack placed his skull in what was left of the palms of his hands, his long fingers drumming against his cheek bones in a rhythm that was both thoughtful and energetic. Sally could see why the Pumpkin King was considered the life of the party - even while sitting quietly he was bursting with energy.
“This year, since we had you as the main attraction, I only had to put together a carnival-like masquerade of faces. Next year, I’ll really have to pull out all the stops and do something drastic, like set the whole of me on fire, but after next year, I’ll REALLY have to think of something great.”
Jack suddenly stood up, as though to remain seated would be more than he could bear, and he began to pace behind the curtain, his long arms reaching behind his back as his bony fingers clasped together. His brow furrowed in concentration as he continued to think out loud, using the ever-silent Sally as his sounding board. Sadly, she was not yet experienced enough in the world of Halloween Town to give him the answers he sought. He heaved a heavy sigh and sneaked his skull outside the curtain.
“Have you seen the Town yet, Sally? It’s gorgeous in the autumn night. Everything is dying and falling and silent as death. You’ll never see anything else like it. Would you like to see it?”
Everything inside Sally - the sawdust, the small genius of her mind, the part that was enthralled by Jack - all parts had an equal longing to view the outside. She nodded and he grabbed her cloth-clad hand in his thin, bony one, and he led her quickly and quietly toward the front door of Dr Finklestein’s tower. And, so suddenly that she almost couldn’t believe she wasn’t dreaming, she was standing outside. Her first impression was one of intense space - the world that had been so small was suddenly so large that she felt she would be swallowed in it - and of darkness. The sky above her was an inky black with little yellow spots - “Stars,” Jack told her, pointing his fingers to them and showing her constellations he drew with his hands - and the large circular orb that Jack told her was called the moon. She could see little slabs of rock coming from the ground (“headstones,” she was told) and a large hill in the distance that seemed to curl at the end. Everything about the town seemed to be odd-angled and off kilter, as though the town itself was going insane. But more than anything, there was stillness to the air - dead, silent and stale. Aside from her, the closest thing to “liveliness” that she could tell existed in this town was the vampire bats. It made her feel unbelievably alone, and remarkably sad.
In that moment, Sally didn’t know whether she felt hopeful or hopeless. She was alive in a world of the dead; the world was large but empty; she was part of the world but separate from everyone else in it. She could escape her prison-like room in the tower, but only if she wanted to roam around a bigger prison outside. Two prisons: one with bars on the windows and one with barred hearts. She honestly didn’t know which was worse.
She stifled a gasp as she felt a sudden touch to her shoulder. When she glanced over, she saw that Jack had placed a comforting hand to rest there, and his brow had furrowed down in an understanding frown. He spared her a small, somewhat hollowed out smile.
“Don’t worry, Sally,” he said, squeezing her shoulder slightly. She got the feeling that he knew exactly what she was feeling without her having said anything. “The dark is the unknown. Hallowe’en is the celebration of that unknowable thing. We represent children’s greatest fears - the future. You don’t need to worry about yours. We’ll make sure it’s a scream.”
Sally had her doubts, but she didn’t speak of them. There was something in Jack’s voice - a discontent that he did not name and of which she didn’t feel the right to give voice. She knew her hopes for the future - to be a part of Halloween Town, to be as frightening as those who were dead and undead, to understand the Pumpkin King, and to see how big her world really was. But for now she would settle on helping to plan for the next year’s Hallowe’en celebration. After all, if Jack really was going to set himself on fire, he’d need to know the right herbs to keep himself from being too burnt. She was pretty sure she knew the right book to read to help him.
And so she and Jack stood, watching the All Saint’s Day Sun rise up in the east, waiting for it to drive all of Halloween Town’s demons to hide in the dark places again until the night.
Let me know what you think!
Rating: G, or K
Summary: "Sally's first awareness was a feeling of being bound; not only by the restraints at her wrists, but of feeling trapped inside a world too small." Sally's first night of existence in Halloween Town.
Genre: Drama, Friendship, Character Study
Disclaimer: Halloween Town and its citizens belong to Tim Burton and Disney. The title of the fic is taken from the opening line of David Bowie's "Life on Mars," which I was listening to pretty much nonstop whenever I've gotten the urge to work on this story over the last 4 years.
A/N: Not altogether happy with the way this fic turned out, but that's mainly due to the fact that I've been in love with it since it came out when I was six years old, and I've always been hesitant to touch it for said reason. I haven't managed to do justice to the film in any way, shape or form, but I wanted to do SOMETHING for it since this year was its 20th anniversary, and the movie has meant so much to me for most of my life. Hopefully it's not as awful as I think, and you can get SOME enjoyment out of it.
A Godawful Small Affair
It is a sad state of affairs indeed that most living beings in the universe have no memory of their first thoughts upon entering that universe. By the time one is old enough to appreciate the intricacies of such thoughts, one's mind is too developed and desensitised to both the Earth's wonders and its horrors to think of how strange it must have seemed at first. The citizens of Halloween Town, on the other hand, had no such quandaries about remembering their embarkation into the world. Why, most had never even been born at all! They had simply existed, born from the minds of people both fascinated and terrified of the unseen things skulking in the dark. If one was to ask them what their birth experience had been like, they would merely stare at the inquisitor in confusion. Most could remember their death, or their first time scaring a mortal being, and what had gone on the Samhuinn Celebration in the days of the Druids (or, at least the vampires claimed to remember, and none of the others felt the need to argue with them.) To the beings of Halloween Town, birth was synonymous with life, and life was something long lost and forgotten by them.
That is, of course, except for one.
When the girl in question opened her eyes for the first time, she was immediately cognisant of two distinct emotions. The first was a mild bemusement at the sight of a short man in a wheelchair sitting by her operating slab with the top of his head hinged open, one gloved hand scratching his brain. Nothing about this first image struck her as odd, for she, having never been aware of any instant before this one, had no knowledge that people outside of Halloween Town would shriek at the image of a man standing with his head wide open. No, the far more pressing moment for the girl was the strange sense of imprisonment she felt. It was not merely the physical bondage of being strapped to an operation table, but the sense of being trapped inside a world too small.
The creation knew of no world outside of the lab she had been created in and could only think, with a sort of embarrassed disappointment, that existence would be quite tedious indeed with such a small world to explore. Later, when her creator (whom she later discovered to be named Dr Finklestein) would let her explore her home on her own, she would be further nonplussed to discover that even though the world extended beyond the lab and even her creator's home, she still felt cramped. In the future, the girl would spend many hours musing to herself about the reasons behind her feeling of discontent and claustrophobia. However, on her first day in Halloween Town, she merely acknowledged the feeling as a mild discomfort to herself and moved on. After all, small as her world appeared to be, that didn't mean that there were not interesting things to explore.
The first thing the creation spent time looking over was her own body. She was, she noticed, not whole. She was completed, of that she was certain, as she saw no gaping holes to convince her otherwise. However, unlike her creator, she seemed to lack a uniform colour. The man in question was wearing a white lab coat, and the only changed colour was that his hands were covered in black gloves. The girl, on the other hand, seemed to be made of so much colour that she was at a loss to name them all! And between the patches of colour were large stitches drawn very tight. She gave an experimental bend at her knee and felt an inward joy when it moved -- she was a success! She could feel it! -- but noted that the movement itself was a bit stiff, a side effect of the stitching.
In the future, she would blame these stitches and patches for her discontent. Eventually, the creation would come to realise that she was a nothing more than an amalgamation of many different fabrics and materials from all over numerous places in Halloween Town. Being that all these materials came from a different place and had a different home, the girl eventually settled on the feeling that her discontent came from all these patches wanting to return to their own home, and all their homes were in different directions. The girl then decided she would either have to learn to live with the discontent or come apart at the seams (quite literally) and let herself fall apart. However, by the time the girl will allow herself to have this thought, she will have found something worth staying for and falling apart in a permanent sense will become quite the opposite of anything the girl will want for herself. On the day of her creation, all of these epiphanies and conclusions are in the future, and she can put no names or descriptions to her feelings other than the single term of "unpleasant."
Being confined as she was by the restraints at her wrists, she did not immediately hop up and explore as her first intuition told her to do. Instead, she merely lay there and stared at the scientist, unsure as to what he expected of her or if she was even meant to do anything at all. She watched in a keen fascination as the man's mouth began to move, and she marveled at the sounds coming from his mouth, speech being foreign to her until that moment.
"Hello, my dear," the man began, "I am Doctor Finklestein." He pointed to his chest to signify the meaning of his words, and continued on. "You," (he pointed to his creation as he said this), "are my first major experiment and scientific breakthrough, my dear." The man must have taken her silence as a mixture of befuddlement and awe because he then gave a gloating smile and raised his hands up in the air in front of his own face, exclaiming loudly, "I created you with my OWN two hands!"
The man went silent after saying this and stared at the girl as though he expected a specific reaction. The girl, being clueless on these things and not yet understanding the concept of what it was to read body language, merely stared at him listlessly. After a few moments of silence, it became evident to the scientist that he was not going to get the desired reaction from his current audience and he merely gave an exasperated huff and used his wheelchair controls to better maneuver the chair so he could get close to his creation's face.
"What would you like me to call you, my dear?" he asked, his mouth coming disconcertedly close to his creation's ear. She fought the urge to move her head further away from him. "It will need to be something easy to remember, I think," he muttered to himself, removing the top portion of his head and scratching his brain again. "Something plain and gentle... How about Sally, eh?" he asked her. The girl, not yet knowing any method of response, merely stared at him. He must have read her silent nonchalance as an affirmative to his question, for he quickly smiled and then moved his wheelchair away from the operating table. He hit a switch on the wall as the chair approached the door to the room (or the end of the world, as Sally --as she was now called -- thought it to be), and the restraints on the patchwork girl's wrists sprung loose and she began to slide off the table.
When her feet hit the ground, she stood for a few moments, her legs wobbly beneath her. The room before her had very little to offer in terms of entertainment. There was merely the table she had been reclining on, a table full of sewing instruments and tools she could not identify with her meager knowledge, a large window that showed nothing but blackness beyond it, and a bookshelf full of large tomes that she could not understand. And of course there was the door to what she believed was the end of the world.
She wrestled with the problem in her mind for a few moments: stay in the room or venture beyond the reaches of her small, yet known, world. It turned out to not be too hard of a decision. After all, she had been graced with the transplanted portion of a genius’ mind, and she had (thankfully) received the rational portion. Despite the darkness beyond the door and the “unknown” she couldn’t help but feel anxiety over, she reasoned that there must be something beyond the end of the world as she knew it. After all, Dr Finklestein had left through that area, and he had given no sounds of distress to indicate that he had fallen off the edge of the world. Therefore, there must be more to everything than what her new and unaccustomed eyes had yet to see.
Also, she was bored and curious. And there was little else to occupy her interests at that moment.
She cautiously positioned her head outside the door, bracing her patchworked weight against the doorframe and the slightly opened door. From her position she could see that the world was much bigger than she had initially assumed. She saw that she was on the second storey of what appeared to be a tower, and that there was a ramp to the lower level, and yet another door on that floor, leading out to an unknown location. She was both frightened and excited to see what lay beyond even that door. ‘Just how big is the world?’ she wondered. She found she couldn’t wait to find out.
She placed one small foot outside of the door, pausing to listen for any sound of the return of Dr Finklestein’s wheelchair. When she had maneuvered herself beyond the safety of the operating room, she began a slow but steady descent down the ramp. The sound of her soft, fabric muffled steps made a dull but audible repetitive sound against the weathered stone of the tower. From beyond the doors she could hear the sounds of shrieking and cackling, and she wondered vaguely about the world beyond the front door - if when she reached the door she would be brave enough to venture beyond it.
She never had a chance to test her bravery because just as she reached the lower level, the door in question opened and Dr Finklestein propelled his chair through the door. Sally had just enough time to glimpse what she later discovered to be the town square before the door closed behind her creator’s chair. To his credit, Finklestein did not appear surprised to see that she had found her way down through his home, but he did take special care to warn her against her inherent curiosity. “You’re not to go outside, Sally,” he told her, one gloved finger pointing at her ominously. Sally was fairly certain he would have been poking her on the chest in emphasis if she had been standing close enough for him to do so. “There is much still for you to learn before you have free reign over Halloween Town, my dear.”
Disappointment appeared on her face, despite her best efforts to hide it. “I know you’re curious,” he continued, beginning to direct his chair toward the ramp, gesturing vaguely for her to follow him, “but it’s a phase, dear, and it will pass. This world is an interesting place, but you’ll soon see that what I’m saying is for the best. Your mind was made to be as great as mine, and there’s no one else near our mental calibre in this town, Sally. No one but you and I.”
When they got back to the door of the operating room, he grabbed her hand for a moment. It was a gesture borne of fondness, and it brought a small smile to Sally’s face. Finklestein gave her hand a small squeeze, and Sally took that as her dismissal from his presence and disappeared back into her room. The massive metal door closed behind her, and Sally was once again alone and imprisoned in her too small space.
She walked to the window on the opposite side of the room and peered out through the panes. It was too dark for her to see much, but she could see strangely distorted figures in the distance, surrounded by a haze of semi-luminous light. She couldn’t make out any individual appearances, but the group en masse (and of a decent size) appeared to be moving in the direction of her tower. If she had known the concept of a parade then that would have been the description she would have given it. As it was, she allowed herself to be swept away into the light sounds of cackling and shrieking she could just barely hear and into the sound of organ music played just slightly off tune. Her eyes drank in the shadows, the shifting lights and the masquerade of ever changing discordant voices.
When she finally convinced herself to turn away from the lively undead of Halloween Town, she saw a set of books on the opposite wall of her room. The tomes, dusty from disuse and full of theories that she only halfway understood, were heavy and written in so didactic a language that she couldn’t focus on them for overly long. One was a history of Halloween Town, which appeared to mainly focus on a character known only as the Pumpkin King. The other book, even dustier but of the same thickness, was a book about herb lore. Lacking in anything more interesting to study, Sally took this book to her operating table and opened it up. She spent about three hours reading through information on Lethe’s bramble and its effect on memory; deadly nightshade and its effect as a natural sleep enforcer; belladonna and its influence on intense dreaming; hemlock and its gift of everlasting rest. She was unsure how much she would need to use these items in the future, but it at least occupied her mind in her otherwise lifeless tower. She tried not to feel like a prisoner, but the lack of amenities made it feel as though she was being punished, and she had not even been alive long enough to have done anything wrong.
Just as she was about to close her eyes and rest - the darkness outside beginning to gain a faint purple tint that was the first precursor to early dawn - she heard the front door open on the lower level, and the sound of a cacophony of voices; the vociferous nature of the voices making it impossible to distinguish one identity from another in the raucous din. The echoes reverberating off stone walls and metal tables only exacerbated the awful clatter. Earlier in the evening, Sally had longed to see and hear the source of the carnival-like sounds outside her known world. Having that same atmosphere in her home space, however, gave her the opposite yearning. Now she wanted nothing more than to hide on the upper floor and watch what was promising to be a large party from a safe distance. Unfortunately, such a wish was not to be granted.
Dr Finkelstein opened the metal door to her room, the already loud noises becoming yet impossibly more deafening as he did so. “Come, my child,” he beckoned, one hand trying to back his wheelchair out of the door without backing into the wall of the stairway behind him. “It’s our special Hallowe’en celebration night, and being the newest addition to our town, everyone is anxious to meet you. Why, even Jack Skellington has come by to have the honour!”
Sally was struck with the strongest feeling of indecision she could imagine ever having about anything. On the one hand, she was desperate to know more of the world she had yet to be able to see. On the other, she was unsure about meeting so many new faces. She knew she would be made into a spectacle - being one who shared minds somewhat with Dr Finklestein, she knew he was secretly awaiting the many accolades he would receive on creating life from a ragdoll - and she was dreading being the centre of attention.
There wasn’t really much of a decision to be made, however. Dr Finklestein started his way out of the room, and left her door open, obviously with the belief that she would follow. With not a little trepidation and many misgivings, Sally advanced out of the door and down the ramp toward the mass of beings that made up Halloween Town.
There was so much to see that Sally wasn’t quite sure what to look at first. The witches oohed and ahhed over her; the trees followed her around, the criminals hung from their branches telling her how beautiful she was; three trick or treaters -- Lock, Shock, and Barrel - tried to pull apart her stitching as a trick when her back was turned, but the Mayor swirled his head around from a nice face to his angry one to off-put the children. The clown with the tear-away face kept riding his unicycle around her, tearing his face off and holding it behind him to keep his eyes on her at all times. Sally was under so much scrutiny that she wasn’t certain whether to be flattered, panicked, frightened or bored.
Thankfully, before she gave in to the urge to run back to her room, people began to realise just how ordinary Sally actually was. She could not tear her face off, she was not filled with bugs (only sawdust), she could not drink blood and there was nothing particularly scary in her visage. She was merely alive when she shouldn’t be and there was nothing particularly awe-inspiring about that. It wasn’t even anything she had done herself. People quickly turned their attention to her creator instead, which made both she and Dr Finklestein happier about the situation. There was a brief moment about 45 minutes into the party when a child ghoul tried to hold onto her arm and wouldn’t let go, and she discovered that even if she pulled apart her stitching, she could control the movement of her arm. She managed to get her dismembered arm to repeatedly slap the boy until he dropped it in boredom and ran off. Sally nonchalantly picked her arm back up, grabbed a needle and thread from the cabinet at the base of the ramp and ran off to find a quiet corner to “operate” on herself.
Earlier in the evening, she had spotted a small alcove, which was a viewing point for a large window on the ground floor, hidden by a curtain. She thought to hide herself there and spend the rest of her first night alive in solitude, but was only just barely able to contain her cry of surprise when she pulled the curtain aside to find someone else already hiding there.
The citizen in question was a tall skeleton dressed in a pin-striped suit, the hollowed out eyeholes of his skull raised up in surprise at her sudden appearance, and long gangly limbs scrambled in multiple directions to keep himself from completely falling over. Sally was both envious and impressed that he made even this clumsiness have a certain gracefulness. She was quite certain she would never have been able to manage it. He finally managed to right himself by grabbing onto the large circular frame of the window.
“Hello there, Sally,” he said, the rich baritone of his voice catching her slightly off guard. Her dismembered left hand waved hello in response. The line of his mouth quirked slightly to one side in a smirk.
“My name is Jack -- Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town, at your service,” he announced, complete with a bow. Sally was taken aback a moment at the sheer amount of theatrics she had been subjected to so far, and she wondered briefly if she would eventually become that way too. Or maybe everyone just played a melodramatic part on Hallowe’en. She was very much excited to have the chance to find out.
“Nice to meet you, Jack.” Her voice was soft, her head bowed. She wouldn’t be surprised if he had not even heard her make a response. She sat down next to him on the window ledge, trying to manoeuvre her arm in such a way that she could sew her other arm back on. However, the dismembered arm wasn’t cooperating, preferring instead to continue waving at Jack. Sally rolled her eyes. Two minutes in the company of a kind man and already her body was acting in a ridiculous manner.
She heard a deep huff of amusement and suddenly Jack’s long, skeletal fingers were grabbing her dismembered arm and holding it at the proper place of her shoulder. She looked up at him and gave him an answering smile and began to thread her needle. When she had tied a knot at the bottom of the string, she gave him the needle to start to stitch her.
“I’m not particularly great at this,” he confessed, his deft fingers stitching her up quickly in a way that defied his statement. The stitching may have been a bit jagged, but it worked and when he was finished she gave her arm an experimental twist and nothing came out from between the seams.
“Thank you.” She placed the spool of thread back in the pocket of her coat, and stuck the needle in a safe spot behind her ear, hiding it away in the confines of her yarn-like hair. They sat quietly together for a moment, both listening to the party going on behind the curtain; they were a world away in their little alcove, separated from the world of the dead and undead by a wall of silence.
“I must confess, Sally, that’s it’s nice to have you be the centre of attention this year. Usually, I have to make up something really theatrical that makes everyone scream - that will live on forever in the terrified dreams of children. And I’m starting to run out of ideas. It was nice not to have to plan this year.” Jack placed his skull in what was left of the palms of his hands, his long fingers drumming against his cheek bones in a rhythm that was both thoughtful and energetic. Sally could see why the Pumpkin King was considered the life of the party - even while sitting quietly he was bursting with energy.
“This year, since we had you as the main attraction, I only had to put together a carnival-like masquerade of faces. Next year, I’ll really have to pull out all the stops and do something drastic, like set the whole of me on fire, but after next year, I’ll REALLY have to think of something great.”
Jack suddenly stood up, as though to remain seated would be more than he could bear, and he began to pace behind the curtain, his long arms reaching behind his back as his bony fingers clasped together. His brow furrowed in concentration as he continued to think out loud, using the ever-silent Sally as his sounding board. Sadly, she was not yet experienced enough in the world of Halloween Town to give him the answers he sought. He heaved a heavy sigh and sneaked his skull outside the curtain.
“Have you seen the Town yet, Sally? It’s gorgeous in the autumn night. Everything is dying and falling and silent as death. You’ll never see anything else like it. Would you like to see it?”
Everything inside Sally - the sawdust, the small genius of her mind, the part that was enthralled by Jack - all parts had an equal longing to view the outside. She nodded and he grabbed her cloth-clad hand in his thin, bony one, and he led her quickly and quietly toward the front door of Dr Finklestein’s tower. And, so suddenly that she almost couldn’t believe she wasn’t dreaming, she was standing outside. Her first impression was one of intense space - the world that had been so small was suddenly so large that she felt she would be swallowed in it - and of darkness. The sky above her was an inky black with little yellow spots - “Stars,” Jack told her, pointing his fingers to them and showing her constellations he drew with his hands - and the large circular orb that Jack told her was called the moon. She could see little slabs of rock coming from the ground (“headstones,” she was told) and a large hill in the distance that seemed to curl at the end. Everything about the town seemed to be odd-angled and off kilter, as though the town itself was going insane. But more than anything, there was stillness to the air - dead, silent and stale. Aside from her, the closest thing to “liveliness” that she could tell existed in this town was the vampire bats. It made her feel unbelievably alone, and remarkably sad.
In that moment, Sally didn’t know whether she felt hopeful or hopeless. She was alive in a world of the dead; the world was large but empty; she was part of the world but separate from everyone else in it. She could escape her prison-like room in the tower, but only if she wanted to roam around a bigger prison outside. Two prisons: one with bars on the windows and one with barred hearts. She honestly didn’t know which was worse.
She stifled a gasp as she felt a sudden touch to her shoulder. When she glanced over, she saw that Jack had placed a comforting hand to rest there, and his brow had furrowed down in an understanding frown. He spared her a small, somewhat hollowed out smile.
“Don’t worry, Sally,” he said, squeezing her shoulder slightly. She got the feeling that he knew exactly what she was feeling without her having said anything. “The dark is the unknown. Hallowe’en is the celebration of that unknowable thing. We represent children’s greatest fears - the future. You don’t need to worry about yours. We’ll make sure it’s a scream.”
Sally had her doubts, but she didn’t speak of them. There was something in Jack’s voice - a discontent that he did not name and of which she didn’t feel the right to give voice. She knew her hopes for the future - to be a part of Halloween Town, to be as frightening as those who were dead and undead, to understand the Pumpkin King, and to see how big her world really was. But for now she would settle on helping to plan for the next year’s Hallowe’en celebration. After all, if Jack really was going to set himself on fire, he’d need to know the right herbs to keep himself from being too burnt. She was pretty sure she knew the right book to read to help him.
And so she and Jack stood, watching the All Saint’s Day Sun rise up in the east, waiting for it to drive all of Halloween Town’s demons to hide in the dark places again until the night.
Let me know what you think!