Chapter Text
He spent most of that evening sitting at the fireplace, listening to the Maitlands and Lydia talk. Or rather, ‘listening’- he dozed off when Adam started telling his third fish story. The guy had a real soothing voice, and that combined with the warmth was a hell of a sedative.
They only woke him up when he started to mumble in his sleep. Lydia asked him about Alnitak and Alnilam, but he himself couldn’t quite remember who they were; the dream too fleeting, the memories buried too deep to be clear.
As he woke, his stomach rumbled distantly. He fumbled for his pockets before he really registered he wasn’t wearing his jacket. Right. Costume change. Barbara had arranged his clothes hanging from the top of the fireplace, so that the warm brick would help them dry quicker. He stretched an extra arm out to rummage through the pockets, making a sleepy, triumphant noise when he grabbed a misshapen apple.
He munched on the apple and squinted blearily at the people before him. Lydia had, at some point, shifted to sit next to him. Barbara and Adam had gotten up, presumably after they’d dried off, and were on the couch facing them. The pair were cuddled together, the casual affection making some part of him hungry in the weirdest way. Not horny, something… more chestward? His sexual attraction to them made sense, sure- but man, they made him feel some weird shit that no one else had. They seemed tired, quietly murmuring to each other. He belatedly realised Lydia was asking him something, so he blinked and focused back in on her.
“-come from?”
“...Sorry, didn’t catch that, kiddo. Run that by me again?”
“I said , where do your extra limbs come from?” She huffed at him. “They’re always striped, even if you’re not in your suit.”
“I have no idea what you’re talkin’ about,” He deadpanned. He crossed his legs, pulling forth a third and fourth leg to cross as well. She glared at him. He bit his apple’s core in half and grinned at her, dropping the act. “So, okay. You really wanna know?”
She nodded eagerly, eyes gleaming.
“Well, if you’re sure…” He trailed off and she smacked his arm, earning a cackle. “Okay, okay. So, my secret is…”
He leaned in conspiratorially. Lydia leaned in with him, excited. He waited a beat to let the tension build, then… “...I have no fucking clue!”
She flopped back, making an exasperated noise. “But they’re your limbs! How can you not know?”
Beetlejuice shrugged, taking one of his extra legs and flopping it about absentmindedly. It moved limply, boneless, like a Muppet’s flailing body. “I’unno. They’re more like props or visual gags than proper limbs, so I don’t use ‘em the same way I do my main limbs. Like, sure, I feel through ‘em, but they ain’t good for much. I, uh, I think they’re tied to the pocket dimension somehow, since that just came with the whole B-man package too, but I dunno for sure.”
“Pocket dimension?” Adam piped up.
“Oh, yeah, ya’ missed the exposition.” He wiggled the leg in Adam’s direction, gesturing with it as he spoke. “Uh, basically, my jacket’s pockets lead t’my personal pocket dimension, it’s cool as fuck, I stash shit there n’ that’s how I have so much random shit on hand at all times. Real convenient. I ain’t know a lot ‘bout my powers, so I figure that shit’s prob’ly linked to this shit.” A final point with the foot and h e paused, considering his multitude of legs. “On the bright side, they’re real easy to summon. I just gotta think about it, an’ another one will show up, see?”
A moment’s focus, and a third striped leg sprouted from his hip, sticking straight out from his side. It wiggled in place, and then zwooped back into him and disappeared. He did lazy jazz hands.
“That’s… a neat trick,” Adam slowly said. “What’s the limit? Like- how many limbs can you have?”
Beetlejuice shrugged. “As many as I want. ‘M not positive, but I think my body pulls some non-Euclidean shit to make ‘em all fit. Most I remember doin’ at once was, uh… twelve legs, 6 arms?”
Lydia whistled low. “And they don’t affect your clothes at all?”
Beetlejuice nodded, leaning to the side against the brick. He unfolded and tucked his extra legs back into himself. He was more awake, but still felt soft and fuzzy around the edges, like he could fall back asleep if he wanted to. It was nice. Usually he didn’t get a chance to let his guard down at all, let alone like this.
“Do other demons… do that?” Barbara asked, wary.
Oh. There that went.
Beetlejuice shrugged, uneasy. “Ma always used’ta say it was because a’ my dad,” he drawled. “She ain’t talk about him much, so what I’ve got is just ‘the entity had powers no demon could obtain’ an’ ‘the songs he sang were in no known language and drove humans to madness, it was incredibly sexy,’ an’ ‘thought it’d come in handy to have a freak of nature around the house, but you’re just a useless bastard , huh, Lawrence?’”
The Maitlands frowned at him and… Whoops. Got a little serious there. He cracked a brittle grin in an attempt to cover his tracks and reached out to ruffle Lydia’s hair. “I don’t really know other demons, so. Basically, I have no idea,” he concluded.
Lydia batted his hand away. “Didn’t you say when you left you were gonna try to find your dad?”
Ah. That’s right. Beetlejuice chuckled awkwardly, scratching the back of his head. “Well, uh, I tried? He ain’t in the Netherworld. Not Hell, not Heaven, not Purgatory, nowhere in the Afterwards an’ the Hereafter an’ the Continuation. The Office of Reincarnation didn’t have anyone with his last name on file, either. I kinda had’ta throw in the towel when I got to the Assyro-Babylonian Sector an’ no one could understand my accent.” He paused and huffed. “Sure, I’m a couple thousand years outta practice, but I can’t be fuckin’ up <looking for name Shoggoth> that badly!”
Lydia blinked, her big, dark eyes focused intently on him. God, she looked so young in her fuzzy pajamas. She may act tough, but she’s really… just a kid. He winced internally. He was gonna hafta go above and beyond for her n’ her folks to make up for what he did, huh?
“There’s more to the Netherworld?” She was asking. “When I went, it was just… empty. A void.”
Beetlejuice focused on the conversation again. “Yeah, that’s, uh, Customs and Processing,” he explained. “Everythin’s empty and infinitely loops so no one wanders off ‘fore they get the paperwork done. Outside’a there, basically every kind of afterlife that breathers expect to find exists, an’ then some. We hadta do a lotta restructuring back when JC kicked the bucket.”
Lydia took a moment to digest that. The Maitlands leaned closer together, like they were trying to meld into one being for comfort. His chest ached again. To distract himself he pulled his jacket down and rummaged through until he could find another snack. A twin banana produced itself, and he shoved it into his mouth without peeling either half. It crunched grotesquely.
“Soooooo… yeah.” He mumbled around the mouthful. “No idea about pops. I was born dead, nev’r alive to begin with, so he hasta’ be dead or outside the laws of life n’ death altogeth’r, but…” he shrugged as he swallowed. “Nothin’.”
The group fell quiet. He was less at ease now, the silence unpleasant, so to distract himself he checked his jacket over. It was still slightly damp, but most of the moisture had evaporated. He reached into the inner chest pocket and willed a particular set of items to him… There!
He pulled out a needle and a spool of thick, black thread. He turned the sleeves until he found the thin puncture marks of his claws and set about quietly mending the tears. These weren’t as bad as he’d thought they would be- sure, the blood would be a bitch to remove, but he’d dealt with much worse bloodstains over the years.
He got in the zone working on his jacket, when- when something touched his shoulder. He flinched hard, undead heart kickstarting, squished himself against the fireplace to get away from the threat of-
...Lydia. It was just Lydia. She’d tried to lean on him.
He shot her an apologetic grin and sat back up, feeling her gingerly settle against his shoulder to watch him work. She was warm, warmer now that they were dry, and her body thrummed with life. If he focused, he could sense her heart rate just from that one touch point.
...It felt nice. This casual contact with the kid.
He went back to sewing. It didn’t take long to finish repairing those claw tears. While he was at it, might as well take care of those loose threads at his cuff. And the rip at his shoulder. And that part of the breast where the lining was pulling away.
“...Do you do all your mending yourself?” Barbara asked softly.
Beetlejuice nodded. His voice matched her volume, low and soft. “Gotta. No one else’s willin’ ta help. One dead tailor reaches into a pocket and gets a knife through the hand, when I told him not to fuck with the pockets, and suddenly none will work with me!”
Barbara snorted. Beetlejuice glanced up and found the Maitlands watching him, sleepy and amused. But… he could see the caution in how they held themselves. A tension under the surface. It made his chest clench, but he understood. He was a monster. He’d hurt them. Of course they wouldn’t trust him. No one in their right mind would.
He glanced back down to Lydia, a joke on his lips, and found she’d closed her eyes and dozed off. Instantly, confusion flooded him. He didn’t get it- if the Maitlands couldn’t trust him, how could she? She was so clever; how could she let her guard down? He’d done so much to her! He’d tried to murder her, her whole family- and here she was, sawin’ some z’s on his shoulder. Her hand loosely holding the arm of his borrowed hoodie.
Looking more like a kid than she ever had.
...He didn’t understand her. But something inside him ached (in a… pleasant way???) over this simple gesture. Some pitiful part of him wanted this kind of contact, trust, wordless communication. He reached into his jacket’s pocket and tugged an old fleece blanket free of the void, careful not to stir Lydia. It was covered with thick purple stripes, alternating dark and light. He knew it to be fuzzy and extra-soft from years of use.
He summoned two extra arms on his stomach and back. Carefully, so as not to wake her, they tugged the blanket over her and retracted once she was covered. She shifted closer to him, and the ache grew, a weird, warm feeling spreading in his chest alongside it. It made him feel almost… proud? Honored? Like he’d kill for her?
...Weird.
He looked back to the Maitlands. They’d softened a bit. He thought about how this would look to anyone back home- the grand demon Beetlejuice, cuddling with a breather kid!- but he’d changed. He didn’t want to be some all-powerful demon right now. He just wanted to be.
...But there were still things to be done before he could truly try to win the adults of the house over. Like, y’know, actually talking at all to two of them.
“Hey, uh,” he murmured, “Where’s Chuck and Deborah? I can’t imagine they, uh, slept through that mess upstairs.”
“On a date,” Adam replied. “It feels like tonight has lasted ages, but it’s only 9.” He gestured to the mantle of the fireplace, where an analog clock sat softly ticking. And then he pointed at an antique grandfather clock near the stairwell, the pendulum swinging back and forth in perfect time.
“Charles has… indulged my love for antiquing,” he admitted with a shy smile, and oh Jesus there were those weird feelings again, Christ fuck he was so fucking cute he could just kiss him- “The clock chimes every hour, so we don’t lose the time like we did when we first died, and it’s a gorgeous statement piece for the location!”
Barbara nodded. “We have clocks all over. It helps a lot.” She nuzzled- nuzzled- against Adam’s shoulder as she settled against him again, and god, that was adorable, he wanted her to do that with him- His fingers itched to just reach out, to touch-
‘No!! No, bad demon, Beetlejuice!’ He shook his head hard. ‘You fuckin’ fool. They just talked to you about that! No touching! No yearning either, considering your lack of self control. Fucking dumbass.’
Now his fingers itched for his hair, but with Lydia trapping one arm and the other mid-mend on his jacket he couldn’t resort to his usual self-punishment. His fingers clenched tight instead, blunt, human-ish nails digging into his palms as he ignored the burning in his chest.
After a few tense moments his emotions ebbed again, and he gradually relaxed. A guilty glance up at the Maitlands revealed they were still focused on him, with far more concern etched into their faces than before.
“...Are you alright?” Adam asked.
“It has been… quite a day,” Barbara added.
Beetlejuice sighed and looked back to Lydia. Her other hand felt for his arm in her sleep, and she wrapped herself around it like she was holding a teddy bear. It was way too cute. He didn’t know how to process her being cute with him.
He realised a bit late he hadn’t responded. “Y-Yeah, yeah, it has. N’ I’m- I’m good, I jus’- I don’t want Chuck to get back n’ see me an’ flip his shit, ykno? N’ I dunno where I’m gonna spend the night since it’s still rainin’. The roof’s definitely wet as hell.”
Barbara paused. “...The roof?”
“Yeah. Was thinkin’ I could sleep up there; that way I ain’t technically in your house, so you can be, like… assured I ain’t gettin up to shit.” He frowned, twiddling his needle between his fingers. “But I dun’ wanna… get these threads wet, ‘specially since you went to all this effort dryin’ my dumb ass off. N’ I’m not gonna just leave with’em.” He chuckled awkwardly.
Slow nods. They murmured to each other, too soft for him to make out over the crackling fire, the rain on the walls… and Lydia’s steady heartbeat, ticking a gentle metronome that seemed to reverberate through his dead body.
“You… you could…” Barbara looked into her husband’s eyes one last time and sighed. “Okay. We’d hoped to talk to Charles before we made any decisions, but… considering the circumstances, if you’d like to sleep on the couch tonight, we don’t think he’d mind.”
“Much.” Adam added.
Beetlejuice blinked up at them, dumbfounded. “Wait, what? Are you- you’re, you’re not joshin’ me?”
Adam chuckled. “No, we’re not ‘ joshin’ you.’” He untangled himself from Barbara and stood with a stretch, circling to the back of the couch. “You need someplace to spend the night, and we’re not gonna kick you out into the rain.” He pulled a heavy blanket off the couch, unfolding it and flapping it open.
Barbara got up as well, approaching him, and- oh god oh god he could not handle her proximity when they were being weirdly nice to him! She was so cute already, and now them being kind, tolerating him for reasons he couldn’t quite grasp- it was making that weird warmth in his chest grow faster. He watched her stop a few feet away and consider his hair, pausing for a good moment before she spoke.
“Beetlejuice, don’t worry about it,” she said, gently. He felt a little bit like he might shatter, like candy glass on a movie set. “We’ll explain everything to Charles and Delia. You can just… get some rest, tonight.”
The urge to reach out hit him again, a desperate desire to bury himself in her arms flooding his being, so intense it hurt. But he didn’t know where boundaries lay, with these modern newly-deads, and it’s not like he’d purposefully sabotage his chances with them now. So he focused on the grounding weight of Lydia and hoped that’d be enough to calm his surging emotions.
(It wasn’t enough. It really wasn’t. That was a different kind of contact, a different kind of soothing. But he’d make it work.)
He realised belatedly that she was waiting for his response. “Y-yeah, okay. Th-thanks,” he croaked. Why was his voice so rough? Like, it was always rough, but usually just gravel in a blender rough, not rockslide rough. Oh god, now they were both looking at him with something he couldn’t recognize in their eyes. Deflect, B-man, deflect! He did lazy finger guns and forced a grin. “Y-you two are the real stars of this show! Honestly, like, puttin’ you guys on more of the merch defs couldn’t go wrong. Not, uh, everyone rocks stripes like I do.”
Adam and Barb shared a confused look. Good! If they were confused about their existence inside a form of media, they weren’t reading into his emotional state. He took the moment to tuck his thread and needle away, sparking tiny fingertip fires to get rid of the excess threads dangling from his mending.
When he looked back up, Barbara had a more serious look on her face. “Now, come morning, there will be discussions of rules,” she warned. “You won’t be allowed to just run wild in the house like you did when Lydia summoned you.”
Okay. She was serious again. He could handle this better than them being nice. “‘Course, Babs. I know there’s a difference ‘tween gettin’ summoned here an’ just droppin’ in. N’ I’ll be good ‘til then, Scout’s honor!” He held up 3 fingers and she squinted thoughtfully, before nodding.
“I’ll trust you for now,” she murmured, but before he could even begin to process that she was continuing. “Would you mind waking Lydia? We have to get her to bed.”
Oh! He could handle this without incurring the wrath of a teenager. And show off at the same time, besides.
He stretched an extra arm out of his side to hang his jacket back up on the fireplace. With a moment's focus, Lydia was gently floating upwards. He moved with her, slipping his arm out of her grasp when it loosened enough, and turned to the Maitlands.
“Don’t gotta wake her up,” he grinned, bouncing on the pads of his feet. The dog heads on the borrowed slippers bounced gently with him. “Where’s her room again? I can bring her there.”
Barbara blinked. “Oh, it’s- here, I’ll show you.”
She led him upstairs. He followed obediently, taking care not to jostle Lydia or bump her into anything. Barbara indicated the second door on the landing, and Beetlejuice took a second to mentally mark the first as Maitland-Land. He was never too good at remembering where things were, but hopefully he’d get this straightened out soon.
...Assuming they let him visit again after tonight.
He carefully stepped into Lydia’s room, glancing around. It was as dark as he remembered it being, but there were more posters up, more photos she’d taken. Her vanity had pictures of other kids stuck in the edges of the mirror- had she finally been making friends?- And the massive wardrobe had a pair of crystals dangling from the handles.
Her bed was made, spare pillows piled at the headboard, and with a flick he lifted them into the air. Another flick rolled her blankets down, and he set Lydia down nice and easy. Part of him wanted to get his blanket back, but he had a feeling Lydia wasn’t the type to steal it, so he let it be. He flicked her blankets back up over her sleeping form, tucked her in, and nested the pillows around her.
She didn’t stir. Her chest kept rising and falling, so she wasn’t dead, but she was just too asleep to notice literally any of this. Must be truly exhausted.
...Probably for the best. He didn’t need more teasing for being a softie.
He turned to find Barbara watching him, her face conveying… something, probably. He had no idea what she was thinking. It made him nervous, but she didn’t say anything so maybe it was alright? She quietly led the way back downstairs and he followed, closing Lydia’s door with a soft klik.
Proper, like, bed pillows now adorned one side of the couch. Adam had arranged the knit throw blanket from the back of the couch into a taco shape on the cushions, the top section thrown wide so Beetlejuice could just lay down and cocoon himself. He liked the thought of that. Adam hovered next to the coffee table- figuratively, not literally, because the Maitlands are boring- fidgeting with the accent pillow he’d had to move. Barbara dipped into the kitchen, presumably to do… something.
“Uh, thanks, A-dog!” Beetlejuice tried to smile wide, doing his best to alleviate the awkwardness of the situation, but his grin faltered and a yawn overtook it. Damn it, he was tired, and no one had invited him to sleep somewhere comfortable in a hundred and twenty years, and he wanted to hurry up and take advantage of it before they threw him back into the Netherworld!
Adam, for his part, seemed to understand. He gestured vaguely at the kitchen and bathroom, like a hot dad at his kid’s sleepover, rambling which light switch did what and how to get water as he started to back out of the room. Beetlejuice nodded along absently until Adam turned the lights off and paused, staring.
“What’s up, dude?” Beetlejuice’s eyes adjusted to the dark with a blink. He mussed his hair. It was noticeably softer after his unwilling shower, and he had to wonder if it was sticking up the way it should. Was that what he was staring at?
“Your…” Adam swallowed. “Your eyes. Do they… always do that?”
Beetlejuice sighed, looking around for a mirror until he caught his reflection in the glass of the fireplace cover. His pupils were wide and dark, and when he turned his head he saw them glint as they reflected light from the kitchen.
“Oh! Oh, the shiny-eyes thing.” Beetlejuice waved a hand dismissively. “Yeah, that’s another built in feature. Night vision, similar model to, uhh… cats? I can change it up, though!” He blinked and the world revealed itself anew in shades of green. Adam’s soul burned brilliantly in the nexus of his vision, so he focused on the stairs behind him. “I dun’ really like usin’ this, though. Makes everythin’ look like $10 night vision goggles ya’ get from an ad in a comic book.”
Adam nodded, clearly off-put. “I. I see. You can- you can do the other, other eye thing, it just…” He laughed nervously. “It caught me off guard!”
Beetlejuice blinked a few times, letting his eyes adjust to his usual night vision again. “That’s fair. Ain’t like humans get cool shit like this, after all.” He stretched hard, his bones stuttering as joint after joint snapped, crackled, and popped. A glance back at Adam revealed that he was paused partway up the stairs, watching him.
“Welp, I’m gonna get some shut-eye!” Beetlejuice announced. “‘Night, A-dog. See ya tomorrow.”
Adam startled, but nodded. “R-right. Goodnight, Beetlejuice.” And up the stairs he hurried.
Beetlejuice sighed and flopped down on the couch, chuckling at the satisfying creak it let out at his weight. These pillows were softer than he was used to- well, hell, all of it was softer than he was used to! He usually slept on things like floors, cabinets, or desks. Sure, he had a place back in the Netherworld, with a bed and all, but it was the place his Ma owned, so it’s not like he wanted to sleep there ever. But- mental tangent aside, this was way nicer than his usual crashing spots.
He pulled the blanket closed over him. It was warm, the yarn’s texture clearly softened by time to a gentle scritch. He adjusted the pillows, wiggled around, fidgeted with the tassels of the blanket.
...Harder than he thought it would be. Sleeping in this house.
The light in the kitchen clicked off, and he craned his head to watch Barbara walk to the stairs. She paused at the base of them, looking over towards him, and… was that a smile? Why was she smiling?
“Beetlejuice?”
He made a grumbly noise in response, and yes, that was definitely a smile.
“Rest well.”
She started up the stairs, and he mumbled a quiet “You, too,” into the darkness. And then he was truly alone. Without anything else impeding him, he could hear the Maitlands moving things around upstairs, the ticking of every clock in the house- even Lydia’s breathing, if he focused hard enough. But most of what he heard was gently muted by the rain, the rustle of it against the plants outside melding with the patter on the walls.
He rolled over, curling on his side. The blanket felt too… open. He pulled the top section taut over his entire body, tucking the excess under him. There we go. That was better. Nothing could get in, nothing could get out, he’d feel it if anyone tried to mess with him- sleeping as a Burritojuice ™️ was the best way to feel safe out in the open.
Finally feeling secure, he felt his eyelids grow heavy once more. The rain soothed him, now that he wasn’t in it, and he slowly drifted off to sleep.
He was falling. His stomach lurched as air whistled past him. It was starting to feel like he’d been falling for years when hydrangea bushes snatched him from the air. Their prickly grasp dug into his skin, promising to never let go. His eyes shot open.
The Maitland-Deetz house loomed over him oppressively. He could faintly make out colored lights on the other side of the building, hear the faint strains of musical theater from the roof, but he’d been kicked from the scene.
He lurched to his feet with a groan. He felt down his spine, pushing each wandering vertebrae back into place and pushing a little bit of magic into any fractures to make them heal. He looked back up at his surroundings.
For a moment he saw double. He saw the world he lived in, the yard and trees and the dangerous slope of the hill; and overlaying it, like a twice-exposed film negative, he saw a set. A musical set. People hustled around behind stage left, beckoning him, shooting him smiles and thumbs-ups. He watched a stagehand quickly worm one of his extra hands out of the hollow back of the chimney, parts of him phasing through the image of the very solid and not hollow version.
His feet mechanically carried him forward, but he jerked to a stop at the threshold of the stage. He couldn’t leave it. The set kept him hidden from the audience, but he heard the song winding down and knew he had to hurry. Still, his feet remained glued.
A hand patted his shoulder. “You okay, Alex? Take that fall a little hard?”
And like that, he came unstuck. Or, well, his actor did.
Beetlejuice watched his actor step forward, out of his body, into the safe darkness of backstage. He smiled at his coworker, said something silly. Beetlejuice stared in awe as the illusion melted, as the set disappeared like a sunspot fading. Colors bled and swam, images intense and ethereal, and then he blinked and there was but one image. The yard. Grass dark with winter, tree mostly-barren, clouds rolling across the moon in an almost threatening way.
He knew, of course. He could feel when his actors got really into a performance. Sometimes, when they vibed real hard in rehearsal or at home, he’d get a glimpse of their life off-stage- a small white dog, a smiling cast, two Lydias dancing with him. He wondered sometimes if it went both ways- if they could ever feel what he felt, if they saw the hill or the graveyard or the Netherworld the way he did. Not like he could ask, though.
Welp! Putting all that aside, he’d been rejected. Time to sulk. He walked through the wall and down, heading for the basement. There was a blood stain on the concrete from when the Maitlands fell that had resisted all attempts at removal. Sitting next to it made him feel less alone.
He walked over and plopped down, but when he turned to look, it wasn’t their bloodstain at all! He squinted. Theirs was all big and squiggly, and this one was just a pool. A pool that he realised was… still spreading.
From him.
His breath caught on the metal rod impaling him. His panicked thoughts scrambled to organise- ‘Okay, in, out, in, out, breathe, BJ!’ It creaked like a swing set with each wheeze he forced through his punctured lungs. He tried to look for answers hiding in the dark of the basement, but when his brain caught up to the spinning of the room he remembered he’d always been at the wedding, surrounded by his “family.” Delia was hiding from him behind a fake plant. Adam was wiping at his mouth, looking disgusted, while Barbara sneered and crumpled the bouquet she held. Charles clutched his trick mic, ready to pounce. The spotlight seared his eyes and burned his skin, made his head reel and his gut clench, and Lydia-
Lydia was behind him. Laughing.
“Just look at yourself, BJ!” She exclaimed, shoving her improvised weapon deeper through him. He swallowed a cry. “Not so tough without your powers, are you? Did you really think we’d let you walk out of here alive?”
No. No, this can’t be it. He’d barely had a shot, please, let him prove-
“God, right? He must be dumber than he looks,” Barbara chimed in.
“He tastes like sour wine mixed with decay and self-pity.” Adam complained.
Beetlejuice could feel himself going numb. The puddle was growing, pulsing out of him in time with his newly-started heart, endless blood covering the floor entirely. Maybe he’d bleed until they all drowned. Maybe they’d like that. He tried to get up, but Lydia grabbed his hair and shoved him back down to his knees.
“You’re not goin’ anywhere, demon.” Lydia drove the rod through him like a stake, pinning him to the floor. The heavy art split his ribs apart as it bore down on him. He screamed, harsh and raw, at the sheer violence of the act.
“We know all about your… history, Mr. Juice,” Charles chimed in. “We see you for what you are. You can never undo the crimes you’ve committed.”
“So we’re just gonna help you make up for them!” Barbara exclaimed, cheerful voice dripping with barely-contained distaste. “And the only reparation a demon can pay is death. ”
“No-” he hacked, the blood swirling in his lungs getting jettisoned from his mouth. “No!! Please, don’t- don’t do this, I’m sorry, I’M SORRY! I’ll never do any of it again!! I promise!! Please don’t off me I’m-”
The room twisted and shuddered as Barbara flicked a piece of the fireplace’s blaze onto him. He screamed again as he began to burn, the inferno taking to his ancient body like kindling. He couldn’t tell if he was choking on the smoke or if the creeping shadows of the room were trying to pull his weak heart straight out of his mouth. He clawed at his chest, trying to remove the art stand, but it wouldn’t budge.
“It’s what monsters like us deserve, isn't it?”
He looked up and saw himself, burning at the stake. If he craned, he could see- oh. Oh, god, Beatrice was tied to the stake behind him. Her trembling fingers clung to his sleeve where their hands were bound together, her simple brewer’s smock burning away. The smell of charred flesh filled his nose.
“I never should have invited you in. You’ve brought nothing but pain to our village.” She whimpered, legs melting away in the hellfire. “Why did you let me think you cared? Why did you pretend to be my friend?”
“I was your friend!” He shouted, the roar of the fire nearly drowning him out. “I didn’t know, kiddo- I didn’t know they’d do this. I’m- ‘M so sorry.”
She wailed as her organs cooked. His words became ash in his mouth as she died a gruesome death beside him. He howled as his friend ran off to the afterlife without him.
And then he was alone. The fire ate into him, marring him, licking the rod in his lung until it was super-heated. The wound seared him deep, burning him inside and out, and he felt himself start to slip away. ‘Maybe Ma won’t be so mad this time,’ he reasoned hysterically. ‘I caused lots of mischief. Maybe-‘
Water was dumped on him, bucketful after bucketful. He sighed, the sweet relief from the burning a welcome respite, but- but then a new burning began.
Holy water.
“You always were too stupid for your own good,” a horribly familiar voice croaked. He cast about, found himself in Hell with Ma, the only proof of his time with the Maitlands being the art still impaling him. She threw more holy water on him, watched him scream and writhe desperately. A cold laugh reached his ears as his limbs fell apart, as his body was eaten away.
“Lawrence, you know why I’m doing this. You need to learn your lesson. You can’t trust anyone. Maybe dying will make that sink in a little better, huh? Maybe then-” she upended the bucket over his head, smiled as his ears and hair were consumed, as his bones started to melt. “Maybe then you’ll be a better son.”
He clawed at his body, trying desperately to put it back together, but there was nothing to put together. His hands dripped from his arms, his chest heaving as it unraveled around the rod. He wailed as he died, as the nothingness embraced and smothered him.
Ma was right. He did deserve this.
He floated for a while, the dark emptiness of his special hell almost soothing, in a way. At least it didn’t hurt. But then something… touched him. What could touch him? He was alone in here with no body, that was the point-!
“Beej? You okay?”
He pushed whatever it was away, scrambling backwards through the abyss. Strange, the abyss had way more texture now. And structure. His lungs stuttered into action. Weird, it almost felt like… like…
“Beetlejuice!”
He opened his eyes.
He was crouching on the wall of the Maitland-Deetz household’s living room, body wedged in a corner. Lydia stood a careful distance away from him, hands on her hips. The fire in the fireplace had burned low, and there was nothing but darkness outside the windows.
He slowly blinked around. The entire room was in disarray. Pillows and cushions had been thrown from the couch- some torn open, some scorched. The throw blanket was still clinging to his leg, the fringe on one side gently smoldering. The couch looked like a flaming bobcat had tried and failed to escape its nefarious clutches for hours. The upholstery was shredded, and what remained was still burning.
The most dramatic of all, though, was the black and white sunburst painting 3/4ths of the room. The coffee table, the couch, the rug, the carpet-
The rug. The rug where he…
“You awake now, BJ? That looked like… one hell of a nightmare.”
He remembered the agony of death clearly. Too clearly. And now confronted with the wreckage of his panic, his rotten heart stuttered as it sank in- They were definitely going to kill him again for this.