Beetlejuice and Lydia

After dinner a few days later I went up to the attic, hoping that Beetlejuice had came back by now. He had said the first Thursday in November, and tomorrow was already Wednesday. I shut the door quietly behind me and walked over to the table, scanning over the surface of it and biting my lip.

"Looking for someone?" Beetlejuice asked. He was sitting on the roof of the figurine of my house, swinging his legs and watching me with amusement.

"Did you bring back the potion?" I asked him. He still had an amused expression on his face. Great. What was he planning?

"I do. Right here in my shirt pocket." He said, patting his breast pocket. "The thing is, I'm too small to give it to you, and you're too large for it to be effective." I rolled my eyes and huffed.

"Come on."

"No you come on, Lydia. Say my name three times." He said, giving me a wicked grin. I would definitely be better off without him here all of the time. But in the meantime maybe I could work this to my advantage.

I crossed my arms over my chest, wrinkled my nose and shook my head.

"Why the hell not?" He asked.

"You know what? I think you're right. I like you better pint size. You get into a lot less mischief when you're the size of a grasshopper." I said, leaning on the table.

"Come on. Who do you think I am? I'm the ghost with the most, baby." He said, pointing to himself. He's so cocky.

"Oh really? I pictured the ghost with the most to be a slightly bigger than a grasshopper. You know, maybe the size of a pear at the very least." I bantered.

"You know, I'm not really the size of a grasshopper when I'm my actual height. I mean, maybe I'm closer to a ruler." He shrugged, as if thinking about it. I laughed.

"Okay, yeah. You're grasshopper-sized and still find a way to argue with me. Fine. You win." I counted out his name on my fingers. "Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice."

As soon as I said his name the last time, he disappeared from the house with a flash. That wasn't what I had expected. Where did he go? Shouldn't he be standing on top of the table, or next to it at the very least?

"Beetlejuice? Where did you go?" I asked around the room. I felt something touch my waist and whipped around to where I was pinned against his chest.

"Aw, missing me already Babe?" He asked and before I could stop him pressed his lips to mine. I closed my eyes but pushed against his stomach, gritting my teeth as I did so. He gave away quicker than I had expected, and I stumbled backwards, wiping my mouth in disgust.

"Yuck! Ew! That's disgusting!" I said, wiping my mouth and trying to get the feel of his lips to mine off more so than some type of foulness that I was pretending existed.

"What? Never been kissed before?" He asked me.

"Enough, just give me the damn potion." I held out my right hand with my left covering my mouth and cheeks. I wasn't sure whether or not I was blushing, but the last thing I needed was Beetlejuice to realize I was blushing before I did.

"Alright, alright. I'm sorry I made you mad." He said, reaching into his coat pocket and pulling out a vial. Violet colored liquid was inside, filled to nearly the top of it. Just the looks of it made me feel uneasy.

"Do I have to drink all of it?" I asked.

"No you don't drink all of it. You drink half of it." He answered me as if it was the most stupidest question in the world.

"Okay, thanks. I'll take it tomorrow before I go to sleep. How long does it take for it to wear off?" I said, uncovering my mouth.

"I don't know. Probably ten hours, twelve at the most."

"Ten hours?! I have school to go to as well." I said.

"Tell Deelia that you feel sick or constipated or something and can't go to school. I don't know. Make something up." He said. I looked at the potion again.

"Alright. If this gets you out of my hair..."

"It will, babe. And just warning you ahead of time, it'll feel like we're gone for a while once we get into the afterlife and come back. Of course, we'll probably have to go through the other end to make it work out to your benefit, where days pass quicker there than what they do here."

"What's the other end?" He grinned at me again.

"You'll find out." He said ominously. "Ooh, which reminds me. Before you take it tomorrow night, you might want to leave me out of there." He jerked his head to the table.

"Why?"

"Jesus Christ Lydia, why do you ask so many questions? Because I need to help you get out of your body and to the afterlife. Okay? Good. Now that we have a deal, I guess you can send me back." He said.

"Fine." And with that I shrunk him down to grasshopper-size again, and he disappeared somewhere in the town.


"Drink half of it. It's alright Lydia. You can do this." I pep-talked myself into drinking the potion in bed the next night. I had convinced Dad that I had a flu, and without another question he left me alone about it. Getting out of school was going to be the easy part. Drinking the potion was going to take time.

"You'll just pass out for a little bit." I coaxed myself. I breathed in and out slowly and closed my eyes. It had to be now or never. I pressed the potion to my lips and swung my head back, chugging down what felt like half. It had a sickeningly bitter taste to it, but I still forced myself to swallow it down. No sooner did I sit the vial down on my side table behind my alarm clock, my vision was already starting to grow hazy. By the time my head hit the pillow, I was already asleep.

"Lyds? Come on. Lydia. Wakey-wakey. Get up." I heard a voice saying somewhere on my right. A figure appeared in my vision, but I couldn't make out the face. Who's voice did those words belong to?

"Hmm?"

"Come on. It's me, Beetlejuice."

"Betel-" I tried to say, but I felt something press on my lips to stop me.

"Shh. Enough of saying my name until we're in the afterlife." The figure started to become clearer. Whitish-yellow hair sticking out at random points around a bulbous white head. Black bruises around the eyes. I would know who that was anywhere.

"Betel.....I didn't think it was going to affect me this hard." I could now see him clearly, though my thoughts were still moving sluggishly.

"Welcome to your artificial afterlife. I will be your tour guide, Mr. Geuse." Beetlejuice said, pointing to his name tag. He was dressed in a tour guide suit, complete with a hat with a skull and crossbones on the front of it.

"Great. So this is what it feels like to be dead." I groaned.

"You'll learn how to enjoy it. Eventually. It took me at least a decade to get comfortable, and look at me now." He said, holding his arms out.

"Point taken, can you help me up?" I asked, trying to reach towards him. He placed his hands under my armpits and lifted me out of bed as if I was a child, setting my feet on the floor but not letting go of my arms.

"You can let go of me." I said, looking behind me. My body was in a deep trance. It looked so real. My eyes were shut and my head was off to the side, as if I was just peacefully sleeping.

"Cool, huh?" Beetlejuice said.

"It's amazing." I breathed.

"Well, off to the spirit world for us." He said, and pulled me closer to him once more. He shot up...somewhere....and we were gone. I landed with an 'umph' somewhere on my back. Displaced, I felt around where I was. It felt solid, and not very large.

"Beetlejuice?" I called out. My voice didn't go too far before it vibrated back to me.

"Right here, babes." Beetlejuice said next to me. Okay, so that was Beetlejuice on my right side.

"Where are we?"

"I told you we were going to have to take the back route to get into the afterlife." Beetlejuice said.

"How do we get there?"

"We don't get anywhere, we just go." I was about to ask how, when suddenly the enclosed space we were in lurched, and then began to go downwards like an elevator. My stomach lurched. Never had I before laid down in an elevator, and this one was going a little faster than I would have liked. I moved my arm around Beetlejuice's arm, him grasping at my hand. It felt like we had been falling for hours when Beetlejuice announced that we had stopped. I hadn't even felt a change since I was used to the elevator feeling for so long.

"Come on, Lyds. Shake it off." Beetlejuice said, as he pushed upwards, grunting as he did so. The top of wherever we were at popped off. A bluish black haze was now clear overhead as Beetlejuice lifted me out of the box by my hand with him. As I got out, I noticed we were in a cemetery with all of the graves and many of the caskets lying open on the ground. Beetlejuice shut the casket behind us, his name on the top.

"Hopefully no one will decide to get a free ride in the meantime. I wouldn't, it smells like a dead guy in there." He said. I rolled my eyes at his humor as we continued on our way.