First Beetlejuice story! But it has been a long time coming, let me assure you.
I've planned this one out rather meticulously, but things are always subject to change.
Also, this is my first time writing a story from the 1st person perspective. There may be chapters that put to use free indirect discourse and a couple other experimental forms of writing, but don't let that scare you away! It's all in good fun.
As always, I love reviews and I really use them as motivation. And, of course, I am always open to friendly, helpful critique.
This might be a somewhat heavy story content wise, but I'll definitely try and lighten it up with humor here and there (even if it is as dry as a bone).
Happy reading!
~Gregor
Chapter 1 - Life Interrupted
The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.
~Albert Einstein
I always imagined death as something sweet, something to look forward to. It is the big, unequivocal ending to our fleeting human existence. It is the only solid truth anyone could have in this life, the promise of death; it's the only certainty. But when the day finally came, the day I was to die, I found it very anticlimactic.
xxx
The smell of bubbling meat made my stomach turn, my forearms almost completely numb from the constant splatter of the boiling hot grease as I dropped the fries into their vat. After the long days of working as a slave to the lower-middle-class American's tendency to over eat, after the countless showers, after the various lotions and perfumes I bought because they were the proper way a woman should smell, after all of the elaborate rituals to rid myself of the stench of mediocrity, my hair still smelled like french-fries.
I often wondered if I started out sane, and the years of therapy, the metaphorical shock treatments, the hypothetical hypo-needles, the symbolic straight jackets, if they all somehow contributed to my slow spiral into insanity. Because this, this life as a corporate wage slave, was not something any sane person would wish for. Not in my understanding of sanity, at least.
I often got "the look," especially when people passed me on my smoke break. It was the "you put yourself here" look. The "you're a high school drop-out, you knew this was coming" look. Then there's also the semi-compassionate look given by middle aged white women who think that smiling at a nihilistic goth girl will warm their ass just a little more as they sits all comfy in the third pew of their Presbyterian church on Sunday, clasping their hands in prayer, telling some apathetic god that they smiled at one of his lost children. I hated those looks even more. I hate them for their delusion. At least the others held some truth to them.
I lived with two girls who were going to the local college: Elizabeth and Christine, or Liz and Chris, as they preferred to be called. They were smart and motivated, filled with life and passion, but also a certain amount of realism that allowed them to keep on trudging. Liz was the type of person who could really read people, sometimes almost becoming the person. She had a knack for emotions and would cry over anything from a smiling baby to a quarrel between two lovers she had never met. Her short, tawny brown hair always seemed to fall perfectly into place without effort, her small face and round, green eyes giving the world a sense of false innocence. She turned heads left and right, both men and women. It amused me and stirred up a quiet, protective rage in Chris. The funny thing about Liz, though, is that in all her perceptibility, she never seems to notice the spell she holds over others.
Chris, in contrast, was more on my team when it came to worldviews. She was snappy, witty, hated her mother, and suffered for her art. Naturally musical, she would spend hours at her dinky little keyboard pouring over the keys, completely hidden by her massive curtain of dark brown hair, until she was satisfied with her abilities. She held a stark bitterness behind her dark eyes that drew me to her like a psychologist to a sociopath. Liz and I planned to buy her a real piano some day. We talked about it like a married couple planning a ski trip we both knew would never really happen.
I knew a lot about my roommates: their lives, their parents, their favorites foods, their sexual encounters... and yet I felt they knew nothing about me. I had never told them about my experiences in the asylum or my childhood, mostly because I couldn't remember it. I especially had never told them about my "imaginary friend."
He still haunted me, mostly in my dreams. I would gasp awake at night, sweat trickling down my ribcage, around my neck, between my thighs, and I would attempt to breath steadily until my mind calmed and I could drift back into an uneasy sleep. For someone who never existed, he sure was a persistent bastard with that crooked grin and those hollow eyes. I would see black and white stripes everywhere, hiding in the shadows of radiators, the sun streaks across the wall through the venetian blinds. Bastard. I even found myself wearing the goddamn stripes. I couldn't escape my sick infatuation with this made-up character from my childhood, even as I entered my twenty-fifth year of life. I felt pathetic. And yet…
His name lingered in the back of my mind, hiding in the corners of my mouth, bouncing on the tip of my tongue. The doctors told me I must never say it, less the hallucinations become manifest once more. One time I worked up enough courage and said it out loud into the silence of my dark room. A candlestick went flying off of my dresser on its own accord and I spent the rest of the night crying into Chris and Liz's laps wondering if I was going insane again. Sometimes I thought insanity might be an easy way out. But they brushed my hair and cooed at me and assured me that I most certainly wasn't insane and we ended up talking about ghosts and the paranormal. They knew what I liked, what would calm me down.
I wanted to say his name so badly. Every fiber of my being was straining with anticipation of the day I finally broke down and said it. Every inch of me was alive with electricity, humming with an aura of truth, urging me to do it, to just get it over with. And then the day finally came.
xxx
My manager eyed me with a suspicion he reserved for people he believed to be lower than him, mostly minorities and women.
"Let me get this straight, you want me to reprimand Mark for asking you out on a date?" he grunted. He had a thick neck and a red face and constantly seemed to perspire, as though the sheer work it took to keep himself upright was as much as running up a flight of stairs.
"Sir, if your idea of a date is insinuating that a girl will be down on her knees the entire time, I seriously questions your morals," I shot back. This seemed to fluster him, the vein in his neck and forehead fluttering for a moment.
"Tell me once more exactly what he said to you," he tried again, dabbing his temple with an off-colored handkerchief. It might have been white once.
"Mark told me that he would be glad to show me a good time so long as I brought a pair of knee pads," I recapped, making sure to keep my face emotionless. "He said that, with a little hard work and some friction, he'd put some color back in my cheeks. Do you find this kind of conversation appropriate for the work place?" I pressed, attempting to keep my voice level and monotone.
"But he never specifically used sexual language. It's hard for me to find the correct path of discipline here…" my manager huffed, beady eyes looking everywhere but into mine.
"The point is, Mr. Dunlop, is that Mark attempted to humiliate me by targeting me sexually in the work place. He never said the words cock, blowjob, jizz, or anything of the sort, but the fact of the matter is he insinuated all those nasty little things with perfect clarity and intention." I spoke with a clipped edge to my voice and found myself relishing the way Dunlop jumped when I said the word cock. He seemed like the kind of guy who watched dungeon porn, jacking off alone in his room making barnyard noises.
"Alright, Miss Deetz, I'll have a word with him," he conceded.
"Don't bother, consider this my two weeks notice." And with that, I excused myself from his office.
I finished out my day in relative silence, ignoring the wary, hateful looks I received from Mark. When my shift finally ended, I clocked out and practically sprinted to my car. Unfortunately, Mark had beaten me there.
"What did you tell him?" he demanded, sounding childish and brutish at the same time.
"I told him the truth, but oh don't worry. You're safe inside your little Phalogocentric world. The truth is rarely relevant," I sneered, attempting to move around him. I was startled when he grabbed me by the shoulders and forced me up against the side of my car.
"You're a little smart ass, you know that?" he spat, lip curling in hatred. I was particularly stupid when it came to wounding men's egos, yet I couldn't stop myself.
"I suggest you let go of me now or I will take you to court on not only sexual harassment, but physical assault. Look around. There are witnesses," I said, maintaining the calm in my voice as I pointed across the parking lot. Two other female employees were watching us; one had her phone out.
"And what if I don't care? What if I…" I cut him off, holding my pepper spray inches from his face.
"Then I will mace the shit out of you," I threatened in a low voice, sounding stronger and fiercer than I actually felt. I knew I kept that thing attached to my keys for something. He backed off, hands in the air in the classic sign of defeat.
"Alright, sweetheart, you got me. But don't think this is over." And with that he walked away. I watched him go for a second before looking over at the two girls across the lot. They gave me a thumbs-up/thumbs-down gesture, making sure everything was all right. I gave them a thumbs-up without smiling, then promptly got into my car.
It was a ten-minute drive home. I started crying after two minutes.
xxx
The small second-story apartment was empty when I got home. I wanted Chris and Liz to be around so I wouldn't have to deal with everything that had just happened. We could just pull a couple beers out of the fridge and laugh at what a terrible day it had been. But my only company was the silence: the deafening, ringing, maddening silence. Of course I knew they both had late classes on Thursday nights. It was always like this, always the same schedule, day-in, day-out.
I took a hot shower, letting the grime and stench of deep fried food wash off of my skin. I lathered the soap in my hands, running them over my body, thinking about the last time I had had sex. It had been a while, over a year. I had gotten a little pudgy around the hip area from all the free fast food I would take home at the end of the day, but I brushed it off. I still looked gaunt even with the added weight. I looked disproportionate. Who was I trying to look good for anyways?
I didn't bother blow-drying my hair. I let it hang freely, dark, damp, and slightly wavy, as I read through a couple books on death customs from around the world. I frequented the local library from time to time; attempting to avoid the leering homeless men long enough to check out a couple of books. I dug into my half-done, plain noodles like they were the manna of life. I had just gotten to Tibetan Buddhist cremation when my cell phone beeped. It was Liz telling me she would be home late tonight because she needed to stay at the studio to finish blah blah blah. The point was I would have to be alone even longer than usual tonight.
I closed my book, setting it on the small coffee table in our living room before getting up and walking to my own personal room. I had the smallest room because I had the least amount of stuff. I liked it that way. Too many material possessions weighed me down, made me feel trapped. I collapsed on my small bed, staring up at the ceiling. I had painted the whole room black, save for the hardwood floor. I had gotten Liz to bum the paint off of some rich art kid in her class. He had painted one wall in his room and realized he didn't want the black anymore. But I did. I wanted to paint everything black. Hell, I'd paint the window black if I weren't under a contract.
As I lay there, a sense of unease began creeping into my bones and I started to think about him some more, that figment of my imagination. How did it all start? Did I completely make him up? Was he the product of strange Freudian repression?
"Beetlejuice."
I slapped my hand over my mouth. Did I really just say that out loud? It just slipped out, barely even a whisper. What was I thinking?
"Say it again, babes." His voice echoed through my head. But was it really his voice? Wasn't he just a figment of my imagination? So really it was my voice egging me on. Wasn't it?
"Beetlejuice," I ventured again, a little louder this time, heart rate elevating. My palms have become sweaty and cold. I sat up and scooted back up against the headboard of my bed, gaining a false sense of comfort from the act.
"Third time's the charm…"
This was impossible. I wasn't hearing him. I was just hearing my own thoughts, my own interpretations. The doctors told me this would happen. That merely saying his name would make it all real again.
But I wanted it to be real. So I screamed.
"Beetlejuice!"
I value your opinions!
Until next time ~
