A/N: My stories are starting to get obscure. It was about time I showed off my love for Tim Burton's works. Whole story is a little weird, but I didn't expect it to be conventional.
The dreams were always the same. Every night had a formula now, a very specific blueprint: she would close her sunken eyes, wait for sleeplessness to pull her into the undertow of sleep, and then she'd dream the same wild dream just like the night before. Despite such patterns, her nights were chaotic, distinct, and terrifying. They were a selfish thrill-ride for her, one that took her straight to ecstasy every time she shut her eyes. The effects were akin to those of using heavy drugs but twice as enticing to her. She had sold herself to this addiction, a little unwillingly at first, but as time elapsed she became more comfortable with indulging. Her eagerness to do so grew, and as a result, when she wasn't writing or at school, she was surely sleeping.
Yes, the dream was, all though familiar, gut-wrenchingly thrilling. She'd find herself wandering through the hallways of her house in the darkness, no sound except for a very faint hissing. The house, despite being empty of people, felt very full and crammed. She'd push herself through the darkness, the hissing getting louder with every step she took, until she'd reach the wooden staircase. She would reach out one pale hand for the railing and slide it across it slowly as she walked, and every time she realized it was no longer made of wood, it would be too late. The smooth, polished wood would quickly change to slimy and cold. Her fingers could feel the ridges and scales, and she'd stop in her tracks to look into the blackness of the hall. Another cold rush of wind. Shivers down her spine. Her hand would shoot to her mouth, and then she'd see it.
Emerging from the darkness would be the head of the snake that had replaced the railing, yellowed eyes bulging in its dark sockets and teeth bared sharp. Its face, though composed of human features, possessed no sense of humanity and resembled what she imagined would be demonic. Its hair was white and dirtied, blown away from its face as it quickly approached her; the hissing morphed into cold laughter. In a fit of terror, she held her hands to her face and backed into the wall behind her. She could still hear the laughter, and not seeing the monster's face was but a small consolation. The feeling of the snake's reptilian body slithering around her own made her shake, and soon she could feel it around her thighs and midsection. Her heart thumped loudly as it constricted slightly, and she let out a long, deep breath.
It was here that the mood changed.
Suddenly, almost as if she were having a different dream entirely, the air became thick and viscous, hard for her to breathe in. Instead of feeling clammy, her skin would burn with a heat unfamiliar to her. Her heart would beat so hard it almost hurt, and the coldness of the snake's scales sent an enjoyable quiver through her body. It continued to wrap itself around her, spiraling upwards closer and closer to her neck. It would constrict tightly around her, squeezing air out of her lungs; sweat began to bead on her hot skin and her knees buckled together in unmistakable stimulation. She'd feel the serpent slide his way across her heaving chest, right between her breasts and straight to her tender neck, where her pulse was nearly beating out of her skin. She'd twist her head to its, and then she'd slowly open her glassy, dark eyes and watch it as it coiled around her thin neck. She'd open her mouth to moan as it squeezed tightly, but just as she tried to push the sound from her lips, she would wake up sweating in her bed.
Lydia Deetz had strange and unusual dreams. She, too, was strange and unusual.
Now, in the middle of the night, Lydia sat upright in her bed. She wiped the sweat from her brow and took a few deep breaths before unbuttoning the high collar of her black nightdress. She reached for the elastic on he nightstand and tied her mussed hair away from her face carelessly. With a shiver from the cold sweat, Lydia crossed her legs and lay her head in her hands, breathing slowly to try and relax her beating heart. It took a few minutes, but soon enough her pulse was steady and her breathing was no longer erratic. She let out a sigh and leaned over the edge of the bed, hands fumbling around in the dark for a moment before producing a thick, leather-bound book. Her free hand groped for the chain to the lamp on her bedside, and as she tugged on it, yellowish light filled the room.
Even bathed in light, the room looked terribly gloomy. Dark blackout curtains were drawn tight over the windows, made for those who didn't want the sun in their life. The walls were bare except for a few pictures of Adam and Barbara Maitland, her friends and ghosts of the attic above her, layers of dust caked on the glass. Lydia kept her eyes away from their unmoving faces as she opened the thick book, which was mostly empty pages. She flipped to where a pencil was stuck between two pages, holding the place. A very rough but detailed sketch of a man in a striped suit was drawn across the page, and Lydia pressed her pencil to his eyes and darkened the circles around them.
If ever someone were to flip through the book, they would find dozens of drawings just like this one. The same man in his crazy black and white suit, always staring with his creepy dark eyes at the viewer, was sketched in the same messy style, for Lydia's hands frequently shook when she drew him. She'd concentrate hard and spend hours throughout the night correcting fine details. She didn't want his suit too straight, his hair to clean-looking, or his expression not eerie enough. Lydia spent nearly every night after awaking from her dream doing this, sketching out this man, for he was the snake that crept into them: Betelgeuse.
Betelgeuse, a ghost she and the rest of the house had met a few months ago. Originally "hired" by Adam and Barbara as a bio-exorcist to rid Lydia and her obnoxious family out of their house, he showed up and created nothing short of chaos. That devilish snake from her dreams was at one point real and torturing her family, almost killing her father and scaring her step-mother half to death. When he had approached her, all she had felt was fear coursing through her like poison. Just as she did in the dream, she curled against the wall and cowered while he slithered around her. His yellow eyes had stared, and what she saw in them she couldn't comprehend.
She hadn't a clue who he was back then, though. It wasn't until she reached a point of depression unlike any other that she discovered the snake's true identity. When Lydia had sunken to great depths of sadness, she had originally planned on throwing herself off of the local bridge. The idea of her suicide was comforting, and she had written a note and everything as she thought it through. She had headed up stairs to the attic to leave it for Adam and Barbara, and that's where all the trouble really started. Instead of finding her ghostly friends, she found a small one lounging in Adam's model of the town. Hair dirty and looking as if he had just been dug out of the ground, he wasted no time in trying to get inside of her head.
Quick-talking but quite obviously underhanded, Lydia had listened and gone along with him only for a short period of time. He asked her to set him free, that it only took one choice word, Beetlejuice, said thrice. It was in her best interest, really. She had said it twice before recognizing the wild eyes as the glowing orbs of the serpent her family had encountered earlier. Suspicious, she blanched, and by a stroke of luck Adam and Barbara showed up before she had summoned him.
The worst of it came later, when her idiotic parents had brought more people into the house to showcase the ghosts. Otho, the moron who thought he knew all about the dead from simple reading, decided to have a séance to bring the ghosts to them, regardless of whether or not they wanted to. Lydia had watched, pressed against the wall and anxious, as he did, in fact, call Adam and Barbara. Slowly, they appeared in their wedding clothes on the table, and they all stared as they aged slowly. Otho had unwillingly performed an exorcism, the one thing that truly killed a spirit. In agony, Lydia's friends began to die slowly. Worried more for them than for herself, Lydia ran from the table and up the stairs to the attic, only knowing one way to possibly reverse their mistakes.
He had been there, like she had hoped. Betelgeuse was still in the model, dressed in his signature black and white striped suit and his boots; it almost looked as if he were waiting for her. Lydia stared down at him and begged, pleaded that he help the Maitlands. With a sly look, he told her that in order to do that, he'd have to be permanently set free-the quickest way of doing that being him getting married. What he meant by that exactly dawned on her, and in a desperate attempt to save her friends, she agreed.
The part Lydia remembered most clearly was bringing him back. He stared at her with those darkly shadowed eyes, that sickening grin, egging her on. The way his name rolled off her tongue and ended with a slow spreading of her lips. The feeling she got when he stood, threw out his hands, and said in that raspy voice, "It's showtime." She knew full well that it was then, in those moments of calling out his name, that everything changed.
Lydia rushed downstairs, unsure of what was going to happen, but sure enough he kept his end of the deal. After torturing the guests of the house and horrifying her parents in a few weird displays, Betelgeuse stopped the Maitlands's exorcism. She had felt so relieved, and she went to her parents to check if they were okay, completely forgetting about her promise. It wasn't until she was dressed in a red gown and by the poltergeist's side that she remembered.
It was a close call. She hadn't married him; she was sitting on her bed, fingers bare and sans wedding ring. Barbara and Adam had managed to send Betelgeuse back via a hideous sandworm, and then things became normal, or at least normal for them. Now the Deetz still lived in the Maitland's home, the friendly ghosts still occupying their homey attic without being disturbed, Lydia going to Miss Shannon's, and no more talk of Betelgeuse or his crazy acts of violence. They all lived happily ever after. Or at least everybody else did.
When, exactly, Lydia started to grow distant, she did not know. She remembered being happy to come home from school, see her parents smile at her, and sit in the attic with Barbara and Adam just talking. They enjoyed her company, and she enjoyed theirs. Her life was generally better then, and she could honestly say that she was happy.
At first, she didn't dream of him, but she did think about him constantly. Betelgeuse, that disgusting ghost that tormented her family and nearly forced her into unholy matrimony for the rest of eternity. She could seem standing around, sputtering at her and trying to force her to say his name. She could still feel his undead hand clapped tightly over her mouth and taking words right out of her mouth. She liked to believe that he only remained in her thoughts due to a strange fascination, but it became clear that that wasn't the case when he invaded her dreams as well.
The dreams started a few weeks after his departure. Lydia could still recall waking up from the first one, drenched in a sheen of cool sweat, heart beating hard and fast. She had dashed to the bathroom and wretched. She had stood in front of the mirror after rinsing her mouth for what had to be an hour, trying to figure out why she had such an obsession with the ghost. He was terrible, cruel, and lecherous. It wasn't like he cared about her or the two of them getting married, except for his own personal gain. The more she thought about him, the more strongly she believed that he had no good redeeming qualities. He was a disgusting creature from another world who was probably a terrible person when he was mortal. The very mention of his name made everyone gag, be them dead or alive.
Lydia bit her pencil and held it between her teeth as she turned back a few pages. Another dirty sketch of Betelgeuse, only this time he was clad in a different suit: the very suit that he had almost married her in. She gazed at it momentarily before leaping from her spot on her bed to the closet beside it. She wrenched open the door and didn't bother to turn on the light, simply because she didn't need it. Hiding behind numerous black ensembles was her prize, and she lovingly extracted a bright, fiery red wedding gown. She made sure not to snag the tulle on anything as she pulled it out from the darkness. With one hand she held it out, and with the other she fingered the vermilion material, a sickly smile tainting her lips. She had made sure to hide it in the deepest recesses of the closet out of fear of anyone finding out that she had kept it.
Her mind's eye could still see the moment perfectly. Betelgeuse stepping forward in his maroon suit, hair and face as dirty as usual, one arm held out, waiting for her to take it. With his throaty voice he muttered "Shall we?" and cocked one eyebrow. Lydia looked down to find herself dressed in the beautiful red gown, a bouquet in her gloved hand, and she was pulled over to him by some unnatural force. He linked his arm around hers and kept her tight to his side. He gazed down at her with a carnal grin and a dark, lusting look in his eyes, and she had to keep strain to keep her mouth from turning up into a shocked smile. A mad part of her wanted to be his bride, wanted to be bound forever to the revolting ghost. Was it because she was deluded, thought he loved her? It was quite the contrary.
She wanted him because he wanted her.
Lydia was no foolish girl. Betelgeuse was a rude, obnoxious, and hideously lascivious. It didn't take a genius to figure out what he thought about when he looked at her. She was a girl, a living one at that, with working parts and a pretty face. She was available, tender, able to be manipulated: free game. He didn't want to love her or anything sappy and romantic like that. There was zero romance here, and instead a gross, uncensored perversion, and that's exactly what Lydia liked.
Betelgeuse was the first person, all though dead, to show any kind of wanting towards her. He was the only to look at her and want to touch her, squeeze her, put his hands on her. Nothing made Lydia feel as good as his sexual desire for her, despite how completely nasty he was and could be. She was a little ashamed, but she welcomed the perverse behavior, the inappropriate comments, the unyielding libido. She liked being lusted after, even if it was by such a sinister being as Betelgeuse.
She was guilty of this sin, too. Just looking at him, Betelgeuse could be described as downright repulsive. His chalky face held no particularly good features, and it was smeared with dirt, among other things. His white hair was wild and dirty, his body average and slumped. His ghastly personality did not make up for any of this, but his outright lechery towards her did. In spite of all the bad qualities, Lydia craved him and his touch. She yearned to have his grimy fingers squeeze her tight, his filthy mouth all over her own, his crass words in her ear. Her lust was caused by his.
Lydia hung the wedding dress back up in her closet. She shut the door and turned her back to it, then walked over to her vanity. A large black mirror was propped up there, reflecting the room and herself in its shiny surface. She took a seat in front of it, and she couldn't help but stare at herself and wonder what had happened to her. Somewhere along the way, she had lost herself to desire. The circles beneath her eyes were deep and purple, her hair lank and unwashed. Her smile looked odd and tweaked, as if it was just shrouding some other expression. She herself looked like the walking dead. She knew that Adam and Barbara worried about her. She had neglected to go and see them daily like she had weeks ago, and she figured that wasn't helping her mood. However, she had no will to hang around in the living world when all the wanted was the touch of a dead man.
She considered the one possibility she had been dancing around ever since the dreams started. She could sacrifice all her pride, ignore every rational part of her, shun all those who actually cared about her. She could make that first move, that simple flexing of the lips to form the one word that seemed permanently etched in her mind; she could bring him back. All it took was her voice to call him to her, to materialize him here for her. Lydia touched her hand to the glass, traced her own features in the mirror. Without him and his cruelties, she'd be but a hollow shell of her former self, wouldn't she?
"Beetlejuice," Lydia said to the mirror, against her better judgment. She took a deep breath and kept her eyes locked onto her reflection's. "Beetlejuice."
Her hands were shaking and so was her voice. She hesitated, averted her eyes away from the mirror. What would happen if she summoned him? Would he hurt her family again, torture Adam and Barbara? What would they think of her, what would they say? Her conscious fought for control of her mind and body, but a voice much stronger than her own pushed it away. She could hear him now, convincing her to go ahead and do it, act on an impulse, live a little.
"Come on, come on, come on," the gravelly voice said. "Third times the charm."
Lydia let out a long, deep breath. "Beetlejuice."
The hair on the back of her neck stood up as a rush of cold wind blew through her room. She shut her eyes and felt her skin go clammy as she heard the loud crash of lightning and felt the room shake a little. When the movement stopped, she slowly opened her eyes. Leaning on her shoulder with a mad gleam in his eyes was the ghost that haunted her dreams and made her life a nightmare; the man who now controlled her thoughts and feelings; the only one that could turn her on. Seeing his reflection in the mirror made her skin sweat and ache. Dressed in vertical stripes and bearing a rotten grin was her tormentor, the notorious ghost with the most, Betelgeuse.
"Miss me, babes?"