Summary: What is he? Is he real? Is he a figment of her imagination? He makes her laugh, helps her live. She loves him, has always loved him. The question is: is he real?
Warnings: Angst, mental illness, taboo/sexual themes, shock therapy, and character death.
Disclaimer: I do not own Beeteljuice, Lydia, Charles, or Delia. I own the therapist, and the biological mother. Don't sue me.
Rating: M for safety.
The chair was comfortable, and the jacket warm. She settled down into the chair easily, taking a moment to appreciate how her feet were finally able to touch the ground when she sat down anywhere. She'd always been too short for her feet to touch the ground when she sat in any chair...
"So, tell me how you met him."
The pale girl smiled blearily. "Oh, it's sort of funny, you know? It was kind of an accident. There are no mirrors on the Other Side, except his. It was just after my... my mother died, and I found the flier in my attic. It said to call his name three times, and then he appeared on chest of drawers behind me!"
"Where you scared?"
The girl laughed quietly. "No. I've never been afraid of him, he's too much of a softy to actually be scary."
"That's good."
"Mm-hm. And he was too nice to be scary: always using his powers to show off for me, or taking me on trips across both worlds, and he'd help me with projects and stuff..."
"So you were friends. Did you ever not get along?"
"Oh yes. Sometimes, he'd drive me crazy with all his pranks on my parents and stuff, and sometimes he would get me in trouble for things I didn't do. One time, we got into a big fight and he was so upset, I accidentally wound up in his head!" She laughed and shook her bangs out of her face. The wisps of brittle hair refused to stay back though, and fell back into her dulled eyes. "We made up though, after I got to see how his mind worked, and I realized he did care about my feelings. He had a whole shrine for me in his head!"
There was a click and a brief scratching sound before the man spoke again. "So he loved you."
"Mmm." Her head tilted to the side and her dazed expression became dreamy. "Yeah, he did. And I loved him. Some people don't understand: they call him terrible things. Like pervert and pedophile. But it was never like that... until after I was nineteen at least."
"That's a long time to wait. You were already legal, weren't you?"
The girl sighed. "Yeah, but we were kind of confused. Our friendship was really complicated."
Another click, another scratch. "I bet. When you turned nineteen a few weeks ago, though, it all changed?"
"Yeah. He told me how to do it, too. How to have sex with a dead man. I was the one that asked him though, that's what people don't get. They think he coerced me, but he tried to stop me. I didn't stop asking though, until he gave in."
"Because you loved him."
"Yeah. So I did what he told me. I dug up his corpse, performed a ritual using blood I bought from the blood bank, and some of my own of course. Then I mixed the herbs and made the candles, and I summoned him with our chant. He didn't have to be in the corpse, the ritual just had to be done over it."
"So when the ritual was complete, he came to your room and...?"
She sighed prettily. "We made love... He was so funny! All soft and gentle and romantic... Like he was afraid he was going to hurt me."
"Did he?"
"Oh no." She assured the man. "He would never hurt me. Not on purpose, at least. Sometimes his pranks got a little out of hand..."
Click. Scratch. "Do you know how many times you were in the hospital?"
The girl shrugged. "Not many. I know we went to the Neitherworld Hospital a few times, to hide accidental injuries from my parents. I didn't want them to find out about him, and he always took good care of me."
Click. Scratch. "And why are you here?"
She lit up and sat straighter in her chair. "He brought me here, for a little vacation. He likes to bring me places after finals or when I'm really stressed. This time though... well..." He bone-white cheeks flushed with some color, almost bringing the life back to her dull eyes. "It's... he told me it's a... a 'bonding' vacation!" She giggled and shuddered in her jacket, curling her toes in the flimsy blue slippers someone had put on her feet.
"You're here to have sex, uninterrupted, with him, right?"
"Yeah. We haven't actually done it yet. We've been having so much fun! And I think he's shy. He's never been shy around me." She sighed longingly, and looked over her shoulder at the man. "Are we almost done? He's waiting for me, know what I mean?"
The man smiled sadly. "Yes, Lydia. We're done. I'll call the orderlies to take you back to him."
The room was fairly good-sized, if a bit plain. The usual documents hung on the walls behind the desk, and there was a low chaise lounge under the window. Across from it stood a bookcase filled with awards, toys, pictures and books. On his desk, the usual clutter of a man in his profession. One file lay open, a small, stuffed ghost doll laying on the pages. The girl had drawn vertical stripes on it with black magic marker that had all but faded long ago. Its eyes were colored green and the girl had sewn on some strands of yellow yarn on its head. The girl's file was filled with photos of graveyards and corpses, poems of death and poltergeists, and drawings of freakish, cartoonish creatures. There were some that were more prominent than most, but one recurring character stood out almost obnoxiously from the rest.
The filthy, rotting, purple-skinned ghost in the striped suit leered out at him from almost every page. Gnarly, misshapen teeth, moss-covered face, bloody red fingertips. Burning green eyes...
If he hadn't known better, he would have mistaken the other occupant of many of the drawings as another creature. It was easily recognizable by its hairstyle and red poncho though. Beneath the twisted, mangled face was the girl. Beneath the hatred and self-loathing that manifested itself in the artwork, the lonely little girl smiled up at him.
She hummed quietly in her chair, swaying back and forth as they waited for a nurse to come fetch her. He continued to jot down notes on her documents, feeling his heart grow heavier with every passing minute.
The door creaked open, and both their heads whipped around to see the man entering the room.
The man saw another, much larger, burlier man come in through the door. The girl saw the striped poltergeist.
"Beetlejuice!"
The man lowered his eyes as the nurse unhooked the girl's jacket. She continued to jabber away to her friend and new lover, her voice breathless and her gaze adoring. The orderly smiled weakly as he freed her from the chair and helped her to her feet.
She was at the door when she remembered the other man. With an unfocused smile, she turned to smile over her shoulder at him. "Good bye, sir. Maybe I'll see you around the resort later."
The man looked up from his desk, his eyes sad as he looked at the face of the pale girl. "Yes. Good bye, Lydia. Good bye, Beetlejuice." He waited until the door was closed before he hit the button on his intercom.
"Yes sir?"
"Tell the Deetzes I'll meet them in a moment.
She was led into the room, and stripped of the straightjacket. Some of the nurses helped her up onto the gurney while the others helped the doctors prepare the machines.
In an observation deck above the room, four people watched as the girl was strapped to the gurney.
"I can't stand this anymore. I can't see her in a straightjacket again." The man who spoke was on the far side of middle age. He'd once been round about the belly and face, and full of life even though his nerves had long been shot. Now he was gaunt, his eyes sunken into his head as he looked down at the girl. It had been him who found Lydia wrapped around the dried-out corpse, moaning and riding it as though her life depended on this one, repulsive act. He swallowed past a lump in his throat. "Please... please tell me this will help her." He begged as the girl lifted her free hand and wrapped it around thin air.
The therapist stood apart from the little family, his hands clasped behind his back. "If this does not... then there is no hope." The girl below them was laughing as her thin, weak arm was guided back down onto the bed and strapped in place. "Mr. Deetz... in her condition... this is very dangerous. She might not... survive it."
The man groaned and his knees buckled. The red-headed woman that stood beside him, their arms wrapped around one another, cried out and tried to support the sagging man. "Charles, Charles! Someone help me!"
The therapist hurried forward to help, but the other woman in the room just continued to scowl down into the room. When Charles had been settled into a chair and his shaky hands had been closed around a cup of water, the therapist stood and walked to the lone woman's side.
"You could still refuse, you know. You have to give us permission to do this." He murmured. "You never gave up your rights to her. Even though she's over eighteen, the circumstances prevent us from going on without your okay."
The woman remained silent, looking down at the daughter she had never wanted. At the daughter she had never loved. The daughter she had given up without a single thought. The daughter she had thought about every day since she'd left. The daughter she had dreamed about every night...
Hot tears began to prick at the corners of her eyes.
Her mother had suffered from the same illness. So had her grandfather, and many of her cousins, uncles, and aunts.
She'd brought a child into the world, knowing all that, and more. Knowing of the depression, drug addiction, and mental illness that had plagued her family lines for generations. She'd left that child with her cheating, absentee husband and gone off to pursue bikers and finely cut lines of coke.
She'd never done a good thing for her child. She'd thought, perhaps leaving had been the best thing for Lydia... but after what she'd heard from the doctor's...
"Do it." She rasped. "Help her. Please."
One of the doctor's looked up from beside the gurney. In the room beside the woman, the therapist gave a slow nod of the head.
Lights flickered. Wires buzzed. The body on the gurney writhed against the restraints and her teeth sank into the cloth wrapped around the rubber bit.
"Was this... was everything... my fault?" The woman rasped, watching the daughter she had abandoned jerk around on the bed.
The therapist closed his eyes. "Children... we can't predict how they'll cope with major changes in their lives. Lydia withdrew. She was lonely, and sought solace in all the wrong places. Her depression manifested itself as an imaginary friend. That imaginary friend never went away. Her dependence on him grew stronger until he gained a life of his own."
"You didn't answer my question."
The therapist glanced sideways at her. "I'm a doctor, and that is my answer. What you interpret from it is up to yo-"
Alarms began to wail in the room below as the body on the gurney fell still.
The therapist held his face in his hands as his elbows rested on the table. Her file lay open in front of him, and the fresh red ink stamped beneath her name screamed out at him.
DECEASED. DECEASED. DECEASED.
It echoed in his mind, not quite drowning out the constant whisper at the back of his mind.
FAILURE. FAILURE. FAILURE.
How many years would he have to face more stories like these? How many more cases would he have to declare as hopeless? How many nightmare would he have to have about ghosts, demons, possession, and madness?
His computer beeped, startling him into lifting his head as the screen turned black. A blinking line appeared in the center a split second before the first letters began to appear.
He read the message with a sick sort of fascinated horror.
"Lydia is okay. I can take care of her now.
Thank you."
Ugh. I had to write something. I'm feeling all angsty, and we all know about my obsession with these two.
So, I did my best to leave the ending up to interpretation. Was Beetlejuice real? Is the doctor going mad, and the message was his own manifestation of madness?
It's up to you. There's plenty of evidence to support and disprove either.
Yay for open endings!
Please review!