Author's Note: My first fic! :) Thought I'd give it a try after reading all the great ones on here! All the usual disclaimers (does one really need to do this? I mean, I think Tim Burton is really a little too busy to be going after lil ole me, right? And Geffen is on Forbes' list of "Richest Americans", so I think he's a bit busy, too, but I don't own any of the characters except for those of my own eeeevil devise, etc etc and all that rot).

This is basically what happens when one has a) too much finals stress b) too much wine and c) watches Beetlejuice all on the same day and/or night. Weird dreams become a vampiric plot bunny that sucks all your muse's energy away until...voila! This fic.

Reviews would be great as the muse is weakened by that damn Bunnicula's feeding, and she loves feedback, so, help a girl out here!

The story starts around two decades after the movie, Beetlejuice. (So present time.) It will have some elements of the cartoon, but mostly Movieverse. Be forewarned, this is not a fluffy, funny story, there will be plenty of violence, blood, angst, and lemons, as well as some scenes that are not for the faint of heart. You have been warned. This is rated "M" for a reason. I hope to create something fun and entertaining for all, but there are some hard roads ahead for our beloved characters.

I will be introducing new characters that are integral to the plot; many will be based on real world historical figures (may they all rest in pieces:). I hope that I do their characters justice, and that they would be pleased with how they have been portrayed.

On the off chance that one of my readers is distantly related to one of these persons of historical interest; whoops. It's a story. For fun. Don't take it personal, you're not them. And on that same off chance that you are one of the persons that I've taken liberties with, don't come scratching at my bedroom windows in the middle of the dark night unless you really mean it. ;)

This chapter is just basically a lead in and prologue so it will be short, but the muse is typing away this evening, so I might get another few chappies written as I have a shiny brand new account and the site won't let me update for another day, so I'm just going with it as the ideas form and I have the downtime to spare. I'm writing this as I upload it, so be aware I might be going back and tweaking chapters as I go along and the plot develops a life of it's own.

Just another quick mention, I've spent a bit of time in the UK in my life, so I have a tendency to spell things a little differently than the English US version at times.

Alright, I think we're all set. :) Enjoy!

The Darkworld

Prologue

Lydia Deetz had no idea what why she cared what happened in the world of the humans any longer. She was as different from them as literally the night was to day. She was now darkness; the humans were light. She vaguely remembered during her earlier life saying something to the effect that her life was one, big, darkroom...now it was a big and eternally Darkworld.

So why did she continue to come back here? Why did she continue to torture herself in this way? Why come back to a place that was memories, that was so far from her "life" as it was now that it might as well not exist?

She idly twisted the odd, old ring around on the ring finger of her left hand... she remembered it from the memories of this place, it was the only tangible thing that she had remaining to her from before...she wondered yet again why out of everything she had had, all she had managed to hold onto was this one thing... The ring from a memory that wasn't the most pleasant of the many from "before"...

Lydia's head snapped up quickly and she leaned closer into the sparse, dried foliage of the tree limb she crouched on as a light blinked on on the porch of the oddly-shaped house in front of and below her. Her eyes changed as the colors of her irises swirled from their normal deep, dark brown to an eerily red hue with a piercing shine from light refraction and her pupils shifted from their normal, large round shape to a slit of vertical black as she focused on the door that opened and the elderly-looking and frail man who came out onto the porch.

"Lydia? Is that you out there? Pumpkin, come inside, it's cold, and we miss you. Come back in, Lydia..."

Lydia's eyes suddenly seemed to be malfunctioning, they were becoming watery. She blinked quickly a couple of times, and a tear traitorously slipped down her ashen white cheek as her eyes slowly went back to their normal dark hue.

"Charles? Charles, come inside. What are you doing? You have to stop this...she's gone, honey, you have to stop. Come back inside. I'll ask Barbara to make you some of her hot cocoa that you love. Come inside, dear, that's right..." Lydia watched as the woman who used to be her stepmother gently wrapped her arms and soothing and coaxing words around the man who used to be her father and brought him back inside the house which use to be her home.

The man looked out into the darkness again before his wife led him back into the light, and for one, brief moment, Lydia could have sworn that their eyes met in the night.

The door slowly closed shut and Lydia's preternatural hearing heard the double snicks of the locks being thrown even from the distance she was at, and over the low humming noise of the wind, which had picked up and was blowing her long, black hair around her face, creating a momentary chiaroscuro of dark and light shapes in front of her eyes.

She turned like quicksilver on the branch, and, tossing her hair back, leaped from the limb to the soon-to-be frozen ground and ran, too quickly for a human's eyes to see, darkness moving through darkness, into the night, and away from the memories and the pain. The knowledge of the pain she had caused, and the pain that she wasn't able to protect them from, and she tried to run from the pain she lived with, every night. She never could outrun it.