"And I will wander till the end of time,
half a life without you
My heart is broken"
The bedroom was certainly a sad sight to be seen. Broken and splintered furniture, piles of crumpled beer cans, and empty cigarette cartons that the cockroaches played hide and seek in littered the floor. All draped in a delicate veil of cobwebs and dust. Had it not been for the painful creaking sound of the eroded, rusting bed frame one would have assumed it was long abandoned. A low incoherent grumbling and hoarse cough followed by wet hacking came from beneath the pillows stained yellow and green. Beneath the piles of moth eaten blankets, a figure tossed and turned.
The ghoul opened his gray eyes, wincing at the green sunlight coming through the tattered remains of what were once curtains. He ran his grimy fingers through his white blonde hair. Another morning, or was it afternoon? What time was it? Better yet, what season was it? He hardly paid attention to the passage of time, save when the dead were boisterous in the street to indicate the comings and goings of the moon phases. He snapped his fingers so the window was now boarded up, shutting out the sounds and light of the waking Netherworld. If he could, he would shut himself in a pine box and sleep there till Gabriel sounded his trumpet announcing the end of days.
This was the fate worse than death.
Betelgeuse cracked his neck loudly and propped himself against the mangled headboard. Curling his thumb into his palm and wrapping his other fingers around the digit, he quickly pulled it upward. It made a metallic clicking that echoed off the decaying walls as his thumb now glowed brightly with a green flame. He lit his cigarette and shook the still extended thumb to snuff out the flame. Taking a long drag, he exhaled slowly looking back at the boarded window, once again greeting his day with recanting why he had shut himself away.
He knew Lydia would age, that's just what Breathers do. And every birthday, he swore to himself he'd start to distance himself from Lydia. Yet each year she lured him in more and more. As the years went by, she blossomed into a raving, beautiful woman like the softest, rarest flower that was worth every dragging second it took to bloom. But that innocent sparkle in those dark chocolate eyes that only teenagers possess began to slowly dim as she learned the ways of the world and it's cruel reality. Lydia was the perfect storm for depression to rain upon, but when high school and hormones were in full swing, things got darker. In a desperate effort to save herself, she tossed aside everything that made her his Lydia. The love of the strange and unusual, her cryptic poetry, she even started dying her hair a lighter color from her raven locks she'd been born with. That red headed bimbo of a stepmother convince her to start seeing a therapist and medicating herself to the point she was either an emotionless shell who had mastered the artificial smile or having destructive meltdowns that left her in tears and his heart in pieces. She had finally confessed to him that something needed to change. Drastically change.
What the ghost didn't realize is that he was the change she was referring to.
Betelgeuse sighed, not sure if he could sink any deeper into the filthy mattress. A mattress that was too big for a bachelor. He pulled the blanket closer to his face, breathing in the comforting scent of wet dog and mold. He didn't know how long it been like this, but ever since the day she told him she was leaving, there had been an emptiness he had not felt since he was a fledgling in the Netherworld. Save maybe when he realized the king sized bed he bought to share with Lydia would always have an empty side. Among the debris of his tormented outburst that had left half the Roadhouse in flames and Jacques without a bedroom, were still remnants of a dozen roses in a vase and a dusty black box that held a proper wedding ring.
Shit, he was crying again. That wasn't his style. Betelgeuse wasn't some wimp who cried over a dame. He was the most sought after the bachelor in the Netherworld after all, and he had a reputation to maintain. That was of course until word got out he a shell of his former self and heartbroken ghoul who was stood up over a Breather girl no less. It was an embarrassment he never really recovered from. He didn't know which was worse, the pitiful looks from the undead at his usual hangouts or everyone, including the whores at Dante's, snickering at how pathetic he was acting. Their marriage in the rush of saving the Maitlands from being doomed to the Lost Souls Room had been just as he put it, a marriage of "inconvenience". But then Lydia called him back after the chaos of what would become the first Co-Living Agreement with Breathers. Babs and Adam were seen as saints, not only from putting him back under Juno's heel but successfully bridging the gap between the dead and living. They were granted early passage to the other side without waiting through their contract as a show of gratitude. But for he and Lydia, their story was just beginning. As the years went on they had become closer than ever, the term best friends not doing their relationship justice. But thing violently turned when Lydia started coming home crying over boys and he would have to console her while a new feeling coursed through his veins.
Jealousy.
He knew he loved her. The first thing he loved over his trickery, scamming and double dealing since he'd met his fate to wander through the eternities. He would never admit it, but even the smug 'Ghost with the Most' longed for something more. Love was hard to come by in the Netherworld considering most spent their days wallowing in the shadows of the real world. Some calling out to their still living lovers who would never hear their cries. Some simply waiting patiently for age or fate to reunite them with their significant others. Of course it could be bartered from the brothels or corners as former prostitutes continued their promiscuous careers in the next life. But there was a longing he couldn't deny in his heart or his loins. Something passionate and inspiring that would give him the will to keep going. And for a moment, he thought he found it in Lydia. He had even kissed her once to see if that spark could be ignited. And it lit something in him that he knew would never die out. In his preparing of how to tell her his true feelings, to ask her to become his wife, he hadn't noticed the change in her.
Until it was too late.
He had prepared for days, paying Ginger to clean the Roadhouse making it more of a home. He was in the very process of setting the stage for proposing, when Lydia called him what would be the final time. He scoffed, remembering how she spat that she was leaving and demanded he not follow. As the ground was being swept from beneath his freshly shined boots, he recalled fragments of an ice cold speech about she had to go back to the light and finding God before picking up the last box of her things and walking out of the now empty bedroom. She didn't even noticed he bathed and got a new suit. But the real knife in his unbeating heart was her leaving boxes of her old things in the closet for him to find. Her drawings, her clothes, and even her red wedding dress.
The thought made him look at his own closet where he had relocated those things. As if one day she'd regret leaving the mementos of their years together behind and come looking for them. He sat up slightly to peer over the edge of the bed, reaching for the murky bottle that lay on the floor. He took a few long swigs of the amber liquid, his morning ritual now complete. Hopefully he'd be drunk by midday and could try again to find the motivation to prank his neighbors or haunt someone. Or maybe he knew he'd lay there and try to recount his times with her, so that they wouldn't fade as his other past lives did. Betelgeuse sighed as he took another long drag and stared as the smoke rose to the ceiling.
"You really did a number on me babes."
Well...I finally got the courage to post this. I've been working on this for about a year as well as some illustrations for a comic in the works based off this storyline. Hope you all enjoy!
~C.C