AN:3/ Alright, so I own nothing! Well, except for the plot and a few OCs.

ON WITH THE SHOW!

There were several things that Juno despised. She hated paperwork, mainly, but she also detested skim milk, yappy little lap dogs, prissy upper-crust snobs, bigotry, fascism, those little sandwiches at parties that never do anything for one's appetite except make you feel anorexic, jigsaw puzzles that were missing one or more pieces, pink, and several other things that to list them would take a year and a half.

But the one thing that really made her rant and rave, mostly because she loved the law more than she loved a nice cuban and a good glass of vintage red (which was really saying something), was a loophole. Now, granted, she understood that no matter what she did, about a rough 50% of loopholes would remain, she was still on a villigent witch-hunt for the dratted things.

This was why, when Betelgeuse had managed to wriggle his way out a major sentence, she sat down at her desk and chain-smoked her way through a four-day marathon of Seinfeld mixed in with the massive tangle of red tape he'd left for her to file through, she'd been steaming. If she hadn't been dead, then she would have died from a brain anyurism caused by extreme frustration and unexpressed anger. Don't get her wrong, she didn't hate the spector himself. It was just that his antics thoroughly PISSED. HER. THE. FUCK. OFF.

Now, however, she felt like someone had punched her in her slashed throat. Uncharacteristic worry spread through her mind like a cancer as she read a single paragraph on the letter over and over. Miss Argentina bit her lip and fiddled anxiously with the slits of skin on her wrists. This would kill the poor, dead bastard, she thought as she pushed back her chair and scrambled through her massive filing cabinets.

"Juno? Honey?" Miss Argentina rocked back and forth on her heels. "What's the matter?"

"Missy," Juno said through her clenched teeth. "we've got a problem. Granted, it's Geuse, so that shouldn't be a big surprise." She paced the length of her office as she read Betelgeuse's rather hefty file. Geuse's overworld life had never been much of secret because, as much as she hated to admit it, the guy was a celebrity in his own right. He'd lived in England at the start of the Bubonic Plague, survived that somehow, only to suffer from what the breathers now know as PTSD and ended up jumping into the Thames. Being a suicide, he was immediately given to Juno (who had only been part of the bearucratic mess for about seven years at that point) as an assistant. He showed a penchant for mischief even then and caused so much trouble that they had to put a Power of Three curse on his name.

Fastforward a little more than half a millenium, Betelgeuse had been around long enough to be savy with his ghostly powers. He was now the most powerful 'geist in the Neitherworld. And that was reason the higher-ups had passed that damned letter on to Juno. It was dated to have been a proposal from around 1786 and its authorization date was yesterday March 27, 1992.

"But the dead can't be brought back to life anymore." Protested Miss Argentina. "Reincarnation ceased after 1348 during the Withdrawl of the Dead Compromise. The Black Death forced so many people to an early grave that there was no way anyone could sort everyone out in time to allow them back to the aboveworld so that they could finish out their leftover time! That's why the Neitherworld began giving out real estate." She furrowed her brow. "Everybody knows that."

"Yeah, well, Betelgeuse died in 1347." She stomped her foot. "He was supposed to have been reincarnated, apparently. And since he's so much trouble, the higher-ups probably just want a break for about half a century." She violently smashed her lit ciggarette into the skull-shaped ashtray on her desk. It'd been a very nice gift from a personal friend of hers. The side was even inscribed with spidery silver handwriting that said To Smoke or Not To Smoke, That Is The Question! "And you know what a vacation means for me?" She asked dangerously, already lighting up the start of her third pack of the evening.

"Erm..more paperwork?" Miss Argentina said hesitantly.

"MORE PAPERWORK!" Juno slammed her fist down on the table. "Damn you, Geuse!"

"Damnit, Betelgeuse." Muttered Lydia as she tossed and turned, trying to get some sleep. "Stop staring at me!" She cracked open one eye and there he was, just like he'd been a few minutes before, hovering over her bed lazily with a huge grin on his white face. He floated backwards and right into her mirror, where he stayed put, but continued to gaze at her unabashedly.

"But I love staring at sexy things." He purred.

"Fuck off." She covered her head with the massive amount of pillows, hoping to shut him out.

"Gladly...with your help." He cackled madly and her covers flew off of her bed. The pillows wriggled out from under her head and she growled, clutching them with all her might to keep them from joining her bedclothes which were currently doing a jig around the room.

"BJ, I need to get to sleep!" She wrestled down her mattress. It bucked like a wild bronco and she held on desperately. "If you don't stop it, I'll call off the frickin' prank!" Everything immediately settled down and she gathered up her covers from the mirror, over which they had fallen. Betelgeuse blocked out her reflection, his wild grin replaced by a decided pout.

For some reason, the pesky, petulent poltergeist found her mirror to be the perfect place to hang out for the time being. He insisted it was because he'd needed to scope out his working environment. Of course, this meant that he also needed someplace to stay temporarily since he was just too lazy to 'juice himself between the Neitherworld and the land of the living every few hours. She'd protested, but he'd whined until she caved.

And right now, she was wishing that she'd put up a better fight. He pulled a face at her, a red and yellow snake tail creeping out of his nose and writhing around. "Boo." He rumbled, his gravelly voice even deeper now that he had a serpentine nasal blockage. Rolling her eyes, she let the cover fall back into place. "Aww, come on babes! I was jus' jokin'. Can't a dead guy have a little fun? C'mon, work wid me here!"

"I could say the same to you." She said, finally pulling the bedspread off and throwing it haphazardly back on her bed. "A bit of cooperationg from you would be nice. If we're going to be roommates for the next three days, then we each have to compromise." She grabbed her pillows off of her dressed and replaced them. "That means you have to respect-"

He made a disgusted, retching noise and stuck out his tongue. "Yelch, respect and compromise, ya know I hate it." He pressed his red fingertips up against the glass. Pleading with her wasn't below him. Although, Betelgeuse did have pride...somewhere. It was probably buried under all of his junk at the Roadhouse. He just didn't care at the moment. She glared at him fiercely, the threat in her eyes was sincere. "Alright, alright! Sheesh.." He placated. "Fine, what are the r-ru-ru-" Face and mouth contorting around the simple word, he couldn't even say it.

A tiny giggle escaped, but she quickly covered it with a cough. "Beej, you can't keep me awake. I love the dark as much as the next person, but my teachers aren't very forgiving of falling asleep in class." In fact, now that she thought about it, the teachers of Miss Shannon's weren't forgiving period. Her classmate Elanor had had her knuckles smacked with a ruler for simply doodling in the margins of her notes. And poor Bertha, who was very nice albeit a bit slow, was made to stand with her nose in the middle of a chalk circle just because she was caught chewing on a pencil.

He blew a raspberry. "Stiffs, the lot of 'em. I've seen dead people more lively than those cu-"

"Beej!" She gasped, her cheeks flushed.

"Whatever, those bitches," He smirked at her, as if waiting for her approval of his language."need to be taught a lesson of their own!"

Catching what he was implying, she wondered what sort of monster she'd let loose. She'd need to keep an eye on this situation. "Absolutely not, I know what you're thinking and it is a definite N-O. In case you don't understand that, NO, and again negative."

"But baaaaabeeeessss-"

"No." She said firmly, climbing back into bed. The space between them, despite the fact that it honestly meant nothing considering he could phase through the mirror at any point, comforted her. "When you turn on the 'juice, I have no idea what's going to shake loose. I want a nice, planned, artful prank. No snakes, lizards or unnecessary creepy-crawlies. No tacks on the teachers' chairs, and certainly no tricks involving the principal. I brought you back here and I could send you back just as easily."

"Not if you have metal plate screwed onto those plump little lips of yours." He mentioned casually, his tone sickeningly sweet.

She narrowed her eyes. "Oh, we're bringing up the past again? What happened to 'under the bridge and all the way downstream', huh?"

"Touchy." He snickered and pretended to wipe away a tear. "Oh, Lyds, can't an ol' deadbeat like myself reminisce over happy times?"

"Sure, just do it quietly." She snapped, despite the quirk at the corners of her lips. One good thing about having him around was that she was smiling more. She sighed, she hadn't felt quite like this since the Maitlands had taken their opportunity to ascend. This probably signalled insanity because what sort of normal person would feel happier with the dead than with the living? She glanced at the mirror and Beteljuice waved cheekily. Inwardly, she grinned, knowing that he'd probably creep on her while she slept despite her warnings.

Hmm, no normal person would act like her, she decided before drifting off. But that was because she was strange and unusual.

Clare Brewster knew she was perfectly perfect in like, every way, like totally. The way her hair like curled up at the ends and her totally fab nose had just the right amount of puckish-cutie-pieness. Her wardrobe was like totally awesome, courtesey of Mumsie and Daddykins. Clare was such a totally hot babe, she knew that because all of the football players from the boys school across the street would wolf-whistle at her as she sashayed her like petite butt home from school to her yoga instructor's studio.

Like, everyone knew that Clare ran the school. totally adored her because Clare was well-rounded and stuff. Also because she was very hot, but would always call it 'sensational beauty'. Clare totally outdid the rest of the gymnastics team like, all of the fucking time, so she didn't understand why there was a team, like, in the first place. Her grades were like, off the wall, and all of the teachers sucked up to her because most of them had slept with her Daddykins and she like, knew, and they like, knew she knew.

So she'd always gotten her way. Like totally. Well, she had until that bitch Lydia Deetz had come along. Clare wasn't even sure the girl was like, a girl. How could someone stand having such terrible hair? Seriously, it was down to her shoulders, black as coal, and stuck out in every direction like she'd like, gotten caught in an electrical storm. Obviously Deetz was born to be like, the Bride of Frankenstein. And when Clare had tried to like, help by pointing out her like, flaws, Lydia's reply was stupid. "Frankenstein was the doctor, not the monster. The monster never had a name. I would be the Monster's Bride."

From that point on, Clare Brewster like, totally hated that terrible Lydia Deetz. For one thing, Deetz was smart and Clare could not, like, stand smart people. Mostly because smart people were hard to like, manipulate. Also because they were hard to insult and that meant Clare would have to think. Clare did not like thinking. It gave her headaches and dulled the sheen of her hair. Being blonde was hard work, like totally. So everytime she had a fight with Deetz, she'd have to, like, redo her hair.

Her latest scheme to embarrass Deetz had gone swimmingly. Like totally. Deetz went home ugly and soaked and, like, utterly humiliated. But now she had a better, bigger plan in mind. Like totally. It was going to be the social death of that stupid, smart goth bitch and Clare was, like, going to be the grave digger.

Lydia awoke to find that the space between the posts of her canopy bed had been covered in spidersilk during the night. Ginger the tap-dancing spider hung in the middle of the massive web snoring loudly. The gothic-styled girl yawned and stared sleepily at the foot of her bed, too tired to ponder the implications of that discovery. She stumbled out of bed, slightly twitching as her body did when her blood sugar was low in the mornings. "Urgh." She pulled on her favorite houserobe and fumbled for the lightswitch just outside in the hallway.

One glass of strawberry milk and a handful of dried banana slices later, she was awake enough to glance at the clock. She still had about two hours before school, giving her enough time to get a shower and get dressed. Hopefully, Betelgeuse wouldn't cause a ruckus and make her late-

CRASH.

"EEEEEKKKKKKKKKKKKKK! CHARLES, CHARLES! GET IT! GET IT! SMUSH IT INTO OBLIVION!"

She closed her eyes. That would be Delia.

"DIE, DIE, DIE!"

And that would be Charles.

Smash! Thump, thump, Thump, crash!

"And there goes Delia's newest scuplture." She grumbled as she got up to see what was the matter. Delia nearly fell down the steps as she ran, still screaming and shouting gibberish. She bumped into Lydia, nearly knocking them both to the floor. "What's wrong, Delia?"

Delia's hysterics quieted slightly as she saw her calm stepdaughter. She grabbed Lydia's shoulders desperately. "You..ahhahah..love spiders don't you, honey?" Delia's eyes were wide and crazed. "Ahhahaha...there's a giant..a..a..giant...tarantula the size of a pitbull in our room!"

Unsure of how to take this situation, Lydia patted her stepmother soothingly on the shoulder. "Erm, it's okay. I'll...uh..take care of it for you." Ignoring Delia's high-pitched grateful whimpers, she took the stairs two at a time. What she saw both shocked and, sadistic as it may be, amused her. Her father, his fragile emotional state of being causing him to shake violently in his worn slippers, was fending off Ginger with a piece of Delia's shattered porceline scuplture and a pillow.

Ginger appeared to be confused and was obviously just trying to get past the strange man in her way. "Dad, just let me take care of this." Lydia gently eased the knobby bit of 'art' from his hand.

"We need to call the exterminator!" Exclaimed Charles Deetz in a squeaky, panicked voice. "Lydia, get back before it tries to eat you!"

"Did somebody say 'exterminator'?" Lydia felt like punching him right now, she really did. Betelgeuse, dressed in an outfit that Dr. Venkmen would have been proud of, came running into the room. He had a whip at his side and a green aerosol can that read 'Bug-B-Gone'. A pencil-thin mustache covered his upper lip and he'd put on a green safari hat.

"H-h-how.."Spluttered her father as he stared at Betelgeuse in wonder. She braced herself for the recognition, the screams of terror, and the fleeing of the premises. It never happened.

"Mr. Beetleman, at your service, sir!" Betelgeuse grinned and bowed low. "Handy-dandy handy man and exterminator extraordinair!" She frowned at him, he was enjoying this role way too much. What a ham! "I was in the neighborhood and heard the tell-tale screams of someone in need." Then as a afterthought, Beej smiled slyly and wrapped a casual arm around Charles' shoulders. "Of course, we'll have to discus payment and fees later,"

"Whatever, just get that thing out of here!" Shouted her father. He ran downstairs to join her stepmother, who was now quietly sobbing into a monogramed handkerchief.

Lydia gritted her teeth. "Beej!" He simply grinned and shrugged, then snapped his fingers and Ginger was gone from her parents' room. He sprayed around some Bug-B-Gone for show and made a performance out of the entire thing. "Is she gone for good?" The spider hadn't done any harm, why hurt it? After all, he was kinda Ginger's creator in a sense, how could he do something like that!

"Not really," He whispered as he laid down a few labelled spider traps. "I just sent 'er back to the Neitherworld to my place. We'll keep 'er there 'till we need 'er."

She nodded. "Probably safer that way."

Once Betelgeuse had finished his job and the Deetzes saw that the spider was truly gone, they couldn't thank enough. When he pretended to leave, her dad stuffed a handful of cash down his front pocket. Suffice it to say, Beetlejuice wouldn't have to worry about money for a while. He grinned, reappearing in her mirror and counting out the bills. "I should really make this handyman gig a thing."

"Oh? Just like your bio-exorcist job?" She quipped while packing up her bookbag.

He shrugged, tucked the money into his usually starved wallet, and phased out of her mirror. "Ya don' have to go to school today, babes." He told her while examining his dirty fingernails with false interest. "I could 'juice ya up some chicken pox or somethin', then you'd be outta school for a while." With a snap, her entire bookbag was devoid of her books again.

"But I have a test!" She protested, trying to shove her books back into her bag. They floated up to the ceiling out of her reach.

"Pfft. They'll have to let you make it up." He waved a dismissive hand. "You wanna scare Clare into the next century or what?"

"Or what." She muttered under her breath. Arguing was futile, she knew that in the end he'd convince her and she'd skip school. She looked up. He was giving her a puppydog face with his lower lip stuck out and his eyes gone wide and starry. "Fine, but this better just be an illusion, I don't wanna be really itchy."

"Unsuit yourself." He said. When the juice hit her, it felt like a volt of fuzzy lightening had zapped through her body. It heated the air, but not to an unpleasent degree. His juice wrapped around her like a snake, enfolding and enclosing her completely. For a few seconds, it was impossible to breathe as if the power had compressed her lungs. All of this took only a moment, then she was gasping for air. She looked down at her hands and saw only her normal, pale skin marred by nothing more than the underlying blue of her veins.

"Are you sure it worked?" She asked him doubtfully.

"Look in the mirror, babes." She gasped because all up and down her arms was an angry red rash that crept up and showed through the collar of her shirt.

"Deadly voo!" She pulled up her sleeve to reveal a small bite mark. "Nice thinking, Beej.I can say I was bit by that terrible spider." She chuckled. "What a brilliant plan. Now..what to tell Dad and Delia so that they don't rush me to the emergency room?"

"Just say that the bite isn't deadly, you had check it out for you and he said to stay home and rest for a couple of days." Betelgeuse'd had much experience in making up stories. He lied practically every minute of every day. Honesty just didn't sit well with him, it put him off his lunch. Speaking of lunch, he snatched the bowl of beetles from his coat and began crunching.

"Ew.." Lydia shuddered. "I'll be back up after a bit." She grabbed some clean clothes for her shower. She sniffed her houserobe and made a face. "Blech! Your Bug-B-Gone smells like something died!"

He cackled and flipped over in mid-air. "See ya later, aligator."

"In a while, crocodile."

Delia and her dad were just too easy to fool. Delia insisted on slathering calamine lotion all over the affected areas, so Lydia was forced to sit through the motherly clucking. Meanwhile, her father went on and on about how brave his little girl was for helping . Thank goodness Delia allowed Charles to make Lydia the soup. Chef Ramsey would have had a field day with Delia's cooking, especially when she tried to make anything that included more than three ingredients. After much ado about nothing, she was promptly sent to bed with a glass of milk and the bottle of lotion. Lydia crossed her fingers that they wouldn't come and check on her.

First though, she was going to have to take a shower. What the hell was in that Bug-B-Gone? It smelled like he'd liquified something that had been rotting in putrid mud for years. And now that smell was all over her clothes and everything. Hopefully, the nightgown and robe wouldn't need burning. The black silk gown was her favorite gift from her grandmother, who had sadly passed away four years ago. Sighing, she allowed herself to dwell on her few fond memories of New York.

Back before Lydia had moved to Themiddleofnowhere, Maine, she'd lived most of her life in New York, New York. She'd hated it, too. The only good thing was the growing gothic scene that was rapidly gaining popularity thanks to the emergence of bands like the Sex Pistols and Alien Sex Fiend. Oh, and there was her grandmother. Grandma Meena was a New York woman through and through. She was tough and heaven help the poor sap that tried to cross her. One time, about a week after her eighty-third birthday, she'd beaten back a guy who'd broken into her apartment using only a pair of salad tongs and a thimble. Best of all, she was the only one in Lydia's entire immediate family that truly understood her.

Grandma Meena was Charles's mother and had introduced Charles and Virginia, Lydia's biological mother. However, as much as she'd loved Virginia, she hated Delia. She lived just long enough to see Charles and Delia get married. That had been the cause of the move in the first place. Charles had felt so much guilt over Meena's death that he had a breakdown. So his doctor advised that he go on a vacation for a while to someplace quiet and serene and that was how this entire mess began.

The steaming water drizzled down in a continous stream that fogged up the glass of the shower stall. Lydia rested her forehead against the cool glass. What the hell was she doing? She'd called back a disgusting, cruel, sadistic poltergeist just because she missed having someone to talk to. That was beyond sad, it was just plain pathetic. Beetlejuice had nearly killed her own dad, almost forced her into marrying him, and..and... "Fuck." She growled.

What did it matter anyway? That happened years ago, her dad was fine, and the Maitlands were in a better place now. Beetlejuice had let everything go, so shouldn't she? Enough of this self-examination, either she accepted the fact that she was happy Beetlejuice had come or she could send him back. So she made up her mind for the final time and that was that. Maybe she'd invite Beej to stay for a while after they'd finished with Clare. Would he want to?

She shook off these thoughts and finished quickly. When it came to Beetlejuice, it was best not to overthink things.

He was waiting for her when she returned. He grinned, showing his unsightly green teeth and she found herself smiling shyly back. "Hey, babes, I was just thinkin'..." She snorted. "Laugh all you want, but sometime it happens. Anyway, I remember that once upon a freakin' time, you wanted to see the Neitherworld-"

Her jaw dropped. "You couldn't be offering what I think you are, are you?"

"If I'm lyin', then I'm dyin' ...again." He twisted his wrist and a slip of paper popped into his hand. "Like before, I can't tell ya the words, but I wrote 'em out for ya. This incantation'll take ya straight to the Neitherworld." He stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Hm, I'd better show ya what my place looks like so that you don't end up somewhere random." Beetlejuice snapped his fingers and a model of his house came into being. "Looks like that, get it?"

"Got it." She nodded.

"Good. Send me back and I'll wait for ya."

"Right, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!" With a loud crack like lightening, Betelgeuse disappeared. The piece of paper that he'd been holding floated gently to the floor where she picked it up.

"Though I know I should be wary, still I venture someplace scary," She visualized his home in her head and focused as hard as she could. There, that's where I want to go! "Ghostly hauntings I turn loose...Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!"

The air in the room chilled to the point where her breath fogged up before her eyes and the sunlight creeping in from her window dimmed. Shadows danced on the walls, which began to steadily grow upwards with the agonized groans of stretching wood and plaster. The walls changed from the sunny yellow Delia had enforced to a dark purple-black. She touched them in awe and found cold stone beneath her fingers. "Whoa..." She breathed. A bright light flashed around her and suddenly she was in a form-fitting black pvc body suit draped with a red spiderweb-print poncho that just barely grazed the ground. Taking a moment to steady herself, Lydia grabbed the knob of the oddly shaped door that had popped up in front of her. "I feel like Alice about to enter Wonderland." She thought aloud.