Chapter 3
Beetlejuice floated casually next to Jacques the skeleton who was jogging at a moderate pace along the Lost Souls highway. The sun was setting, casting rays of amber and purple light that distorted in a hazy blur over the hot pavement. They were a mile outside of the Undercity but the discordant sounds of traffic, laughter, shouts, and bar music were already an audible hum. As they drew closer the pungent smells of sewers and waste wafted on the breeze. Beetlejuice inhaled deeply.
"Jacques you need to lighten up," Beetlejuice advised as he floated Jacques up into the air beside him. "You're wasting your afterlife if you ask me."
"Arrêtez! Beetlejuice put me down!" Jacques cried in his heavy French accent.
"Whatever you say," Beetlejuice said, sighing as he allowed Jacques to fall unceremoniously to the ground. The force of the impact dislodged the skeleton's left arm and leg with a loud crack.
"Sacre bleu! Beetlejuice can't you go pester someone else" Jacques said indignantly reaching for his detached limbs.
"Hey Jacques you're 'all right' now," Beetlejuice said bursting into a fit of laughter and flipping over in mid-air.
"Ha ha very funny," Jacques said, giving Beetlejuice a scathing look. He finished attaching his limbs and began to head toward the city once again. His companion floated down to walk beside him, his beetle boots clicking rhythmically on the sidewalk.
As they entered the outskirts of the city the dense smog glowed in a rainbow of undulating patterns as harsh neon lights flashed erratically. A few ghouls lurked in an alleyway, money exchanging hands, as they shared a pipe with a foul smelling odor. Across the street, a female monster with one large purple eye pushed a stroller filled with metal scraps and empty bottles.
"I know you won't ask, but Ginger's doing well. She really likes her apartment above my fitness center," Jacques said, glancing sideways at his friend. Beetlejuice said nothing to this.
"She's teaching a tap dancing class in the evenings twice a week now. The class is not that popular, but she has two regulars and that makes her happy."
Jacques was silent for a few minutes before saying, "Since you are already dead it wouldn't kill you to apologize to her, à mon avis." Beetlejuice just snorted in reply. The skeleton silently admitted defeat and the pair walked on in silence again.
"I assume you're going to The Sweaty Sock oui?" Jacques eventually asked as they came closer to the heart of the city. He had to yell to be heard over the angry shouts and honking of two ghouls whose cars had collided in a busy intersection.
"Yea, we've got a big poker game going tonight if you want in," Beetlejuice said with a smirk. "I'd love to relieve you of that cash that's weighing you down."
"Non, merci. You always cheat. Although I don't know why since it's your own bar and you're already making money off of everyone there." Jacques said, his disapproval apparent.
"What are you, my mom?" Beetlejuice asked with a pop. Suddenly, Jacques was wearing a dress and cradling an infant BJ in his arms. The baby wailed loudly, causing the people nearby to stare. Jacques frowned and dropped the squalling infant. The second he hit the ground there was another pop and Beetlejuice was again walking beside Jacques who was back in his fitness attire.
The Sweaty Sock came into view as they turned the corner. It was a narrow building with dark wood paneling and a sloping roof covered in moss. An illuminated wooden sign above the door had a gigantic dirty sock nailed to it. The stench of the sock was drifting up in visible waves of foulness, with flies buzzing noisily around it. To the right of the door another sign cheekily advertised "Liquor in the front and poker in the rear". No one was sure how Beetlejuice had acquired the place and he had always managed to evade the question when asked directly.
"BJ you've had this place for over a year now. I've never seen you commit to something this long. C'est bien!" Jacques stated, smiling.
"Woah! Enough with the 'c' word, Bones." Beetlejuice said with a hint of embarrassment. "I'm selling it any day now. There's always some sucker out there who I can convince to take it off my hands."
Jacques laughed at his friend. "You said the same thing a few months ago, and again a few months before that. If you are not careful people will start to think you're going legitimate, oui?"
Beetlejuice rolled his eyes and reached for the large brass handle on the foot shaped entryway. "They drink my liquor, I'm pretty sure they aren't able to think at all," he replied as he entered the bar, leaving Jacques laughing as he walked away.
The inside of the bar was dimly lit with wooden booths on the right and a timeworn bar along the wall on the left. A thick velvet curtain separated the bar area from the card tables at the back of the building. An ancient ghoul with jaundiced eyes and gray cracked skin was pouring a viscous green liquid into the cup of the only patron sitting at the bar.
Beetlejuice floated behind the bar and nodded a greeting to the bartender. He pulled a vinyl record from thin air and switched it with the one currently playing on the phonograph. A mix of blues and jazz began to play, the smooth notes of a sax filling the air. Pouring himself a glass of the house specialty, he took a deep swallow and perched himself in the corner.
A tall green creature with a red plume of feathers instead of hair emerged from the bathroom and stumbled drunkenly back towards the bar. Just as the man was about to sit, his chair was juiced a few feet to the left and the creature fell backwards with a loud squawk. Beetlejuice and the other patrons burst into laughter.
"Do you have to do that?" his bartender asked him.
"Don't sweat it gramps, he won't remember this through the hangover he'll have tomorrow," Beetlejuice said, still laughing as he knocked back the rest of his drink. The bartender just shook his head as he grabbed a soiled looking rag and began wiping down the bar.
The door to the bar opened and a petite woman with shadowy hair and large dark eyes made her way to the bar. Avoiding the drunken creature on the floor, she approached Beetlejuice.
"Um, excuse me but did I leave a dark red coat here last night?" the woman asked.
"Not just your coat babes; you left a trail of broken hearts a mile long last night. Can't believe you left here with that wart-faced scaly guy," BJ said grinning as he produced her coat from behind the bar.
"Wha .. what? I left here with someone?" the girl asked as she took her coat, her eyes going wide with shock.
"Yea, he walked over to you and said 'Did you just fart, cuz you're blowing me away'. After that you two were inseparable. He probably had to peel you off of him to pay for your cab," Beetlejuice reported.
The woman made a strangled noise and ran out of the bar without a backwards glance. Beetlejuice chuckled quietly to himself as he returned to his corner. In reality, the girl had been a drunken mess blubbering about her ex for most of the night. When she had reached her limit Beetlejuice had asked his car Doomy to drop her off at the address that was on her license. She didn't need to know that though. He had a reputation to maintain.
Unwillingly, he thought of her dark sad eyes. They reminded him of another pair of eyes. The pain came sudden and sharp and Beetlejuice refilled his glass, downing it in one large gulp. This had been a good week for him, he hadn't thought of Lydia at all until that woman had come into the bar. Now, unable to stop himself, he let images of her flow through his mind.
He remembered the last time he had seen his Lyds. She had been standing, hands on hips, pinning him with a frustrated glare. Her raven hair had been disheveled, with large curling wisps escaping her hair wrap to frame her face. She had looked like a vengeful pixie. To say that he had screwed up royally that night was the understatement of his afterlife. After thoroughly chastising him, she had sent him back to the Neitherworld. Wanting to make sure she had gotten home alright, he had juiced into a book on a shelf in her living room. Exhausted, his power almost completely tapped out, he had only been able to stay long enough to know that her parents were taking away her camera and darkroom because of what he had done. He had spent the next day planning on how he would fix things with her parents for her. Beetlejuice had even bought her a gift.
His efforts had ultimately been for nothing because Lydia had taken their ring off. He had been unable to see her room through his mirror and juicing into her world was impossible. At first, he had thought she was just punishing him for getting her into so much trouble, but the days had turned into weeks and he had still been unable to contact her.
The first year without his best friend he spent locked away in the roadhouse. He avoided Jacques and Ginger like the plague because he was tired of them asking about where Lydia was. Spending time with the teary eyed Doomy had been impossible. To keep himself busy he worked on idle projects like organizing his attic and cleaning some of the skeletons from his closet. He had been convinced that Lydia would ultimately come back.
When Beetlejuice had finally realized that she wasn't returning something inside him had snapped. He became the worst version of himself, ruthlessly terrorizing the inhabitants of the Neitherworld. No one had been safe from his wrath. It was during that time that Ginger had moved out. It was Jacques who had finally given him his wake up call. Although he couldn't bring himself to say it, Beetlejuice was eternally grateful to Jacques. Somehow the crazy bastard had stuck with him through the worst moments of his existence.
Beetlejuice had been forced to lay low for a while after that in order to avoid a sandworm sentence. During that time he had started fermenting his own liquor and selling it to make enough cash for rent. It was the best thing he had ever stumbled into. The materials cost him next to nothing and the fermenting process required almost no effort. Since he had invented the recipe while immersed in his depression over Lydia's absence, he had named the brew 'Torment'. When the bar had fallen into his hands it had seemed like a curious twist of fate. It was now the only Neitherworld bar to serve Torment and he was making a small fortune.
He wouldn't say he was happy, but he was probably as close as he was going to get. The bar was entertaining and it allowed him to prank and scheme at his leisure. The bartender had essentially come with the bar so he never really had to work. On most days he was even able to push Lydia out of his mind and have a bit of peace. Sadly, today wasn't one of those days. It was hard to forget someone who gave you so much to remember.
The record on the phonograph finished and Beetlejuice replaced it with another. Bill Withers started crooning out 'Aint no Sunshine When She's Gone' and the ancient bartender eyed Beetlejuice curiously.
"It's always a woman isn't it," the bartender said in a rough voice.
Beetlejuice grunted and replied snarkily, "With devilish good looks like mine, it's never just one."
"Funny, I don't think a single female has looked at you with anything other than horror in the past year," the bartender pointed out.
"Well it is frightening how sexy I am," Beetlejuice concluded haughtily.
The bar crowd had been growing steadily over the past hour and there was now a decent press of ghouls and monsters. A small group lingered in the back, waiting for the poker tournament to start. The door to the bar opened and Jacques appeared, slowly pushing his way towards the bar.
"I knew you couldn't resist the poker game," Beetlejuice stated as he juiced a stool for his friend at the end of the bar.
"Oui, but if you cheat tonight I'm going to play Celine Dion nonstop in the Roadhouse until your ears bleed," Jacques threatened.
Beetlejuice shuddered at the thought and reached under the bar to retrieve a bottle of Chartreuse. He poured a glass for Jacques, contemplating the challenge of cheating just enough to go up against the skeleton in the final round.
"I don't know why you bitch about me cheating. Without lips and facial tics your poker face is legendary," Beetlejuice complained.
"True, my poker face is incroyable," Jacques said smiling. He took a slow sip of his sweet and pungent liquor.
"Seriously where does that go?" Beetlejuice asked incredulously.
"Que?" the skeleton questioned.
"The liquor or the food you eat. Where the fuck is it going? I mean I don't know if you've noticed Bones but I can see through your chest. That liquor should just be pouring directly onto the stool."
Jacques chuckled heartily. "You have your secrets BJ and I have mine." Beetlejuice continued to stare curiously each time Jacques took a sip. Whatever the secret was, he couldn't figure it out.
His drink finished, Jacques got up from his stool and started to make his way toward the tournament room. Beetlejuice disappeared with a loud pop and became a fly buzzing easy over the crowd. The ghost flitted about the room taking in snatches of disjointed conversations. Just when he was about to return to Jacques, he caught the end of a strange conversation.
"…stronger every day. Honestly, it's disturbing," a burly monster with bulging insect eyes and red fangs was saying to a similar looking monster across the booth from him.
"I don't get what the ring has to …" he didn't get to finish his statement before the other monster punched him in the arm.
"Shut your mouth about that stuff when we're outside the manor. You want to get us killed?" the monster growled at his companion.
"Damn, you didn't have to hit me that hard. I was just wondering. I guess it will be soon now huh?"
"Yea, any day now according to the weaver. It can't happen quick enough, I'm bored with all this waiting BS."
"Same here. Anyway, are we playing poker?"
"Sure lets go."
Beetlejuice buzzed away and popped back into his natural form next to Jacques. He ran his hands through his shaggy hair and looked back towards the monsters. He couldn't remember if he had ever seen them here before. Noticing Jacques looking pointedly at his suit cuffs, Beetlejuice sighed. He rolled his sleeves up past his elbows and snapped his fingers, making a small green visor appear on his head.
"If I win, you have to switch your arms with your legs and stay that way for a week," Beetlejuice said.
"And if I win, you have to take a shower and brush your teeth every day for a week," Jacques challenged.
"Deal."
A/N: Reviews are super appreciated, thanks to everyone following this story