Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow

by Ten Story

What was he thinking? Alluring? How could he be thinking that about his little Lydia, who had had no shape to her when they had met for the first time? Who was awkward and sweet and funny and far too forgiving… She was still all those things, but now... she was beautiful. And sixteen. Prequel to "Prince Vince, Vampire Hunter."

7. Dawn

Dawn ~

An orange sun peeked over the hills in the Neitherworld. Covered in dirt, Beetlejuice sat on a mound next to a shovel. A hole six feet deep was in front of him. He took one last sip of his beer before throwing it off the edge of the yard into the void below.

Hopping in the hole carelessly, he curled up into a ball and juiced the shovel to start covering him. The dirt felt cold over his body, but soon he got used to it.

She was the thing he had kept him going. Visiting her had been his only real pleasure. Six hundred years had been nothing but tedious repetition, despite his attempts to liven things up in his world. And now there was no world without Lydia in it.

Before he allowed himself to be still, his last image was of her face, smiling at him. He chose to freeze that thought in time - to pretend everything was fine, and he was only taking a short nap while she went on vacation or some such thing. He wanted to ignore the truth - that he intended never to wake up again, so he went still with his heart happy, and yet broken at the same time.

In the world of the living, the yellow sun climbed higher in the sky as Lydia threw a lighted match onto two canvases in the backyard. She slowly watched the portraits she had done for the dance burn. Particularly she watched each feature of the one of Beetlejuice in living form crumple under the flame. It did nothing for her heart, but at least she had no more tears left to cry. Her body had been rung dry head to toe.

Maybe they had both been wrong, she considered - him for thinking she wasn't ready at all and her thinking that she was completely. Maybe this was for the best, she tried to think as a comfort to herself.

There were many maybes in her world right now, but at least there was one thing that she could say with certainty, with no maybe in the sentence. When they had first met, Beetlejuice would have done anything to anyone to get his way, to get ahead of the game somehow. And she was the one person he couldn't have done that to. His conscience had put such a firm roadblock there it had prevented him from even entertaining what he wanted ahead of what was best for her. Even now she was the only person he ever treated that way.

That was proof enough for her. Even though he hadn't said it aloud, he loved her, and always would. She would remember that most of all.