Chapter 9

Her reaction, although not exactly what he had been hoping for, was hilarious. She collapsed out of the air and landed on her bum, staring at him open-mouthed.

Despite the fact that he had really wanted the moment to seem serious so the apology would be more believable, it was just too funny to pass up a cackle for. So he rolled back into the air, kicking his boots in the air and giggling.

"All right!" Lydia growled, her ghostly energies starting to swirl. "Who are you, and what are you doing in my house?"

Beetlejuice jolted upright, startled. His predictions for how she would react were seeming more remote by the minute. Of course, he had imagined something along the line of her swooning, him catching her in his arms, and then having his wicked way with her . . . Nope. Wasn't happening, at least at this point.

"What do you mean who am I? It's me, your lovable poltergeist!" he spluttered.

"Ha! I know him better than that! He would NEVER apologize, not even to save his own afterlife!" Lydia revealed smugly. Beetlejuice spluttered indignantly.

"Here I am, practically on my knees begging for your forgiveness, only to have you mercilessly spurn me as a fraud!" he declaimed dramatically. To be honest, he had no idea where the words had come from, or what over half of them meant.

At the sight of his traditional ridiculous behaviour, Lydia's stance wavered. "But . . . it's impossible! You've never apologized before!"

Beetlejuice sensed he was close to a victory, and chose his words with care accordingly.

"There's always gotta be a first time," he said, shrugging his shoulders and looking at her intently.

Lydia was flabbergasted. It acted and sounded (and smelled) like the poltergeist she knew so well, even the stuttered apology showed a reluctance that he would be certain to have.

Besides, the real Beetlejuice would probably have killed an imposter by now. Unless the imposter was strong enough to overpower him. In which case, said imposter would probably have more important things to be doing than apologizing to her.

And so, trapped by her own traitorous thoughts, Lydia was forced to come to one conclusion. The monster was capable of feeling remorse after all. And technically, if he could feel remorse, then he wasn't a monster at all . . . No, no, she wasn't quite ready to face that train of thought yet.

"I . . . accept your apology," Lydia forced out.

Whooping with glee, Beetlejuice spun around the room. Lydia stared in disbelief. B had only been around for three days, and she had the feeling that once again, nothing would ever go back to normal.

--

Beetlejuice spent the rest of the day glued to the screen of the television, watching breathlessly as Christine fell into the arms of her illicit lover, the gardener Eduardo, while her husband made a deal with some gangsters.

By the time he finally managed to peel himself away, it was nearly dusk. He wandered about the house, looking for someone to spook. As it turned out, Fantasy was on hand, still not quite finished clearing out the house of everything she had broken.

Sneakily, Beetlejuice animated the broom and forced Fantasy to chase it all over the house as he flicked pennies at her head, and laughed audibly. After a mere fifteen minutes, Fantasy had bolted out the door screaming and pulling out her own hair, followed by a shower of change.

Beetlejuice lazily drifted through the floor into the basement. What he saw surprised him. Lydia was standing in front of a large pile of Delia's art, going over it contemplatively. What really caught his interest, however, was a life-sized bust of the Beetlesnake, poised menacingly over her head.

He had a thought, which at the moment seemed like genius. Silently, he drifted over, and slid inside the sculpture, stretching and shifting until he filled every contour.

"Hiya babe!" he said.

"WAAAGHH!" she screeched, leaping back. Recognizing his blunder, Beetlejuice slid out of the sculpture, and immediately tried to cover over the situation the usual way -- by talking fast enough that the other couldn't get a word in edgewise, and hopefully forgot what they were talking about in favor for what he was talking about.

"Hey, looks like Delia had better taste than I thought! Seems like she can appreciate true beauty when she sees it, I guess its a good thing I came around, 'cuz all her other stuff looked like shit. Did she do any other stuff based on me, or is this one just special?"

"It's special all right," Lydia muttered, having regained her composure.

Beetlejuice beamed, having completely missed the sarcasm. He swung around and started pacing the room heavily, fiddling with his hands, his eyes roving. Snapping his fingers, he plopped down onto the floor, and started going through his pockets. He had made it his personal mission to give Lydia a gift each day. Hopefully, she would warm up to him.

Lydia drew back, feeling vaguely horrified at the sheer number of bugs and rats concealed upon his person.

She watched him pull out of his pocket, of all things, a baby grand piano. As he did so, something dropped away from the keys, and rolled towards her. A little glass ball, which slowed, and then finally stopped, right at her feet. She picked it up, curious, and examined it.

A miniature explosion was trapped inside, fiery waves racing to the edges of its glassy confines, only to dissipate and withdraw into itself, into a vaguely spherical shape, compacting further and further, until all that was left was a small fiery ball, a fierce shade of deep red. Without warning, it exploded, and the whole process repeated itself.

"The birth of a star," Beetlejuice informed her, having come up behind her shoulder without her noticing. She did not notice his vague uneasiness.

"Which star?" she murmured, captivated.

"I dunno. Just some star," he said with forced cheerfulness, which she also did not notice. He hesitated, and then, against his better judgement (when had he ever listened to his better judgement anyways?) he told her, "You can have it if you want."

Lydia, who had been clutching the trinket tightly, loath to let it go, looked up at him suddenly, gratitude shining in her eyes. She made a sudden, quickly-aborted motion towards him, almost as though she had been going to hug him, and stepped back, thanking him sincerely.
Seeing Lydia happy made him very happy, and swept away the last traces of wariness.

Lydia floated through the ceiling, so she could put the trinket with her other belongings, in a tucked-away corner in the attic. Naturally, the other two gifts B had given her were there as well. The poltergeist obviously just knew the kinds of things she liked.

Sighing, Lydia picked up the fallen model of the town, and placed it back on the table, fixing the broken pieces with a twiddle of her fingers. Beetlejuice, who had followed her up, sqauwked indignantly. She ignored him.

Sulking, he started drawing pictures with his finger in the grime on the window. A large, stick figure Beetlejuice, with large bumps on his flexing arms, towering over the puny, cowering mortals. He added a tiny sandworm under his feet, for good measure.

Lydia was in a good mood, and feeling a bit mischievous. So she added her own finger to the fray, drawing herself even larger than the vain ghost, with her hands on her hips and a foot poised to squash.

Huffing indignantly, Beetlejuice drew a large machine gun in his picture's arms. Lydia, however, simply gave her drawing what she explained was an "impervious shield," (Imperva-what?!)

"Oh, this is war!" Beetlejuice exclaimed. He frantically drew a spark on Mini-B's finger, which he claimed turned her 'impervable' shield into a handful of snakes, which Lydia stepped on in much the same way that Beetlejuice was stepping on the sandworm.

"We've run out of window," Lydia remarked, making a mental note to herself to check the rest of the windows in the house to make sure they were not in the same condition.

Beetlejuice drew a tiny raining cloud over her head just to prove her wrong, but then had to admit, there was no more drawing room. Just then, Fantasy's shrill voice echoed faintly from downstairs.

"Dinner-time," Lydia said to herself, floating downstairs. It was her habit to preside over meals, as she was still the family matriarch, dead as she happened to be, and this was the first dinner they had had as a family for nearly a week.

Naturally, it was tense affair, Sara glaring at Fantasy, Fantasy glaring at Eddie, and Eddie glaring off into space, and Beetlejuice of course felt obliged to aggravate them, although discreetly for once.

Icing up all the food so it seemed like it was uncooked, which got everybody mad at Fantasy, whispering Eddie's name into his ear so that he thought the girls were calling his name and then playing innocent, which got him mad at everyone, and sharply yanking Sara's hair so that she cried out, which caused Fantasy to denounce her as an attention-seeking trouble-maker.

Ah well. Supper was doomed to be a failure anyways.

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