A Walk Around the House of a Family
By: Kichara
Well, Kichara the Review Whore thanks you all! I got 2 new reviews in 2 days and it actually got my lazy butt to finally finish this chapter. I just hope it doesn't sound too choppy. I've written and re-written and altered it so I think it makes sense, but that could just be me cuz I'm living off of a steady diet of pixy sticks and Code Red Mountain Dew. Enjoy much and tell what you think (and please don't spork me!) Although it would be terribly amusing to have a grave stone with "Here Lies Kichara, Death by Spork, May we All Benefit From her Absence and Now she Can't Poke Us With Badgers" :P
*~*~*~*~*
Something smelt good. That was the first, very vague thought that Beetlejuice had and he rolled over in bed, slowly waking up. Which was always a slow process, and could take hours to complete if he wanted to.
"Daaaaaaaaad!!!!!" Not that it ever happened. Something started pulling on his arm and he groaned, burying his head in the pillow. "Daaaaaaaaaad!!" The sing-song voice repeated and he grumbled, trying to ignore it and get back to sleep. And then he was hit by a small shower of ice-cold water.
The ghost bolted up, dripping and blinking in confusion at the young woman standing by his bed with a bucket over one shoulder, cocky grin on her face. He growled, but was cut off by her chipper voice. "Now don't get grumpy. I made breakfast and have been trying to get you up for the past half an hour." She bent over, kissing him on the nose and he rolled his eyes to the ceiling, smiling good-naturedly.
"Alright, alright." He said, feigning grumpiness as he stood up. "But it had better be a dammed good breakfast."
She tossed him the towel that had been slung over her slender shoulder, still grinning. "Hey, I'm the one that can actually cook, remember?"
"Brat. I'm getting better at it and you know it." He grumbled, toweling his hair dry and following her out of the bedroom and into the living room.
"Mayyyyybe." She giggled and winked at him as he sat down at the table and she placed a plate in front of him, sitting down opposite him with her own plate.
"So you're goin' down to the studio today right?"
"Mmhmm." She said around a forkful of food, managing a close-lipped smile at him, amused by the fact that she wanted to smile, but had a mouthful of food.
"Whatcha doing?"
She swallowed the food and took a sip of her coffee before answering. "We should be getting the final version of 'Harsh Wind' done and I want to run a new idea through everyone."
"That's the song that's um, isn't it the one about the girl and the guy and she left him."
She shook her head. "Nuh-uh, it's the one with the haiku chorus, remember?"
"Oh yeah." He smiled at her fondly. "Very original idea, I might add."
"Thanks." She beamed as she shoveled in another bite of food and swallowed, then continued. "I thought so too." She cast a quick look at the bat-shaped clock on the wall behind him. "Speaking of which, I should get going. I've got to open up today and the guys get grumpy if they have to wait around in the morning. I'd kick their ass if I didn't love 'em so much." A soft laugh tickled her throat as she stood up, gathering together her dirty dishes and setting them in the sink, rinsing them off and placing them in the dish washer, then hurried out of the room.
Nicky hurried to her room, snatching a worn satchel from a hook on the wall. The bag was extremely raggedy, the big spider (although it was a bit hard to tell that was exactly what it was) that was embezzled on the side of it coming off in more than one place. She stubbornly refused to get rid of the bag, as it had been a rather special birthday present. Quite a few years back, there had been a satchel that was on display in a store window that she and her Dad saw whenever they had to make a trip to the grocery store. She'd fallen in love with it, and he'd decided to get it for her for her birthday.
However, when he went to go buy it, it was gone, purchased by someone earlier that day, so he bought a plain one instead, cut a spider out of fabric and painstakingly sewed it on the side as a replacement. Nicky had almost cried when he gave it to her and told her about it, telling him it was hundreds of times better than the one she'd wanted from the store. She smiled at the memory, taking a moment to let her fingers trail along the cloth before grabbing her lyric notebook and shoving it into the knapsack. The young woman slung it over one slender shoulder and half-jogged out of the room, shouting out a good bye as she ran out the front door.
The morning air was crisp and pleasantly cool as she hurried out onto the front lawn. The young woman stopped, taking it in and looking around her, at the sky that was flushing from a deep purple into a bright orange, the crooked house behind her that was her home, and the grass at her feet. She blinked, crouching down and touching the dewy blades, realizing it was the exact same spot where she'd arrived, all those years ago. Nicky stared at the untidy grass for a long moment, then stood up and ran back into the house. Dad was still in the kitchen, draining the remains of the coffee and she danced over to him, giving him a light hug and gently placing kiss on the end of his nose.
"Forgot." She explained sheepishly and turned to leave, casting out another goodbye over her shoulder, "Love you, I'll see you later tonight, okay?"
He grinned, beaming and nodded. "Alright, see ya tonight, kid." She smiled back at him, the gentle upturning of her lips full of simple, child-like love, than ran back out of the kitchen.
Beetlejuice ran a hand through his messy hair, scratching at it vigorously as he smiled to himself. He finished off his coffee, and rinsed the mug off, placing it in the dishwasher with the rest of the breakfast dishes. The kitchen sink was almost always empty now, unlike the hundreds of years when a steady pile of dirty dishes would always be in it that he'd neglect to clean. They would sit there, abandoned, until they'd either become fused to each other with fungus, or grow legs and crawl off, while the rest of them would eventually throw away and he'd just get new one's. Which he would never clean. An excellent show of laziness and the vicious cycle of it, he mused with a grin.
But only a couple of days after Nicky had come to live with him, she'd pulled a chair up to the sink, rolled up her sleeves and (literally) attacked the dishes, scrubbing them all clean and spotless. She'd actually motivated him to fix the dishwasher, which in turn made it easy to keep the kitchen a livable environment where one didn't have to worry about piles of unwashed dishes and the slime clinging to them. Her presence had been more motivating than he'd ever imagined it would be, getting him to do all sorts of things he'd always been too lazy to do before.
Like get a job. That particular experience hadn't happened all that long ago, when Nicky had decided that she wanted some extra money, and had landed a job at a fast food place called The Grease Pot that had just opened. Because they needed more people (and because he felt bad about sitting around the house and not doing anything constructive while she worked), he'd managed to get a job there too. It hadn't been all that bad, and he and Nicky got all the free food they could want.
And then one day while Nicky was mopping up the floors and singing to herself, she got the attention of a man sitting at one of the tables. He loved her singing and immediately asked her if she was interested in being the lead singer of a band he was putting together. She'd laughed at first, sure that he was only joking with her, but he'd assured her he wasn't. The idea got her thinking and after work that day she walked down to his studio to check it out and talk with him more. The next she'd quite from the Grease Pot and had been singing and writing songs ever since.
She hadn't really liked the band he, Mr. Ashfield, had put together, but with her help, they got a new and better one together. Nicky wrote almost all of their songs, which were performed in various styles of rock. She was extremely happy and had made her dad quit his job, as the only real reason why she hadn't protested him working was because it was fun to have someone to throw French fries at (which always ended in epic Fry Wars) when the manager wasn't looking, now wanting only for him to support her singing.
The ghost drifted into the living room, stopping to look over several pictures sitting atop the entertainment center, which hosted a huge TV and a collection of over a thousand movies. Both he and Nicky were huge movie buffs. It was a ritual that they picked one night out of the week to just watch videos until they fell asleep on the couch, a forgotten bowl of chocolate-covered grasshoppers sitting on the floor in front of them.
The pictures were only of him and Nicky, as he really didn't have anyone else whose picture he'd really care to have put on display in the living room. She'd proven to have a knack for photography at an early age after she'd come across an old camera in the backyard. The piece of machinery was rather exceptional, as it was home to a little spirit. Once she'd cleaned it up, the harmless creature had woken up, materializing into tiny hazy cloud that had curled up against her chin. She'd bonded with it immediately, calling him Igor and the spirit had happily fallen back into the camera. It's presence made the camera float around, always taking pictures of Nicky and Beetlejuice, neither of them realizing it until the film would finish and he'd get it developed for her.
She'd arranged the pictures in chronological order, starting from pictures when she was a scrawny five year old hanging from his shoulders to when she looked as though she were about eight years old and he was teaching her how to ride a bike, to when she looked as though she were about eleven and he was teaching her how to fly. She still wasn't all that good at it, even now, but could go for short distances, although she said she preferred not wasting the energy trying to perform the task unless she had to.
The whole aging process with Nicky was rather unnatural. She didn't age normally, doing so at an extremely slow pace and as she did so, she began to take on the appearance of a dead person more and more, slowly losing the fleshy tone of her skin, which eventually became unnaturally pale, with blackish circles forming around her eyes and even a pair of fangs growing in her mouth. Everyone's body reacted differently to death, although he wasn't quite sure how to define her 'death'.
'Is Nicky really dead?' He wondered, as he had countless times before. He'd never heard of a mortal entering the Netherworld and staying there for an extremely long time, and had no idea how one would react to it, and there really wasn't anyone he'd wanted to ask. It didn't really matter to him, as she was perfectly happy and he too. They'd been through a lot, and as she'd put it to him, they'd done it a family, and that just made everything right.
'Right.' He laughed softly. She had this way of expressing her thoughts and feeling in a simple, childish way, justifying things as "the way that it is" and" all right" and "because my feet made me move". Just sayings that were so simple that they made sense.
"And that's just because that's the way it is. That's all there is to it." He stood over by the patio door, one arm up on the glass as he looked outside at the morning sky and smiled.
*~*~*~*
Right, there ya go, lads and lasses! Not much to say here, I think I said it all at the beginning. Oh, but a qwik note for Spencers13: I luv you! ^^ *in Sean Connery voice* That is all.
Well, Kichara the Review Whore thanks you all! I got 2 new reviews in 2 days and it actually got my lazy butt to finally finish this chapter. I just hope it doesn't sound too choppy. I've written and re-written and altered it so I think it makes sense, but that could just be me cuz I'm living off of a steady diet of pixy sticks and Code Red Mountain Dew. Enjoy much and tell what you think (and please don't spork me!) Although it would be terribly amusing to have a grave stone with "Here Lies Kichara, Death by Spork, May we All Benefit From her Absence and Now she Can't Poke Us With Badgers" :P
*~*~*~*~*
Something smelt good. That was the first, very vague thought that Beetlejuice had and he rolled over in bed, slowly waking up. Which was always a slow process, and could take hours to complete if he wanted to.
"Daaaaaaaaad!!!!!" Not that it ever happened. Something started pulling on his arm and he groaned, burying his head in the pillow. "Daaaaaaaaaad!!" The sing-song voice repeated and he grumbled, trying to ignore it and get back to sleep. And then he was hit by a small shower of ice-cold water.
The ghost bolted up, dripping and blinking in confusion at the young woman standing by his bed with a bucket over one shoulder, cocky grin on her face. He growled, but was cut off by her chipper voice. "Now don't get grumpy. I made breakfast and have been trying to get you up for the past half an hour." She bent over, kissing him on the nose and he rolled his eyes to the ceiling, smiling good-naturedly.
"Alright, alright." He said, feigning grumpiness as he stood up. "But it had better be a dammed good breakfast."
She tossed him the towel that had been slung over her slender shoulder, still grinning. "Hey, I'm the one that can actually cook, remember?"
"Brat. I'm getting better at it and you know it." He grumbled, toweling his hair dry and following her out of the bedroom and into the living room.
"Mayyyyybe." She giggled and winked at him as he sat down at the table and she placed a plate in front of him, sitting down opposite him with her own plate.
"So you're goin' down to the studio today right?"
"Mmhmm." She said around a forkful of food, managing a close-lipped smile at him, amused by the fact that she wanted to smile, but had a mouthful of food.
"Whatcha doing?"
She swallowed the food and took a sip of her coffee before answering. "We should be getting the final version of 'Harsh Wind' done and I want to run a new idea through everyone."
"That's the song that's um, isn't it the one about the girl and the guy and she left him."
She shook her head. "Nuh-uh, it's the one with the haiku chorus, remember?"
"Oh yeah." He smiled at her fondly. "Very original idea, I might add."
"Thanks." She beamed as she shoveled in another bite of food and swallowed, then continued. "I thought so too." She cast a quick look at the bat-shaped clock on the wall behind him. "Speaking of which, I should get going. I've got to open up today and the guys get grumpy if they have to wait around in the morning. I'd kick their ass if I didn't love 'em so much." A soft laugh tickled her throat as she stood up, gathering together her dirty dishes and setting them in the sink, rinsing them off and placing them in the dish washer, then hurried out of the room.
Nicky hurried to her room, snatching a worn satchel from a hook on the wall. The bag was extremely raggedy, the big spider (although it was a bit hard to tell that was exactly what it was) that was embezzled on the side of it coming off in more than one place. She stubbornly refused to get rid of the bag, as it had been a rather special birthday present. Quite a few years back, there had been a satchel that was on display in a store window that she and her Dad saw whenever they had to make a trip to the grocery store. She'd fallen in love with it, and he'd decided to get it for her for her birthday.
However, when he went to go buy it, it was gone, purchased by someone earlier that day, so he bought a plain one instead, cut a spider out of fabric and painstakingly sewed it on the side as a replacement. Nicky had almost cried when he gave it to her and told her about it, telling him it was hundreds of times better than the one she'd wanted from the store. She smiled at the memory, taking a moment to let her fingers trail along the cloth before grabbing her lyric notebook and shoving it into the knapsack. The young woman slung it over one slender shoulder and half-jogged out of the room, shouting out a good bye as she ran out the front door.
The morning air was crisp and pleasantly cool as she hurried out onto the front lawn. The young woman stopped, taking it in and looking around her, at the sky that was flushing from a deep purple into a bright orange, the crooked house behind her that was her home, and the grass at her feet. She blinked, crouching down and touching the dewy blades, realizing it was the exact same spot where she'd arrived, all those years ago. Nicky stared at the untidy grass for a long moment, then stood up and ran back into the house. Dad was still in the kitchen, draining the remains of the coffee and she danced over to him, giving him a light hug and gently placing kiss on the end of his nose.
"Forgot." She explained sheepishly and turned to leave, casting out another goodbye over her shoulder, "Love you, I'll see you later tonight, okay?"
He grinned, beaming and nodded. "Alright, see ya tonight, kid." She smiled back at him, the gentle upturning of her lips full of simple, child-like love, than ran back out of the kitchen.
Beetlejuice ran a hand through his messy hair, scratching at it vigorously as he smiled to himself. He finished off his coffee, and rinsed the mug off, placing it in the dishwasher with the rest of the breakfast dishes. The kitchen sink was almost always empty now, unlike the hundreds of years when a steady pile of dirty dishes would always be in it that he'd neglect to clean. They would sit there, abandoned, until they'd either become fused to each other with fungus, or grow legs and crawl off, while the rest of them would eventually throw away and he'd just get new one's. Which he would never clean. An excellent show of laziness and the vicious cycle of it, he mused with a grin.
But only a couple of days after Nicky had come to live with him, she'd pulled a chair up to the sink, rolled up her sleeves and (literally) attacked the dishes, scrubbing them all clean and spotless. She'd actually motivated him to fix the dishwasher, which in turn made it easy to keep the kitchen a livable environment where one didn't have to worry about piles of unwashed dishes and the slime clinging to them. Her presence had been more motivating than he'd ever imagined it would be, getting him to do all sorts of things he'd always been too lazy to do before.
Like get a job. That particular experience hadn't happened all that long ago, when Nicky had decided that she wanted some extra money, and had landed a job at a fast food place called The Grease Pot that had just opened. Because they needed more people (and because he felt bad about sitting around the house and not doing anything constructive while she worked), he'd managed to get a job there too. It hadn't been all that bad, and he and Nicky got all the free food they could want.
And then one day while Nicky was mopping up the floors and singing to herself, she got the attention of a man sitting at one of the tables. He loved her singing and immediately asked her if she was interested in being the lead singer of a band he was putting together. She'd laughed at first, sure that he was only joking with her, but he'd assured her he wasn't. The idea got her thinking and after work that day she walked down to his studio to check it out and talk with him more. The next she'd quite from the Grease Pot and had been singing and writing songs ever since.
She hadn't really liked the band he, Mr. Ashfield, had put together, but with her help, they got a new and better one together. Nicky wrote almost all of their songs, which were performed in various styles of rock. She was extremely happy and had made her dad quit his job, as the only real reason why she hadn't protested him working was because it was fun to have someone to throw French fries at (which always ended in epic Fry Wars) when the manager wasn't looking, now wanting only for him to support her singing.
The ghost drifted into the living room, stopping to look over several pictures sitting atop the entertainment center, which hosted a huge TV and a collection of over a thousand movies. Both he and Nicky were huge movie buffs. It was a ritual that they picked one night out of the week to just watch videos until they fell asleep on the couch, a forgotten bowl of chocolate-covered grasshoppers sitting on the floor in front of them.
The pictures were only of him and Nicky, as he really didn't have anyone else whose picture he'd really care to have put on display in the living room. She'd proven to have a knack for photography at an early age after she'd come across an old camera in the backyard. The piece of machinery was rather exceptional, as it was home to a little spirit. Once she'd cleaned it up, the harmless creature had woken up, materializing into tiny hazy cloud that had curled up against her chin. She'd bonded with it immediately, calling him Igor and the spirit had happily fallen back into the camera. It's presence made the camera float around, always taking pictures of Nicky and Beetlejuice, neither of them realizing it until the film would finish and he'd get it developed for her.
She'd arranged the pictures in chronological order, starting from pictures when she was a scrawny five year old hanging from his shoulders to when she looked as though she were about eight years old and he was teaching her how to ride a bike, to when she looked as though she were about eleven and he was teaching her how to fly. She still wasn't all that good at it, even now, but could go for short distances, although she said she preferred not wasting the energy trying to perform the task unless she had to.
The whole aging process with Nicky was rather unnatural. She didn't age normally, doing so at an extremely slow pace and as she did so, she began to take on the appearance of a dead person more and more, slowly losing the fleshy tone of her skin, which eventually became unnaturally pale, with blackish circles forming around her eyes and even a pair of fangs growing in her mouth. Everyone's body reacted differently to death, although he wasn't quite sure how to define her 'death'.
'Is Nicky really dead?' He wondered, as he had countless times before. He'd never heard of a mortal entering the Netherworld and staying there for an extremely long time, and had no idea how one would react to it, and there really wasn't anyone he'd wanted to ask. It didn't really matter to him, as she was perfectly happy and he too. They'd been through a lot, and as she'd put it to him, they'd done it a family, and that just made everything right.
'Right.' He laughed softly. She had this way of expressing her thoughts and feeling in a simple, childish way, justifying things as "the way that it is" and" all right" and "because my feet made me move". Just sayings that were so simple that they made sense.
"And that's just because that's the way it is. That's all there is to it." He stood over by the patio door, one arm up on the glass as he looked outside at the morning sky and smiled.
*~*~*~*
Right, there ya go, lads and lasses! Not much to say here, I think I said it all at the beginning. Oh, but a qwik note for Spencers13: I luv you! ^^ *in Sean Connery voice* That is all.
