Beetlejuice, Ulf when he was still alive, knew that he was beginning to lose himself. He'd never had a great grip on his sanity to begin with and things weren't really changing just because he was dead. They might even be getting worse. His powers made it so easy to just do the things he'd struggled with before. Like killing. And torturing.
His name fit him. He knew that. Even as a child his family had seen something in his smile that told them he was a wolf. It wasn't just his jagged teeth, but something behind them. He could vaguely remember his mother being just as fierce as himself. It was hard to believe considering how soft she was now.
But those thoughts didn't matter. He was thinking about his slipping mental state.
He was grasping these thoughts as tightly as possible because people in the Neitherworld had been whispering. They didn't like his jagged-toothed smile or the way his magic seemed to be stronger than anyone else's. They didn't even know that he could feel it growing every day.
Recently he'd gotten word that there was a petition going around about him. They wanted to bind him. Beetlejuice just considered himself lucky that they didn't know the extent of his powers. The binding would never hold him properly if they didn't know how to set the parameters.
That wasn't important at the moment either. What was really important right now was finding a loophole. Ulf had learned all about contracts within the first year of being dead. He hated how they made him feel hemmed in and trapped. So he started doing some digging and discovered loopholes.
His magically imparted ability to read allowed him to skim through his contracts until he found those blessed little twists in the writing. If he was lucky he could get out of it completely, change it to benefit him more than the other party, or at least get around the worst parts.
Eventually he just stopped signing contracts or filing paperwork. He wasn't a suicide. They couldn't force him… even if they tried.
Now they were going to slap a full binding on him to prevent him from getting out of any more contracts. Not to mention all the other stuff a full binding would prevent him from doing. Like visiting the living world on a whim. Or torturing the living without permission.
Which all brought him back to how to deal with it.
He had this vague idea about leaving his unrestrained magic in the living world. But he couldn't figure out how to leave his power there as something that would last any length of time. He'd tried creating little balls of pure energy, but they all dissipated.
So he sat on an outcropping of rocks in the Neitherworld that overlooked the living world with his Handbook for the Recently Deceased open on his lap. He watched it absently for the changes that would appear when the binding went into effect. He also liked to flip through it to look for more loopholes. The thing was synced to his afterlife specifically and everything in it was general information or related to him.
After a moment of staring blankly at a page on exorcism he closed it. He went to set it beside him on the rock, but his fingers didn't seem to want to put it down. So he started tossing it up into the air and catching it.
It was only the third toss when he fumbled the catch. The book plummeted quickly off the edge of the cliff towards the living world.
And the solution hit Beetlejuice as fast as the book was about to hit the ground beneath him. Zapping himself to the bottom of the cliff with a thought Beetlejuice watched the book thump to the ground. The fall had been bad enough that the book should have been shredded, but it was as unharmed as Beetlejuice himself.
Grinning manically Beetlejuice juiced the book into his hand. Even the forest seemed to grow quieter as he chuckled; a low, evil sound.
A day later, maybe three – he hadn't kept track – Beetlejuice looked at the newly minted book in his hands. This book looked exactly the same, but it was fused with so much of his power that he wasn't even sure it could still be updated by The Administration. Not that he'd ever find out for sure. The book was staying on this side of the death line and he wasn't.
Beetlejuice wasn't entirely sure how much he could do with the book, but it was enough to tie him to the living world no matter what the higher-ups did.
He once more gave his low chuckle before dropping the book in the dirt and going back to the Neitherworld.
They could take away his real name. They could try to control his powers. They could even temporarily bind him to the Neitherworld. But as long as that book was in the living world he would always have a way out.