The Case of Lydia Deetz Beetlejuice

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NOTE: This story depicts what might have happened 5 years after the events of the Beetlejuice movie, though there are some non-sexual flashbacks to help the reader get some background from when Lydia was between 12 and 18 years old. All sexual situations in this story are between consenting adults between the ages of 18 and 600 years old.

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"[redacted] I am utterly alone. By the time you read this, I will be gone... having [redacted] plummeted off the Winter River bridge..."

I found the old crumpled and re-straightened suicide note that I'd kept while packing things for college in the fall. I shook my head, troubled, thinking back to those days. I was such a weird kid. As if my too-short bangs weren't awkward enough, I'd put gunk into them and shaped them into black spikes that hung down on my pale white skin, making it look as if a spider had died on my head. Everything was about death and darkness, then. I walked around in black and did everything I could to remind everyone that life was unfair, pointless and cruel. To be fair, I had just lost my mom.

Of course, I wasn't always like that. Before mom died, I was a lot more normal. I had friends, even. True, they were the really smart kids that just snarked about everything because they were too scared to try things and fail at them or be rejected, but still -- they were friends. I had a good start on the whole smart, but normal, thing. Then, mom started dropping dishes.

We laughed about her dropping things at first, mom and I. First, it was a coffee cup that she was taking out of the dishwasher. It fell and shattered on the tile kitchen floor, surprising the cat who ran up the Christmas tree and knocked the whole thing over. It was so funny. Then, a week or two later, it was a plate that slipped out of her hand. She shouted "OPA!" like they did in that Greek movie when they broke dishes, and we laughed again. After that, the cat began avoiding the kitchen when mom was unloading the dishwasher.

Next, mom started dropping weight. That wasn't as funny. She was naturally thin already, so when she lost even more weight, her skin became pale and her eyes had a dark sunken look to them. Then, she was dropping words... or not saying them at all. She didn't want to talk about it when I asked her, or if she did, she just made a joke about it. I didn't think too much about it, though... I didn't want to.

Charles never noticed. He was always hustling. New York real-estate never sleeps. Neither did my he. As things changed with mom, he kept working later and later. As it turned out, he was "working" Delia Exire Shalimar, the impossibly red-haired whore of the New York modern art wannabe scene, while my mom was growing a brain tumor. Charles and Delia married six weeks after mom died. That was when I stopped calling him "dad." Delia wore a bustier with cleavage to my mom's funeral. I wore a black veil to their wedding... and pretty much every day after that.

After that, it felt like I was becoming invisible. Mom was the only one who really knew me, and she was gone forever. Gone and replaced by a wound-up, shrill, self-absorbed woman that only bothered to pay attention to what I said if I related what I was saying to an old money name or someone whose work was currently being displayed in the Guggenheim. Not that I wanted her attention. It came too often with suggestions for self-improvement that basically boiled down to getting an eating disorder, plastic surgery, prostituting myself for status, self-medicating, or some combination thereof.

Dad wasn't much help, either. Charles Deetz, like all successful realtors, saw things only as he wanted to see them. If I was a good girl and pretended that I was the happy beautiful daughter that looked like the dead wife he once loved and was happily adjusting to her new step-mother, he would see me. If I didn't pretend to be happy, I was invisible. That's when I started getting more dramatic. At first, I thought it would get his attention, but it didn't. Then, I just kept on doing it because I was pissed. I decided I'd make him deny seeing bigger and bigger problems until he knew what a ridiculous liar he was being. I might have pushed the drama too far, though, because he had a nervous breakdown and moved us out to Winter River, Connecticut.

I really think I'd be dead if it wasn't for the Maitlands: the ghosts that lived in the huge old house we bought. They were the previous owners of the house and had died in a car accident. They were invisible to everyone except me, weirdo that I was. What was even better was that Barbara and Adam saw me, even as strange and unusual as I was, and they loved me. Maybe it was because they needed me, or maybe it was because they couldn't have kids while they were alive, but they gave me what I'd needed since mom died. It saved my life. Barbara was the kind friend and confidant that I'd missed in mom, and Adam was the doting dad who adored me, tutored me, and nudged me to be better. It was because of them that I was packing up to go to Columbia University's film program instead of floating down Winter River as a bloated corpse. After a period of adjustment that I just can't seem to remember, we all decided to live together in the house.

Things were great for a while. I grew out the weird spiked bangs, did away with ghoulish dark eye stuff, and stopped wearing black clothes all the time, and just started letting people get to know me. I even made some friends. I wasn't really perky or simple enough to be popular with the easily-threatened rural Connecticut boys, but that was fine with me. I figured out that needed a different kind of guy. You can't just tell anyone that your family lived with a couple of ghosts. That kind of secret takes a lot of trust, and the right kind of guy.

Then, things started getting bumpy. It began right after the State of Connecticut emancipated me from Charles and Delia. Delia had begun secretly tapping into the trust fund that my mom had set up for me before she died and Charles didn't stop her because he just wanted everyone to pretend to be happy. So, I filed for emancipation and took over the money. Delia pitched a fit and made me pay rent to stay in the house. Charles pretended everything was fine and just watched birds. I hung out in the attic with the Maitlands for like a month. It was pretty lame.

Then, that spring Charles and Delia went to New York for the weekend. They came back talking about how great it was and how much they missed the scene. Charles wouldn't stop talking about three different undervalued properties that they could afford and it really looked like we might be moving back. We never did, though. A few days after they decided on a place to buy, I found Charles and Delia dead at the bottom of the stairs. The police said that they probably tripped on the runner rug on the stairs that Delia had designed to look like a giant black and white striped snake.

It didn't feel the same as when my mom had died. I kept expecting Charles and Delia to show up at the house as ghosts, but they never did. I didn't fully understand the rules that ghosts have, but I knew that they went back to live at whatever house or apartment they were in until they were done. If they tried to leave before then, they were instantly sent to Saturn where there were giant sand worms that would eat you. Adam said that he saw them going out the back door and he tried to warn them about Saturn, but that Delia said that all the yellow was calling to her and she pulled my dad with her. They never came back. Figures.

People were surprised that I stayed in town after the accident. I always got confused looks of pity whenever I went into town for stuff. I didn't mind, though. I was emancipated, and had the trust fund, so I was able to just live in that big house with the Maitlands. We kept ourselves busy. Barbara wanted to redecorate everything after Delia was gone. Adam always needed pictures of everything that was changing around town for his miniatures. Everything outside the house in the real-world ended up falling to me. It was actually kinda nice. Nice, but exhausting.

It was on the night before my 18th birthday that I collapsed into bed, my mind spinning with all that reaching official adulthood would mean. I stared at the ceiling, thinking about college in the fall. Columbia University was close enough that I could come back home on the weekends and help Adam and Barbara with things, but I was looking forward to trying out life on my own in the dorms. Getting a boyfriend that I didn't have to hide my weird life from, maybe even losing my virginity. I tried not to show my excitement too much, though -- I could tell Adam and Barbara were worried about me going away.

I drifted to sleep and images flashed through my mind... I was wearing a red dress, and a man was standing at the end of an aisle waiting for me wearing a red velvet tuxedo. Adam and Barbara were there in their wedding clothes, rotting and shriveled, yelling things... a name. They were yelling it again and again. Suddenly, without even walking, I zoomed to the man's side. He switched back and forth between appearances. Sometimes he looked pale white, bloated and molding with crazy hair and other times he looked... almost handsome. He was older than me, maybe in late 20's, but he had these piercing eyes. His lips were naturally pursed, and he had a look of intense focus on his face. In the dream, he put a wedding ring on my hand. The Maitlands were going crazy, doing weird stuff, and yelling that name, but the man just kept looking at me.

I woke up in a cold sweat. I sat up in bed, hugging my knees, trying to remember. I'd had the dream before. I had seen that man before... he was so familiar. Where had I seen him? I took out a sketch pad and began drawing his face, not when he was all moldy, but the one that looked like he really saw everything... like nothing was invisible to him.

I padded barefoot down to the kitchen in my nightshirt, took the Oreo O's cereal out of the cupboard and continued drawing, spending a lot of time on the lighting of the eyes. What was that name? Beetle something... I forgot about my cereal, looking at the drawing. Then, I took my pencil up again and drew a small beetle crawling across his face. I chuckled at it... it was something I would have done when I was in my dark dramatic phase when we moved here... when we met the Maitlands.

I heard Barbara and Adam coming downstairs, talking about how we should have the landscaping done. I hastily erased the beetle from the man's face. Adam hated beetles. He would bend himself into a pretzel to personally escort spiders, mice, birds, bats, and even snakes out of the house. Beetles, however, were immediately smashed into a pulp, the pulp was then scraped off whatever surface it was on, and then the pulp was burned on the stove. Burnt beetle pulp smelled almost like burnt hair. Not great.

"But if we move the garden away from the house, we'll be able to see it from the windows, Adam! If it's just bordering the house, we'll only be able to enjoy it if Lydia takes pictures. Hey kid, it's your 18th birthday! You can't just eat cereal for breakfast again," Barbara said, walking into the kitchen, putting my forgotten cereal back into the cupboard and taking out ingredients for pancakes.

"She can't take pictures of it for us... not anymore... she's leaving us, remember?" Adam said, in a tone dripping in forlorn self-pity.

"I can still take pictures for you on the weekends, you guys. It's not like I'm leaving forever," I said, rolling my eyes.

"Gardens don't look the same on the weekends," Adam sulked.

He brought me a glass of orange juice and looked over my shoulder, watching me draw. He reached out his ghostly finger and rubbed the spot where I had erased the beetle. "Who's this? One of your teachers?" he asked trying to sound casual, but actually pulling away my drawing pad and bringing it to Barbara where she was making pancakes. He reached over her shoulder to put the pad in front of her face because she was so focused on getting the batter into a perfect heart. Seeing the drawing, she jumped, shrieked and sent her spatula flying across the kitchen. "Come on, this is one of her better ones! I still say you should have gone for a double major in Art," Adam joked, but I could tell he was covering for something, because Barbara still looked terrified, even after the surprise had passed.

"It's nobody..." I said, going to the pantry to get the syrup, "Just someone I saw in a dream. It was really weird. I was getting married and you guys were freaking out about it. So, now since you're creeping into my dreams, you guys need to cool it with the separation anxiety," I laughed, "Can I have my drawing back, now?" Adam handed it back to me, while exchanging looks with Barbara.

I leaned over the sketch pad again. The place where I erased the beetle was perfectly clear, so I didn't know what Adam was freaking out about. Then, I noticed a smudge in a different part of the paper. Almost like the beetle I'd drawn had moved across the page toward my glass like he was going to get some of my OJ. I laughed and drew a small glass of juice next to the smudge. "Drink up that beetle juice, little buddy," I thought, smiling.

After pancakes, I flipped my drawing over and wrote down a list of things I wanted from Target, along with Adam and Barbara's things. You wouldn't think ghosts would need much, but when you have a home, there's always something you need from Target. My list was all dorm stuff. I had gotten the exact dimensions of the room and had planned everything out, even the closet space. I just had to go feel things.

That's why I just can't online shop for some things. I'm tactile. Until I feel it in my fingers, I just don't know if something's right. That, and I hate returning things. Our postmaster is a guy named Leonard Sims who has a thing for speculating what's in my packages when I go to return them. He doesn't outright ask, mind you, he just talks aloud about what a girl my age might be ordering. Soft envelope packages were the worst because he actually would fondle them, his guesses getting more and more specific, while staring at my breasts. Well, what breasts I have, anyway. I mean, at age 18 I have more in that area than I had, but I mostly grew up more than out in the last five years. So, yeah, Leonard is a creep. As if that wasn't bad enough, I made the mistake of once calling him "master" as a joke when I was fifteen, and he's insisted on it ever since.

I walked into the bright happy store, feeling a little embarrassed. I always felt like I should shop at cooler places, unique shops that sell things that were used, cursed or maybe magical, rather than a clean tidy well-lit place that has stuff I need that's... good enough. It takes a lot more time to find all the stuff you need at those unique magical places. Plus, Target has coffee.

I got my cup of brown liquid life and meandered over to the makeup aisles, even though I didn't need makeup. I looked at the displays that had over-primped models-of-the-week with their eyes looking like they had hairy caterpillars crawling over them. I didn't get the whole new heavy eyebrow thing. I looked at my own reflection in the mirror. I looked a lot like I did five years ago. Large dark brown eyes with naturally thick black lashes, and skin so pale it was almost blue, framed by shiny long black hair. The main difference was that I wore a little eyeliner and a deep red lip tint, now. Looking more closely, I realized that I really did look like my mom... everyone had always said it, but I never really realized it before.

A flash of a face appeared behind me in the mirror. It looked like the guy from my dream... the beetle guy. I whipped my head around, but no one was there. The hairs on my neck rose up and a shiver went through me. I looked down to see that my nipples hardened under my thin tank top and I gasped, hunching my shoulders, and pulling my shirt away from my breasts so that the bumps wouldn't show through. I heard a soft dirty laugh nearby, or maybe I just thought I did.

My body flushed hot, and I pulled a hair band out of my pocket and quickly tied my hair back in a messy bun just to get it off my neck. The cool air calmed me. I looked in the mirror again. "No beetle, juice or weirdly erotic older guy. Just perky, yet bland, commercialism. Once more unto the breach," I thought, pushing my cart past the brightly lit makeup display.

I rolled to the quiet back of the store where the bedding was, left my cart outside the aisle, and stared at the bedding sets. My choices seemed to be between either a variety of bright and modern styles, or darker faux luxury styles. I wasn't bright and modern. I wasn't the goth girl I was, but perky pastels weren't me and they never would be. The other faux luxury option would just look ridiculous in a dorm room... or maybe just delusional. Nobody believes dorm room luxury. I sighed. Why had I even come here? I pulled my list out of my pocket again and frowned at it, wondering if I should just get bedding later. I sighed and grabbed one of the huge neutral colored bedding sets and carried it back toward my cart.

Blind from carrying the huge bed set in my arms, I bumped into someone at the end of the aisle. "Sorry!" I yelped, seeing a white down comforter go tumbling down and bouncing off an end display of clearance items and knocking several things to the floor. "Oh... sorry!" I said, dumping the set into my cart and bending down to where my victim was crouched, stacking several discounted Halloween-themed bedskirts back onto the display.

I picked up the white down comforter package and held it up for him, as he rose from his crouch, and gasped when his face became visible. "Hey, thanks," he said, smiling, I was shocked to see the intensely focused eyes and naturally pursed mouth that I'd been drawing this morning. He took the comforter from me and tossed it into his cart, then picked something up from the floor. "This yours?" he asked, holding up my shopping list. I looked at all the listed items, realizing to my horror that on the back of the list he was probably looking at my drawing of... him.

"Um yeah, thanks—" I said, grabbing for it before he could get a closer look, but he pulled it back out of my reach, frowning at it.

"What... what is this?" he asked. I swallowed nervously, sure that enough blood was flowing to my face to turn it a color other than palest white. His face twisted quizzically, glanced up at me, and then back to the paper. He flipped it over, showing me the other side. "What's this?"

To my shock, the face I'd drawn -- his face -- was gone! All that remained was the beetle-like smudge and the glass of juice that I'd drawn next to it. "Beetle juice," I said, relief flooding over the undercurrent of my confusion. Where had his face gone?

"What?" he said, laughing.

I leaned closer to him and tried to grab it out of his hand, though he kept pulling it out of my reach. Grinning as I finally snatched it away, I showed it to him, pointing at each thing, "beetle... juice" I said, looking up at those eyes that saw everything, now looking down into me. Something birdlike, started fluttering around in my belly. Our shoulders were brushing. I never stood this close to people... well, not real people, anyway. "You know," I said, looking up into his eyes, now more intense than I'd ever seen them in my dream, "beetle juice..." I shrugged.

He looked at me half a second longer than felt normal, then his mouth curled into a smirk. My heart was galloping. I felt like an idiot just standing there looking at him. I wanted to ask him a million questions, but all of them felt too awkward. "What's your name?" was stupid, because why would I need to know the name of a stranger in Target? "Want to get some coffee?" was equally stupid because I was actually holding a cup of coffee and I didn't want him to think that I was some kind of caffeine freak that wanted to talk him up while doubling up on cappuccino, though it did sound appealing. "Can I get naked with you on that comforter?" surprised me when it popped into my head. I mean, sure I was 18, now, but what was I thinking? He was way older than me... not to mention that the comforter was white and being a virgin, I'd probably bleed on it when we did what people do when they get naked on comforters. I was just standing there gaping like an idiot, imagining him on top of me naked, being smooshed into that thick soft comforter, when he cleared his throat and raised his eyebrows at me like he had asked me something while I was thinking about him touching me.