The Whole Being Alive Thing

From Demon to Human and Death to Life

Betelgeuse should have known just how quickly his mom would be back. Instead of going on his vision quest to search for and find his dad, the demon instead found himself inside her office. He was nervous, his hair a shade of people. And from behind the desk, his mother sat, discarding a cigarette and tossing it off to the side. Her eyes were locked on Betelgeuse, her giving him a glare that he knew could kill him twice.

He went to say something, but nothing would come to mind. A hint of blue peeked out from the purple. It was faint, but there and he reached up a hand to cover it.

"Ma," he started, but her speaking up cut him off before he could say much of anything else and he closed his mouth.

"I knew that you were a disappointment, Lawrence," she sneered at him. "You should've known what would happen when you fed me to that Sandworm." He stayed silent, still unsure of what else he should or could say. And his mom just continued on with her ranting. "Oh! You didn't, did you? Well, how about a taste of your own medicine?"

His hair color went from just being purple to half purple and half blue, an expression of panic flashing across his. What did his ma mean by a 'taste of his own medicine'?

"Ma-," he tried to say. She cut him off again.

"That living girl, Lydia, you were best friends with her right?"

Betelgeuse's hair turned red at this and he slammed his hands on her desk. "Leave her alone, ma!"

She seemed to just ignore him, summoning another cigarette and continuing on, "I'm sure that she and the rest of her stupid little family would appreciate having to deal with you again... this time alive."

"Leave them all alone!" he defensively said.

She removed her cigarette, and leaned over her desk to look him in the eyes. "Let this be a lesson to you, Lawrence."

Before Betelgeuse could even think of a response, his hair color going from red to its previous blue and purple, Juno snapped her fingers and everything went black.

When Betelgeuse came to, he found himself back in the living world. He sat up straight, stretching and looking around at his surroundings. Several passersby had stopped and were now just staring at him as if he just appeared there in a flash of light. And all he wanted to do now was ignore all of the stares that he was getting.

He stretched once again and stood upright, looking around at his surroundings and somehow finding himself near the bottom of a small, grassy hill. He tried snapping his fingers, growing confused when nothing of the sort seemed to even happen. Trying a second time just to be sure he wasn't imagining things, he gave up when it turned out that he wasn't.

'Did something happen to me?' he thought quietly to himself as he started to walk. 'Was this what mom meant when she told me 'let this be a lesson to you, Lawrence'?'

However, he didn't get much far when he got exhausted, sitting himself down on a nearby bench to rest for a little bit and closing his eyes to take a nap. When he opened them again not even five minutes later, he was initially surprised to find Lydia standing not too far from him, turned and looking at him in surprise. Looking off to the side, he caught sight of Charles and Delia staring at him with the same look of unease and fury. Though it was more unease than it was fury.

A silence befell the four of them, eventually getting broken by Lydia, who took a step forward. Her dad coughed and Lydia stopped, now standing right smack dab in the middle of the footpath. And she only could utter out one thing,

"Bj?"

"Hey, Scarecrow," he managed to say. "Long time no see, huh?"

Lydia stepped forwards again, not doing as much as even paying attention to her dad when he tried to get her to not move any further. Betelgeuse stood up from the bench and wrapped his arms around his best friend. And Lydia parted when she heard what she thought was a faint heartbeat.

"Beej, are you alive or-?" she questioned. A look of pure confusion crossed his face as he processed that.

"Alive? no, I'm not," he tried to say as he backed away a few hundred feet from Lydia, who seemed insistent on still making sure that her best friend - whether he was alive like she seemed to think he was or if he was both still dead and a demon like he still thought he was. "What makes you think that, kid?"

"You have a heartbeat," Lydia seemed to say. And that only served to confuse him even further. "And your hair is brown now. Instead of its usual green."

When he insisted that he still had green hair, Lydia pulled out her phone, opened up the camera app, and handed it to him. He just stared at himself for a few minutes, noting that he did in fact have brown hair. He still had on his everyday black and white striped suit, so that was good. After a while, he handed Lydia back her phone and sat himself down on the same bench from earlier.

"So... I really am alive, aren't I?"