Dead Shadow: Beetlejuice Fanfiction Story

Chapter 17: Deep Breath, Lydia

Neitherworld

"Okay, deep breath, Lydia," Lydia tried to convince herself as she waited at the Roadhouse. She got a pretty black rose she figured she could use in place of the ring just in case she did fall back down as a dead shadow. "You are just going to take your fun friendship to a new level. Not dating. Just, marriage. You know, just that little thing called marriage!" She basically yelled at herself.

This was so bad. "Beej doesn't even like the L word. He even calls it the L word." That didn't help convince her she was making the right action. "He doesn't do mushy or romantic or even polite. He does . . . . himself." And that's what he had been. Himself. He didn't put on a show for people, unless he was deceiving them, which was also a part of himself.

"Okay, straighten up." Lydia looked at the time. Impossible to tell with nothing but a seven and three, but a good guess was 4:35. Still didn't mean anything. She didn't know when he'd come.

Miss Second Chance was right, Mayor Maynot brought her straight up there to wait. He even gave her some advice, trying to make her believe she could escape as a dead shadow and a fate with Beetlejuice, if she just let him kill the last person on his own. What a cruel man.

Lydia swung the rose around. "Even if he cares, this is so fast. And what if he doesn't? Because that's so much more likely." She walked around the Roadhouse. Pacing. "I've known him when I was just reaching an age to even want to like boys. Stuck between child and woman." She groaned. "At 18, I still feel that way. I was his human friend, so how am I supposed to go from that, to . . ." Mrs. Beetle Juice. Or, Mrs. Beetlejuice Juice? "His mom didn't call him Beetle, she called him Beetlejuice too. See?!" It's like she was trying to make a point to herself. "I don't even know the right name."

She bent down and rubbed the black rose against the ground. "I want to save him from hell, I don't want him to ever go, and I don't want to become a dead shadow either. If he doesn't feel the same way, then we are doomed." She looked toward the door. "I mean he's doomed. He'll take out the last one freeing me." She closed her eyes. "That's so much worse."

She stood up again. "I don't have a choice, Miss Second Chance is right. I have to ask. If he doesn't want it, then I can't change that, but I have to ask." She had to ask.

She had to ask for her best friend in the world to marry her and spend his afterlife with her. "But it's such a greater chance that he isn't going to feel anything back! He doesn't like me like that. So then what? He goes to hell? We figure out something else?"

Ooh, Miss Second Chance just appeared! "Miss Second Chance!" Lydia immediately went over to her. "Is there something else that we could try? I just. He can't even say the L word, so . . .?"

"Marriage without consummation?" Miss Second Chance took the words right out of her mouth.

"Look, there isn't a law that says love has to be physical. It could be chaste?" Lydia tried. "Anything?"

"It is literally an eternity of hell or an afterlife of marriage," Miss Second Chance said. "Consummation brings the children of the Neitherworld."

Um? "Okay, but when I was alive, they had a thing where people helped without the actual act. Like, the guy didn't have to be around, just the stuff to have a baby." Really stretching but I have to try! "We could do that, couldn't we?"

"Invitro. You didn't even need to be married to do that." Miss Second Chance sounded like she knew a lot of the world Lydia came from.

"Then, I mean, that's similar!"

"You want to marry Beetlejuice, and have a baby with him instead of just telling him your feelings?"

She just didn't get it. "Beetlejuice is trying to save me from my eternity. He tried to help me from becoming a dead shadow. I have to save him from an eternity of hell but . . . but I can't force anything on him. If he doesn't love me, in that kind of way, then this will never work."