Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

III

The children's choir sang as Rory, Lydia, Astrid, and Delia all watched the casket carrying Charles Deetz's body get lowered into the ground. Around them were friends of Charles. After the burial, Delia pulled Lydia and Rory aside and said, "I just don't believe I won't see Charles again."

"Stay comforted in the knowledge that he's in a far better place," the pastor who conducted the service said to Delia. "Angels are guiding him towards everlasting light. And may his soul fly through the heavenly gates like the birds that he so adored and soar over the fields of Elysium to the glory that is thine."

"What?" Delia asked, not having a clue what he just said.

Lydia, however, turned around and saw Astrid sitting alone on an old wooden bench at the other side of the graveyard. Walking up to her, Lydia sat down on the other end of the bench. The two Deetz women sat in silence until Astrid finally broke it.

"I haven't been to a funeral since Dad's," she said.

"Death is hard," Lydia agreed.

"Yeah, sometimes I think life is harder," Astrid pointed out.

"I know," Lydia said. "Listen, if you want to talk to that therapist again..."

"There you go again," Astrid said, interrupting her mother. "You just sidestep every possible conversation about him."

"Astrid, I loved your father," Lydia said, "but our relationship was over a long time before the accident."

"I still don't understand why you can't see him," Astrid said, bringing up the topic of Lydia apparently seeing ghosts. "Why not?"

"I wish I knew," Lydia said simply. "But this ability didn't exactly come with instructions. It all started when I was your age."

"It's ironic, isn't it?" Astrid asked. "You can apparently see any random ghost for your crappy TV show, but the one ghost that actually matters to me you can't see at all?" Lydia stayed quiet as Astrid stood up to leave.

—

In the afterlife, the headless spirit of Charles Deetz entered a dry cleaners store. The owner, a dead Asian man, looked at him angrily and shouted, "We are closed!"

"I'm sorry to bother you," Charles said politely despite losing his head. "My name's Charles Deetz. I feel a little light-headed. Where am I?"

"Damn newbies," the shop owner cursed. "You wait! In waiting room!"

"Ah, alright," Charles said as he walked out of the shop to find the waiting room. "Unbelievable."

However, the shop owner felt like someone was watching him from behind. Turning around, he faced his bagged suits and said, "Hey. Who's there?" He began looking behind them before he saw Delores.

The poor man screamed as Delores picked him up by the throat and began sucking his soul out of him. After dropping his lifeless body, Delores went into the back and found a beautiful white gown. Grabbing it from the rack, she pulled it out of the bag and held her hand over it, causing the white to turn black. She smiled as she picked up the dress.

In another part of the afterlife, Beetlejuice downed a strange drink that strangely looked like urine before nervously looking around.

"My ex-wife is back," he said as he went back to his department, where all the shrunken heads were still working. "Well I know what you're thinking. When was the Juice ever tied down? What kind of woman could ever keep him satisfied? Well..." Beetlejuice spoke a foreign language into a microphone.

"I'll tell you!" he said in the language. "In a forgotten age, shrouded by death and the plague, the tendrils of our depraved love story unfurled. I was a humble grave robber, plying my trade amidst the corpses of the forsaken. My heart had long withered into the abyss. But destiny, like a phantom, cast its shadow one cold, starless night.