Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!

Chapter 3

 Kyle opened his eyes to a small waiting room and he tried to focus. All around him were people, however, they weren't normal people. These people were dead.

Looking around the room, he tensed, clinching the arm rest of his chair. Beside him to his right was a young man in his early twenties, a bullet wound through his head. His arms were bound behind his back, and his mouth was stuffed with a sock and wrapped with tape.

To his left was a middle-aged woman, her throat slit.

Kyle himself wasn't in much better condition. His flesh was torn on his legs, as not all of him went down unscathed. His ropes had been snagged and ripped by the tooth of the sandworm, unfurling him on the way down the creature's throat.

"What is happening?" he shrieked.

The woman next to him tried to speak, but blood squirted from her throat and gurgled in her mouth.

The man then rolled his eyes and grunted at Kyle. When Kyle looked at him, he nodded his head towards the line. Kyle looked at it and back at him. The man nodded again, and Kyle hesitantly stood and made his way to the line. After standing for quite sometime and finally making it to the front of the line, he tried not physically showing his distain at the woman behind the counter.

Her skin was a sickly green, and the right side of her head was blown off.

"Hi." He said, struggling to smile. "My name is Kyle. Can you tell me what is going on here?"

"You're dead sweetheart." Said the woman, with a Brookeland accent. "Take a number."

"Dead?" Suddenly it all came back to him. That ghost. That ghost that was in the bed of his beloved Lydia. That ghost that tied him up and threw him in a hole. What happened after that? He was eaten.

"What can I do?" he asked

"Take a number." The woman siged.

Kyle swallowed hard and reached over, taking a number from the slot.

Making his way back to the seats, his heart sank as he read 919 as the woman at the window called out "57."

Looking around, he took in the dead. One woman in particular stood out to him. She was floating in the air, her hair swirling around her as if she were in deep water. Fish circled her and ate at her body. She wore a uniform. It looked to him like a prison guard uniform. She had said something to another woman wearing the same uniform, but he only was able to make out the last bit. ". . . Beetlejuice will be happy." He tilted his head at her and watched as she entered a back door using a card.

He had a feeling he should follow her. Running to the door, he grabbed it before it shut. Looking inside, he waited for the woman to turn a corner, and looking around, seeing that no one was noticing him, he walked through the door.

The hallway had many twists and turns, and he had no idea where to start. Windows lined up the walls and a janitor stood, mopping the floor. He stopped at the janitor, a man that appeared to be in his 70s, white hair, and beady eyes. A purple line lined his neck and Kyle guessed he had been hung.

"Hey, can you tell me where this hallway leads?" he asked, looking down the hall the woman had turned.

The man jerked and his bones made a creaking sound. "That goes to the prison. Prison for the dead."

"What makes the dead go to prison?"

"Many things. It's all in the handbook."

"Handbook?"

"What are you doing here?" asked the man, looking at Kyle with a tilt of the head.

Kyle thought quickly. "I was told to follow a woman that came through. I was distracted and fell behind."