Agh! Lydia felt her legs get tugged out from beneath her and she was dragged backward. The front door opened and she was helpless to stop from leaving the house. She felt the burn of the cement against her as she was being pushed off into the road! She heard Astrid yell, and then felt something stopped her.
It wasn't soft, but it was softer. It was plastic. It was.
Even he knew he couldn't handle all the contracts coming onto Lydia and Astrid. And Lydia, had a history of skipping out on the bill. But? He couldn't help it. He turned into a long and wide rug attached to the cliff, slowed her down in a roll and careened her back down.
He watched Astrid start coming. "Don't tell her what I did."
"What, saved her?" Astrid pointed out but he disappeared.
Beetlejuice showed up to the ghost energy he sensed nearby. He made sure to be in his black and white outfit, the one he would be most recognized in. "Hey."
Another spirit appeared. "Beetlejuice? Are you still hanging around the fiancee that dumped you twice?"
Great, he knew his story. "She just had cold feet, you know? Being wife to an acclaimed guy like me, she was just too nervous. I'm getting closer to snagging her, so if you could just put this contract on hold and work on something else, I'd appreciate it."
They just stared at him. "No way. I prepared this for a long time."
"Come on, you know it hasn't been a long time." He tried to keep this civil.
"If it isn't me, it'll be another person stealing the contracts on them, so I can't." They refused to quit.
"Okay? I'm telling ya," Beetlejuice warned them. "Back off."
"Even if you like these living, you can't save them," they outright judged him. "You're a bioexorcist. If you start saving people, you might as well say goodbye to the business. Now, leave. Look on the bright side? When she dies, maybe she'll be easier to get a date with finally. Instead of, you know. Being some visualization that haunts you?"
Beetlejuice shook his hands, fixed his collar, and then fixed his collar sleeves. This one knew everything. He had to go.
"It's pretty sad to see someone that used to be a great big idol to me, fall into puppy dog territory for two measly humans."
Puppy dog. "This puppy still has one gnarly bite."
"Do you have enough to bite everyone coming after them?" they challenged them. "I bet you don't. Especially when all we have to do is say your name."
"Yeah. Yeah, you know you are enjoying your priviledge to come back and forth too much," Beetlejuice warned him. "Overstep, and you'll end up cursed just like me. In the meantime? What was it that used to make me an idol to you?"
"Oh, the fact you came up with this whole thing in the-"
Oh, her legs. Lydia started to wake up. She tried to stand back up but couldn't. She wasn't on the road. It was a striped mattress?
She was covered in the burning of being rubbed across the concrete. Her skin was bloody, peeling, and bruised. She may have broke a leg. She didn't hurt as much as she thought she would. She saw Astrid beside her, but couldn't stand up. She couldn't even feel her legs. "Astrid."
"I'm right here," she told her.
Lydia felt herself getting scooped up. She felt something. A weird connection. She hadn't felt it in a long time, not since before her husband's death. Her body just wanted to sleep.
Astrid stared at him. Yeah, if there was any doubt before in her assumption, it was gone now.
Beetlejuice stood there, just holding her mom, hot as hell. Fire was starting to appear around him as another spirit appeared a little ahead. That spirit was bleeding severely. "You were warned like the last guy. Back off, or you've got 30 seconds before you face the waiting room again."
"Your warning was a rabid bunch of you-dogs that took off his arm!" they complained. "The waiting room isn't going to give back his arm." It snarled. "I'll leave this, but I'll let everyone know what happened. No one will ever do business with you again."
Astrid watched the exchange. If he didn't think a deal could be reached, he wouldn't have lifted a finger. Apparently, he was making enemies interfering even.
They had the upper hand whether he wanted to say it or not. There was something else too. This guy was the stuff of her mom's nightmares. But?
He was holding her and she wasn't fighting it. Even injured, she would at least be rigid. It kind of even . . . looked like her mom was relaxed.
When Astrid was small and she woke up in the morning, she would see her mom just like that with her dad. Not the same position. It was the same kind of . . . feeling.
She approached him. "I don't buy it. She does know you." She looked straight at him. She wouldn't back down. "The chances she would be into you are slim, but it doesn't matter because you will run after her each time anyhow."
Oh he had a bitter face, but she knew that she was right.
"No marriage. Make a workable deal with mom," Astrid insisted. "Otherwise we are all going to keep going in circles until we die, or you do."
He didn't want to take it. It was clear he didn't like following orders. "This freebie was the last one you get." He started to scan the area. "There's more than one already here."
"No, it's not. You will keep coming back." Astrid stayed strong, but she also felt her mouth get sewn shut! She touched it, but it didn't hurt. Just another reason she could tell. He could do that and make sure it hurt, but he didn't. He had a huge bark, but he wasn't biting with fangs.
She had no doubt he had them. Her mom did tell her about him. He did kill people for a living.
He was a dangerous undead demon guy. He was also the person that her mom looked really comfortable in the hands of right now. She even nestled against him while he was still looking around.
"Alright you pest, I know your close," he insisted. It looked like he knew there were more out there.
The smell of him. Her mom didn't even seem to mind it. Even hurt, the average person would try to scramble away from that smell, not cozy up to it.
It was weird. Astrid didn't understand it. "Anyone would be fighting to get away from that smell." She had to point it out. "Mom is comfortable in your arms. I think maybe you do have a chance."
He stopped looking around to glance at her. "She's out."
"Your smell probably still wakes the freshly dead," Astrid said to him.
"Flattery won't get you anywhere." He said it with a straight face.
Strange. He wanted her to be sure about it before. She gave him a good sign, just like he wanted, and he was ignoring it. Like, it was really hard to accept it.
Astrid knew the feeling, but she could really see it. Somehow. It was like . . . but it wasn't. It couldn't be, she knew her dad. He didn't look like him. He didn't act like him. But.
The feeling between them. That feeling. Before her parents became distant, she felt that feeling. She still cared for her mom and her dad, but the feelings were changed. Now those changed feelings, they were back. "Impossible." She stared at him. He wasn't talking, but he clearly knew something. "You feel like . . ." How?
"Just your imagination, Kid," he answered.
No. "How?" This deadbeat disgusting undead monsterlike demon. "You're my dad?"
"Ooh, you are trusting your gut a lot more, aren'tcha?" He didn't deny it.
No way, there's no way her mom would do that. "She said, she just, she fell out of love before he died." The feelings changed beforehand. The closeness. Everything changed.
Standing next to to Beetlejuice, with him holding her mom. It felt like when she was a kid again. That strange, weird, almost whimsical buzzing between all three of them. It was always there, and then it was just gone one day. Even when her dad was still alive, it was just gone.
A mess. She felt so incredibly sad. That feeling was lost to time. And now, it was there again. "She can't even stand you, and you're dead." She knew her eyes were starting to tear up, but she didn't want to.
It didn't make any sense. What was going on? What was he hiding?!
Okay, she had to get it together. Rethink things through.
Her mom Lydia wouldn't trust him to work out any deal. She didn't think he wanted anything else from her but his freedom.
The almighty undead guy Beetlejuice, was definitely hiding things, but he was skeptical of giving any chance. He gave it twice, and both times it fell apart. He wouldn't share any secret now.
No one would budge. They would all eventually be dead at this rate. "I don't want to die. I know mom doesn't want to either. Is there anyway we can get out of this? It looked like you might have fought a couple spirits."
"Six," he told her. "I took out five. The guy I was talking to was taken out by another one." He readjusted her mom. "I know you want to live. It's a pipe dream."
"Even if mom married you?" she asked.
"We are talking I don't know how many contracts, but every bioexorcist is eventually gonna show up," he said to her. "Big, small, and company handled."
She moved closer. "How many are there?"
Beetlejuice stared at her with a raised eyebrow. "Whoah, what are you thinking? Oh, I know what your thinking." He backed up. "There's no way," he refused. "No way. No how."
Astrid had to try. "Please?"
"Please? Really, please?" Beetlejuice walked around with her mom, back and forth. "Gee, let me think. Since Lydia still has a backbills to pay, that needs taken care of first. Let's see. I still need paid in some way for stopping the exorcism of the Maitlands. I should have gotten paid for saving them years of the Neitherworld overlap too, that gift wasn't spoken, but it still counts now. Then, there was saving you with your mom. Add in these five guys, and the gremlin I dealt with earlier. All in all, can you even pay what you owe already?"
Well? "No."
"Then how are you gonna pay for me to take out at least 500 dead guys! Because that's what we are looking at! Some professional, some new, some 'cup of coffee getting paid by the big companies to defeat houses for yuppie new ghosts' ghosts too. Not to mention the really big one, I'm a fucking demon ova here! Name three times, I'm done!"
Boy. He sure could yell.
"Then, yeah, the kicker? Even if I did all of that . . . they just come back! They'll go to the waiting room for awhile and be back out there before you know it, ready to off you again. So? I know your clever. Are you clever enough to get the debt owed to me, and figure out a way to stop all the contracts? I'll give you a few minutes."