Beetlejuice
“Beetlejuice isn’t actually juice made from beetles.”
Beetlejuice was a freelance jack of all trades between the years 1330 and 1666. He was rumored to be a court jester who had been turned into a vampire, and then turned into a Renfield who featured as a servant of Dracula. His cause of death is reportedly a mysterious event where a host of suspects all gathered in a mansion for a dinner party, had access to blunt objects and weapons, and left the scene leaving Beetlejuice mortally wounded. It was never determined if his death was caused by a rope, a candlestick, a lead pipe, or a revolver. Or all of those. He was born into royalty as Lord Michael of Keaton to parents who tried to send him to the Spartans only to have him end up being sent back. They also attempted to have him raised by wolves, gorillas, and Jack the Ripper. Also by all, being sent back. After his death, he worked as an assistant with an afterlife caseworker known only as Juno. After that he became a freelance bio-exorcist, on a conquest to rid the world of the living. He dined in Hell with the Spartans, eating bugs and other disgusting things until they threw him out and had him sent to Winter River, Connecticut.
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I, myself, am strange and unusual. |
The Black Plague[edit | edit source]
When peasant folks started dropping like flies after being burned at stakes, Beetlejuice cooked up a formula for turning folks black, without the charred effects of flames, and as a result dropped dead from being humiliated at being accused of being a racist. It also wasn't a good look as others would suspect they had already been burned at the stake for being a witch and somehow came back to life. Making them witch zombies. Or zombie witches. Beetlejuice was having such a good time that he started a campaign against more of the populace, reaching beyond the peasants and even into royal houses throughout Europe. He went by the name of Beetlejuice to hide the fact he was a royal, escaping any scrutiny of the fact.
It wasn't until Dr. Strangeglove began examining cases of the bizarre plague and discovered the evil plot carried out by Beetlejuice, forcing him to spring into action. At first the strange gloved doctor began calling on the constables of the village to arrest Beetlejuice but suddenly remembered that he had previous issues with them on account of his own experiments involving piecing together cadavers. When he was asked to provide the evidence of Beetlejuice's treachery, he mumbled something about innocent people being accused of being witches and that vampires exist and that everyone should watch out. Then he gave them garlic, onions, wilted flowers, wooden stakes, and handed out bibles.
Beetlejuice at that point was questioned by authorities, and after they handed him a card and left satisfied that he wasn't bringing plagues to innocent people to be burned at a stake later, he suspected Dr. Strangeglove of ratting him out. So both Beetlejuice and Strangeglove were now at odds and one trying to kill the other. Things really got interesting when Beetlejuice would make some folks dead, have them delivered to his rival's doorstep, and then be waiting inside the cart underneath the corpse springing up and scaring the shit out of Strangeglove. And sometimes Beetljuice would hide inside a coffin as a corpse and scare the holy shit out of the gravediggers as they lowered him into the ground. In return Strangeglove would research one of those bible editions to learn how to resurrect people whom Beetlejuice had sent to the afterlife. Then Beetlejuice would contact the Spanish Inquisitor to do something about the zombie apocalypse.
While Stangeglove sent inquiries for an available vampire hunter (Van Helsing), and a vampire slayer (Buffy), he spoke to missionaries about passing out face coverings to wear whenever they'd see black smoke rising, and sensed any fires, or spotted any large vats of tar sitting nearby. Beetlejuice got wind of this and started handing out masquerade masks in order to get regular folks to blend in with the vampires. It thwarted Strangeglove's plans. Beetlejuice made a long line of some of the weirdest, creepiest, craziest masks anyone had ever seen. He had some people looking so outrageous that drag queens would have to be even more colorful and outrageous, which eventually got them noticed and in that time period, was a bad thing. They risked being burned at the stake for being witches and for being bitches.
Strangeglove raised some of the folks back to life and had them attack Beetlejuice. But they would end up dead again when Beetlejuice figured out the secret trick of jumping in the line, and rocking his body in time. The doctor then employed the help of The Mad Mister Boo to bring Beetlejuice down. This ended with Boo being scared by his own name when Beetlejuice made good use of that. By the close of the century, Beetlejuice and Strangeglove had managed to wipe out Europe, bring it back, kill them again and turned them into a multitude of small groups. All these groups today represent the French, the Nazis, the Mafia, the Vikings and the Gypsies.
The Titanic[edit | edit source]
A particularly difficult encounter with an iceberg had left Captain Cheshire Meow Max scrambling to save the ship he sailed across the ocean. And although the voyage was just north of the Bermuda Triangle, he knew that icebergs were not a feature of that part of the ocean. Unbeknownst to Meow Max, he had a troublesome passenger stowaway who created the iceberg in the first place. The culprit was Beetlejuice himself.
Meow Max couldn't quite figure out how the stowaway created an iceberg but it had crossed his mind that something was unusual with the energy deployment nitro weapon that the crazy bastard who wasn't even listed on the ship's manifest, somehow assembled on the deck. It was massive and ugly looking. Most folks just walked around it, carrying on with their own business and tried to pretend it wasn't there. When Beetlejuice aimed the clunky nozzle type apparatus at the sea in front of the ship, it froze the waves and a block of ice formed and expanded. All the passengers and the crew ran in all directions, screaming. Beetlejuice was laughing hysterically. The captain tried to steer away from the danger but Beetlejuice was able to call on Cthulhu. Now that the ship appeared to be sinking, Meow Max called on Poseidon. Then he kicked the contraption Beetlejuice used over the side and it sunk into the water. Then he fought with the ghoulish destructive nitwit who caused such an uproar. When Cthulhu arrived, the beast saw the iceberg and the ship and began grabbing a hold of the stern. Then Poseidon showed up and grabbed the ship at the other end, and a tug-of-war ensued.
Beetlejuice taunted the captain, saying he wasn't scary at all for calling on Poseidon. Then started insulting Poseidon with a long line of put downs, pointing out his insecurities and belittling the sea god with no sign of relenting. Poseidon stopped for a moment and looked over at this little runty man who was on a roll dissing him. Cthulhu tightened his grip on the ship and Poseidon resumed trying to pry it away from him. The end result was a massive disaster in which the ship was torn in half, sending both Cthulhu and Poseidon flying through the air in opposite directions. The passengers and crew had to swim for the iceberg where they were all stranded and struggling to not slip off and drown. Beetlejuice was immediately attacked by the crew and half the passengers. This caused the iceberg to spin wildly, sending it smashing into the rocks off the coast of Savannah, Georgia.
Meow Max, and all the rest of Titanic's numbers were calling for Beetlejuice to be arrested. However the authorities could not locate an iceberg, two parts of a ship, Poseidon or Cthulhu, so the investigation was obviously a cold case that nobody was going to solve. Meow Max was furious. Beetlejuice then tried to dress just like the captain and wanted to be friends, saying they shopped at the same store. The captain was by this point completely driven insane and had to be put in an asylum.
The A-bomb Incident[edit | edit source]
Around the time of WWII, weather modifications using the spinning of the earth as fuel to form out-of-control blizzards, and whipping up the La Brea Tar Pits, a military weapons expert by the name of Mythical Unicord delivered a payload of raw materials for making a terrible bomb. Unicord had no idea what this would be used for ultimately, but the suspicion of its being used for evil purposes was not unwarranted. Thanks to the recent addition to the U.S. war machine, Beetlejuice was now in command of a fleet of ski jets the military was keeping at Pearl Harbor.
Unicord was handed orders to assist Beetlejuice in training soldiers to use jet skis as weapons, since it proved to be a total failure to train dolphins. When Unicord asked what dolphins would have been used for, he was informed that they wanted them to retrieve mines, place mines, and in general fetch things that explode. Dissatisfied that the military would even want such a worthless feature as fetching explosives when they kind of resolve themselves in the end, he went to Beetlejuice to inquire of what he might be trying to accomplish. Beetlejuice acted all polite and smiles, but when he could get Unicord off alone, he told him that he was going to use the jet skis to launch on attack against Hawaii. Unicord was shocked, asking why he would do such a thing. Beetlejuice's answer was that it was too sunny, and warm, and there was something horribly unnatural about all that.
This was a distressing situation because Unicord would have to alert his superiors about Beetlejuice's plans. On the other hand, he was perplexed by Beetlejuice's claims that Hawaii was too sunny. Since he had been there, it was the middle of monsoon months and there was always rain. He didn't expect this to happen in Hawaii as it did in India, but he was too under the weather to deal with the concept that he might be cursed. Beetlejuice worked on his nerves, drumming up the feelings of paranoia and using subtle mind games to prevent Unicord from saying anything to anyone. Still Unicord was the one they hired to build a new weapon and that's what he focused on, trying to ignore Beetlejuice.
Meanwhile Beetlejuice trained soldiers to use Japanese anime characters as test subjects to pick up mines out of the ocean on their jet skis. At first the soldiers wondered why but as Beetlejuice explained; they don't want to have an accident with any explosive going off and killing their own soldiers. That it was best to use something that doesn't seem too harsh. And dolphins, monkeys, and hula dancers were out of the question. Still the anime characters felt shortchanged and begrudgingly fulfilled their duties. Scooping up mines and other life-threatening debris from the last war, noted in the last bottle that washed on shore with documents crammed into it.
Unicord successfully developed the atomic bomb, a laser beam capable of splitting the moon in half, a subterranean energy device that vacuumed oxygen and compressed it to deliver megaton shockwaves, a device that distorted gravity, and a device that could make grilled cheese sandwiches in under ten seconds. The military commanders were impressed and sent Unicord to arrange for the jet ski suckers to prepare to circle the island looking for sharks. Unicord told Beetlejuice this new order and Beetlejuice didn't like it. In fact he threatened Unicord, telling him he would feed him to the sharks and to leave the Japanese out of it. Unicord lost his patience and whacked Beetlejuice upside the head. Beetlejuice then grabbed Unicord by the neck and tried to strangle him.
The Japanese all scrambled and fled away on the jet skis. There went Beetlejuice's plan for bombing Hawaii. But he compensated for it by catapulting the mines and other explosives he'd been secretly stockpiling toward the island and all hell broke loose. The Japanese were spotted making a run for the open sea back to Japan. When the military saw this, they believed it was they who bombed the island and tried to get away after the fact. When Unicord came to, and saw all the fires and mayhem going on, he spotted Beetlejuice loading up another mine onto a catapult and tackled him. They fought. Unicord pulled his hair and Beetlejuice complained that he messed it up, but took a moment to calmly suggest that it could be a new look for him, and then resumed attacking Unicord.
By the time the fight was broken up, Unicord was informed that his bomb was on its way to Japan. Unicord was horrified and tried desperately to tell the military leaders that it wasn't the Japanese who were at fault, but Beetlejuice himself. That was when Beetlejuice grabbed Unicord and knocked him down a flight of stairs. When he managed to shake it off, he lunged at Beetlejuice knocking him across the beachfront. Beetlejuice rolled over and seized Unicord's leg and dragged him up the slope of a volcano. Unicord bit down as hard as he could on Beetlejuice's hand and he fell backward, grasping his hand in pain, screaming. Unicord got his balance and stood up on the lip of the volcano, gloating over defeating Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice sure made a show of it, wincing and whimpering, crying and hyperventilating until he got back up and casually reached into his pocket and pulled out a severed finger and a spider and threw them at Unicord. Unicord shrieked in terror, jumped back, lost his balance and fell into the volcano.
Japan was not doing very well, despite the anime characters who managed to escape the sharks, Hawaii being blasted into pieces, and the creator of the atomic bomb being Gollumed.
Final Days[edit | edit source]
After the second world war Beetlejuice tried to live a normal life and attended Juilliard. He wanted to apply his skills for entertainment purposes and use less fire. But he would meet a man who would turn out to be a bad influence, and set him on the road to destruction. Beetlejuice wasn't prepared for the trickery of the sly and savvy Mr. Keejamadoom.
Beetlejuice went to an art class, to finish a sculpture the students had been working on. He wanted to do one of those museum statues that had missing heads and arms, but the teacher had to stop Beetlejuice from dismembering their model. However his comments caused the model to run away, forgetting to grab her clothes as she ran out the door. Beetlejuice went after her and grabbed her and brought her back to the classroom. Her hair standing on end, arms flailing, screaming, kicking, and shivering in a fetal position was going to have to suffice for the time being.
Mr. Keejamadoom thought the whole scene was hilarious and invited Beetlejuice to have a drink with him at the local pub. The best way to describe Keejamadoom is a man who possesses a body-builder stature, a face that resembles a lost tourist in a leper colony, and a voice that sounds like James Earl Jones on helium. But the most astonishing thing about Keejamadoom was the fact that he could summon the dead, get them back into a physical life, bringing them back from purgatory and giving them a second chance. He learned this trick was much the same principle that illegal aliens used, by getting married and thus, the bond of marriage would allow passage. Until death parted them and they'd have to go through all that shit again. Most people just stayed dead.
While Beetlejuice was having a drink with his new friend, he was fascinated to learn that there were other ways to bring the dead back, as his knowledge of it mainly consisted of the average zombie thing. Keejamadoom laughed and stated that no zombified corpses were needed, the trick worked really well. Beetlejuice asked him if he could marry a dead movie star. Of course he could and Mr. Kee said to just give him a name and he'd see what he could arrange. Naturally Beetlejuice chose someone who was notorious in life and had met her fate when she was murdered by a big name movie mogul, known as Mr. Green who was never caught because, you know, that's all a "conspiracy theory". So the next night a sort of ceremony was enacted and the movie star was drawn back to life betrothed to Beetlejuice. He even had a ring for her that he broke a whole bubblegum machine to get.
But later on, Keejamadoom would ask Beetlejuice to accompany him to a dinner party. He accepted and they arrived at a gloomy, sinister-looking mansion. After they all sat down at the dinner table, Beetlejuice whispered over to his friend. Asking how he became associated with all these people. That they all had issues and that half of them probably needed locked up in an asylum. Keejamadoom told him that he had to show up for the invitation because he was being blackmailed and that he had no choice but to do as he was told. Beetlejuice was intrigued. He wanted to know what Keejamadoom had done that was so terrible. He learned that night that the dinner guests and his friend were all involved with the Dead Mans Club and that some of them ratted out other members out of petty vindictiveness. So naturally they were trying to lay low until the heat died down. Mr. Green especially had an obligation to this insane clown posse. Of course the other guests overheard Beetlejuice talking smack about them, and demanded to know who he was. Beetlejuice bragged about being the handsome husband of Miss Monroe Bette Davis Eyelashes. The others all gasped and wanted to know how that could be. Beetlejuice told them about the nifty trick that his good friend introduced him to. This resulted in an uproar. The house servants ran for cover. The guests were all at each other's throats. Mr. Green grabbed Beetlejuice and threw him up against a wall. He was intent on killing Beetlejuice. He couldn't have his victim being brought back to life to witness against him, and he knew that she would have blabbed everything to her new husband. And he knew she would seek him out and kill him eventually.
Mr. Green was enraged, as well as the other guests, because they had known of the murder and never went to the police. So Beetlejuice had to die. There was a crash of thunder, the lights went out, a gunshot was heard, and there was a thud on the floor. When the lights came back on, Mr. Keejamadoom appeared to be nailed to the wall although nobody heard any hammering. Keejamadoom was rather surprised. But he told the others that Beetlejuice was the one they wanted and to go after him. Somehow Beetlejuice and Keejamadoom ended up on the roof. They argued over who was going to die. Whether they were going to kill everyone or everyone was going to kill them. It was an obvious dilemma.
Keejamadoom sat down and reminisced about his affair with the maid of the estate they were now trying to escape. Telling Beetlejuice that she was very devoted and loyal to him and that if anything were to ever happen to him, she would use the trick to bring him back to life. But no sooner had this been spoken of, did Mr. Green clamor onto the roof and held them at gunpoint. He demanded to know how Beetlejuice brought back Miss Monroe, who surely had a plan to bump him off as soon as she could. Beetlejuice laughed at him and said that saying her name three times was a challenge since it was a long name, but didn't let that stop him. And that he'd be prepared to do it again. Keejamadoom was shaking his head and wondered why Beetlejuice had such a big mouth. This was something he really didn't want Mr. Green to know. But as Mr. Green advanced on the two, they stepped backward and fell through a skylight. Mr. Green jumped after them. The other guests all clamored to kill Beetlejuice any way they could. Then a fire broke out, due to a lit candle falling on a rug as Miss Scarlet grabbed a candlestick.
When the smoke cleared and everyone had fled the scene, there Beetlejuice lay dead. The investigation read like Japanese stereo instructions because it was never determined how he died. He had multiple wounds from blunt trauma, bullets, strangulation and smoke inhalation. Keejamadoom's fate remained unknown, and was never found for questioning. Rumor has it that the maid pulled his lifeless body out of the rumble and brought him back to life. Other rumors suggest that he survived the fire, but he had to change his whole identity and traveled with a carnival troop, bringing people back to life, posing as Jesus Christ.
Mr. Green however caught up with his movie star victim and bit her ring finger off, Gollum style. Sending her and her finger back to the afterlife. She would meet up again with Beetlejuice, who could not bring her back because now he was dead too. So she threw his ring back at him, finger and all. Beetlejuice shrugged and just put it in his pocket. As was his habit with severed fingers and other disgusting and morbid things. Mr. Green eventually died of choking on a chicken bone.
Personal Afterlife[edit | edit source]
Having been unable to get in contact with anyone willing to use Keejamadoom's trick and willing to marry him, Beetlejuice found a job working as an assistant with a diabolical, but not-so-insane, grandmother-type woman named Juno. Beetlejuice on the other hand started to become more and more erratic and unpredictable. If there is even such a thing. His job description was simply to help Juno with people who had died and became trapped in their houses or other residences making them unable to register as recently deceased citizens in the dimensions she was overseeing as the director of the Alternate Afterlife Program. Her main role was to see to it that they wouldn't end up on the Moon, in some black hole or Saturn. Or one of Saturn's moons. Beetlejuice had told her about the trick of bringing someone back to life if they said the name three times and agreed to marry the ghost to give him/her life again. But Juno wasn't going to provide any contact with the living, and ghosts trapped in their own houses would be off limits since they technically couldn't register as recently deceased anyway. So the perimeters of the realms of the dead wouldn't recognize a dead person from a desperate person looking to marry a ghost. It just wasn't done.
Beetlejuice, of course, threw a fit and told Juno it was most definitely done – that he had done just that before he died. He even went as far to speak with the dimensional entity that held the office of the celestial space-time continuum about the persons still not registered as dead. When it was explained that the undead and/or living may still be alive, or undead, or vampires, or zombies, Beetlejuice asked if there would be a way to contact the living in order to seek a partner who wanted to marry a ghost. Then told the entity that he might be a ghost, but he could offer the most. This confused the usual dimensional being who oversaw the comings and goings of people all over the world. The weird glowy being talked in its usual paranormal way and showed Beetlejuice a scene from the current time in Bumfuck. Beetlejuice looked on in horror and could not imagine marrying any of those people. He was very distressed but he was determined to defy death. So he figured he would just simply get rid of the living and bring them to the other side. If he was going to be dead without his chances for living a good life, nobody was going to live.
When the office of the Angel of Death heard about all this, Beetlejuice caused trouble for Juno, suggesting that she was avoiding Bumfuck and not properly doing case work for ghosts in the living world and vice versa. That she wasn't helping the living to accept ghosts and that ghosts weren't being properly introduced to the living. He also protested that the handbook for recently deceased people wasn't updated to specific manifestations to manifestations. When the officials looked into it after placing Juno in a temporary limbo as opposed to the definite limbo of being dead, the handbook was in accordance with the rules of the deceased and lawful on manifestations should any ghosts decide to haunt their own houses and remain in a limbo of that location, regardless of the living. But that's not what Beetlejuice wanted to hear. He placed an ad in any perimeter he could to be a guide for new ghosts, to assist them on how to haunt the living, in order to get rid of the living. He handed in his resignation to Juno's office, complete with a few insects, a severed head from a praying mantis, and inked in what would have been blood but was instead embalming fluid. Juno was reassigned her position working with ghosts who were trapped in their own homes, but on very strict guidelines. Determining if help was needed, deserved, and available. She was ordered to keep quiet about things like moons and other planets. At least until they could figure out what the deal was with Beetlejuice. They weren't sure where he was from exactly.
Juno spoke with the office staff and told them about Beetlejuice's trick of saying a name three times to summon a ghost. They soon found that, living or dead, Beetlejuice could be summoned back to life by either a living person or summoned to haunt a dead person's house or property. That this gave him too much power and he was already kicking the afterlife's ass. So in a paranormal emergency situation, the space-time continuum officials decreed that Beetlejuice could never utter his own name. But it would prove later that he found ways around this. Even using the spelling of another similar-sounding name that represented a solar body without involving any moons or planets. Eventually he ran into some snags when entering the domains of haunted houses by way of lower doors and outside stairs, as these lead to Saturn. It was even worse when he discovered that sandworms lived there and that their diet consisted of dead people who wandered there by accident, and other sandworms to wear as protection in Saturn's sandy environment.
Going Freelance 
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Once Beetlejuice obtained a working license from the Bureau of Bones, he began scouring obituaries for possible clients. He developed a method for picking out folks who owned their own homes or other residences and had a lot of flyers printed up, declaring his skills as a bio-exorcist were the best, along with his misspelled name three times in a row. Eventually some guy called on him to get rid of the couple who moved into his house. Beetlejuice asked his new client, Mr. Bill Clayton, what he wanted done but stated that the fee for doing an exorcism of the house would require for him to find him a living bride. Preferably a very good-looking one.
Mr. Clayton agreed and Beetlejuice went to work on scaring the couple to give them a heart attack. His first attempts failed. In frustration, the home owner (who was pretty scared himself at what Beetlejuice could do) told him he just wanted his dog back, that he wandered off after he had died and he missed him. He was ready to risk the chances of ending up Saturn, just to reunite with his dog. Beetlejuice thought it was stupid to haunt a dog. But his client figured out a way to be with his dog by floating out a window and hanging around a bridge near his house. He found he could call his dog even from the other side, and his dog would see him and come. Beetlejuice was peeved at Mr. Clayton for backing out of the deal they had, but he couldn't get him back near the stairs of his house to get him to trip and fall into the warped passage to Saturn.
Building a Clientele 
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While Beetlejuice didn't really get a good look at the couple Mr. Clayton wanted out of his former house, he was in an ideal location for haunted houses, as the whole area had all these sub-dimensional passages to Saturn, the Moon, and some of Saturn's moons as well. There was a lot of activity. So he was making contact with several ghosts of Winter River. He didn't really choose Winter River in the first place, either. That was something beyond his control after he was partying and feasting in Hell with the Spartans. He made such an impression on them that they sent him away and as a team, settled on Winter River as his resting place. But Beetlejuice made the most of it, and decided to try and establish himself. He scared the living out of some houses, but none of the ghosts could manage to find him a bride. He would work with ghosts to help them at first, but ended up not only getting rid of unwanted living people, but somehow terrorizing the ghosts themselves. They opted for passage to some foreign location, even if it was Saturn willing to put up with sandworms just to get away from Beetlejuice. They would all eventually meet up with caseworkers in Juno's department to register as recently deceased as long as they didn't have to go back to where they had been dead. It just wasn't working out for them. Never mind that being dead is kind of a bummer, too.
Juno talked with a few of Beetlejuice's former clients. They told her about his obsessions and how he didn't work well with anyone because he was too over-the-top, and that they couldn't use their own ghost-like talents to just go around asking women if they wanted to marry a dead guy. One of the ghosts did try that one time, but the woman thought he was hitting on her and tried to slap him only to find that it didn't really work as well when trying to do that to someone who's alive. She freaked out, and when Beetlejuice popped out from behind him, she ran away screaming. Last anyone heard of her, she was talked down out of a tree, and sent to an asylum.
Defying the Dead Zones 
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Because Winter River was rich with elements of the living world and the underworld, not to mention that it served as an ideal place for a speedy trip to Saturn, offering sandworms far more of a smorgasbord, it was also built in such a way that Charon could use it as a shortcut between the river Styx and Hades. That the Grim Reaper could use it as a transitional stage for the almost dead to the absolute dead. And it was also an ideal spot for picnics. A local couple had passed away and Beetlejuice saw another opportunity to escape death. This time his clients were determined to keep a new family from remaining in their house. They had worked so hard on it that they were desperate. Beetlejuice honed in on that. But the family they wanted out were going to be a challenge. A big challenge. Beetlejuice immediately started campaigning to be their bio-exorcist and threw flyers at them and even did a television ad to get hired by them.
When they finally called on Beetlejuice, they changed their minds after about ten minutes of talking to him. He was pissed off. Juno heard about their first attempts at trying to scare people out of their house that failed miserably. But Beetlejuice was angry also at the fact he didn't once bring up the fact that he went to Juno to tell her about their unsuccessful stunt and laughed at them, mocking them, and even had Juno laughing at how stupid they were. So he watched them attempting another big scare as he sat and sulked in their attic model of Winter River. Beetlejuice was brilliant at scale dimensions in the veiled perimeters. So he knew they couldn't get rid of him while he lived in their model, unless they wanted to throw their own living work away. He was there to stay.
When the couple's second attempt at scaring the family out of their house failed, Beetlejuice was relentless. He laughed at them again. And because he was out due to his name being called three times, and not repeated again three more times to place him back, he was able to frighten the family something terrible by turning into a bannister railing snake and picking up the living body of the dad of the family. And dropping him. Beetlejuice was about to wreak havoc when he saw the girl Lydia. It was her soft and pale appearance that stayed his wrath. He fell in love with her. This was who he wanted as his bride. And she was alive, and gothic, and dark-ish. A dream come true for Beetlejuice.
Now his mission shifted and he concentrated on getting rid of the ghost couple more than getting rid of the family. He was within reason because the ghost couple rejected his services, leaving him to focus on his main goal. But there was a snag. Lydia had become attached to the ghost couple. She bonded with them in a way that she never could with her own parents. Many reasons could be argued that they never paid any attention to her, that they ignored her, and that they weren't covered with bloody veins and puss. She considered that very bland and unimaginative of them. They simply weren't cool. But nonetheless, Lydia talked the ghosts into letting her and her family stay in the house. But Beetlejuice wasn't going for that. When a family friend by the name of Otho got a hold of the handbook the ghosts carelessly left behind, adding to the fact they let Beetlejuice out and never put him back (into the model or just back), he saw his plan come into fruition.
At first, Lydia came calling on the ghosts and came across Beetlejuice lounging in the model. She expressed her desire to follow the couple to the other side, just to be with them. Beetlejuice wanted her to live, and tried to deceive her on the specifics that she could see them if she said his name three times. It almost worked until the ghost couple showed back up and stopped her from the third utterance of his name.
When Otho began a seance to bring the house ghosts back to life, as per instructions from the handbook, he was unaware of the trick of saying a name three times to bypass the standard practice of raising the dead. Although the handbook was also oblivious to the trick of raising the dead by sacrificing a savior to the Roman Empire and then having said savior rampage through Hades which brings back a lot of dead people to throw bigger parties. But Beetlejuice knew Otho wasn't going to know any of this and waited for the eventual and predictable outcome. When the ghost couple were being manifested into the wedding clothes Lydia's mother stepmother found in a closet to complete the seance, they were being brought back to the land of the living. The problem with that was they would eventually have to decay in living time and turn into zombies. Beetlejuice was having one of those schadenfreude moments when Lydia went to him and begged him to help them. That was his moment. And he didn't really have to plan a whole lot for it. The stupidity of the living and the dead were, in his view, hysterical, hilarious, beautiful and just as unintentionally funny as Lydia's neurotic parents and the stepmother's bizarre sculptures. Which reminded him of his days in Juilliard.
But there he was, being asked to help the two people who were the last two he'd ever think of helping, and agreed to for a bargain. He told Lydia that in order to help them he would have to get married and those were the rules of the realm. She agreed and three times she called his name. When he was finally free of the dead zone, it was showtime. He was now in full living discolor and helped the dead couple from decaying any further, but he sent them to different locations. The ghost groom was sent right into the model, while he sent the corpse bride to Saturn when they attempted to interrupt his own wedding ceremony with Lydia. As he had not yet been confirmed as Lydia's husband, they were trying to prevent it from happening. But the vows were uttered. Although Lydia was of sound mind, she wasn't of her own sound, as Beetlejuice spoke for her in her own voice. During the last few words of the ceremony when the ghoulish priest finalized the marriage, the ghost groom ran into Beetlejuice's foot with one of the model's pick-up trucks and the sudden expert on domesticating sandworms came crashing through the ceiling and devoured Beetlejuice. For a split second he was alive again only to be killed by a sandworm with the ghost bride riding it through the perimeters of their house. And making such a mess.
Beetlejuice had to wait to make an appointment in the waiting room of the recently deceased after dying in the belly of a worm creature on Saturn by way of Connecticut. And it took him awhile to get there. His usual trips to Saturn weren't always that dramatic. When he did finally make it, he incurred the displeasure of a headhunter and suffered a minor setback. As compared to the major setback of being within seconds of not being dead anymore.
More Dead But Just As Fun[edit | edit source]
When his shrunken head finally healed from the not-so-potent-anymore-dead-headhunter, Beetlejuice found his way back to Winter River. There he discovered that Lydia and her parents had accepted the ghost couple as co-inhabitants. The sugary sweetness of such bliss made his stomach turn. And he hated that almost as much when it would happen to his head. But he did have his commitments and he was, in his own right, a married man and he was determined to make things work out with Lydia.
He settled among the sculptures in the studio room where the stepmother shaped and created her inspired works of gargoyles, sandworms, snakes, and Beetlejuice himself. He felt welcome and quite at home. He appeared to Lydia to say hello. She wasn't interested in seeing him, and told him she was too young to get married. And also that he was dead. He reminded her that she didn't seem to mind ghosts when they helped her learn the Cha-Cha. She relented and sat down to talk with him about what was on their minds. Beetlejuice had to clear things out of his mind, but she told him to knock it off. She wasn't in the mood for him to be ripping his head off and shaking out worms and other disgusting stuff. But after awhile she began to like him. He was cool, after all. He could do the bloody veins and puss, but she was trying to get herself on the straight and narrow and get to living life. Her days of mourning were over as far as she was concerned.
Lydia told her parents and the ghost couple (Adam and Barbara, as the family would learn who they were after the whole botched wedding thing) about Beetlejuice's return. Her parents were shocked and the ghost couple were angry that Beetlejuice returned from the dead, after being dead. How rude. The couple went to see Juno, after failing to summon her by becoming very unhappy again. But Beetlejuice was one step ahead of them this time. He went back to the Angel of Death and the entity who oversaw the space-time continuum and complained about the handbook. And to find out why no newer editions were printed. That the handbook was outdated and wrong in so many places ... and who the hell wrote all that? It was discovered that the author was a dead person who, in life, had written manuals to include in stereo equipment. Beetlejuice brought up the evidence of how incomplete and dangerous the handbook was for anyone living or dead.
Juno agreed and filed a request to put together an investigative team to test the merits of the book and find out exactly what it gets wrong. From there the team would then have new editions of the handbook published to prevent any misuse of being a corpse or using corpses for untoward things, and using the living to become married to dead people or just making them corpses themselves before their time. Beetlejuice asked Juno if he could assist her in finding a team. Juno rejected his proposal. When Beetlejuice reminded her that he was the one who brought all this to everyone's attention and informed her that he knew tricks of the trade she wasn't aware of, and that being a caseworker in this field without the utmost knowledge of all things related to dirt and daises, it would be a mistake to not let him assist. She agreed. Regretting that she couldn't hold enough cigarette smoke in her lungs to exhale in his face. He laughed.
Beetlejuice immediately set up a workshop at home (read: the house he just moved back into that wasn't really his) and asked Lydia to help him choose a team of famous dead people who were most likely to argue the case against the handbook for the recently deceased. Lydia mentioned Elvis Presley, Napoleon Bonaparte, and a few Titanic survivors. Beetlejuice immediately thought of some of his old friends and decided he'd bring them to the table. The table with the model on it, of course. He summoned Captain Meow Max, Keejamadoom, Unicord and Strangeglove. Then he summoned Merlin and Galileo. When the ghost couple saw that their model and house was crowded with all these people, they demanded to know what was happening. Likewise, Lydia's parents wanted to know too, but made a lovely shrimp dinner and dressed up, ready to dance again.
Juno appeared and gave Beetlejuice a timeframe to a tomb hall meeting, where they could present the case against the book. When the time arrived, Beetlejuice with his team brought along Lydia, her parents, and even the ghost couple as long as Barbara brought her pet sandworm with her, provided it was on a leash. Beetlejuice greeted his old friend Keejamadoom and asked how he got there. His friend shrugged and said that he was nailed to a church door for impersonating Jesus. All the dead people gathered there could present evidence that the handbook wasn't always accurate or took into consideration all the mishaps that can happen when you're dead. Beetlejuice looked around and noticed Elvis wasn't there. For a brief moment his entire head shrunk down to the size of a tennis ball and he remembered how he tricked a headhunter out of his place in line. He regained his composure and his regular head size again, and asked where Elvis was. Nobody knew. Juno came through the iron gate and told Beetlejuice not to expect Elvis. So, he's still alive then? He asked. How did you guess? Juno answered with her usual cryptic attitude. Beetlejuice knew if he were to ever attend an Elvis concert, he'd have to do something about the issue with the headhunter.
The handbook was officially dismissed as outdated and incomplete after all the evidence was presented. And after someone was called in to clean up after the sandworm. The main determining factor was Strangeglove's own account of the history of the Black Death wherein people were dying, being brought back, dying again, and living off the grid. Keejamadoom's trick was also a factor. The afterlife authorities decreed that the handbook was unreliable and moved to get another handbook out with all the new and updated information as soon as they could move again without the effects of rigor mortis. When it was all over, the ghost couple thanked Beetlejuice and Lydia's parents was looking forward to more dancing around the table. Merlin zapped Unicord for being such a destructive genius and for being so stupid at the same time. The captain of the Titanic was still mad at Beetlejuice but made a fortune selling baskets so he wasn't one to complain. Then he complained about his lost ship after realizing he was now dead and couldn't make baskets anymore. The revelation about Saturn proved once again that Galileo really should not have given up his day job to become an astronomer. Napoleon was there but everyone thought he was the midget priest ghoul. Lydia asked Barbara if they could keep the sandworm, but Barbara explained that it belonged on the planet Saturn, and it would be best for it to live in its own environment. Beetlejuice gave Lydia a hug and told her he would take her to Saturn for their honeymoon.
Beetlejuice Twice As Much As Before[edit | edit source]
Lydia ran off with some weirdo junkie, and had a kid with him. The weirdo died and she was left to raise a goth kind on her own. Being goth they could mourn the death of a loved one and still be true to their habit of dressing in black all the time. Beetlejuice's plans to take Lydia as a wife didn't pan out, and Saturn didn't interest her enough to want to marry a dead guy. Poor Beetlejuice moped around all day in the afterlife staring at Lydia's picture. What followed next was something totally unsuspected. His old flame was unboxed and was able to pull herself together. She was chopped by Beetlejuice for trying to kill him during the Black Plague. He was poisoned, but the Fake Historical Events News listed him as dead long before he actually died. Figures. Now he was dealing with a soul sucker who had the power to kill dead people even more dead. She was a Death Cult leader, priestess, and styled herself after Elvira and Morticia Addams.
Running out of options, he had to marry Lydia to get out of the curse set forth by his ex. Going around and sucking the souls out of anyone who crossed her path, she was relentless and gave Kamala Harris serious competition. Not only that but she had more respect from her admirers because she sucked without the annoying laughing and braying. Beetlejuice helped a living person escape damnation and handed out copies of the new edition of the Handbook for the Recently Deceased to the living because he knew it would piss somebody off.
Lydia was an emotional wreck as the man who almost forced her to marry him, ended up at a wedding ceremony but with Beetlejuice instead. This thwarted the plans of the ex, and Lydia's daughter and mother both danced around and with the help of a 1970s TV show featuring now dead cops and a dead actor-turned-detective, came and saved Lydia and Beetlejuice from having their souls destroyed. Their vows were the lyrics of an old song about green icing on a cake being left in the rain to melt. However Beetlejuice was taken back to the realm of the dead causing him to bubble, which then caused him to burst.
In the wedding announcement page and the obituary section, Lydia and Beetlejuice's event was said to be the most bizarre and most beautiful thing we've ever seen!
