Disclaimer: I do not own Beetlejuice. If I did, there would have totally been a sequel by now. I make zero monies doing this, it is just for the amusement.

A/N: Ok, so I had a huge bout of writer's block on my other story and needed a break. Thus – this. May or may not be continued, depending.

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Chapter One: In Which the Marriage Goes Forward as Planned

Lydia had been stuffed unwillingly into a poufy tulle monstrosity, her parents were captivated by Delia's sculptures in a way nobody had been before, and it was hitting her right in the gut with a gnawing terror what a horrible thing she had agreed to do. He had seemed so much CLEANER and HARMLESS when he was two inches high, although of course she hadn't forgotten the giant snake. And now he was treating her arm like a leash.

"And you. Do you, Lydia, take this man to be your wedded husband?" the reverend intoned.

She was right on the cusp of shouting NO when her frantic gaze caught on the Maitlands, who were beginning to pick themselves up (literally). And to her right Beetlejuice was nodding and motioning the reverend on, expecting her to uphold the bargain just as he had even though he had enough power now that she couldn't stop him from taking whatever he wanted. The realization made her heart tremble just that much more in its frenetic pace. But he just wanted an 'I do' and then he was gone, right? He didn't want a REAL marriage, right? He gets a green card, I get to say I'm hitched, that's how he explained it. He was scary, but he hadn't actually hurt anybody, right?

She took a deep breath, stomped down her disgust (she wasn't going to flinch at a little mold and grave dirt – it wasn't like he was all bloody veins and pus), and said, "I do."

"Then by the authority invested in me – the ring, please?"

"Argh! The ring!" Beetlejuice started frantically going through his pockets, dumping handfuls of creepy crawlies on the floor. Lydia winced. "You know I got it, honey."

"Beetle-" Adam started to say, but Lydia interrupted.

"Stop it! I agreed to this." She tried to warn him off.

Beetlejuice finally pulled the ring out, still on someone else's finger. "Here it is, here we go…."

"Eurgh!" Lydia gagged, but didn't resist as he took her hand. She was wearing gloves, right? So it wouldn't actually touch her skin. And when he was gone she could take it off and put it away in a box in the bottom of a drawer in a corner of the basement. Or bury it.

"I'm telling you she meant nothing to me, honey, nothing at all!"

Barbara staggered closer. "No! This is wrong, Lydia!"

"I did it to save you!" she yelled back. "Now just…be saved!

"I now pronounce you man and wife."

The ring was on her finger.

She could barely breathe and she had imagined that maybe the ring would feel heavy, or cold, or something remotely symbolic but it just sat on her finger over the tacky red glove and she hardly felt anything at all. It was actually quite disappointing and anticlimactic.

Then came the kicker: "You may now kiss the bride."

Her eyes flew wide open just in time to see his necrotic lips descending all puckered up and molding on the one side, and then he was kissing her and she was clenching her eyes and especially her lips shut. It seemed to go on forever – it was like kissing a frozen lamp post, the kind you get stuck to – she could barely hear someone shouting "Beetlejuice!" over and over through the roaring in her ears but it was too late, and he wasn't going anywhere.

And then the slight pressure was gone, nearly tearing her lips off, and then somehow everything was indefinably different. So she opened her eyes to find herself still in his arms and all around them was a beach.

They were standing on a spur of gloriously white sand which she now felt seeping into her shoes. To the right the sun was sparkling over cobalt waves so clear she could see coral and rainbows of fish. To the left was a tropical jungle with exotic flowers and a waterfall in the distance. It was gorgeous. It was sunny.

She hated it.

"You bastard!" She whacked him about the head and shoulder with her bouquet and shoved at his chest, trying to get free.

"Ow! Ow, ow! Will ya – ow – stop already!" He let go only to snatch the bouquet and toss it into the bushes.

Deprived of her weapon, she resorted to pounding on his chest with her fists in an unfortunately clichéd manner that nevertheless made her feel slightly better when he flinched. "You lying bastard! You said you just wanted out!"

He grabbed her wrists, raising a twisted eyebrow at her antics. "Honey…sweetie…sugar pie pumpkin muffin…What is the MATTER with you!"

She could feel her eyes start to burn with unshed tears, so she kicked him in the shin. "You didn't even let me say goodbye!" she wailed.

"Oh, well, if that's all," he said while a battered pay phone appeared in the air. "Why don't you just give 'em a ring while I go fix up our little honeymoon love shack!" And with that he planted a slobbery kiss on her wincing cheek and bounded off around the curve of the shore.

She scrubbed it off and hoped against hope that she had heard wrong and as little sense as it made he had said 'tough shark' or 'glove attack,' ANYTHING but 'love shack.'

Sniffling, she yanked the phone off the hook and dialed 0, wondering if the thing could even work without any lines or wires. Hell, it was floating, so why not?

"Operator," a bored voice issued forth from the receiver and smacked its gum.

Lydia felt like the boringly blue sky had opened up and a choir of black clad angels descended and began to play melancholy mandolin music. A single, grateful tear slid down and plopped into her red tulle ruff.

"Like, hello?"

"Hello! I need to make a collect call!"

"State your name, please."

"Lydia Deetz. No, wait, I just got married…it's um, it's…" Lydia realized she had no frickin' clue if Beetlejuice had a last name. Or if that WAS his last name. Or if she was even going to take his last name, anyway! This wasn't the Stone Age, for god's sake.

"Congratulations! Now, like, hurry up. I don't have all afterlife, here."

"Then just Lydia Deetz, I guess."

"And the person to whom you are directing the collect call?"

"Charles Deetz."

She heard some papers rustling. "I have here a list of 87 Charles Deetzes. Do you know his death date?"

"What? No. I mean, he's still alive. He was still alive five minutes ago!" Her knuckles were even paler than the rest of her as she clutched at the phone.

"I see. I'm, like, sorry, but you need a special exemption to call the living. Thank you, have a – "

"No! Wait, don't hang up on me! He's my father and I've been kidnapped by the ghost I just married and I really, really need to talk to him!"

"I dunno, I could get in some serious trouble for this…"

"Please! I'm desperate here! Couldn't you just…oh! What about the Maitlands? Can I call them?"

"They're dead?"

"Yeah."

"I don't see why not."

Lydia sagged in relief.

"Lessee here…Maitlands…first names?"

"Adam and Barbara. They died this year, if that helps."

"Aha! Yes, I'm connecting you now. Please wait."

Meanwhile, in the Deetz-Maitland residence, the fragile peace that had fallen over the rubble-strewn room was broken by a shrill ring-tone.

"Umm," Charles said after the second ring. "Is somebody going to get that? I'm a little…tied up at the moment." He smiled weakly and laughed once with absolutely no humor but with a good deal of coping mechanism.

Adam and Barbara, clinging to each other in despair, self-consciously let go and began poking around for the phone.

"It's the pair of giant blue lips on the counter over there," Charles helpfully supplied.

"Oh. Really?"

"The top comes off."

Adam picked it up and spoke, not really expecting a response, seeing as he was a ghost and the living would not technically hear him. "Hello?"

"Mr. or Mrs. Maitland?"

"Adam Maitland speaking." He put his hand over the receiver and loudly whispered, "It's for us, Barbara!" His wife hurried over to stand next to him.

"Would you like to accept a collect call from one Lydia Deetz, recently married?"

"Who is it?" Barbara asked.

"It's Lydia!"

"Oh, Adam!"

"Lydia?!" Charles exclaimed.

"Mmmmmmmrphmph!" Delia screamed.

"Sir? Would you like to accept the call?"

"Yes! Yes, very much so!"

"Just one moment, please."

And the hold music played.

Then with a crackle of static that had Lydia falling to her knees in the belief that the call hadn't gone through, the call went through.

"Lydia?"

"Mr. Maitland?"

"Lydia!"

"Oh, thank god!"

"Where are you?!"

"I don't know. Some deserted tropical beach." She glanced over the picture perfect scenery as if to find some clue she'd missed before – like a sign saying '[Insert Name Here] Beach: Tourists Welcome!'

"A…beach?"

"HE said we're on our," she grimaced, "honeymoon."

"Honeymoon!" Then there were noises like two people scuffling over the phone and a muffled shout of fatherly indignation. Also a curious smothered screaming.

"Hello? Are you still there?"

She thought she heard someone say, Let me talk to her, and, Give it back, and then Barbara was on the phone, a little (well, technically a lot) breathless. "Lydia, honey, listen to me – if that pervert tries anything, you knee him right in his pants! He may have tricked you into marrying him, but that doesn't mean you have to put up with it! We're going straight to Juno to see if we can get this sham annulled, or a divorce, or, or something!"

"Really?" This thought sparkled through Lydia's brain like a ray of appropriately gloomy glitter.

"Yes! Now, talk to your father. Adam and I have to go fix this right away!" She heard the phone being propped up.

"Dad?" She sniffled.

"Punkin, don't worry! I know some great divorce lawyers that owe me a favor…"

It was then, in the face of her father's well-meaning but extremely futile reassurance, that she began to cry in earnest. "Dad, I know I may not have told you this lately, but I love-"

Her only support, the pay phone, vanished, sending her face-first into the sand.

"-you," she mumbled as she got up, wiping off sandy tear-tracks. What rotten timing. She thought it was just the sort of nasty trick a poltergeist might play, if she was ready to credit him with some sort of all-seeing eye that allowed him to know what people were doing when he wasn't around, but she wasn't because that was just too creepy.

Not ready to face the music just yet, or in fact ever, she kicked off the stupid sand-filled high heels and wandered off in the opposite direction of where Beetlejuice had gone.

Meanwhile, in the Deetz-Maitland residence, the ghostly couple had just gone through their chalked-in door in the attic when the phone started shrilling its busy tone against Charles' ear.

"Lydia…? Lydia!"

There was no answer.

It took three tries for him to shrug the beeping phone off his shoulder.

Delia said, "MMMMMMMPH!"

It took three minutes of struggling to resign himself to the fact that he was going to be stuck there for a while.

Delia finally got hoarse.

In three more minutes he broke down and just started talking about anything, just to shut out the annoying busy tone.

By the time the state troopers had arrived to check on the house after finding the hysterical Mr. and Mrs. Maxie Dean lost but unharmed out in the middle of nowhere, Charles and Delia had a very different perspective on life, love, and statuary.