Disclaimer: I own what is my own.

"Come on, it's for a good cause: ME!"

Thirteen Hallowed Nights

The Fifth Night:

"The Sloth"

By Corvus no Genmu

From the northern west coast to the northern east… was there really a difference? Oh yes, there were two different oceans involved but aside from that were the people of those corners so different from the other? The eastern coast was more likely to hold favor to the old traditions while the west lived up to its name of being wild and untamed, at least that's all he could assume really. Jacque hadn't ventured across America that much in recent years and time changes everything…

Some things though…

Jacque glanced at the paper in his hand and took another look at the nearby town sign. "Winter River…" He took a look at his watch and bit back a foul oath. Samara was going to be out from school in a few hours. He had to wrap this up quickly.

He reached into his pocket and grasped the item therein and started to run. He was at the house in an instant, a cloud of dust trailing along behind him. Brushing his clothes, Jacque took a look at the place and couldn't help the small bit of pride in his smile. Well this place is certainly better than I thought of him…

He walked up the steps and had only just begun to knock when the door was ripped open and he was hastily pulled inside as an older woman hectically spoke to him even as she finished primping herself. "You must be the babysitter we called, thanks so much for coming, we'll be out until ten, there's money for pizza, thank you and goodbye!" She was gone out the door with her husband dragged along behind her looking utterly defeated with himself. The door slammed shut behind them and a disheveled Jacque stood blinking in surprise for a moment before chuckling softly to himself as he straightened his clothes out.

That worked out better than he thought it would.

"Aren't you kind of young to be a babysitter?" He turned and saw a young teenaged girl, just barely into her teen years dressed in what had to be the most gaudy looking school uniform he had ever seen. From the paleness of her face and the generous use of eye shadow she was at the very least partially inclined to being a Goth.

"Aren't you rather old to be needing one?" He asked right back.

She blinked and couldn't help a small laugh at that. "Touché."

Jacque made a show of looking around, but really he was inspecting the girl. Rather plain in appearance but given she was still in her uniform that was understandable. Soft hands but sharp eyes… an artist perhaps, one with a keen mind for sure but there… yes, she carried herself like an adult, a maturity beyond her years. A polar opposite in almost every way for Jacque had not missed the small rubber spider that had been converted into a brooch on the girl's top. He took another glance at his watch and winced. Only two hours left.

"Look, I'm on a rather tight schedule today, so could you do us both a favor and just call him."

The girl's eyes widened before she feigned an ignorant expression trying to emulate some of the ditzy members of her class. "Call who? The pizza guy?"

Jacque sighed. "I don't have time for this. Call him or I will."

"I really don't know what you're talking about."

Jacque scowled and crossed his arms over his chest. She was a stubborn one and her acting was terrible, at least to his eyes, but he had to give her points for actually trying didn't he? He repressed a sigh. Here he was hoping this would start out civilly, Ah well… "Fine." He took a deep breath. "Though I know I should be wary…" The girl's mouth dropped open in shock at the words, but Jacque had only just begun. "Still I venture someplace scary! Ghostly haunting I turn loose! Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice!"

Crimson lightning cracked in a darkened sky the walls suddenly twisted and warped upon themselves, transforming the large room into a foreboding tower with grisly beams piercing through the ceiling as bats flew freely above. A swarm of insects scurried across the floor, leaving stone works where floorboards once were and traveled upwards along the wall as stone steps burst from the side. The changes ended when a poncho suddenly blew into the room and attached itself to the girl, flashing red as intricate spider webs drew themselves upon the fabric. Her hair tied itself up into a high ponytail. Her school clothes shifted and changed into a form fitting black bodysuit that would have shown off her figure well if it weren't for the poncho.

Jacque raised an amused eyebrow at the change and would have voiced his opinion of it hadn't he been interrupted by a sudden loud bang as a ghostly apparition appeared floating above the room with all the subtlety of a train wreck. "Heya Lyds! Good timing, I was just about to see if I could break my beetle jug chugging record!"

Jacque glanced up and saw a man dressed in a black and white pinstripe suit with black boots and a dark violet shirt underneath the jacket of his suit with a black necktie held by a golden tie clip shaped like a spider. His skin was deathly pale and rather dirty looking in some places, particularly around the mess of bleached blonde hair that looked like it hadn't touched a comb in centuries. His eyes were slightly sunken in and possessed a strange madness to their violet depths. Strangely, his hands were tipped in blood-red fingernails filled to almost resemble claws.

"Uh, Beej…" Lydia hesitantly started to speak, looking back and forth between the distracted poltergeist and the amused young man that summoned him.

"I got to twelve gallons worth last time so I gotta go for double or nothing! C'mon, Babes! My good name is riding on this!" His body suddenly popped, changing into the letters of his name Beetlejuice with a saddle beneath them.

Jacque snorted at that. "That's as much your name as Mortimer is mine."

Another pop and Beetlejuice was back in proper form but this time the beat-all grin was gone and his eyes were narrowed into angry slits. "And you're supposed to be?"

Jacque spared a glance at the confused Lydia before focusing on the summoned spirit known primarily as 'Beetlejuice'. If his mother heard about this… "The babysitter."

"He's the one who summoned you, Beej. Not me." Lydia explained, staring distrustfully at Jacque.

"What? That can't be right? No one knows that spell save for—" Beetlejuice cut himself off, literally for his mouth suddenly fell from his face with a slicing sound. He hastily picked it up and stood before Lydia, arms spread out and glaring at Jacque with a strange intensity that bordered on the edge of terror but was in fact overwhelmed by a sea of rage. His nails lengthened into true claws and the mishmashed teeth snapped into place as deadly fangs.

"BJ?" gasped Lydia, never before seeing him act like this before.

"Run Lydia! Get out of here; I'll hold him off with everything I have!" At his words, power gathered in Beetlejuice's hands, ghostly flames that burned in the shape of skulls in the specter's hands.

Jacque sighed, massaging the bridge of his nose. "There's no need for that… but if it'll make you more comfortable…" He looked over at Lydia and smiled apologetically. "Sorry but… could you leave the two of us alone?" She hesitated, looking back and forth between them. "If it helps any I am as mortal as you. I can do him no more harm than I would to myself." She glanced once more at Beetlejuice who turned only just enough to look at her from the corner of his eye.

"Please Lydia. Go!"

She went.

The door slammed shut behind her and Jacque shook his head in amusement. "Now you've done it. She's likely to come back with help from—" A blur and he was gone, standing on the opposite side of the room as the spot he stood was occupied by a massive clawed hand that extended from a striped sleeve. Jacque frowned, his emerald eyes matching with Beetlejuice's amethyst ones with a burning anger though his own was warranted. "You weren't acting I see."

"Grrr…" A light bulb suddenly lit up on Beetlejuice's head. "How about we heat things up?" A sudden flash and Beetlejuice had a pair of flamethrowers in hand and was ready to use them when Jacque suddenly spoke up.

"You are aware that any damage done in here will be reflected back upon the house proper?" He spared a glance at the hole in the floor where light shined from an unseen desert sun and frowned. Where could that possibly lead to?

Beetlejuice meanwhile deflated in defeat, the air going out the suddenly balloon-bodied guns in a long, slow wheeze of helium. He tossed them aside and made an exasperated show of straightening his jacket. "Alright, I'll be blunt," He shifted into a hammer and back again. "What are you doing here?"

"Can't I just be here to see how you're doing?" asked Jacque. "Hard as it is for you to believe me, I do care about you."

Beetlejuice snorted at that. "Yeah, sure. Where were you on my last birthday then?"

"… Do you even remember your birthday? More to the point, do you even celebrate it?"

"Yes! … Okay, not really but that's not the point!" Another just, this time into a human-sized tack and back again just as quickly. Obviously Beetlejuice was getting a small handle on his powers if he only changed for a brief moment. "Every time you come back into my afterlife it has always been for something!" He turned away from Jacque with crossed arms, refusing to look at him and staring resolutely at the wall. "So what do you want this time, old man?"

"I'm not proud of what I was like before… I didn't deserve the things I got and I sure didn't treat them like the gifts they were… but I've changed since then. I'm trying to make up for the wrongs I did to the people I should have cared about." Jacque sighed, rubbing the back of his neck as he stared down at the floor as though some answer laid there beneath the stone. "Betel—"

"Don't! Just… don't. I don't have to listen to you!" With that said, Beetlejuice's ears popped off and started flapping away into the rafters and Jacque sighed, quite exasperated with the poltergeist's attitude and was going to inform him of such when something that captured his heart in a icy vice of fear. It was massive and rose upwards like a snake from the hole in the floor, but it was nothing like those smooth-scaled reptiles. No this was more like a massive worm with a mouth lined in grisly fangs with four gleaming eyes that shined like pearls on its otherwise striped hide of purple and green. A massive fin like a sharks jutted from just behind the head like a massive meat cleaver. This was a rare predator that few beings of any sort dared to cross, especially those already dead for this monstrosity was a leftover from the Time Before, a fragment of the chaos given a permanent form and a devourer of the departed.

A sandworm.

"Betelgeuse!" Jacque yelled but without his ears attached to head, the poltergeist never heard him as does was completely unaware of the sandworm until its massive jaws had clamped down on the tails of his jacket and pulled him away back into the hole. Jacque was there at the hole's edge in an instance and winced at the sight below. It was a massive desert where the sun never ceased to shine, a forgotten place for the failed creations and the unwanted monstrosities. This world could at best be described as a prison but considering what made this desert its territory… It was then that Jacque realized something.

He actually punched a hole in the Wall… There was that proud smirk again and Jacque actually felt a tear coming on when,

"Aaaah!" Beetlejuice squealed like a little girl as the sandworm struggled to clamp its mouth shut upon him. "Get me out of here!"

Jacque's eyes widened as the jaws of the sandworm finally clamped down and his eyes narrowed in a blazing rage. "Spit." A blur and his was suddenly slamming down upon the wicked thing's spine, shattering it. "Out." A flash and his fist as imbedded in the front of the sandworm's throat, forcing to gag out of reflex. "My." Another burst of speed and the sandworm received a kick to the face that broke more than a few of its massive fangs. "Boy!"

The sandworm slammed down, bruised and paralyzed halfway down its massive body, its mouth hanging open limply as Beetlejuice staggered out looking none the worse for wear save for the fact that he was covered from head to toe in sandworm spit.

"This is vile… even for me…" He muttered, shaking a slobber covered arm when he realized something. He turned and stared at Jacque, his eyes wide and shaped like saucers, his mouth hanging limply and squeaking as it swung before he clapped it back into place though his eyes remained transformed. "What did you call me?"

Jacque suddenly found the sky interesting and with good reason. "Well that's not good…"

Beetlejuice looked up and his eyes popped out of his head but a new set appeared to replace them. The hole was closing! Before he had a chance to scream like a baby, or as he would later deny and proclaim as manly cussing, Jacque had a firm hold of his lips and glared at him.

"Are you or are you not the self-proclaimed 'Ghost with the Most'? Surely you can fly at the very least?"

"Oh… yeah…" Beetlejuice locked wrists with Jacque and in a moment was up and through the hole just in time as it collapsed upon itself, the Wall healing the damage unknowingly done by Beetlejuice's own hand.

Jacque scowled in disgust at his soiled hand and waved it about to rid it of the excess slobber. Finding it more difficult than he thought, he reached into his pocket to pull out a handkerchief but instead felt a small pile of dust. He froze but soon relaxed with a depressed sigh. "So much for that I suppose…" He reached into his other pocket and pulled out a small, silver brooch and finally smiled if only a little. "At least there's this…" He tossed it at Beetlejuice. "Catch."

Beetlejuice caught it and stared at it before glaring at Jacque. "This is a girl's brooch."

"For your friend." Jacque agreed with a nod before boring his eyes into the poltergeist who took a step back in surprise. "Just how long were you going to wait before you got that child some protection? Until she was dead on her feet?"

"What are you talking about? Lyds is fine as wine!" He a glass of red wine appeared in his hand but he tossed it over his shoulder. "She ain't gonna die!"

"Not if you keep bringing her to the Otherside as you have. What do you think happens to a mortal who keeps visiting a land of the dead? They die before their time you lazy little—" Jacque sighed and shook his head. "Never mind. I came here to do you a favor and I did it. Whatever your feelings for me are irrelevant; if you truly care about that girl you'll give her that brooch. It won't protect her from actual threats but she should be fine visiting you in that pit you call a house." With nothing more to say, Jacque turned and started for the door.

"What's the catch?"

Jacque's hand gripped the doorknob but he didn't turn it. "Catch? No catch."

"There's always a catch with everything you do! Why would this be any different?"

"… Because I've learned from my mistakes." He laughed suddenly and glanced back at Beetlejuice with a full smile. "Like son, like father isn't it? Oh and Betelgeuse? Your birthday? It's March 30th." He chuckled again and opened the door and stepped out in a normal yard in an otherwise normal town. Without looking back, he started down the long path towards the town proper in the hopes of finding a phone. Hopefully, Morrigan wouldn't tease him too much about having to ask for a lift back home to pick up Samara.

And… who am I trying to kid…?

Zealous actions clear away the dusty cobwebs of sloth.