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Life or Death

Summary:

Hey folks! Welcome to Life or Death, the fantastical game that's totally not some kind of trap! Contestants who successfully make it through all the challenges will receive their heart's dearest desire. Those who don't will be, you know, dead. Good luck!

Notes:

So, apparently, this is what happens when you relisten to one of the most traumatic arcs of your favorite podcast, and realize, hey, a character from my current obsession made his own deadly gameshow too! I wonder how much more upsetting I can make this by combining them. So yeah, welcome to the Suffering Game themed Beetlejuice fic. Buckle up kids, this is gonna be a weird and wild ride.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter 1: Prologue

Chapter Text

“Is this the place?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“...doesn’t really look like much.”

---

Lydia heard the footsteps coming up the stairs and quickly stuffed the spellbook under her mattress. It wasn’t so much that she thought her father wouldn’t approve of her trying to learn magic. He’d probably be pleased she was taking an interest in something again. But she doubted he would approve of what she wanted to learn magic for.

It had been almost a year now since Lydia’s mother, Emily Deetz, had passed away. Even between healing magic and modern medicine, there had been nothing that could be done to save her. And Lydia and her father had been a mess ever since. He’d moved them to some tiny town called Winter River, in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

“A fresh start,” he’d called it. “We’re moving forward.”

Lydia hated it. How could he expect her to just forget their home, their whole life? To forget Dead Mom. Not that that seemed to be a problem for him.

A knock sounded on her bedroom door.

“Lydia,” her father’s voice called. “Sweetie, Delia’s here for your session.”

“Yeah. Fine. Okay,” Lydia replied unenthusiastically.

Delia was Lydia’s “life coach” that her father had hired so that she would stop being so sad about Dead Mom already. Delia had a small amount of magic herself, enough for basic spells, and for convincing people the stuff she said about crystals wasn’t a complete hoax. Magic may have been real, but the validity of the “healing power of crystals” was... debatable. The general consensus was that it was more of a placebo effect than anything else and that the rocks themselves had no inherent magic, but when magical power is strengthened by belief, that kind of thing was a trifle difficult to entirely disprove.

Lydia supposed she could ask Delia for help with this whole magic thing, but the woman was so disgustingly cheerful and positive that even the slightest hint that Lydia might be interested in anything remotely “dark” would probably cause her to freak. Plus, she was dating Lydia’s dad. The two of them thought she didn’t know, but neither of them were exactly the most subtle individuals. Gross.

Whatever. It’s not like it mattered anyway. None of it mattered.

Because Lydia Deetz had a plan.

---

“Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! Looks like I’m gonna have some new friends to play with!”