That whole literal translation thing was like a switch in his head. It was easy to turn on, but so difficult to turn off.

It caused... changes. He could feel them rattling around on the inside.

When the switch was off he could think clearly. It was easier to access his thoughts, memories, and rational processes. In other words: he wasn't so crazy. However, he had a darkness to him that came from living as long as he had with as many problems as he had. People usually didn't understand. His parents were older, but they weren't nearly as disliked. Scuzzo – the only one Beetlejuice thought of as crazier than himself - was maybe a century or two younger, but he was even more hated than Beetlejuice.

But when the switch was on... that was when things got complicated.

Usually only the most harmless things happened. He didn't have the mental capacity to watch his tongue and his puns always turned out badly. Not that they turned out the same way each time anyway. The phrase "cat got your tongue" could cause any number of outcomes: he could become a cat, he could cough up a hairball, he could have an actual cat stuck to his tongue, an actual cat could run off with his no longer attached tongue, or any number of other options. But normally they were small problems; easy to fix.

When they weren't they were huge. When one or another of his body parts developed sentience, for example, it was always terrible. Or when someone else took advantage of his puns. There were endless possibilities for bad things to happen.

The worst of it was that he couldn't just turn the switch back off by thinking about it. The literal translations had a tendency to buzz around in his head. On the inside it was more like all the endless possibilities took form in his head and he had to work hard to dodge them to turn the switch off. It was mental gymnastics. Sometimes literally. His mental self had swung from trapeze handles more than once. That took time. Beetlejuice had to have a quiet place to sit and meditate.

So why did he turn it on at all? He didn't when he was alone. It was too hard to clean up your own messes. Especially when that mess might involve not having a body or a brain. Even having someone to fix it didn't make it worth it though. That was only part of the answer.

The real reason was that this cute little girl, with her dark ideas and her easy laugh, seemed to enjoy his puns when they didn't go wrong. Even when they did she always made things right. Afterwards she would tell him how scared she had been, but that she'd still had fun.

That was why he left it on. He left it on longer than he ever had before for a young girl's laugh.

He could still remember that last night they spent alone together. One of his puns had trashed her city. She'd ranted and raved at him until he fixed it up. He'd turned himself into a giant pressure washer. It cleaned up supernatural messes without damaging the physical world like a real pressure washer could.

Beetlejuice was good. And thorough. He didn't just clean up the visible marks like she demanded. He also cleaned up the huge ghostly footprint Negajuice had left over her city. There was no reason to tell her it was there or to tell her what would have happened if he'd left it. It wasn't important as long as it was gone.

She'd given him this really happy smile. He'd made a ridiculous joke. She'd given him a heartfelt thank you he was sure he didn't deserve because everything was all his fault. No use letting her know that though. Instead he just grinned back at her. He'd transported them both back to her room and she'd yawned before sending him back with a quiet "Night Beej."

It turned out all his cleaning wasn't enough. His brain repeated the phrase "too little too late" over and over until it was all he could think for hours on end.

Her parents had woken up after only three hours of sleep. Chuckie found the nice dent in his car that Beetlejuice had missed while focusing on the rest of the city. (Beetlejuice still didn't see why he should have fixed the dent anyway. It was those stupid kids leaving town in such a rush that caused it.) He knew that wasn't all there was to it. There had to be something more than some partying neighbors and a dent in a car. All he could be sure of was that something changed.

They told her that night at dinner that they were leaving town.

He'd been so frantic it had been hard to engage in mental gymnastics. He kept creeping into his mind and tripping over running dogs and snaking vines. Every failure seemed to make the switch further away. He'd never felt his mind so crowded.

Then she was gone. It took two days for his brain to finally process that she was really gone. That she'd forget about him. When the realization hit he had a moment of perfect clarity. The switch flipped off so fast he wasn't sure he'd ever be able to turn it back on. But it didn't matter. He'd only turn that switch on for one girl. And she was gone.