A/N: For some stupid reason FFN decided to totally get rid of the entire first name of "Kristine's long-lost cousin," putting her only as "Daae," which wasn't very funny at all – this has now been fixed.
One fine day, Erick, the Phatnom of the Opera, decided to take a walk around his Opera House. It had been quite a while since he had seen the Upper World and he rather wanted to take a peek at the goings-on (but mostly he just wanted to spy behind the mirror of the talented new diva Suzie-Marie-Antoinette-Fleur-Jolie Daae, Kristine's long-lost cousin whose voice he had heard all the way down in the third—or was it fourth? Perhaps it was the second—cellar of the opera).
After all, he was A Phatnom. Not a Phantom, because that would just be unoriginal.
And his name was Erick.
Spelled with a C.
Before the K.
That was very important to remember.
Feeling a brief twinge upon his face, he gingerly poked at the tiny purple spot growing out of the side of his oh-so-hideous visage (made oh-so-hideous by the tiny purple spot, of course...otherwise, he was quite attractive for a Phatnom). He sneakingly suspected that one day it might enlarge and morph into Barney the Dinosaur, but that was a mostly ungrounded suspicion.
He deftly avoided one of his splendiferous gee-willikers Trap Doors. Narrowly.
Actually, truth be told, it more resembled a Plot Hole than a Trap Door, but perhaps this was only coincidence.
Up, up, up he went, his eyes alternating with his erratic moods between hideous yellow, icy-blue, startingly green, and a decidedly nasty shade of puce.
His swollen (or were they nonexistent?) lips hummed "Baba O'Riley", because as every educated person worth their salt should know (and woe to anyone who disagrees, might we add), the Phatnom loved rock songs. One is almost inspired by this undeniable fact to wonder whether or not he had a splendiferous gee-willikers Time Machine. But that is purely digressionary.
Through the passageway he crept, wondering if Kristine was happy with Roule—or was it Raul?—it must be Roauol, he decided. All things considered, it was that spelling which made the most phonetic and grammatical sense.
Suddenly, there was a clatter in one of the passageways.
"Erick!" came A Voice out of nowhere.
The Phatnom jumped, looking around frantically to see what was the matter.
"Hello, hello, hello!" bubbled Kristine, jumping up and down and clapping her hands. This was not the authoress's friend who went by the pseudonym Aminta Kristine, by the way. This was simply some twistedly fanonical Christine spelling her name in a wonderfully anachronistic way. Because, after all, what's the past without a little future.
"Kristine?" Erick whispered. "What on earth are YOU doing here? I thought you had been replaced at the opera by your long-lost cousin, er...um...what was her name again?"
" Suzie-Marie-Antoinette-Fleur-Jolie Daae," Kristine supplied helpfully, with a roll of her eyes. "Honestly, Erick."
"Of course," he said smoothly. "I take it you were on your way to see me?"
"You could say that," she said. "Actually, I was just going to get a sample of your lake water to put on my skin. I think it halts the aging process and gets rid of wrinkles, but I wanted to make sure."
"Er...indeed," he said uncertainly, deciding to turn the conversation to more coherent matters. "Well...and how is Roaoul?" he managed smoothly.
"Fine," she gushed. "He's such a honey-suckle-lover-muffin-cupcake-bunny-pookins, that boy of mine. Aren't you jealous, Erick? Don't you just wish he could DIE?"
"Er..." said Erick, not quite sure how to respond to that oddly phrased question.
"And Meggy-bunny-kins," said Kristine, "is doing splendiferously. Gee-willikers, that is."
"Indeed," Erick said, growing increasingly alarmed at the turn this conversation was taking. Kristine had mentioned the word "bunny" twice already, and as everyone knows (and woe to anyone who disagrees), the Phatnom is deathly afraid of bunny-rabbits. Leik, he could die of fright just by seeing one.
Or perhaps fall into a pond and wet his trousers.
"Well," said Kristine, "I'll let you get back to whatever it was you're doing. I shan't intefere."
"You're not interfering," said Erick, feeling a swell of returning feeling for her. "At least...not very much."
"Oh, of course I am," she said, flipping her hand and looking at him as if to say You big silly! "After all, I'm nothing more than a poorly-developed large-busted brainless waif who has no brain and Raul beats me every night after raping the living daylights out of my poor porcelain body which looks like the milk from a cow."
Erick twitched.
He suddenly wished for the quiet of his lair, in which he could lie back upon his swan bed (or was it peacock? Perhaps it was a coffin-shaped peacock—yes, that was it), listen to Evanescence CDs in his wonderfully modern CD player which he had invented, and contemplate using his razor blade upon his exceptionally pale and moon-like wrists.
"Bye, Erick!" Kristine said with a cute little wave, walking away and suddenly falling through a trap-door with all the gracefulness of a morphined swan.
Unfortunately, it was one of his splendiferous gee-willikers trap-doors, the one with no less than fifty-six half-starved piranhas lurking in a seemingly harmless in-ground pool.
Erick suddenly wanted his razor blade.
Watching Suzie-Marie-Antoinette-Fleur-Jolie Daae from Box Five, he yawned to himself. She really wasn't that wonderful...was she?
"Ha-HA!" came A Voice out of nowhere. Again.
Only this time, the Voice seemed to be considerably less bell-like than Kristine's. It had a more modern, yes, a more evanescent tone. How delightful.
He turned around, half-expecting to see Amy Lee, but was instead rewarded with the horrifying shock of a girl with very yellow teeth, bright red hair, and clothes that a prostitute might wear...as undergarments, that is.
"Who let you in?" he snarled, leaping to his feet (which were quite large, you know, and as every educated person worth their salt...no, never mind, we won't go there), intending to strangle her himself. "How dare you waltz around the Opera in such shameful attire?"
"Um, duh," said the girl, chewing on something that made painful pops, assaulting Erick's eardrums with terrible force, "I'm from the twenty-first century. As if you didn't know. I mean, how could I not be, with clothes like this? Aren't you supposed to be smart?"
Erick opened his mouth, shut it again. He really didn't know quite what to say.
The girl grinned. "So, uh..." (Erick cringed. That popping sound was getting quite irritating.) "You've never...uh...had a woman right? Wink-wink, nudge-nudge." She winked, and elbowed him in the tummy, nearly breaking a rib.
This was the last straw. Within the space of two minutes, the twenty-first century whelp of impertinence was hanging from the balcony of Box Five by her bright-red toenails. After being strangled artfully.
Erick dusted his hands off, checking his fingernails for dirt. A Phatnom could never have too clean fingernails.
Venturing out into a hall, he suddenly turned around to face a silent, staring army of twentieth-century prostitutes. At least, they were dressed in the same manner as the other he had just fastidiously murdered, so he could only assume.
All my life I wanted to become somebody, he thought to himself absently. Now I wish I would have been more specific.
"You killed Angie," muttered one.
"Yeah," said another. "We liked Angie. You'd better bring her back to life. Right now."
"I...I..." stammered Erick.
"And another thing," said one. "What's with that purple spot? Hello, you're supposed to be completely undeformed?"
"Yeah, and another thing," said an especially young-looking specimen, "why come you don't look leik Gerald Butler?"
"Er..." began Erick.
"He does, stupid," said another, elbowing the young one. "You just don't recognize him without his mask."
The young one peered at him, making him feel as though he were under a microscope.
"Ooooohhhh," she said between her teeth after a minute. "Well, good. That makes me feel somwaht better. Do we have to kill him, tehn?"
"I say," said one who looked about twenty years of age, who was grinning wolfishly, "we turn him over a spit until he expires."
"Gerald hater," said the young girl sullenly.
Erick had had quite enough of this by now, and was frantically racking his brain for a way to distract what seemed to be a quite insane bunch of ferociously loyal ladies of the evening, and then, he hit upon it.
"Look!" he pointed. "Gerald Butler!"
Naturally, everyone looked, even the bashers.
When they looked back, Erick had escaped into oblivion. But they were Sues, mixed sporadically with disproportionately Gerald—er, Gererd—er, um, Gerry-despising phangirls, so it was really only a matter of time before they found him.
They gathered behind a set piece (how all three hundred of them fit behind it, we'll never tell) and began to plan out their strategy.
Buffy Daae, Kristine's first cousin's sister's niece three times removed, and a Fop Hunter to boot, was stalking the halls when she came upon the group of Sues and disproportionately Gerry-despising phangirls.
"Might I be of assistance?" she inquired, hefting a stake.
"Hailz yeah!" said one. "We're hunting Erick. Care to help?"
Buffy Daae cringed in horror. "Erick!" she cried out. "You...you don't mean...the Phatnom of the Opera!"
"One and the same," declared a particularly rosy-cheeked Raoul-loving Sue. "We're going to turn him over a spit until he implodes...at least, that's what Gererd-hater over here says."
"Ahem," said Buffy Daae. "My business is hunting Fops. Not Phatnoms. Particularly not of the Erick variety."
Several girls immediately stood to their feet.
"Fop!" "Fop!" "FOP!"
Some cheered, but others were outraged.
"How could you say that about Roaoul-honey-bunny-kins?" cried one girl, bursting into dramatic tears.
"Oh, shut yer face!" said another. "Roaoul's nothing but a drunken raping wife-beater who wants to kill the world and have Christine all to himself."
"Er..." someone raised her hand tentatively. "Besides the drunken raping wife-beater thing, isn't that leaning more towards Erick?"
The girl opened her mouth, but was at a loss at what to say. "Well, he's a drunken raping wife-beater, at any rate," she snapped, and sat down, stewing in her own juices.
"I say," said another girl, "that we team up with this Hunter chick and kill Erick anyway. He's not the real Erick, after all..."
"Totally!" the group assented.
"Furthermore..." the girl began.
Suddenly there was a loud boom. The girls' faces went white.
"Oh, crackers," said the Raoul-basher. "It's..."
"The IPFC," intoned a booming feminine voice. Several women in black, green, and pink uniforms strode forward, fixing the twisted sisters with a collective evil eye.
"We're here to blast you into oblivion," the leader said, "for messing with fictional characters. You too," she added, nodding at Buffy Daae. "And then we're going to blow up this entire place, because none of it makes sense."
"The Institution for the Protection of Fictional Characters," said the second-in-command, "does not tolerate Sues, bashers, so-called Fop Hunters, or any other such abomination upon the fandom."
"Hey," screamed the Gerry-haters. "What about us? We're just expressing our honest opinions!"
"Fine," intoned the leader smoothly. "You have committed no real crime, and are therefore pardoned of your blind association with these true criminals. As for the rest of you lot, we hereby declare this group of phanfictional misfits CONDEMNED."
And, with that, there was a thundering explosion, a gust of black dust, and when it cleared, there was naught but a gaping hole where the proud Opera-Populaire-Palais-Garnier had once stood.
But some say, on a dark and moonlit night, that you can almost hear the haunting sound of Suzie-Marie-Antoinette-Fleur-Jolie Daae's last, soaring shriek, one that could almost be mistaken for a perfect E flat.
The End