(A/N: Hey! What's up! And don't say "the ceiling"...
*cough* Well, anyway, I am georgebobpinglingchu, formerly known as ChristinexPhantom. I decided that the old name was cheesy beyond all forbearance of humor, so I changed it to the same as my DA and YouTube accounts.
I have written a POTO phic before, and I'd just like to say that even I myself believe it was terribly written. It's called Christine's Other Friends, and it's from a while back, so if you have any inclination to read it, it might take a bit of searching.
This story's gonna be based off of a lot of different versions, mostly movie/musical, book, and the Kay novel, but there's probably going to be a bunch of references to other versions too. And for the record, I started writing this mid-March, so it's taken me a while to put everything together.
I regretably do not own POTO.)
"...and can anybody tell me what this is?"
Ellie Manchez raised her small seven-year-old arm as high as it could go. From her seat in the far left of the back row (the one closest to the hallway door), she was as likely as not to be noticed by the teacher, because almost the enitre left side of the classroom was devoted to bookshelves.
She snuck a glance around the room. Darren Tschaw, the class clown, was busy in the back row carefully folding a veritable armada of paper airplanes. Courtney Brown (affectionately known amongst the student body as "pigtails") was sitting in the middle of the room, twirling said trademark hairstyle around with her pencil, not paying a lick of attention to her surroundings. Leroy Donohan had his hand firmly up in the air, as nonchalant as could be. The boy was practically a child genius, and he knew it.
To Ellie's surpirse and relief, the teacher called on her. "A dotted quarter note," she answered confidently, sending a smug smile in the direction of Leroy, who responded by poking a hole in the clouds with his nose.
The teacher smiled at her. "Right, Ellie." She returned her focus back to the chalkboard, where a smorgasboard of musical notes and symbols were written. She pointed to one, seemingly at random. "Now, does anyone know what-"
Just then, the bell rang, signifying the end of class, and the end of the school day. All of the children rushed to their cubbies and emptied their belongings into their backpacks. As soon as she was finished shoving her books into her bag, Ellie walked up to her teacher's desk.
"Ms. Everard?"
Ms. Everard's head shot up from the paperwork she'd been working on, raven curls falling in front of her usually pale face, which had a slight pink flush to it at the present moment. "Oh!" She breathed a sigh of relief. "Ellie, it's you. You should hurry up, sweetie. The buses leave in ten minutes."
"My momma's picking me up today."
"Oh. Do you need something?" Ms. Everard kept glancing nervously at her papers, like she thought they would explode any second.
"I was just wondering, when are we going to start casting for our spring program? I mean, the music theory is cool and all, but there's more to it than just knowing how many beats to hold a note out, or knowing about all those dead composter guys." Ellie smiled, flashing her dimples.
Ms. Everard chuckled. "Composers, Ellie. And they're not all dead. Do the names Andrew Lloyd Webber or Stephen Schwartz ring a bell?"
Ellie shook her head. They both sounded vaguely familiar, maybe she'd heard her older sister say it. Carolynn was a sucker for musicals.
"Ah. Well, I was planning on starting our preparations for the spring show on Monday. Sadly, I won't be here, though. I have to take my mother to the doctor. You'll have a substitute. Is there anything else?"
"Kinda, it's a little personal, though." Ellie shrugged off her momentary unease. "Why do you always seem all rushed at the end of the day?"
"Rushed?"
"Well, you were flying through those papers a few minutes ago. And I can tell you really want to go back to them."
"You're very observant, Ellie." Ms. Everard smiled at her. "I just don't want to be stuck at school all night doing all this paperwork and stuff. Now," she said, standing up. "let's get you to your mother, shall we?"
After seeing that Ellie and her mother had left, Adeline Everard returned to her small classroom and resumed her paperwork.
Once she had every paper on her desk in it's proper place and file and all her student's daily grades logged into the computer system, she glanced at the clock. 5:45. Shit.
Adeline collected her things and slipped on her old light brown windbreaker. It was early spring, but it was still bloody cold outside. It was also already getting dark.
Once outside the school building, she walked with ease through the familiar pedestrian-filled streets. Coming to the dreaded area, she stopped and looked around for any sign of trouble. Seeing none as of yet, she ducked into the alley, fingering the Swiss Army Knife her father had given her for her eighteenth birthday present that was sitting in her right jacket pocket, ready at hand, should the need arise.
She made it to her apartment without incident (unless you count the jeers and cat calls of her neighbor and his drinking buddies). Drawing the key out of her dingy messenger bag, she paused. What was-? No, Addie. You didn't see or hear anything. You're not hearing people's thoughts, you're not seeing random objects glowing green- URGH! Why the HELL am I reading that book?
Adeline unlocked her door and gave it a push. Nothing. "Bloody Hell," she muttered, pressing her shoulder into the cheap plywood. After several hard shoves, the door reluctantly creaked open. Gonna have to talk to the management about that stupid door. 'Course, they're not going to do anything, anyway.
She dropped her key back in her bag and shut the door behind her on her way in. Once the door was closed and locked (all six deadbolts and latches), Adeline dropped her bag and jacket on the cat puke colored carpeting and collapsed on her couch.
After around ten minutes of laying sprawled out on the couch doing nothing, Adeline sat up, feeling her stomach rumbling. Despite already being dreadfully skinny, she got up and fixed herself a bowl of that Special K crap that they kept advertising on the TV. It wasn't near as good as those gorgeous women on there said it was, but it was okay.
Still chewing her cornflake and strawberry concoction, she made her way back to the couch. She set her bowl on the small endtable and stripped her sweater off, revealing a black cami with lace trim on the top. Adeline never wore anything out in public except for baggy sweaters and jeans, but every woman has the right to look sexy in her own apartment. She giggled at the thought.
Reaching for the television remote, Adeline nearly knocked over her cereal bowl. She gingerly picked it up and set it in her lap. Turning on the tube, she saw another ad for Special K. The woman on there was smiling and eating her bowl with evident relish, then went on a tangent about how she's lost twenty pounds in the last month by following the "Special K diet" and went on to introduce their shakes and granola bars in addition to all five kinds of cereal.
Adeline glanced at her own bowl, which by this time was getting rather soggy and more resembled dogshit with flecks of blood than actual cereal. Not very appetizing. She glared at the obvious plastic-surgery patient on the screen. "Shut up, bitch. It ain't that good." She raised the remote and changed the channel.
Now on the screen was a new(ish) episode of Spongebob. Adeline used to find Spongebob amusing, but now it kind of got on her nerves. There's only so much you can do with an underwater sponge living in a pineapple.
Click. Now the TV was on Full House. Adeline let out a guffaw. People still watched it?
Click. Match Game '73. Much better, she thought, leaning back into the couch, attempting to eat the mush that was now her cereal.
Sometime that night, Adeline woke with a start. At some point or other she'd managed to find her way to her bedroom before she'd completely conked out. But, as usual, she woke up because of the nightmares.
It was always one of two nightmares. The first was the one that was very possible in real life, and the reason Adeline still kept her Swiss Army Knife in her pocket after six years. It always started with her walking down the alley. It was always night, sometimes just after sunset, sometimes around midnight, but night all the same. There's always a drunken gang hanging out in front of her apartment, and... It was pretty obvious where the rest of it went.
The second was...Strange. It never started as a nightmare, just odd. It was just Adeline and a man, sitting in what looked like her apartment's living room. The man was tall, well over six feet, well-dressed (sometimes wearing a wide-brimmed fedora, sometimes not), and with a white porcelain mask over the right side of his face. Adeline knew him from somewhere, but couldn't remember where.
They would sit there talking, always about some aspect of music or other. Sometimes the conversation would progress into what almost seemed like a lesson, the man being the teacher in this case. Sooner or later, Adeline would ask him about the mask. He wouldn't give a straight answer, so she'd keep pestering him about it. Eventually, she'd get so fed up with his half-assed answers that she'd just rip the mask off his face.
That was the nightmare.
The right side of his face was so horribly, grotesquely disfigured, that Adeline would shriek and drop the mask, forgotten, on the floor. The man would scream and yell at her, grab her by the wrists and shake her, force her to look at him, at what she'd done.
At this point, Adeline would wake up, usually in a cold sweat, crying her eyes out, but not remembering anything.
This particular night, she still didn't remember anything, except that the two dreams had been combined.
It was night in her dream. As usual Adeline was on her way home from work. Except, this time, she'd forgotten her Swiss Army Knife at school. She passed the usual drunks, who made cat calls at her and asked her to come over and join them. She ignored them, continuing on her way.
The men followed her, cornering her at a small intersection. One ripped off her coat. She cried out in pain. The others were still smiling their drunken, lopey grins. There was a sudden wet choking sound, as if someone was being strangled. Adeline felt the arms of the first drunk let go of her, and she turned around.
The man from the other dream had a strange looking rope around the drunk's neck. Once he stopped moving, the man released him. He snapped the rope, sending the others running for their miserable lives. He let out a chuckle, then turned to Adeline. "You're not going to rip my mask off this time, are you?"
(A/N: Well, there's the prologue for you. And in case this gets confusing {when I made my friends read this, they said it was}, Adeline doesn't remember her dreams. Except for random details. And you get virtual chocolate cookies if you can guess what book she was talking about...
Please review!! Especially if you have any suggestions for a new title. I think the one I have kinda fails...)