The Phantom of the Opera Retold (again)
Chapter 1: The Miracle of Birth Occurs for the 300 Billionth Time
At the very, very, very beginning there was nothing. Then there was the creation (or evolution) of the Earth, and thousands of years of history, and pre-history. Then, after wars, prophecies, sins, virtues, songs, dances, dinosaurs, and Brian Boru there was a woman in Paris who got pregnant. That was not a new event in history, however, so no one bothered to record it at the time. It was, shall we say, unimportant.
The baby grew inside his mother's womb, and not in her stomach as some three-year-olds believes. He started the size of a drop of water and soon began to develop tiny features. After a few weeks he was sucking his thumb and kicking his mother in the ribs. It was a pleasant, if wet, existence.
Unfortunately, his mother wasn't the brightest of women. She began to wear lead powder to give her skin a porcelain complexion. This was stupid, and I shall explain why. Lead is poisonous, and can cause serious damage. Some of the effects of lead are: madness, auto-immune disorders, and... birth defects. The poor baby was stricken with the latter of these effects, (and some would argue the first as well, but that comes later.) His nose never grew. I don't know why, it just didn't. His eyes sunk inwards, and his skin turned yellowish and clung to his skull. He was not yet born, however, and did not know that these defects were a problem.
One day, after the baby was nine months old, he began to feel himself being pushed from his warm 'home'. Without warning, he was thrust into a strange world of light and air and personal fads. It was shocking!
"Why didn't anyone give me a heads up about this?" he thought, "How was I supposed to be prepared for such an alien environment? Get me back into the womb! It's cold here! Oh, no! What's wrong now? I can't breath! Waaaa!" When he opened his mouth to cry however, he discovered that the singular, gaseous atmosphere of the strange, new world was breathable.
"Oh! So that's what lungs are for!" he thought. Then he heard noises. They weren't very nice sounding. They all seemed angry at him, and they were calling him a strange sound liken to "Freak."
"Hey! What did I do?" he thought, "I just got here!" He wondered what 'freak' was.
He looked around to see what was making the noise. The world away from the womb was much bigger than he had thought! He looked at the creatures calling him 'freak'. One was a tall, pink, fat thing with hair growing from his upper lip. The other was a pouty, pink, thing with long hair off her head. Both of these creatures had their bodies wrapped in odd material. The hair-lip's was green and brown, (though the baby didn't know what those colors were yet,) and the pouty's were black and white, (the baby didn't know these colors either.) Then the baby saw his mother. She was a pale, long haired, creature with dark circles under her blue eyes.
"Hi mom!" he thought.
She glared at him, and moved her mouth saying strange, incoherent syllables: "Icanthave A freeeek forason! Getrid ofit."
"I can't understand you, mama." The baby thought, "But I can tell that you're crabby."
Then another of the tall, pink folk stepped up. He was dressed in black, and he had a white collar. He looked at the baby kindly and said in a deep bellow, "Howcanyou wantto abandonyour sonbecauseheis different? Youmust careforhim. Donottreat himwrongly. Itiswhatwe dotothe le ast ofthese thattakes usto heaven."
Then the deep voiced creature took the baby and carried him over to a strange container filled with water. Deep voice pored water on his head and said some things that the baby couldn't follow. The only thing that he did catch was that he had been named. He was now Athenasious Gretter Zenophan Josephus Erik.
"What a horrible name!" he thought, "Just call me Erik! I can't even remember the other names!"
Fortunately, though very few fortunate things were destined for Erik, everyone did call him Erik.
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