"The Song Isn't Over Until the People Stop Singing"
On a noisy street corner in the middle of Paris, sits an opera house called: The Paris Opera House. It is enormous in size and secluded in the fact that no one goes through the doors until evening when they open for the opera. One day, however, the rule was broken as a carriage rolled down the cobblestone street and stopped in front of the house. A man stepped out of the carriage wearing an expensive scarlet coat and a pair of newly shined black boots.
He was Fredrick Cutting, the pride of the British opera, unrivaled from Scotland to the English Channel. He had received a letter from the Paris Opera House requesting his presence. It said that he was to receive an award for his talent if he would only take a part in one of their performances. Fredrick removed his gloves and knocked on the door. As he did, the carriage he had arrived in whooshed away down the street, never to be seen again.
"Hey!" he hollered hopping down the stairs after the distant carriage. "What about my luggage?" A trunk was cast off the roof of the carriage. Fredrick sighed in exasperation and forced on his gloves.
Several minutes later, Fredrick stood again at the door with his luggage, sweaty and tired, but otherwise fine. He pulled off his gloves roughly and knocked at the door again. No one came. He knocked again and jiggled the locked handle. Exhausted, he fell against the door.
"Please let me in!" he yelled with what breath he had left. "That is all I ask of you!" Finally, the door was opened by an old man with his hand at the level of his eyes. Looking closer, Fredrick realized that a shoelace bound his hand to his forehead, splitting his facial features in half.
"Monseiur Cutting," he greeted while ushering Fredrick inside with his free hand. "we did not expect you for another week. What brings you so early?"
"My last show was canceled, I had nothing to do for the next week, and so I left early," He explained.
"Oh; very well," the man said. "Come in then."
Fredrick obeyed; the man picked up his trunk with his free hand and walked inside.
"Would you please close the door, Monsieur Cutting? As you can see, my hands are quite occupied." Fredrick closed the door behind him and the strange man led him into the theater.
"If you do not mind my asking," Fredrick began.
"Not at all."
"Well, why have you tied your hand to your head?"
"To keep my," presently the man broke into eerie song, "hand at the level of my eyes…"
"Is that all?"
"Yes."
"But, why a shoelace?" he inquired.
The man chuckled in his throat at the silliness of such a question. "Well, I can't very well hold it there for all eternity without a shoelace, now can I?"
Fredrick frowned. "No, I suppose not." Upon looking up, he saw the opera populair and realized that absolutely everyone had shoelaces tying their hands to their heads!
The man dropped his trunk on the floor and kicked it aside. He then led Fredrick down the aisle, introduced himself as Andre and proceeded to acquaint him with each person on stage. Fredrick knew he would not be able to keep any of their names straight, but he smiled and nodded just the same.
"These are all the main performers except for one." Andre turned around several times in search of her. "Where did that girl get off to anyway? Christine Daae!"
"May I have the script, please? I must begin studying it." Fredrick told him.
A thud was heard and a young man, with his hand tied to his forehead, came racing up the aisle behind them.
"You have found her?" he asked in excitement.
"No, my boy. Is she truly missing?" Andre asked.
"I've been looking for her all morning. I cannot find her! I went to her dressing room and heard the voice of some awful man who sang like a donkey with a swollen tongue, but when I opened the door, they were both gone!" he fell exasperatedly into a chair. "All that was left was an envelope with this inside!" he produced a letter from his pocket. Andre snatched it up and read it while Fredrick looked over his shoulder. Here is what was written:
Dear, My dear, RAOUL:
Leave Christine alone. Do not search her out.
P.S. I do NOT sing like a donkey with a swollen tongue.
Your servant, friend master, Erik
"This is most serious," mused Andre, maneuvering around his hand to stroke his chin. "We must send out a search party immediately. We must find that sheet music!"
"And Christine," Raoul, the young man, added impatiently. "You are going to search for her too, aren't you?"
"Yes, yes, of course," Andre said waving him away. "Well, on with the opera."
"But Mr. Andre—"
"Please! You are in France now. It is monsieur."
"Monsieur Andre, I need that music before I can rehearse with you." Fredrick protested.
Andre smiled a disbelieving smile. "We can't stop and wait for you to find your music. The curtains open in a fortnight and we have a lot of preparing to do." With that, he turned and fired up the band again, doing a sort of lop-sided conducting of it.
Fredrick turned and went down a hallway that was built along the side and behind the stage. He would find the music himself. Suddenly, that boy, Raoul, showed up in front of him and nearly scared him out of his wits.
"Good heavens, man! What's the matter? No place in the ropes above to lurk?!"
"No, sir," Raoul replied. "There are no ropes. The phantom has made sure of that. He has taken every last one. That is why we must use our shoelaces to tie our hands to our heads." He stuck out his foot. "Have you ever experienced walking in a pair of shoes with only one shoelace? It is most uncomfortable."
"I can see so, but I really must be going. You see, I have a part in this opera, and I don't even know who I am playing." Fredrick stepped to the side to bypass Raoul, but Raoul stepped in his way.
"Aren't you going to find my Christine? She is trapped in the phantom's lair!"
"Oh, I'm sure it isn't as bad as all that." He stepped to the other side and was intercepted by Raoul again.
"But she is being kept against her will and I am almost certain that they are down in the catacombs, down into which you are traversing."
"Look, young man," Fredrick said, nearly fed up. "You may come along with me and scan for your beloved if you'd like, but I really must find my music."
Raoul shrugged. "I suppose that will have to do."
"And another thing, Raoul. This is just a hallway. No catacombs down here. None. At. All." They turned a corner and – behold! – there were the steep, stone, misty stairs that led down under the opera house. "Huh, well, I take that back."
The two men stepped gingerly down deeper and deeper through the dark. As they went, Fredrick could not help feeling that someone was watching him. Or rather, following him. He could hear the faint hum of a male singer's voice, but could not place where it came from or what it sang. The catacombs increasingly darkened until he could not even see Raoul.
A voice whispered into his ear, "I can find your music; I am the Angel of Music!"
Fredrick batted it away. "Raoul, stop whispering in my ear like that. If you want to say something, say it outright."
"I did not say anything, Monsieur. Truly," the boy sniffled loudly in the dark. "I have been thinking about my beloved rose, Christine Daae."
"Oh. Alright then."
Again the voice spoke to him. "How could you think I was that boy? He, who sings poorly. He is the swollen tongued donkey, not I. I never said I was him, and I will say now that I am not. I will help you find your music. Do you want it back or not?"
"Yes I do, but how do I know I can trust you?" Fredrick whispered back.
"I promise that you can trust me." He replied.
"Who are you talking to?" Raoul sniffed.
"Alright, well—wait, were you being totally and irrefutably serious about that?"
The voice was silent a moment.
"Yes."
"Alright. Fine then. Where to?"
"Follow me."
"What are you doing? Who are you talking to?" Raoul asked again.
"I don't really know. He says he's an angel of some sort. It's a little odd, I'll admit, but he says he knows where my music is."
"Angel!" Raoul cried. "Do you know where Christine is?"
"What do you think I am, donkey-boy? A genie in a lamp?" the voice yelled. "Just follow me."
"Well, that's good enough for me. I'm not a donkey-boy, but no one should be required to know that, since it is so terribly dark down here." Raoul said cheerfully.
They followed the voice of the "angel" until they hit a wall of stone.
"This way," it bid.
They turned again and hit another wall.
"No. This way," it bid.
They walked a couple steps more and hit another wall. Fredrick heard something snap.
"Ah, now. Look; you broke my shoelace."
"This is getting ridiculous!" Fredrick exploded. "Are you leading us where we need to go or not?"
"Trust me."
Eventually the darkness ended and they came to the edge of an underground lake. They approached the water and saw a small boat tied up and the hunched figure of a man sitting on the bank facing towards the water.
"It's five franks each to ride the boat." The man uttered without turning to face them. Fredrick sighed and dug in his pocket. Raoul did so as well and found it much easier now that both of his hands were free. They produced the sum of money and climbed into the boat. The man got in after them and sailed it across the lake.
Raoul squinted in the dim light at their mysterious companion. "Why do you wear a mask?" he asked.
The man looked directly at him and the light reflected fully off of the wide rimmed glasses, large plastic nose and furry, black mustache. "There are some things a boy so young should not see." And he left it at that.
Fredrick had to admit that he was a little confused. If this mystery person thought himself too ugly to look upon, why had he chosen such an ugly mask to hide himself?
They reached the other bank and Raoul spotted Christine on the other side, among the many candles.
"Christine!" he hollered and ran to her. The man with the Groucho glasses grabbed his shoulder and threw him back.
"No! You cannot have her! She must stay here!" Fredrick didn't know what to do as he stood bewildered on the sidelines. Raoul lay bewildered on the ground, looking up at bewildered Christine. The only one who was not bewildered was the mysterious masked man.
"Yes!" he answered the formulating question. "I am the Phantom of the Opera!"
Raoul looked genuinely stunned. Fredrick decided to intervene.
"Please, Mister. What do you want with her? Perhaps then we may come to an agreement."
"I have asked her – no, pleaded with her – over and over again to help me, but she will not. She refuses to have anything to do with me!" the phantom whipped his head spitefully around at Christine.
Christine crossed her arms defiantly. "You do not deserve it yet. All he does is yell at me and command me to do things. I shall never teach him."
The phantom rushed up to Fredrick. "Look at me," he said removing his mask. His face was covered in a green, sandy and cracked mud. "She covered my face with it, saying that it would clear my complexion. But now it stings and though I am a musical genius – I admit – I have absolutely no idea how to get this burning sand off of my face and, ask as I do, Christine refuses to show me how!"
"Christine, why will you not put this man out of his suffering?" cried Raoul rising from the ground.
Christine sighed in defeat and walked up to the phantom. "Here," she said, leading him over to the water's edge.
The phantom peered deeply at his reflection. "I am a monster. But I year for beauty, secretly …secretly …sec—" with a shove, he was in the water.
Christine ran to Raoul and they both scrambled into the boat.
"Get in!" Raoul shouted to Fredrick.
Fredrick looked at the man thrashing about in the water.
"Leave him! We must get out before he does!"
Fredrick looked at the man again, realizing that he could not swim.
"No," he said. "I will not leave him: monster or not."
Raoul stared with understanding. "I understand," he said "Goodbye, my friend." And with that, they sailed to the other side of the lake.
Fredrick looked around for something to throw the phantom and he spotted a pile of ropes off to the side. He grabbed them and threw them all in.
"Grab the ropes!" he shouted.
The phantom did and it was no time before he was on dry land. The exfoliation mask was melting off of his face so Fredrick gave him his coat to wipe it off.
"Miserable female," the phantom muttered into Fredrick's coat.
Fredrick sighed. "What's worse is they took the only boat."
"Oh, don't worry about there; there are a couple of back exits. The shortest one is up over a wall, but that will be no problem since I have many ropes that we…" the phantom looked to the empty corner. "…could …use. Why did you throw completely all my ropes into the water? Why didn't you grab one and use that?"
Fredrick stood. "Frankly, I don't see what you needed them all for anyway."
The phantom stood likewise. "Well, to be absolutely frank with you, sir, I wanted to weave a hammock. No matter. There's still another way to get back to the opera populair, and it really isn't hammock season anyway."
"Thank you," Fredrick said picking up his feet to keep pace with the phantom's quick step. "But I must inquire about my music. You said you had my part."
"I did," the phantom answered.
"And?"
"I burnt it."
Fredrick's jaw hit the floor. "But, why?"
The phantom walked on a little ways more before replying. "Perhaps when you observe the opera, you will reconsider your agreement to partake of it."
The phantom was right. Upon reaching civilization again, Fredrick heard for the first time, a passage of the opera. Awful does not even begin to describe it. It wounded like everyone was a half step off from everyone else and the band was playing sheet metal and chalkboards with their fingernails.
The phantom and Fredrick came out of the tunnel directly underneath the great chandelier.
"See what I told you?" he asked. "Terrible."
No sooner had he finished speaking, when the chain bonding the chandelier to the ceiling snapped under the pressure of the intense sound waves coming from the theater and it came crashing down. Fredrick and the phantom dove out of the way just in time. Crystals shattered everywhere and the force of their leap pushed the two against the wall.
Fredrick panted hard and looked at the phantom.
"Huh," the phantom said smiling slightly as he rubbed his cheek with the back of his hand. "My face is softer."