This was originally intended as a Shakespeare fiction but I could not help wanting to put the phantom in it. It's basically nonsense, but please tell me what you think of it. The phantom will arrive in the next chapter, which hopefully will be up tomorrow or later today.

Disclaimer: The Phantom of the Opera does not belong to me, nor does Hamlet.

But I do claim Mr. Postman, his family, friends and psychologist.

The next in line was a writer of fiction. He slumped in his chair and had a defeated air that went well with his slender frame and delicate features. I mustered up my most professional air. "Mr. Postman, I believe. Do tell me why you want to see me." He smiled at me sadly.

"No offence meant but I would much rather not see you. Or" he added. "Nothing but see you. Your outward appearance is pleasing; it is the speaking part which I rather resent." I was but mildly surprised at this statement as, being a psychiatrist, I came along this kind of attitude a lot, although it was not always so openly pronounced. "I see. What made you come then?"

"Who, you mean. My wife. But what made who do it, you will want to ask."

"What? Who?" I had trouble following his train of thoughts. It had been a long day. Mr. Umbrella, who thought he was a bonnet, had tried to hang himself on the hat stand. After that he settled on trying to make me wear him, but he was not my style.

"It is my job. She told me just yesterday that it causes me to take up immoral and dangerous habits." Mr. Postman imparted this to me with a very solemn look on his face. His drooping eyelids, I thought, did much more likely derive from a particularly calm nature than they were a sign for a lascivious disposition. His gaze never once wavered to the picture of a naked woman that was hanging behind me, opposite to him. My secretary had placed it there prior to his entrance. I thought there might be something learned by the patients reaction to it.

"Why would she think that?"

"That is beyond me. But she told me she wants me to go and see you if I wanted to go on seeing her."

"Those were her words?" I asked. I imagined someone pronouncing this rashly and in an agitated manner and failed, creating a knot in my tongue at the very thought of it.

"No. But I joined her many fragmented pieces of a speech to form something more whole and coherent. That makes her look more sophisticated." I snapped back into work modus at this, training was kicking in.

"Is it important to you that the world knows her as a sophisticated woman?" I queried hopefully.

"Absolutely not. It would not do on closer acquaintance. It is much better that the world learns the worst at the very beginning." He prompted. "But she does not understand this, so I humour her against my better knowledge."

I wished he would use exclamation marks more often. They went so well with the question marks, which in their turn went so well with my job. I stared. "First things first" I muttered under my breath and made a mental note to approach that subject again at a later meeting.

"Indeed. So, once again, what do you think is it that revolts her about your job? You are an author, I gather?" I asked with dawning suspicion. "What kind of books do you write?" He shot a mildly disgusted look from below his tired lids.

"I write fiction, Miss Day. There is nothing immoral about fiction. Most non-fictional literature out there is revoltingly perverted. There is always something disturbingly immoral about facts. But in fiction there is no such thing as bad morals - however bawdy the narrative it is still very much fictional and has as such a moral standard of its own. One may frown upon it but it's basically a harmless what if."

"I strongly disagree, personally and professionally. If my patients' fictions had a moral standard of their own I would not be needed." I objected.

He shrugged. "But that is madness, not art."

"I don't think so. Indeed, I don't think you think so." I replied after a moments thought. "Moreover I am beginning to suspect that you do not mean anything you said to me. You, Mr. Postman are an Oscar Wilde persona."

He stiffened and for once gave up his defeated posture.

"Try to put a label on me, if you want. File me away, if you will. Call me what instrument you will though you fret me, you cannot play upon me!" he cried. All artists are alike. Tell a musician that his compositions are considered to belong to the classical genre and he will smash his violin on your head and declare himself a rock star. I was finally growing weary of this. Somehow we had come to Hamlet, which – professionally - was profoundly interesting, but I had yet to hear the cause of his distemper. I had half a mind to tell him that he would surely bar the door upon his own liberty if he denied his grief to his friends.

"Why have you come here, Mr. Postman?"

He settled back in his chair and decided that there was no use arguing with me, for which I was immensely grateful. "It may be possible that I get lost in my own plots sometimes. In other's also."

"How does that show?"

"I become increasingly fictional." He said confidingly. "I think that is what has been worrying my wife. But I really cannot help it."

"What symptoms are there to being fictional?"

"To explain this you must know that I write nonsense."

I felt bad for him. "You must not say that. I am sure you write well enough!" I assured him soothingly.

He felt the urge to explain himself. "You mistake my meaning. I literally write literal nonsense as a plot device. The world today is so very much devoid of sense that absurdity has become the noblest kind of realism. Are you acquainted with my Donkey Pyjama series? It has become somewhat popular, you know."

The author of Donkey Pyjama! I had always suspected that the name of Hollis Hit had to be a pseudonym. But this was remarkable. I thought I should have to have him sign some extra paperwork. Who knew what his signature might be worth a few years from hence.

"I have read your books very thoroughly, Mr. Postman. I have to inform you that what you wrote must be the most advanced nonsense yet. It is profoundly silly!" I regarded him admiringly, knowing very well that I was not being a very good psychiatrist today.

"Thank you." He bowed his head, a faint flush in his cheeks. He was not yet used to the success. But his finely cut jacket and the expensive watch indicated that he was quite used to and at ease with the wealth that accompanied it. "However, my art takes its toll on me. I hope I have not become very silly by now, as I try to keep the silliness restricted to my books, but I do get overwhelmed by my characters at times. I develop them very carefully. That is not what nonsense is about, however, so when I've done making them unique I start making them nonsensical by stripping them of their common character traits and more serious habits." He illustrated this progress with his hands and formed a character out of the air, regarding it fondly before making fuzz about turning it into nonsense. I watched him curiously. There is always something very attractive about madness in great ones.

"I also change them a lot to fit them to the storyline. I believe all this creative garbage returns to plague the inventor. I, Miss Day, am a man covered in fictional debris!" he concluded dramatically. I stared at him once again and he stared right back at me as if challenging me. I took courage in the thought that psychiatrists had, in a way, always been binmen for overflowing imagination.

"And for your everyday life this means…?"

"The death-sentence." By now he seemed to be almost enjoying himself, in spite of his previously expressed dislike of talking to me. "You see I pick up all this stuff. I mean, it must have been in my head before, because I invented it, but now it is quite disordered and I am at loss as to keep it in check."

"Would you care to specify this?" I suggested, feeling slightly useless.

"I belch."

"Excuse me?" Genius often serves as an excuse for many evil things. But not belching.

"Or rather, I used to belch for month after I made M. Richardson stop."

"Mr. Richardson? The baker in Donkey P.? Why would you make him belch in the first place? It's so not his style!"

"No, that is why I made him stop. I could not help writing him like that. Do you believe in muses? I certainly do. And that's why my characters must be written as they reveal themselves to me." He extended a long finger to lecture me some more but I ungratefully stopped him.

"So you started belching in Mr. Richardson's place."

"I did. My wife was not at all supportive in this time of trial. She thought I did it on purpose, just to vex her. As if I could not have found less disgusting means to do that!" he went on in a haughty manner. "I did not leave the house till it wore off. I am a martyr in my field of work, Miss Day, a martyr."

I shifted in my seat and covertly viewed my watch. As interesting as this was, I felt that to be of any kind of use I would first have to do some serious research work. My mind was already on the possibilities should his story turn out to be true. Just fancy Shakespeare picking his nose publicly for weeks just because it would not fit to Prospero.

"And I am not only charged by this waste of invention, but also by the completed product itself. I woke up this morning thinking I was a robin featured my latest book. I ended of jumping out of my bedroom window. Gladly I hit the gardener before I hit the garden."

A picture of Shakespeare waking up convinced that he was the thane of Cawdor, king that shall be, came to my mind, but I shrugged it off.

"But there's another thing that may be considered unsettling." He leaned in. "I have been visited at nights. My wife was very upset about it."

I did not make an inappropriate comment. "And by whom, if I may ask?"

"Hamlet and Ophelia."

Once again I stared at him blankly. Text thing he would tell me the phantom of the opera lived in his cellar.

Author's note: Sorry for the lack of a phantom, as I said, next chapter. Christine and Raoul, will visit, too! And sorry also for grammar or spelling faults, I'm not a native speaker.

I remain, &c E.L.