L'Irken de l'Opéra
By
E. S. Young
Prologue
All the way back in 2003 a simple-minded teenager by the name of E. S. Young decided to combine her two favorite fandoms (Invader Zim and The Phantom of the Opera) as well as her two favorite pastimes (writing and acting) into one show-stopping extravaganza. Unfortunately, it didn't quite turn out the way she had planned. The jokes were lame and the grammar was certainly not up to par. So, so sad…
However, in 2004, a new movie came out… one that was based on ALW's charming musical. (shrug) I liked it – Minni Driver and Miranda Richardson specifically – although I think the Phantom's deformity could have been worse and they could have gotten better singers to fit the roles of Christine and the Phantom. Their voices weren't bad, but I think they could've been better. Eh. Don't mind me; I've been brought up on Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman, so my standards are a little high. :D; Anyway… the new movie came out and inspiration for a PotO fic hit me. Now, since January that story has been taken down and is undergoing some serious reconstruction, but it shall be back. Until then, IZ and PotO fans alike should enjoy this rewriting of my parody. Also, nearly everyone now has a French name. Or at least they have theiroriginal name with a French twist to it. (shrug) I thought it would be fun, not to mention fitting. After all, they're in France.
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Paris, 1919
It was such a shame to see the Paris Opera House reduced to this. Now it was nothing more than a sad, decaying building that only stood as a bleak monument to what it had once been: a magnificent theatre. How awful it was to see the once grand windows boarded up, it's marble stairway coated with a thick layer of grime, it's beautifully painted walls filthy and peeling. Oh well. It wasn't like it was any of his concern. He had withdrawn from patronage years ago.
"Hey," a decrepit Dibier began, twisting around in his wheelchair to scowl at the young nun who served as his nurse. His "nurse/nun" or "nun/nurse," whichever the reader preferred. She had thus far been wheeling him toward the towering Opera House, but she had suddenly paused in her work, choosing to gaze up at the grand building and let her eyes glaze over. Again Dibier frowned when he got no response.
"Come on, it's just a building. Couldn't you hurry it up a bit? I kinda wanted this to be a 'get-in-get-out' thing, ya know?"
Shaken out of her dumbfounded reverie, the nun/nurse started and at once turned her warm brown eyes upon the withered old man stationed in the elegantly carved wheelchair.
"How's about I send yeh onna trip down th' Sien Riva, eh?" she asked in throaty English.
The old man's eyes widened behind their gold-framed spectacles as he fell silent, knowing that she would not hesitate to make good on feeding him to the fishes.
"I was just wondering if you could go faster. Jeeze, Abby…"
"Yeh wanna go faster, kid?" asked the nun/nurse – though Dib was having second thoughts about the woman's sisterhood and her medical abilities– her dark eyes glittering mischievously.
"Well…yeah, I – no, wait!"
But he was too late. With a triumphant laugh, the young nun/nurse took off, pushing the delicate wheelchair and its equally fragile occupant with as much force as she could muster, barreling into the Opera House with terrific speed. With her charge emitting a piteous wail of terror – to which Abby paid him no mind – the nun/nurse burst through an enormous pair of double doors, sending them flying back against the sullied walls with an echoing bang.
At once heads turned, and Abby grinned.
"Viscount's here," she announced to the dozens of staring eyes, giving a nod to the shaken old man in the wheelchair. "Silly ol' man loves t' make a dramatic entrance." She gave a careless shrug, showing just how unconcerned for her charge's condition she really was.
Little did Dibier and his nurse/nun know that they were being watched. Far away – well, really not that far away. More like across the room and behind a rather rotund gentleman. But it was a pretty big room and he was a pretty big gentleman, so the space was rather far away… Okay, okay. Across the room and behind a rather rotund gentleman stood a tall, slender woman, her auburn hair stained gray from years of age, and the alabaster skin of her face sagging with folds of wrinkles. But within her dark blue eyes was a something that not even Time could grasp: a flame. The bright, flickering light that one could only find in the eyes of small children danced within this old woman's blue orbs, partially obstructed by a pair of slender, oval-shaped glasses. And when the old woman saw the Vicomte, clutching his chest and panting at his over-zealous nurse's actions, she smiled and the light of her eyes burned even brighter.
At the top of the dusty staircase, the auctioneer stood behind a polished, wooded lectern and cleared his throat importantly.
"Well, as you can see by the sign outside –"
"What sign?" hollered a voice from the crowd, cutting through the din like Simon Cowell cuts through a young singer's hopes and dreams (because 'like a knife through butter' is so yesterday.)
The auctioneer blinked, his large moustache bristling in confusion.
"The sign...it…it's right out front –"
"I didn't see a sign!" the voice called again.
"Well, how could you miss it? It was right over –"
"Didn't see one!"
"Then how, pray tell, did you end up here?"
"I read it in the paper!" the person stated proudly (the readers may picture him making the 'u.u' face right about now).
"Well then what difference does it make if you saw the sign or not?" the auctioneer demanded, his face turning a vivid shade of maroon as his irritation continued to climb.
"It makes a lotta difference, buddy!" the person cried, highly affronted at such a ridiculous notion. "What if I hadn't seen the add in the paper, huh? Then I never woulda known about the auction!"
"I'm sure we would've gotten by," the auctioneer commented dryly. "After all, there are plenty of bidders—"
"Who said I was gonna bid?" the voice demanded. "Not me! I'm just here for the pie."
Upon hearing this, the auctioneer seemed ready to eat his gavel as a look of pure rage consumed his flabby face. "There is no pie, you imbecile!"
"Oh," the person said, stunned. "Goodbye, then."
And with that, there was the distinct sound of someone walking out of the room, (because the author didn't feel the need to give the person a face since she thought it would be much more comical to just have a voice shouting from the crowd) followed by the sound of a door being opened and then, several seconds later, closed. Sitting back in her faded, gray computer chair, the author read over what she had just written, shrugged, and thought to herself Hooray for too-long sentences!
Again the auctioneer cleared his throat.
"Well, now that that's over with… we can begin. Ahem. Lot 665: a prop from the very popular Scary Monkey Show." He gave a curt nod to the assistant at his side who immediately lifted a small, apish figure into the air and began parading it around for all to see.
"Yes, yes, thank you," the auctioneer murmured distractedly. "This…incredibly freaky monkey is, in fact, a music box –"
A gasp rose up from the crowd of bidders.
"Be quiet," snapped the auctioneer, banging his gavel against the lectern in anger. "It's not that amazing. Ahem. As I was saying… this music box was found in the Opera basement. At first we thought it was covered with mold and mildew and quite beyond repair… but then we realized that it was supposed to look like that. Why anyone would want to buy it, I don't know, but we figured we might as well give it a shot. Any takers?"
The ugly toy monkey scowled out at the crowd from beneath its sloping brow and began to move its mechanical arms. The tarnished cymbals it held in each hand began to clang in time with the music that issued from the little black box on which it sat. The crowd stared in awe.
"Anyone?" droned the auctioneer unenthusiastically. "Anyone at all…? Yes, you there! Next to the Flying Nun!"
"'Ey!" Abby cried angrily.
"Quiet, Abby," Dibier hissed, waving his bidding paddle furiously at the auctioneer. "Me, me! Oh, come on! I know you see me! Over here! Thirty francs!"
"We use Euro, now, sir," the auctioneer informed him dully as his assistant placed the music box in Dibier's gnarled hands.
"Whatever," the viscount replied, eagerly accepting the Scary Monkey Box. Gazing down at the little machine in somewhat revolted wonder, he could not help but reminisce.
A collector's piece? No way.
I couldn't sell it. Not even on eBay.
But she always talked about this monkey;
Its creepy face and its smell that's kinda funky.
"Okay," the auctioneer sighed, unknowingly pulling Dib from his musings. "Now, the occurrence I'm sure you've all been dying to…occur…Lot 666, ladies and gentlemen!" The auctioneer leaned over his lectern and whispered conspicuously, "You just know it's something good, right? The triple 6? Now's the time to be excited!"
The crowd stared, completely unmoved. In the distance, a single sound vibrated throughout the entire theatre: the lone chirping of a cricket. The auctioneer was outraged.
"Oh, come now! What about old-timey superstition and all that garbage? Don't you people know a bad omen when you see it?"
Several pairs of eyes blinked, but that was it. The auctioneer shook his head in disgust and motioned to his assistant to help him with Lot 666.
"As I was saying…erm…what was I saying…? Oh, yes. Lot 666! A chandelier –"
"A chandelier?" someone – most likely the same obnoxious person from before – called.
"Yes, a chandelier. Of DOOM."
"A broken chandelier of DOOM," the assistant corrected calmly, tugging on the massive sheet that covered said relic of DOOM.
"Dude, why would anyone wanna buy a broken chandelier?"
"For the collector's value, geeze!" The irate auctioneer shook his head and sighed. "Don't you people know anything? This chandelier is the one that was dropped by the Phantom – you know. The Opera Ghost."
He was pleased to when a gasp came from the cluster of bidders.
"Exactly. So, needless to say, this baby's value is through the roof – broken or not. Of course…we replaced the candles with light bulbs, so that may take the price down just a teensy bit. Ahaha. Oh well. Raise the curtain, José !"
"How many times do I have to tell you? My name's Fernando, gosh darn it! Fernando!"
But no one paid the grief-stricken assistant any mind, because at the exact moment he was correcting the auctioneer for the umpteenth time, he was jerking the sheet away, revealing the colossal structure that lay beneath it. The giant broken chandelier of DOOM (aside from being giant, broken, and full of DOOM) must have doubled as a time machine. Because, you see, the moment the sheet was pulled away the chandelier began to rise from the dusty grown on which it stood, pealing the dirt and grime from the theatre as it soared to the heavens above. The signs of age melted from the walls of the Opera House, fading away into oblivion as the theatre was once again restored to its former glory.
♪ ♪ ♪
Yes, I've decided to re-write the songs. (hangs head in shame) Normally I would never consider doing this because my poetry skills are simply abysmal. However, I had a few new lyrics in mind when I first considered writing this and apparently they were enough to convince me to re-write all of the songs. Oy. I have most of the songs planned, though some may take longer than others – example: "Music of the Night." Noooo idea what I'm going to do for that. It's such a beautiful piece and I'd hate to taint it with my lame excuses for replacement lyricists, however, I don't want to post the same song because, let's face it, that's boring. And you don't want to be bored, do you? No. I thought not.
Notes
"nurse/nun" or "nun/nurse" – I think in the movie she was to be a nurse, however, my charming cousin had to remark that she looked like the women on that old TV show The Flying Nun and I've never been able to figure her out since
Sister Abby – the nun/nurse (or nurse/nun) is, if you've read Open Up Your Mind or are a member of my RPG, quite obviously my character the wiry nun-turned-privateer Abigail Bones. If on the unlikely chance I decide to write a Pirates of the Caribbean story, she would be in in. However, since that is, as I already stated, unlikely I've decided to give her a cameo in this.
Monkey Music Box – it's pretty much the Scary Monkey dressed in Persian robes and holding cymbals if that wasn't already clear.
666 – no notes on this, I'm just wondering if anyone knows why exactly the number 666 is associated with Satan. I've tried looking it up and have only succeeded in procuring a number of satanic cult web sites. If anyone can help me out, that'd be great. :)
'Til next time, dear readers! Au revoir!