DISCLAIMER: Well, nothing in here belongs to me, except the story itself. I guess Erik and all them belong to Leroux, the monkey belongs to ALW, and the story of Cinderella, um...well, whomever it belongs to, it's not mine either. Although I must say, the fairy godmother is my own creation.
One gloomy night, Erik was sitting forlornly at his organ, glumly playing random songs in a vain effort to distract himself. He was very upset due to the fact that this was the night of the Masquerade Ball and everyone was going except him. For one thing, he hated socializing. For another, he didn't have a costume.
Most years, he didn't really care; in fact, he generally avoided a day when humans ran around like idiots, dressed up in ridiculous costumes, got drunk, and wasted time in pointless conversation and dancing. And besides that, they made a general mess of the opera house which O.G. then felt obliged to clean up as he could not have confetti strings in Box Five, and if he left it to the normal clean-up crew, it took nine months to see the end of the crumbs and bits of glass.
But this particular year, something was different. Christine was going to the ball. And so was the Vicomte de Chagny. More than likely they would see each other there and Erik would not be around to stop whatever happened between them. Unfortunately it was now too late to acquire a costume, and he simply could not go without one. It would have been embarrassing and cheap.
So he tried unsuccessfully to distract himself with music while waiting for the next morning when he could take out his aggravation by punjabing the first moron to piss him off. As he played, attempting to lose himself in the music, he noticed that something was not right. There was a chord that was out of tune. Naturally, Erik never played out of tune so he became alarmed and looked up. There, standing on the keyboard, was a little woman who could have passed for Thumbalina if she hadn't been so sour-looking and wrinkled.
Erik's threat caught in his throat and instead of the intelligent and wicked thing he was going to say, all he managed was a little "uhhh..."
"I have been calling your name for the last ten minutes. Are you totally deaf?" the little old woman screamed in a gruff voice. "Wouldn't surprise me! Anyone who spends all his time playing those insane things you call compositions at full volume on a pipe organ in a restricted space ought to be deaf."
"You're the size of a finger," Erik said dumbly. "You are a little, tiny person standing on my keyboard."
"I'm the size of a thumb actually. And I'm here to..."
"I have to get out more," Erik said with a touch of concern in his voice and rubbed his eyes.
"No, you're not hallucinating. Now listen. I'm here to..."
"It must be all the candles. Maybe I should switch to gas lamps..."
"Hello! I'm talking to you!"
"...Or the persistant mist that always hangs around here. It's just a trick of the light reflecting off the mist..."
The little woman began jumping up and down on the two nearest keys. A jarring sound belched out of the organ and Erik screamed and covered his ears. "Stop! You're creating discord! I can't stand hearing unharmonious sounds!" he began to crumple into a mass of black satin and pain. The woman stopped.
"Thank God!" Erik panted, picking himself up. "Now, what do you want? Who are you? And why are you so small?"
"Hey! Vertically challenged people deserve respect too!"
"Okay, sorry."
"And anyway, I'm a fairy. All fairies are small. Namely, I'm your fairy godmother. And I'm here to..."
Erik burst out into a round of evil, insane laughter. When he was finished, he snorted, "I don't believe in fairies. And I don't have a fairy-god..."
The little woman waved her hands, mumbled some incomprehensible words and nodded twice. Erik felt a funny sensation come over him and his whole body began to tingle. He looked down at himself, fearing the worst (i.e. that he had been changed into a hippopotamus or some such thing) but to his surprise, he was as normal as ever.
"What did you do?" he asked, confused.
"I made you tone-deaf."
"What?"
"You heard me. Tone-deaf." The little woman wiped her hands on her sparkly azure dress and nodded firmly. "Don't believe me? Go ahead. Test it out."
Erik turned back to the keyboard, shut his eyes and played a random note. "E flat." He said with certainty. He played another. "G." He opened one eye and peered suspiciously at the fairy. "If you're trying to make a fool out of me, I swear I'll pluck off your wings and fry you with a magnifying glass."
The fairy turned red and smiled sheepishly. "Hold on a moment." She repeated her movements of before and then looked up at him. "Okay, try it now."
"I'm getting tired of this. If you don't bug off..."
"Come on, one more chance."
Erik pounded angrily on a note and opened his mouth, but found he could not answer. Stricken by a sudden wave of panic he began pounding on every key in reach, but to no avail. They all sounded more or less the same to him, like meaningless sound coming randomly from a big black box with little white things. Erik gasped, "What did you do?"
"Simple. I switched your musical ear with that of some chap named Raoul de Chagny."
"Oh. Figures. Please, switch it back! If I am going to keep de Chagny's talents the rest of my life I might as well kill myself now."
"Now don't do anything hasty..." the fairy quickly set to work. And once Erik was convinced that his skills had been returned, he turned to the fairy with a look of miserable defeat.
"All right. You've proven your point. What do you want?"
"Like I tried to tell you, I'm your fairy-godmother and I'm here to help fulfill your greatest desire."
"You're going to make me handsome?" Erik cried gleefully, clasping the little woman so tight in his hands, he almost squashed her.
"Well...no. That is a little beyond even my powers. Your other greatest desire."
"You're going to strike Raoul with some horrible, unimaginably mortifying, incurable-but-not-quite-deadly-so-he-has-to-live-the-rest-of-his-life-with-it disease?"
"Umm...not that one either."
"...You're going to make Christine fall desperately in love with me?"
"Aehhh_"
"Well what exactly do you consider my bloody desire to be?" Erik exploded, putting the fairy close to his face and squeezing her tiny neck with his pinky and thumb.
"You... want to go...to... the masked ball...right?" the fairy choked out.
"Well, yes. But I would hardly say..." started Erik, relaxing his hold.
"Well, that's the desire you're going to get!" the fairy humphed, struggling out of Erik's grip and flying to a safe distance out of his immediate arm span. "So let's get started. We've already wasted a lot of time."
"So... you're going to get me a costume or what?" Erik stood tentatively and gave the fairy an odd look.
"By the way, if I help you, you can't tell this to anyone. It's a secret."
"Oh, like I'm going to tell everyone how this little fairy came and magically granted my sort of important wishes. I do have an image to keep up."
"Okay. Stand over there." The fairy pointed to a spot in front of the mantel. "First we need a carriage. Do you have any over-sized vegetables down here?"
"Hello! I live in the building! I don't need a carriage!"
"But that's so much more fun. You're being a very boring god-son."
Erik took a step forward. "You want me to make things a little more exciting?" he asked, his voice dripping with menace.
"That's okay. I guess we'll skip the introductory stuff. Down to the costume. What sort of costume do you want?"
"Hmm. I hadn't really thought about it."
"How about this?" With a flash of bright light, Erik found himself dressed in loose polka-dotted pants with suspenders and a big red nose. He was instantly grateful that there were no mirrors in his house.
"I was thinking a little more...menacing?" he choked.
"Oh. Okay." With another flash, Erik was wearing a sheet with holes cut in it.
"Oh that was creative."
"Give me a break. I usually work with normal balls...and normal people."
"Are you suggesting that I'm not normal?"
"Anyway...how's thi..."
Erik was not about to let this continue much longer. He closed his eyes and tried t imagine the perfect masquerade costume. "You know, what I was thinking was something red...with feathers...."
"I've got it!" squealed the fairy and with another flash, Erik had again changed outfits.
"I think I'm going blind." He muttered, reaching up to rub the dancing lights out of his eyes. But there was something amiss with his hands. They were covered in feathers! In fact, his whole body was covered in red feathers and on his nose...
"AAAAAUUUUUUUGHHHHH!" screamed Erik in horror. He was dressed as a giant red chicken. "Get this off me!!"
"What's wrong now? You said..."
"Get it off or I'm going to fulfill my own greatest desire which, at the moment, is that you cease to exist."
The fairy didn't even bother to reply, she just shut her eyes and zapped a flash of light at Erik. Erik shut his eyes as well, anticipating the worst.
But when he looked down, what he saw was the most splendid costume he could ever have imagined. It was all scarlets and crimsons and rubies and...well, you get the point - and made of the finest material imaginable. A truly frightening thing it was, and completed with a fine wide-brimmed hat full of red feathers. It even had red-tinted glass boots, although Erik wasn't really sure if that was a pro or a con.
"Exactly!" Erik cried, breathless with delight. "Did you come up with this all by yourself? I guess you're not so dumb as I thought."
"Well, I had a little inspiration from Poe." Admitted the fairy, but she didn't say more for fear of losing the only compliment her temperamental god-child had thought to bestow upon her.
"What do you call it?"
"erm...The Red Death."
"Oh...a little inspiration, huh? Can we say downright copyright infringement?"
"So anyway..." the fairy interrupted, "That's it. Since you didn't want any of the other trappings, there you go."
"Fair enough." Erik relented, "Christine can't help but find this a lot sexier than her viscount dressed up as a game piece." And he prepared to rush off.
"One last thing." The fairy called after him, "Don't forget to come home before 4:12 on the dot."
"What's so special about 4:12?"
"Fairy coffee break. Due to work strikes, the National Committee for Fairy Welfare has insisted that all magic cease once a day to give us over-worked saps some time off. The magic will fade and you'll go back to wearing your expensive designer tuxedo and beaded fur-lined cape."
"I see. I won't forget. Thanks for everything." Erik said and left in with a sweep of his glorious red cloak. His fairy-godmother was just about to go when she heard a voice calling out to her. As there was no one there, it took some time to locate the source. It was the monkey-music box that Erik kept by his mantel.
"Well, what do you want?" she huffed impatiently.
"I want to go to the ball too." The monkey said.
"I don't know about that..."
"Look. I've already got a costume. I'm a monkey for chissakes. All you'd have to do was make me alive for one night."
"Hey, this here is a rip-off of Cinderella, not Pinocchio." The fairy-godmother said uncertainly.
"Oh, come on. Erik always gets to have all the fun. I just get to sit here and play him music. And not even that - always the same old song. And I have to bash these stupid cymbals together. Have you ever been in a marching band? Do you know how much cymbals weigh? I think I must have it almost as bad as that frickin' statue we sent the Americans...!"
"Okay, okay!" the fairy threw up her hands in defeat, tired of listening to ill-tempered primates. "We'll see what we can do..."