She awoke in a very uncomfortable chair.
Woozily, she reflected that it wasn't really such an uncomfortable chair unless one was trying to sleep in it. She tried to remember why she'd fallen asleep in such a chair, and came to the conclusion that she had not. In fact, she did not own such a chair. She had fallen asleep in her own bed, in middle America, in 2005, reading a dogeared English copy of The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston LeRoux.
Forcing herself to focus on her surroundings, she realized that she was in an opera box. Leaning over, she could see that she was in an enormous and extremely overdone theater.
The Paris Opera House.
She'd know it anywhere, though she'd never been out of the States. She'd looked up photos, illustrations, even architectural plans on the internet. This hideous theater could be no other.
She started to stand, and realized that she was not in her own clothes, but in a floor-length gown. It seemed to be silver-grey satin, a color that matched her eyes. She put her hands to her head and found that her red-gold hair was pinned up in what felt like a turn-of-the-century fashion.
She wasn't just in the Paris Opera House, she was in Erik's Paris! She'd always known it was possible, but she had never expected it! Well, she'd expected it a little. Enough to prepare a song to sing for Erik when she met him. Which she would.
Was this before or after The Incident? It didn't matter! Christine or no Christine, she had to find Erik and save him with her True Love!
With no other people in the theater, this was her big chance. Relying partly on her memory of the building plans, partly on repeated viewings of the movie "The Phantom of the Opera," but mostly on her natural instinct, she made her way quickly into the basements of the opera house.
Descending to the fifth sub-basement (which was extraordinarily easy, considering she was wearing a corset), she mentally rehearsed "Think of Me." She would sing it just like Sarah Brightman. She'd been practicing for months, and her vibrato could stop a truck. She knew just where to be shrill and where to lose projection on the low notes.
Reaching the lake in the fifth sub-basement, she found a boat waiting for her. Stepping in, she discovered that she knew all about steering a gondola.
The gate to the Phantom's lair was open. Gliding under it in the gloom, she never saw the Punjab lasso drop from the ceiling just inside the gate. When it first slipped over her head, she thought it was a cobweb and moved to brush it away, but before she even realized her mistake, the lasso jerked back up to the ceiling, snapping her neck.
A dark figure emerged from the shadows and sighed heavily. "Not another one," grumbled Erik.
Author's notes:
I have deleted my author's notes because everyone was reviewing them instead of the story.