"…And this is the living room, and this is the dining room, and upstairs there are four bedrooms," the old woman explained, showing Erik and Christine through her newly vacated house. "It's a great little house. The only reason my husband and I would even dream of selling it is that we've always dreamed of retiring in Miami." She pointed out the back window. "And out back, there's a swingset and a sandbox for these sweet little children." She made the mistake of trying to muss the twins' hair, and nearly lost a finger.

"Why did you let them wear those capes?" hissed Christine. "You know what a rambunctious mood it always puts them in."

"Meh. Let them be rude as they want. We're not buying this place, so there's hardly any need to make a good impression."

"What do you mean? This place is perfect."

"It's pink." Erik spat the word as if it were the most horrible obscenity in the French language.

"But it's so quaint and cozy, and there's plenty of room for the children to play. And look! The drapes are printed with angels!" She tugged his arm insistently. "Erik, this has got to be a sign!"

"Ugh…angels…always angels…" Erik shuddered. Had he known six years ago what he knew now, he would have introduced himself with some kind of cheesy pick-up line like a normal guy instead of trying to make things easy with the angel hoax. "Christine, no. I've put up with a lot of stuff over the years. I let you put lace curtains and a welcome mat in my lair. I replaced my coffin with that frilly little canopy bed you wanted. I even kept quiet while you've dressed my children in pink angel prints for the past five years! But when you ask me to leave my quiet, comfy lair and move into the suburban pastel palace from Hell, I've got to draw the line! We're not moving into this hideous house, and that's final!"

Two days later, the last of their belongings had been moved to the suburban pastel palace from Hell, and the lair was being leased to a couple of ecstatic phans who paid the rent by conducting guided tours twice a day.

Erik had been too busy sulking to help unpack, so he didn't have a clue where anything was. "Christine, where did you put my pipe organ?"

"Sorry, Erik, but I had to leave it back at the lair."

Meanwhile, back down in the Phantom's lair, two teenaged girls in Phantom T-shirts and plastic half-masks were having the time of their lives.

"Look at me, Tiffany!" said one to the other as she banged on the organ keys. "I'm the Phantomette of the Opera!"

Tiffany sniffed the air, perplexed. "Is it just me, or do you smell a delightful blend of juicy pears and ripe forest berries?"

"You what!" Erik cried in disbelief.

"Look, there was nothing I could do," said Christine as she unwrapped the newspaper from her collection of angel figurines and placed them on a shelf. "It was too big to fit through the door, and besides, the noise would have really bothered the new neighbors. We don't want to get off on the wrong foot, now, do we?"

"Christine! I'm a composer! I needed that!"

"Don't worry, Erik. I took the money those charming Phans gave me for it and bought you a better instrument." She led him into a small room at the back of the first floor, and pulled a sheet off a concealed piece of furniture in the corner. "Look, it's a piano!"

"No, dear. It's a harpsichord," corrected Erik grimly.

"Oh. Well, it looks just like a small piano to me. They can't be all that different."

Erik didn't answer. He just walked over to the "piano" and played a quick scale. The sound that came out sounded more like it had come from Tinkerbell than the Phantom of the Opera.

"Oh. Um…bye!" Christine bolted from the room quicker than her kids on a sugar high.

"Adorable psycho! Adorable psycho!" squawked Pierre, whose cage had been hung just above the harpsichord.

Erik's eyelid began to twitch uncontrollably.

Thirteen years went by, with Christine collecting angel merchandise, the twins devising new ways to get the sugar canister out of the safe, and Erik trying to pound out his frustrations on his harpsichord.

The good news is that when the children hit their teen years, they got over the sugar-craze phase. The bad news is that they developed several much more troublesome phases.

Erik had taught the children everything he knew about music, and while they had plenty of talent for it, they didn't really seem interested. At least not in the way he would have liked. Angelique, who had inherited her old man's "baddie" persona, had started up a band. It had been rather sudden. The day she turned eighteen, she had suddenly thrown all of her pink angel-print ensembles into the fireplace, extorted some money, bought herself some black Goth-style outfits and makeup, and gotten several piercings on her face. Then she piled three of her friends into a van and took off on the road with nothing but her tambourine and a dream.

Erik still had high hopes for Eric, though. He had remained at home, still dressed in his sky-blue angel suits. Like Erik with his white knight get-up, Eric's spirit had been broken, and he no longer even tried to protest. But he hadn't decided what line of work he wanted to pursue yet, and Erik had been trying to convince the boy to get involved in opera.

Then one day, as Erik sat tinkering with his harpsichord, desperately trying to lower the pitch somehow, Eric approached him nervously, with Christine smiling encouragingly at her son from the doorway. "Dad, can I talk to you for a minute? It's kind of important."

Erik sighed and slammed the harpsichord shut. He was fighting a losing battle. "Sure, son. What's on your mind?"

"Well," said Eric, taking a deep breath. "I've been trying to decide what I want to do with my life for a while now, and I've finally made a choice. I want to follow in your footsteps."

Erik's eyes lit up. "Really?" He put an arm around his son's shoulders. "That's great!"

Eric beamed, gaining confidence. "Dad, I'm becoming a ventriloquist!"

"Huh?" Erik blinked in confusion.

"A ventriloquist, just like you!"

Christine threw her arms around Eric. "Isn't this wonderful? I'm so proud!"

Erik groaned. "A ventriloquist? Eric, you're killing me!"

Christine frowned. "Erik!"

"Yes?" replied Eric and Erik in unison.

"I was talking to the Erik who's nocturnal and wears a mask," Christine clarified. "Erik, apologize to Eric!"

Erik wearily patted his son on the back. "Er…I didn't mean it son. I suppose…if you really want to be…oh, God…a ventriloquist…it's fine by me."

So Eric went on tour as the opening act for his sister's band, and Christine and Erik were left alone again. Erik had always imagined the day the kids left home would be the happiest of his life. But without the little monsters around to keep her busy, his wife had started devoting all her attention to him again. She cut his hair, put him on a low-carb diet, and forced him to start going to the gym with her twice a week. One day, he collapsed from a heart attack during a high-intensity aerobics class and was rushed to the hospital. But it was too late. The doctor only gave him a day or two to live.

The children rushed home to be at their father's bedside during his final hours, but Erik couldn't even look them in the eyes. Oh, not because he was ashamed of them. It was just that Angelique's eyebrows had so many piercings that it hurt to even look at them. And Eric had brought along a ventriloquist's dummy identical to himself, and it was so creepily lifelike that Erik could never tell if he was looking at the boy or the doll. The fact that Eric had named his dummy Erik in honor of his father didn't help lessen the confusion any.

Christine came to the hospital to be with him, too, and she brought Pierre along with her. "He's part of our family," she insisted.

"Adorable psycho! Adorable psycho!" Pierre agreed.

"It's okay, I'm glad he's here," rasped Erik. "I want to thank him."

"Really?"

"Yeah. After twenty years with Pierre, Hell is going to seem like Disneyland." And with those words, the Phantom of the Opera…or rather, the Phantom of the Suburban Pastel Palace From Hell departed from this life.

The Lair Beneath the Opera House, 1881:

Erik suddenly snapped out of the vivid daydream he had been caught up in as his beloved Christine was giving him his first kiss. Dear Lord, was that what was going to become of him if this progressed any further? Oh, thank heavens it had only been his imagination! He burst into tears of relief as Christine pulled away. He still had a chance to stop this.

He backed away from Christine as though she carried some infectious disease. "Take her, forget me, forget all of this!"

Christine and Raoul stared at him in disbelief. Ugh, what were they waiting for, a written invitation? He waded out of the lake, waving them away. "Leave me alone, forget all you've seen. Go now, don't let them find you!"

Christine ran to Raoul and hugged him, looking over her shoulder at Erik hesitantly. He began to tremble as a ghostly squawk of "Adorable Psycho!" echoed through his memory. Why wouldn't they just get away from him? And quick! He opened the gate for them, hoping to hurry them on their way. "Take the boat, swear to me never to tell the secret you know of the Angel in Hell."

Christine untied Raoul and they hung back as though they expected some kind of trap. Erik was getting frantic by now. "GO NOW! GO NOW AND LEAVE ME!"

They obediently fled, and Erik sank onto his organ bench, resting his head against the keyboard. He smiled. No pearberry scent. Ayesha jumped into his lap, and he breathed a sigh of relief. And when he looked down at his familiar black Goth ensemble, he laughed ecstatically. "Whew, that was close!"

THE END