Chapter Three

Erik, with his busy schedule of composing opera, playing with his cat, and making scary faces at the ballet rats, had little time for minor distractions like bedtime. Raoul, on the other hand, wasn't used to functioning without sleep, food, water, oxygen, or television the way his rival was. Around two o'clock in the morning, he fell asleep, slumped on the organ bench. Normally, Erik would have just ignored this and kept playing, but the vicomte had passed out face-down on the low end of the keyboard, and the instrument was making some really horrible sounds.

Irritably hopping to his feet, the phantom yanked forcefully on the handcuff chain. "Get up, boy, we're going to bed. And if you make even one damn joke about what that sounds like, so help me God, I'm going to invent a horrible new way to strangle you with one hand."

Raoul was too groggy to question anything. He allowed himself to be towed to Erik's bedroom, but went wide awake as he took in the black funerary decorative theme. "Are you kidding me? I can't sleep in your coffin over there!"

Erik whacked him in the back of the head. "Oh, grow up. It's just a wooden box, nothing more, nothing less."

"I'm not afraid, you fool." Raoul rolled his eyes. "I slept in plenty of coffins during my hazing in military school."

Erik gave him a double-take.

"Don't ask," the vicomte muttered. "I simply meant that that thing isn't nearly big enough both of us to sleep in."

"Nonsense. There's plenty of room leftover when I sleep in it."

"In case you've forgotten, you're an anorexic who's constantly being mistaken for a reanimated skeleton. You could probably sleep in a shoebox and have room leftover."

"Just shut up and get in the coffin." Erik shoved Raoul into the coffin and climbed in beside him. Or tried to, at least. He landed squarely on top of the vicomte, and with no room on either side, he had nowhere to recoil to. He glared viciously into Raoul's face, which was inches from his own. "If I see you laugh once…"

"Don't worry, you won't." Raoul put a hand over Erik's eyes and laughed himself silly. After a few minutes, he got himself under control, plastered a grimly serious expression to his face, and took away his hand.

Erik crawled out of his coffin, angrily grumbling unintelligible words under his breath. "It looks like we're sleeping in Christine's bed tonight."

They clambered out of the coffin, stumbling and hitting their heads a couple of times, earning them a disdainful look from Ayesha, who was trying to gnaw on her catnip mouse in peace.

When Raoul pushed open the door to Christine's bedroom, his jaw dropped. The whole placed was full of scented candles…well, even more than usual…and a stereo in the corner was playing a mix tape of corny romantic music. Red rose petals had been strewn across the velvet-draped bed.

The unmasked half of Erik's face was beet red. "I like to be prepared for anything when I kidnap a lady, okay?" His voice turned bitter. "I probably would have been able to put this stuff to good use, too, if certain parties hadn't interrupted Christine and I before I could finish reading my list."

Raoul gave his enemy an evil look. "Would not. She loves me."

"She's got a funny way of showing it, leaving you alone with a guy who would just as soon kill you as look at you."

"Meh. To tell you the truth, I'm kind of glad I'm stuck down here. At least it'll keep me away from Christine until the wedding."

"What? What are you saying? Why would you ever want to get away from Christine?"

"Oh, don't get me wrong. I love her dearly, but she's been driving me out of my skull with this wedding business. Yesterday, she made me spend four hours picking out a wedding cake with her. And then, when I got hungry and ate up all the samples, she got all mad and stormed out. Then, the day before yesterday, she made me spend the whole day trying to help her choose a wedding dress. But when I kept telling her she looked beautiful in anything she wore, she started yelling at me to stop being so unspecific. And then--"

Erik pulled on the chain, dragging him over to the bed. "All right, all right, I get the freaking picture. Let's just go to sleep, and hopefully, we'll wake up to find that this was all just a really realistic nightmare."

"Okay." Raoul pulled off his jacket and shoes and crawled under the covers. "Hey, Erik?"

"What?" snapped Erik, turning off the mix tape and brushing some of the petals off the bed.

"I've got to ask you just one very important question. It's been weighing heavily on my mind ever since that fateful night when you had Christine and I trapped helplessly in your lair, then changed your mind and decided to let us leave unharmed."

"What?"

"Why is this bed shaped like a giant swan?"

"Huh?"

"I just don't get it. Christine and I made a couple of guesses, but we never could quite figure out what the reasoning behind it is."

"Well, I happen to think it's pretty."

"You may be a legendary mastermind with music, science, illusion and architecture, but evidently your genius doesn't extend to interior design. That thing's weird."

"Is not!" Erik defended.

"I'm afraid it is." Raoul leaned back against a pillow, glancing up into the giant pewter bird's face with a shudder. "Christine told me she nearly died of a heart attack that morning when she woke up with Big Bird here staring her in the face."

Erik sank down on the bed with a sigh. "If you must know, I didn't always have that cool gondola out there. Before I bought it, I used to have one of those little swan shaped boats. You know, the kind with the pedals that they rent out down at the duck park. When it broke, I decided to keep it around to use as a bed because it had sentimental value."

"Oh. What is it with you and sleeping in boats?" He gestured toward the ALW "boat-bed" anchored on lake just outside the window.

"I think I might have been a sailor or something in a previous life."

"Really? You and I should talk sometime. Ever thought of going to the North Pole?"

"Go to the North Pole, with all those chirpy, sickeningly cute little penguins around? Ugh. I'd rather lock myself into my own torture chamber."

"That's the South Pole, actually, and--"

"Shut up and go to sleep!" Erik wound up the monkey music box on the bedside table and pulled the covers up to his neck.

Raoul sat up in bed. "What are you doing? I can't sleep with that ugly thing clashing cymbals in my face all night."

"I fall asleep easier when I have some music. And stop calling Bob ugly!" He patted the monkey on the head. "He's just jealous, boy."

"Grrrrr…" Raoul flopped back down on the bed and shoved a pillow over his face.

Finally, the two of them managed to fall asleep, though Erik was intermittently wakened by Raoul's nightmare-induced screams of, "No, Chrissy, no! You can't make me wear a powder-blue tux!", and Raoul was occasionally awakened by Erik's moans of, "No, please, Ms. Khanum, you can torture me all you like, just don't make me cut my hair!"

Around four in the morning, Erik was shaken awake. "What now?" he growled.

"I have to go to the bathroom."

"Grrrrr…" Erik pulled himself out of bed and towed the vicomte to a set of doors down the hall. One was labeled with a female stick figure and the word, "Ladies". The other was labeled with a male stick figure in a hangman's noose and the word, "Victims".

Raoul looked from one door to the other hesitantly. "Well, you've done it again. Either way I choose, I cannot win."

TBC...