Disclaimer: Blah blah blah... fine! I don't own POTO! Happy now:pouts:
Marianne Brandon: I know it doesn't seem right for Carmen to beat Erik at chess at the moment, but when you get to know her character a bit more, it won't seem so odd, still a bit off, maybe, but I just can't stand it when Erik always beats everyone at everything. Sure the guy's a total genius, but he isn't totally infallable. Don't worry, though, he won't be doing any more losing in the future (at least, none that i can think of...).
Angeloftheoperahouse: Thanks a bunch! Aww... Angle was a typo:pouts: Angle made me laugh... oh well!
Boredboredbored: Heehee! This isn't the only sugar high our dear Phantom will have, fear not!
Baby-Vixen: Yay! Fellow psychos unite! Woot woot! Bananallama! Ah! Not the rubber chicken! Noooooooo:dies:... :remembers that she isn't allowed to die yet:...:comes back to life: Alas, I have no kitties, either, for they make me sneeze, but I have the world's fluffiest poodle! he isn't a puppy, though, so he doesn't count... and a hedgehog! I've got one of those, too!
Firebird Flight: Yeah, I noticed the spelling mistakes when I proofread chapter four, which for some odd reason was after I posted it (Don't ask me why I do stupid things like that...) You've gotta give me a bit of leeway there, as I'm stuck using wordpad to type these things up and I have no spellcheck. Oh yes, and I've only read the original Phantom of the Opera by gaston Leroux, so I have no idea what the differences between the two books are, but from what I can tell, they give similar descriptions of Erik's mask and deformilies, however, I'm using some details fom the books and some from the movies (mostly because I started writing this before I'd finished the book) , so Erik is going to look like movie Erik(Gerik), except his deformities underneath the mask are going to be worse than they are in the movie(which isn't saying much), but most of the other details are from the Leroux books.
Me: Um... Okay then... And by the way, I did base a character off of you. She's just not in the story yet, so no whining!
Gothamin: Stella's going to give you nightmares? Oh my! Wait... who is the K anywhoo? And Harry isn't a puppy :pouts: He's too old.
RavenPOTOGirl: I've always wanted to put Erik on a sugar high... Honestly! That man needs to lighten up! By the way, cool smiley!
Note: I can hear the hampster dance! Woot woot! Now, where the heck is it coming from...?
Chapter Five: Home Alone...Whatever Number Comes Next! (Four or Five, I think...)
Carmen was carefull to be super-silent when she left her dorm the next morning. Erik was still asleep and she didn't want to wake him. She'd already explained to him that he needed to relatively quiet while she was gone, and she'd doubted that he would make any efforts to keep quiet at first, but after her weirdo roommate had shown up yesterday, she was fairly certain that Erik would heed her warning and shut up.
Erik watched Carmen leave through eyes opened just far enough for him to see while still giving the impression of sleep. He had things to do today and he couldn't afford to lose any of his alone time to commodities like sleep. True, he didn't really need to feign sleep, but he needed Carmen gone as soon as possible and she would waste time reminding him to be quiet and such while she was gone if she thought him awake...
He waited until her footsteps had faded into the distance before moving. Perhaps some(Carmen, for example) would call him a "controll freak", but he simply felt too vulnerable without some line of defense, and it had been gnawing at him all week that the Trap door-lover had no tricks up his sleeve, so without furter ado, he set to work on some sort of contraption that would give him an advantage in the event of an intrusion. This proved to be considerably more difficult, however, when he had no spare rooms or trap doors, and not to mention the lack of materials. He would have to come up with something completely new... how annoying!
An hour later, Erik had been inspired and was working up a way to get one of the heavier items on Carmen's shelf to swing down and hit virtually anywhere in the room he chose, he'd figured out how to get it to reach about half of the places in the room, but the further he got from the center of the room, the higher the object would go, and eventually it would run into the ceiling. He'd thought about using a spring of sorts to extend the object's reach, but that would have made it impossible to controll...
What he needed, thought Erik, was-
Wait! There was someone in the hall! Everyone should have been in classes by now! What was going on?
He pressed his ear to the door, and after a bit of straining, managed to discern the muttering...
"I'll show him! No proof, eh?...not so polite this time...barge right in!"
He recognized that painfully sharp voice! It was the same woman who had come looking for him the day before! She was coming for him again! His first thought was to let her come, and then permanantly remove her from his thoughts with an improvised punjab, but he knew that wouldn't end well. A murder, or even a dissapearance, would surely instigate a thourough examination of the grounds, and would likely get him found... He had to distract her long enough for him to get himself out of Carmen's dorm.
He cracked the door open just enough to see his little stalker coming towards him. Without thinking, he threw his voice so it seemed to be emmulating from a room just behind the approaching woman.
"Ouch! Damn you!" he said. He had no idea what she would think he was doing, but it didn't matter. She stopped, grinned and slipped into the room behind her.
Now he needed to get somewhere safe! Grabbing Carmen's wedge-shaped doorstop and his half-finished plans, he slipped into the room acoss the hall. The door was locked, but locks had never been able to stop Erik. He picked it in a moment's time with a small peice of wire he kept for that particular reason and slipped inside, just before the woman emerged from the other room, looking very angry, and stomped into Carmen's room.
When the girl had gone into Carmen's room Erik crept out of hiding, carefull to re-lock the door behind him as not to arouse suspicion from the room's occupants. With a sinister chuckle he slipped to doorstop beneath Carmen's door, trapping the lass inside until further notice. How could she have been so foolish to think that she could take the Phantom of the Opera by surprise?
Now, where to go? He could give himself a tour of the cellars... but there was bound to be employees of the establishment down there. No, he would go to the only other room he was safe in, Ava and Jessica's room! Carmen had mentioned to him once that they were sharing room 167, so he followed the room numbers upstairs untill he finally came upon number 167.
It didn't take Erik long to decide that he vastly prefered Carmen's room, which was decorated mostly in darkly colored wood, to the room of her friends, which was plastered in various posters, one of which, he was rather amused to observe, was from the movie "The Phantom of the Opera". The real thing about this room that bothered him, though, was the bright colors! They were everywhere! No matter where he looked, he found himself forced to endure some garrishly vibrant shade of blue, green, orange, or yellow! Soon, he found it best to simply close his eyes, but that didn't last long, as he grew bored rather quickly.
Perhaps they had an electric keyboard? He searched about, and was going to look in the closet, when he heard a faint scratching from inside and decided that from what he knew of Carmen's friends, he simply didn't want to know.
Carmen dragged herself back from her classes, eager to have an intelligent conversation after having been bored to hell and back all day. She'd thought college would have been more of challenge, but alas, it was no better than high school. Maybe it would get harder after the first week... she sincerely hoped so. She was going to die of boredom if this kept up. She'd been finishing essays for one class while pretending to listen to a lecture in another class all day!
She got to her room and was a bit surprised to find her doorstop in the middle of the hallway and the door unlocked.
"Oh my god!" she gasped, "Erik?...Are you here?" Her room was trashed! It appeared as though her garbage can had been kicked across the room, sending trash flying everywhere! Books were thrown everywhere, her chair was on it's side, and everything that had been on her desk was thrown onto the floor! "Erik! Where are you!" she cried franticly. He wasn't here! Had he left? Had it been he who'd done this?... No! It had been that damned roommate of hers! She was certain of it! That bitch had waited until she was gone, and caught Erik while he sleeping!
Jessica was more than a bit surprised to find her door unlocked when she returned from her classes. Georgia had gotten home before her, probably.
But when she opened the door, she did not see Georgia.
"Aaaaak! Erik!" she screamed. Erik was lying on Georgia's bed, staring at the poster bedecked ceiling. The look on his face reminded her scarily of what she'd always imagined the Big Bad Wolf would look like after he'd eaten Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother, somewhat bored and drowzee looking, but with an amused smirk playing about what little she could see of his face. " You've eaten Georgia, haven't you?"
Erik wished, for the first time in his life, that he'd actually learned to burp on command from that ragged man in Turkey. It would have been a laugh to see the look on her face had he burped and said something about needing a glass of water to wash it down with... But alas, he was far too dignified to do something like that.
"No. Is Carmen back from class yet?"
"I don't know? What're you doing here?"
Georgia came in, toting an armfull of books. "Who's here, Thaur? ...Erik?"
" It's rather a long story." He said, " I suppose that by definition, I'm hiding."
"From what?"
"Carmen's roomate."
"Ha!" shouted Georgia " I told you her dorm was haunted."
"No, the roomate that brought me here, and then left, but now she wants me back for whatever reason.. and why am I wasting my breath on you two?"
"Because it amuses us."
"Well I am not here... to amuse you."
Everyone jumped when Carmen entered, looking rather pale and worried. "Have any of you seen...ERIK!" Carmen didn't care what he would think. She ran up to Erik and hugged him round the waist. "I was worried she might have gotten you!"
Carmen's hug had caught Erik by surprise... certainly not the reaction he'd expected... and he felt like the kitten of some possive little child who was clenching to it so tightly that it's eyes were bugging out. " She almost did-" he squeaked... " and please let me go!"
Carmen apologized sheepishly and realease him... She really needed to controll her randopm ures to hug Erik... but he was the type of person that you knew really needed a hug, but clearly doesn't want one... It was actually rather sad. "What do you mean, she almost caught you?" she asked, feeling the need to change the subject.
Erik dove into an explanation of what happened, leaving out the fact that he'd been feigning sleep when Carmen had left (as to leave that option open for him should he need to use it later) Halfway through, he was interrupted by that same scratching noise he'd heard earlier. " What is that blasted scratching?" he wondered, more to himself than to the others.
"Uhh... nothing! Absolutly nothing!" said Jessica quickly.
Carmen gave her friend the 'yeah right' look and went over to the closet. She looked inside and laughed.
" Jessica and Ava! Bad!" she scolded jokingly.
"Well... It's not like we could just leave them with our parents and come back to find them dead, so we told them that we were allowed to bring small pets, just not dogs, cats, and elephants."
Carmen reached inside and pulled out... to Erik's horror... a rat! She scratched it behind the ears before letting it run up her arm and curl up in the hood of her sweatshirt.
" What was that?" Erik asked, not quite ready to beleive that these girls actually kept rats as pets.
" A rat." said Georgia.
Erik suddered, "Disgusting..." he muttered.
" They are NOT disgusting!" snapped Jessica, now holding a second rat. "They're actually quite clean, plus they're intelligent, friendlt, and adorable."
"That remains to be seen... "
"That's it!" Jessica strode over to the closet, pulled out a third rat, and shove it in Erik's face. "This is Remus! Pet him!"
There's some suspense for ya! Will Erik pet the adorable rodent? Will he scream like a girl and throw it across the room? Will he eat it? Will he look at Jessica like she's mad and refuse to move untill she takes the fluffyness from under his nose? You decide! Tell me what he should do in your reveiws! Reveiw in the next five miniutes and receive, as my gift from you, this limited edition year-old potatoe chip! But wait! There's a catch (but not more, I'm afraid)! If you tell me he should eat it, you're wasting your vote, because he's not going to eat the rat... That would be totally disgusting! Anything else is perfectly fine with me, though! And if anyone has another idea, that works too!