Chapter Fourteen: Desperation

In the Administration Office, Random had succumbed to a very vile strain of depression and was edging closer and closer to the open window.

Three more Writers had joined the two trapped in the bathroom, mostly because they had gotten too much in the way between Stalker Erik and Hardcore Erik. For a while they had made lots of noise, and then even more noise, and then the most noise of all, but for some time now there had been nothing but an ominous silence. It was the popular opinion of most that MPS, if she was still alive, had eaten them. No one wanted to try and open the door to find out. The rest of the Writers were beginning to settle down, mostly on the laps of the Eriks. A few times being forced off of them should have told them that they weren't exactly welcome, but it was going to take something more like a death threat and a gun to get that through their heads. Granted, the Eriks would have been more than happy to oblige with that, but the heavy artillery wasn't present to back it up and the Writers were currently playing jumprope with most of the punjab lassoes. An act of sacrilege that was not lost on the Eriks, but at least the Writers hadn't come up with the possibility of tying any of them down with the lassoes. Yet.

"Molly Po— er, Polly Moopers!" said Celtic Heart, putting her hands on her hips. "Untie Chaney Erik right now and let the poor black and white mute man go!"

"That's it," said Random, and made a dash for it. She was scrambling over the sill when PJ caught her by her Please-Don't-Feed-Billie-Joe shirt and hauled; but she clung to the sill for all she was worth. "Let me go!"

"Random! You can't commit suicide!"

"Why not, I've done it before!"

"But it's a bad example for the kids!"

"Screw the kids," snapped Random, trying to heave herself over the sill. PJ clung tighter.

"Isn't that illegal?"

"Gah!"

"Eesh," said Mae, wrinkling her nose. "That was a tasteless joke."

PJ waved at SE, who put his DL on the TBL and RHE, as he'd BYOB'd and just avoided the FBI by joining the CIA, which was a lot like asking what the number for 911 was and, also, makes absolutely no sense. "Hey!"

Erik glanced up. "Let 'er go."

"Erik!" said Mandy, and smacked him.

"Ow! What? It's a first story window!"

"—oh."

"Oh," said PJ, and let go of her shirt. Random succeeded in making it over the sill, and launched herself into the empty space beyond. There was an abbreviated yell and a thump as she landed in the bushes just below, followed by some grumpy fake-swearing and the sound of footsteps, running away very fast. Not for the first time, the group found itself without an Author, but somehow this was okay. It wasn't like she was helping things along in the first place, anyway.

The only difficulty, in fact, with her leaving was the fact that she took Billie Joe and his wire with her. No double entendre there. We swear. This was gotten past with a minimum of fuss and a lot of Erik-fondling. Kay Erik slapped hands away and perched moodily on a chair.

"Do you realize," he icily asked the room at large, "that this situation has been ridiculous for such a long while that it has gone straight past the ridiculous and into the realm of ludicrously unlikely?"

"Big words," purred Kit. "Oh, I love a man who knows his way around a dictionary."

Kay Erik glared at her. It had little effect; she swayed a little and smiled dimly, sitting in a heap in the corner and digging a CD player out of nowhere. Kay Erik blinked.

"Can I be losing my touch?" he worried. "Is it possible that after all this time..."

"Nonsense, hon," said Mandy, and petted his misshapen skull until he growled at her.

There was a few moments of silence until someone had the bright idea of trying to force Gerry Phantom into fishnet tights. It was at this point that Stalker Erik got monumentally fed up with it all. He stood up decisively, Hardcore Erik's arm sliding from his shoulders.

"Fine," he said. "The girl's gone. Right. Technically there's nothing keeping us here, yes? Technically its perfectly easy to walk out the door. Technically there's no reason why this should go on. Besides which, I'm bored." He dug in his pocket for a few minutes, while everyone watched.

Except for Nite, who was petting Leroux Erik. "You're funny," she told him softly, "but looks aren't everything."

Stalker Erik cursed, unable to find whatever it was he was searching for, and dug in his other pocket, deeper and deeper. By the time he was scrabbling around his ankles, Mae reached into his back pocket instead and removed a vial.

"This what you're looking for?"

He took it from her with a short nod, and examined it for a few moments. "Drink me," he read. "That, and a skull and crossbones. I'm getting mixed signals from my own dangerous potion."

"Is it poison?" questioned Mandy.

He eyed her for a long and ominous moment. "Of a sort," he said darkly.

"Then don't drink it," said Mandy, and shrugged.

"You're so unadventurous," Stalker Erik condemned, and popped the cork like champagne. It flew to the center of the room, where Chaney Erik caught and ate it. Stalker Erik raised the potion in a salute to the room at large, and lifted it to his lips.

The few people that were paying attention held their breath. Nobody else particularly cared. Brain cells and all sense of individuality had been destroyed by prolonged exposure to Eriks and the growing apathy of the now-absent Writer. Names were disappearing gradually, and consciousnesses were drifting back to reality, leaving behind the shells of once-rabid Phans. No one thought it was all that sad, either. The time had come, the time had passed, and what was left was disgruntled fictional characters, an Admin Room like a tornado had gone through, and Stalker Erik sucking down something purple. He drained the vial and flung it with spectacular force across the room, where it smashed against the wall. He then stood, breathing heavily and being generally dramatic.

"I wanted some," sniffed Nite. "Greedy."

Stalker Erik drew his hands up in front of his face, eyes growing wide. "I feel a change coming..."

"That's 'train'," corrected Celtic Heart. "Its, 'I feel a train a-comin'."

"How can you feel a train?" asked Mandy blankly.

"Raaaaaaawrrr!" said Stalker Erik.

"Oooh!" said Mae.

"He's writhing! Make him stop writhing, I'm very disturbed!" shrieked MA.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrgh!"

"Oooooooh!"

"Writhing!"

"What's he done?" asked Kay Erik curiously. "What's he taken, and where can I get some?"

"What have I done to him?" spat Stalker Erik, curving his fingers into claws and gnashing his teeth. "What has he done to me?"

"He's Hyde!" exclaimed Mae happily. SE turned on her and glared with absolute ferocity.

"That's wonderful," remarked Nite. "You get fed up with a situation, change it. That's a wonderful outlook to have. I'm very proud of you, Erik."

"Grrrrrrrrrr!" said Stalker Erik, or what used to be Stalker Erik, and what still looked a great deal like Stalker Erik, except he was now foaming at the mouth. He had the look of someone who was about to go on the rampage and storm out of the room as destructively as possible. He picked up Mae and slung her over his shoulder, picked up Twisted and slung her over his other shoulder, ran out of shoulders very quickly, managed to grab Mandy by dint of wrapping one of his legs awkwardly around her, beckoned to Hardcore Erik, and tried to storm out of the room. He hopped, really, but it was still pretty dramatic. He knocked a table over on his way out, but that was probably an accident.

Afterwards, there was applause.

"Lets," suggested Kay Erik deviously, "play a game."

He had the immediate attention of the remaining Writers, though the game they had in mind, in all probability differed vastly from what he suggested next.

"You're all familiar with this concept of reality television, I suppose?"

"American Idol!" screeched Monj. "Lets play Erik Idol!"

"No!" said Kay Erik, and glared. It worked rather better this time. "Let us not. We shall not play the Idol. We shall play... Phantom Survivor."

The Writers exchanged glances. It was like the Secret Santa of looks.

"Phantom Survivor?"

Kay Erik disregarded the curious looks he was getting from his fellow Eriks, especially considering that they'd nearly all been wrangled into fishnets by now. He doubted that they could have anything wise to add to his scheme. He doubted correctly. Leroux Erik in particular was extremely intrigued by the feeling of tights. He'd also inadvertently discovered the word "thighs" and was repeating it over and over because he found it very fun to say.

"Phantom Survivor," repeated Kay Erik. "Do you have what it takes? Let us take the mettle of you all. Enter the underground labyrinth. Stay for many weeks. Explore. Kill and eat each other. See who makes it out alive... if anyone does." He narrowed his eyes and held them enthralled. "Its a challenge," he whispered.

It was a challenge that caught the imagination of them all, immediately, and in short order they were bustling themselves off in a distinctly downard direction.

"Is there a Lair underneath the Administration Offices?" asked Gerry Phantom.

"I wouldn't be at all surprised," answered Kay Erik.

And there was; because what good, after all, is a building without a basement? Such storage space! Such dampness! Such rats! The Writers took to it like ducks to a pond, like squirrels to trees, like Ex-Presidents to Viagra commercials. The Eriks, meanwhile, were left for the first time, totally unsupervised.

"Amazing," said Crawford Phantom, shaking his head. "They actually trust us to remain here, even on our own?"

Gerry Phantom frowned. "I don't know. You see, I'd been thinking about it..."

"Ha!" said Kay Erik, rolling his eyes.

"I'd been thinking about it, and what I was thinking, was..."

A pause, while he looked around the room.

"Maybe they just know its time that this was ended. Maybe they know that their reign of terror is over."

"Maybe next time they'll put you in a dress," hissed Kay Erik.

"I think they know," said Gerry Phantom, nodding seriously. "I think they know. Its all a question of timing, after all. Everything is timing, and timing is everything."

A silence while they thought about this.

"I think we just tricked them, actually," said Crawford Phantom. "We're cleverer. We're faster. We did it. We tricked them into letting us alone so we could leave!"

"And imagine," remarked Gerry Phantom, "it only took fourteen chapters." This earned him a glare from Kay Erik.

"Thigh," said Leroux Erik, dreamily.

They shut him in the bathroom for a bit. He loved it. He said it was just like being home.