He offered a half-smile, then abruptly turned away from me. His footsteps echoed as he walked away. The lights blinked out.

"Oh my God. Oh my God," I repeated to myself in a scratchy whisper. Then I wondered if the wired-in ballerinas could hear me. I tried to wet my dry lips, then called, "Help! Can you hear me?" My scratchy voice seemed to melt into the heavy darkness. "...Help?" My throat felt like it was closing in . I was too dehydrated enough to cry out my fear and frustration, and that fact alone scared the shit outta me.

"I'm still here." It was the young-sounding guy!

"Where are you? Can you take me out of these wires?" I panted, struggling to speak. "For the love of God, help me!"

" I'm sorry, but I can't help you. I'm also wired." He did sound genuinely pained. I still couldn't pin-point his accent, but I was vastly relieved to not be alone. "I'm in Box Five. It's directly above you, and a bit to your left." I was glad he told me his location. It made him seem more real, even though I couldn't see him.

"Why are we here? How it that guy with the mask? …..Is he going to kill us? Are those ballerinas dead?" I was growing hysterical again.

"He calls himself "The Phantom."...I don't know why or how he does it, but he creates worlds. We're in his opera house. He doesn't kill all of us; just the ones that aren't useful. If you please him, he'll keep you alive. Don't ever mention his mask." His raspy, tired voice helped me enter a semi-calm state.

"If I'm the Prima Donna, what role are you supposed to be? He stalked me before he kidnapped me. Why did he choose me? I'm a stripper, for Christ's sake."

"I don't know why he chooses us, but I do know that he researches for months to find the right people to take. I'm the opera house's patron."

"Who are you? Where are you from?" I had already asked him how long he had been here, and he hadn't known. There was a slight pause. He sounded exhausted when he finally answered.

"I'm French, lived in Paris for most of my life. Then I came to New York for college when I was nineteen. I got kidnapped when I was twenty. My name is Raoul de Charbonne." Wow, he was French! That explained his accent. His name sounded fancy. I remembered the last time I had gone to France – it had been part of the vacation my family and I went on before the plane accident. Just thinking about the accident and my family's death reminded me of my own uncertain future. I could be dead like them in a matter of moments.

"Ah." My lips began to tremble. Why was this happening to me? This was so sick and twisted. "You never answered my other question...are those ballerinas dead?" There was another long pause.

"Yes."

"...Oh my God. Oh my fucking God." I rasped to myself. Suddenly an idea lit up my mind. "Has anyone ever escaped from the Phantom?"

"No. Not that people haven't tried. They've just been killed before they could ever follow through with their plans."

I think I started to hyperventilate at that moment. Again I tried to move, but the wires attached to my skin and costume kept me firmly in place.

"It'll be alright," Raoul said after a few seconds of my pathetic attempt to escape. I grunted and continued to try and loosen the wires. My breathing was returning to normal. "It'll be alright," he repeated, his soft voice going even quieter. I appreciated his attempt at calming me, but we both knew he was lying. After a few more minutes, I stopped my wiggling all together. I was stuck. Utterly stuck.

"I'm so hungry," I murmured. My nausea at being kidnapped by a psycho had faded into a painfully obvious hunger. "Do we ever get to eat? Does he kill with poison?"

"We'll eventually get taken down from the wires. We each have a bedroom. We stay there the entire time we're not strung up." Raoul sounded weary again.

"Oh..." I replied. I felt so tired; my fear and anger had taken up all my meager energy. I slowly closed my eyes. Perhaps I'd wake up at Heat, having all of the other dancers laughing at me because I drank too much again. I desperately hoped I was just having a vivid nightmare. My whiny thoughts eventually quieted and I fell asleep.

When I woke up, I was stretched across a soft king-sized mattress. It felt like I was wearing a long nightgown. I slowly rose from the stack of fluffy pillows that had cushioned my head. Once I was sitting up in bed, my eyes quickly scanned the room. A door! I jumped out of the huge bed and ran to the door. It was locked. Of course. I slowly returned to my bed. My body hurt. All of my limbs were sore, and the skin on my wrists was raw from the wires that had kept me strung like a puppet.

Nestled between the silk sheets on the luxurious bed, it was hard to believe that I had been cast as the prima donna to a crazy guy's plans for a fake opera house. I looked around the room again. All of the furniture was made from dark wood and covered with carvings. It was very pretty and rather old-fashioned. In fact, the whole room looked like something out of a historical fiction movie from the BBC. I noticed that there was a huge scarlet curtain covering a large section of one the walls. Slowly I got out of the large bed again and pulled the gold tassel. The curtain swept aside to reveal a window. The views showed a wide expanse of towering trees and an overcast sky. I was in a completely unfamiliar land. There wasn't a latch on the window, though it's not like I could have jumped out of the three-story high window and survived. I turned back to the room. There was a tall screen patterned with feminine roses. I went behind the screen and saw an archway. Ignoring my aching body, I ran through the arch and found myself in an old-fashioned bathroom. There were marble counter tops with fancy perfume bottles and cosmetics scattered atop them. A large bath surrounded by candles and a floor-length mirror with a shining gold frame competed the ultra feminine room.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. "Oh my gosh!" I gasped. I hadn't fully taken into account that my nightgown was made out of ivory silk and lace. It had a modest neckline and the hem went past my feet. The heavy make-up I had worn at Heat had mostly smudged away. Combined with my wildly curly hair and my fancy nightgown, I looked like a rich woman from the 1800's.

What the hell. I was locked in a room that belonged in the nineteenth century wearing a dress that looked like it came straight out of the freaking Phantom of the Opera movie. Wait a second...Oh shit.

My kidnapper called himself the Phantom. He wore a mask. He had kidnapped a French guy named Raoul to be the Vicomte for his opera house. He had kidnapped me – and my birth name was Christine! I've got the brown hair, the singing voice...Oh my god. If my thoughts were correct, then my kidnapper was trying to relive the Phantom of the Opera.