The children huddled closer, leaning toward the figure in the chair with the suppressed air of anticipation. The woman rested against the chair back, searching for the right words. "Our story begins, as these stories often do, on a rather unassuming November night. Not cold enough for winter, not warm enough for fall. It is here we find five teenage girls, sheltering from the weather in a comfortable basement."

"Please? Please? Oh, please, oh please, oh please, oh please, oh plleeeeaaasssee!" Mira was on her knees, begging the one person standing between her and her newest favorite movie.

"No, no, and no." Elizabeth replied, "I absolutely refuse."

"But, it's Gerard Butler! How can you say no to Gerard Butler?" The smaller girl's voice was reaching higher with every word.

"No," was her flat reply.

"Come on Elizabeth, it's her house, don't you think you should humor her?" A hispanic girl asked from her lazy perch in an arm chair across the room.

"Yeah, listen to Elizabeth, Elizabeth!" Mira chimed.

"If I've asked you once, I've asked you a thousand times, just call me Beth." The half Nicaraguan said, searching in her bag for the package of twizzlers she was sure existed, "All this Elizabeth and other Elizabeth stuff is just so complicated. Beth works better than trying to call us the same name."

"Alright then, Beth, my answer is still no." Elizabeth replied, pushing her short, dark blonde hair back for the umpteenth time.

"We got the food!" a new voice announced, bringing with it the smell of bubbling cheese and hot bread.

"Yeah, ten bucks for a pizza! Next time we might as well make the trip to Little Caesar's." The fifth girl flopped onto the carpet with a humongous bowl of popcorn and a king size bag of tootsie rolls. "So, we pick a movie yet?" Gwen asked, glancing at the store of about a hundred movies trapped in a binder.

"I want to watch Phantom, but Elizabeth won't let me!" Mira whined to her best friend.

"Elizabeth." Adrienne said setting down the pizza, "Be nice. It's her house."

"That's what I said." Beth interjected.

"I am not going to watch some dumb movie about a crazy stalker because-"

"Where's the remote?" Gwen interrupted. All five girls glanced around, not finding the device anywhere. As Adrienne and Beth searched between seat cushions and Mira put on her best puppy dog eyes, Elizabeth continued, "Because my friend thinks that it's a brilliant film. It's Joel Schumacher; I doubt it's that good."

"A bat credit card?" Adrienne exclaimed causing giggles to abound.

"Exactly my point, the guy makes a mockery of Batman, what is he going to do to-" Elizabeth was cut off a second time by loud music and dimming lights. She sent a glare that could peel paint in Gwen's direction.

"This is a democracy. I've just made the presidential decision to override you and go with the majority vote. Besides, no remote means you can't change the channel or the film. " She told her friend with a triumphant smirk.

"I'll deal with you later." The threat was heard by all, causing even more giggles.

"Oh, come on, even the deer heads want to watch the movie! See, they're looking at the TV." The other girl said gesturing at the four stuffed deer hanging from the wall, each positioned toward the big screen.

"That's not funny." Mira told her, glaring at the taxidermy animals. Her hatred of them rivaled only her hatred of spiders and clowns.

"Shh, the movie's starting." Beth told her, immediately taking her mind off dead deer and on to hot Scottish men. The first half an hour of movie went well, comments only being made on the atrocities of Carlotta's singing, quickly shushed by Mira (whose like of the character and her singing was beyond rational thought).

"Insolent boy, this slave of fashion, basking in your glory!" Adrienne tugged lightly on her long brown hair, a tingling feeling going down her arms. Something felt wrong, she liked Gerard's singing, but it wasn't enough to give her chills, was it? Maybe it was just cold in this basement. That had to be it.

Beth rubbed her temple, trying to sway a sudden head ache. She felt like the pressure in the room had just doubled, which was completely impossible without some sort of compressor. Even with her inner scientist arguing principles of physics, she scrunched her forehead and closed her eyes in discomfort.

Mira snuggled closer under her blanket, trying to stave off the shivers running up and down her spine. Perhaps she should listen to Elizabeth and look into some other men for a while. The worst Gerard had ever made her do before was forget to keep her balance. The blanket wrapped tighter, maybe it was a combo of Gerard and sugar.

Elizabeth wrinkled her nose in discomfort. Not from the man singing, her nose itched like fire. It was as if someone had just shoved a dusty rag over her face. Mira had a cat; it was probably her allergies acting up. There was cat hair all over this house; it had to be that, pet dander allergies ran in the family after all.

Gwen blinked and pressed against the wall, fighting the sudden head rush. As the sparkles and darkness cleared from her vision, she shook her head. That was strange; normally she only got those from standing up too quickly. Apparently stretching her neck could trigger it too? She'd have to check that out, once this next head rushed stopped.

"I am your angel of music…come to me angel of music." As if the world had suddenly changed its axis, there was a flash of light; it felt like the room had spun on its head and the very fabric of reality was heaving uncontrollably.

Mira picked herself up off of the floor, rubbing her still spinning head. At one glance, her hand fell down to her side, "No…way." They were on the shore of an underground lake. The area was dimly lit by candles.

"What the hell just happened?" said Gwen.

"Not a clue," said Beth. "Is everyone okay?"

"Fine," said Elizabeth. "Adrienne? Mira?"

"I'm okay," said Adrienne. She looked around. "I'd say the house fell into a sinkhole, but we'd probably be dead."

"Maybe we are," said Beth.

"What, so it's a mild level of hell?"
"Nah, it looks familiar," said Gwen. "Mira, you with us?"
Mira was staring at their surroundings in shock. "Guys, I think we're in the Phantom's lair."
"That's fiction, honey," said Elizabeth.

"Dude. Organ." They looked where she was pointing. There was indeed an organ-none of them had noticed earlier, due to having slightly more important things to worry about. Various exclamations of shock followed.

"Do you think he still lives here?" Beth asked.

"It doesn't look destroyed, so yeah," said Adrienne. "I say we get out of here."

"And go where?" said Elizabeth.

"Anywhere that isn't here."

"In the nineteenth century," said Gwen. "With one person who speaks French. That's gonna go great."

"Or we can stay here and get strangled," said Adrienne. "I'd really rather get arrested for public indecency."

"He wouldn't kill us right away, would he?" said Mira.

"I guess it depends on which version lives here," said Gwen. "If it's the one from the movie, we might have a chance. Book version, we're screwed."

"Thank you Gwen, for that warm and comforting thought," Beth said, "However, I think our best bet is to either A, find the guy that's apparently going to try and murder us, or B, just have a look around."

"Beth's got a point. We'll go this way, you go that way." Elizabeth said in a tone that did not allow for argument.

"I guess we'll go this way then," Mira replied, grabbing Adrienne's arm and tugging her away in the opposite direction. Gwen glanced between both groups of friend.

"Well, there goes the idea of looking at the pipe organ," she muttered before catching up with Mira and Adrienne. "So, if we're here…do you think the pizza came too?"

"Gwen, do you think about things other than food?" Mira asked.

"Of course I do."

"Yeah, music and bad jokes," Adrienne added. Their laughter echoed in the cavern behind them. Slowly and silently, the Phantom of the Opera detached himself from the shadows of the doorway he'd been lurking in. There was something wrong with those people, that was sure. How had they managed to get into his lair though? His security was of the utmost importance, and if they knew how to get down here, was it possible that other people did too?

It was decided then, he would find out who they were and how they got here. As for letting them live…Erik hated to be so wasteful as to kill five people at once (not to mention the mess), and part of him detested the idea of killing defenseless young women, even if they were probably escapees from an insane asylum. He'd decide on killing them after he found out how much they knew.

"You think we're actually in the Phantom's Opera house?" Beth asked, holding her stolen candle a little higher to see the path ahead. She wasn't sure if they were still in the house or in a secret passage, once the light of the main from had disappeared, it was impossible to tell what the surroundings were.

"I don't know. Part of me wants to say it's a dream, but another part of me knows that I would never dream this up," Elizabeth replied, eyes searching the shadows for something, anything.

"Hey! That's my bag!" Beth exclaimed, stepping away from her friend and bending down next to the duffle she had packed earlier that day. "I wonder how it got here." Elizabeth shrugged in response. Beth set down the candle to look and see if it still had her things inside.

"I found the pizza! And it's still warm!" Mira exclaimed, opening the cardboard box still filled with cheesy delight.

"Well, I guess whatever brought us here took other things in the basement too. Maybe we'll get lucky and the couch will have landed on the Phantom and he won't be able to kill us." Adrienne replied, seeing Beth's twizzlers and Gwen's tootsie rolls laying haphazardly on a small table.

"Adrienne!" Mira stood up, attempting to put herself nose to nose with a girl four inches taller than her, "You shouldn't say things like that. Besides, what about the butterfly effect?" she asked with a smirk at her sci-fi nerd friend.

"To be honest, us even showing up here is a butterfly effect that probably would have caused the universe to explode if that theory were true."

"Well, I think-" Mira finished her sentence with a scream as an unknown hand grabbed her arm.