Chapter Last: Last Call
"Its quiet."
"Too quiet."
"And empty— apart from us."
"I believe I'm beginning to feel a slight amount of—" Gerry Phantom nudged at his ear with his shoulder, popping his shoulder blade. "Edginess."
"Ridiculous," said Kay Erik imperiously.
"Thigh," said Leroux Erik cheerfully. "Thigh thigh thigh apex thigh thigh thigh."
Kay Erik narrowed his eyes at him sternly, and scratched at his chin under the mask. "One would begin to wonder about you, monsieur, if one didn't already know for a fact that you were stark raving mad."
"Bobby socks," said Leroux Erik.
Crawford Phantom glanced around the Administration Office, thoughtfully. "You know," he said, "this really begs the question of why we are still here."
They were silent; no one wanted to answer that. The room was quiet and desolate apart from the mild humming that came from Leroux Erik, who eventually began to sing under his breath.
"Stake my honor, screw these guys, oh no I've said too much... I haven't said enough..."
Kay Erik groaned loudly and buried his head in his hands.
"That's me in the corner... that's me in the spot-light... losing my religion..."
Crawford Phantom patted Leroux Erik on the shoulder, cooing softly and soothingly to him. Kay Erik glanced slowly at the masked faces that were the only occupants of the room, shaking his head slightly.
"Don't tell me," he said sourly, "that you like the attention."
There was an uncomfortable shifting that went on, like the gentle tide of the sort caused by throwing a puppy into a swimming pool. Kay Erik took a deep breath and held it.
"Alright," he said finally, "in the vernacular of these days, I'm afraid you all have to suck it up and move on with your lives. They're gone; this is our chance to escape. There's an open door, there's the floor leading to it, there's our feet. Let us utilize them to their fullest." He glanced again around the assembled Eriks, shook his head once more. "We are so pathetic," he announced, and walked, finally, finally, out the door.
There were words, words, words, as there always were.
"D'you suppose there'll be another sequel?"
"God I hope not."
"No."
"No."
"I wonder."
"Not if God has any mercy on the human race."
"No."
"No?"
"No."
This was the way it happened.
In the beginning, God created Leroux Erik.
A lot of people were worried by this and thought it might not be a very good idea. Perhaps, they thought, it meant that humans weren't really meant to be sane. Maybe there was the possibility that living underneath an opera house wasn't really all that weird. It was conceivable, they thought, that this meant it was something everyone should be doing. And so quite a few of the population decided to emulate this Leroux Erik and his living conditions. They moved beneath a theater, taking only a few weeks supplies and a film crew, thus proving beyond all doubt that reality TV was not created by God at all, but by sinful humans with boredom issues.
A second faction denounced all this fuss as nothing more than a trend. They were the ones that stayed above ground and learned to build houses, roads, cities, families and, in time, the Eastwood trailer park. They learned to hunt, to fish, to forage, to scavenge, and, in time, to knit. They learned to meet, to greet, to commune, to get drunk, get married, to start communities and, in time, PPN and similar sites.
A third faction thought it was ridiculous, this notion of God creating Leroux Erik before, say, Green Day or the Rocky Mountains. And perhaps it is.
But it does give you a very good idea of where His priorities lie.
Many thanks and much gratitude and lots of redundancies to the Writers, the Eriks, and my readers and reviewers.