Bently McQuinn Saves Literature

The perfume was what struck Bently first as they entered the world. It smelled very, very strongly of smelly flowers, and Bently almost sneezed. He wondered how in hell people could stand smells like that.

When he opened his eyes, he found himself in a room that had hundreds of flowers crammed into it. The wallpaper looked like it was from the 1800’s, and there was a huge dresser with lots of makeup on it.

“We’re here,” said Meggie, a bit unnecessarily.

“Yeah, but where is here?”

“Her dressing room,” Meggie replied simply. “Now we just need to find Bella.”

They all crept out one by one into the hallway. Their ears were met by some truly awful singing, or at least, it sounded like someone was trying to sing, yet they were failing miserably.

“That’s definitely not Christine singing,” Meggie whispered.

“WHO SAID HER NAME?”

They all froze in the shadows as the singing stopped and what sounded like a teen girl started screaming, which wasn’t that much different from the singing.

“I said, who said Christine?”

“No one, ma’am,” said a trembling voice, a man this time.

“Don’t lie to me! I heard someone say her name!”

“Please, we don’t—AHH!”

There was the sound of swooshing fire and screaming. The four companions all looked at each other with shock on their faces. What in the world was happening out there?

“Now, if I hear anyone say that name again, you know what’s coming to you!” the girl screamed. “Let’s try this song again!”

Bently gave Meggie a look that clearly said, “Don’t do it again,” and she nodded. Then they continued on.

They found some stairs and climbed all the way up onto the catwalk. The crossed it, careful to make sure no one looked up, and watched the scene below them.

It seemed to be a show rehearsal. There was a conductor and orchestra down in the pit, along with a few people, perhaps the opera owners, sitting in the audience seats. On the stage were three people Bently never thought he would see together, and never wanted to see together anyways.

The first was a man with flyaway black hair with a white streak near the front. He wore perhaps Victorian cloths, and was very, very pale. This man, Bently recognized as Sweeney Todd, although what he was doing in Phantom of the Opera and not his own story confused him.

The second person was perhaps even more out-of-place than Sweeney. He recognized her as a girl from a movie his older sister had made him watch before she left for college. If Bently remembered right, her name was Shiloh, and she was from a very odd movie by the name of REPO! The Genetic Opera. How a character from a movie got into here baffled Bently completely.

And finally, in the center of the stage and parading around like she was God, was Bella. This was obviously post-fairy vampire transformation Bella, because her skin sparkled brightly under the stage lights, brighter than any of the other fairy vampires they had met so far. And she was singing, or rather, screeching, an awful song that had no place being in an opera. At the moment, she was at the lyric,

“Don’t you ever leave me baby,
If you leave me you will kill me now!”

Cheesy love song plus awful, drama queen singer makes for blood spurting from your ears, as Bently found out. Literally, his ears were bleeding, and he motioned for the others to get off the catwalk as fast as possible. Even so, one drop of blood fell off of Bently’s neck, through the grate of the catwalk, and down onto the stage. As he hurried off down the stairs, he caught a glimpse of Bella. She was looking up at the catwalk, murder in her eyes.

-

“Alright, what’s the plan, Bently?”

They were in a secluded corner of the opera house, in what Bently strongly suspected was a janitors closet. At least, he hoped it was.

“Plan?” he asked absent-mindedly.

“Well, yes,” Lucy said. “You’re the leader, after all.”

“Well, I don’t have one,” Bently admitted. “I’m at a loss. Did you see the other two people on stage with Bella?”

“Yeah, I didn’t recognize them. Who were they?” Meggie asked.

“They were two characters from other musicals. You know how Phantom was turned into a musical? Well, the man was Sweeney Todd, and the other girl was Shiloh from REPO! The Genetic Opera.”

“So… there were characters from other books here as well?”

“Not just books. Shiloh is from a movie.”

King sighed. “This book is really screwed up. Do we have any idea of if there are any characters left from this book?”

“No, I—”

They stopped talking. Footsteps sounded outside. They were angry footsteps, and they belonged to the same angry voice that had seemed to breathe fire. Bella was storming down the hallway, but she was crying.

“I ju-just can’t get them to t-t-turn for me!” she sobbed to herself. “I d-don’t know how my sweet Edward did it! He j-just smiled, a-and…” She cut off here, completely engulfed in tears, and her footsteps and sobs faded away. Once they couldn’t hear anything else, everyone let out a sigh of relief.

“She can’t get people to turn for her?” Meggie asked, curious. “Does she mean like how Jacob turned everyone in Narnia into huge wolves?”

“And how Edward turned everyone at Hogwarts into these creepy zombie things,” Bently added. “She must be trying to do the same to the characters in here.”

“But they’re obviously scared of her,” King reasoned. “I’m not sure what she did to that man when Meggie said… her name, but it sounded like something with fire.”

“She probably burned him alive,” said Bently bitterly. “That’s what it sounded like to me, anyways.”

“Alright, so if we can get some of the characters on our side—”

Everyone froze. The door had opened.

“There you are.”