I reached to the back of the cage, had to make sure none of my ribs were cracked, they hurt like nothing that can ever be described. I froze when I felt my hand brush- a rope! I turned my hooded face to make sure my mind was not playing tricks on me-but it was really there! Enlightenment struck me. Ropes could kill! I looked around, and yes- he was there, the source of my misery, the one who profited from my deformed face. He sat on the floor of the cage, grubbing on the ground for the coins made at my expense!
The rope was around his throat before I had even decided to do it. I was not strong- thirteen years of lying in a cage will not make anyone overly muscular- but I had rage and a thirst for revenge on my side. "Let them laugh at your face, your dead face!" I hissed, cutting off his windpipe, so he could not get the air to breathe. He struggled, then collapsed, dead. I looked up, and a chill went through my spine. A girl, slightly older than me, was staring through the bars in horror. She had witnessed the entire scene. I thought I recognized her as one of the children from some theater that had come to see the fair- but had she been one of the rare people who didn't laugh at my defect?
To my shock, she did not call for the police. Instead, she pulled the cage door open, grabbed my arm, and began to run. I was unaccustomed to running, but I stumbled along after her, the little monkey, the only toy I had ever owned clutched in my hand. We raced through the streets, her gracefully, me struggling to keep up.
"What is your name?" she asked as we tore through a narrow alley.
"E-Erik," I stammered. No one else had ever asked. No one else had ever cared. I had always just been the freak, the spawn of the devil-
My thoughts were interrupted; she was speaking again. "Hide in here," she commanded, pushing me through a grate in the wall of a building. "They'll be looking for you. This place is beneath the Opera House where I live; you'll be safe there. I'll find you when things quiet down."
Her name was Monique Giry, and I came to be her friend as I spent the first four years beneath the opera house. I tried to enjoy it, but while it was better than my previous life, the rooms beneath the house where cold and damp, especially the ones I carved for myself in my spare time. However, I soon discovered that one thing overcame all of that. The music…
The music was compelling; it filled my mind with melodies and harmonies; tunes and sections. I soon began to sing the songs that I easily memorized, but I was not complete. I was missing something.
I was now seventeen. Monique came to visit when she could, but she had recently had a child, a daughter named Meg, who took up most of her time. I was so lonely. Without thinking, I unconsciously took a sheaf of paper and a pen, and allowed the notes and rhythms to flow from my hand.
I looked at the score several days later, after days of endless writing, with no sleep and little food, because the lure of the music was so possessive that I could not put it down! It seemed to me that the music had a life of its own, that it called to me, told me I would write more, much more music, create more of the ultimate beauty! I was alive. I was seventeen and at last, down in the dank, gloomy cavern, I had found a true calling, an inner light.