"If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness." -Les Miserables, (The Novel)
He had always been in darkness.
It is a curious thought, but one that the man did not care to cherish. He had heard it said that children naturally cling to joy and to the light, but the masked man could not recall one instance of having either. It was bizarrely strange, but it delighted him, and maddened him as an insect does to flame.
He relished the night, and embraced it more readily than he had any human. It had hidden him from the world, and the world from him. Whose was that shape in the shadows? Whose was that face, in the mask?
There was another thought to ponder upon. From where in Hades's depths had this darkness arisen? Perhaps it was the fault of his mother, or even God himself, for smiting him with such horror…had the man committed any crimes? True, there was a beauty about a knot's mark upon a pale throat, but it was rather difficult to be a monster without killing from time to time. Always the gentleman; always the murderer. Was it not man that made him such? Was it not man who could not understand fear, yet feared what was not understood?
But perhaps that thought in itself, in some bizarre way, proved he, the Red Death, was merely a man. Oh, he understood fear. He reveled in it as he did the darkness, for it was another item that fascinated him. To manipulate power, to toy with a man and watch him squirm were interesting pastimes. When situations arose, panic arose, and with it an overwhelming sense of laughter.
He was a ghost. He was a living corpse. He was a phantom. He was a monster. He was madness. He was the Red Death. He was a demon. He was, if only for a moment, an angel. Alas, he held many titles, but none so simple or true as poor unhappy, Erik, the composer of Don Juan Triumphant.
That music…that beautiful music…but alas, it faded away with the echoes of that laughter. And with those echoes, the man would fade into the darkness, never setting his glowing eyes upon the light again.
Somewhere in France, his angel weeps.
"It is far more difficult to murder a phantom than a reality." -Virgina Woolf