Filth
A/N: Originally written as part of a mini-fic challenge on Tumblr, for TasteoftheBitchPudding. The prompt was, "things you said when we were the happiest we ever were."
Tonight she did not look to the painted ceiling as she so often would when the Angel spoke to her. Looking up, as if she could have found me there among the dusty, gas-lit candelabras and carelessly carved plaster rosettes. Looking up, as if in truth I weren't so deep below. My sweet girl, my ingenue Christine, devoutly kneeling, her face upturned, and palms like molded porcelain clasped beneath her chin. She often twisted the beads of her rosary between her restless fingers even as we sang––as a supposed man of God, I did not know how to tell her to put the damnable thing down.
Tonight the beads lay forgotten upon the shining mahogany of her dressing-table. In the tremulous silence following her bold declaration, Christine coiled her white knuckles together and listened for her Angel's reply.
Behind that cursed mirror I was certain she could not have said what my treasonous ears suggested. Now the distant Angel regarded her in holy quietude, or so it must have seemed to her. The monster's own depraved, mortal heart could not be so easily stilled.
"I love you," my girl repeated, all humble timidity, to her voluptuous, silken lap.
Those forbidden, enchanted words, pouring out from between her parted lips, exalted lips bitten red like sweet berry-wine. Those words, for me.
"As you must love the holy messenger of the lord, my faithful child," I said––perhaps with greater asperity than intended after far too extended a pause. Carefully I cast the Angel's voice to floating about the hanging gas lamp above her sweetly bowed head. Away from the mirror. Never behind the mirror.
I am not here, good, charming girl, the Devil behind your dressing-room mirror. I am an Angel, look up. Look up.
On her little vanity-stool Christine sniffed an exhale out that fine upturned nose and buried her unquiet fingers in the warm, mounding silk of her lap, and with her watery gaze, studied their writhing paleness upon the fabric as if she held no control over their movements.
Her painted-ivory cheeks flooded with prurient, brilliant color. Hot to the touch, certainly. My indulgent fingertips found the shadowed glass of the mirror's reverse to trace the pleasing curve of her sweetly-curled spine. Realizing what foolishness my hands enacted, I snatched the detestable things away.
And yet the corpse was quickening.
My tender sweetling spoke to her dancing fingers. "For so long, Angel…it has been difficult for me, you know. Without Papa."
"Yes, my dear," I replied gravely, well-pleased with my audible, if not actual, collectedness.
Her twilit gaze shot toward the mirror. I spread my fingers before me in a violently terse gesture of silent frustration, mimed the pounding of my obscene forehead.
Not behind the mirror! Never behind the mirror. To the lamp, the ceiling!
But her interest in the mirror waned with the absence of my voice, and the dear girl dropped her gaze again to her lap.
"It's just, everything was so…dark, really, if you can even understand…as if all the lights in the world had simply gone out and for all my searching I still could not find a match…" whispered the beautiful child, her delicate chin lowered humbly, her voice tremulous, puerile, perfect, "until you."
Normally I stand as we sing. More conducive to proper airflow. Better control of the voice. Less destructive on the knees, on my zibeline trouser-fronts that surely would object to any collision with the black filth that coated the floors, walls, of this cavernous passageway.
This demon's path to Hell.
Now on achingly senseless knees I pressed my bare palms flat upon the dust-warped vision of her, my delicious girl, all fluttering tension as she perched atop that little stool. She chewed her ripe lip, cast her innocent gaze to the ceiling. Waiting, again, for her Angel to speak.
To tell her he loves her in return.
I cooled my wasted forehead upon her shadowed afterimage, her untouchable apple of a silhouette; I closed my mismatched eyes.
"My child, that is enough––" I spoke, as tenderly as was possible and unfortunately, not at all with the Angel's typical composure. My hot breath steamed upon the icy mirror-surface, heating and wetting my mucid flesh in the dank cavern.
I heard my sweet girl's breathless protestations and strangled an ungentlemanly groan upon the glass. My repulsive fingers clawed at the bones of my thighs.
"Angel––" she tried.
I interrupted her. "Your lesson––dear––let us continue." Thowing my voice. Careful, careful. Anywhere but the mirror, abhorrent fool. Disease of a thing.
"No, please, Angel––hear me." It wasn't like my girl to challenge me. Bold, too much so, and yet, how charming to find her so brazen! A vixen indeed, my luscious little Christine.
A breath shuddered from my mockery of lips upon this terror of a face as I resisted the all-too-familiar desire to smash its repugnance upon the back of the mirror.
"Please…" in earnest she continued, her treasured voice like a curse in my ears as I dug my thumbnails, hard, into my temples. "It was you, Angel, who brought back the light…"
During this, she had stood––with my eyes still shut tight before the mercury-glass I did not catch her rise. At her sudden proximity to the mirror, my agitated nerves propelled me backwards within the stone cavern; I skittered on hands and knees like the fiendish thing that I am to crouch excitedly, breathlessly, against the wall opposite, my ruined trouser-legs perfectly disgusting.
Hiding like a criminal in the shadows of a room already hidden. A room the girl could never find.
With her plump, gentle arms fanned out low by her sides, Christine opened her palms––to me, surely, and yet not to me at all––as I watched her from my shameful prison.
"I need you to know how I love you," she said to me, her eyes downcast upon her lovely little feet. Her supplicant palms trembled between us. White wrists. White ankles. White to my soiled, soiled, soiled––
"And I am grateful for your regard, my child, for it is a pure and humble thing," I said, finally, cursing my dryly stammering tongue. "What you speak of is divine, though is only your devoted love for your God, and not for your Angel." My shoulder ached, half-crushed upon the unforgiving stone; I hated myself for a thousand loathsome things I could not name. Could not think. Could not do.
"But it is not!" the passionate thing exclaimed in sudden arousal. Her fervid gaze captured her reflection in the giant mirror. With a fluster of skirts she took a hurriedly impetuous step, two, toward the glass, then flung herself, breathless, at the base of the frame to press her cheek upon its surface.
Like a spider––ah, not so very far from accuracy––I very nearly climbed the wall behind me.
Her lush, red mouth dragged the glass as she continued, "it is you, you, that I love––not as I love God, for I love him too, and not as I love his holy chorus of angels, but you––you––you––oh––," she groaned bodily upon the mirror, my gentle pet overcome. Seductive lips wetting the surface. Pink tongue tickling the glass. Rousing. Prurient. Forbidden.
I stifled a moan with my fist.
My sweet girl gathered herself, clawing still at the glass. "Angel, Angel––is it blasphemous to say these words? will you hate me for it? will God?––no, no, it cannot be––for surely, you are not God, you are yourself––you laugh and think and speak, and I know you well, the person you are, the man––and it is for all of this, that I so entirely and devotedly love you!"
"Christine, please––" I breathed, begging the mordant air. I clawed at the stinking stones beneath me with my yellow fingers. Repulsive fingers. Unclean. "You are tired, exhausted––I've kept you too long––"
"There is nowhere I would rather be," she told me like a secret, and stroked the glass aside her steaming flesh with a sensuous finger. High upon the mirror plane, about her cascades of sticking curls. High, about her halo, now slipping lower, lower, low––
Her eyelashes tickled the glass as she closed her eyes, adding softly, "don't you want me too?"
"Dear girl––what you imply is blasphemous, I beg you not repeat it––" I stammered, almost reasonably, though I fell upon my foul palms and knees as zealous as a spring. A beast, ready.
"Do not be offended, my love, my Angel! Do not be angry––" she spoke as if her pleading words could reach me where her pink-tipped fingers could not. She caressed me with her voice, her delicious, dulcet voice that whispered and writhed and fogged upon the glass––I felt it, trembling, shivering, burning there behind the mirror. I saw the goose flesh rise upon her flesh as it did mine.
"I love you as a woman loves a man," my good, pure girl purred. "Not as an Angel, and I want you, need you, to love me too––as a man loves a woman––"
"I cannot love you in the way which you desire, child," I answered haltingly, though hot, shamed tears warmed the horror of my cheeks. "You mustn't equate me to a man when I am not one."
"But you do love me!" my girl said passionately. Then she added, with such unbearable sweetness, "I love you for whomever, whatever you are!"
I fell to the floor, my foul visage where it belonged.
"Please. Please! Do not say such things, Christine." I cried, "you know not what you say!" In long, tortuous arcs I ground the vulgar stain of my face into the dirt beneath my prostrate form. The black filth devoured my speech and still I whimpered out the words like a wounded animal, debased creature that I was.
"Please, my dear, dear girl," I begged her, choking and sputtering in the bruising dust. "Nothing may come of it. I am your Angel of Music, and that is all I can ever be!"
"Then let it be so, and I will love you for it!" proclaimed my good, virtuous Christine, from there beyond my prison gate as she gazed into my cell.
"I cannot be that if you must say such things to me!" I sobbed, screaming the words in foul seclusion.
She stared at her reflection as if she thought she might find me in it, but for all my carelessness my vile secret was safe. The lever, the hinge. No escape. My clever girl could never find it without this Minotaur's aid.
"Angel, please!" Now her little fist pounded upon the mirror-glass, set me to twitching about in the dark. Beating upon the unforgiving surface. Whimpering her sweet ragged sounds. "Come in! Come in!" she moaned, and pressed her steaming forehead to the glass.
"I swear to be yours forever if you will only love me…" my girl promised, surrendering to lovely tears.
Without thought to how, or when, or even why, I had begun to crawl pathetically upon the blackened stones, dragging my senseless corpse toward her atop the corrupted mire beneath. Water pooled in the corners of my lips and I sputtered revoltingly as I spoke to her, plead with her, with the earnest helplessness of the utterly, entirely mad––
"Christine, Christine," I sobbed, the Angelic guise abandoned as I slid like the serpent in the mud, "if I were a man, Christine, I tell you, I would love you as one!"
"Angel…" cried my girl as fog steamed from her open, sweating palms, a burning crown about either side of her perfect forehead. I drew myself, slithering, to the ground beneath her and crawled up the mirrors hidden face, to place my sickening palm upon her through the glass.
"If I were a man, Christine, I would love you as no man could hope to dream of loving a woman," I said to her then, my familiar voice insane with passion, my own putridity a stain upon the mirror-glass. "With all the glory of Heaven above," I swore, "I would love you, Christine Daaé, so much that you would never want the love of any other man but me again, so much that no other man, living or dead, could hope to satisfy your desire for it––"
Her fingers traced aimless patterns upon the glass. I kissed their shadows, drew my lips, my tongue atop them until the the surface shimmered with my own spit like a hot ocean rippling overtop her.
Capturing her in ecstatic wetness...
She felt the warm ghost of me upon the cold surface––upon her––I know she did, for she gasped and touched her fingertips delicately to her red lips, then returned her hands to the mirror-glass to gaze upon them in awe. I covered her palms with my own and she moaned, gave a torturous little sigh of irresistible pleasure. She was on her knees––how red, how aching they must be––her tender, lovely body pressed close against the mirror. She drew her cheek along its surface, listening, hearing me, sensing my unseen shape so impossibly close––
"If I were a man, my Christine," I promised her, my forked tongue silken through the glass, "I would love you until you could imagine nothing else save me and my love for you, so your entire world was only me, me, loving you––"
Upon my knees I pressed my sweating shape to hers, crushing my abhorrence upon her, as moaning sweetly she writhed against the warmth of me. "Sweet, sweet Christine, my lovely, luscious girl-love, I would remind you every minute, every second, until you hated the sound of my voice, until you dreaded the words, I love you, I love you, I love you––"
"Never," she breathed, pressed to me like a lover, "never, never––"
"Yes––" I said, into the shadow of her ear, "if I were a man, that is how much I would love you––"
The words growled from my throat, words like a disease, words as ruinous as the foul mouth that spoke them. Words that could tear everything down, take everything away, and still were worth the risk just to speak and hear the responses spoken––
Again my sensuous sweetling groaned, as I covered her hands in my own, as I moved against the base heat of her upon the mirror, sensing the vulgar animal at the stinking core of us––
"I would have you, Christine," the maw of my lips promised hers, "if I could be right there beside you now, I would have you, do you hear me? As only a man can have a woman, I would have you now. As only a man who loves you can––"
Now her eyelids fluttered against the glass as her open mouth pressed sidelong into its reflective surface. With one palm still captured by the heat of mine, my disgusting, delicious girl stroked at herself madly, mindlessly atop her clothes, hot fingers following the hidden curves of her, digging and squeezing at the softness beneath the shifting fabric as she moaned into her own caresses. Hip. Waist. Breast––she rocked upon her touches, sticking, trembling flesh pressed hard upon the mirror. I was that hand, I, those fingers, tracing and discovering her beyond the blind solitude of my rank prison, the damning curse of this repugnant mask. It was me, me, learning her, pleasing her, loving her––
In paroxysmic abandon she growled those holy words––have me, have me––rising deep from within her throat like the most sensual secret, as she squirmed in sublime mockery of a human union upon the glass. Upon me, on me, she cried out, "Angel!"
"Call me Erik, and tell me again how you love me!" I begged her, emboldened by desperate, esurient mania, my hands a mimic of her own. My quixotic heart betrayed me––like a fool, and groaning like one too––I was finally overcome by love, the self-preservation of sense had thoroughly abandoned me––and with it, wrath, madness, fear, hatred––my usual companions, my four horsemen––I basked in the light of love, acceptance, hope, something, something, something I could not name, but, oh, oh, how something overwhelmed me now––
Bliss! It was Bliss!
And still my fair, fallen love spoke the lovliest and most repugnant of words, her sublime and honest words upon the ruin of me! My name, my name! She said my name!
"Erik, then, oh, holy Erik!" The sweet girl said it, again and again! "It is the Angel Erik that I love, Erik, my love, and I will love you always, Erik, Erik, if you will let me!"
"Press your lips to the mirror-glass," I demanded, my voice heavy with ardent declaration, "and know it is I who kisses you, I, your devoted Erik, who loves you more than any man has ever loved a woman, and I, Erik, who will love you still, even when you are long dead!"
All things are fleeting, but this was a sensation I had never known and I would cling to it until its inevitable destruction. Because sweet Christine pressed her lips to the steaming surface of the mercury-glass, and mine I touched to hers. And when finally she drew away my girl brushed her pink fingertips over the succulence of her parted lips and met her own wide eyes, reflected––and so she met my eyes with them––and never, never have I seen such deliciousness, such loveliness, such pure, sweet goodness reflected back at me.
My perfect reflection. My girl, Christine.