Disclaimer: Phantom of the Opera belongs to Gaston Leroux, Andrew L. Webber... but Phantom belongs to Susan Kay.
A/N: Just a little fiddling with Susan's version of Erik. I wanted to give that loveable sociopath a little bit more depth than 'rar, bitch bitch bitch'.I hated the ending of the book, by the way.
Erik… your mother died three days ago. …She lived here in this house, alone…
All for nothing! I had fled, selfishly hoping to free myself from my mother, and to free myself from seeing her with that - that - that man… and all I had done was imprison her in this house. It may have been a child's sacrifice, but it had been a selfish one. This house that had been my prison had become her tomb!
And all the nightmares I had conjured, all the spectres I believed haunted this place, were nothing. Nothing but phantoms in my mind which faded and vanished as I sat stock still in the chair, gripping the arms which had once been over my head but now barely came to knee height. My mother was dead.
She was here in this house and she was dead.
And I was damned, for I damned her. I had damned my mother, and so would I be damned.
I barely noticed the crying woman in front of me, barely noticed the wracking sobs as she mourned her friend and my mother. After the words she had exchanged with me there no longer needed to be anything else.
The dead woman upstairs was nothing but a shell of the woman I knew. My mother was nothing more than a hollow shell, her face a shrunken death-mask which resembled the ravages of my own face. A family resemblance at last. I forgave her the torments she had subjected me to, then, because I understood. The revulsion she felt whenever she saw me was simply an anger and a revulsion she felt of herself.
I did not kiss her. I did not take those two kisses from her that I had begged for on my birthday. I did not want to anymore.
I walked out of that room where the cold dead body of my mother lay, and I climbed the stairs to the attic. The room was coated in a thick layer of dust but in the centre of the room I found what I was looking for. It had not moved, it seemed, since I had left… all those years ago… Even my mother had not dared touch it.
The statue of the shepherd boy.
This had been mother's baby. Her second son, where her first had failed her. Her first son, he with the monster's face, was nothing. It was this son who my mother kissed and caressed and held in her arms and cherished. This was the son my mother loved.
Two kisses… That was all I had asked…
This statue had sung to my mother, pleaded and urged and controlled her; this statue had earned my mother's kisses when my face repulsed her.
It did my crying for me.