Disclaimer: I do not own The Phantom of the Opera, characters, places, etc. All rights belong to Gaston Leroux and their respected owners.
Blood bleeds.
However, in my short time on this planet I have learned that not all spilt blood signals the snuffing out of a life.
Indeed, my experiences have taught me that blood has many connotations, not all tinged with fear and death. Blood gives us the ability to live, to survive, to function and to create. The blood that spills from a woman during her fertile years signals the ability of a female to create. Blood and primordial ooze which a baby is born from is the sign of a life come unto this earth.
However, as I wax poetic about the life-force that resides within all of us, I have seen my fair share of blood spilled in the name of championing one's cause. I have seen blood shed for reasons no more noble than for the demented entertainment of a sick mind. I, myself, have dispatched many a life for the sake of someone's whim. My experience with life and all of its beauty has been tainted with the gross need to maintain the upperhand in all situations that may involve my continued health.
My morbid curiosity with the sticky, pungent liquid began as a child. As a young boy, I often found the carcasses of dead animals along the paths that I walked. The limp bodies of the animals drew my attention in ways I cannot explain. Did the blood that courses the bodies of amphibians look the same as that of my own? Are the innards of cats as vital to their existence as they were to my compatriots? As the years passed, I satiated my curiosity by merely studying nature and documenting all that I could for the advancement of my intellect and for my own scientific purposes. When I reached adulthood my observations as well as my keen eye to detail did much to advance my career.
For you see, I have led the life that most people only read about in fiction. Some may scoff at the tales I have told to a select few, but everything that I write here in this journal is fact and has been experienced by me. For better or worse, I inscribe everything which I have lived through in this notebook, not as a release of my soul. I care not whether I rise to Heaven or am dispatched to the fiery pits of Hell, but I feel the need to purge myself of the incidences that have defined my life until now. This manuscript of my life is meant for no one's eyes and yet at the same time, it is meant for everyone. I do not foresee the need in the future for anyone other than myself to read these words. I only write to make plain in my mind my varied and colorful history.
A person such as myself is not ushered to the front of the Heaven's gates. Many a time I have felt Death's claws take grip of me. Unlike many, I have stared into the face of Death and I have conversed with him. My sanity has teetered precariously between this world and the next. Death has a name, and Death's name was Erik. I no longer wish for my life to be clouded within smoke and mirrors, and in an effort to wipe away confusion I elucidate this experience within these pages.