Title — L'Epoque

Description — She is about to turn the last page and put the paper down when she stops. Her eyes roam to the very right corner, on the bottom. Erik is dead. Her ghost of a heart flickers… Leroux-verse E/C. Based on a prompt. One-shot…ish? Broken into five parts.

Word Count — 2,031

A Note From Your's Truly (aka Peach) — Hey everyone — I'm back! Sorry for the absence, I've been through some rough times in the past couple months with my anxiety, but I'm happy to be back. Credits to this prompt I found somewhere years ago on insta and found again recently… I just had to write it! Also *cough cough* let's deal with the fact that this is my first time writing in a while and — as you know me — I'm not a huge fan of editing. Like ever. Also that title? I'm literally a joke I couldn't think of anything else. Uhhh and the rest of the "chapters" coming in the next few days.

Also — I literally just realized how close this idea is to Not A Ghost3's recent one shot… but like I couldn't bring myself to not post it… but I swear I'm not copying! Y'all go give her story a read. She's literally the best writer out there!


One.

She picks up the paper from where her husband reads it every morning before he goes to work… wherever he works. She doesn't care anymore. She hasn't cared about what he does since they were married. She doesn't think she will ever care. No, she takes that back. She knows she will never care.

Is it sad that she feels like ghost haunting a body?

She doesn't know why she is opens the newspaper this morning. She isn't a reader — she never has been. She lets life happen around her, without giving a fret as to what is going on in others'. She doesn't care for their lives.

No, she does know why she picks it up this morning. He never leaves it at the table, the newspaper. But this morning he has. She is curious.

Her husband reads many newspapers and magazines, but the one he reads at breakfast is the L'Epoque. She doesn't know why the title rings a bell, but something in her ghost of a mind flickers in remembrance.

The heavy clock ticks in tune with her heart.

The paper is heavy. Sheets upon sheets of news. Politics. She skips the page about the theatre. The social section meant for housewives and single women to read about who is getting married when, what so and so wore last evening. Who was seen with who.

She was in these pages once. Well, she never read them to know for certain, but with everything that had happened to her, she was sure she once had been. People liked scandal. Drama. Rich Vicomtes marrying poor chorus girls.

She is about to turn the last page and put the paper down when she stops. Her eyes roam to the very right corner, on the bottom.

Erik is dead.

Her ghost of a heart flickers. She sets the paper down slowly, a small flame inside her that she hasn't felt in many, many, months. She still feels like a shadow, but there is something solid about her now.

She sits back in her husband's chair at the head of the table for just a moment, before standing quickly and rushing through the house. She calls for one of her many servants who brings her coat and gloves.

Christine knows she made a promise.

A promise to bury him once he died.


He left the paper purposely on the table, wondering if she would pick it up.

His wife just isn't the same girl he proposed to many months ago. She is a shell, an apparition. Her cheeks are hollow and her skin white.

He is going to take her on holiday to Italy in the spring when it gets warm again. Then maybe she will perk up a little.

He had seen the sentence at the bottom of the paper. It had caused a flicker of anger to rush through him, but only for a moment.

Only a moment, because now monster is dead.

He could breath at last.