"The stars look especially lovely tonight." Erik had tilted up his wide-brimmed fedora so he could get a better view of the twinkling jewels, just starting to awaken from their daytime slumber. The sky was painted with swirls of pinks and golds, a splattering of crimson; off away from the fading gold, a rich purple seeped the city skyline.
He smiled to himself, something he rarely ever ventured to do. He didn't want to imagine what his skeletal face looked like with a sickening, rictus grin of a corpse, but he could not help himself. The masked ball was a success, Christine even commented on how lovely his Red Death costume was! Everyone around them, wearing a mask.
Normalcy had an intoxicating flavor.
Erik had to propose to her that night after he, as she so whimsically described it, "spirited her away." The solid gold band solidified their relationship, it had to! After that wretched boy left and they have had their make-believe fun, she would stay with him forever.
As he stared at the sky and past the horizon, a giggle almost bubbled up. To think! A real, living bride! Christine! And they'd move away from his little dungeon of a homestead and live outside-
"-but Erik and Christine would have to live outside the city, not with a lot of onlookers…" he murmured his thoughts aloud. A frequent habit that annoyed the Daroga. Erik would speak halfway through a conversation with himself that he was having in his head, often in the third person.
"But the flowers! Oh the flowers! We will have so many flowers, Christine." He reclined serenely against the feet of Apollo, either unaware of the dangerous height or simply to stubborn to care. "We'll sing together, every day, every night if you want. I'll play any instrument that you wish. You'll never want for anything, I'll provide it all. That's what a husband does, Christine."
A clawing burden in his belly told him that he would be too cowardly to leave his little house underneath his lovely Palais Garnier. His safe nest where no one could scream monster. Being surrounded by beautiful things was his favorite.
His yellow eyes, gleaming in the starlight, cast down, thinking of the incessant hell his life had been.
"But then Christine…"
His head tilted upwards again and a tear leaked from his eyes. "Angel…" There was nothing but up from here. Only a future with her in it.
What a beautiful future it would be…
"Higher! Higher still!"
Erik snapped out of his reverie. His attention, a lightning fast predator, was focused on the entrance to the rooftop. He slithered back behind Apollo, climbing up on the statue of the God. His reflectant eyes unblinking between the statues.
The pounding of feet trudged up the steps.
Christine, his lovely, darling Christine, and that boy stumbled out of the staircase, panting for air. Christine kept looking over her shoulder, expecting someone to arrive any minute. Raoul was bent over, gasping for breath.
When she seemed ascertain that whatever wolf seemed to be chasing her was no longer there, she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. She, too, enjoyed the painting of the sunset.
Erik imperceptibly leaned toward her, to catch a whisper of the beauty she held in that moment. A sweet sigh of relief passed over her lips. How painfully endearing.
"Soon we shall go farther and faster than the clouds, to the end of the world, and then you will leave me, Raoul." She spoke to him without even looking at him. Christine continued gazing at the dimming light. "But… If… When the moment comes for you to take me away, I refuse to go with you-"
'Yes, YES,' Erik aggressively thought. 'Christine is a good girl and would never leave her Erik!'
"-well, you must carry me off by force!"
Erik's heart plummeted to his stomach. What was she saying?
Raoul dusted off his hands and stood next to Christine. "Are you afraid that you will change your mind, Christine?"
"I don't know," she mumbled, sharking her head in an odd fashion. She twisted the gold band on her left hand. "He is a demon!" And she shivered and nestled in his arms with a moan. "I am afraid now of going back to live with him… in the ground!"
The simultaneous feeling of his heart sinking lower in his gut and stuck in his throat pained Erik. How could she say this? Feel this?
Raoul wrapped his arms around Christine. "What compels you to go back Christine?"
Erik hunched as a gargoyle to listen what she had to say.
"If I do not go back to him, terrible misfortunes may happen!" His clawed hand gripped onto the statues tighter. "But I can't do it, I can't do it!" Christine moved away from the warm embrace of Raoul as the confession poured out from her mouth. Her hands busied themselves by fiddling with her gold ring yet again. "I know one ought to be sorry for people who live underground… but he is too horrible! And yet the time is at hand; I have only a day left; and, if I do not go, he will come and fetch me with his voice. And he will drag me with him, underground, and go on his knees before me, with his death's head. And he will tell me that he loves me! And he will cry! Oh, those tears, Raoul, those tears in the two black eye-sockets of the death's head! I can not see those tears flow again!"
She wrung her hands in anguish, while Raoul pressed her to his heart.
"No, no, you shall never again hear him tell you that he loves you!" The Vicomte hushed her with soothing words. "You shall not see his tears! Let us fly, Christine, let us fly at once!"
The pounding of Erik's heart filled his senses to the brim. That's all he could hear, could feel, the coppery taste of blood and of his surroundings, even his vision blurred with the pulse of a broken heart.
The sun set to an ink black sky. Christine and Raoul set upon the rooftop, making plans, fantasizing futures, and revealing how she became possessed by the phantom.
Every once in a while a sigh escaped from Erik's mouth, not of contentment, but of anguish. A sob would be too loud, so despite how his body retched with agony, only a ghost of a sigh ever revealed his pain. His cloak loomed behind him as two menacing wings, as the dark angel stricken deaf and dumb from their conversation plotted and thought.
Christine dabbed at her eyes with the corner of her sleeve, her heart a little lighter now that she spoke her confessions aloud to Raoul. They embraced again, but this time, more intimately as praying pilgrims as their lips touched.
Contented sighs echoing of romance and one small one filled with torment on the wind.
Christine walked hand in hand with Raoul as the decided to leave their rooftop sanctuary. She took one last look at the cityscape; the glittering stars with reflected in the illuminated lights scattered in the city.
"The stars look especially lovely tonight," she told Raoul.