Prelude in Nursery Rhyme
Once upon a time, there was a boy who was born amidst rain and thunder and storm.
The newborn boy did not cry – his mother did.
And so did the midwife, but in shock, not terror or sadness.
The father did not even want to see his son – he exited the house before anyone could stop him, and never came back but for taking more money and sometimes, when he remembered, to sleep or bath.
Well, sometimes he brought some money home. Sometimes, when he won bets and things like that.
But mostly not.
Anyway, there was no surprise that the women in the birth room cried upon the arrival of the newborn. And they did not cry in joy, either. Of course, that could have been deduced from the reaction of the father. And no, the father did not go to the bars to boast his new pride and joy.
But back to the baby, there was absolutely no reason to forbid the women that surrounded him upon his birth – mainly his mother – not to cry. You see, this baby was born not crying, and with yellow skin. And with mismatched golden-yellow eyes that was pushed way too deep into their sockets, not to mention he was too thin for a newborn, while his mother was perfectly healthy…
Of course, they did poke and tap him on the buttock a bit, at last. And he whimpered, they supposed.
And the yellow skin, too, wouldn't really have been a problem in any other occasion. It might indicate excess of bilirubin in the newborn's baby, but with the limited technology at the time, they did not know about that. But then again, it might not be a problem if the conditions were different.
If the baby had had a nose, things would have been different. Very different.
If only the baby had a nose…
But laments, prayers, cries, curses and everything the mother tried did not change this. The baby still did not have a nose, and the black gaping hole where the nose should have been was a terrible thing to look at. And with the unnatural thinness of the child, it really looked like a skeleton with yellow skin. A rotting corpse.
Unable to look at her wretched creation, the mother did the first, life-changing, world-turning step. Alright, it was not that extreme. But the mother did take a revolutionary step; something that no one else would ever think to do: she made him a mask. But of course, it was not really a mask. With the limited time she had (she did not want to look at the baby – ah, pardon me, the wretched creature – too much. She just could not bear it), she couldn't have done so much more.
It was, really, a bit of improvisation with a small face-covering made of cloth. It had two holes for the eyes and one for the nose, too.
Well, not exactly for the nose. The baby had no nose anyway. It was more like a small puncture for the baby – ah, pardon me again, the wretched creature – to breathe through.
And must I repeat, it was a revolutionary move. No one else had ever made a mask for a disfigured… creature.
But everyone else who bore such things surely would have killed it. Drowned it in the river, or in the bathtub if there was no river close.
What a revolutionary, life-changing, world-turning step it was!
And so, in the very minimalist of conditions, the creature grew up.
Even though she couldn't really bear to be close to him, she fed him. Not with her exclusive breast milk, of course. It did not come out anyway, out of stress. She fed him goat's milk. And not with the nurture and love of a parent, either. She fed him like a slave doing labor. She did not have to, of course, but she did. Even she was not sure why.
She did her best to keep the baby out of her husband's sight, too, on the rare occasion he came home. It would have made him very angry. But she was not even sure the man who came to her home was her husband anymore. It might have been some creatures in her husband's skin, because it really did not seem or look or act like her husband anymore. But anyway, fortunately for her, the baby – or the creature in the attic – never made a sound. She grudgingly admitted to herself that it produced the most beautiful of sounds on the very rare occasions it did – it sounded like some heavenly music when it cried. But she did not want to admit it to anyone else, to what little contact she had left of the outside world. For one, she did not really want to grow fond or attached to the yellow creature on the little cot, and two, she did not want them to accuse her of fondness to some hellish creature.
But of course, then again, how could she be fond of someone – no, something – like it?
But back again to the baby. He grew on what little his mother fed him, surprisingly. Surely no one could ever live on three times of a tiny bottle of goat milk a day!
But he did anyway, not caring very much if you or I or his mother or anyone's mother was surprised.
The baby rarely produced a sound – no one talked to him or sang to him, so it was not quite surprising – but when his mother cursed him, or silently muttered her grudge, he repeated after her, surprisingly in a beautiful manner. With the best efforts a baby could repeat after its mother, of course.
He did not have a name – no one bothered to give him one. But that did not matter – at that time he did not know what a name was, anyway.
He did not play – no one taught him to. So he did not like to play.
He did not know how to interact – no one taught him to. So he did not like humans, other than his mother. She was the only one he knew, anyway.
He did not love – no one taught him to. But he loved anyway, somehow, someday. It was based purely on basic human instincts.
Yes, he loved.
And this was his love story.
Author's Notes: Alright. So this is my first phic (not fic xD)... aaaand... currently, this is a one-shot and the last line would, of course, refer to Leroux's novel. But should I get some inspiration and write anything more, this will likely become an AU phic which, of course, involves Christine and the rest of the gang. And then the title will change and everything else, because this would only be the title of the prologue. So tell me what you think. In a review. How you dislike what I wrote, what was not canon and everything else... or in the little possibility of everythign, if you have liked the phic. I really hope so. Looking forward to read what you think! - that is if I get reviews of course. So! Have a nice day, dearest readers!