This is a take on something my twisted imagination made up. It's Leroux based. The thing that always intrigued me was how Erik says 'when my own father never saw me.'. Some say this means that his father was dead. But what if he wasn't? Then why would he have never seen Erik? This is what I thought:
"Oh, mad Christine who wanted to see me!...when my own father never saw me and when my mother so, as not to see me mad me the present of my first mask!"
In the end it was quite simple to deceive him. I felt bad of course, but he was my husband.
He wouldn't be able to stand the imperfection if he were to ever find out. In truth, he would never see the baby boy I had given birth to. It's not that he wouldn't. He couldn't. It was a physical impossibility to see when you are blind.
But the tricky thing was he still had his sense of touch-something he used quite often. The boy I had given birth to was deformed. Severely-and I couldn't stand it.
I had done it all for him, my husband Bo and I have retained nothing! The child was a menace. A menace with the voice of an angel and the face of the devil. Or a corpse.
So, in the end I gave the child his first mask-the first of many. It was smooth enough to feel like real skin for Bo and I did not have to look at the child a my husband never did-oh how lucky he was!
The one thing my husband did remark upon was the temperature of the child. He was always cold. Eventually I made him wear gloves to deceive my husband into thinking we had a normal child-no, not normal. A genius and as far as Bo was concerned an angel.
He was so very concerned when I named the child 'Erik'. It was such a common name, he had argued, our child needs a name that is spectacular.
He is lucky I even bothered to give the child a name.
I wonder if Erik ever thought it was odd that I would not permit his father to touch him after the age of two years.
I think not. A monster doesn't need something as good as humans.