Chapter 1: Aftermath.
What are years to me, when looked at in terms of days, months, hours, minutes? They simply pass me by. Seventeen years have passed me by and I have lived in a quiet state of mourning. I never ventured above the ground. I do not know what is going on in the world; how Paris has changed, if it has changed or even if things are better or worse. Who is the minister or who are the poor. I have had no desire to know any of it, anymore. I never walk through the halls of the great palace that I had, had a hand in building. I do not know if they have replaced the chandelier, what it looks like, if it is as over done as the first or if it is simply a mass of glass. None of this matter to me anymore because everything I had loved about it, all the beauty that was once there is gone. It is all gone forever.
There is no longer any music in it for me. I do not hear the bells or the violins as I once did. The dance does not appeal to me, the ballerinas have always been a bore and the singers do not sing with the grace, innocence or charm that I once witnessed in this building. It is nothing but stone; cold and unfeeling like the grave. It is a casket that I should have long ago given up my body to. It has taken my soul and keeps it, without any hope of redemption or peace.
Everywhere I looked I can see her. I can hear her voice and I can not escape the sorrow that I am feeling. She was always there, in the music I had written. Twenty years it had taken me to write Don Juan Triumphant and in a moment I had let it all go. She would have stayed with me. She could have chosen me. She had worn my ring and yet I let her go. I could not keep her. And now beauty is gone, song has no pleasure and colours grow dim, dull and fade to black.
Should I ever see the sun again I would not care. I would not know the warmth that it promises to the human race. I am not human. I am a monster; horrible in the eyes of all who know my legend. I am the ghost that everyone fears, even though I no longer lurk. There is no drifting through the flies or creeping through the darkness of the labyrinth that makes the mechanisms of the stage. I no longer whisper the words that once set fear and dismay upon a cast of characters whom I played the ringmaster too. I was once the puppeteer and each and every person was captive by my stings. Now, however, that is all gone and there is freedom for those who work here now, but not for me.
She is really gone now. The news has reached me before it has reached anyone else. Died of the fever as so many have done. Why cannot I die in such a way? The card came today, it is in his hand. It was the one thing I had been waiting for. I wasn't going to accept any other links with the world above. I through it into the lake and left it to dissolved in the murky waters. Yes, she has been returned to her maker and as for me, I cannot die. How I have waited for it. I have wanted it and wished for it, but it is my punishment to stay alive. Again I say, I am not human; human beings die, they return to the dust from whence they came, and I cannot. I have been cheating death all of my life, wishing to stay alive, to find the one who would sing for me alone and see me for the being that I truly am. I believed that there was good in my soul, that the music that I had made could not mean that there was nothing but corruption within me, but I have been wrong for so long, and now death will cheat me, mock me, and spurn me.
To see her wither and become what I am was once my greatest fear. She should never grow old. She should never be anything but the music that she sang, young, vibrant, beloved, all of the things that create joy in the hearts of man. Still she has left a beautiful corpse. She has died young enough that the bloom of her youth will be with her always. No one will ever see Christine as an old woman, but rather as the angel that had been stolen from heaven. She will never grow old, as my mother did. She will always be my beautiful Christine; the rose withered too soon, the song without end.
What is left for me now? The opera is dark and faded. The architecture of this place is being ruined by age and the stone is now in need of repair. It is strange to see something that nature had worked on to create, the rock that should stand the test of time, and yet it has grown old; like it can no longer weather the elements. Man had plucked it out of its natural state and it is just simply giving up the fight.
I had killed to build this building. The men and boys that labored over it were nothing to me as long as my vision of grandeur was realized. It is like me in a way. I have given up. No longer do I wish the weather the elements of the human mind. I wish to decay in the quiet solitude of the darkness of my tomb. But it is not here in this place. She had been here. She had kissed me here. All of these walls, my rooms, have her imprinted on them. I have seen her in this place and now when I close my eyes I can still see her. She haunts me now, the ghost that I have given up. Christine is here in all of her beauty, her voice ringing off the granite, torturing my soul and mocking me with the reminder that she had chosen Raoul. One day he too will die, and they will find themselves here in this place, for the bonds of love can never be broken, and he will one day haunt my palace as I had once done. There is no room for me now.
Paris has been soiled for me. My home land has seen me come full circle and as I should have died in the darkness of my secret home, I did not. My heart, thought tired, would not cease its beating, but it too has chosen to forsake me. She thought me dead. I knew I could not keep her and so I used another of my trick. I who was a brilliant magician, apothecary, ghost, I knew how to mix remedies and potions, how to kill in the ways of the poets. I faked my death and, though the seizures in my heart were real, they have stopped and my heart is strong again. Why has it not stopped beating, it is beyond explanation and yet it continues. I have begun to curse my own stupid body. Why should I not be privileged enough to die? Have I really been so wicked? I have stolen life from many men and yet I cannot take it from myself. The scares that I have inflicted on myself are healed now. The blood does not run out of my body as it should. I am a ghost living forever, and yet, I am tired, I am aging; I can feel time passing away from me and it turns my body into the body of an old man. I live on.
Perhaps there really is a God that is unable to relinquish his angels. Can I think of myself in such a way, I who had so strongly denounced a God for the masters of fire and brimstone? It was certain in my mind that my genius could be greatly wanted by such a creature as the devil himself, but alas, heaven will not take me. I am not able to die, or pass on to another life. I will not ever see heaven or live in the fires of hell. I am doomed to dwell always on earth. Is it God wishing for me to return? Am I to do bigger things in the name of God then those that know of what I have done in disgrace to the heavenly name?
I am stuck in this purgatorial life; between greatness and condemnation. I cannot have either. So what am I to do now? I put the question out to the great void. Guide me now, tell me where I should go, what I should do. I will erect monuments to your name. I will compose requiems and wedding marches. I just need the guidance that I seek. I will do anything that it takes to send me on my way. Take me home please. I beg to be free of this life. What is needed, in way of redemption, to take me away from this place and put into the afterlife?
Can I promise to no longer be wicked? Is the bitter urge left in me to kill? I cannot say. I have not had the urge for drugged hallucinations anymore. Nor do I think I should take pleasure ever again in anything, let alone taking the life from another. I have not wished to even look on another human being. But if I was faced with danger, would I be able to deny my instincts and let them kill me. Murder would be, for me, a way to die and yet I do not think I could give in so easily. I have never given in to defeat, well not by another's hand. I gave up Christine because I knew this was no life for a bird. I could not keep her caged, as I had never been fond of my cages. She had to go. I would fight. I would see the red before my eyes as I always have and I would be the fastest into the battle. I would kill again. But I do not think that is what God has intended for me. I do not wish to fight, for the voice of some greater good speaks to me. I am not to be taken in anymore by the violence of my own greed.
I sit here in this darkness and all I see, of my once normal life, is how abnormal I have been. Always, I shall never think of myself as ever able to live as a normal person because I am not normal and I never will be. I have very few possessions that I truly care about and those I have gathered around me. The rest I can leave. They are only things that will way me down. I have the money that is left of my great career and my even greater farce. It is time now to leave. I am but a memory now in the Opera Garnier, and now I have finally found the will to leave. I shall never return to the streets of Paris; to the sights of this place or the small town where I had been born. France holds nothing for me but negative memories. I shall leave. I will find my way as I will now turn to God. And so I here by swear, I will do Good for the rest of my days, or at least try. Take me now into the solitude of my pilgrimage for all I seek is to finally die.