Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Gaston Leroux, Susan Kay, ALW, or the Really Useful Group. Please don't sue me.
Author's Notes: Well..uh...this was sorta random. Okay, it's VERY random. I've come back to writing after a long time of...not-writing, so it may not be all that good. By the way, the following fanfiction has NOTHING to do with the Evanescence song of the same name. It is not a songfic. And also, some parts may not make a lot of sense if you haven't read 'Phantom' by Susan Kay.
Haunted
By Exitabilis
The transformation from man to ghost was infinitely painful. Every night he flitted in and out of the shadows, merging into them, becoming one of them, leaving behind a trail of discarded emotions. Childish fantasies and broken hearts and unshed tears littered every corner in such amounts that he sometimes wondered why the residents of the opera house couldn't see or at least feel them.
At those times, only one thing could keep his fears at bay.
He watched the needle in the candlelight as it pierced his already mangled arm. So beautiful – so delicate! – as it glistened bright silver, yet it still moved with deadly accuracy, firmly held in his guiding hand. He traced the patterns on the uneven skin with the point, slowly, as if in contemplation, but what was he searching for? The right vein? The wrong vein? He knew perfectly well which ones would relieve him and which ones would kill. In his most vulnerable moments the two would seem to merge together before he remembered the words Father Mansart had spoken to him in his youth and shrank from death as if he were a boy again.
Because the unshakable belief of God and Satan, heaven and hell, had never really left him. He knew that his present security was only a momentary stage, a snatched second of peace as he tottered and swayed on the edge of that gaping chasm that was sure to swallow him one day.
It wasn't the traditional view of Hell that terrified him so. He wasn't foolish enough to believe in burning flames and pitchforks, all the nonsense meant to scare children.
He knew perfectly well what awaited him.
It was the one dream that had stayed with him since he had left Persia, the only nightmare that had managed to follow him here, into the catacombs of the opera house. In his waking hours it was laughable, really. He, the Angel of Death, the Opera Ghost and the Phantom, unable to shake off a little nightmare? Time and time again he resolved to get rid of it.
Time and time again he failed.
As soon as he closed his eyes he heard her voice in his head. He saw her beautiful face, distorted by her fury as she screamed the words at the cowering boy. He remembered Madeleine as she had been then, lovely and untouchable and cold, as cut off from him as if she had been a fantasy.
'I hate you! Do you hear me? I wish you had never been born! I wish you had never been born!'
And upon waking, trembling and wrapped in sweat-soaked sheets, he whispered the words she had forced out of him, words unheard by her or any other.
"So do I."
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