THE ERIK MONOLOGUES:
I am under a spell. I weaver of tales, master of magic, demented Cerberus of the Parisian Opera house am under a spell.
I think myself the victim of many spells and often wish that, as it is in so many pretty little fairy stories, life's misfortunes could be blamed away to the shame of wicked fairies and stepmothers anonymous. But that is not so. There was no one other than God, leaning with malicious intent over my cradle, so that from infancy I might be a monstrous burden to all who knew me. And there never was, nor is, any hope of ever reversing the fate which life has dealt me, no magical alchemy can transform this beast into a man. And this is no curse with which I am burdened to atone for some past crime, either of my own or familial. The only sin I ever committed was to be born.
Perhaps I have lain too long asleep in a somnolence I lulled myself into. A pleasant web of cobwebs, an ivory tower though in the opposite direction. Like the Lady of Shallot, I shut myself from the world, content to weave my music and my art and glimpse the world through a pane of glass.
But oh what I saw one day in that looking glass will surely be the death of me. For as she gazed on fair Lancelot riding into Camelot I have gazed upon such fair radiance. And all that I have weaved is torn to shreds and I find myself tangled in my own complicated web. I, the spider, who had tempted numerous helpless flies into my trap, am now the victim.
Oh gods help me. How I long to touch. How I long to be. There is no logic in this. No formula I can carefully measure out to simmer and distill human emotions. One cannot slice ones heart and examine it under a microscope in the hopes of coming to an explanation for its vile betrayal.
Her voice is a most intoxicating poison and our liaison, a most dangerous game. For I looked in the glass. I dared to look. And now there is no going back.
Who would have thought it possible to be enamored of the funny little shape a girls mouth forms when she blows on her nails to quicken the drying of carefully applied polish? Or to count the strokes of a coarse brush through golden curls? These are vain and dainty things, totally unbefitting of my time. But oh! The more I watch her curious little eccentricities of fashion the more enamored I become.
Did you know she binds her breasts in a silk scarf before she laces her bodice? To prevent chafing, or so she says. I can feel the blood rush under the soft ever-present velvet crush of my mask. What would I know of the forbidden fruit of a woman's breast? But oh to nick a powder puff or that silk scarf. No. That is too conspicuous, she might miss it. Yes, I'm sure she would. No doubt it has some deep ritualistic function, theatre superstition being what it is and none know more about theatre superstition than I.
Perhaps watching her delicate feminity, the dainty way she goes about her prepairations for the stage, her little vanities, has driven me to this new madness. This new morbid obsession with my own naked flesh. My fingers explore, tracing over my spidering veins, cataloging my ribs and as many vertebrea as I can reach. Asuming the pose of David, I allow myself the small vanity of feeling my manhood. Were I other than what I am I too could be a young god. Were that I were handsome.
Oh Christine.
My hands fly again to that place on my breast, just over my heart. Similarly has she clasped her hands thusly, but never as I do now. Not for me. Never for me. For my voice perhaps, and M. le Vicomte de Chagny, but never for poor Erik. Oh to cut out the treacherous organ, all that keeps this infernal machine of my body functioning. Oh that I could still the gears and cogs that gyrate ever further into madness. But for all my mechanical skill, such a self opertion and sabotage remains impossible.
Do not presume to think that I have not contimplated suicide. A foolish voice in the back of my head refuses to submit. It's not nearly dramatic enough. Lover of the stage that I am, what point would obliterating myself from jumping from Apollo's lyre serve but to be a curiousity and a line in the paper for a day. And yet this same voice seems content to quietly live out the rest of its days in anonymity as a person and immortality as a spectre.
I collapse into the useless pile of bones that I am and lie like a marrionette in my little puppet stage. Gradually my skin settles against the stone and I remove the mask, staring at my "face" as I feel the cold granite against my long stiffled skin. Oh to be free of that face, that soft black face with nobody inside it.