A/N: Hello all! This is just a short piece I wrote for the Halloween Morbidity Contest this October about 2 hours before it was actually due to be submitted (I started write at 10:03 pm and the thing was due at 11:59 pm). Yay for extreme procrastination. But apparently I was on good chocolate that night because it received the Leroux Award. Some things have been fix, but there's a lot I need to tweak and add. Hopefully I'll get around to doing those...sometime. And now...on to the phic!

I am going to see Christine today.

What a statement of finality, as I exist here starring at the face in the mirror, that unbiased reflection of the soul. Such affirmative declarations are a rarity these days. Anything affirmative is a rarity. Decisions have seemed too unnecessary, too superfluous. What has been worthy to decide upon? Ever since she left existence has seemed a perpetuity of fogs, sunsets, and winters. Days, weeks, months. Yet I remained unchanged. They come and go, but what is that to me? I remain the same. Rotting in body, spirit, and soul, I have dwelt. Lived? No. Existed, perhaps, but not lived. It only leads me to ask if I ever lived at all. Yet without life, there can be no death. I suppose that is why Death has never deemed me worthy of such peace. I am not deserving of such a consolation. Instead I have been given an eternal purgatory. Ironic that Death should not care to grace me, when I have forever existed in her shadow, known by some as her very personification. Irony. A thing that has showered my entire occupancy of earth.

But what are these ramblings of the masquerade of live and death? Such a thin line exists between the two. Yet that line is all I have ever known. My mind has become a haven to these vagabond thoughts. Crazy? Another perhaps. I shall have to look the word up. There are no definites anymore. Choice, fact, rectitude. They matter not. Now as the warm blanket of lethargy and indifference cloaks me, I have the wonderfully numb feeling of anesthetized indifference. All is about to change. I am going to see her again. Today. Now.

The night is a secret as I step into the dark blighted street. I lead Caesar, my fate-chained companion with through the muffled conversation of the darkness. The wind swirls with a whisper, an echo of a horrid memory. The wind. Like my thoughts. The way they ribbon through the dull torrent of my conscious. I gaze up the broken mirror in the sky; those little pinpricks of light tauntingly fluttering in their mockery. The are simply another reflection of my loss. But what matters the winds or the stars? They too are only decorations in this masquerade.

My perceptive senses (which I have never successfully established as either blessing or curse) guide me through the darkness. I look for the home that marks itself as Christine's. There it is. Just there, through that jail-like gate lies the sanctuary of the one thing that may remedy my ailments. Her. I just want to see her. Just a glance could relent my sufferings, I'm sure. Whether it will completely cure my sickness, I do not know. But it will alleviate the symptoms. It must. It will.

I tie my destiny-shackled horse outside her residency. It is the pit of night. No one will notice him. And if they did, what would it matter? Like a compressed spring gaining its freedom, I shoot over the impregnable gate that lies between me and my beautiful elixir. I enter onto the lawn of the vast residency, the grassy pasture decorating her home. Even in the darkness of light, the moon reflects the brilliant color of the lights delicate flowers. Such remembering beauty marks the stony gate. It is apropos. She always liked those roses I used to pay her my compliments. They were the only embodiment of my affections I dared to give. And still, every year, despite the admonitions of certain interfering ballet instructors, I leave her one at her door as a reminder that I have not forgotten her.

I examine the door to her place of residency, that icy monolith. I work at the door. It is stiff and belligerent. Like everything else in this dismal existence it wishes to deny me my only desire, cementing itself to the ground. I am sure her husband has locked it, thinking to keep me away.

But I have been kept away too long.

I toil at the door under the moonlight, digging up every memory of the past form the distant abyss which is my mind. In the deep core of night I work. Work to remember. Work to forget. Work to recover something lost to me. My façade of life. My façade of love. Yet I wonder if these are worth my pride. Such a question to be wondering at this time of night, yet when else does dare when to ask them? Yes, my mind says, of course. No pride existed to begin with. How may one indulge in the sin of pride when one has nothing of which to be proud?

There! It is unlocked. I can feel myself growing agitated with expectancy like an opium addict waiting for his next trip. I must have my drug. I will have it now. I am so close. There lies the door to her room. Such elaborate designs, such distinct rivers in the wood. I stare for a moment at its beauty, thinking on the incomparableness of the beauty which lies behind it. I gently crack it open as to not disturb its inhabitant.

A stifle a moan that results from the ecstasy of pleasured shock.

An ethereal visage stars back at me, lying in tranquil slumber. Chocolate curls frame the oleander white face. The wraithlike hands are interlaced in careful neglect above the still frame. The body itself! I have read the tales of dreaming princesses in their peaceful repose. Yet no Snow White would dare compare herself to the rose-like innocent of this sleeping beauty. For a moment I cannot help but stare. It is a natural reflex prone to emerge in anyone who beheld such a Euphrosyne.

I reach down to touch her cool cheek. Soft, like the lip of a rose blossom. This is too much. I am overdosing on my elixir. I must take all of her. The cinnamon rivers brush past my face as I gently pick up her dainty frame. Europhrosyne though she might be, she will always remain my Persephone. For that I am truly regretful. I have bound her, in this life and the next. Selfishness has been my incessant dominator. Yes, I have been selfish. And I will continue to be so now. Chained to darkness may be my goddess' fate. But my angel will have a ceremony of light.

Madame Giry entered the still smoldering building. Ashes lay strewn about the entire vicinity like black remnants of destruction. Dying sparks of the debris fought nobly for life. Cautiously, the dignified woman found her way through the piles of rubble.

Such as waste…She surveyed the scene sadly, remembering the days she had spent in the opera house that now lie in ruins. Incredible. I knew of his illness, but to this extent? After all these twenty six long years it finally comes to this. She shook her head, attempting to ignore the horror of the facts. Erik had been chronically depressed, she knew. After convincing him to see a doctor, she had adamantly begged to take his medication. Yet he always refused, claiming there was only one prescription which could cure him, and that was rare indeed. He had been stoic in the beginning, recognizing Christine's happiness with the Viscomt. But the day she died his madness had consumed him.

She sighed and glanced down at the newspaper in her hand. The cold black letter screamed the headline, "Opera Popular Mysteriously Incinerated" the accompanying article, "Grave of Viscomtess Distrurbed." No one would ever detect the connection. All those involved were either dead or had banished the memories. What a sad ending to it all.

Giry shook her head. She wondered whether the bodies would ever be found. What a story they would tell. She viewed the hypothetical headline. "Obsessed Lover Commits Arson As Finally Sacrament." Erik had incinerated Christine's body and himself in a last attempt for release. Giry contemplated the morbid ending to this gothic romance, and felt a strange fascination swell. Grusome yes, but incomprehensible? Not after she had known the man whose sufferings consumed his entire life, and had ultimately driven him to such a means of atonement. If they only knew...

Her reverie was suddenly interrupted. Two men in suits approached her. The taller one reached to kiss her hand.

"Bonjour, Madame Giry."

"Bonjour Monsieur Firmin."

"Although these circumstances of our meeting are…saddening, I am glad to see you again all the same. There is someone I would like you to meet." He directed her gaze toward his companion.

"Madame Giry, meet Monsieur Leroux, lead investigator."

"Pleased to meet you," she said with a bow.