Regardless of what his looks might suggest, the truth was that Erik was a man. With the exception of his outer appearance, Erik had the same as any other man: two lungs, one heart, a stomach, intestines, blood and everything else, all working in the order they should. And just like any man, he craved the pleasures of life: food, water, a roof above his head and a warm bed on cold nights.
And of course, the company of a lady.
Truly, Erik hated himself for that more than anything: what right, after all, had a wretched creature such as him to claim the pleasures of the flesh? Man or not, Erik was beyond hideous, and he had no right to make a poor, unfortunate woman pass through the shame and disgust of letting his wicked hands touch her. His mind kept telling him such over and over again, yet, his firm pace did not stop until his eyes caught sight of what he had been looking for: the door with the rusty number 3, and the empty place with the paint mark of a 6 beside it.
He entered the room quietly, and closed the door behind him slowly as his eyes adjusted to the annoying gaslight and the odor of cigarettes flooded his senses.
"Ah, there you are, monsieur," came the voice of the lady laying in the bed, with the disgusting lit cigarette still between her fingers before she lit it out on the little table beside the bed and threw it away, "I was starting to wonder if you had changed your mind."
"Not at all," he answered with the calmest voice he could force out of his constricted throat. He cleared his throat as his eyes wandered away from the woman's body, knowing well there was probably nothing under the night robe.
"Good." She smiled at him, and though her teeth were yellow and many of them crooked, Erik's heart beat harder against his chest. He felt like a ridiculous school boy, acting like a nervous teen in spite of being probably around 40 years old.
"Come here, monsieur." Erik stiffly walked to the bed and sat at the border, not facing the woman and letting his twitching hands grip tightly the fabric of his pants over his knees. She crawled to him, and the moment Erik felt the tiny hands resting over his bony shoulders he tensed as a shudder ran down his back, and slowly, oh, so painfully slow the little hands slipped down his chest, trying to take his cloak off. He was momentarily lost in the sensation, not caring at all as the garment fell around his shoulders and pooled around him on the bed. The woman pressed herself on his back, and Erik had to suppress a gasp as he felt her almost-bare chest –and voluptuous. Very voluptuous, he noticed as his mouth went dry-, against him, and everything was bliss. Then he felt her mouth leaving a trace of kisses on his neck, from above the black cloth of his mask, seductively making a path up his face. Her nose suddenly made direct contact with his flesh.
He practically jumped off the bed, and quickly moved a few feet away from her, not daring to look back at the confused woman who was trying to hold back a smirk. First timers were always so cute!
"Do not take any of Erik's clothes off," he demanded, his voice raspy with a mix of passion and rage, trying to control his agitated heart and breathing, "and hear me clear, mademoiselle: you are in no danger with me as long as you do not touch the mask."
The little grin in the corner of the mouth of the woman disappeared instantly, the voice suddenly seemed to have stopped belonging to an angel and instead was that of a demon. She saw the golden eyes of the masked man, glowing behind the mask and under the rim of the hat. She simply nodded.
"Good." He walked towards the bed and sat again, this time facing the woman. She was no exceptional beauty; with her little eyes and dry lips, but her golden hair was precious, even if it was a notorious the little care she took of it. "Undress," He commanded in a severe tone, wanting to be in control, even though his hands were shaking and his palms sweating under his gloves.
The woman did as she was told without a reply, her uninterested mind more concerned about how well this mysterious man was going to pay, and took the robe off to reveal just as he had expected: nothing underneath. His breath caught in his throat and, feeling the heat running up his face and his pants tighter than ever, he let his curious eyes wander freely to their satisfaction. Women were truly living art.
He did not move. He made no sound. He just observed. The woman once again almost chuckled at his innocence, almost expecting him to be drooling behind the mask; he had obviously never seen a woman before. With a mischievous grin, she asked: "do you wanna touch too, monsieur, or do you just wanna look?"
"Erik can… touch…?" he asked, his eyes still glued to her body. Before she could answer, he quickly snapped out of the daydream, "Yes, of course, yes." It took him some more seconds before his left hand shakenly raising and moved forward towards her breast, but it stopped mid-track. The woman was about to ask if everything was alright, when she saw him quickly taking off his leather glove. She looked at the bare hand in front of her; skinnier beyond words yet very manly, unlike any other hand she had seen before. His skin also had a yellowish glow, but she decided to blame that on the lights.
"Come, monsieur, it is alright," she urged him: she was not going to spend her whole night with a single client just because he was nervous. Seriously, with all the time he was taking, perhaps they could be over with this already; she was really craving a cigarette right now. Erik let his naked hand take her in one quick move, and she gasped at the unexpected death grip of his hand. Erik jerked his hand away at her reaction, but she quickly took it in hers and put it back on the same place.
"You are quite cold, monsieur, that is all" she said, letting a small smile appear in her face. Erik did not reply.
As he grew confident, he became absorbed in the movements of his hand –to which the second hand quickly added on the other breast, addicted to the sensation of the soft, warm flesh-, observing her pink nipples hardening at the contact of his death bare fingers over them, circling them, pinching them, massaging them, adoring and worshipping her body with gentle yet curious and desperate caresses. And then the most marvelous of sounds came from the mouth of the woman: a little, feminine moan. His eyes quickly left her breasts to look at her, and repeated the actions with his fingers, this time watching her face as the sound repeated. Her face was flushed and her eyes were closed; her brow furrowed in silent satisfaction, and in that moment, she looked beautiful. No, beyond beautiful, she looked like the most astonishing woman to ever walk this earth! And the fact that he, a wretched creature like him, was able to make her produce such sound and expressions brought tears to his eyes.
She snapped her eyes open at the moment she heard his little sob.
"Monsieur! Are you alright? Is it…?" she was cut off by his sudden embrace, cold as death. The man was painfully thin, but she could not have cared about that in that moment even if she had tried. In all her years of experience, many men had come to her looking for the same thing. Each and all of them had their own preferred thing: soft kisses, no talking, lots of foreplay, swearing and screaming, submission, control, etc. Yet, none of them had ever asked for what Erik asked that night, and she would surely never forget it.
He asked for each and all of the candles to be lit out, and the curtains to be closed, until the densest of darkness surrounded them. She could not see a thing, except for the pleading glow of his cat-like eyes. And then they just laid in bed, tangled and undressed.
He did nothing else, besides tightly embrace her and put his masked head against her chest, listening to her heart as his other hand wandered from time to time around her hair and body, leaving soft caresses while he hummed tenderly on her skin. That night she could feel him; his bare need firmly pressed against her thigh, yet he did nothing. He seemed to enjoy merely the feel of her with him, and she had the strong feeling that the man had probably never been loved in his life: he had to recur to the lowest parts of town and the lowest kind of women just to hold someone in his arms. The thought brought tears to her eyes.
She forbid herself to weep in his presence, and instead gently whispered for permission to do the only thing she knew that could please a man. He merely nodded his head slightly –and she, for an insane moment, had thought that she had felt no nose under the cloth he wore over the head and that pressed against her chest-, but when she tried to move, his embrace only tighten more.
"Stay," he whispered, his angelic voice quivering, "please, do not leave Erik yet."
And the tears had been unavoidable then, and she had to hide her face against the flat pillow so he wouldn't feel her tears, as her hand slipped down between the two of them, looking for him. When it was over, quicker than with most men, she was the one to hold him now, as her lips left gentle kisses on the top of his nearly bald head, and their quiet sobs mingled and fuse into one.
She fell asleep with his languid, bony, and cold arms around her, but by the time the sun rose, he was gone. His money laid guiltily in the table besides the bed, and never before did she find the image of the shiny coins so disgusting; feeling, for the first time, that she had no right for any payment. Accepting the money felt like taking food from the starved.
As years passed, she never forgot the mysterious man, in hopes to one day hear his heavenly voice whisper sweet nothings in her ear again, but when she saw the simple, inexplicable announcement on the newspaper one morning, she knew she would never meet the man again.
And she wept over the printed letters on the paper, over a man whose face she never saw, and now would never know.