Too Late
"No, Raoul!" Snowflakes stung my eyes, but I could not escape the sight-the sickening nightmarish sight… the flash of steel… the grind of metal on bone…"No!" my scream died on the wind
The bastard… my vision reddening, body heavy as lead…. Sound echoed as if in the catacombs, echoes of a female scream… So even as I lay dying, she still loved another… would ride off with that contemptible boy? Even in this, my last visage of hopelessness, God would have no mercy… I prayed that the devil look upon me with kindness…
If you have ever seen a rat, skewered to the floor by a mouse trap, you will know my agony…. I flew to him without knowledge of how I got there-it was as if I had been blinded to Raoul, to that snowy cemetery, to the rest of the world…"NO, no…please…"The blade made an unpleasant sound as I tugged it free as gently as I could, tears obscuring my vision. Blood spilled over his brocade waistcoat, steaming as it dripped onto the snow…
As sure as there was a God, this was an angel of my Christine… my mother? Agony and torment and sheer exhaustion took me into their mighty arms… So, Death had finally come for me… but a moment with this angel… This was heaven, this was bliss…
My chafed hands were painted scarlet as I tried to staunch the flow, the deathly liquid pooling at my knees. I became all too aware of a queasy feeling rising from the pit of my stomach, but beat it back in panic. "Raoul, you have to get help!" He stared at me, as though struck dumb by my purely human feelings of compassion. "Go!" I screamed at him and turned away, pawing helplessly at my fallen angel… Seconds later, hoof beats pounded behind me, scattering snow and ice across the back of my cloak. I hardly cared…
I watched his retreat with half glazed eyes, my mouth frozen to the ground, breath melting into ice. My eyes caught the angel of light before me, and I grasped her cold, human skin, coated scarlet to the skin of porcelain coating me. I wanted her to know… in those perfect, aching moments…
He… he wanted me to… No, it wouldn't come to that! I wouldn't let it… Tugging my hand away, I blinked back steamy hot tears and threaded my fingers through his hair… snowflakes had begun to settle onto the ebony strands, making it seem as though he'd aged twenty years. The bursts of fog hovering above his face grew fainter and fainter…." Angel… try… please, please try…"
"My-my… Chri… please. I need… I nee… you…" Numb now, I laughed at my weakness, my own pain… unable to handle a wound from a soft boy's sword…
His eyes began to flutter; with a cry of desperation, I shook him awake. He wouldn't… not here… not in this frozen hall of death… "Can you walk?"
"I… I-will –"I could hardly breathe, liquid rattling in my lungs… The pain was hardly evident, thank God for that…and she had wrapped a piece of fabric around my bloodied chest…. And I could still feel the aching draining as I forced this cumbersome body to stand. Black stars clouded my vision as a sensation of falling gripped my every nerve…
He collapsed against me, and I stumbled backwards, fighting to support him. For five long minutes I dragged him up the steps to my father's mausoleum, his body deadweight on my aching shoulder. It was better inside-not warm, but better. It took every ounce of my strength to lower him to the floor gently…
I grasped her arm as firmly as was humanly possible and put her hand to my mask, every moment a torture…"Please-m-my-m-Chris-Christine…"Every word fire, every move an eternity of agony. I needed her to know that hideous creature inside that she had so claimed to love… I needed hope… that she… that we…"chr-pl-I-am…dying…" But I wanted to say more, romance her, and show her the pleasures of a worldly life…
A sob left my throat. "You're not dying!"My eyes searched the chamber franticly, finally settling upon the expanse of linen stretched across the altar. Praying for forgiveness, I tugged it to the floor and smothered the wound with it-instantly, the fabric was clotted with blood. "I-I can take you back home; Madame will know what to do…. You won't…" The tears were coming harder and harder, and I could barely speak. Yet he still clutched my hand to the ivory mask. "Angel, p-promise me!" My throat closed with each desperate sob. "Promise you won't die here…"
She thought of me still as an Angel? My little Cherí, frantic over this…"Chr… Christine. I need- you to –to-s-see-who… who this…-who I…"Someone to know… someone to see me for what I was… a monster, yet so much more...
His voice was thick, and I could see a drop of blood form at the corner of his lips. With a terrified shudder I realized how pale he was- the ivory mask and the waxen tint of his skin were almost indistinguishable. The leather glove felt cold as he gripped my hand with diminishing strength. Trembling like the snowflakes outside, I curled my fingers under the porcelain shell and gave a gentle tug…
I clenched my fists in futile rage, all instincts pushing her away with all of my strength… Naked, abandoned, I was frightened, for her sense, and for my sanity…Turning the abomination away from her, I heard a gasp, the cool touch of her fingers… Her tiny hand dancing over my scarred flesh…
I had not laid eyes on him since that morning, underground. He had terrified me then, yet now I saw only fear and anguish. Raoul had told me his story only the night before, and for hours I had lain awake, grieving for him…He stiffened as I gently caressed each of his scars, turning his face towards me until I could see his eyes. For this expanse of damaged flesh, he had been cast out, tormented, and hounded to within an inch of his sanity… I saw tears glittering beneath his eyes…
Was I a man or a child? She had said nothing, only touching me… there… How revolting I must be to her! Better that she leaves me in anguish, to crawl to my frozen death, hunted like a wounded beast, crimson soaking the snow in gory splendor…
Keeping my eyes wide open, I lowered my lips to the leathery, deadened skin, kissing away the tracks of salt… "Mon Ange…" I wouldn't lose him. I wouldn't let go of my life's one light. Lord, please…
My heart stopped. She… She… But… Her auburn locks falling onto my cheek, her gilded emerald gazing into my eyes. .. Her lips, firm and subtle on the dead skin of horror…. Could this be…? Was it even possible? Numbness was pierced by the sickening sensation of draining… "Has the bleeding slowed, Angel?"
The horrifying reality of the present swooped back upon me like a passing shadow, and with new terror I turned my gaze to the linen clutched in my stiffening fingers. With a gasp, I snapped my eyes shut- the fabric was saturated with a thick scarlet liquid, and a large pool on the floor was steadily expanding… My jaw trembled as I bit back desperate tears…. This could not be happening…. I would remain calm. For him, I would remain calm.
As I watched her, her jaw clenched in pain, her eyes full of horror, I knew. Take me to Madame, my love… Let me not die in this place of torment…. Fading into the shadow, numb frozen hell around me... I love her…
He was wilting visibly, I couldn't keep him here…alone in desolation…"Ange…" My breath shuddering, I lowered myself to the floor, cradling his poor face with my crimson hands… the blood spilled on the floor, the linen lay forgotten… Somehow, we both knew it no longer mattered.
Her hands, so soft, so warm and gentle… How could I ever have deserved such kindness, such warmth from such a beauty? I had slain… willfully taken lives… I lay dying, damned for eternity… Morphine… I wanted morphine…
He murmured something, his beautiful voice now nothing more than a hum in his throat. Biting back a sob, I threw myself forward, my lips finding his mouth…
The world stopped, for a moment, my aching body was still. Her warm… Her soft…
He was going to die. He was going to die, and nothing I could say or do would stop that. In that single moment of realization, my childhood withered and died, and with it, my innocence. I was no longer a little girl, living on dreams and fantasies… I was a woman.
I closed my eyes and let her fingers caress me, let her hands roam my body… the first and last time. I couldn't… I wouldn't stop my muscles from tensing to her touch… though it was like lava burning each nerve… I was weakening- Morphine… please, end this quickly, Hades… God of Death…