Caution: Do not read this while you are alone in the house at night, because I swear, it'll scare you to death…enjoy!
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Hmm hm hm hmmm…
Tristan and Isolde. The classic romantic tradgedy. One cannot expect much more from an opera, and certainly not a happy ending.
She sat there, humming, her little feet dangling a few inches from the carpet, an aria all to herself.
She looked up and frowned. He wasn't home yet.
Hmm hm hm hmmm…
Poking at her pastry, she kicked her feet slowly against the table legs. Always a child at heart, she remained little more than a child in proportions. A small, fragile little lady, twenty, going on ten. Dressed in the pastel frills a little girl loves, blue eyes set off by the pearls in her jewelry, humming, aimlessly now, distracted.
"I wonder…"
She had not meant to speak aloud in her empty house…humming.
Slowly, she walked about the living room, touching those things that were hers, humming. Those gentle watercolors, posies and daffodils and sunshine on meadows, china vases, dried roses, pink as they were when taken from their bush and prepared to last a lifetime, and none so fresh as the day they were picked. Dry, brittle, and less fragrant than the flowers in the garden.
Hmmmm hmm hmm…..hmm hm…
Humming, she tapped her fingers listlessly over the lovely bound books on the shelves. Poetry, plays, literature, history, but no science or philosophy or geography. Nothing to vex the mind. Nothing not belonging to the gentle room and its soft shades of peach and spring green, tinted by sunlight. The large windows were free of their heavy velvet drapes, and only light gauze curtains filtered the sunlight through their flowered patterns, dappled against the pale green walls with their white wedding cake trim of baby's breath and roses in plaster.
Humming, she made some miniscule and uneccesary adjustments to the tiny porcelaine dolls lined up neatly on their shelf, not for playing with, but for looking at only. Delicate, insubstantial, not worth very much (except her Japanese lady with her red kimono; that had cost a great deal and was fastened to the shelf with tiny wires, so as not to be broken).
Humming, she gazed upon the piano, it's now yellowed keys absorbing the soft white light of the sun. The cream colored couches with their blue china wear patterns stood comfortably on the hardwood floor. The pale pink carpet supported her feet as, humming, she walked lightly across the room.
Humming, she sat on one of the sofas and looked through the translucent curtains that softened the garden outside into a world of pinks, greens, lilacs and cottony whites. She watched the peonies sway in a light summer breeze, large white blurs through the curtain. The ornamental cherry tree shed a few fragile blossoms, shaking as if in cold.
Humming, she stood up, her brow furrowed, steepled fingers resting thoughtfully against pale pink lips. She wound up her music box, humming, She turned and executed a series of slow, languid dance steps, trailing her satin slippers over the carpet. The pretty china dishes on the walls reflected the light of the sun, as, humming, she pointed her feet, staring down at them from a new height, then coming back down to her soles. The high ceiling with its pretty little chandelier cradled the humming and sent it back to her.
Hmmm hm, hm hmmmmm…
She tugged at an escaped golden curl, biting her lip, and attempting absently, vainly, to put it back in place, eventually electing to fidget with her earrings instead. Humming, she turned her eyes to the window again, trying to find what it was that bothered her in her soft world of pastel thought and shrouded dreams, soft thinking in her soft chambers. Humming, she twirled, trying to distract herself from the sound, the sound that she was surely imagining. Humming, she twirled faster, more wildly, till, out of control, she collided with the music box on its little white table, and collapsed against the window. Humming. She turned towards the glass, stepping on the fragments of her mechanical angel, its cogs whirring pointlessly. Humming. She thought of the dreams that had plagued her in her waking hours. Humming. She shook her head fiercely then pulled open the gauzy curtains. Humming. She gazed upon her undiluted world, unshadowed by doubt and pretty things.
Hmm hmmm, hmmm hm…hm hm hm…
A body swung from the ornamental cherry tree, decked in its fragile pink blossoms.
Humming.
She swung round and stared at the white double door that led to the outside. Humming. She backed against the window. No maids in the house. No charwoman. No cook. No butler. No help of any kind, hired or otherwise. Humming. The sound she knew too well.
Humming.
The sound she'd begun to hear only a week ago, alone in her room.
Humming.
The sound she'd heard all morning, had chalked up to loneliness, repressed guilt, anything.
Humming.
Anything at all to stop her from coming upon the truth…for if she admitted it…
Humming.
The sound she knew from hours of lessons, walks by the lake, outings in his carriage, the constant presence of soft music.
Humming.
The sound she'd heard as she'd come upon him, kneeling over a corpse in his torture chamber, a nameless face, and his detached expression.
Humming.
"Come now my dear. Don't be so childish. You are ill, that is all."
Humming.
Now a different tune. The death scene from Aida, perhaps.
Humming.
"Now then, you know that Erik would be very upset if you left him for a little thing like this. Besides…"
Humming.
It twirled within her brain, like smoke in the darkness, or seeds in the wind...or blood in water…
Humming.
"It wasn't any fault of mine. One has a right to protect his own home, his own…" He looked at her, strangely. "Interests."
Humming.
So strangely beautiful and frightening.
Humming.
"Come now Christine, you know how Erik loves you, how he would die for you…"
Humming.
Quieter.
Humming.
"A little faith my child"
Humming.
Closer.
Humming.
"Yes, I do see that a mistake might be made"
"You know how easy it is to make a mistake Christine."
"And you know, I play with too dangerous a fire for my mistakes to be small, inconsequential."
"The same with you my dear, I'm afraid"
"I would hate for you to make such a mistake"
"Don't ever give me any reason to make one myself"
"Remember that Christine."
"Don't ever give me a chance to make a mistake."
The humming was silent.
"You will regret it for the rest of your time amongst the living…possibly even after that."
The silence stretched on.
She let out a sigh of relief.
The door opened.
And Christine began to scream.
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The End