This was my first Fanfiction. I am QUITE aware of its stupid plot, dumb situations and somewhat horrible grammar. I started working on this in 2007. It's not by best piece. But, it might still be worth reading. I keep it on here to remind myself what NOT to do. It's still a fun read, though :).



It had been one year. One year since she left me. One year since the Opera Populaire expanded an extra three floors, and several rooms wider. One year since... Christine has died. Raoul had died.

I never found out how or why Christine had died.

Raoul on the other hand, had been shot. He bled to death. Christine had been devastated in Heaven, I'm sure. I certainly wasn't. He deserved it, in my eyes.

But, of course, my eyes weren't always the most reliable.

She would have given up all of her dreams for him. She was willing to live in my Hell with me, then have her precious Raoul die.

I had been cruel. She had seen my evil side. I have not loved for so long, I would have done anything to make her mine. I needed her. She did not need me. She needed Raoul. Raoul would give her the love she deserved. I was a monster. A monster that deserves to be chained and hidden into the basements of the Opera.

Many consider me a genius. A musical genius. Madame Giry told me that I write entire operas for the house that made the spectator's jaws drop. The performers were spectacular. The lights. The dancers. The beautiful curly-haired woman singing... entrancing my mind into a state of ecstasy.

But she was behind me now. I had nearly killed myself over my loss of her. I threatened myself with guns and knives... all to fail because I still thought there was hope. Hope that she may come back for me.

Deep down, there was no hope.

I guess you could say I moved on. I still have somewhat of a feeling for Christine, but it is fading. Over the years of my wretched life, I have learned to let things go easier. I have learned to forgive the way the people at the circus had beaten me. I don't know how... but it doesn't bother me much more.

Or maybe I am just lying to myself... Who knows? I lie to myself almost all the time.

The scars are the only thing I still hate. Then again, I also hate how cruel and hateful my soul is. How I kill. How I am a monster to some, a God to others.

I leaned my head on the back of my chair. Writing music was so much easier when I had something going on with my life. There was nothing. A blank, empty, hole. It had been this way ever since I sang my last song before Christine had left. An abyss of boring emptiness.

The Opera Populaire definitively was not abandoned. I had been writing operas, story after story, for the house. The house was under new management, after an unfortunate accident. One of the owners hurt his back when he tripped down the stairway. The other broke his arm when the man who fell down the stairs landed on him at the base of the stairs.

None of the singers had impressed me. They had enormous shoes to fill, with Christine being the expectation bar. Some of the dancers were very talented, particularly a little, seventeen-year-old girl named Denise Derri. She showed great potential to be an amazing ballerina. I wish she would sing. Just one note? I seem to have hope for great dancers to be amazing singers.

For good reason.

I sit alone in my lair now... the trickle of a small water fountain falling into my own little river being the only sound. My pen had stopped writing lyrics to my latest serenade. My mind was too lost . Lost somewhere. What was this feeling? My eyes burned, and I found it getting harder to move swiftly through the stone floors of my lair.

Drowsiness. I was... sleepy. I had not felt this feeling for three months. I had not slept in three months, though. Maybe my body was telling me to sleep. Well, yes. That was the point of emotions and feelings, right? To tell me what was going right or wrong in the body?

So I must sleep if I am tired. I have not used the bed that was ready and made for when Christine may have married me since long before Christine came into the picture. When I did sleep, I was usually slumped over in my chair. I had been working on yet another piece of beautiful music. Every few months or so I had a large wave of drowsiness, and I would dose off. I once spilled my ink on my suit, and I was angry about how stupid that was.

I whirled my black cloak as I stood from my chair and turned. I heard some papers from my desk ruffle because of the air moving, then settle once more. I sauntered towards the bedroom. I was in no hurry, for what was there to look forward to with slumber? Unconsciousness. Whoop De Do.

Something caught the corner of my eye. I stepped back from the passed doorway to gaze at the white fabric.

The wedding dress. The one I had made for Christine. It once was worn by the wax doll that I had made of Christine. In anger and betrayal, I had thrown the doll into the deepest part of my lake. It was still in there... I never had the desire nor will to fish it out.

The dress had been saved because I had taken it off. I put effort into that dress... I can make a million dolls. But only one dress exactly like that I can make. It took a lot of time, and the need for me to go up to the surface and into the public eye to buy supplies.

I shook my head to snap myself out of the trance of thoughts. I shoved away the memories that still stung with little stingers. Such as a bee or a jellyfish. Stung me in my heart.

I began to walk faster to my bedroom. I ran away from the memories.

I paused at the door. It was engraved with detailed pictures of angels and flowers. I had taken my knife and began to engrave flames engulfing the angels long ago. I had finished only recently.

The angel in Hell.

I pushed the door open, revealing the bedroom within. The only thing in the small room was a small end table next to a large, dressed bed. I slowly stepped towards it.

What was making me hesitate? It was just a bed, for God's sake! I knelt into the cushions, a knot twisting in my stomach. Fear? Fear of what? Nervousness? I am nervous for a bed. What kind of drama could a bed experience? I do need fresh air.

Fresh air later. Sleep now. I crawled into the bed, not bothering to slip under the covers to stay warm. A monster did not need to be warm.

The knot began to fade. It was soothed with my mind closing, my sight darkening. I sighed one last sigh, and that was he last sound I heard before darkness and silence.


"Hello, demon" she stepped toward me. She was blurry with the tears in my eyes.

"No. Leave. Please, monsieur" I cowered. The man with the whip had been following her... staring at me with big, bug-eyes.

"What is the matter, fool? We offer you a gift. You are so unappreciative, mongrel" The man with the whip held something brown in his hand. I was nervous about what trick he would play on me now.

"a...gift?"

"Yes! Did you not hear him, demon?!" The woman yelled at me, "well?! Answer me!"

"Yes."

"YES WHAT?!"

"Yes, madam" I felt a tear slide down my face. The scars burned with the water, because they had cut them and whipped my face.

"Good, rat. Monsieur, give him the 'gift'. It is probably the best gift he could ever receive!"

Then they laughed. Everybody. Then the man tossed me the brown thing at me, hitting me in the burning face. It hurt even more now that the scratchy fabric had rubbed and hit the wounds.

Everybody left, locking my cage. My boundary from life. A good life, at least.

I looked at the fabric. A bag. A potato sack with two holes cut out where the eyes are supposed to be placed.

Crying, I pulled the bag over my face.

A mask, my first, unfeeling scrap of clothing.