Disclaimers: I don't own The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. (I don't own Phantom by Susan Kay either—and don't particularly want it)
Additional Disclaimer: BleedingHeartConservative does not intend to promote any one particular religion. If you'd rather not read something with spiritual overtones, you might just skip this one.
Author's Note: This is something I wrote a while back and postponed posting. I figured I'd just go ahead and share it, despite its... well... strange qualties. Assume mostly a Leroux Erik and a Leroux novel-ending, but with a bit of Kay history thrown in for... well... no good reason other than self-gratification.
Erik crawled into his coffin beneath the Opera for the last time that evening, taking with him the score to Don Juan Triumphant. He closed his eyes and drew a shuddering breath. He expected tears to flow, for he had been unhappy all his long life, but none came. He lay quietly, felt his heart slow, heard his body gasp, felt it shudder. Then all was darkness and the pain he had suffered every day was suddenly no more.
There was a silence like none he could remember and he wondered that his consciousness seemed intact. Then the darkness was no more for everything was blindingly white, even behind his closed lids. He opened his eyes—or maybe they had been open all along, for nothing changed. He pushed himself upwards and tried to look around. He was certain he'd died lying on his back, but now he seemed to be prone for he felt a solid surface against his chest and arms and in extending his arms, he rose upward and brought himself to his knees. The coffin was nowhere to be seen. Neither was the rest of his room in the fifth cellar.
In fact, there was nothing to be seen. It was a blank expanse of nothingness. Purgatory, he thought. It was not enough to suffer on earth, but now he was to suffer the burning away of the impurities wrought by those dark deeds he had committed while he walked the surface. That, at least, would have purpose, as his life had not. His life had been one long sob, endlessly seeking comfort, always denied it and committing atrocities along the way in loneliness, fear, rage, and spite. At least at the end of this, there might be peace at last.
He slowly became aware of a gathering about him. He could see nothing, but he could feel the presence of several beings assembled around him, seemingly calmly waiting for something. He got to his feet and tried to face the creatures that surrounded him but could see nothing. Whatever they were pushed closer. Surely from this proximity they could do him harm if they wished, but he felt no panic: a most peculiar situation.
He felt rather than heard the greeting as he was welcomed back to a place he was certain he had never been, was called a strange appellation that was decidedly not his name.
"Erik," he tried to tell them. His words were mere thoughts, conveyed the way theirs were. He looked downward to assure himself of his own existence and was not at all reassured, for still he saw nothing but blinding light.
Meanwhile, emotions and nuances came alive and contorted themselves into words, solely to please him. If it pleases you, we shall call you by your human name until you readjust.
Readjust?
To the presence.
He was quiet a moment to ponder this. The presence... of what? Or whom? A god? He would have laughed had he not been so perplexed. G-d was construct created by man in man's own image for those too weak-minded to simply bear their pain in miserable silence. And yet the alternative was that he was still alive and this was a deranged fantasy of his disturbed mind. But no. He had felt the body dying all around him....
Another glance about him prodded him to precarious belief. Peace. Light. This place was something like Heaven. All I have done in my miserable life, and I am in Heaven?
Something rejoiced about him. You have returned.
He moved as though to shake his head, considering this. It was not possible. A moment ago, he was alive. He had never been here before. But as he said—or somehow conveyed—the thought, he had the notion that it was not entirely accurate; he had certainly been here before, though probably only in a dream.
His vision adjusted and he was able to look about himself. He made out the forms, though not the faces, of the creatures that surrounded him. 'Creatures' was the word he used, for they were clearly not human, not by even the loosest definition. Their bodies, if bodies they could be called, seemed made of light. They were neither white nor gold but the color of a candle, intensified infinitely, uniformly as tall as he with enormous appendages extending in an arc. He had a terrible thought: Angels.
There would surely be some terrible punishment for that terrible lie. It was a sin to lie, yes. It was perhaps a greater sin for a human to call itself an angel. It was Sin beyond compare for a demon to even dream it.
You had no need to pretend it, they said, and they called him that strange name that seemed entirely made of vowels.
Erik, he corrected. It is Erik. Why do you call me— he hesitated even to think the strange appellation.
It is the proper Name, the respectful way to address the Angel of Music.
Erik scoffed inwardly despite knowing that the strange beings seemed to be able to read his thoughts. Such silly tales young human females might believe in their desperation, but even a sinner like himself would not expect that real angels could fall for such nonsense.
The beings exchanged worried thoughts involving how long before his human memories fell away.
Erik wanted to rage at them that he was listening, that he heard their every thought, but a calm descended over him. Even so, the human left in him scoffed. Surely you do not believe me fool enough to trust that I have become an angel!
Become? He felt a sensation like hands on his shoulders, except the beings had no hands and he had no shoulders.
Erik. We shall call you Erik until you remember it all. You are as you have always been, even after length of a human lifetime.
Surely if he had ever been an angel there would have been no use for spending the length of a human lifetime on earth. This thought floated through rapidly and dissolved into the ether followed quickly by another: Next they shall be saying I fell. Next they shall compare me to Lucifer. Heaven is no different than earth, for even in Heaven I am compared to the Devil!
To fall is different than to leap.
To leap? He'd done it to himself then? For what purpose? Why would he—why would anyone choose to suffer?
It did not go as expected, he conveyed.
A human body simply cannot contain the splendor of your glory, nor can the human eyes perceive it. The result was somewhat unsettling to mankind.
Somewhat? The part of him that still called himself Erik scoffed while a deeper and more profound being within stirred and questioned 'to mankind?'
To us, you have always retained your majesty.
A warm glow suffused whatever his substance was at the words. Majesty. Such a word!
They exchanged thoughts again: all this for the sake of one innocent human girl, Christine Daaé.
Ah, how he remembered that name!
It was at her father's request that you went, you recall.
He felt he could not remember it, clung for a moment to the idea that he had never heard her father's voice. He suddenly had memories that he felt should not be his, but they mingled with those he knew belonged to him, and he could not tell them apart. Among those memories were the old Swedish fiddler's concerns for his young daughter, imploring him.
No, it isn't possible. A man, perhaps. A monster, quite possibly. But an angel I cannot believe I am. Not even a fallen angel could commit the terrible atrocities I have!
Not fell. Leapt.
and
Who is to say what is terrible?
Who is to say? I shall say! I lied to the poor girl! How was that to help her?
What lie did you tell?
That I was the Angel of Music. Ah. But that was the Truth, was it not? Even so. I put her through something very like hell.
You gave her life.
I nearly killed her fiancé!
The boy loved her all along. Now they both know it for certain.
Erik had the strange sensation he was arguing with himself. He was no longer certain which thoughts were his own, nor was he certain which argument was stronger, which he preferred.
Christine Daaé became irrelevant. The salvation of Christine—though it had meant all the world to him when he lived—could not possibly the rest of his ill-led life justify to a heavenly being. Inwardly, he drew back with distrust. I killed Giovanni's daughter. I killed Luciana.
The natural thing to do after confessing this terrible deed seemed to be to fall to his knees, wrap his arms around his head and sob, but he was suddenly very aware of having no knees, no arms, no eyes. Was it even possible to sob?
Instead he glanced down and saw time lying beneath him like a heap of thread. He reached out with a thought and lifted a strand.
Ah, poor Luciana, who would have died the same day of fever had there never been a young man named Erik. He remembered at once the fever, the elixir, the fact that she had been sent home early when the Sisters at the school fell ill. Had he not left town immediately after her death he might have learned of the epidemic that raged through the town, claiming the life of the man he would have called father. One way or another, Luciana would have died that day, but she could have died in all her vanity and having never experienced love. Instead... yes, fear and pain, but emotion that counterbalanced selfishness and narcissism. Either way she would have died. He remembered the broken body. Rapid; not the slow suffering of the fever.
He steeled himself against the thought. All the same, he himself had suffered.
Perhaps you will recall in time why you went. It might have been their words, might have been his own thoughts. He couldn't tell for certain. You said that it would help you understand the human tendency toward sin.
If he'd had any physical eyes to speak of, he'd have rolled them upward in acknowledgement. That certainly made sense. There was nothing he understood if not sin!
But it did not account for the lives of the others! It could not account for the lives he took in Persia.
He struggled a moment to retain the autocracy that humanity allowed him, limiting though it was.
There was silence, then it came to him slowly like a memory. Those were condemned to die anyway. He had used it to rationalize on earth long enough, but at last he saw the value of something larger. If he had not been involved, the Khanum would have arranged for someone else to carry out their deaths and the blood would on that man's hands. It was a wonder and a miracle. Through his terrible deeds he had saved another from the fate of becoming a murderer. Yet what of the Khanum? What of her sins?
At last she made her peace with Allah.
Allah? Then the Persian's faith was correct all along?
Human names are irrelevant. It is merely the Khanum's understanding. She had many terrible things for which to atone. It was through her relationship with you that she came to leave them behind.
Me?
In her way, she loved you. She wished to be worthy of you.
There were hundreds, thousands—an infinite number of questions he could ask of them, but even as questions occurred to him, memories of things like answers slowly flooded in. Raoul and Christine would never have spoken to one another at the Opera had it not been for Christine's triumph that night. Christine's triumph that night could not have happened had it not been for her lessons, and she would have lived a life knowing neither Erik nor Raoul. The threads of time sifted through what his mind still wished to call his fingers, and he saw in her lonely features a sorrow that surpassed that when he had first come to her. He saw her faith fail and her soul fade. He dropped the thread as he reached the part in which she took her own life, and he remembered the scissors in the Louis-Philippe bathroom, the night she struck her head upon the wall. These were things she would have done regardless; how ironic his strange intervention saved her!
He threaded the fingers of his consciousness through the tangled heap of threads. His mother was no better to a fully formed son and the boy suffered mightily but without reason and without the righteous indignation that drove him to hope of escape. Without the intervention of the runaway Erik, a man named Javert would have lived—and harmed many. Giovanni and Luciana passed before his eyes, slipped through his fingers, and their lives and deaths suddenly full of meaning that could not have been without his influence. Had the life of Erik not been lived, what purpose would Nadir have had after the death of Rookheeyah? What terrible monstrosity would Charles Garnier have constructed instead of the monument they erected together and how would it—and he—have ended? What of Jules, and of his children? Each thought was answered as quickly as it was asked, for one had only to select a thread. There were others... Oh! So many countless others! He saw the meaning in each one and he remembered...
The feeling was not so strange now, this feeling of being somehow attached to and a part of the others. Their voices faded to a dull murmur in his mind as though they had been a part of him all along, and they had. He looked upward and outward and at once and the magnificent expanse of all the universe was his to behold. It was beautiful, yet so was the memory of his human life and his experiences there. The light within and without glowed still more intensely, overflowing from within. There were not words to express the emotion but a sound broke forth—a sound that surpassed any earthly sound.
The Angel itself spread what we mere humans would call wings and beat the air, ascended, spiraling upward, crying out—not from lips or throat or even heart but from that for which there are no earthly words—something that humans in our finite consciousness might loosely translate as Father, but encompassing all the emotions associated with father and mother and love and joy, I am at last home!
The nervousness and worry fell away from the other angelic beings gathered there. The Angel of Music had surely at last returned, they acknowledged with joy.
Music, from that point forward, became more poignant than ever before, imbued with the passion of humanity combined with the splendor of the Divine.
End note: Though this piece is a little saccharine, reviews are nonetheless appreciated and therefore encouraged.