Life is unfair.
Carlotta sat before her dressing room mirror, ornate knife before her.
There was no use to life, she'd decided. No matter what you did, no matter how hard you worked, the fall was always there. The fall was always the same. Of course, Carlotta did not know that the fall was the same, for everyone, every time – this was her first time experiencing the Sorrow. She didn't realize that she wasn't the only one feeling this pain. There were millions more, at any given time. In many ways, Carlotta was a child. Everything had always gone her way. And if it hadn't? She'd throw a tantrum.
But the tantrum hadn't worked this time.
Before, when the incapable little brat – Christine – had been trying to steal the limelight, Carlotta had just been angry. How dare they simply… replace her! That was before this incident – the toads... her voice… Well, Christine had won the battles and the war. Carlotta could accept this. What she couldn't accept was Christine. She couldn't accept her demotion. She couldn't accept her own defaced image.
Carlotta stared into the mirror. A hideous beast. Was that all that she was? But in Carlotta's limited world, the mirror could tell no lies… and what was the mirror telling her? To Carlotta, the reflected image showed a once beautiful woman, tears ruining her mascara, which was now slowly dripping down her face in two dark lines, face red and blotchy with the heat of her discomforting tears… the scene – her ruination – began to replay in Carlotta's mind. That haunting laughter…
Yes, her treatment of Christine had certainly been lacking. But was this God's way of getting even? All she'd ever used against Christine were words… Like Cain and Abel. And was Christine not the devil's tool?
It mattered not. Because now Christine had everything and Carlotta nothing. Everything and everyone sympathized with Christine, seer of hallucinations. Even Raoul. But that was to be expected, Carlotta thought, bitterly smiling. She glanced at her face in the mirror again, and the smile became even more menacing. Her fine features and fine voice, combined in the perfection of acting and music in everything that embodied the arts and beauty… and in one evening, it had all been ruined. And what did I do? Nothing.
And it all started one day with the myth of the phantom…Carlotta didn't speculate the phantom she knew to be a myth, however real he may or may not have been.
At this deliberation, Carlotta's eyes grew wide, the pretense of herself as a monster dropped. She had thrown away her entire career for a rumor.
Sorrow having fled for the moment, Anger took its chance and possessed Carlotta.
She snarled at herself, reflected in the mirror.
She grabbed the knife.
She shattered the mirror in a fit of rage.
Who's to say that it shan't be useful when Sorrow finally returns…?