A/N: Where better to go than Phantom when your heart is breaking?
oOoOoOo
I feel empty.
Not in the sense of loss, but as if there was nothing there to begin with, and finally I'm being reminded of that sobering fact after a few years of being distracted from my own emotions.
The gold ring on my finger is heavy, the strength required to lift my left hand seemingly insurmountable. My vision grows hazy and what little food I eat tastes of ash.
I know that I am dying. Slowly, but steadily, my body is collapsing in on itself, having lost the will to continue, just as I have.
When you love someone so much that the air around you turns cold when they are not by your side, there is no point to the strange and savage endeavor that is living, once they have decided to leave for good. It would be a farce, at best, and not one with a happy ending.
Now that my Don Juan is complete and its inspiration whisked from beneath its fervid glare, I have taken to leaving the mask off, as if perpetually preparing to sleep. Indeed, it is a surprise when I open my eyes to another day.
Or night, as it were. It makes no difference here.
Bare-faced and broken-hearted, I await the day that I will never have to lift that hand again, and when death, the only kind lover I have ever known, kisses me at last.
Just a handful of kisses in a lifetime. Fitting for a monster.
Perhaps when I am long gone, and my body finally matches my necrotic face, people will look upon me and merely wonder as to the life I lived, rather than wondering why I was allowed to live at all.
Perhaps, since all men are equal in death, they will look upon me and claim that I must have been a handsome fellow in life, curious as to how many kisses I must have accumulated in my seasoned time upon Earth.
The answer is more abysmal than even I dare contemplate for too long.
A handful, hardly big enough to toss to the wind. That's all I've ever deserved.
And that's all I will ever receive.
I'm ready to be kissed again for the last time, as my mother would not and Christine could not.
We are ready to say our vows to eternity, my golden ring and I.