Author: AuditoryEden

Rating: T

Warnings: Character death, angst, blood, violence, insanity

Notes:If you recognize any of the dialogue, it's probably from LND, the appallingly named sequel to PoTO.

THE BEAUTY UNDERNEATH

The Angel of Madness

I do not expect you will believe the story I am going to tell you. It is a fantastical tale, of a romance crossed by stars, and of people beautiful as the stars and ugly as sin, of poor and rich and pauper and prince. Of tragedy, again and again, of moonless skies and points of no return and angels of music. It is a story I should have liked to tell fat grandchildren, sitting around a fire.

This is the story of my father, of me, of a girl, of my mother. Four poor souls, doomed forever by forces unknown and unacknowledged. Two sets of lovers star-crossed to failure and pain and tears.

This is the story of a woman called Christine, Angel of Music, Daée and de Chagny. A man called many things, though his proper name was Erik de Lassy. A girl who had no name and could not have told me if she did. But most of all, and this is because I am doing the telling, this is my story. I am a man, once a boy, who had been called by many named himself, not all of them pleasant, but now and today, I am Gustave de Lassy, and I am the Phantom's Son.

xXx

I am telling this story now, for one reason and one alone. My father, murderer though he may have been, insane, perhaps criminally, was a good man, and a brilliant one. I do not make excuses—I know as well as any other what awful things he did. Brilliance does not make one above the law. But those circumstances which brought him low again and again throughout his life were hardly his fault. My father was more than a mere criminal. He was a genius, a wit and composer and artist.

Had he possessed a normal face I'm sure he would have been dubbed the musical genius of the Century, just as my mother was deemed the soprano thereof. Together, Erik de Lassy and Christine Daée would grace the stage, he handsome, she beautiful, with odd unearthly voices, creating a magic spell over the world and each other. Perhaps they would be lovers, as Carlotta and her Piangi were, or perhaps they would forsake all other things human in pursuit of the music which fed both their souls. Perhaps my parents would have been wed, not estranged, and I would have been born and raised in the Opera Populaire, not the de Chagny country estate.

But I have let my thoughts run away with me again. I digress.

I am telling this story now, for one sole reason. My father, murderer and artiste, is dead, and though it would have pained him to have his secrets revealed, there is too much at stake. I have salvaged his pride by waiting til his decease, until he was buried and gone, by my mother. Another man who factors greatly in the proceedings hence has also died of late, a Raoul de Chagny. I am now free to solve the cases of the Phantom of the Opera and the Fall of Phantasma with no mortification of vanity or privacy.

So here I am, about to spill forth the secrets of my father's life, and mine, for the good of those who would know the truth. I hope the Sûrète are satisfied with this account, for I shall give no other, and I hope they will accept that they now have no man to put up on trial, to punish for his crimes. What better gift can a man give to the man who aided in giving him life, than his own life back? The Surete must be content with knowing the Phantom, Erik de Lassy, my father, is dead, and never will return to haunt those hallowed halls, of the Opera he loved so well.

This story is as much for his good as theirs, though. It is time those who condemn the Phantom as a faceless, ugly murderer who was obsessive and homicidal finally saw the good in him—for while those statements proceeding are certainly true, in many ways the good in his character outweighed the bad. His music, the genius behind the mask. It is time, I think, for the curious case of the Phantom of the Opera to come to a close.

xXx

Let's begin at the beginning, shall we? The beginning of it all.

Once, there was a respected and skilled stone mason who lived in the small village of Lassy, outside of Rouen. He loved a pretty, spoiled girl, also of the village, and when they married she was soon with child. During the course of the pregnancy, they were still heady newlyweds, drinking and sating their every desire. His vices were more varied than hers; she was drunk, once, for a night and day. Then the rush of new marriage wore off, and they prepared to welcome the child into their small family.

But the spoiled woman, so pretty to look at, so pleasant to take, revealed herself to be a terrible choice of bride. She was lazy, she did no work, and she whined about everything. Just before the child was born, he fled, disappearing in the night to ply his craft elsewhere.

Then the child was born, and the woman wished she could run, as her husband had, for this child...this child was missing half his face. His nose was flattened into the flesh of his soft baby cheek, the eye drooping sadly, the corners of his tiny pink lips twisted, the skin of his face angry red and blotchy, with what looked like scabs decorating the demonic surface. Then this child, so terrifying to mother and midwife alike, opened his tiny infant mouth, normal, thank god, and let out a cry of unearthly beauty, like some heavenly babe calling for the angels.

This was more than enough to cause my grandmother to abandon her child, aged only five, to the gypsy fair passing through Rouen, for a small sum of silver, with the only piece of clothing she every made for him, a mask which covered half his face. She had never even named him, allowing the priest of the village to name him instead. So Erik de Lassy was born and named and pushed into the great cruel world.

From there, my father's story is mostly known, so I shall be brief. He spent four years with the gypsy circus, being beaten and starved and displayed. He killed his captor, was rescued by a fifteen-year-old ballet girl, and was hidden in her opera house, where he learned everything, as most curious children are apt to do. He knew his name, and he knew the Opera Populaire. That was enough. But soon, he discovered music. His own voice was beautiful, far too beautiful for him the be the "Devil's Child", as he was known at the circus. He discovered how to sing, and then the violin, the piano-forte, the organ, the cello, every instrument he came into contact with became a force of fascination, driving him to master them in periods of days. And then he began, at the age of fourteen, to compose. I have seen some of his works; I have sung some. They were as wild and strange and frightening as night itself, and driven by emotions too dark to put into words. Some were soft and delicate, like a lace curtain floating on a wind, some vast and bombastic, and all were tinged with a quality that spoke either of genius of insanity. As he grew he became a designer, created costumes and sets, developed a taste for architecture, and submitted a plan for the renovation of the Opera, which was selected from hundreds of others, examined by the contractor, and deemed the best, both structurally and aesthetically.

While the renovation was taking place, he added things here and there, creating the dark world he would inhabit for the next twelve years.

Four years later, a girl was brought to the opera after the untimely death of her father due to illness. This child was only seven years old, and she was sad and dark and terrified, just as he had once been. The little ballet rat, Christine Daée, began to hear the voice of an angel, who told her things and taught her things and sang to her. And so the years passed, until she was sixteen, her voice in full bloom and her heart beginning to stir with yet-unknown feelings for her angel.

Then another man appeared. Vicomte Raoul de Chagny, a childhood friend of my mother's. The great tragedy of the Opera Populaire occurred, the chandelier destroying everything. Christine Daée was engaged to marry Raoul de Chagny. Her wedding day would be tomorrow.

This, you might say, is where my story starts. For that night, the night before her wedding, my mother ran from her fiance's home, and sought out a man that the world thought was dead. She found him in the dark, I have never been told where, and meant to say only goodbye.

That night, I was conceived. In the morning, my father disappeared into the night, my mother woke, discovered his absence, and returned to marry Raoul de Chagny.

She told him she had visited her father's grave, and fell asleep on the steps before it. On her wedding night, she deferred the act of consummation by pretending to have fallen ill. Days later, she finally relented, but she knew, when it was evident that she was with child, that the Phantom was my father.

My father left, mere weeks after I was conceived, for Calais, then for America, with the woman Giry and her daughter.

It was cold the night I was born, not surprising because it was midwinter. In the earliest weeks of January, I was born on a cold, dark, foggy night, with bright sun the day before, and bright sun the day after. I was born in the wisest hour, three o'clock in the morning, and my mother was gasping and crying as she held me, because she had thought for certain that I would be born too early and perish. My infant wail was as strange as my father's, but as progeny of the soprano of the century, that was not questioned. Hours later, Raoul de Chagny, not yet drunken and evil, held his wife and exclaimed over me, in the dark hush of their room, cradling us both close to him, his family.

Then, he told me, mere days before he perished, I opened my eyes for the first time since I had fallen asleep at my mother's breast, the first time I had opened my eyes in the dark. They glowed, he told me. Like cat's eyes, the strangest green, the pupil and outer rim of the iris ringed in gold. It was dark and mother was supposed to be resting, but she and my father had been discussing my name. Then I opened my eyes and, he said, it was like two green burning coals appearing suddenly in the night. I have observed the phenomenon myself, both in my own eyes, and those of my father. I believe de Chagny's description to be accurate.

This was the moment, of course, which drove my foster father to the bottle. Like the birth of my father, my birth drove one parent clear to abusiveness. My so-called father saw my eyes, and remembered the eyes of another man, the powerful, majestic Phantom of the Opera, who loved my mother, who my mother loved, and fled. He didn't believe it was possible, of course, that I was not his son, next blood heir to the seat of Vicomte. But he hated me all the same.

He told my mother that she could name me whatever she liked, and fled into the night. That was the first night, or rather day, when he came home drunk. My mother named me Gustave for her father, and would probably have made my middle name Erik, for my father, had she known what his name was.

Years passed, as they are apt to do. In New York, my father was hired by a sideshow, and then bought it, gathering funds and inventing and composing, until he had created the vast imposing empire of Phantasma, the appellation adapted from his title at the Opera Populaire, a bit of a joke with a sting, or so he told me. In Paris, I was raised, my mother teaching me music, a number of tutors teaching me everything else. Anything else. I remember, in the heady days of my cheerful youth, that there was nothing I could not do, nothing I could not learn quickly and without effort. I learned everything a tutor could teach me, they were paid, and a new tutor was engaged to fill my head with another topic. I learned all sorts of things that were odd for a boy of my age; cooking, rhetoric, architecture, mechanics. I could never stop learning. And yet, I was still a child, delighted by tricks and magic that I could have performed myself. I was beguiled by way the lights created false people, which I later learned were projections of people standing at just the right angles to glass plates, their image perfectly displayed as they spoke and moved and played their parts. I was enchanted.

When I was eight, our family was in hot water financially. The country estate had been sold some years before, and now we lived in Paris, in the town house. I was thrilled, for now I was near to other children. I could see the vast shell of the Opera Populaire, although I was only taken there once, by my mother, who explained that she had grown up there. I saw other opera houses, though. Never with my parents—my foster father abhorred them, and we couldn't have afforded to see opera even if he wanted to. No, I saw the opera houses, the Garnier and the Comedie and all the music halls and performance spaces. I would ask a stagehand, usually an elderly man, a door-closer, to show me the place. I would ask in my best voice, the one my foster father once angrily exclaimed should never have issued from the body of a boy. They would let me in, show me their kingdoms. I was known by the people of every place of performance I could find, and they let me see operas and cabarets from behind the scenes. The whole of Paris was my opera house, and I reveled in it.

By the time I was ten years old, our situation was growing desperate. My life at home was a conglomeration of economies small and large. The smaller economies tended towards the financial. The larger ones were often those of words. I mean, between my foster father and my mother, of course. I spoke with my mother all the time, singing with her and sharing dark stories, teaching her the melodies that played in my head, and those words which were just of affection. But my mother never spoke to Raoul if she could help it. He was drunk so often now. He never spoke to me, although I often, and foolishly, attempted to win his parental love. I had no idea that he was not my father.

My mother received a letter from a Mr. Y, of New York City, in America. He offered a fairly large sum of money to her, and stated that the money would be hers if she would come to America and sing one single aria at his theme park's music hall, the Aerie. The money, my mother knew, would be enough to pay back at least two of my not-father's largest gambling debts. She spoke to my father, and he agreed. Within weeks, we were on the Persephone, sailing to America's shores.

Our trip was frankly uneventful. My father was drunk, my mother was exasperated with him and affectionate with me. I was merely curious, employing my usual means to get access to wherever I wanted on the ship, exploring and learning.

When we landed, it was an explosion of color and lights. Mostly the lights came from the flashing cameras, and as photographers in their boxes shot away, a cloud of their horrible sulfurous smoke drifted over the crowd. My father was angry, half-drunk, and indignant at how we were paraded in front of the "lower class scum". Perhaps he had forgotten that, for all intents and purposes, his lovely wife also hailed from the lower class scum.

We were met by a glorious glass carriage pulled by automaton horses, and three freaks, called Miss Fleck, Mister Squelch, and Doctor Gangle. I remember, as we drove, my father sat in angry silence, my mother not daring to speak, and Miss Fleck, the only freak not sitting on the outside of the carriage, sat next to me, showing me a little music box made for me by Mr. Y. It played a cheery little vaudeville song that nonetheless had the same odd quality of one or two of the songs my mother had sung for me, without telling me of their origins. I would soon learn that these songs were written by the same Mr. Y who was our host, and who had constructed the music box. I was agog at the present, such a complex little things, and so beautiful, but Miss Fleck, I still remember her high, strange voice, simply laughed and told me that a trifle like this was the work of a moment for her master. Then, conspiratorially, she told me about the wonders of the park, the rides, and the Aerie. She told me about her act; she was a freak, but like all the other freaks, she was also a prodigy at something. She was an acrobat and contortionist, who looked like a bird, with feathery hair and solid black bird's eyes. She wrapped her thin, bony body in an outfit of black cloth that glimmered with the colors of a peacock, and wore a tail of long feathers, sailing through the air on a trapeze, bending herself and shocking the audience with her strength and balance and flexibility. I briefly saw her perform during our three-day stay, and it was like magic.

We arrived at the hotel, which was strange and full of wonders, to no surprise, but as soon as Miss Fleck closed our door behind us, my father broke into an angry rage, yelling at my mother. Finally he stormed out, likely to drink himself into a stupor, and certainly to gamble, if he could find any way to. True, he had nothing to gamble with, but I would learn the very next day that he would put anything into the stakes, even myself, or my mother.

I was put to bed, my little music box playing by my ear, and I fell into an odd sort of dream. A figure of gold light was pulling me, and I cried and cried, but she—I could tell from her voice it was a woman—simply hushed me, cooed at me, and kept dragging me. I didn't know where I was going. The woman looked like an angel, but an angel of death or madness. I could seen a crazed glint in her eyes, though her other features were indistinct. Finally, the dark around us parted, and I heard the sound of waves. The Angle of Madness dragged me to the surf and began to sing, her voice starting soft as a lullaby, growing louder and more frantic as she pulled me into the waves, until I couldn't touch me feet to the sand, and she was supporting my whole weight with her arms. My throat felt like it was burning from the screams that never made it past my lips. She was pushing me down, her voice muffled by the water, but I could tell she was crying and singing. I thrashed, calling out, inhaling water. Then I woke, a cry in my throat.

There was, I remember, a man with an odd half-mask, when I ran to my mother. He was tall, tall and strong-looking, with broad shoulders, and what I could see of his face looked handsome, with strange green eyes that burned in the half-dark and a strong jaw. He had dark hair, just like mine. I barely took note of him, crying to my mother of my awful dream. She calmed me, and it horribly reminded me of how the Angel of Madness had cooed to me. I shuddered, and my mother took no notice, visibly distraught by the presence of the man, who she introduced to me as our host, a "friend" of hers, Mr. Y. This man was my father.

I didn't know it at the time, as he promised to show me the island's mysteries, in fact he didn't even know it. Thrilled at the prospect of seeing all the wonders this man could offer, I went back to bed and dreamed of darkness and music and beauty, as I usually did, the thrill of the sounds and roaring might around me filling my senses and causing me to scream out with raucous laughter and song, in my amazing dream world where all that was hidden from the eye came and flaunted itself, twisting up and around and showing me its beauty. I was totally addicted to this dream world, to the music that drifted from it while I was awake. When I woke the next morning, my mother was already up, singing the aria she would perform the next day. I remember the words, and the sadness in her voice as she practiced. When I was dressed and had eaten the breakfast provided for me, we gathered our things and headed to the Aerie, which I was enthusiastic to see. There we encountered a glowing blonde woman who had been rehearsing a routine on the stage. This woman, Meg Giry, was the image of my Angel of Madness, a glowing golden mass, although her eyes didn't hold the spark of insanity that the Angel's had. She and my mother were joyous at the sight of each other, until my mother revealed that she was to sing at the Aerie tomorrow. Suddenly another woman, and my father appeared, and the whole reunion turned into an argument littered with angry social graces. They parted angrily, and the three freaks appeared.

I followed them, of course. I was far more interested in the wonders of Phantasma than I was in the anger of my father. They lead me to a strange, dark space, where the strange and mysterious Mr. Y sat, writing something.

"Go, look, while I finish my work," he told me, and I gravitated to the piano. There was a strange, discordant, achingly beautiful melody playing in my head right then, so I began tapping it out on the keys, my mind automatically placing chords and embellishments as I went. Mr. Y told me to keep playing my song, so I switched into the full arrangement I had just thought of, playing with both hands, and singing to it quietly. Mr Y was speaking to himself quietly as I played, and then he turned to me, and I met a turning point in my destiny.

"Have you ever yearned to go past this world you think you know, been enthralled to the call of the beauty underneath?"

The question stole my breath. This man...knew? He knew about the music in my head, about the strange and beautiful things I was addicted to, the things that rent my very soul and glued it back together again?

My god, it was the most amazing thing. He knew about the beauty, how it filled my every sense till I was drowning and suffocating on wonder, terrifyingly intense. He shared it. I was no longer alone.

Then I pulled off his mask and god, did I scream.

Now I am horrified that his face incited such a reaction, but at the time, I was young, I was foolish, and frankly I was out of my depth. My mother must have heard my scream, for she appeared almost by magic at my side. She must have known about his face, for she didn't flinch, didn't start. She sent me away, and as I left, I heard her say, "I'm sorry, please forgive him. He meant no harm."

It was true. I had meant no harm. I wanted only to see the face of this man who knew all my darkest fantasies and shared in them, in the careening glory of the music of the night. I wanted to see his whole face, read his expressions, translate them, and know this man. Something about him drew me to him, drew my hand to his face. All I wanted was the truth, but instead I got...a different truth.

Raoul was angry at me, horribly angry, and enraged at my mother. He kept yelling at her, "You knew! You knew he was alive! You knew when we came here it was him!" I don't know how knew, but I knew that him was Mr Y. I wondered what he was, why Raoul hated him so much that he wouldn't even acknowledge his name. Of course, Mr Y was not his real name, but I didn't know that, and I wondered why they would have thought him dead.

My not-father stormed away to a bar that night, again, while my mother sang the song, practicing. I slept fitfully, and Mr Y did not return that night.

The next day was a whirl. Mother had rehearsal, in between Meg's performances as the "Ooh-La-La" girl. Raoul was oddly gentle, and pulled himself together, washed and shaved and donned clean clothing. He wasn't drunk, as far as I could tell, although he had been in the morning. When mother was dressed, he asked me to wait outside, with such an expression I had never seen in his eyes before. It was almost love.

Now I know that he was trying to convince her to walk, to leave, gather me and our things and vanish into the night. Needless to say, she did not.

Just as my mother walked on to the stage, Meg Giry appeared next to me, knelt and whispered, "Isn't she just the most beautiful thing, your mother?"

I replied, "So very beautiful..." She made a noise like a sob, and slipped a thin, strong hand over my mouth.

"And you are so very beautiful, dear boy, that you have ruined me," she spat. Her eyes, when I met them, held a spark of anger and wildness. My Angel of Madness had found me at last.

She muffled my cries, pulling me along, walking so fast on her long dancer's legs that I stumbled and ran to keep up. I saw Miss Fleck, the bird girl, turn and glimpse us, as Meg continued her desperate flight. I tried to call out to her, but she dissolved into the night.

It was just like my dream. The crazy, beautiful golden angel was dragging me to my death, I could tell.

Someone strange and mad,seething me and drowning me, I remembered my cry to my mother, and despaired. My mother was singing, probably weaving her magic over the audience so thoroughly that they would probably not have heard my cry even if Miss Giry hadn't muffled it. I could almost hear her voice, soaring through the notes, spinning through the words, creating a sound so pure and unearthly they must have thought an angel had dropped from heaven to enchant them.

She uncovered my mouth as we pulled through the crowd, instead employing both hands to pull me. I called out to her, pleading that I wanted to go back, I wanted my mother. I could hear the waves. God no, not the water. I couldn't swim, and I knew she was going to throw me in.

"The world is cold, the world is mean, it's hard to keep your conscience clean," she sang to me, and dragged me to the waves. She didn't pull me out, as she had in my dream, but instead the Angel of Madness pulled me into the shallow waters, and shoved me down. She gripped my throat and pushed my head underwater. I couldn't breath, and I didn't dare call out. She continued to sing, her voice slow and quiet and delicate, holding me under with hands tinged with gentleness, but firm in their intent.

Then, I heard voices, calling, screaming. She cried out, but pulled me out of the water, her vice-like grip holding me close to her as she brandished a gun.

"Always wondered how to make you watch, so watch me now!" she screamed. Mr Y looked enraged, and called for her to return me. My mother was standing there, beautiful and terrified, her eyes flicking from the gun, to my face, to Meg, to Mr Y. Mme Giry stood just behind them, her eyes wide with horror.

"I took a little trip to Coney Island," Meg sang, her voice hoarse and unsteady. "I took a little trip because of you," she brandished the gun towards Mr Y. "Well, here's the way it works on Coney Island. They make you pay for every little crumb. I gave what they would take. I gave it for your sake..." She glared at Mr Y, her eyes growing wet with anguish. "Now come and see what I've become!"

She took a tremulous breath, and I felt her grip change, growing tighter, trembling. "Bathing beauty, on the beach," she spat, "Bathing beauty in her dressing room. Bathing beauty, in the dark. On their laps, in their arms, in their BEDS!" She screamed the last words. I didn't understand what she meant, what was wrong. But the others, my mother and her mother and my father...They looked horrified.

"What are you saying?" my father asked. Looking back on it now, I know why he asked. His twisted expression at her declaration was from her tone, from the suggestion of madness her words gave. My father, may he rest in peace, was a man who was not familiar with the concept of prostitution. He essentially only engaged in sexual intercourse once in the whole course of his life, the night I was conceived. I'm sure he knew what she was implying, but he never would have thought that Meg would prostitute herself for his sake. My father never realized how much she loved him, not until it was far too late, because he had been betrayed and shunned so many times that he didn't believe it possible any woman could love him. Nor, I suspect, did he truly understand the implications of prostitution. He was, let us face it, completely naïve.

Well, Meg certainly illuminated the matter for him. I still am haunted by her cracking voice, as she told of the horrors she had endured to help him. Then—god, I can never forget this—she placed the gun at her temple and cried.

My father sang to her, trying to get her to give him the gun, telling her how beautiful she was, how he could see the beauty underneath her sin and anger. I could see it too, how her pain made her radiant, how her sins showed off the purity of her motives. But, oh, god, I don;t even know what he said, but the spell broke and she screamed, "Christine, Christine, always Christine!" Then a gunshot.

This is the end of my mother's story. That shot hit her, and she fell. My father caught her, and Meg stood and shuddered and pleaded. I tore free and ran to her side, my poor, beautiful, dying mother. I screamed for my "papa", Raoul. The only father I'd ever known. Her words tore at my heart.

"Your father, your real father..."

I remember my scream, when I realized. I'm still not sure where it stemmed from. Perhaps my fear of his face, or the horrible notion that the man I'd always loved and known was not my father, or that he'd abandoned me and my mother, or that my mother was faltering. Probably all of them.

My father held her, tears on his face, in his eyes, his handsome half twisted with pain. He sang to her quietly, and she told him to look after me—evidently I was a little behind the times, not knowing about my father—and they kissed. I had never seen Raoul kiss my mother. That sight...I knew she loved him. And I knew he was my real father, and from the moment he'd met me had been more of a father than Raoul had been my entire life.

He didn't stop me, after my mother's body was taken away by the doctors, after Meg had been cuffed and locked in a police car, from taking his mask away. That face, with its twisted skin...It couldn't horrify me after what I had just seen.

That night, I met my father, and we mourned together. I couldn't stop my tears, but I was exhausted and cold and wet. He drew me to him and carried me back to the Aerie, where he lived and worked. I fell asleep as he walked, awoke as he lay me down in a chair.

My voice was tiny and scared. "F-father?"

He started, looked at me. He had donned a new mask, and was standing at the piano, folding a dew sheets of music. He didn't reply outright, simply nodded.

"What's going to happen now?"

He spoke. His voice was richer than I remembered it, but also sounded as though he was choked with tears. "We must leave this place." He lifted a black cloak from one of the shadows, and it swirled as he wrapped himself in it. He donned black leather gloves, and placed a fedora on his head, before looking at me, critically, and digging through an armoire I hadn't noticed. I suspect now that it was full of performers' costumes, but he had another cloak, much smaller, closer to my size. Mine had a hood.

"We must melt away, Gustave, do you understand me?" he asked, looking at me, seeming to peer into my soul. "Melt away into the night, like spectres."

I nodded. What else was I to do? He stood, tall and intimidating, slipping the sheets of music into his cloak. Then he took my hand, and we left, father and son. When we had reached the mainland, I looked back. A fire had started somewhere on the Island, and was beginning to devour everything. It was a fiery blob on the dark sky. The dark, moonless sky. My father saw it and cursed, quietly. I heard him whisper, "And so, again, it ends in flames," and then he pulled me on, into the night, melting away like spectres.

xXx

Parting Comments: I actually find this first-person thing rather fun. Gives whole new dimensions to some of this stuff. This story is far from over, by the way, but updates will be quite far between, and probably not as long as this.

Hugs and Kisses,

Eden