I stood nearly powerless in my growing fury.

"But Raoul…You promised. You promised me that I could go back to see him. It's just one more time!" The furious tears in my eyes refused to go back to their source. The lump in my throat grew to the point that it hurt to swallow or even breathe. How could Raoul break his promise? He didn't trust me…

"Christine, what in the hell makes you think that you'll be going to see that decrepit old madman? And the day before our wedding?" he roared at me. Raoul never raised his voice toward me…never…until now. I had imagined it as just a simple request. It was just that…wasn't it?

He continued upbraid me…on and on and on. And then it hit me.

He was scared. Of losing me. To Erik, my Angel…[imy precious angel…oh, why did I ever leave you...[/i

"Raoul you promised," my voice managed to push past the lump in my throat to speak tremulously, "It would be against your honor to break that promise. Please let me see him for just a while. I wouldn't be gone long at all." The tears were still gently pooling in my eyes but just as they refused to go away, so they also refused to start the journey down my face…

Raoul's eyes narrowed in an odd way, as though he were threatening to keep from being threatened. He turned his back to me resolutely and started toward the door. I ran after him, my legs beating my deep green velvet dress. I caught him at the door and clutched the back of his cravat.

He slowly turned to face me and our eyes met in the frostiest lock we have ever given each other. He spoke a single word that chilled me to the marrow and caused my face to flush in fury, frustration, passion, and million other incomprehensible emotions.

"No."

He turned his back on me and slammed the door in my face. All this for such a simple request.

And now the tears started spilling. I whirled and fled to my bed. I threw myself down into my fattest pillow and screamed and sobbed, each one in turn.

A short time of this noise (I know I made quite a cacophony), and I needed to pull my head out to get some air. The air has a strange, tangy sweetness when you've nearly suffocated yourself, in rage or in a kind of self-destruction, I thought.

I'm going mad, I thought. Mad with rage, frustration, love for my fiancé, or whatever.

As my tornado of anger settled into the dust of my soul, I heard Raoul go out through the front door. I jumped up and ran to the window to see him climb quickly into the baroque and drive away toward the restraunt and tavern district. No doubt to drink away his own wrath.

I gritted my teeth and breathed out slowly and firmly.

"I'm going whether he wants me to do so or not." I spoke aloud to no one in particular. "It is a dishonor to go back on a promise, especially a promise to a dying man." And as I said those last two words, my heart dropped in horror. His words came floating back to me through a roiling fog, "Six months at the most…then you would be free to make a real marriage…"[idying man, dying man…[/i

Without realizing what I was doing, I turned from the window and began carefully gathering my things, handling them as though they were of the most delicate porcelain. I wrapped my monstrous woolen cloak lined with ermine around my slender body. This dove grey wrap had been a special present from my Erik, an expensive present to a little chorus girl who had never had anything more expensive than a pair of Sunday shoes in her whole life. I pulled my small satchel over my small shoulder and quietly opened the door to my bedroom.

As I headed to the front door in a surreal kind of daze, I must have told the maid on duty that I would be gone shopping, or something to that effect. I know I didn't tell her exactly where I would be or how long I might be gone.

I opened the door to the outside world and winter's harsh slap took my breath away. I turned my feet toward the grand Garnier Paris Opera House and began walking with my head down to soften the snap of the freezing wind.

I knew the way without looking. I could be blind and find my way to the Opera House. After all, I had lived there for most of my over-sheltered childhood and young adulthood.

The snow crunched lightly and gave way under my feet, sinking them so I would have to labor to pull them up again. Snowflakes fell thickly, and the occasional sleigh, baroque, or city taxi would drive by. The sleighs were my favorite. They almost always had the most beautiful bells attached to them. In fact, I had heard from some of my old chorus friends that it was something of a status symbol for the wealthy to have each little bell tuned to a certain note that was part of a particular song. I never understood the reasoning behind these bells. If they didn't play the notes in the order needed to make that song, then why have those specially tuned bells in the first place?

[iThe tinkling sleigh bells turned to my memories of grandiose bells in my favorite cathedral while I still lived in Sweden, the gigantic bells I always loved, and my thoughts then turned to the beauteous organ in that cathedral, with it's superfluously built pipes and keys and pulls and pedals. I remembered running my small hands over the cool bench, and then laying my head back as far as it could go to see the pipes seemingly touch the heavens themselves.

My Angel of Music played that same organ for me once when I went to visit my precious father's grave many years later; I believe I was nineteen at the time. Angel had directed me to go to that cathedral a bit after midnight, and he would be there to let the organ's music fly me to places I could only hope to reach in the afterlife.

I had treaded as quietly as I could into the church, and the moment I stepped onto the altar, the organ began to play not a crashing ear-blaster, but a serenade that oddly didn't seem to fit on the organ, yet was being played the only way that it could possibly ever be played on this mortal earth.

The serenade grew in it's power and seemed to command my knees to weaken and kneel on the altar, tears came from the depths of my very soul, and my forehead bowed forward and touched the cold cobblestone in a worshipful euphoria. This is what heaven on earth means. A meaningless phrase used over and over again in sermons became so vivid that I wanted to throw back my head and sing it out to the four corners of the earth…[/i

My pace quickened in a subconscious sudden sense of urgency.

I was so wrapped up in my thoughts when I arrived at the Opera that I didn't even notice the Persian man, Daroga I believe Erik called him, standing and smoking a pipe in front of the entrance. The Daroga had facilitated almost all contact between Erik and the managers of the opera house, and had seemed to act as a kind of conscience to Erik at times.

"He didn't think you would come." The Daroga said in his thick Middle Eastern accent as I stepped up the stairs lightly.

I reached the top and looked him straight in his sad, velvety eyes. "I had to come. I just had to."

The Daroga regarded me for a minute, as though questioning how I could have been so shattered by Erik's manipulations and then return to my former captor for one last visit. The Daroga didn't realize that while my innocence had been obliterated beyond recognition, I had grown stronger and so much less selfish through that twisted rite of passage. I was coming to the Architect of my Womanhood not to say good-bye, but to show him his life's final masterpiece: myself.

The Daroga then screwed his eyes tightly shut for brief second, put out his pipe and said barely over a whisper, "Then he's ready to see you if you are, Mademoiselle."

I nodded my head gave him my arm and we traveled silently through the heavy brass and oak doors. We walked up the sprawling marble staircase and I surveyed the gold-plated statues that clutched candelabras in their frozen embrace. These halls held the memories of so many New Year's and Christmas balls. I could almost hear the cheerful waltzes being played all over again.

Together, we swept into backstage wings of the theatre and past the doors of the various ballet studios, dormitories, singing halls, storage rooms, ropes strung onto upper rafters above the stage. We approached my old dressing room and a twinge of pain caught onto the top of my stomach. I instinctively held onto the Daroga more tightly as we continued our journey.

The Daroga opened the door for me and I smelled once again the familiar scent of thousands upon thousands of roses, even though they were long gone. I walked carefully into that dressing room, the room where the whole of my life had turned on a single counterpoint. The Daroga followed me as I walked to the monumental mirror; I tripped the catch myself and [inow we were going through the mirror[/i.

The musty air filled my nostrils. My immediate thought was that it was too cold down here for my dying Erik. For anyone for that matter. I slipped into the gondola awaiting us, rubbing and blowing my tiny hands, pulling my cloak tighter around my body. Staring down into the solidly black water, I remembered the first time I had been taken across…and not by the Daroga.

My Angel's singing came back to me over the plains of my memory, and tears came up again. It was the first time I had seen him in person, and the joy had almost physically choked me. I had sung along with him, my Erik, and had not stopped until he interjected with his thunderous organ.

The organ again. The most majestic instrument the human race created.

Was it always to be an organ that signaled a turning point in my life?

I shook my head to clear the mist rising from the lake from my vision and then I held my breath in stunned disbelief.

Erik's home under the opera house had been completely razed and ruined. The beautiful silk couch was shredded. Candelabras had been snapped to little brass pieces. The black and red velvet wall hangings had been yanked down and mercilessly shredded as well.

And his pride and joy…his personal organ. The pipes were bent beyond recognition and the keyboard had been ruthlessly hacked to destruction. As I stepped out of the gondola and onto the small dock, I briefly glanced at the discarded ax that had wreaked havoc on such an instrument of musical beauty, the very symbol and essential ingredient to my coming of age.

This house, Erik's home…had became my home through the many hours and days and weeks at a time that I had spent it. It was like coming back to the house you grew up in years later only to see it gutted and painted over in an ugly color. But the object that sucked in my attention the most was not the unrecognizable house, but Erik himself.

Erik looked more like a corpse than any of the times I ever knew him. His corpselike state was accentuated by his clothes hanging off his bony shoulders and hips. His mask was off, exposing the pale, grey face. His nostrils flared in the exertion of effort to walk across the room, even when helped by the Daroga.

The Daroga had apparently gone to get him while I had gaped at the deliberate destruction of the evidence of the greatest maestro, magician, healer and architect this world I am convinced will ever know. Erik had always told me that he didn't want to be remembered for anything by anyone.

"You…came…back…" Erik breathed. As he walked stiffly toward me, his failing legs stumbled and he would have fallen flat on his face were it not for the Daroga's diving forward to save him.

I dove forward simultaneously and held my dying Angel's eyes as the Daroga helped him to sit up. I took Erik's hands (so cold they were!) and began to speak, but he spoke first.

"Dear Christine, why are you here? There is nothing left for you here. I am a dying man," he rasped. "There is no more music here…But where is your fiancée?" His husky voice was such a strong departure from the usual, smooth musicality of his voice.

I bowed my head and began to shake as I began, "I should have accepted your offer of marriage at the beginning. I have been the ultimate fool in leaving you behind. I now realize that the man I was intended to marry was behind my mirror and singing with me the whole time…You've made me the fully grown woman I am today, and I can't go on anymore without you." I would have said more, but that painful lump came up again. Thoughts of Raoul's face came up, but I pushed them away and centered my mind back onto the moment.

I looked up to see that the bewilderment in Erik's eyes turn to mute joy. My hands were no longer shaking as I reached into my satchel and took up a tiny gold ring that had always been there, wrapped in a piece of silk. I reached for his right hand and slipped it onto his ring finger. "It was a gift from Mama Valerius. She said to give it to the man who would become my husband. And now…it is yours forever."

His joyous tears turned to powerful sobs, and watching him cry made me well up too. "I want to give back to you, my precious Christine. You've entrusted me with your hand, I can only take care of it for a short time. But it will be long enough. Help me Daroga…"He worked to stand up and with the Daroga holding him up on one side and myself on the other, we slowly walked to Erik's bedroom.

Erik went by himself to his dresser and took a little box out of a drawer. He came back over to me, opened the box. Taking out the white gold ring carved in Celtic knots he offered it to me. He had had this made for me while he was trying to convince me to marry him months earlier. Now I was coming to him of my own will, not being forced. I aided his shaking hands in putting the ring on my finger.

We stood toe to toe for a time, heads bent, eyes closed, and tears in freefall, tightly embracing one another as though we were waiting for something massively catastrophic to happen. I think that something had already happened. The world's course had just turned on the outrage of the marriage of the red rose and the nightingale.

We opened our eyes and began to walk toward the coffin that served as Erik's bed in some unspoken agreement. I believe the Daroga left about that time, for I heard the door open and shut very softly.

Erik allowed me to lower his torso and head onto the lining and pillows, and then pull his legs up inside. I leaned over his face and kissed those red lips, obscene to so many, but no longer to me. I gently slid my tongue into his mouth and touched his tongue with just the tip of mine. I reluctantly pulled away and kissed his sunken cheeks, and the swollen eyelids closed for me to kiss as well.

I prepared myself to put aside my own happiness and pleasure to bring the same to my husband. I continued to stand beside the coffin and began to unbutton the tiny filigrees on the front of my dress, and slowly shed it all. I raked my fingers through the lacing on my corset and soon my ribcage was free. The underskirts were dropped and then my bloomers joined the pile at the side of the coffin.

The cool air licked at my breasts, making my nipples turn a bright pink and stand up firmly. I lifted myself into the coffin and slowly began to straddle Erik's hips, and the tender flesh between my legs touched and felt the warmth of his body, even through his clothes.

Erik struggled, but eventually bent his knees and brought them behind up to my back to support me. I laid back on them for a minute while he tremulously stroked between the skin folds of my flower and then put his finger up to the first knuckle inside me, bending and twisting his finger to feel around. My body seemed to relax and pull down to that part of me as he pushed up a little deeper, and then a little deeper still.

He took his finger out and I leaned forward and began to kiss his face again. He returned the kisses, however weakly as he helped me to unbutton and take away his trousers, freeing us both to revel in the married bliss that God had ordained just for us, even for a while. He seemed to defy what the rest of the world thinks when it comes to consummation of unions of roses and nightingales.

I began to feel his lingam go from flaccid and impressionable to a warm symbol of virility, even though we both knew it would last only a very short time. He looked to be on the last leg of his life…so weak, but he was rallying himself to make the most of our wedding night.

I moved off of him for just a little while and did a most daring thing. I took his lingam into my hand and began to lick just the head at first, then I worked all the way down to the base, being sure to allow lots of my saliva to drip onto him. I trailed my tongue back up to the head and opened my mouth and began to take him in. The hand that the wedding ring was on took him by the shaft and began to gently twist around and around and tenderly rub while I made a gentle suction with my mouth. A salty taste alerted itself on my tongue as I made the suction wax and wane. Even though he was erect, his flesh was only lukewarm, but I looked up and saw to my satisfaction that he was rolling his head from side to side and moaning in pleasure.

Now I got up on my knees once more, my right hand holding the middle of his lingam and my left hand spreading the petals of womanhood, ready for the moment of our physical coupling. I guided the head, searching, until I finally found the entrance to my vagina and very tenderly, very slowly pushing onto him.

As I came down, Erik's whole body tensed up into a living powerhouse and he mightily gripped the sides of the coffin. His wild cries of ecstasy came through clenched teeth, and his writhing body underneath me pulled my clitoris out of its tiny hood and filled with a life of its own.

My screams and shallow pants came in harmony with his as he circled his hips making his lingam churn inside me, around and around and around. I collapsed forward onto his chest and burst into tears that came from a rush of many emotions. I gripped his shoulders as he wrapped his thin arms around me.

Erik began to thrust forward and pounded my cervix, and I began to feel him grow hot and even more firm inside me. I gasped for air and heard him groan, "My dear wife…too much…" Erik's breath ripped in and out as his warm seed exploded from his body into mine, and I could have sworn I actually felt his searing semen slip into my freakishly pulsating womb.

We lay there for what seemed like hours while we both came off our peaks, trying to catch our breaths, a mass of shivering lovers so wrapped up in the power of one another's bodies.

I helped Erik to come out of me but I continued to lay on his chest. My super-sensitized breasts felt his heart still flipping wildly in it's cage, and I moved my head down to listen…

I think we may have fallen asleep for a short time, because I woke and saw that he was breathing much more shallowly than he had before. I quickly tried to pick up any sound from his heart and heard the beat gently winding down.

"Oh God…my angel!" I sobbed. Erik's eyes opened and he wound and tangled his fingers in my brown curls.

"Dear wife, my time on this earth is done. My body is old and worn out, it is only natural that I go to meet my Maker."

"O, Erik, of all the loves on this earth, there is no greater love than mine!"

"No angel ever received a gift so fair…" He trailed off…and stopped breathing.

I buried my face in his neck and cried like there would be no tomorrow.

Raoul came and got me some time later. Somebody had tipped him off to my whereabouts. The Daroga led me to Raoul and told him to take care of me. I couldn't stop crying as we left the Opera House; it was the last time I ever saw that monument to the beauty of music. It was destroyed in a mysterious fire just a year later.

I stared out of the carriage until the Opera House became blocked from view by multiple apartment complexes. I knew that Raoul saw the ring on my finger, but he didn't mention it.

Our wedding was delayed, so we married two weeks later, Raoul and I. A very private ceremony, nothing like the wedding we had planned once upon a time, while we were still innocent.

We were sailing to London for our honeymoon, and I laid on the deck in the reclining chair that I had grown to like. I was all alone. It was night, and every single one of the stars shone their brightest. The moon added to the nighttime scene more lovely than Michelangelo himself could ever aspire to.

I closed my eyes…and heard My Angel's singing once more. I wondered if I was wishing too hard or just hearing things…

…until I felt the tiny kick deep inside my belly.

Perhaps my Angel hadn't left me after all.

A/N: Please go read the sequel, "There Were Roses-The Continuing Story"! Thanks for reading.