This was my entry for the POL Morbidity Contest. I was in a violent mood when I wrote it, so it's different then what I usually write. It was fun though.
"Erik! I have turned the scorpion!"
The sound of rushing water filled the underground chamber. Christine stared at the wall to the torture chamber in befuddlement. A minute passed. Then twin shouts came from behind the wall. Raoul, and the Persian, they were drowning! She turned to Erik in terror. "Please," she pleaded, "please, I said I'd stay. Let them go! Let Raoul go! Please!"
He looked down at her coldly, "My dear, you have promised yourself to one husband, why do you need another?"
Christine huddled on the bed, a pile of frothy white skirts that was shivering almost convulsively. A wedding dress. She was wearing a wedding dress. Her wedding dress for her wedding to a corpse. Her mind in turmoil at what had happened, she could only stare down at the dress in a sort of helpless terror. She was simply unable to comprehend what was happening. Flickers of the past hours ran past her eyes ceaselessly.
Erik emerged from the torture chamber bearing Raoul's limp form in his arms. Christine took one look at him and crumpled to the floor. He was dead. She had been too late.
Christine shook her head, pressing her palms into her eyes. This couldn't be happening. Raoul couldn't be dead.
A thought struck her. If he was dead, then she had nothing left to live for. Whatever compassion or pity she might have felt for her tutor had been drowned in the same water that had killed Raoul.
Bending down, she frantically ripped thick strip of cloth off the bottom of her dress. If she couldn't bear to live, then the only thing to do was to kill herself.
Clambering up to stand on the mattress, she stretched up precariously to knot the fabric as firmly as she could around the crosspiece of the bed. Then she reached around her neck with trembling hands, and fastened the other end around her throat.
She curled her toes over the edge of the bed, looking straight ahead. She closed her eyes for a moment—could she do this? Could she really kill herself? She thought about Raoul's body and knew that she could. The thought of living without any of the things she had depended on for her whole life—her father, Raoul, the Angel of Music—was intolerable to her.
She opened her eyes again, steeled her nerves, and stepped off the edge of the bed.
With a shredding sound, the fabric ripped, and Christine dropped to the floor. She lay in a crumple on the ground for a few moments, her mind trying to assimilate the fact that her plan had not worked. In fact, the only thing that had happened is that her neck and throat were sore.
Slowly, she pushed herself up into a sitting position. She was still alive. Erik would be coming for her soon. She gave a sob, and her hand immediately flew to her throat from the pain. Maybe she had done more damage than she had thought, but obviously not enough.
Her eyes opened to see the torn skirt of her wedding dress, the edges ragged from where she had torn off her impromptu noose. She needed something stronger. Maybe if she twisted strips of it together…
She sat up very slowly, leaning back against the bed for support. Reaching down, she examined the skirt again, eyeing the fine material. Her fingers encountered a piece of wire, used to give the full skirts shape. An idea bloomed in her mind. Frantically she gripped it and tugged it from the skirt, her other hand shoving back the material. At last a fairly long piece of wire lay coiled in her lap.
Picking up an end, she bent it with fragile fingers, testing to see if she could bend it into what she needed. With a little strength, she could do it, and it definitely wouldn't break.
She stared down at it. There would be no turning back from this. It wouldn't break. If she did this, she would die. She closed her eyes.
Erik turned away from her, still carrying his burden. As he turned, Raoul's head lolled backwards, his blank, staring eyes seeming to look straight at her.
A shudder went through her. No, there would be no mistakes. She slowly got to her feet. Painfully, she clambered up onto the high bed and regarded the crosspiece above her. With trembling hands she stretched up and, pushing aside the ripped strip of cloth already there, twisted the end around the wood, wrapping it around and around so it wouldn't slip off. The rest dangled before her almost innocently.
She inched forward until she was standing on the edge of the bed. Tentatively, she grasped the wire and dragged it around her neck. Bending her arms behind her, she attempted to fasten the end so that it formed a noose around her neck. The wire resisted her efforts at such an awkward angle, but finally she succeeded in twisting the end around, the wire snug around her throat.
Done. It was done. All she had to do was fall, and she would die. She could escape this truly intolerable situation.
Once again, she stepped off the end of the bed.
The wire jerked tightly around her delicate throat, the force of her fall causing it to cut into her neck. More pain than she could ever imagine blossomed in Christine's mind. The first unsuccessful attempt at hanging hadn't hurt near as much as this. She began to thrash in mindless panic, each jerk of her body sending the wire digging deeper into her neck. Her hands clawed desperately at her throat, but could find no purchase under the wire, in fact could not even find the wire. But she could feel it. She could feel it slicing through the tender flesh of her neck, through her vocal cords even. Blood was everywhere. Slippery, red blood splattered over her hands, running down her neck and onto her dress. It was flung all over the room in front of her by her thrashings, painting the floor, the wardrobe, the vanity, even the walls red.
Finally the wire, pulled loose by her efforts, unwound from itself at the base of the noose. The end uncoiled, sending her plummeting to the floor, her neck tearing loose from the wire with a sickening rip of flesh. She fell to the carpet to lie in a gurgling, bleeding heap, hands still clawing uselessly at her throat. She could feel the blood filling up her lungs and tried to scream, but she couldn't—she couldn't make a sound.
With every beat of her heart, blood pumped from her throat to soak the carpet under her. The gurgling noise she made slowly faded away, and her hands flopped from her neck.
Erik stood before the door to Christine's room. He hesitated a moment, and then knocked. There was no answer.
He was not worried about that though. His bride was shy—almost childlike in her innocence. Surely it was only her maidenly modesty that kept her from answering. But he was going to be her husband, and she had nothing to hide from him.
He hesitated a moment more, and then he opened the door. His gaze went immediately to where Christine laid crumpled on the carpet, the blood staining her neck and dress the only color on her otherwise pale form.
He tsked softly as he bent over her. "You should not lay on the floor, Christine. It will crease your dress. Come, I will take you to someplace more comfortable."
With an ease belayed by his skeletal form, he scooped her up. Her head lolled back, forcing the gash in her throat even wider with a wet-sounding tear, and her arms dangled limply towards the floor. Silently, he carried her out of her room and towards his own.
Shouldering the door open, he entered with his precious burden. His coffin was gone. In its place lay his gift to Christine. Their wedding bed.
Walking over to it, he laid her gently down on one side of it, tucking her wayward hands to her sides. With skeletal fingers he straightened her gown and brushed stray hair off of her face.
She looked so lovely lying there, he thought. He certainly didn't deserve a bride like her. Not a monster like him.
He forced himself to turn away from her and walk over to his organ. He stared at it a moment, then leaned over and picked up the folio sitting on it. He traced the title written on it with the same delicate touch he had used for Christine. Don Juan Triumphant.
A sigh rattled his thin frame. It was done. He had finished it just hours ago.
He glanced over his shoulder at the bed and then back down at the work in his hands. His magnum opus completed, and his bride waiting for him. A great weight lifted from his shoulders, but it was replaced by weariness.
Slowly, very slowly, he turned away from the organ, still clutching his opera to him, and made his way back to his bride.
He climbed into the double coffin beside her, propping himself up to gaze down on her pale face. "Oh Christine," he whispered softly, "I told you when I finished Don Juan Triumphant I would take it away with me to sleep and never wake up again. And I knew that you would be here with me to share my triumph. For in your eyes, I have always seen you as my wife—my dead wife."
Leaning over, he pressed thin, misshapen lips to her forehead. He then laid himself down beside her, arranging himself so that one hand held Don Juan, while the other entangled itself with hers. And so he rested.