Chapter 1

I remember that I used to dream as a child. Locked away in the dark recesses of my mother's home, trapped away from the world of regular men, I would sit alone and dream of what it would be like to walk among them. I would come up with worlds beyond my own prison, make up friends to join me on adventures or simply journey out by myself. I would see incredible sights and achieve impossible feats inside my mind. I would design palaces to visit and live in, I would battle monsters, or I would even sometimes find a lovely home to call my own with a family who would not sneer or hit me when I showed my face. I would dream of a mother who would smile at me and tell me she loved me every day. Each night a father would tuck me into bed, telling me stories or simply sit there, rubbing my chest until I fell asleep. I would imagine the fantastical or what I thought should be normal.

Every time I woke up, however, I was faced with the Hell of my reality. All of my dreams would melt away, leaving me with nothing but the empty feeling of disappointment and pain. I would still start afresh, making up even grander settings for my mind so that I would not have to focus on how limited my body was.

My body was not so much the limitation as my face was. Wearing my mask for fear of a beating from my mother, I was trapped in two cells. One of the house I lived in, and the other of the cover that hid my ugliness. I would cry or smile or frown behind the mask, but to the outside world it was all the same. I had no feelings or emotions or thoughts of my own. They were all taken by the mask. So I learned to hide them on purpose. I used the covering to my advantage. I would seem as though I was listening when my mother would preach to me, but instead I was in my head, envisioning that caring home somewhere off far away from her. She never caught on, though sometimes I think she knew I was not listening as attentively as she wanted. Still, she did not care enough for me to press it.

As I grew, my dreams became more wild and desperate to be lived out. I longed for the outside world more than the one I was in and began to wonder why I had to stay inside. I knew why my mother wanted me to, but I questioned what truly kept me from disobeying her.

It was a thrill the first time I left the house and ventured into the town. I did not go very far before a noise sent me instantly scurrying back. I could not be caught out, this I knew, but the call became too loud to ignore. There was so much promise beyond the walls of my house.

When my mother became less and less encouraging for me to continue living, I decided it was time I took matters into my own hands. I left the house I was born into and crept out in the cover of night to escape the town I had never been bold enough to explore fully. I thought myself an adventurous rogue about to live his dreams. I thought everything was so thrilling, just as I had imagined. My fault came, however, when I realised I had taken for granted my freedom in the house of being able to wake up from my dream and find myself safe. I could leave my dreams at any time and find myself with shelter. Out on my own, I did not have that luxury. I had no food or shelter or water. I had to scavenge to find anything to sustain me. It is a wonder I did not die.

My hopes were already starting to tarnish when I came across a travelling circus. I was wary of it—knowing that other people were not kind to me—, but I made a mistake and had my secret revealed.

In those awful years of captivity and exposure, I realised that all my imaginings were for naught. I had been a foolish child, dreaming of a world that did not exist. Every aspiration I had entertained was crushed under the boot of my capture and whipped out of me. My hopes fled with my screams of pain into the night. Each scar on my back was a wish that had been taken from me. My innocence was punished in the harshest way and my naivety was quashed. The iron bars of my cage became the prison around my mind. I could not imagine, I could not hope or yearn. I was trapped and felt I would be forever more.

When at last I did manage to escape, I felt something in me break. I had a choice when I made my eventual release a reality. I had to choose between my freedom or my captor's life. When I felt the breath leave his fat body at my hands, I knew the last of my childhood went with it. He had stolen it, but I had let it go forever. I could not go back. Any wild vision I had of retuning to my mother vanished. I could not go back for I was no longer the child who had left her. I knew also that I would only be trading one prison for another. The torture would not end but simply shift to new hands.

I fled the place where most children's fantasies are made a reality. Dreams can be born in a circus for those on the outside, but inside it they are killed.

I wandered for years, searching for I knew not what. My apathy and indifference to the world only grew as I journeyed. I picked up trades and became very good at sleight of hand. I would trick people out of their money. Much like the circus, I used flashy showmanship to create the illusion of wonder. There was nothing wonderful or magical about picking pockets except the fact that it allowed me to continue eating. I did not subsist on much, but I had human needs as anyone else. I lived, though my face may tell a different tale.

Life seemed to drag on in this way, going from place to place, doing the same tricks day in and day out to the open mouthed delight of the idiots I entertained. They were well paying idiots, but they were easily impressed. A few times I ran into some trouble, but I had learnt how to escape such trivial matters long ago. A few clever words, or a quick dash into the shadows and I was out free once more. No cell could hold me and no man would ever again call me their master, this I made sure of.

Through all of this, I completely forgot about my dreams. I had known them to be gone, never coming back as they had no home to come back to. My mind was a trap for innocence; ruining it and twisting it into something vile. My jokes became darker and without true humour, my tricks meaner, and my very being became one of shadows. I felt more at home in the night than in the day, preferring to hide and pounce from unseen corners. Where once my mind had yearned for light, I inhabited only darkness.

I began to realise through all of this that I did still imagine and hope. I did long for things beyond my reality, but now I had the means to make them true. I also realised that my dreams were quite far from my visions in my youth. The darkness I craved and adored had invaded my mind and tainted each aspiration.

The amazing thing about these dreams was that I was not alone in them. For so long, I had been imagining worlds beyond reality without the merest idea that someone else would like to know of them, but now, there were people who not only wanted them but hungered for them. I made my dreams a reality. I made things to scare and hurt and torture as I had been tortured. I made mazes of never ending darkness with traps to keep the victim running until they inevitably fell to their own weakness. I made shadows that would move and trick, the sufferer never knowing when they would strike until they had already been hit. I made so many machines and evils that I forgot all about the fluffy clouds and gentle hands to hold me up to the light. I put aside what I thought to be the wonders of a childish mind not yet made to see the world as it was. They were pure foolishness.

Then I met a child. I met a child so full of light and beauty that it brought me to tears. The crime that the world had put on this child, however, was that he would not live long enough to make his dreams come true. In some ways, the world had done him a favour in not letting him live long enough to suffer the painful break that came from seeing the world as it truly was. He would die still naïve; still believing the best in a world that did not deserve it. He would die pure and I would have to watch.

Through the child, I remembered and relived my old, forgotten dreams. I realised that what I had been seeing now were not dreams but nightmares. I had fallen into a world of corruption. I had lowered myself to the standards of those I despised. They had robbed me of the innocence I now strove to protect in this boy. With me as his guardian, I swore that his illusion would never be broken as mine had been. I would defend his dreams until his dying breath. This breath came softly and sweetly and far too soon.

I remembered the things the boy had envisioned and sought to make them a reality, but once more I was lost. I had not the drive or endurance to keep this dream going. I could not do it. I had tried for my own and look where it had gotten me. I began to feel that I was doomed to fail. If I could not see my own imaginings to fruition, how could I possibly do any better for someone else's?

But then, just when I was dropping back into the shadows of my now tainted soul, fate supplied me with another light. She was more than anything I had hoped for when I was as a child. Where my youthful mind had envisioned two loving arms to hold me and nurture me, there now came one who needed the same for herself. Where once I had hoped to hold a hand as we walked in a sun, there now was one reaching out to me. Where once I was a child longing for a parent, there now was a girl, barely more than a child, longing for me to protect her. Our roles were swapped from what I had originally hoped, but I could not bring myself to complain. She was everything I had been, and just like the boy who had inspired me to hope, I tried to protect her innocence as well.

It started off the same, being a guardian and defender from the darkness of the world so she would not be corrupted. I would be there for her as a father might, to look after her and comfort her in times of need. I would provide for her and nurture her. I would do everything in my power to make her smile. I wanted nothing more than for her to be happy.

But, as all things do, something changed. Something happened and I started to notice how beautiful she looked. I started to notice how her form had become less childlike and her eyes sparkled when she laughed. I started to see her less as a student and more as a glorious woman. I began to realise she had been inspiring me in a way that none ever had before. I saw the way her presence in my life had changed my tastes, how I now took her thoughts and desires into consideration when making decisions for myself. I felt something strange come over me when she would smile upon hearing my voice. I felt a stirring in my gut whenever she would call for me, false though her monicker for me may have been.

The strangest thing of all to change were my dreams. Though I certainly still fell into the pit of nightmares often enough, I now dreamt of things I had not thought possible since my woe-filled youth. I dreamt of walks in the sunlight, now not with some blurred version of what I imagined a loving parent to be, but with her. I imagined her on my arm, chatting in that pretty way of hers as we walked as any other couple would. I envisioned a house for us to live in, just us two, in the country. It would have a garden of beautiful flowers and bright colours. I dreamt of a life so different from my own because she was there.

I realised, much to my own pain and shock, that I was in love. It was no longer the love of a teacher for a pupil, nor a father for a daughter, but of a man for a woman. It was the love that I had seen many times in other people but never once imagined coming for myself. I had long viewed it as an affliction or disease to which I was mercifully immune. Now, I realised, I was sick with it. I was cursed with it. I was in love with Christine Daaé.

Now, I had many hopes for this discovery. I had new dreams that seemed more and more real. I thought, foolishly, that this could possibly work between us. I began to ask her questions, subtly at first, of how she felt about me. I wanted to know if she thought of me in the same way. It turned out, much to my fear and excitement, that she did care about me deeply. She, however, was still hiding behind the veil I had placed over her in thinking me an Angel. She believed that I was naught but a spiritual being sent from Heaven to guide her. She felt I could do no wrong. She believed that I would never have feelings for her beyond what I had long assumed were the only ones possible. She would be devastated to know that not only had I lied about who and what I was, but that I was far from the innocent and pure creature she had long confided in. Though I dreaded it, I knew she needed to see the truth that I had kept from her for so long. I decided to break the promise I had made to myself to protect her from the evils of the world. I was about to reveal the most frightening one yet: me.

The night she removed my mask, she unleashed the horrors I had worked so hard to conceal behind the mirror and my persona. She truly was like Pandora, unable to resist temptation and paying the awful price for her curiosity. The worst part of it, however, was that I knew I should not have blamed her. In my heart of hearts I understood why she did it. I knew it was something she would want to investigate and unveil, but still that did not prepare or stop me from reacting in the way that I did. I screamed and raged and clawed her poor hands down my hideous face. I made her cry and turn away from me. I broke everything I had worked so hard to build between us. In one fell swoop, I sent all of my pretty fantasies crashing down to rubble. I turned from the light to the comforting arms of darkness, broken beyond repair and yearning for the simplicity that came from giving in to the nightmares. Why fight what you cannot beat?

I still remember her tear stained face, looking up at me with fear and loss in her eyes. She had the expression of betrayal I knew to be in my own gaze. I had broken not only my dreams, but hers as well. Realising I had hurt her and not simply myself cut far deeper than any of the Shah's blades.

I tried to apologise, but how can one apologise for existing. After all my years of life, one would think I would be adept at that, but no. I crawled on hands and knees, trying to make her understand how sorry I was for breathing. I tried to make her see that I wanted me dead, too. She was not alone in her hatred of me. Yet all of this too was wrong. It was not what she wanted. In my haze of desperation, I forgot something very important about her: her grace. She has the power to forgive and show compassion to even the lowest creatures. She had the power to make an ant feel important. I was lower than dirt and yet she took my hands and lifted me to my feet. Though she cried and cringed from looking at the cuts I had made in my flesh with her fingers, she raised me up to the height of a man. She returned me to the form I had been struggling to be worthy of all my life. In that moment, I was human. In that moment, I loved her more than anything in the world. All of the love I had nurtured for her became nothing compared with what I felt in that singular instant of her hands in mine.

I always knew I did not deserve her, but I still wanted her. I knew then that I would never deserve her and could not live without her.

I hate to recall what happened after. Oh, there were a few times when we were happy or at least friendly with each other, but nothing could bridge the gap I had formed between us. She tried, angel that she is, but it could not be done. Even if, in her infinite kindness, she had forgiven me, I refused to forgive myself. I could not let go of how I had hurt her and frightened her and harmed my only chance at happiness. Where her smiles should have brought me purest joy, they were tainted in my guilt over what I had ruined. I could not let it go, though. I could not let her go. I needed her, and knew it fully now. Whenever she would come visit her poor, unhappy Erik, I would feel guilty for keeping her from the sunlight at the same time as I was rejoicing her return to me. Surely, if she did not care for me at all, she would not come back down. Some part of me must not have repelled her. But how could I not? It was out of pity that she returned, not out of affection I so longed to receive. I was a monster and she a heavenly being. It would never work.

It turned out that I was right. I wonder even now that if I had not let the bad dreams back into my time with her, if it could have possibly worked between us. If I had managed to keep the purer dreams and not give in to the lure of less friendly solutions, would she have chosen differently? Was it all my fault that we were not at this moment together and happy? Had it really been all my doing?

The thoughts are too painful to bear, yet as I sit here in my home before the dying fireplace, they are all that haunt me. The questions that pursue my waking and even sleeping moments are whether or not I destroyed everything through my own self-loathing and doubt. They taunt me and berate me in turns, driving me further into the pit of my madness. I had looked into the void and seen myself. I am falling deeper and deeper into despair as each painful day passes.

She has probably married her boy by now. I wonder if it is as I had dreamt our own wedding to be. Is she as radiantly beautiful as I had always imagined? Of course she is. Nothing, not even my cruelty could harm her perfection. Even as she sobbed and begged and lost hope at my torturous hands, she remained glorious. Even as she plead with me to let her go, tears streaming down her face, she was the most stunning being on this sorry planet. Her beauty is beyond physical. It is ethereal. She is a seraphim and therefore untainted.

She would smile at her boy, beautiful in form as she was in spirit, and they would live in the cottage I had hoped to purchase. He would be the one in the garden with her, tending the flowers, not me. He would be the one to receive her kisses and hold her hand, not me. He would be the one to read to her each night until she drifted off in his arms, not me. He would be gifted with her glances and laughter and joy, not me. She would be happy with him, not me.

Dragging myself to the only part of my home that was not destroyed by the mob that night I let her go, I prepare myself for my nightly bout of torture. To make up for all that I had done to her, I put myself through Hell. It is my recompense for how I made her suffer.

The Louis Philippe Room was graciously untouched when the raiding and understandably furious hands of the Opera employees tore through. The secret door had been closed and there was too much commotion going on for anyone to figure out how to open it. I am grateful of this, for it gives me one little reminder of what I had shared with my angel.

My side still hurts from where I was shot. I have only barely cleaned it. I want to die. Though infection is not a preferable method, death does not seem inclined to take me in my sleep as I had hoped. I must taunt death; persuade it to take me.

My mask lies on the floor of her room, cracked over the eye and under the nose. I had taken it off that night and must have stepped on it. Yet another reason for her to have been so desperately terrified that night.

I look down into the empty eye-holes of the mask. I try to see through the eyes of the man that I could have been had the mask stayed on. She had mentioned at some point in the haze that was that night that I had more than one mask. It was more than the physical mask that I wore that had made her feel betrayed. I suppose she was right. I hide behind the porcelain to seem like a good man, but I hide behind my failing dreams to seem human at all. In my soul, I am wicked and awful. She accused me of as much in a surprising turn of anger. She had never been angry at me before. That outburst had shocked me almost more than anything else that happened in the chaos of my own actions. She had screamed at me not in fear, but in anger. Some say that those are one and the same emotions, but I felt something different break in me when seeing them on her.

Turning my gaze next to the furnishings of the room, I find myself sighing in something akin to weary disappointment. My home is filled with dark wood and garnet stylings, but this room is unlike anything else I own. Much like the being this room was made for, it is nearly a complete opposite. Though the sleigh bed is simple enough in design, the rich wood matches her chocolate curls more than my ebony locks. The soft green of the walls are the perfect compliment to the deep reds I so prefer. The rose pink and ivory of the upholstery on the vanity chair, small sofa, and writing desk chair all lend themselves to light thoughts. This room is the Rococo to my Baroque lifestyle.

My eyes find the pillows of her bed, the sheets still mussed from the last time she slept there. They make me wonder if they still hold some bit of her warmth. It is not possible, I know, but in my maddening despair I still find myself questioning.

Walking over to the bed on tired and stiff legs, my side stinging with every motion, I find myself freezing beside it. There, laying so innocently upon the cotton casing of her pillow, rests a single hair. It curls so sweetly and perfectly, left behind and I cannot help but imagine it waits for me. One piece of her that was not repelled by my presence. A gift, of sorts, for one who longed for too much as it was.

I fall to my knees, barely noting the pain, as my eyes brim with tears. One last essence of the woman I almost wondered to be a dream. This small piece of evidence as a solid reminder of her to keep my madness from convincing me of a fantasy.

I take it with shaking hands, pressing it to my heart, then to my horrid lips. I cannot help myself in this action. Though I long believed my kiss to have held the power to kill, I cannot find the will to stop myself from showering such affection on the one part of her I have left. I cannot kiss my memories of her and indeed her clothes or bedding would not be as much a part of her as this. This came from her and was not given by any other besides the God she so devoutly believed in.

I do not realise I am sobbing until I hear its echo return to me from the empty house. I am alone with my tears and sorrow and memories. Nothing will change that. I have created my own Hell after dreaming so long of finding a way out. My selfishness, jealousy, and twisted heart have made not only my fortune sour, but hers as well. Ruining her life and love for music hurts me more than anything else. How could she bear to sing now when all she would imagine were our lessons or myself? I have cursed her.

Pressing the hair to my heart again, I wish it could go through to the organ and remain. I will always hold her in my tattered heart, but to have a physical piece of her there may finally help me to let go of the life I burnt to the ground. I wish I could die.

I feel a shift in the air and know it is not caused by me. I wonder if it is the Daroga coming to check on me, or some last part of the mob come to finish me off. I hope for the latter, choking out a plea to kill me, to take away my suffering. I am now seated on the floor beside the bed, clutching at a single hair, sobbing my unnaturally amber eyes to puffy redness. I look like a demon and feel like the devil. I simply want it all to end.

'Erik?'

The voice who speaks my name is feminine and beautiful. It is the voice of an angel, despite the pain and worry that ring out in the single word. I look up towards it, wondering if somehow I am to be killed by an angel. Oh, to have that grace end my pitiful life must be a joke beyond measure.

I cannot see for the tears still in my eyes, but I make out a form in purest white coming towards me. Her skin is shining pale, nearly indistinguishable from the dress that flows elegantly around her. A brown mane flows out around her face, though I cannot make out any specific features. She is beautiful, I know, and I wonder if God is truly so cruel as to send his loveliest angel to cast me into Hell. But, my mind questions, is it not also a kindness for my last sight to be of one so lovely before I am thrown into the pit?

I feel her gaze shift to my hands, clasped at my heart. I feel possessive of my treasure for a moment, but her obvious curiosity breaks my resolve. I open my palms to show my prize.

'Please,' I whimper out. 'Do not take it.' I look at her pleadingly when her hand reaches out to the hair, but she rescinds it before it touches and I hear her gasp. 'Let me keep it until the end. I need her.'

I hear another gasp from the being above me but I cannot take my eyes off of the hair. I will look to my love until the very last. I want my final sight to be of her, even if it is such a small part of her.

'Oh, Erik,' I hear the angel gasp and feel something hit my wrist. I look to see a tear, but it is strangely not mine. It is hers; my angel's.

I do look up then to see my angel crying over me, her pretty shoulders shaking from silent sobs. I wish to reach out to her, some part of my mind telling me I should comfort her, yet before I can, she falls to her knees beside me and instead holds me.

I cannot think for the rate of my heart pounding in my ears. No one has ever held me as this being is. She wraps her arms about my shoulders, tucking her sweet smelling head in beside mine. She would hold a monster like myself close to her!

I squirm, trying to protest, to explain her folly and remind her of my hideousness. I tell her that I am a monster who must not be touched. I tell her how I ruin all I am near. I explain this, but she does not let go. She holds me tighter! I fight her, but I cannot win. I give up and simply sit on the floor in her arms, crying with her.

One of her hands comes up to my head and I gasp as she runs her fingers through my hair. She is comforting me, I realise. I have never felt something as wonderful as this. She is crying, yet I am the one she worries for. She moves me so that I lean against her breast, pressed close to her heart. My arms feel like lead, hanging uselessly at my sides. Some part of my mind remains conscious enough to ponder if I should hold her back. Another wave of sobs crash through me as I realise that I have the opportunity to do so.

She whispers hushing words in my ear as I quiver in her arms, still stroking my head and keeping me close to her warmth. I almost apologise for being so cool, my skin always holding more of a reptilian temperature than a human's. My love once complained of this and I was fully aware of her description of my hands smelling of death. My memory of these moments make me try to pull away. Feebly, I explain my reasoning, telling the angel that I am not worthy of her touch, nor anyone's.

'Erik,' she says again. I could listen to her speak my name for an eternity. Yet, I hear a tiredness in her tone, which reminds me of her purpose in being here.

'I am ready,' I tell her, still not meeting her eye. 'You have offered me far more than I deserve and I thank you. I am ready to go wherever you would take me.' I take a shuddering breath, bracing for the flames to lick up at me, to burn my flesh so that my body may finally match my face. I wait…and wait…and wait.

I look up, finally, my gaze questioning her hesitance. Why will she not kill me at last, or cast me into the gaping maw of Hell?

My eyes meet hers, finally seeing through the haze of tears which have paused in my confusion. Her blue, crystalline eyes. The eyes of my love.

I gasp, falling back from her as if pushed by some supernatural power.

'Christine?' I whisper out as though in prayer.

'Erik,' she says, reaching out to me. I see her slender hand coming towards me but the world is turning dark. I am falling backwards into black shadow. I cry out for her, fearing the dark. I wish to remain in the light with her. I wonder if this is God's final trick. Did he truly send Christine to me right before I was to die? Did he send an angel that looked like her, making me suffer just before Hell claimed me?

I feel one more tear slip free at these thoughts as the world around me disappears into nothingness. My final thought is an apology to Christine and all I put her through.