Chapter Two: A Fantasy's Lullaby
The chilly darkness of this strange newly discovered corridor frightened the fleeing chorus girl. Her angry feet, her rushing mind, and her trembling will drove her slender legs with such great force that she never knew she possessed. Her echoing pants chased after her as she sprinted down the hall, following her deeper and deeper into the maze-like opera house.
Only when her tiny bare feet slid off from some slime that covered the forgotten corridor did reality once more hit her; more precisely on the side of her cheekbone and burnt on her throbbing knees.
The splitting pain crushed her sore to the bone. Her shaky legs quivered against the cold, hard concrete. The putrid odor of this dark oblivion was enough to make her eyes water.
That is, if they weren't already.
She whimpered as she pulled herself to sit up from the ground, feeling her cracking knees buckling uncontrollably together from the pain. She tasted blood that seeped between the cracks of her dried lips; her slime-caked fingers found the cut that trailed along from just beneath her eye socket to her lower cheekbone. In the privacy of her own disgrace, she laid back forward on the floor, feeling her mouth twist and her lips stretch, her nostrils flare in a desperate fight.
She felt pathetic not even having the spine to win a battle against herself.
She gave in to the overwhelming power of humility and loneliness that ate at her soul every day, that rewound in her dreams every night, and laughed at her rehearsals every morning.
She screamed in pain and anger against the deaf ground, slamming her petite fist at its cold and emotionless face, cursing at it between each reality-wearied cry. Not even the ground of which laid beneath her feet would grant her the courtesy to show any acknowledgment of her.
She rose from her bony ankles and treaded down the endless corridor, hopelessly fighting the air-desperate spasms of her bruised chest. Gasping back in her tears, and walking off her crushing pain, she forced her slimed feet to carry on until she found another door that would ultimately lead her back into the chorus girls' dormitories.
She studied herself in her own mirror. Found her injuries to be a stingy red scratch flawing the left side of her complexion-perfected face, a sensitive soft-pink spot on her cheek that she assumed will be the primary area of bruise discoloration would soon initiate. Her ragged bridesmaid gown was now saturated in greenish slime that reeked of ancient filth and decay. Her bony knees resembled gray leather rags, her hair oozed with sweat and slime.
She then took the nerve to stare at herself in the eye. She scowled at herself through the mirror and mentally chided herself for even approaching the good mirror to abuse its courtesy with her presence. There she was, young Christine of fourteen, thin, frail, and weak. Her eyebrows furrowed in disgust at her brunette spider web of hair, her large, insect-like eyes, her hunched, bony shoulders that towered up to her round, bat-like ears.
What were the heavens thinking when they created a worm like her?
She turned away hastily from the mirror and disrobed herself from her thick and filth-heavy dress as soon as she stepped under the first showerhead she spotted in the chorus girls' shower-room. Unlike this prior morning, she was no longer alarmed to see none of her dance-mates skipping about in the deserted wetland.
As she returned to her dorm, wrapped in her drenched towel and changed into her usual pale-yellow nightgown, she heard a knock on her door.
She mentally sighed, but was determined to show no more defeat to Carlotta or anyone else. "Come in." She allowed patiently.
It was Meg's sunshine-golden hair that first appeared from behind the jarred door, and then came her perfect, rose-kissed face until lastly her fully developed figure. Her face bore concern but her body language revealed ignorance and blissful obliviousness. Christine mentally groaned at the sight of her only friend, wishing her unbridled bliss would kindly take its innocence somewhere else. She bore a wide, actress-strict smile and gestured her friend a seat on her bed.
"Meg, what brings you here this night?"
"The affairs of this day, my friend," Meg began as she locked eyes now onto Christine's. "Are you feeling better?"
Christine fought the embarrassment that began to warm in her swollen cheeks. "I wish not to talk about it."
Meg nodded understandingly as she eyed Christine's newest facial accessories. "Never you mind about that Carlotta" Meg gently chided as she ever so tenderly soothed the scratch."She's merely an ignorant twit with an arrogance as thick as her skull."
Christine half-reluctantly stretched a smile. Oh, the irony.
"She blindly believes that she is now the queen of England just because she outages us all by a few measly unimportant years. The old bag!"
Christine couldn't resist a small chuckle at the image of Carlotta, ugly and wrinkled with sagging breasts and draping skin, parasitic towards an unlucky wheelchair. Whilst she, the unlikely blossom, would be young and strong, prancing gallantly and gracefully across her stage with the world in her palm.
Ah, wishful thinking is oh so bittersweet.
She envied Meg's unsinkable smile and unfaltering energy, wishing for once she'd be the spirit of someone's hope.
But the events of the day made her weary, and she let out an unknown yawn. Meg got up with a replenished smile and led her friend to her bed.
"Nevertheless, today is merely a day to forget. Never mind you of Carlotta or anyone else, you will be fine. Now, let sleep be your only worry for now. We have a big day for the morrow, and these strong legs must be well and ready." She cooed as she playfully tapped Christine's covered shin.
Christine smiled realistically for the first time in hours. "Goodnight Meg."
Meg merely smiled warmlyand closed the door behind her.
Christine then felt the weight of the bed begin to pull on her, the undeniable coax of its mysterious covers of security and fantasy; the allurement of dreams to entice her never-resting mind.
She closed her eyes and began playing a speculation of the Opera's performance tomorrow, conducting her fantasies into one magical musical all her own. An orchestra of applause, a drumming storm of the ballet dancer's stomping feet, Carlotta's symphonic apologies of immaturity, however, was the part that made most beautiful music.
So wonderful was her secret retreat of fantasy, she could almost hear music in her sleep.
Wait…was it music?
She couldn't tell.
Sleep my innocent angel
Let your song take wing
And when the sun shall break your night
Let music entice your dove-like flight
So we may make music together again
When you dream
That voice.
She wouldn't know, her song-heavy eyelids would not open.
