Chapter 4
Unbreakable spell
"When one is in torment, love is its tormenter." Unknown
Erik had been sitting at his organ playing a sad tune as he listened in the dark to the fine acoustics swirling around him in the cold and dismal night. The world slipped in his mind in and out of clarity as he picked up the discarded stem of the crushed rose she had dropped on the rood. Tears leaked from his eyes as he marveled at the loss of the bloom, once so beautiful and red. Vibrant and full of life, just like love itself and now just as his love it was dead, crushed and mutilated like his tortured heart. He gazed down at the stem where one last petal drooped forlornly from its stem, looking like a tear of pain that had yet to fall from its massacred face.
He pressed the petal to his face, its silky gloss caressing the unmasked side of his face. It was the only piece of her that he had left. He had given her everything he had, his music, his love and his heart. She had taken it in her hands just like the rose and dropped it, not gently either into the pit of his despair. True she had not physically harmed the rose, but seeing the only physical gift he had ever given her is cast aside in favor of someone who could offer her more material things had been just as painful if she had slain him herself. His voice rose in a choked whisper and the lyrics he had written in that blackness came out. The lyrics were not full of the rage he had felt, rather they were almost coaxing as if to convince himself that he was fine way he was.
"Like every tree stands on its own
Reaching for the sky I stand alone
I share my world with no one else
All by myself
I stand alone
I've seen your world with these very eyes
Don't come any closer, don't even try
I've felt all the pain and heard all the lies
But in my world there's no compromise
Like every tree stands on its own
Reaching for the sky I stand alone
I share my world with no one else
All by myself I stand alone
All by myself I stand alone
All by myself I stand alone."
Erik's voice reverberated off the walls of his cave the words sounding as they were, torn from the soul of a wounded man. In the shadowy darkness of his underground home Erik had been composing…well not really more like venting the emotion that he had been bottling up. His music had been the only thing keeping him sane or so he thought. He had been enveloped in it so deeply that his madness had become infused with the melodies. It swirled around him endlessly and no matter how hard he tried he could not break free to its surface. He had long since ceased to fight the current and submerged himself in the turbulence within his mind. He swam with those tides, black, murky, a deep shadowed pool of bitterness and tortured love forever to remain unreturned.
Love was meant for the beautiful and he was certainly not, love was meant for people like the Vicomte. Handsome, lovesick young men with eyes like the summer sky. Erik had to congratulate her on her taste at the very least, if she must shatter his heart than she must be choosing someone as beautiful as she is. That didn't change the fact that every moment he thought of her in his arms made him feel sick to his stomach. He had written that song to make himself feel better but the endeavor had failed miserably. All his efforts to heal his inner pain had failed thus far and his appearance reflected it.
In the golden surface of his polished organ he saw his face and the picture mocked him. The handsome un-deformed side of his face showing him that he was a human…a man with the ability to feel… How he hated the fact that he could feel love, the fact that he had a heart was something he hated even more than his hideous face. He cursed God for creating him with the heart of a human male, the body of a human man and the face of a demon. Most of all he raged, raged at her with anger so fierce that words could not express it. So he let his music speak for him, beautiful tragic music that told the long and laborious story of the tragedy that was his life. The notes caused his consciousness to slip and slowly, very slowly his thoughts slipped to those of sin.
Lustful thoughts of her and the night she had been beneath his hands, eyes closed and floating to his dark seductive music. Erik pictured her sighing beneath his touch as he sang to her; subconsciously he felt his lips warm as his hot breath ricocheted back to his lips. It was the first warmth he had ever felt on his own skin and it had carried the scent of her back to him. He inhaled deeply; eyes shut and thought he could still smell her French Vanilla perfume and cherry-blossom hair-soap as he ran his gloved through her hair. It was a memory too sweet and too painful for him to physically hold back and the pressure of his sorrow burned behind his eyes.
In his grief a single tear seeped down his face, trickled burningly down the malformed side of his face and he winced clutching at his face through the silk of the cover. One of his fingers pressed through the material as he tried to locate the droplet. The salt in it burned the chasms of missing skin and a line of sweat leaked from underneath his mask. He pressed there where the sensation was and felt something hot and sticky glued to his mask. Blood, he tore off his mask and stared at the smears marring the pristine white surface.
It was still wet and he thought that it reminded him of her lips, wet, rosy and glistening. Erik groaned as he forced himself to remember that it was from his own face. He placed the mask on his face and groaned as he imagined her lips there. Erik thought they might feel as smooth and semi warm as his mask did at the moment. His face always bled at the slightest touch because the skin was so terribly thin, but the hole always burned the worse when he cried from the bitter sault of his tears. He let the blood dry on his face determined to ignore the sting of it till he heard a noise.
He stopped his dark musing, suddenly on the alert like the animal he was. Erik rose from his bench, angry at the intrusion but feeling that murder was the best stress reliever for his thoughts of Christine. He went to the gate grabbing his lasso as he went. Whoever this was, was about to meet their maker. But just as he was about to swoop down and vent his rage on that member of the perfect race, the human in him caused him to freeze and ask who the singular intruder was. It was just as he was about to smack himself for asking such a thing when he heard someone calling his name weakly in the dark.
"Erik…"
The voice was soft and feminine; childlike and as soft as the wind on the summer breeze. It sent chills down his spine as he saw Christine laying there limp on the cold wet stone. He stumbled like a drunk from the shock but lifted her easily to his bony chest. Tears streamed down his face as he gazed down at her as his cheeks became wet. She looked so pathetic…soaked in water and…blood it looked like. He was drunk. There was no denying that, his eyes were glassy and dreamlike as he floated in a sea of utter euphoria. Erik stumbled like a bum toward the voice, his grace suspended from his inebriated state.
Colors bright and pale whirled around him. He just couldn't believe what he was seeing; his beautiful, darling, innocent Christine... She was here, and calling for him! Soaked to the bone too, But why had she come? Shouldn't she be dancing in the arms of her handsome fiancé? That bloody Vicomte De Chagny! It was just too much for him to handle! He got out a bottle of scotch, even though he hated the taste. He drank half of the bottle in ten minutes. The other in five, and then many more bottles of wine afterward, that was the only way to explain the sight before him as he looked narrowly at the shape at his door.
Erik lifted her into his arms her eyes opened slowly, their brilliant blueness gleaming at him tiredly. They closed again and a soft groan came from her and he could see her arms were bruised from an apparent struggle. His brow furrowed, the water could not have done this, it scarcely rippled but then there were little droplets of blood on the walls as though she had been battling and then he felt for the first time a pang of remorse. His Christine had never been a good swimmer and she was most likely dog-paddling and as the water grew closer and closer to his home it grew deeper and darker.
Everything in Erik screamed for him to turn around and leave her there, to take his revenge for his heartache. But his heart, traitorous as it was screamed louder with an overpowering call to tend his angel with her fragile body so weathered by this world meant to protect the mortally beautiful. He carried her carefully, as hurt as he was he still wanted her to be comfortable and warm, so with heavy steps he carried her limp form to the Luis-Philippe room and laid her down amid the thick velvet sheets. Erik made a move to leave her then but seeing her soaked like that and shivering tugged at his heartstrings. Fear crawled up his spine and out of impulse; he stripped her of her wet clothes and left her naked before him.
Erik knew that the gentlemanly thing to do would be to cover her and leave the room but he was drawn to her body as if he were a virginal schoolboy with his summer love and not a man of thirty-six who had seen many an in inappropriate picture in his time. Beside her bed were large jars of different color paint, and paper (he'd been using this room for storage when she had left him) and so he took up a white one and began to paint her like that on his bed only this time he covered her up to the shoulders. She sighed and rolled over, obviously the warmth making her drowsy. He shook his head and blew on the painting taking out his pen to draw a string of tiny z's coming from her.
He set his work down and watched her sleep for some time until boredom took over him and he carefully penned a big thought-bubble on her forehead with head in the clouds in the middle. He laughed as she rolled over so her face was toward him and he decided to draw a cat (her favorite animal) so he painted the whiskers on her delicately to form the word's Daddy Daaè's little girl. Just at that moment she blinked and yawned and looked at him. He closed his eyes and faked snoring, hoping not to get caught but of course when she felt her bare skin beneath her hands she knew something was amiss.
"Erik? She asked, "Where are my clothes?" when she received no answer she assumed he was asleep but then when she looked in the mirror above her bed she screamed and slapped him.
"Ow!" Erik snapped back, "Why?
"I could ask you the same why did you draw on my face and why am I naked?"
"I was bored, watching you sleep is no opera my dear."
"You were-all right then!" she glared at him, "Where are my clothes?"
"You were soaked to the skin I needed to get you warm and why were you here anyway?"
"Well I…" she grabbed a wet towel from the table that he used to wash his brushes and washed the paint from her skin.
How did she explain to Erik about her dreams and who he was in a former life? She leaned forward and kissed him knowing that no amount of words could explain the situation. He gasped and then slowly, very slowly kissed her back. It seemed that he understood as well, because in that moment he started to cry, his hands framed her face and when she pulled away he looked her deeply in the eyes.
"I love you too…"
