Chapter 8- Addiction
(A/N: just a note: i took Erik's morphine addiction from Susan Kay's Phantom. so, if you were wondering, i didn't make Erik have this little drug problem! but it does make things interesting...
also- to those who are wondering: ERIK IS NOT INSANE! his inner voices are the result of years of solitude and the fact that he is a troubled genius. but Erik- insane? of course not! ;) wink! you all will see that soon enough)
Not long after Erik retreated to his room, Meg surveyed the rocks again. Her hands still burned from what she had done, but she was desperate to escape. She waded out to the pile, and stood, hands on her hips, knee deep in water, contemplating the best way to go about moving the rocks. She was not a particularly strong girl- she had the strength of a dancer, but had never had to do heavy lifting before. Gingerly, she began to climb up onto the pile, carefully finding footholds and lifting herself higher and higher. When she was a fair distance off the ground, she began to push at some of the smaller rocks at the top of the pile. With a little urging, a medium-sized boulder detached from the rest of the bunch, and cascaded down the pile, landing with a loud crash as it collided with the other rocks at the base. The sound echoed throughout the cave, and a moment later, Erik, having heard the noise, staggered out.
"What the-" he uttered a few expletives that made Meg blush with embarrassment.
"I'm trying to get us out," she said.
She squinted to get a good look at Erik's face. There was something different about him- but she couldn't say what.
She noticed the way he swayed while he tried to stand upright.
"Erik?" she asked. "Are you- are you all right?"
He didn't answer; his eyes looked out of focus. Concerned, Meg scrambled down and waded back over to him. As she drew closer, she realized that something definitely wasn't right. Erik looked... drugged, she thought. His green eyes were out of focus and the visible side of his face was pale and drawn.
"Erik," she said loudly. "Look at me-"
But he couldn't. Not clearly, anyway. He swayed again, threatening to fall over. Meg reached out to steady him, but he shoved her away.
He mumbled something incoherent.
From the way he was, Meg was sure that he was either drugged or delirious.
She approached him again. His shirtsleeve was pulled back on his right arm, and she saw the vein, sticking out more prominently than usual- a few drops of blood leaking out that Erik hadn't bothered to take care of. "Erik," she said testily. "What happened? What did you take?"
Erik's head was so infused with the drug that his mental capabilities had been suspended. Morphine was what was controlling him now.
He stumbled over to his chair and collapsed, motionless. Meg stared at him. He was clearly drugged, she thought. Or at least, she hoped he was. She prayed he wouldn't act like this normally. With him temporarily incapacitated, she hurried down the hall to his room. Maybe there she would be able to find out what he had done. She threw the door open and burst in without thinking twice- stopping short when she saw what was inside.
A coffin.
Standing, like a bed, on one side of the room.
Erik slept in a coffin. The thought of it caused Meg's heart to feel as though two cold, slimy hands were squeezing it. She swallowed hard, and then moved over to Erik's desk. On the desktop, she saw, was a long, empty syringe. She picked it up. So Erik was injecting himself with something. Whatever it was, he was likely to have more of it around somewhere, she thought, pulling open one of the drawers. Curiously, it was filled with scraps of parchment. Suddenly interested, she took them out and examined them. They were drawings- beautifully detailed sketches of various buildings; extravagant palaces and theatres that exceeded the standards of contemporary architecture. Meg flipped through them, until she came to one drawing that she knew wasn't and architectural sketch. Instead of rigid, symmetric buildings, it was a portrait of a young girl, sitting before an altar with a sad, faraway look in her eye. She flipped to the next one. The same little girl- she looked like she might be crying...
The others were more of the same. The drawings showed a progression of ages; from childhood to preteen to maturity of the girl. Meg knew at once who the girl was.
Christine.
When Meg came to a picture of her as a young woman, it was so startlingly lifelike that she gasped in surprise. When she had seen all of the pictures, she set them on the surface of the desk, and continued rummaging through the drawer. Underneath some other trinkets, Meg found the morphine. She took out the container of syringes, looking at them with disgust. So Erik was an addict.
A hand on her shoulder sent an electric jolt of fear through her. "What- are you doing?" a silky voice asked viciously. The grip on her shoulder was talon-like. Meg tensed in fright.
"Nothing," she said through clenched teeth.
"Liar!" he spat, yanking her away suddenly, causing the case of needles to fall to the floor.
Erik rounded on Meg, advancing on her so that she backed into the wall. "I want you... out of my room," he snarled.
His sudden protectiveness caused something in Meg to snap; something inside that made her look past her fear. "Why?" she yelled back. "So I won't be able to see that you're an addict? So you can hide it away, where you think no one will ever find it? So that once I'm gone, you'll just drug yourself again? How far will you go this time, Erik? How close will you come to killing yourself before you remember that there are other people on this earth who need you right now?"
Erik was slightly taken aback by her words, but didn't let it show. His temper, once again, got the better of him. "Get out, damn it! Get out!" he yelled, raising a hand to strike her. The look of raw fear in Meg's eyes stopped him. His hand, suspended in midair, did not fall as Meg had been anticipating. She noticed this, and used his moment of indecision to escape to her room, slamming the door loudly behind her, and then slamming an angry fist at the stone wall. This did nothing to help her injured hands; on the contrary, it caused her to feel even more pain as she strained to bite back tears. Now that she was safely behind closed doors, Meg allowed herself to let the fear flow over her. Her fear of Erik had reached its apex tonight. She was more frightened of him now than she had ever been of anything in this world. He was mad, she thought- a madman who injected would-be lethal doses of morphine into his blood stream. She knew that she should hate him, but she found that whatever feelings she had toward Erik, hate was not one of them. For hidden within her fear and anger, deep down inside, was a small core of something- pity, she supposed- like a piece of ash, in the midst of a blazing fire, waiting to be consumed. But there was something else... something that Meg didn't understand. Her pity for Erik- if you could call it that- was not like the feeling of pity that she had for say, beggars on the streets. Beggars in Paris were not uncommon- they stationed themselves at nearly every street corner. Meg and her friends often used to pass them when they would take walks to the cathedral or to the park. Meg pitied their situation, their plight, but somehow, it was different than what she thought about Erik. It was a step above that; she pitied him, but she found herself seething with the overwhelming desire to help him. To reach out to him and let him know that she was here... but she knew she never could. Erik was like a solid wall of ice, and she a single match. She could never expect to melt the ice around his heart alone.
Back in his room, Erik was still shaking with silent rage. So Meg now knew about his addiction, he thought hopelessly. What did it matter? What did any of it matter?
He just felt so tired... so tired.
His mind was coaxing him to sleep. Just let go... just sleep... just close out the rest of the world. Let the darkness take you... it's time, phantom. You know it's time...
'Too much morphine,' he thought. He had taken too much, and now he was...
Dying? Oh, no. Not yet, phantom. Not yet. You've had this much before, your body still harbors some resilience to it. But you could... just one more shot, what would it hurt? Just a little prick, then you can climb into your coffin and satisfy your life's wish. Death really isn't bad, you know. It's just... sleeping. Forever.
'Unless I'm doomed to burn in hell,' he thought sadistically. 'The image of my body searing forever in the eternal flames doesn't particularly appeal to me...'
Just one more shot... that's all it takes. You can do it... we'll help you...
His hand shot out and grabbed one of the syringes. Instinct and despair screamed at him to do it, to just take it and embrace mortality, but...
He stared at it, transfixed.
The difference between his life and death was contained here, in this tiny tube, waiting to be pumped into his veins. 'Strange,' he thought with a small laugh. The paradox of life; how it could all be over so quickly.
The voices in his head were now chanting, steadily.
Do it... do it... stop the pain... do it...
The needle was poised, right above the blue of the vein on Erik's right arm.
But he suddenly heard something else. "How close will you come to killing yourself before you remember that there are other people on this earth who need you right now?" He remembered Meg's words. The needle hesitated.
Do it... DO IT!
'No,' he thought, surprisingly calmly. 'Not tonight.' He lowered the needle, letting it fall free of his grasp and land with a clank on the hard stone floor.
'Perhaps sometime,' he thought. 'But not tonight.'
A/N: so... very angsty, suicidal chapter, all for you, my darling readers! Well, i never said this would be all sunshine and roses, now did i? so... REVIEW!
coming up... more angst and- dare i say- maybe a little fluff? you like? lemme kno!
