This thing has given me so much trouble I'm seriously debating just blowing it sky high, but I'm out of dynamite. LOL Have at it, folks!

Erik

I was half-mad with rage, but all I could do was laugh and laugh as I took her back down to my house. Let it become her tomb! Let it be our burial crypt, where no one would come to mourn us and lay flowers on our graves! We would die there together, because she would never see the light of day again and I was never going to let her out of my sight! I could hardly stay upright, lost in my fit of deranged hilarity, but I still dragged her along behind me, breaking off every now and then to sing to her once more. "Do you not hear, O Caterina my sweetheart, my voice and my footsteps?" I let out another cackle. "Do you hear my footsteps, O Christine? They echo so loudly down here! So loudly!" I yanked her by the arm to make her go faster and she cried out as she tripped. "Come on now, hurry up!" I taunted. "We must hurry home, my sweet! Home sweet home! Where your heart and your treasure lay, and where they are always overjoyed to see you! I'm so happy to see you home again, my darling!"

"Please!" she pleaded, nearly screaming it out. "Please no, don't take me back there, please! Kill me instead, I beg of you!"

"Why would I kill you, Christine, when I'm so glad to have you back again?" I swooped her up in my arms and steered her around in a manic waltz, still laughing hysterically. "You wanted to leave! You wanted to leave without saying goodbye!"

"Stop!" she shrieked, struggling against me. "Stop! Let me go!"

"Well, now you're never leaving again," I told her, coming to a halt and no longer laughing. "Never again. That was a heartless trick, Christine, trying to hurt me and break my heart like that when you know I love you so much. It won't happen again, do you hear me?" I seized her by the shoulders and leaned down close to her face. "You will never do that again, do you understand? You won't leave me, you stupid woman! You won't, because I won't let you!"

"No!" she wailed. "No, you can't! Oh please, no!"

"Shut up!" I shouted. "All your begging and sniveling won't save you! Did you think I was going to let you leave? Did you really?"

"What are you going to do to me?" she asked, ashen with terror.

I chuckled again. "I haven't decided yet," I told her. "But it has to be something special, so you learn your lesson…it has to be very special indeed…though I don't know why I bother! You're never leaving here again!" I set off towards the lake and forced her into the boat, still laughing. I couldn't see any humor in it, but I couldn't help myself. "You're never leaving again!" I repeated. "And from now on, I'll be watching you every second of every day! I'm not letting you out of my sight for one instant! The supplies down here will last for a few weeks, and then we'll simply starve to death! You get to die after all; isn't it splendid?"

She lunged to dive off the side of the boat but I caught her and flung her back. "That's cheating, Christine. You're breaking the rules again!"

I expected more pleading, but she let me down. Instead, she hunched forward with her head pressed to her knees and sobbed so hard the violent motion jarred the boat. I rowed us to shore and dragged her up the bank, and she suddenly came alive again, thrashing and struggling with all the madness of a jailed lunatic. It took a considerable effort to restrain her, but I finally threw her over my shoulder and carried her into the house.

"Do stop screaming like that," I told her, raising my voice over her renewed noise. "It won't do you any good. In fact, it's only irritating me further." I dropped her to the floor and the impact knocked the air from her lungs, silencing her for the moment. Finally! Some peace!

I crouched beside her and watched her fight to breathe again, her eyes wide and filled with crazed desperation. "It seems you've forgotten how to do as you're told," I informed her, keeping my voice level and clear. "So you and I are going to spend some time refreshing your memory, and you are going to learn once and for all to do exactly as you are told. Is this in any way unclear to you, Christine?"

She hid her face in her arms and, incensed, I snatched a handful of her hair and forced her head up. "Look at me when I'm talking to you, damn you! Have I made myself plain?"

She didn't speak, still gasping for breath.

"Answer me!" I shouted.

"Y-y-yes—Erik," she gasped.

"Good." I released her and reached to unbuckle my belt.

"No!" she screamed. "Not again, please, not again!"

"Be quiet," I ordered, "and get up on your knees."

She bolted like a deer that has spotted a hunter, tearing from the room in a frenzy and nearly tripping over her own feet. I heaved a sigh of exasperation. "Why bother?" I called out, starting after her. "You and I both know you can't escape, Christine, and there's nowhere for you to hide! Come back here now, or it will only be worse for you!"

There was a commotion in my bedroom, and I set off to investigate. She was turning it upside down, searching through my belongings for something. "What do you think you're doing?" I demanded, but with a cry she drew the Persian dagger and placed the point to her chest.

I leaped forward to wrestle the blade from her and she turned on me, lunging so fast I barely had time to dodge the blow. I caught her arm and twisted it back, and she shrieked with pain, letting the knife fall from her hand.

I bent down and picked it up, never once letting go of her. "So it's pain you want, is it?" I asked. I forced her hand open and sliced a gash into her palm, hearing her scream so loud it made my hair stand on end. "Do you like how that feels?" I cut into her arm, careful not to hit any veins. "Is this good for you, my pet? Is this what you want?" I made my third cut on her shoulder, ripping through her sleeve to the flesh beneath and seeing the blood stain the fabric.

"What if I was to make you as hideous as me?" I demanded, tearing off my mask and pressing the flat of the knife to her cheek. "Do you think you would like that?" I took her cut hand and held it to my face, smearing my skin with her blood. The smell of it filled my nostrils and the taste of it was salty and sharp on my lips, and like a hound on the hunt it drove me mad.

"I'll tell you what," I said, the words coming in a low snarl, "I'll just give you a little taste for now, just something to think about." With that, I dragged the tip of the knife along her temple, leaving a long, thin scratch. She gasped loudly and tried to pull away, but I threw an arm around her and pressed her to my body. "I'll let you decide whether you want to start doing as I tell you, or whether you want to learn your lesson the hard way. Doesn't that sound nice? I'm leaving it up to you! The choice is yours, Christine!" I raised the dagger between our faces and saw her eyes flick back and forth from me to it. "You just think long, hard and carefully about it, my pretty one."

I set off with her back through the house, pushed her into her room, and shut the door. I then examined the blade of the dagger, seeing the dark red against the gleam of the steel. I ran a finger through the blood and licked it off ponderously.

What answer would she give me? I was curious, and I honestly didn't know which would please me more. She started screaming again, so I went back into my room and went to the organ, playing a Dies Irae that nearly brought the ceiling crashing down upon my head until I was sure at last I had drowned her out.

Christine

Oh God! Oh God! I couldn't stand it anymore! I just wanted out!

I paced my room frenetically, going faster and faster until I was running from one wall to the next, nearly insane with the need to escape. I couldn't do it! I couldn't face it! To have freedom in my grasp only to be snatched back to this hellhole! Oh God, no! I was so close! So close! It was only a curtain call away! I was nearly free of him, and demon that he was, he let me believe I could escape at last before crushing my plans for good! In what dream had I thought such a plan could possibly work? Was I so stupid as to think it even stood a chance? Was I cursed to be such a fool for all time? Surely I'd had time enough to think of something more foolproof and less ridiculous than handing a note to a stagehand—my stomach dropped. The stagehand. Erik had learned of my plan, and the only hint he could have gotten was from that note. There was no mercy in his heart, and I was afraid to guess what he might have done to my poor accomplice but knew only too well what must have happened. Oh God, I'd gotten him killed…I was hardly any better than what I was trying to run from…an accessory to murder. That thing had made me his device to harm even more people! What crimes he committed through me could only make me as guilty as him!

I couldn't get his song out of my head, mocking, cruel, and merciless, turning the voice I had loved best to hear into a weapon just as deadly as that dagger. There was no hiding from it! It was in my mind and my soul like a malicious spirit from Hell, bent on destroying me! I would never be free of it! Free! Free to see the sun and stars in the sky and feel the wind through my hair! Free of this living grave forever and any chance to heal as best I could from the damage to my soul! Now I was as stained and filthy as he was, and nothing could save me. I had tried my best, I had pleaded and prayed, and I had called on God for His mercy and deliverance, but He'd turned His back on me again! He didn't care how I bled and cried! He'd abandoned me, leaving me to rot in these chains I wore. Damn Him! Damn His mercy and goodness when He refused to see me through! I needed a savior, and He'd only stood back and watched me suffer. What good was my faith when He rejected it and spat in my face? Worthless! Worthless as a pretty song and a free romp! Worthless…like me…

I pressed my hands to my face in anguish, and the cuts he'd given me stung and bled, reminding me of the decision I was to make. Either submit again and endure those horrors all over, or let him torture and mutilate me until I gave in anyway or lacked the resistance to fight him. Neither! I wanted neither! I'd lost all hope of what I really wanted, and he was crazed enough to make good on his threats. We would both die down here and there was no telling what he would do to me before it was over. I remembered the savage, bestial light in his eyes when he wiped my blood across his monstrous face, seeing anew how much of a monster he was. The face was nothing to the creature that bore it. I had weeks ahead with him before death claimed me for its own, weeks of torment, torture, and his sadistic games. A few cuts would only be the beginning. Death would come as a blessing.

A scream tore from me and I dropped to my knees on the floor, ripping at my hair. I tried to will myself to stop breathing, for my heart to cease its weary rhythm at last and leave all this forever. But my body betrayed me again, and still I lived! Still I suffered! God was laughing at me again, not even granting me the grace to just stop living! It wasn't even living anymore, not like this! I was caught in limbo between eternities, ensnared in the webs of time and being and watching that fat, ugly spider of mortality continue to evade me when I longed to surrender and would have joyously embraced that lethal blow. Why? Why can't I just die? Just let me die! Please, let me die!

I staggered to my feet again, blind through the film of tears in my eyes. I wasn't going to wait for death to take me. I was going to run into its arms like the good little slut Erik would have me be for him. It would be nice to be someone else's whore for a change, and doubly satisfying to cheat that son of a bitch of whatever atrocity he had planned for me. I didn't have the strength to go through it all again, not the fear and the agony and the rape and the maiming. My God, what had he done to me? I didn't even know what I was anymore, let alone who I was! I couldn't stand the taste of this pain and hatred. I hated him for what he'd done to me, and I hated myself for falling into his trap, and I felt as though my soul was already dead with the toxicity of it. Hell itself would never be worse than what I'd already been through, if Hell even existed. No, I realized, it does…it's right here, and the Devil reigns supreme. There are no saviors down here, and God really doesn't exist.

With a cry of agonized rage, I threw myself against the bedroom wall, striking my head as hard as I could. The blow dazed me and there was an explosion of pain, but I refused to back down this time, letting out another scream and slamming my head to the wall again. White lights danced in front of my eyes and it took all of my willpower to stay on my feet, but still I carried on, feeling skin break, blood flow, and bone crack—or was that my imagination?

Was I still screaming? Was I still standing? I couldn't tell if my blows were losing strength or if I was slipping out of touch…my head hurt so bad…my body felt so heavy and burdensome…I felt something solid against me and had no idea if it was the wall or the floor…Was that enough? Had I done enough damage? I wanted to be sure…but I couldn't move…I couldn't move…

The room faded in and out of focus, going from black to gray to white and back again…I saw him come in, then a flash as the knife dropped from his hand…he knelt down beside me…so I am on the floor…I was dimly aware he'd lifted my head up off the ground and saw those yellow eyes invading my soul again…was I still alive?

One more tear fell from my eyes…No, I can't be…then darkness took control and everything around me disappeared…