It's like you can predict it now can't you.
He wasn't there, and I bet you're not even surprised are you?
No, and guess where I was? Guessed? The gothic bedroom with all its blacks and reds booming around and down on me. Once again I was attired in a granny type nightie and the blankets were up to my chin. How, I don't know. I don't know much.
Things happen in instants, you have to understand that with what is going on around here. It defies logic and reason. There's no point sitting there in your ivory tower, picking up on plot holes, if this is some sort of dodgy B-movie that I have magically found myself in, then it's a damnable crap one to say the least. I shoot and drop from scene to scene, dressed by a wardrobe department I have never seen at work, although it is pretty much going to be credited to the Funeral Party
So, not quite the wedding of the century was it? Oddly, I remember glancing down at my left hand, querying once more what my memory was telling me and hey-presto – there was a simple gold band resting on my finger.
So which bit was the dream then? The horror story wedding or the love story afterwards?
My body didn't feel exerted in anyway. I wasn't sweaty or breathless or, I don't know. Whatever it is you're meant to feel after consensual stuff.
I closed my eyes and slapped my hand against my forehead. Images from my life on that farm flooded into my head as if there had been a sudden monsoon of crap..
Faces, gritty, terrible ones. Men from the fields. Their filthy hands and their unshaven faces, all laughing whilst I suffered and cried.
I curled up into a ball, shutting my eyes and willing the memories away. I buried my head under the heavy blankets and tried to forget where I was and what had happened my entire life. I tried to imagine that I was dead, in my coffin and this was the end of everything that I had gone through.
I heard my name being uttered somewhere above me.
Weirdo was back.
Or was he the same as the guy I had - no, wait. He was literally only a dream to me.
Weirdo it is.
I peeled back the covers, as if I was a naughty teen who had been reading a comic under the covers with a torch.
He said my name again. There he was, looking like I wanted to feel – death. He was wearing the suit from the wedding. His head of death cocked to one side, observing me with a fire in those burning orbs of his.
"What?" I said sharply at him, harpooning him with a single word.
"I was simply concerned for your welfare my dearest. I trust you slept well?"
I sat up, pushing my hands into the soft mattress and feeling them complain from the exertion, reminding me of their injuries.
I winced, giving me enough guile to round on my captor.
"Ow. Oh yes, I forgot, you stabbed my hands with your finger nails to make me say 'I do' after disorientating me and trying to scare me. Well aren't you the big man? So the only way you can bag a wife is by scaring and injuring a woman? You even got your freaky mates to do the worst bits for you. Weirdo"
I kept my eyes narrowed and ensured the anger in my voice was obvious. I was peeved to say the least and he was going to get the full firm feel of it.
"Hmm" he said, as if I had just told him the sky was green.
"I didn't hurt you too much my dear and it's about time I got my way. I let you run off with Raoul last time, didn't I? Now it's my turn".
He came out with that random nonsense so matter of fact, it was as if he was telling me the time.
"Raoul?"
"Yes dearest" he replied in a honeyed tone that made me feel terribly uneasy "Raoul de Chagny".
"Raoul, sorry, what? Sounds like a South American porn star, mate. Never heard of him".
This earned me a hideous cackle from a throat long out of practice.
"Darling, you make Erik so exquisitely happy with your queer lexicon and lack of remembrances. It is no doubt for the best that you do not remember that foolish boy".
His terrible smile that turned my stomach, still played across his ghastly visage.
"Your name is definitely Erik then?" this was messed up.
The guy from my – I don't know what to call that entire experience, a dream? – said he was called Erik. There is no way on God's green Earth that I could have known that. There was something going on here.
"I already knew you were called Erik, before you said it then, but I thought it was a dream".
He approached the bed, his smile fading and his thin, ragged flesh contorted into an expression akin to concern.
He perched himself on the edge of the bed, making me scurry to the other side. There was no way this freak was getting close to me on a bed with my knowledge.
"Go on" he urged, his voice now a velvet purr.
"You kissed me at the end of the ceremony, right?"
Erik nodded to the affirmative.
"Yes dear and instantly you passed out. A sign of a fair and chaste bride, no doubt."
"Yeah, whatever mate. Whatever yanks your chain. Anyway, you say I fainted?"
He cleared his throat and his mouth tightened for a moment, but the calm look in those huge golden eyes failed for a moment. "You fainted the instant my terrible lips touched your full, pink lips. Erik has dreamt of this moment for a very, very long time".
"I bet you have buddy" I raised my eyebrows, this guy was now referring to himself in the third person. Crikey, I really had scored high here in the nutter stakes hadn't I?
"Well, I don't remember that bit, but I remember – I just don't know how to say this. Urgh. I mean, it's not like anything makes sense round here does it?" I took a deep breath and carried on.
"I don't remember fainting, I in fact, remember kissing – I'm not sure who. I can't say you because this dude had a nose. Nor did he smell of embalming fluid, or fell weird and bony. We didn't stop at kissing either. I asked for his name and he said it was Erik. He also told me, no, insisted that I did not open my eyes. I turned to look and bam, here I am, back in Morticia Addams' boudoir with you lurking about".
I looked at his decaying face, searching it for answers, wondering if he would just look at me with distinct confusion or incredulity.
"Ah yes" he said "that".
His tone sounded like I had just reminded him of something funny he did last Tuesday instead of a strange event that may or may not have occurred in my imagination.
"That was just a side effect. Let me explain my dear. You were once Christine Daae, the diva of the Paris opera! My protégé, my pupil, my angel. As you can see by the way I look, society was not very welcoming towards me so spent my days living eclectically and in seclusion. I had convinced you I was an angel so I could teach you to sing, but as well as that" he sighed, a sigh that you imagine an angel had "I fell in love with you".
"It turned me into an obsessed mad man. I burned for you. You, however, bestowed your angelic affections on another, leaving no room for poor Erik. Suffice to say, you broke my heart. I died three weeks after you ran off with that Raoul chap. As I lay there dying, a worthless heap of a man in a pitch black pit, I begged God with my last breath that if I could not have you in this life, that I could have you in the next."
I patiently sat there within the covers of the bed whilst he blurted all this out, a wistful look in his animal-like eyes. I had to hear the whole delusion, so I was quiet happy to let him continue.
"I closed my eyes and gave up my soul to the almighty to do as he felt fit, only to awaken in this very room. My mission clear in my head, as if a message had been planted there. I was to be the keeper of this underground transition point, this house, which was a simple marker between the worlds of the living and the dead. I was to wait until you were ready to come here, to me".
He paused, as if waiting for me to reply or ask a question. It was a pretty impressive tale of randomness and I can't help think to this day if he and his funeral favouring buddies sat up at night thinking it up and adding to it.
"I was informed over the years, that you had been granted another chance at life, but that life would lead you here, to me. You would be so unhappy that your path would lead you to me, and that you would give yourself to me, without any thoughts of others. For my benefit, you would look the same and even have the same name! Oh Christine! I had wondered for years how you would come to me and what form you would take! Here you are, alas, a great deal thinner and unhappier, but still mine".
He looked at me with undisguised adoration, so much so, that I unconsciously dragged the covers up higher.
"I'm meant to believe that bag of crap am I?" I scoffed, shaking my head slowly.
"You have clearly escaped from some sort of mental institution sunshine. Listen, I'm sorry that you have had issues with your face and that, but, you know, if the plastic surgeons can't help, then the bloody psychiatrists can –"
"Be quiet, ignorant child!" he suddenly yelled, his voice slicing through me so deeply that it robbed my lungs of air.
"Just-" he closed his eyes and took in a calming breath "Sshh".
I did as he said, he was probably being told to by the voices in his head.
"So, I'm meant to be a long dead opera singer that has conveniently been reincarnated to not only look the same, but have the same name? I've been purposely given a damn awful life, to make coming to you seem like a better option? You kidnapped me, moron. I did not come to you. Besides, am I really meant to buy any of this? I mean, think about it from my point of view. If you were me, would you buy into this?"
I still found myself edging further and further away from him on the bed, all the while, my brain tugged at my nagging doubts and my heart begged to stop.
"I understand Christine and you are indeed correct. You are an intelligent, beautiful young woman with such a strong spirit, it is impossible for me to expect you to believe what I had said to you. However, you are starting to. That experience you had, the kiss at our wedding. That is part of this. You were with someone that was me, but wasn't me". He looked away, towards the door "not yet, anyway" he mumbled to himself.
This made me knot my brow in confusion. What was he saying? It was true and it was him, but it wasn't? What the hell?
He stood slowly and smoothed the creases out of his trousers as he rose.
"I would do anything for you Christine" he said earnestly.
"Apart from kidnap me"
"That was necessary"
"And stab me with your nails on two occasions"
"I do feel bad about that, please forgive me"
"No"
"Fine"
"If you'll do something'd for me, then let me go"
"No"
"Let me go outside. I mean properly outside, not on the shore of that weird lake".
"Perhaps. If you behave".
"Stop having your weird mates dress me and stop knocking me out".
"That is fair enough, I will grant you your own room, clothing and bathing facilities".
"How good of you. Don't put yourself out or anything."
"I will not dear. We will start the day with music in the morning. I wish to ascertain if you have been returned to me with your once exquisite voice".
"I can't sing, I promise you. Besides, what if I don't want to sing?"
He shrugged nonchalantly.
"Then you will feel pain worse than my nails digging into your flesh and you not get to be visited by Erik's better side in your vivid dreams. Not for a very long time".
"Say what?"
"Is there anything else?"
"Yes, I want a clock and a calendar. I want to know what day and time it is. I have no way of knowing the passing of time".
"Why ever would you need to know? You will be awoken by one of my servants, you will have breakfast in your room, you will bathe, change and join me in the music room. After lunch, you will join me in the library. After that, you will dine with me in the evening, we will retire to the parlour where I will play you a little Mozart and then you will retire for the night".
"Got it all worked out haven't you? You frigging nutter".
"You do not need to know the passing of time. I shall tell you what your days are and you will live by them".
"No".
"Fight and resist as much as you like. It will only be your blood that is spilled and my patience made thin. However, I suppose, I could help you keep track of how many days you spend here. There will of course be a lot of them."
A worrying glint sparkled in his eyes, as if a hideous thought had just passed through his brain, but it was twisted enough to make him grin with the pleasure of making it reality.
"I will leave you a gift in your new quarters that will assist you in keeping track of your time here". He madly tried to muffle a terrible giggle but it escaped through the cavern of his empty nose.
"Er, great. Looking forward to it" I said, giving him a decidedly perplexed look. He was getting loonier by the minute. Each time I spoke to him, he seemed more and more off his rocker.
What the hell had he meant by 'Erik's better side'? What? Was that dream after the wedding real? I didn't understand or get any of it. I had to know more about my supposed former life.
So I decided I was going to play his game.
All I had left was the game.