I threw her into my coffin bed and she screamed even louder than before.
"Dose the death bed scare you? Should I put the lid on as well mon amour?"
She sat up trying to escape its walls, and I simply pushed her back in. She would look dead had her eyes been closed.
"It was very easy to ravish you away and it would be quite simple to do more than that." Not that I could…
She said nothing and cried.
"All I wanted was for you to love me….all I ever wanted was someone to love me! As a child I would often reach up for my mother to hug me only to be pushed away! Is that too much to ask Christine? For someone to care for me? Apparently it is so I must force you to marry me and leave you no choice but to learn to love me!" I took off my mask and through it to her. "Look at your new husband Christine! Isn't he just ever so handsome?!"
"Marry you?! Erik you've kidnapped me!"
"In Persia that's the law. If a man takes a woman they must marry each other for they obviously must have had sex in that time."
"This is France not Persia!"
"And thank the lord for that! Oh wait god is dead. Too bad, no one to thank."
"Stop trying to scare me Erik! I hate you for this!"
I heard my heart shatter like glass and felt the shards cut the surrounding organs.
"I will never marry you!"
"Erik's only a small boy Christine….yet to be taught right from wrong for in his mother's eyes everything he does is wrong…how can Christine hate a scared child?"
She opened her mouth to speak some more hatful words, but was cut off short by the loud ringing bell of my torture chamber.
"Why, it appears we have a guest Christine!"
She somehow managed to look even more frightened. "Erik what is that?"
"Why it's my door bell Christine! It seems your little lover has come to fetch you!" I pulled her to her feet. "Shall we go and greet him?"
"Erik please leave Raoul alone!"
"But he came here, trespassing on my property Christine! Come now Christine we shouldn't keep him waiting when he came this far!"
He took my hands and pulled me to another room, a room that had a mirror for a wall, with 2 chairs facing it. He made me sit down in one of the chairs and then he sat in the other, then he clapped his hands and the mirror turned into a window.
On the other side of this window was another room, with an iron tree in the middle, and on the floor under the tree was Raoul holding his arm, apparently broken.
"Raoul!"
He looked up and said something I could not hear.
"Its sound proof Christine, I do not like to hear my victims scream. That's why I kill them with a noose. They can't scream if they have no air going their lungs. Speaking of air…."
Raoul began to cough behind the glass.
"The air in that room is toxic. Symptoms include, hallucinations, loss of breath, and suicidal considerations…."
I then noticed the noose on one of the tree branches.
"Oh my god Erik no!" I stood and looked to him in horror.
"You could save him Christine…give me a reason to spare his life." He rose from his chair. "I once put a scorpion and a grasshopper in a box to see if they would fight, and they did. The scorpion won."
"What are you saying Erik?! You begin to speak nonsense!"
"Oh not at all, on the contrary in fact! This is simply foreshadowing I speak." He walked to the wall beside the window and opened a hidden panel of it. In side were 2 knobs, one in the shape of a grasshopper, one in the shape of a scorpion.
"What is this Erik?"
"I will let you turn one of these knobs, should you turn the scorpion, then Raoul will be free to live another day, but you must stay with me forever. Should you choose the grasshopper, Raoul dies and you go home free, and once you're safely away from the building, well let's just say grasshoppers jump jolly high! Do you remember that trail of black powder on the floor on our way down?"
Oh dear lord.
"And if I choose neither?"
"Then I turn the grasshopper before you can even leave the building." He took a pocket watch from his pocket. "Think quickly my dear, I say your boy only has about...10 minutes before he begins to think of using that noose."
Raoul was coughing harder now, and appeared to be having some form of panic attack.
"Erik don't make me do this please! I beg you please just let Raoul and I go!"
"I'm afraid it's your only choice! Maybe next time you'll think twice before attempting to betray a mad man!"
I wiped tears from my eyes, trying to think through my anger and sadness. Erik or Raoul….Raoul or Erik…
"Make your choice Christine. Time is running out."
Simple silence. Were it any quieter I would have heard my heart beating.
Then she spoke. "You're a monster and a mad man…"
"I'm not mad Christine, I'm simply traumatized."
More silence.
"Tik-tok Christine. There are 5 minutes left to choose. Either way I win I suppose."
She stepped towards me, then reached for the knobs. Oh what would she choose? The anticipation was murder! Death or life, freedom or marriage….
"This does not mean I love you…" She then turned the scorpion.
"Good choice Christine." A grin crept to my face. "And you shall learn to love me in time. I do not mind the wait. The air in that room shall now be filled with fresh air for the viscount to breath. Once he has his sense back he shall find a lever at the base of the tree. All he needs to do is pull it and the door will open."
"I hate you Erik! I truly hate you!"
Another shard of my heart broke off and feel to my stomach. "As said my mother…"
"She knew there would be a good reason to hate you, she just hated you too early!"
I stepped away and turned from her. "Please stop Christine. If you knew what it was like for poor Erik back then you wouldn't be saying such things….why, my mother wouldn't even kiss my head goodnight or for me to kiss her the same."
She stepped toward me again and turned me around to her gently. She had a guilt stricken look upon her face.
"Christine must forgive Erik, he does not know how to love. He thought he was doing everything correctly. But apparently he wasn't. The only other time he felt that way ended in disaster."
She stood on her toes and kissed my cheek.
She kissed me! Oh God of all things pure and holy she kissed me! It was only my cheek but it felt like heaven! And now…I wanted to kiss her back.
So I did. I kissed her nose. And she let me.
She let me kiss her…Christine let me kiss her! That sweet lovely angel let the hideous monster kiss her!
But she was crying….I made my love cry…I truly am a monster!
"You….may leave with your boy."
"You're letting me go?"
He nodded. "The 2ed door next to this room leads to a stairway to the surface. There are no traps in that one…"
"Do you think this will make me love you or forgive you?"
"I do not deserve either." He then shook his head and walked out of the room.
I ran to the window. "Raoul! Quickly before he changes his mind! He said there is a lever under the tree can you find it?"
He looked around the base of the tree and found a lever out of my view then nodded.
"Pull the lever Raoul!"
He pulled it back, and door on the wall next to the hidden panel and knobs opened.
I ran to him and pulled him out of the room.
"Christine…" He coughed again. "We must leave…quickly."
"I…one moment there is something I must do 1st…" I left him there for a moment and went to find Erik.
I found him in his room, curled up in a ball at the foot of his coffin bed. I can't explain how but he looked different yet his features remained the same.
He looked to me with teary eyes and spoke. "Will you attend my funeral?"
"Funeral Erik? What Funeral?"
"When it's my time to go…will you grant a last wish and come to my funeral?"
"Erik you're not going to die…"
"Do not forget my age Christine...do not forget I'm not right in the head either…"
I walked to him. "If you do die…then I will come."
A look of relief was placed upon his face.
I leaned down kissed him again, this time on his mouth. He sat there in shock for a moment then kissed me back, all the while crying. And I did as well, though I'm not quite sure why.
When the kiss was through he held onto my legs and begged me not to leave, I almost didn't want to but Raoul called for me, so I had to leave him.
But as I tried to go away he held to my hand and cried. "Please Christine just one more moment and I'll let you go! Hold me in your arms just once!"
I wish I could have; but Raoul pulled me away from him and his dark innocence and up to the surface light.
His screams and pleads at that moment may never leave my memory. They were not of a monster or a demon, and though they were the voice of a man they were not the screams of a man. They somehow sounded as if they came from a scared little boy.
End of Part One.
