The Phantom of the Opera
Eight Years Prior
It was the dizzying height of my madness.
P.S. 118, and more specifically, Mr. Simmons was arranging a play. "Phantom of the Opera". It was the first I'd heard of it. And even today I desperately wish I hadn't. The title alone sparked enough interest for me to research it myself.
Everything about the Phantom resonated with me. His tortured genius. His mysterious nature. And, naturally, his infatuation with Christine. It perfectly paralleled my predicament with Rhonda. I was the outcast just as the Phantom was. Shunned andridiculed. I sympathized with his struggle and his drive.
Naturally, I tried out for the part.
And I was cast. But no, not as the Phantom. Once again, Simmons made it clear he had it out for me in one way or another. Or so I had thought in my fevered delusions.
I was Raoul.
Harold was the Phantom.
I nearly lost it right there in the auditorium when I read the casting sheet. I nearly took it upon myself to hunt Harold down and make sure he got into an accident. Injustice after injustice.
Christine Daae? Rhonda, of course. Of course it had to be Rhonda.
On the one hand, you might tell me, I should have considered myself lucky. Raoul gets Christine, right? Meaning I'd get Rhonda. I'd get to act alongside her. To pretend, even for a fleeting few moments, that we loved each other.
But no! Raoul and Christine were a perversion of justice. The Phantom was wronged by the world just as I had been. Raoul was a nobody. A nobody who didn't know love. The Phantom and Christine were destined. And the cruelest injustice of all was that Harold had somehow been extended the honor of playing the role of the Phantom. A courtesy of Simmons to help his confidence. But that act of good will spurned me.
I would be the Phantom.
I wouldn't play the part.
I would BE the Phantom...
"In sleep he sang to me..." Her voice. An angelic, euphonious sound. The stage filled with a fog and the lights illuminated some places and switched off in others. "That voice which calls to me, and speaks my name. And do I dream again? For now I find-" My cue. Unbeknownst to everyone.
"The PHANTOM! Of the Opera is there! Inside my mind!" My voice bellowed through the auditorium. Harold and Rhonda looked around the stage in confusion.
I cut three ropes from up on the catwalk above the stage. Bags of sand, probably thirty pounds each, plummeted below. Each as loud as a gunshot. Fine sand exploded everywhere, adding a fog to what fake mist was already being generated.
The audience screamed in unison. Some hurried for the exits, and others scrambled toward the stage.
It was a delight. Euphoric, even. The power I felt. To see masses of people, maybe a hundred, truly terrified of what I could do was a rush.
For good measure, I sent a light careening below before descending by rope myself. Another explosion and a crunch of metal.
"You will CURSE the day you did not do! All that the PHANTOM asked! Of! You!" I sang. The lyrics having little bearing on the situation, other than the fact I was terrorizing the crowd. I wore what I was able to stitch up with my limited sewing skills and what I could fashion from bargain bin Halloween costumes. But it was passable. I looked like the Phantom. Truthfully, I don't think I'd have been taken seriously without the theatrics. And especially not without
"Is that a-"
"Oh my God!"
I waved it around proudly. It wasn't real. But just as Erik had been, I, too, was an illusionist that evening.
The gun.
A painted squirtgun.
But a gun to the audience.
It was now that nearly all of them began to scramble for the exits. Harold was nowhere to be found. Coward. And Rhonda, sweet Rhonda, was flat on her butt. Mortified by what I had just done and terrified of what I might do next. She looked truly heavenly in her white, flowing dress. Her pale chest rose and fell like a frightened little lark. My lark.
I expected the audience to fear me. I intended it. But why was Rhonda so fearful? Didn't she understand?
"Curly," her voice was hardly a whimper. I descended from the rope and fell the last few feet to the stage. A crunch of glass and sand beneath my dress shoes. A flip of my cape, and a wave of my vacant hand, extended to my angel of music.
"My darling Christine."