For hours, Erik sat as straight and as still as a statue, Christine's lost ring clutched in his hand.

His eyes stared forward, unseeing. He did not seem to breathe. He did not seem alive at all. Indeed, he looked dead. Since Christine and Raoul had left the roof, he had stooped down to pick up her ring that had so easily fallen off her finger, as if to underscore the treachery that he felt resided in her heart.

Underneath the lyre of Apollo, he silently sat, a deadly dullness coming over his eyes, the eyes that had before shone so viciously and vehemently. His thoughts flowed slowly, deliberately, with all the malice and danger of poison overtaking the body.

She had lied. She had deceived him as he deceived her. Utter betrayal, pure falsehood. He could never trust her again. He could never let her see the light of day again. She had trampled him to the dust. He, a fool, had poured himself out to her-tried to make her see-but to no avail. She still preferred the boy.

"But I love you, Raoul. If I did not love you, would I give you my lips as I do now?" she had slid her arms around Raoul's neck and kissed him deeply under the stars, curling into his embrace with ease and delight. It was clear that she loved him. Her smile was so telling, more than her words.

And the revelation of it, the blatant truth, tore away the last shred of hope that Erik had felt. That very evening, he had finished Don Juan Triumphant and was on his way to demand its premier in the manager's office.

But now he had proved a failed lover; he was no Don Juan. Cursed as he was, his hope, his life, had dissolved to ash before his eyes. Christine truly did love another. It broke the last strand of rational thought, of gentle consideration, of good will, of desire to even live.

But his feeling was more dangerous than despair.

She had played with him. She had lied and brought him so easily into her spell. He almost hated her in that moment, her failing still fresh in his mind. She, with her innocent eyes, her soft hands, her white skin, her angelic voice: all of it housed the soul of a false actress.

She had kissed the boy-willingly, truly. She herself had put her arms around him and held him with soft love.

A darker feeling than disappointment came over him as he brooded under the shades of night on the rooftop. In stillness, he had no tears: no crying, blubbering idiot. His stony expression under the mask looked as if he had died already.

It was no longer just the boy's fault: it was hers.

Then, Erik's thoughts turned to the cellars below him; he had anticipated this, though he had hoped it would not come to it. Christine had thought that he was solely working on his opera in the dark for the last month; to be sure, he had been. But he also had been hard at work at another plan: a disastrous one.

It had taken great pains to bring all those barrels down to his storage room: gun powder proved a great and heavy burden. The labour had scratched his hands, though he had tried to hide it from Christine.

When he worked, he had rationalized to himself: "A precaution. A perfectly innocent precaution. I will not need to... But O it would be so delicious to see them all go up in flames."

Now, with Christine's true nature before him, one word encompassed his future:

"Revenge."

He muttered it to the night air, blinking slowly for the first time in hours.

Looking down at the ring, he turning it in his fingers; it bore a friendly glimmer, winking at him in the dark.

"On them all," and a strange smile came to his face.

He would have her. She no longer had a choice in the matter-though as a gentleman he would let her have a nominal choice. Christine would never come willingly now; she was right to fearfully whisper to the vicomte:

"Take care, Raoul. If I go down with him again, I shall not return."

Erik would have to take her himself; it would be easy. Of course, the boy would surely come to try to rescue her after Faust. All the better. It would make the choice and the result all the more satisfying.

"The grasshopper may hop...jolly high." he whispered, pocketing the ring at his breast. "Poor little Daae, you know not how in danger you are now that your finger is naked to the night."

With eyes blank and dark, he rose and made his way calmly to the cellars and deeper still. Only a few adjustments to make below. With steady hands, he opened a hidden drawer and drew out two carved pieces: a grasshopper and a scorpion. He himself had made them for this occasion. And soon it would be time for their beauty to be appreciated.

The night passed swiftly, and dawn came with the echoes of voices in the caverns below the opera house.

Erik worked and tidied his house, singing softly to himself.

Guests soon.

It would not do to have the house in disarray; what would Christine think if her husband had his papers flung all over the place.

"Dear, dear," he muttered when he came across a hair ribbon of Christine's. "The girl can be so untidy, sometimes." He chuckled and gently placed it on the mantlepiece.

At length, the time for Faust came.

Christine was cast as Marguerite, a role that suited her voice so perfectly.

From behind the glass in Christine's dressing room, Erik watched as his angel prepared to take the stage. Her hair, curled and flowing long down her back, shone in the gaslight; one of the maid's laced up Christine's deep blue dress, pulling the cords so that the dress fit her form in an intensely appealing way. Christine seemed calm, unnaturally so before an opera. Her eyes were steady; her hands still. She was not trembling...yet.

A stagehand called out,

"Two minutes, Mademoiselle Daae."

"Thank you." Christine replied.

She rose and turned away the maid,

"Give me a moment. I am coming."

She walked to the door, put her hand on the knob and took a breath.

Then with a turn of her head, she looked straight at Erik through the mirror.

"Tonight, Erik, I sing for you."

Then she closed the door behind her. He sighed.

As Erik listened to her below the stage in the dark, waiting, he willed his heart to turn to stone. She was still so beautiful, so earnest, so beguiling. She was beauty itself. How could he harm her?

He remembered her face, upturned in faith, as she listened to the voice sing to her of heaven's beauty. How simple it all had been then.

But now his own pain, it was half a century's worth of sorrow and hatred. For all her beauty, it did not quite remove the sting of his past anymore. Her innocence had once blotted it out. But now...

He was tired of it all. He wanted a wife, not a simpering student, and he wanted to be loved for himself. And he would get it or die. It was as simple as that.

Christine's final aria, divine in its own right, overtook the hearts of the audience. Heaven seemed to open for them as she sang. Her arms lifted high, and tears streamed down her face.

Erik could hear her tears in her voice: "Let me dry them for you, my dear little liar," he remarked. The climax of the song neared.

At her last glorious note, he pulled the lever that he had set. Above the lights flickered off, the trapdoor underneath Christine flew open, and the soprano disappeared from sight.

Erik caught her as she fell, an angel dragged out of heaven to the depths.

At first, she was dazed and confused. The sudden darkness shrouded her sight. What had happened?

But then she sensed her place in his arms, clutched to his chest as he sped through the dark to the cellars.

She gasped: "Erik!"

"Good evening, my dear. You sang very nicely," he sneered.

With terror and anger, she began to struggle.

"No, no, none of that," he pulled out a rag and held it to her nose. "You are coming with me. I am afraid that I shall have to alter your travel plans with the vicomte."

As she writhed, her eyes grew wide at his words, a deeper terror overtaking her mind.

Slowly her limbs became listless; Erik gathered her to his heart with curious delight and flew through the shadows, his precious, treacherous cargo drugged in his arms.