Everyone: My SINCEREST apologies for the extended absence. Sometimes you get smacked across the face by life all at once and everything just gets overwhelming. As you may have guessed, that's the kind of situation in which I've found myself. On top of that, I really struggled with writing this chapter… and, as with many chapters before, I find myself not completely satisfied with it. Regardless, you all deserve an ending and so I'm posting this chapter and the Epilogue is written and under final review.
Again, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Thank you so much for your patience and understanding.
"Erik please… give me strength… give me courage," Amelie whispered into the darkness. She had made a habit over the past few days of speaking to him. She knew he would not speak back to her from the shadows, but it brought her the smallest solace in the depths of loneliness. Yet tonight was different.
"I am just a moth trapped in a spider's web, destined to be consumed until nothing remains of me…" Amelie whispered through her tears. "All I can hope for is to become a hollow version of myself, something that serves no purpose but to feed the spider."
Hopelessness seeped into her soul and finally the moth did not struggle against the spider's web anymore. She would resign herself to her fate.
Prior to that night, Amelie had only consumed alcohol in small doses, only to the point that it warmed her body in the slightest fashion. But as she crept down the stairs, well after Theo had retired for the evening, she did so with a different intention. The cognac Theo kept tucked on a shelf above the counter top would make her sleep and would quiet and numb her fears. She had seen it with her Uncle, the way his eyes would glaze over as his worries and insecurities were hushed by drink. Even in his last days, the enveloping, tender haze of wine had alleviated his agony to some degree and, though his pain was not replaced by genuine joy, Henri's suffering lessened. Amelie wanted the same for herself.
And so she consumed her first small glass, the burning warmth causing her to gag and choke. The second she drank with the same discomfort, but by her third it was as if she had consumed the fiery drink all her life. She could barely taste it, only felt the heat of it as it met the sides of her tongue and the back of her throat. Soon enough, she felt her mind quiet, replaced by dizziness. Bottle in hand, Amelie crept as silently as possible up the stairs once more.
As the facade of peace brought by drunkenness filled her soul, Amelie finally felt a burst of creativity run through her like a fierce gust of wind. In sloppier than usual letters, she scrawled quill and ink against parchment, channeling the final words of Eleonora from mind to paper.
She ran a hot bath and as soon as her skin met the water Amelie melted into it, utterly consumed by drunkenness and warmth. Steam from the heat of the water stifled her breathing, but there felt an odd sense of relief at the sensation.
A fourth drink and a fifth. Amelie drank each one with more eagerness and desperation; she needed this feeling to continue, to grow, to silence the smallest whispers of sadness that still haunted her. After the seventh drink Amelie could not remember just how much she had consumed but she felt drowsiness overcome her. The now-empty bottle slipped from her hands with a hollow song as it met the wooden floorboards.
Absent of fear and free from the trap that had ensnared her, she disappeared below the water into sleep.
Finally, Erik arrived at his destination. He cursed himself for the hundredth time since the horrid affair began, this time for not taking a carriage to the home before him. He had feared recognition, that someone would detain him and further delay him from his destination, and so he had chosen to stride silently through the night. Despite his tardiness, however, he felt his first twinge of hope as he saw light coming from a single window. It reminded him of Soucia, except this time there were no voices. Perhaps they slept. Perhaps, on this night, he would not have to kill and he and Amelie could disappear into the night in silence.
But as Erik sets his jaw he knew he did not want such a peaceful ending to prevail. He wanted to kill.
He moved silently towards the door and found it locked, but it did not take much prying to quietly break the lock and force his way in. The breath caught in his lungs for a moment when Erik entered the living room to find his adversary propped against the fireplace by one, tired arm, staring vapidly into the embers of a fire that had long died. Yet when he saw Theo, and despite the insatiable viciousness in his veins, Erik could not help but spare a moment of pity for him. As the boy turned to face the intruder, Theo's eyes were red and swollen from tears and dark shadows framed below them indicating a grief and despair Erik found only too familiar. Theo stood staring into the smoldering fireplace blankly, until his eyes met Erik's. The cold gleam of a knife shone through the darkness, gripped tightly between his hands.
"Ghost or imposter?" Theo croaked. "It matters not now; she will never love me…"
"Good of you to come to terms with it, monsieur," Erik hissed with all the cold venom he could muster.
With only a few long strides across the room, Erik was behind him, lasso around his neck. There was a cry as Theo struggled only for a moment, driving the blade into the inside of Erik's thigh until Erik twisted the lasso and heard the snap of bone. The hand holding the knife went limp, but the blade remained.
Erik looked towards the stairs, hoping to see Amelie and expecting to find horror upon her features. Yet no figure appeared from the darkness.
After dropping the recently deceased to the floor, adrenaline and satisfaction hot in his veins from the kill, Erik stared at the knife buried into his skin, realizing the wound had come dangerously close to the artery. He tried to carry himself forward with the blade still in place but his muscle screamed in agony at the continued presence of the object. With one swift motion, he drew it from his body, ignoring the subsequent pulse of blood and instead choosing to drag himself up the stairs.
Erik, silent as ever despite a pronounced limp, pushed the door open to the room that held the single light in the home only to find it empty. But the door to the adjacent washroom was cracked open, light seeping through the space between the door and wooden floors below it.
"Amelie, dearest?" Erik grimaced through the pain of his wounds but his words were met only with painful quiet. Tentatively, he pushed the door open, his eyes immediately falling upon her bare knees protruding over the rim of a gold-footed tub. Quickly he shut the door once again, embarrassed at the immodesty of it all. "I apologize, my dear, when you did not answer I felt the need to investigate, I did not realize you were so… exposed. Hurry now, we must take our leave from Paris."
When his apology was met once again with silence, his heart pounded horribly in his chest. He could not feel the pain in his leg anymore, for it was overpowered by cold dread creeping into his body. Slowly, he pushed the door open once again.
It was then that Erik realized her head was not visible above the water. He moved towards the tub swiftly, as if without injury, to pull her above the placid surface. He found Amelie had grown pale, much paler than he had seen before and the air was ripped from his lungs. Limping quietly to the bed with heavy, breath torn from his lungs with agony, he ripped the sheets off with a grimace and returning to Amelie. With all the strength left in him, he pulled her from the chilled water, wrapping her in the soft, white sheets.
Feeling hot tears well into his eyes, Erik hardly noticed his own blood soaking the sheets that held Amelie's body. Gathering himself as best he could, he raised a nervous, shaking hand towards her neck seeking any sign of life within her. Nothing. As his breathing grew labored and shallow, Erik wanted to plead with her to return to him, but his mind instead drowned in the physical agony of distress and, if he could bring himself to recognize it, loss.
A horrible roar, the cry of despair, tore itself from his throat as he held Amelie close, burying his face for the last time into her frizzy, russet hair. He kissed her head over and over, tasting his own tears as they ran in rivers below the mask.
For how long he sat, tangled in her body and the bloodied sheets he did not know. It wasn't until he noticed a scrawled letter hanging from her writing desk that he found the strength to move. Gently, he rested Amelie against the wall, gently stroking her cheek as if she only slept. Erik could not walk; his legs shook and his hands trembled, his limbs weak and unyielding to his own mind, but he moved towards the parchment as best he could.
Finally his struggle towards the desk allowed him to grasp the papers strewn across the desk. Propping himself against the drawers, he read Amelie's last words. Immediately he recognized them as her last contribution to their opera. Erik's body shook with tears, his hand raised to his mouth to stifle sobs, as he drowned in her sadness and utter abandon as she wrote the final lament of Eleonora.
Let it all pass to the River of Silence.
Let it pass to the River of Silence.
Through the vision blurred with tears, Erik reached up to the desk, grasping at the quill and ink on the desk. Melancholy cello sang through his mind and he scribbled the few notes of the main line above her words.
Then, as darkness crept into his vision, Erik crawled across the floor, stains of blood trailing behind him, to hold Amelie once more. Cold ran through his veins and he trembled violently as the last light of his life escaped him.