Erik
Nadir screamed my name and pounded at the walls. The Chagny boy shouted his own sort of abuse - really the lad has quite a mouth on him, I wonder if Christine knows that - as well as some colorful suggestions that I take part in any number of acts that I am not certain are actually physically possible outside of a sideshow. Briefly I wondered if I should stay a bit an listen, but I rejected the idea. It would be some time before anything interesting happened. And mind games would hardly be any enjoyment at this juncture. I usually wait until at least a layer or two of reddened skin has peeled and my subject is half mad with dehydration before the real fun begins.
Besides, I felt collected enough to visit Christine again, and it had been long enough that she probably needed checking in on. If nothing else, she would probably be hungry.
What I did find was not at all what I had expected.
There she was… lying on the floor, moaning, with a large welt and two small cuts on the center of her forehead.
Instinctively I knew she was fine… relatively. Surely if she had died (or nearly died) I would have felt it. Though worry for my love overcame connection to my soul mate and I found myself on the ground beside her, checking her pulse and gently examining her injuries.
"My darling!" I gasped.
"Did it… did it work… did I?" Her bleary eyes focused on me and through our link I sensed a convoluted mixture of relief and disappointment. "Oh," she sighed.
Then it occurred to me. Of all the stupid…
"Christine, angel, did you try to kill yourself?"
"I had to! Don't you get it? I felt you. You were murderous. I didn't know what you'd do. But we were already hypothesizing that if I died you'd get your soul back, right? So you'd either be happy and normal again or you'd die of… really old age." She shrugged. "We just… we can't continue like this, Erik. I had to do something."
So she tried to kill herself so that I would die. Huh. I was not sure how I felt about that. Granted, she was going for the same result I was looking for… but I really could not help but feel at least a little insulted.
I carefully lifted her off the floor and set her down in my desk-chair. "There is an old adage about Hell and good intentions, my love," I scolded. She was strangely passive as I brushed back the hair from her face to better see the injury.
"Is it bad?" she asked, quietly, looking so soft and scared that I was not sure whether to laugh or cry.
"Certainly not, angel. If you planned to die tonight, you certainly had a foolish way of going about it. It is very difficult to kill oneself by hitting one's own head against a wall. Self-preservation, and whatnot. You might have a bit of a bruise come morning, though."
As I was speaking, I pulled a lasso out from each pocket and began to gently tie her wrists to the arms of the chair. I kept my voice steady and mellifluous throughout. She never struggled once.
"Nevertheless," I concluded, tightening the ropes, "it would seem that I can no longer trust you to be left alone. So Christine will just have to stay here and think about the consequences of her actions for awhile."
"What do y-" When I stood from my kneeling position, she also tried to stand; it was only then that she realized that she was bound. "ERIK! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? LET ME GO!"
"Well, you see angel, therein lies the problem. If I let you go, you might hurt yourself again."
"There was no other way!"
I threw myself at her feet, grasping at the hem of her jeans like the lunatic I was accused of being.
"But there is! Do you not see? Erik has found a way! Erik has decided to keep Christine! I do not want my soul back, angel. Erik only wants you! You are my soul now."
"You can't do that, Erik. It isn't fair."
"Haha!" I sneered. "What about any of this has been fair? Why can you not be happy, Christine? We will be married? Erik loves you! He has found a solution for us both! You will be his wife and be with him forever!"
"Forever?" she whispered in horror. "And you're not even giving me the choice? Maybe I'd rather just die now, huh? What if I thought that'd be a better option?"
Now it was my turn to be horrified. "Christine would rather die than be with Erik? Really? Die?"
"That's not what I-"
"Fine." I snapped. "Christine shall have her choice. But think long and hard about it, Christine. Some choices are bigger than yourself. When the grasshopper jumps, he jumps jolly high."
I stormed out, ignoring her panicked cries behind me.
-0-0-0-
Honestly. I knew I was terrible. Still am. There is not really a way around that. When you do nothing but bad things for a couple hundred years, it is safe to assume you are probably a bad person. And there was always that pesky detail of my half my soul being replace by evil concentrate. Mustn't forget that.
Still! Was I truly so repulsive that death was preferable to being loved by me? Really?
So be it, then, I thought. Who am I to disagree with my angel? For that matter… if death was really such a blessing, perhaps we should not be so selfish as to keep it to ourselves! You think death is your salvation? Then I shall save everyone! Yes, Christine. You will be happy now, yes? Erik will give you what you want and more. Will you love him, then?
Many years ago, I had invented tiny explosives - grasshoppers, I called them, because of their shape and size - which I planted throughout the foundation of the concert hall. I had enough sensitive… evidence, I suppose… lying around that I did not want anyone getting a hold of so, in the event of any capture or attack, it has always been my habit to destroy my current dwelling as I escaped. In the past I simply burned the place, but with each generation, I have become a little more efficient in my techniques. The grasshoppers were a work of art, in my opinion, as they were nearly undetectable and could be controlled by remote. Not to mention, being so small, they were pretty localized to the area I planned out. More than once I have been caught inside a burning building when one of my own fires grew out of control. In theory the grasshoppers would eliminate that risk and give me nothing but beautifully controlled devastation.
Anyway, my original intention had been to destroy the concert hall via remote when it came time to change hideouts, but I was captured before I had a chance to do so. I will be the first to admit… I was not exactly in top form at the time.
But, I reasoned, Now is as good a time as any. I had always wanted to test the grasshoppers out, and Christine had basically just given me carte blanche to do so.
And since I have never been the sort to do anything half way…
I left the cellars of the concert hall entirely and entered the city's underground tunnels.
With enough grasshoppers in my pocket to blow up three city blocks.
