Chapter Thirty Six: The Little Madness

Looking back, Christine didn't really remember how it happened. In the haze of memories clouded by stress and fear, it was hard to clearly recall losing her mind. But she did.

She remembered flying at the locked door and pounding on it with hysterical fists, screaming at the top of her lungs. "Let me out!" she shrieked, until her crystal voice was hoarse and choking. "I've made my choice, I've made it, now let me out! He's going to die if we wait! Erik! Can you hear me? Erik! Let me out!"

Finally she slid to knees and leaned her forehead against the cool wood of the door. She was shivering; the sweat that had gathered during her passionate frenzy was now beading against her skin, sapping her body of heat. Christine looked down at the hands clenched in her lap and saw bloody knuckles and palms, little shavings of wood and blood clotted under her fingernails. Looking up, she saw the clawed gashes on the door, and didn't even remember making them.

"Fuck," she moaned, hitting her head slightly against the wood. It made a nice dull whumping noise, and the little aching pain that accompanied it helped to sharpen her thoughts. She tried it again, a bit harder. Whump. Pain. It felt good.

'Alright, fine.' The little voice inside of her sounded completely rational, offsetting the rhythmic rocking of her body and the gently painful tapping of her head against the immovable door. A little harder. Whump. Whump. 'Alright, alright, alright.'

'He wants me to think about it. I will.' To the steadying beat of her head Christine pondered her options. 'So, I marry him. What happens next? We'll probably leave here. I'll never see Meg, or Claudia, or anyone I care about ever again. Definitely not Raoul. I guess it's good that I don't have any family to miss!' Somehow, the adrenaline and the shaking of her body were making her giddily hysterical. She increased the strength of her poundings. Whump whump was slowly turning into a nice, satisfying crack crack noise. 'I'll probably never see the sun again, or feel summer's warmth on my skin, or swim in a pool, or…no, no. Don't think about that. This isn't a game of what I will never do again. This is a game of what will I do. For I will still do things, oh, I'm sure I will.

'What will marrying him be like? I will sing, though probably not in public, not anymore. Messed things up too badly for that. It was becoming hard to think; she was getting woozy. A little harder, then. The pain jolted her and helped clear her thoughts. I will never be alone, that's for certain. More games of chess! Maybe I'll take up cooking. She wanted to laugh, but instead realized that she was crying. Was she? There was something wet on her face. Tears? Did tears taste of iron?

'It will always be night here. Night. Where will he sleep? Will things stay the same? Will I have to sleep in a coffin with a corpse? Will he expect me to…will I have to…oh, no, no, no….'

How could that have never occurred to her before? How could she have overlooked the main idea behind the word marriage? She wanted to vomit. She couldn't think. She couldn't even feel any pain in her head anymore, just a sort of distant wooziness, a long-suffering exhaustion.

'No! Harder, harder, I have to think! I can't let…I won't let…'

Crack.

Dark clouded her vision. Why was everything tilted? When did she lie down? Something was stinging in her eyes. So tired. Maybe she should take a nap.

She barely even registered the door opening, the figure stooping over her. Why was he bothering her when she just wanted to sleep? Who was crying? It certainly wasn't her.

"Oh, Christine." There it was again, that heartbreaking sob.

"Don't cry," she wanted to say. "I was just thinking hard." But her lips didn't move. Whoever was carrying her was shaking and whispering something. What was it?

"Don't fall asleep."

And then…

The angel was singing.

Something cool was pressed to her forehead, wiping away the stickiness and the iron-tasting tears. The song, instead of lulling her to sleep, was pulling her up from the darkness against her will, forcing her struggling eyes open. She was lying on something soft ('the couch?' her mind wondered) and now the water was gone and something that stung was touching her sensitive forehead, making her gasp in pain and open her eyes for the first time.

She quickly closed them again. The light in the room was blinding; the few dim lamps seemed to throw out a glow that would have rivaled the sun. In the instant her eyes were open she had registered Erik's dark figure leaning over her, cradling a wooden bowl in one hand and gently dabbing some kind of ointment on her forehead with the other. Christine moaned slightly, then forced her lids open again.

Their eyes met mid-dab, as his hand was reaching out with a greenish, opaque substance on his fingertips that smelled slightly of menthol and mint. He froze, and just stared at her for a moment with tender, worried eyes, but then she moved and they hardened into something cold and frightening.

"That will not get you out of your obligations," he hissed breathily, the angry sound belying the gentleness of his hands as they resumed smoothing the ointment on her forehead.

"What?" she asked fuzzily, trying to bring one hand up to touch her face. He forced it down.

"Lie still," he commanded.

"What happened?" she asked, wincing in pain as he touched an especially tender nerve. "I was just…thinking. I don't remember…"

"Yes, selective memory loss is so convenient, isn't it?" he asked snarkily. The hand that dipped into the wooden bowl was shaking. "Especially when concerning attempted suicide."

"Suicide?" she gasped, trying to sit up.

"Be still," he snarled again, pushing her with rather more force than necessary onto the couch. "And don't lie to me."

Christine fell silent. She knew that at this point it would be useless to argue with him, and really, the facts did seem to be in his favor. She could barely remember what happened, just that one moment she had been in a panicked frenzy and the next she was on the couch, her forehead a mass of welts and bruises.

Finally she spoke. "I've thought about it," she said in a quiet voice. "Just like you asked. I'm still willing to stay."

"And how will I know that the moment your friend is gone you won't attempt to commit suicide again?" he asked icily. "I can not keep you tied up all day, and I'm afraid I have no rooms with padded walls to insure your safety when I am not around."

"I won't kill myself," she said in an even softer voice, eyes unfocused, staring at a point on the ceiling, hands laced peacefully over her stomach. "I promise, nothing like that will ever happen again."

"No, it won't," he said shortly, before placing the wooden bowl next to him on the low table and wiping his long fingers with a clean white cloth. "It won't happen again, because I am upping the ante, as it were, to our little game. If you are able to stand?"

He held one hand out to her and she stared at it blankly. "No?" he asked, in a voice so layered and woven with civility and love and anger and bitterness that it was impossible to tell them apart. "Then I guess I'll just have to carry you."

Before Christine could protest he scooped her up in his arms, his thin body belying his strength in the easy way that he carried her from the room. Instead of struggling Christine was very still, frozen, an animal faced by a predator. Her ear was so close to his frail chest that she could feel the rasp of his breath, how his lungs moved in an out with each step; she could feel his heart beat, an awkward, fluttered pumping, like that of a bird's. His frozen hands were wrapped under her knees and curved around her back; he held her so lightly, as if she was made of air, or delicate china that could break if jostled. It was almost comfortable.

Then they were back in his grey-walled surveillance room and he was dumping her unceremoniously into the black leather chair facing the screens.

"Now," he said, crouching down so that he was next to her, hands fisted on the back of the chair, near her shoulders. The picture of Raoul under that dangling, swinging light was still looming, but he pressed a button and the screens shuffled the image away, replaced by security camera images of buildings and offices that she didn't recognize. "I would like to show you my empire."

Christine's eyes flickered among the images. "I don't understand," she said softly.

"Well, what do you see?" he asked, in the patient voice of teacher coaching a confused student. Christine frowned.

"Just…buildings."

"And where are these buildings?" he seemed enjoy baiting her, but underneath it Christine could feel the shaking sense of madness and futility, of his collapsing control.

"I don't know," she finally answered, choosing her words carefully. "I guess…here? In the United States?"

"Exactly!" he crowed. "These are just a few of the corporations that I own. They are scattered across this great country, from sea to shining sea, as it were, and they represent the pinnacle of our economic system. Banks and insurance agencies and universities and theaters and conglomerates, law firms and consulting firms, and so many more. I don't directly run them, of course, who has the time? But I do own a controlling share in their stock, and I do have access to their passwords and their computer systems and their personal information. I know all of their secrets." He paused, but when she did not speak, only stared at the screens in horrified wonder, he continued. "I could bring them down so easily. I could do anything I wanted to them, if I was in the mood. I'm sure that the banks would be decidedly put out if a computer virus crashed their system or if all of the money suddenly vanished from their accounts. We are already in an economic recession; I would hate to see the consequences of more banks failing.

"I'm also sure that many of them don't know about the wired explosives built into their foundations—I was paranoid, you see, and decided to take out a little extra insurance on my investments. And since I really am just a shadow to these people, I think that they would come to their own conclusions about what happened—terrorists, maybe? Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea, Venezuela…the entertainment value of the conspiracy theories alone would be worth it. And then how would we react, how would we retaliate? The possibilities are endless. One thing is for certain though: many people will die. There is even a good chance that this country will be decimated. But it won't matter to you, will it? If you kill yourself, it won't affect you at all. But just because you won't be here to witness it doesn't mean that it won't happen."

Christine was speechless. She stared, open mouthed, at the flickering images before her, then turned with a kind of stunned wonder to the masked man still crouched by her side. He was eyeing her curiously, panting a little from his long and impassioned rant, waiting to see her reaction.

When she did respond, the words weren't the right ones, but they were the only words that came into her head. "You're crazy," she gasped. When he didn't respond she plowed on, her voice rising in pitch and taking on a sharp, hysterical edge. "I mean, I knew you were messed up, but holy shit." She pushed the chair away from him on its rolling wheels, her hands clenched white-knuckled around the arm rests. "Do you hear yourself?" she asked frantically, very aware that she was digging her own grave but so shocked and disturbed that she didn't really care anymore. "Do you hear yourself at all? You're telling me you're going to destroy the United States of America if I kill myself? I mean, threatening to kill my friend, that's normal crazy, that's like, expected crazy, but this brings crazy to a whole new level. I can't deal with this kind of crazy. Do you hear me? I can't mentally fucking deal with this kind of crazy!"

"Well, you're going to have to!" he snapped, his calm finally breaking. "You're going to have to deal with all of it because this is what I am, this is what you made me!"

"You're blaming me for your insanity?" Christine gaped at him. "You're blaming me?"

"Yes!" Now he stood and began to pace the room, gesturing frantically, his breath short and gasping. "Before you I was calm, I was always in control, I was…I was…"

He brought his hands up to his head as if he was going to tear his hair out, as if the very act of forming coherent sentences was becoming too much for him. He seemed on the edge of breaking, every word a struggle. "Everything was fine," he muttered, almost deliriously. "I wasn't crazy, I wasn't, I was…I was fine…Erik was fine! Erik was sane! You!" He spun on her and began advancing in such a slow, threatening manner that Christine leapt out of her chair and backed away, her back hitting the wall of televisions. "You drove Erik mad! You made Erik feel emotion! You made Erik want to live! Why? Why did you have to do that?" He seemed to crumple before her eyes, and underneath the mask Christine was sure that he was weeping. "Why couldn't you have left Erik alone to die?"

She had no answer.

"Fine then," he snarled. "If Erik can not live in the sunlight then maybe no one…"

"I already told you I'd stay!" Christine screamed, finding her voice in time to cut off his terrible words. "Isn't that enough for you? What more do you want? I'm staying, Erik, I'll never leave! Now stop this! Please!"

For the first time, her words seemed to reach him. He paused, and a sort of nervous hesitation flickered through his eyes, as if sanity and madness were battling for dominion in his shattered mind. "You will…?" he asked softly, then continued in a bolder tone. "You promise Erik this? Of your own free will? You'll stay with him?"

"I will, Erik," she said in a steady voice, not breaking eye contact. He stared at her for a moment, then dropped his gaze almost shyly and reached for her hand, twining her fingers in his and tracing her bruised knuckles with his thumb as if mesmerized.

"Forever?" he asked, in the quietest of voices. Christine sighed, defeated.

"Forever."