Why so silent my dear readers? Feels like I'm writing to the void lately. Is the story dragging on too long?


"Daroga..."

"Daroga!" a soft voice from nowhere circled his mind, as he numbly stirred the soup Christine was preparing for the day. He recognised its mellow allure.

"Stop it, Erik," he whispered and shook his head, trying to physically force it out of his brain.

Alas, the pestering, delicious sound continued. "Do me a favour."

He threw the ladle in the stew, the hot liquid splashing onto his dark jacket, making an array of crude words fly out of his mouth. "What do you want?" he hissed.

"Two sheets of paper, a pen and my violin," the voice replied in his head. "Make it quick, she won't be in the bath forever."

Despite his annoyance, he followed his instructions. Allah, the cellars were doing him no good. No wonder Erik's screw had loosened all these years in that rat hole. Entering the Louis-Philippe room, he found him sitting on the bed like the sultan-or the sultan's relic, for that matter- nonchalantly smoking a small wooden pipe he had recently undug from the back of some cabinet. He recognised the familiar scent of the poppy seed and almost craved it, yet reminded himself he was too old for such nonsense and that Christine shouldn't have to tend to two intoxicated fools.

"You feel like writing?" he inquired, setting his finds at the edge of the bed.

"Hm," Erik hummed without looking at him, "perhaps."

Nadir supported himself on the doorframe casually. "That's good. She's making chicken stew for you."

A gagging sound immerged from his throat and he chuckled at Nadir's momentary alarm. "Chained to a bed and spoon-fed? Never thought I'd end up eighty in the course of a few weeks. Daroga, if she tries to feed me lentil soup, please shoot me."

Nadir rolled his emerald eyes, but grinned at his friend. "You never took illness well, old man."

Erik hunched forward to reach his violin. "I'm not ill, Nadir. Good old stabbing."

He wanted to keep him talking, just for the sake of seeing him well, but he had already began to tinker with the violin, signifying their conversation was over.

Once the Persian was out of his way, he put the instrument aside and bent his knees, trying to write against his thighs. His head was pounding at the temples, but he carried on, awkwardly hesitating only at the beginning, unsure of how to start.

He didn't keep count of how much he wrote, but once he put the pen down, salty streaks had formed on his face. He lifted the mask ever so slightly to wipe them away and turned to hide the folded papers inside her nightstand, but stopped midway.

Perhaps it would be best she'd never saw this.

With a growl, he lifted himself and dragged on towards his room. He should sort his notes, as Christine always said, as he tried to reach his organ, stepping over endless piles of compositions. He took Don Juan in his hands and it seemed almost comical how devoted he had been to this work for more than a decade. He realised, of course, writing this music was eating him alive, each note urging the hands of his clock a second forward, stealing away seconds, that turned into hours, into years. But it was true. It was all he had to say put to paper and he always said he wouldn't go speechless.

Leafing through it, he reached the piece he was looking for. An instrumental he had come up with the first time he'd spoken to Christine behind her mirror, when suddenly he'd woken up from an eternity of dark hybernation, fogged by death, starvation, and his twisted, sick music.

"Erik!" She shrieked behind him and he turned to find her, with her hair still wrapped in a towel, her ends dripping all over his expensive carpets. "Can't I leave you alone for a moment? Your wound must heal," she sighed.

Hurriedly, he burried the note between the pages of his opera and followed her back to her bed.

After what had been a tremendous fight, she managed to force-feed him some chicken and make sure he would not starve himself. The Daroga excused himself, explaining he had to return to his home aboveground and make some arrangements if he were to spent half his time in the cellars.

Christine found he slept a lot lately, something so rare for the Erik she knew, who went weeks without a moment's rest. She concluded he needed to heal and let him sleep endlessly, while she sat next to him, reading him her favourite books softly. What an image it must have been, to see an angel hunched over a demon, reciting latin prayers of hope and salvation to him.