A big big big thank you to Astrophysicschic, EvaLark, Batty Dings, crawfordphantomluvr, peanutpup, phanrose, WolfShadow1, Pensez-a-Erik, Phantomgirl24, SloaneDestler, smrb, Aphaea21, ruukii, YinuoTong, Child of Dreams, Mominator124, FleshofMidnight, amandarhoads1, and The TenthMuseSappho for your wonderful reviews! I appreciate them so much!

I also wanted to thank those of you who checked it out for your interest in "Music Notes". Unfortunately, I think I bit off a bit more than I could chew. I have a lot on my plate currently, and simply having a second story up and expecting a new chapter (even far in the future) has me drowning in stress. I absolutely love writing, and don't want to get burned out, so I want to focus on finishing "A Rose Among Thorns" before I get any further into another story. I have taken down "Music Notes" for the time being but may repost it in the future.

Thank you for understanding!

TW: Self-harm

A very short chapter, but the next one will be longer. Enjoy!


Erik

Chapter 39

The Coffin

I was eleven.

Three years. Three years since Marie died. Since Sasha died. Three years, and yet it felt like an entire lifetime had passed.

I would never, ever forget the way Marie held me when I cried. Or kissed my bare face before bed. Or smiled at me with all the love in the world. The way Sasha would smile too, in her own canine way, tongue sticking out and panting as she sat behind me as I played piano. There was absolutely nothing better on Earth, I'm sure, then the feeling of someone looking at you with joy.

That was something I would never experience again - with the exception of Right. Cerberus's right head was always smiling, but I think it was less because I was here and more because it was his natural inclination to pant. Javert smiled too, but it wasn't because he enjoyed my company of course. It was because he was pleased with what I managed to bring him.

Money.

So much money.

So much money, in fact, that he did indeed pull together enough to buy his own plot of land just outside of Lyon, rent his own flat there too.

The plot of land was set up as a permanent place for me to perform. Since he now lived in the city itself, he sold his horses and allowed me to live in the caravan alone with Cerberus. After I turned down the offer to live with the Swedish musician nearly a year ago, I think he now believed I would never run. I think he had a sort of smug confidence in that fact. I was a beast trained well.

Truly, why would I run? I had my own living space. My own dog (for, though Javert called himself Cerberus's master, he was my dog). Privacy. Real privacy. Javert only came around for a couple of hours a day - but that was it. There was absolutely nothing enticing about leaving my warm home, my safe bed, and trying my chances on the street.

With a new living situation came a new and improved performance as well.

Javert bought a coffin. A coffin.

The moment I saw it - and I wasn't sure why - a piece of light that I didn't know was left inside of me dimmed. He told me what it was for. I felt a dark nothingness at the explanation.

I burned myself anew when he left. He had, of course, left the coffin behind. It was meant to stay here, with me. Where it belonged. It was difficult to find a fresh place to burn on my wrist. My arms were covered in burn marks. My legs too. My hips. My stomach and chest. I picked a piece of unmarred skin near my ankle and held the needle to it, letting the pain wash away the cacophony of darkness from my mind, letting the hurt fill me with a kind of ease, a kind of control.

When I finished the burn, I retired to bed. Cerberus never slept on the ground anymore. In fact, I insisted that he didn't. He slept right on top of me. If I had to make the choice between him and myself taking the bed, I would have let him have it in a heartbeat. He was my only friend in the world, and I wanted him to have everything that I could offer.

In the morning, I made breakfast. I fed and took Cerberus outside. I read. And read. And read some more. And when night fell, I got ready to use my new prop.

As I walked into the warm evening air, I recalled what Javert had explained last night:

An hour before the performance, before any guests arrived, I would climb inside the coffin. He would take money from the guests gathered on the grass under the starlit sky. He would introduce Cerberus as he normally did. Then he would introduce me.

Le Fils d'Hades would then open wide the coffin. Step outside of it. Climb onto the crate for all to see my face, easily hear my voice, watch my dancing body. And I would begin.

A small addition, barely worth mentioning, really, but for some reason it crushed me.

I wasn't dead.

I was alive.

I had a heartbeat. A mind. I felt pain, hunger, thirst. I slept at night and awoke in the morning.

I was a monster, yes, but I was still alive.

But though he'd named me for the son of Hades, though he'd always introduced me as a thing from the underworld, the coffin was the piece that solidified, truly, how the world saw me. A strange half-living thing. Unnatural, undead, and unworthy of taking my place as a person in society.

As the days passed, I felt less and less affected by the coffin. I was numb to it after a while. Burning myself helped with this. Sleeping with Cerberus too. Reading. But still, every time I was made to close myself inside of it, a little piece of me shriveled. A piece that I doubted I'd ever manage to reinvigorate again.

Cerberus, burning, and books. These things kept me sane. Take one away, and I think I'd lose my mind. I think my soul would snap in two.

I felt, truly felt, that this was to be my existence for the rest of my life.

Should I have known what would come a year later, I would have taken Cerberus and fled. I would have taken my chances.

I would not have stayed to find out what my twelfth summer held in store.