Note: While I must stress that Christine is down for what happens, I had initially gotten some feedback that this toes the line into dubcon. I've tried revise to make my intentions and her consent clearer, but be forewarned: it's a dark chapter.
"You were a mistake."
He had lost count of the number of times she had told that to him as a small child. Breaking a window, he was a mistake. Knocking a tea cup off the table in a moment of childly clumsiness, he was a mistake. Playing a sour note on the pianoforte in their increasingly shabby parlor, overrun by piles of paper and dust that she could not muster the energy to clean up, he was a mistake. Coming to his mother, desperate for an embrace—whether it was from the pain of a scraped knee or the instinctual need to feel loved—he was especially a mistake.
"You were a mistake," she'd say, whether he remembered to cover his face or not. As he grew older, he'd lay awake in his narrow bed and dissect the meaning of her words, trying to figure out what pattern of behavior provoked such emotions from the only person he inferred should love him. The poor Holy Virgin was in constant torment from her only son's behavior, after all, and yet she still loved him to the point of bursting; their own house was a shrine to it, the chintz statues and cheap printed etchings of her heart aflame and run through entirely by swords, her beautiful face glazed with fat tears.
How could his simple existence compare to such pain?
Maybe she would love me I were dead, he often wondered.
And so he made himself as scarce as possible outside of meals, locked in his bedroom with his books and pencils, using what scant knowledge he had to make himself into one of those long-dead, holy folk—the great churches of the world displayed their poor, hideous bones with pride, and pilgrims came from miles around for the honor of pressing a kiss to a bony, blackened knuckle or a dried lock of hair. Perhaps he could hope for sainthood, to transcend his ugliness with thoughtfulness and mildness.
But whenever he emerged, ready to show his mother how good he could be, inspite of his deformity, she would shoo him away like a fly and pray for peace. If he were lucky, his cleverness would get a small smile from her or a rare pleasant afternoon where they orbited each other like moons.
But more often than not, it only begot him more of the same.
"You were a mistake."
And so Erik was. As he grew older, he learned to take pride in the insult; mistakes made a wise person pause to reflect, galvanizing every bit of what was good into sharp steel. Mistakes could bring grown men to their knees, begging for the mercy and redemption they never considered before . Mistakes brought thoughtful reconciliation between angry friends, and stoked the fires of affection between desperate lovers.
In the week since he had brought Christine down to his home, he saw the same sentiment in her eyes: Every slight wrinkle of her nose, every polite cough, every stray glance sweeping over the damask wallpaper in the dining room, was a constant reminder of how much of an error his life was.
A mistake, a mistake, a mistake.
And it never felt good. It never gave him a modicum of justice, nor the delightful fear that his existence gave others, the way they prayed to God and swore they'd be better if given the chance to continue living when confronted by his monstrousness. The cautious and sullen looks Christine gave him, however, were only a further admonishment that there was nothing truly good to put to his name—that he had betrayed the clever boy who scribbled and prayed and dreamed of something better.
Try me, you aberration, Christine's eyes said. You want your salvation and your whore. Make your choice.
So he leaned upon what worldly knowledge was left to him, and did one of the most foolish things he'd done in his forty-some years on earth. And somehow, such foolishness led to the sweet hardness of her left nipple in his mouth, her little hands swatting and raking across his back in foul percussion.
A mistake, a mistake, a mistake.
But everything about that nub rolling around his wicked tongue felt like a life's worth of natural course correction—his was a hunger that earthly sustenance could never sate, and the font of her body was his divine recompense. When he released her fat tit with a wet pop, both of their chests tossing like ships in a storm, he nearly doubled over from the kingdom they had created in that moment. If it weren't for the wine, he might have spent himself on the spot at the site of his saliva glistening across her chest.
Christine's voice had taken on a husky quality as Erik suckled, one that first endeared him upon discovering her in her sad practice room; it only amplified when he repeated the gesture to its lonely companion, his broken teeth pulling and licking in a frenzy that should have sent them both straight to hell on the spot. The conservatoire had tried to beat it out of her, tried to fashion her into a sweet little instrument that could recite the part of a lover without giving her the actual wherewithal to understand it. The monster supposed they were equals in this way, but who else to make a bad decision with besides his innocent helpmeet?
He didn't deserve the vision of Christine's nakedness, her panting, not even her slaps and ridicule, as he dragged his tongue from that fleshy spot just above her heart and down over the ridges of her ribcage. When he stopped to press his forehead to her soft stomach, overwhelmed but pleased by his own boldness, he waited for her to intimate just as much. In that space of the little witch's long silence, his leather-clad hands reached up to take the place of his indolent tongue.
"Leave... leave me," Christine cried as she fisted what was left of his hair. "I say, Erik, if you love me... if you love me at all, you will leave me. We... we will forget all about this." He looked at her, writhing, all gibberish, and almost laughed in her pretty face, how she clung to him despite her protests. "We will...forget all about this and continue as friends."
Stupid girl. They were as meant for one another as that first unthinking whore, Eve, and the godforsaken serpent who had the audacity to stick his tongue in her ear. He wrenched his monstrous head from her grip and met Christine's lidded gaze. She made no move to continue her pathetic monologue, only staring at him like she was preparing herself for death—whether it was her's or his, Erik cared little.
"If I love you," he repeated back at the girl, his voice simpering and mocking. "You little fool." And thusly, he gave a hard tug on the swollen ends of her breast, eliciting a pathetic yelp from her little throat that made him even harder. "What do you think a lover is for, if not this?" He persisted with the tugging, and he perceived the slight downward tilt of her head, the way her eyes widened in horror at the pale flesh under his hands jiggling and slackening. "Is this what you dream about whenever that pissant vicomte comes to sniff at your twat?"
"Stop," she moaned, her lightly-haired knees buckling. "I would never, I swear it—" The contradictory nature of her mewling against her words had Erik's vision swimming with red, red blood, the pulsing in his heart, wrists, and cock nearly painful.
"You make a lot of promises about what you'd never do, my dear," he practically roared, relinquishing his hold on the distended tissue after giving one last snappish yank, turning his back to her and gritting his teeth from the worst and most delicious pain he'd ever known. "Forgive me if Erik chooses not to believe you."
A mistake, a mistake, a mistake.
The monster tasted salt on his mouth and did not care to know if it was from his own tears or from biting his tongue in anguish—at the nearly comical situation he was in, at a lifetime of wanting, of fucking himself in his fist, seeing his seed spray against the back of an uncaring stranger, of seeing women thrum with pleasure—familial or friendly or passionately—and knowing he would never be the source of such good music. He heard a soft rustling, and assumed it was his little dove running to her virgin's chamber in horror. When her voice spoke, shaking with rage, it set every fiber of his being vibrating.
"Are you punishing me?" There was ice in her voice. "Erik, look at me." When he disobeyed her with his silence, he heard, rather than saw her come up from behind him—she never touched him, no, but he could still the aura of her hands hovering over his back. "You are punishing me for not being the woman you think I am. I don't know who she is, Erik, but it is her transgressions and not mine that have you so mad."
Poor, uncanny Christine. She was right—so painful right. What was he but a violent creature, an animal lashing out against alien humanity. She was a good girl, a sweet girl, one who had never asked for anything more than the companionship of music. Sobs wrenched from his body, so loud he was sure his mother's corpse and whatever Breton worms still slithered over its remains, could hear them.
"Stop crying," Christine murmured, her voice still thick and hot. "Why can you never simply say what you mean to me? Erik, this... this sort of childishness is truly beneath us both." She paused, and in that small stretch of time, the monster could practically hear her mind choosing its next words carefully, individually. "Erik. Why can't you even try to cherish me like a normal man?" There it was. The lie he had been waiting for this whole evening—she might fancy herself simple and earthbound, but this this nasty scenario ? Beneath him, of all the wretches to have ever been born? Surely Christine was playing at being dumb, for he would die if that was how little of him she understood, after all this time, after all his effort. His sobs turned into laughter, and his constricted prick ached more than ever to be released from the confines of his trousers. He whirled around on his darling, grabbing her wrist and pulling her down the hallway so quickly that she gasped in earnest.
It was time to show her Christine how wrong she was.
#
First, there was darkness. Cold, dry darkness and a sort of compression to the air that made Christine realize she was trapped in no ordinary bedchamber. The entrance had been thrown open so quickly, and Erik had flung her into it so roughly, that she had little time to process what was happening until she was completely sealed away into an oblivion so thick that she couldn't even see her own hands.
Had she not been so deep into her wine, the young woman might have summoned the courage to grope blindly in that darkness, might have found a wall to steady herself against, might have been able to remind herself that she was in nothing more than another room with four simple walls. After all, hadn't Erik's home been ordinary to the point of crassness? Would she not have been perfectly comfortable in his little house, were its master not the source of its nightmarishness?
But instead, Christine wept, crouching down to the ground, shameful wetness still tracing its way down her thighs with no sign of abetting. It seemed a sick game—that every time she felt could not possibly sink lower, fate was more than happy to nudge that misery into a newer, unfathomless places. The dark had rarely scared her before the Opera, but now it left her in a state of misery that, if it didn't feel good, felt tailor-made for her. And the worst part of it was how much she found herself enjoying this new level of debasement, how much a part of her still wanted to keep pushing the boundaries of the depths to which she could sink.
It was a lonely thought, but loneliness was holiness.
Minutes slid by, and just as she was beginning to believe that Erik meant to lock her in this prison for the rest of her life, a steely grinding filled her ears and a illumination flooded her vision. Directly before her stood a tall, magnificent shadow, backlit by the dim hallway lights and filling the frame of the strange, sliding door entirely, a gas lantern dangling from its long left hand. Christine blinked through her tears and snot, dazed, until she recognized the terrible glow of it's eyes—the sloppy, wrinkled clothing had been replaced with nothing but silky blackness from head to toe, its face covered entirely by a matching hood and cowl, save for the small opening for a panting, jagged mouth; with a dry swallow, the young woman realized it was the same attire the creature had worn when she was first stolen away from her dressing room. There was no embarrassment of a man, kissing her feet and begging for her caresses like a child, only a wraith crawled up from Pandemonium.
It said nothing to her only for a long moment, only watched her, unblinking, as she shivered and whimpered. The ugly beast had hardly shut up for the entirety of their domestic charade, emboldened by her charity to shove its face into her's at every given opportunity—would my darling like some music? Would Christine like to play cards? Would Christine care for a blanket while she reads? Or tea? To see the monster immovable and mute, drawn up to its full heigh while those eyes slid over her naked body, reminded her of her initial terror, reminded her of its hard length pressed against her bottom as they silently rode down into Hell together that endless week ago. When it had set her down into a brightly lit room filled with garish flowers, Christine remembered how she nearly laughed in into hidden face at the contrast, at the sheer mockery of courtship this stranger had offered to her.
Unfortunately, there were no flowers now. There was only the monster, fixed as a star, and the bizarrely familiar shadows surrounding her, flickering in and out of view with the gentle sway of his lantern. And here, here, such a figure belonged.
The grinding ruckus resumed, until it was just her and a monstrosity trapped in its cage, with no light to comfort them besides a sputtering wick.
This is how I die, Christine thought for the hundredth time that week—but for the first time, she knew it was not mere dramatics. As the dampness between her legs grew, as she stared in wonder at the shade come to take her away, her wreckless curiosity began to get the better of of her yet again.
When the creature finally took one halting step forward, Christine nearly lept out of her own skin, frantically scooting backwards on her bottom against the cold floor. When she abruptly bumped into what felt like a cold, iron support beam, the creature resumed its slow pacing, stopping once it was only mere feet away. With inhuman grace, it bent to place the heavy lantern on the ground, the glow illuminating a long trail of slickness that started at its shoes and ended at the apex of her legs.
Christine's eyes traced the glittering line in mortification3, her desire winking back at her like a rope of diamonds, when the dull shadows caught her eye again. And slowly, with a wave on confusion that felt like a slap, she realized why they looked so familiar. If she had ever felt shame exploring her soft figure in the mirror before, it was nothing compared to seeing her wet pinkness splayed out and shown to her at countless angles, nothing compared to her own nakedness softly multiplied and multiplied until the hundreds of Christine's trailed off into the unfathomable.
Something like embarrassment flooded her—Christine could hardly describe the emotion as something so simple when the humiliation was couple by a tingling sensation she felt throughout her own body. If the silhouette looming above her noticed her bewilderment, it said nothing, nor made any move to assuage her discomfort.
"Stand up," it commanded, but she was too overwhelmed to even play with a response.
"Very well," it breathed, and in the blink of an eye, the dark mirrors around her were filled with the monster, its form covering hers as it caught her by wrists and yanked her into the desired position. Were it not for the beam behind her, Christine was sure she would have swooned to the floor again, her legs shook so much.
"What are you doing?" Her questioning sounded pathetic even in her own ears. Who was she to question retribution. "What—"
"For once in your little life, be quiet," the monster spat, the coldness in its voice shocking her into temporary submission as it protracted a length of thin rope from within its cloak with a free hand. It was only once her hands had been cordoned off to some unseen protrusion above her, forcing her ribs outwards, her breasts thrust into the void, that she started whimpering again. As Christine reflexively tested the severity of her bondage, it watched her for a moment, the small visible corner of its mouth turning upwards into a sneer, immune to her whines.
"Erik, please," she gulped, unsure of what she was asking for the shadow to do, but trusting it would condemn her appropriately.
"Fuck."
The gloved hands returned to their home, buried deep into her wet core, and this time, a finger tip pushed slightly past the tight vortex at the center—its touches would have been gentle, almost loving, Christine supposed, if it weren't for the staggered breath of its owner, the way it crested and fell as the cruel hand pushed in and out.
"I don't believe you," it said simply, withdrawing the digit and replacing the strange emptiness left in its wake with a second partner. "Do you know how tired I am of your lies," it continued, pumping with an increased tempo, the cruel bend of its knuckles striking something in Christine that made her useless. "Erik, I promise this. Erik, I swear that." When a third long finger was added, Christine moaned so loudly that strange room echoed it into her very soul. "Do you know, sweet Christine," it said, after long seconds of exploration, unbothered by the garbled noise coming out of her mouth, "that I'm starting to think not a single word you've said is true. Not about your devotion. Not about your friendship. And most certainly not your precious little virtue." And thus saying, the creature removed its hand entirely, and brushed her engorged lips with a light but firm slap. The resulting squelch and her shrieking had it swearing again—"Fuck, fuck, fuck."
The shadow leaned against her suddenly, limpid and exorcized of some of its evil, its mouth huffing into and licking the shallow of her shoulder blades at turns; the tenderness of these gestures only increased the heavy pulsing between her woman's place and in her breasts, in her swollen lips. The grooves of the strange iron beam dug into her backside, and Christine was at a loss to explain why it felt good.
"Please—" she repeated, instinctually, reasonless, only for the shadow to repeat what Erik had done to her earlier in the parlor, its slick claws working their way back into her mouth. An unfamiliar salt overwhelmed her, thick and sour, bearing only a passing resemblance to her own taste, and she gagged.
"Silence...," the voice gasped tiredly, a portion of the magnificent power gone. It's other arm, meanwhile, wrapped around Christine's waist to grab at her bottom and shift her body sideways. While one hand nurtured her with its foul cum, the other dug into the thick softness of her cheeks, the leather the only barrier preventing it from leaving deep red streaks along the pale surface. It hurt more than any pain she could remember in that moment, but the way the shadow pathetically quaked against her made Christine's heart nearly burst from sorrow.
"What do you want from me," it whispered, broken, before the broad side of its hand collided against her ass. She screamed again, which only brought her more of the same treatment. "I give you everything I have," it continued, the slaps quickening their pace; as she squirmed, Christine noticed how disgusting and lovely her own image looked in the ephemeral obscurity of the mirrors. "I try so hard... I make you a proper Queen of Sheba, and yet you still treat me like filth... like the filth between your toes."
The shadow dipped its face again back to her breast; as it sucked again, an errant finger, wet with her love, slid into the puckered hole between her cheeks and sent Christine tumbling into her grave from disgust, the faces of everyone who uselessly tried to nudge her this way or that in life leering down at her.
"What more can I do to make you submit," it rasped around a mouthful, while the hand that lay been between her pretty teeth left to stroke her throat, compelling her to swallow the fluid in her mouth. "How must I cleave you to me, make you understand?" As she coughed and choked on its essence, face burning, the hand that wasn't working itself halfway into her rear-end slid tiredly down her body.
"Should I tag you, Christine," the voice continued, bearing down on her nipple with broken teeth, the horrid delight distracting her from the creature's odd question. "Pierce you the way they do with cattle through their noses, too base not to hurt themselves. Too stupid to know to whom they belong." When its fingers clamped down on one of her engorged nether lips, it pulled in the same fashion schoolmasters did with wayward children, leading them by the ear to hurt and embarrass them. "Shall I mark you as my chosen one where you'll feel it?"
Christine howled, the sensation of her stinging bottom and leaden cunt in the demon's needy hands unlike anything she had ever known. As the wet strikes against her flesh began to subside, along with her caterwauling, sense returned to her in ragged strands; she burned to rebuke the demon, and yet she knew it would only incense it further to madness.
"Please—" she keened, to the faces looming above her, to the memory of the her angel singing her to sleep in its arms that first surreal night, to the remorseless pillar standing before her. Perhaps to her father's soul or the angels that tended to him. Perhaps to God, long departed. "Please."
Christine could only barely make out the tip of the shadow's pink tongue running across its blank face, so unforgiving was the opening of the hood it wore, so feeble was the lantern light.
What she missed entirely was it wrenching off the glove on its left hand, with such expedient violence that she was genuinely disturbed as the offending article was crammed into her mouth. Hands lay at her throat, and she wondered if this was what drowning felt like—why the gruff sailor-types her father drank with across Scandinavia passed around shanties and tales about it, made gods out of a death that hitherto seemed barbaric to childish ears.
"Oh, sweet cunt," it said, squeezing at her neck just so that it forced the poor woman to look into its hellfire eyes. "This is all your fault. And yet I know I shall forgive you thrice over."
They stood staring at each other like so, breathless and frightened and angry, until the demon's maleness had swelled so noticeably that it twitched against her thigh.
"A kiss," it sighed into the ether, eyes like coals, its voice never sounding so molten. "I must leave a kiss, a token. I must pay homage." For the first time since Erik had her pinioned up like a marionette, Christine was awash in sudden, genuine fear at the thought of its mouth on hers, his shapeless face sucking out her very soul. She twisted against the iron column, screaming around her gag, hardly noticing the demon slide down onto its knees; it was the feeling of a rough tongue delving between her thighs that finally rebuked her. The way the monster feasted and snuffled against her like the poor animal it had just accused her of being robbed her of all reason, and she could have sworn she was actually being lifted into heaven when black, silken limbs lifted her round thighs over hardened, sinewed shoulders.
When three bare fingers joined that freakish maw in their reverence, the unfortunate couple moaned and quivered in unison, transubstantiated into an entirely new monster, an inseparable mass of pleasure and loathing. Its still-gloved partner found her red-raw chest again and gently slapped at her breasts and their tight nipples, as if the demon no longer had words to scorn her with; as if it could only show Christine how lost her soul was by making her so wet with its punishments.
"Oh, God, she wailed, eyes shut against the horror as that delightful tautness she had teased at so often in the privacy of her own bed became unbearable. "Help me, oh god!"
God replied with another finger up her cunt, and Christine sang his praises in earnest as the tightness swelled and burst like a blemish, baptizing the demon with her sin, creating streaks across its leather scalp. The walls within her clenched and unclenched, and she wanted nothing more in that moment than to worship like this for eternity.
In her euphoria, there was no need to worry about the demon sliding away from her thighs, situating behind her wonderfully useless body as it slid between her backside and the beam; when its hands cupped her jaw and forced her to look at the mirrored wall before them, she only only saw the monster, the blackness of its clothing swallowing her entirely, saw its pale and disturbingly long, thin cock painting a horrible contrast against the abyss.
If there was pain when the demon slid itself into her sodden ruin, she could not have cared less, so natural did it feel to have it take the place of those disgusting, clever hands. She did not see her swinging breasts, the way one death's hand played with the that sinful little bump of nerves above her slit while the other brought the torture of her nipples to an almost baroque finale. She only saw golden eyes staring back into hers as their owned fucked up into her with such fury that it lifted her to see her Maker yet again. She collapsed against him, eyes screwed shut as the demon screamed her name and quickly pulled out its length, spraying its seed into the soft nest of hair around her desire.
Exhausted beyond all knowing, thrown back against the support beam, she felt the demon return to his supplicant position, felt its mouth as it kissed her curls tenderly and licked up the mess of blood and desire that tousled them so.
When the shadow had eaten it's fill of Christine, it collapsed into a posture of pure submission at her bare feet, like a reverent pilgrim. When she dared to open her eyes, the mirrors revealed her reflection in its entirety—and now, finally, Christine saw what the monster did. She saw her frizzy tresses plastered against her forehead and shoulders with sweat, the tears that slid down her face glowing and near beautiful against the endless darkness, much the same as the come dripping down her chin. She saw the beam against her back was no support structure, but a queer simulacrum of tree. Her pale arms and breasts stretched to near pain above her, covered in scratches and demon's teeth, her ribs and the soft swell of her stomach glazed with spit. Saint Sebastian never looked so beautiful in his torments, nor did the price of his martyrdom look so compelling.
All of Erik's crooning and honeyed words flew back to Christine—how she was his angel, how she was his redemption, how she was the one who loved him in the way only saints could. Such operatic language in the past compelled her to roll her eyes, for only idiots, bad poets, and sick people talked in such platitudes about normal shop girls.
But now, completely torn apart and pieced back together, like a piece of neglected art, Christine understood what her hideous master had meant in his estimation of her—that sainthood required ugliness and death and so much awful pain before it brought transcendence. And the only person who understood that and worshipped her all the more for it was now knelt before her, crying so softly that Christine's heart nearly burst into flames.
"I am sorry," the demon—it, he—Erik murmured over and over. "Oh, my dear girl, forgive me. Forgive your Erik."
It was then that she cried in earnest, in a manner that expressed every beautiful and awful emotion that had browbeat her into apathy over the last months and years—perhaps for the first time since Erik had revealed himself truly to her.
He stood shakily to his feet, unable to meet her eyes, shoulders still heaving under the mysterious, otherworldly clothing—but what little did it matter, when she was blinded by her tears? Trembling fingers coaxed the filthy glove out of her mouth, a thumb running over her bottom lip as if it were tracing a rose petal. A wave of appreciation for the little nothings revived her: her sore arms falling back to her sides, the musty but clean air filling her lungs, the very heart that pounded within and gave her the wherewithal to create beauty.
"Erik, look at me," said Christine, more tired and heartworn than she could have ever conceived of, but with a clarity that surprised them both, nonetheless. His sad eyes met hers, wet and filled with self-loathing and a question that she didn't understand, but somehow felt compelled to gently nod at.
He slid off the hood, the proof of her apotheosis still glimmering faintly, his stare fixed.
And just as all sinners inevitably do, when the world's wickedness and cruelty become all too much to bear, they sank to the floor together, hands intertwined, and prayed for a better day.
This whole work has ended up being way more personal and cathartic to write than I could have even imagined. I'll be doing some revisions for the first chapters, since there is such massive gap between updates, and also cleaning up typos. I hope y'all enjoyed reading. This is the first piece of fan fiction I've finished, let alone written, in years—and honestly, it's because you all have cheered me on(?)/into hell ;)