I could not be certain of the time when Erik had returned to my dressing room, but it was glaringly obvious that he had left his own message for me.
My body wavered with awe- how, considering how much labor and attention to detail must have been involved, did he know I would return? Had he believed the same as I; that our parting kiss so many months would not mark the end of our strange relationship? We had never been merely teacher and student, nor simply friends; but we had not been lovers, either. Erik and I shared something beyond all common terms, a connection so indescribable and rare, that I was certain it would never be found among any other two individuals again.
I could no longer bring myself to rationalize my feelings for him, or the intoxication tension between he and I as an understanding of two persons with an obsessive love of music- as Raoul had often said after many awkward lapses in our nightly conversations. It had been his own way of comforting himself. Guilt once again swept over me as I gathered up a handful of rose petals-some eerily fresh, others stiff with age- and pressed them to my face. My husband had never even wished to think ill of his young wife, and had convinced himself that it was the trauma of the past that so often left him at a loss of my affection.
If I did not move or make a sound during our 'lovemaking', when I did not respond with wanton anticipation as he palmed and caressed the pink flesh between my thighs, pressing his erection against my core, he reasoned that I must still be frightened and shy, due to the events that had transpired at the Opera Populaire.
"You are safe, now," he had told me on our wedding night, kissing my forehead as he parted my legs, and easing himself on top of my body, his arousal pressing against my still-untouched sex. Had he reached the realization that first night- or any other evening when he took his pleasure- that I saw another face, and not his, above my own- beautiful in its deformity and anguish?
That is why I closed my eyes each time my sweet, naive husband thrust into me. For, with each touch or ragged breath he made, my mind fostered the illusion of Erik's hands caressing my flesh, his body melding into my own.
I had not acknowledged the forbidden longings, even to my own soul, that first night. Yet, with the passing of months, the loneliness and detachment I felt gradually pervaded my every thought. If I had simply allowed myself some honesty and let my soul speak to my mind, I very well might have come to the rose-covered dressing room much sooner. Perhaps, I might have arrived to find Erik in the process of leaving his poignant and extravagant message, his own scent mingling with that of the roses. Yet, I had tried, without success, to forget him, to plunge my soul into a state of numb acceptance and wifely duty.
To follow the storybook pattern, to reach the predictable, but always lauded, storybook ending. The maiden marries the prince. The 'ogre' is slain, and the virginal maiden is grateful to her rich Adonis for rescuing her from the ghoul's foul clutches. Or so the stories say. . .
I let the rose petals fall between my trembling fingers, and gave into the sobs of regret that I had stifled for two years. Exhausted, I laid down among Erik's fragrant blooms and let my eyelids fall shut. I fell asleep with those dead white and red flowers kissing my body, and dreamt that the ogre would return to avenge his sorrow upon the maiden. To quell his rage and find peace against her now-willing flesh.
The storybooks never allude to the virgin's intoxicating and inexplicable desire for her ogre, her fascination with his fate, and her curiosity to know him and the intricacies of his past. . .of what has made of him a damaged creature.
No, the storybooks will never reveal the secret of the maiden's entrapment: that she loves her captor for the passion that oozes from his every gesture, and it is a strange love- one that the maiden dares not even admit to herself. But all the while, she sits and waits, waits until that moment when he will force her to that revelation: that her passions are as great as his own. That they are both lost without the other. And that, to be found and made whole, the monster and the maiden must surrender themselves to one another, in flesh and soul.