Chapter 71 Acedia
Erik sat in the tangle of blankets on his bedroom floor that now served as his bed, resting his back against the pewter monstrosity that he couldn't occupy, now that the person he'd intended it for was no longer in his life. He stared at nothing.
Perhaps it was 3am, but he slept so infrequently now that time had ceased to have any meaning. Night, day – he'd only ever known when one ended and the other began by joining in the world above him. And that world now, was irretrievable.
He'd run out of alcohol sometime in the last week yet had no energy to go above and obtain more. He missed the dulling of his senses that drinking himself into a stupor could bring, but not the nightmarish hallucinations that had accompanied many of his drunken rages. He'd woken up covered in bruises and blood too many times to be able to count lately. The images were always the same - he was back in his cage, people screaming and laughing all around him, deafening him with their never-ending noise. And he was throwing himself against the bars, desperate to escape. The dried blood upon his bedroom wall stood as testament to his imagined distress. To the battle raging within him, restrained as he was by forces, yet again, beyond his control.
He couldn't find her; he couldn't see her. He'd never hear her voice again, never feel the touch of her fingers against his flesh. If he could only see her. But he couldn't find her.
Yet, the rage, the fear, the desperation, all bled out of him over time. Until he wasn't even lost in thought any more.
Thought meant memories, memories meant pain and he couldn't cope with that now.
The limit of what his heart could bear had been reached and though he still opened his eyes and looked around his home, he actually saw nothing of what was there.
He never ate, he rarely slept; all he concentrated on was remembering to breathe. Ignoring his erratic heartbeat, he spent hours taking air in and pushing it out, taking air in and pushing it out. The damp caused him to wheeze slightly at times, but he was too lost to understand this meant that his fire had gone out days before. Rising from the floor to attend to it didn't even occur to him.
Emilie hadn't kept her promise - neither she nor Marguerite had gone to Christine or brought her back to him. His anger at her protestations and feeble excuses had only lasted so long before exhaustion and despair had once again confined him to his home.
Emilie, he came to realise, had never meant to help him, only keep him alive in this desolate purgatory. Hoping, no doubt, that the agony he went through would purge his soul of the sin of murder stamped so irrevocably upon it.
She didn't understand, he thought without emotion, that God had never wanted him saved - only continually punished for the sin of being born such an abomination to His sight.
Only Christine had thought him an angel. Only Christine had thought he was worthy of love. And now her love shone upon another. Yet he could not even summon up enough fire to hate de Chagny anymore either. For to think of him meant to think of her being with him and that was too much… just too much…
There had been no formal engagement - that had only kept fire in his blood for so long. And as the days had passed into weeks, and then over a month, he slipped into a darkness so deep, he couldn't break free.
Until the music box in front of him started playing.
There was a click as the metal contracted and then the tinkling sound of the music echoed through the silent cavern. He looked up at the faint whir of noise as the toy monkey's legs began to move, then the miniature cymbals it held came together with tiny clang. And that was it. The music box stopped.
Had he frowned? It felt like he'd frowned. He reached out for the box then and turned it over in his hands to find the small knob at the back. Then turning it back to face him again, he stared down at it whilst the music began playing, over and over.
Emilie hadn't asked him - when he'd directed her to buy it, so many years ago – why the design had to be so precise. She'd been far more interested in scowling at him over where the money he was giving her had come from and had insisted that it would be the last thing she'd ever buy him until he could prove his money came from something other than blackmail.
Strange, he remembered, how that vow had never applied to buying his books, only anything else. As if she'd thought education through reading would somehow save him from his ungodly ways.
He turned the music box again, winding it up once more, needing to hear the soft tune over and over. He'd never told her that it had to be exactly the same as the one his father had brought him. He'd never told her that his mother had hated the gift and it had been the first thing she'd smashed, upon learning of his father's death. He'd never told her that he needed another one, to cling to his father's memory; to find strength to start his new life in the Opera House and not succumb to the darkness that had always chased him, even back then.
But one day, he would tell Christine.
His eyes unclouded at the thought and he took a sharp, deep breath.
But to do that, he would have to speak to her again. To do that, he would have to find her.
And claim her as his own.
He placed the box down upon the small trunk that still held her silk stockings and watched it for hours, his thoughts gaining more clarity with each passing moment.
But it wasn't until he started singing gently along to the tune that the swirl of ideas inside his head started to coalesce into a single and essential purpose.