Down Once More
Christine stood in the midst of mayhem.
She fought to draw breath upon surveying the devastated chaos that
remained of Erik's home. The sanctuary
where she'd spent so many hours singing with a clarity that she'd rarely experienced
since was ravaged almost beyond recognition.
The house in the walls of the opera house foundations was nothing but a shell,
a shadow of its former self. It was a haunting sight, far more so now that it
had been vacated than when the 'Opera Ghost' had been in residence.
Everything that had made Erik's dark underworld intoxicatingly alluring to
Christine had been eradicated, completely destroyed. All that signified the
presence of the mysterious genius had vanished, and in its place was an empty
nothingness that troubled Christine more than anything she'd seen or heard
since returning. Not a single room had
been left untouched, no secret place left uninvaded. The intrusion was an insult to the senses, and Christine stood,
self-accused, fully responsible for the nightmare she now stood in.
It was all so final, and screamed out to her that the changes that had taken
place were irreversible. She'd longed to come down here and find that nothing
had changed, that Meg had been misinformed, that Erik was alive, that his
precious home and everything contained therein stood proud and dominating as
always. How far from the truth her longings had been.
It was a small mercy that Erik had managed to escape. If a group of people were
capable of doing such damage to his home she shuddered to think what tortures
they would have subjected him to in the name of revenge had they caught him.
She fled the destruction, craving the bank of the underground lake, fighting
against nausea. She closed her eyes and
thought of the world that Erik had once offered her. This underground realm,
although strange, had been beautiful then, a place to inspire and encourage
creativity. Now it was merely an empty space and she believed that to be her
own fault. Had she stayed things may have taken a completely different route.
Countless times the words ran through her head like a chant. If only she'd
followed her instincts sooner, if only she'd returned a day or so earlier. Now she would exist, but never feel alive
again, and she deserved such a grim fate.
Sleepless hours spent in agony hadn't hastened her return, hadn't stopped Erik
from dying, and hadn't changed the fact that she'd consented to marry Raoul
after a period of five years had passed. Why she'd agreed to this she didn't
understand even to this day.
In the specified five years she'd resolved to put the ghost of the past to
rest, to be absolutely sure of her feelings, and Raoul's, before committing to
something that could make them both truly miserable.
And yet, although life with Raoul hadn't been bad, she was still deeply
miserable. She'd tried and failed to put Erik from her mind. His dark charisma
and aura of power, the magnitude of emotion she'd experience during that one
kiss, everything else paled into insignificance when thoughts of Erik took
over.
But she was too late, too late. The taunt tore through her fuzzy mind like a
sharp knife blade until she could endure it no longer.
"Oh, Meg, what have I done?" she cried, leaning on her small friend
for support, feeling weak again.
"Christine, you couldn't possibly have imagined the consequences of that
night, anything that happened here wasn't your fault" Meg spoke the words
with warm feeling, but Christine noted that the warmth didn't reach her eyes,
which remained cold and unanimated. She thought this was strange, but in
comparison to everything else she'd learned since her return it could be
discounted for the moment.
"I've seen enough, please, let's go back, I don't know how much more of
this I can stand". Christine clasped her head in her hands, tortured and
tormented; she wondered whether this was how Erik had felt for the duration of
their acquaintance, as she denied him over and over again the one thing that
would have made his life complete, her love.