MEMOIRS

The phone rang very early in the morning, Mercedes reached eyes-closed for it and answered half asleep:

"Hello?"

"Dr. Chacon?" A male voice on the other side asked.

"Yes, who is this?" Mercedes asked as she rubbed her eyes and fixed them in the alarm clock on her bed-table. It was 4:02 AM.

"I am very sorry to interrupt you so early Ma'am, but I'm calling from the Gaston Leroux Association and I just called to remind you that the authentication is due Monday."

Mercedes groaned almost inaudibly and said dryly: "Thank you I won't forget!"

Dr. Mercedes Chacon was a light sleeper and once she was awake she couldn't go back to bed, so angrily she moved to the bathroom and after washing her face she went to her basement where her lab was located. She took a deep breath and glanced at the papers on top of one of the tables, she had looked at them and read them so many times she almost knew the words by heart, nevertheless she re-read the document that was causing so much controversy in France...

Mes Memoirs

Gaston Leroux

Not so well paid an honest reporter, ha! I found myself wondering in the depths of my own mind. I have loved writing for as long as I've know how to write, but I had foolishly reserved my gift to use it researching for an ordinary newspaper. Recently I have found great pleasure in coming up wit my own stories, but I can truly not forget what lightened the story-telling lumière inside my brain.

When I published my book "The Phantom of the Opera" in 1911 I was desperate to make it believable, not because it was an unbelievable story but because I had gained fame as a novelist and now that I was publishing a factual, credible story I feared that people would not take it as seriously as the story deserved to be taken.

I wrote a great prologue to the magnificent account and an even vaster epilogue, I hid very little from the reader; I gave most of my evidence plus my word and the word of those who really had met Erik. Nevertheless my fame brought doubt and my efforts to give credibility to the story were lost as fast as one loses money! Don't I know about it?! Ha!

Being sarcastic at this point of my life is not really useful, but I hate to say that sarcasm is the only type of humor I have left. Thus trying to tell the truth and failing I shall now write what really happened to me while researching the Opera Ghost's story and this time God as my witness I shall not steal detail, I shall tell the truth... the entire truth from the second my hands grabbed that old Parisian newspaper to the point were I decided that I could not write everything in one book and consequently what I buried in the depths of my mind for so long.

Being a writer I never thought that the action of writing would ever become tedious nor hard, but as I now try to face myself with the facts that I hid for so long I reckon I am not able to find the words which properly describe what I want the reader to know.

"The Opera Ghost really existed." Not only I began my account with this phrase but also I am forced to begin the re-telling of my investigation with it, for it is and I swear it, the pure, simple truth.

I first came to know about the Ghost in 1886 while in the middle of the enormous bibliothèque de la Faculté de Droit. I had heard about the 770-kilo chandelier that had fallen from the ceiling of the Opera Garnier, but young as I was I did not pay much attention to it and foolishly proceeded to assume it had been a simple error in design or perhaps just the age of the mighty chandelier.

But in the library that day I had very little to do...

A/N: I know its not my style but this story just popped into my head, hope you enjoy it... feel free to review as always, any suggestions are more than welcomed.