Greetings to you all! I hope you've had a Merry Christmas and look forward to the New Year! As you I know, the movie version of ALW's Phantom of the Opera was released on Dec 22, and I have seen it 3 times sense. Despite my expected disappointment that they've reproduced such a bastardized version of Erik, I found that it only encouraged me to recreate my own image of this fantastic creature in my mind. So here is the Erik that I love and adore – I thank you all or reading and reviewing! And loving Erik, of course! :-D

Christine Daae knelt between my knees with her head bowed shamefully towards the ground, her body rocking back and forth with the suppressed terror of a prisoner prepped for execution. She swayed and muttered indiscernible words under her breath that sounded like words of penitent prayer. My hands crept from her face to the whitening flesh of her neck and settled into the curvaceous slope of her supple shoulders. I clasped onto them so tightly that she whimpered in pain, but she dared not look up and meet my eyes. She was afraid yes, that perhaps my gaze would burn her alive.

I let myself sink down to the ground so that she would be compelled to stare into my face – with a violent squeeze I gripped and pulled her face towards mine, and she finally looked at me with half-masked eyes that welled with emotion. Her tears slipped down her cheek and onto my forceful hands.

"Erik—Please…"

My grip around her chin tightened at the sound of that treacherous voice which I no longer entrusted my faith.

"It would be wise to be very silent now, Christine," I said with impermeable coldness. Without warning I slipped my left hand down to her small corseted waist and ripped at the last few laces which held it in tact. I think she might have gasped under my threatening grasp. "Oh no, my dear – you mustn't act so surprised!" I pulled her towards me with savage violence. "It hardly seems genuine when you can no longer confide in me your uncontaminated virginity!"

She let out an anguished cry of terror as I shook her like a ragged doll in my arms. But she did not deny it; her betrayal was like ink splattered all over her beguiling little face—that guilt that lack of denial which only drove me further into madness.

"Our little ménage upon the roof was not enough to convince that boy…He had to lie with you to be assured your abysmal affair was true love, didn't he?"

I shook her more fiercely as she struggled in my arms. Her face had already become deathly pale, drained of all the rose-flush of her earlier intoxication. She was somberly aware of my menacing spirit now. As I clung onto her body she began to shake, in the convulsing, uncontrollable manner of someone who was suffering from seizure. I pressed my thumb into the crevice about her upper lip, and her shaking subsided. Pulling her hair back with one hand, my other swooped with strained tenderness around her wretched neck.

"That's better. How bizarrely stiff you seem now. You couldn't have possibly been this stiff with the Vicomte, could you? Perhaps you would like to demonstrate how you calmed your brave young suitor…." I pulled her hand towards my mask and forced her clumsy fingers to rip it from my face. Slowly I maneuvered her hand to fall against the thin layer of my ravaged flesh and down towards my neck, chest, stomach….

She did not struggle but her eyes widened at the sensation of each new undiscovered territory of flesh that she touched. Then as she extended her land lower, below the waist, I caught it repulsively and threw it from my body in revulsion.

"Come, stand up you little fool."

I dragged her to her feet, crushing her corset beneath my step as I lead her numbly into my bedroom with me. I positioned her limply by my bed and ordered her to undress. She did so without a word, removing her full skirt and undergarments with a stupid quivering hand until and at last as she stood naked before me engulfed by the frigidness of my unyielding gaze. I lifted a dejected hand and struck her icily across the cheek. The impact made a crisp, popping sound, immediately followed by the echoes of her quiet sobbing. Slowly, I removed my cloak and wrapped her body in the material, and I lifted her into my arms with one swift swoop and carried her towards the coffin that I regarded as my bed. I positioned her over the large black mouth of the silk-lined box and smiled stonily at her expressionless face.

"You will sleep here tonight."

The consciousness in her eyes returned as I dropped her vehemently into the casket. Upon realizing where she was, she screamed in dull horror and shot an outstretched arm to clutch at my sleeve.

"Erik, no!"

"Yes, my dear," I nodded with pitiless formality. I pulled away from her hand and stared down at her in remote frostiness. "Perhaps in here you might find it easier to reflect upon the consequences of your blasphemous crime. By the time I come to fetch you, I expect you to have an appropriate punishment in mind. Nothing in the sort of strangling or throwing yourself out the window, please—I don't have much tolerance for ill-considered torture."

Her eyes blinked several times as if she found it difficult to register my orders. Then at last as her hands crept upon the luxurious soft material of the elaborate funeral bed, she allowed the realization of doom to dawn on her.

"You mean – to leave me," she stuttered, "in your coffin…"

"Now your coffin, my dear." I patted the side of the mahogany with a cordial hand. "I daresay this is the first time I've shared my bed with anyone, but it's proved less problematic than one would have anticipated, hasn't it, Christine?"

She withdrew her hand from the lush walls of the coffin and swallowed what seemed to be a growing lump in her small throat. "And if I can't think of an appropriate punishment…?"

I issued a sigh of impatience and lifted the lid reflexively above her head.

"Then you shall join me in my improper burial and exist as the living dead."

Before she could open her mouth to speak I dropped her lid upon her with a dull thud. Turning the scorpion key that locked the casket, I left the room, letting the sound of her screams and her small fists beating against the lid grow into faint whispers behind me.