The second midnight, I sat alone in the living room with my hands slowly messaging the black ivory arms of my chair in slow circular motions of restlessness. At the fourteenth hour her screams had begun to decrescendo into to sporadic whimpers of defeat. By the twentieth hour, she fell silent.
I smiled wryly, examining the snake crested handle of the black whip that I retreated from the secret compartment of my throne. That's better my dear. It's not wise to ruin your vocal palette with hopeless cries for help. The engraved cobra twisted its lengthy emerald body around the grip in a conniving, merciless fashion. Its provocative grin taunting me with it's covert hissing as I stood and sent the long whip across the room, extinguishing the first flame that met it's bite.
Game sport.
I slid a finger down the leather, reminded of the terrible amusement it gave me in the Persian courts. I had nearly scared the Shah of Shahs out of his skin when I pounded the instrument around him to capture his ill-advised assassin. The Shadow of God couldn't catch his breath before muttering in flustered exasperation that I could have warned him before it caught the hired gun around his throat and sliced it quite succinctly at the Adam's apple. I daresay that day I proved myself too proficient an executioner to kept around.
I sliced the air with the instrument again, this time cracking the second black candle into two halves. I proceeded to kill each following stick of wax until darkness surrounded the pipe organ with emptied candelabras scattered in untidy piles around it.
Still, my ability to pick up the slightest shuffle in that casket destroyed the possibility to concentrate on any other form of self-indulgence. I beat the cobra against my glove hand irritatingly, considering the possibility of continuing this exercise of appeasement.
The snake fell short of hitting my palm again when I realized there was no longer a sound of movement. But a melody of faint familiarity rose from her room like a requiem of doom. It seeped through the door of my room like poison and poured mercilessly into my ears. I recognized it curiously to be from Rodolfo's verse in Aida:
Then I, silent, ecstatic, listened to her words
as
she, sounding like an angel, said "I love only you",
so
that paradise seemed to open to my soul!
Sounding like an angel,
she said "I love only you".
Ah! she betrayed me! She betrayed me!
The Verdi score soared beyond the walls of my chambers, ringing in my head in seething clarity. Then changing the lyrics, she sang…
Sounding like an angel, I said "I love only you".
Ah! I betrayed you! I betrayed you!
I lifted my hands to cover my ears…It was too piercing—her voice! It rang like bells that could not be muffled—such incessant craving, precision, retribution, all warped in one long, deafening note…She sang like it was her dying prayer, drawing me into the wrath of her hateful revelation as I gripped tighter and tighter onto the raw instrument in my hand.
Dragging myself to the bedroom, I threw open the door and beat the whip several times against the lid of the coffin. The snapping of the wood in several place resulted in cracking echoes in the room.
"Silence!" I boomed in the darkness. I lashed at the coffin again with raging ferocity until my hands tired from the violent pounding. Slowly the singing transformed into distorted laughter, and as I leapt towards the casket and threw open its lid, wrapping the whip around her little throat in such atrocious madness, I found Christine Daaé smiling back at me.
Her hair clung in messy, wet, sweaty tendrils around her face. Her fingernails, engorged in blood, had been broken from scratching the insides of the lid so viciously. The tears in her eyes were still fresh; it seemed, even as she sang, she did not stop crying. I took in the sight of her disheveled insanity with a mix of horror and fascination as I slowly loosened the taut rope around her neck.
"Ah, what a lovely sight you are," I remarked, disguising my own apprehension with sarcasm. I wiped the tears from her cheek with an absent finger, pausing for a second before continuing to tame the wild hair around her face with my free hand.
"How do you expect to think of a penalty if you preoccupy yourself with bloody crying all night?"
She lay very still and compliantly as I dabbed at her forehead with the corners of the cloak. A smile rested on her face as peaceful as that of a sleeping child, but her eyes remain open, staring blankly at the ceiling. For a moment I had the slightest regret that perhaps I'd truly forced off the deep end.
"Well, my dear? Don't just stare at the wall like that; what shall be your punishment?"
She liked her lips and spoke very softly.
"Please, don't hurt him, Erik…My heart foreseeing your condemnation, in your arms I wish to die."
I slammed the lid back onto the coffin with a thud and crushed my fist into the splintered wood.
"You idiot!" I yelled, "Not another line from Aida from you, do you hear? I don't want you to play another character to me from an Opera! Don't lie to me, poison me with your resignation Christine Daae, do you understand? I don't wish to be amused!"
Exasperated, I spread my hands across the lid of the coffin and tried to quiet down my heavy breathing by gripping onto the mahogany. I was really growing tired of this charade—perhaps I didn't want her at all. Perhaps I only wanted to find an excuse to keep her here to satisfy my perverse need for company, and I had never loved as much as I loved myself. Perhaps what bothered me more than her being with the Vicomte was her being with my brother, and that he had won everything in the end: my life, my mother, my wife…all with his singular face.
No, that wasn't it. I was not jealous of Raoul. He was young, unaware, unfortunate even for loving Christine as much as I did. But he was innocent, and I had nothing to hate in him.
Then it had to be her own undoing that I wanted so much to undo myself…I wanted to turn back the hands of time that could never be touched. There was no magic within my reach that could cast the spell on the reversal of time, and I was helpless now as I once was, trapped, in the prison of my mind.
"I will not kill him, Christine," I said to the coffin, "He's much more useful alive to me than you are…We have a lot in common you know."
A noise from inside the box.
"Yes, quite a lot in common, in fact," I spoke with meditated calm, "One can never predict when fate will deal him a deck a peculiar cards…Here, I have the Joker, you see." I tapped the coffin to make certain she was listening. "It seems that your precious Vicomte de Chagny and I are from one nest."
Another noise.
"Oh yes, that is exactly what I mean!" I laughed softly, amused at my own ability to humor the situation. Leaning closely into the coffin I hissed with predatory charm, "Upsetting isn't it, Christine? I daresay you've given yourself to my half-brother quite blindly."
A cough. A sniffle. Then nothing.
I began to delicately trace the splints with my finger. "I see…you must be sleeping. I suppose fatigue befits a night of screaming. But you must tell me what you think of this new turn of events, my dear. Tell me straightaway and I shall leave you alone."
I stepped back from the coffin, listening for her faint, anxious response.
A long desolate pause ensued.
Then, with shrill vivacity, a blood-curdling scream.
