Erik: Life was simple enough. I composed my music, helped the bumbling manager with my Opera, and watched Little Meg grow into a fine toddler. The first year of her life was amazing, from her sweet smile to her first tiny tumble when she began to walk. Ann tried hard to keep Megan away from me, but she had no power over what I could do.

I would often leave little choctlates for Meg to find and small toys I bought especially for her. My favorite past time, however, was to visit Ann's apartment on the eleventh floor late at night and sing to Meg. If she ever began to cry, I could always console her with my voice, and Ann knew this, though she resented it.

I cared for the child, wanted everything to go right for her, and would do anything for her sake. As for Ann, we reconciled, a little at a time. She would visit me once a month, and I would give her my simple list of items I required. I had stopped going out at night, in fact I would spend weeks without ever venturing into the sunshine.

My experiances with the outside world were painful, and I became tired of the tedious Parisian society. Life inside the Opera was where I felt most comfortable. So the years passed, and I grew older. My old games and amusements had fallen away to more academic interests, and I no longer played silly tricks with the patrons, only doing enough each month to assure the employees of the Opera that their ghost still watched over the proceedings.

Meg began to talk, and Ann grew angry when she realized I was talking back. She cornered me one night and made me swear never to reveal myself to Megan. I swore that she would never see my physical presence, but she would know that she had a friend, should she ever need one.

Time seemed to pass by unnoticed, and I began to live by my own internal clock, sleeping only once or twice a week, and staying up during the late hours of the night. Life was a moment, and I lived for the moment.

Ann grew populer among the Parisian ladies, and they would send their daughter's of all ages to the conservatory to learn not only ballet and chorus, but ettiquette and social life. Of course I was interested in the older girls, I was a healthy man of eighteen, but I never dared to think about doing anything to them.

When I was alone I would often fantasize about the perfect woman, the woman I wanted to love and cherish me. I wanted her to be intellegent, clever, and compassionite. I wanted her to love me for who I was, for my music and my talents. Beauty was not an important item to me, so long as she had dark, chestnut hair. The color of Ann's actually.

I never approaced Ann with my feelings for her, I knew she was still upset over Jason, and I tried hard to remedy that mistake. It was difficult to console her, and so we often left the subject alone. She could never hide, however, for I knew late at night when Meg was in her bed that Ann cried. I couldn't sing to her the way I did for Meg, Ann would surely burst through the walls and strangle me.

Time heals, though, and in time she buried her grief and focused on her career. Meg began to ask questions when she was four, and it was then that I sealed off all contact with the charming little girl.

It hurt me deeply, indeed I was crushed, when I told her that her friend was going away. She had cried and pounded on the walls, but I simply walked away. Of course I did not stop loving her, for she was the child I knew I could never be blessed with, and I continued to watch over her when she entered the conservatory at age five.

Two years of silence and brooding consumed me, until one rainy night Antoinette brought a young seven year old girl to the Opera, and my heart was inflamed.

Ann: Life wasn't very simple, in fact I was begining to feel the signs of stress. Megan was growing into a fine, if a little too curious, child, and I was proud. However, Erik angered me to no point.

He would follow the child from within the walls and often left sweets and toys for her. She was being spoiled by him, and she expected it from me too. I tried to explain my reason's to him, that the child would soon talk and perhaps leak his secret to someone, or she would try to find him on her own and become lost within the cellars, but Erik was a man unto himself.

He listened to no one yet expected everyone to listen to him. He ordered the manager around, changed things so often that chaos was a daily occurance, and late at night I could hear him singing to Megan. Of course she would calm down whenever he sang, and I do believe his voice made her very docile and quiet during her first three years.

She was no real problem, her nanny never complained, and it made my job easier. My job, on the other hand, was becoming harder and I was forced to become stricter. Aristocratic ladies, or "odiferous dogs with money and foo-foo hats" as Erik called them, would send me their unruly daughters simply to get them out of their homes. I was not a teacher to these ladies, I was a nanny, and it made me quite angry.

I had often glimpsed Erik slipping among the shadows during rehearsals, and I began to wonder if he had yet had a woman. I wasn't worried about my students, Erik was not the kind of man to force a lady, or else he would have had me long ago. I was more worried for his mind, how he coped with such solitude. Of course the answer was in the loud cachaphony late at night, and whenever I heard this horrid music I knew he was whittling away his frustrations. I felt such pity for him, and I cared so deeply for this man.

I knew he cared for me and Megan, and I appreciated him. He tried to make up for his past mistakes, but nothing could take away my pain at losing Jason. It was hard to put away my grief, but late in the nights when I cried I would hear him singing to Megan, and I too would fall asleep to his distant voice.

The relationship between Meg and Erik was becoming more pronounced as she began to talk, and one time I even heard her singing one of his songs.

I made him swear not to reveal himself physically, and he had promised, so long as he could continue to be her friend. It was an odd friendship, and I was glad Megan was only three, for it would be hard to explain a sixteen year old talking to a wall. The real problem was when Megan began to ask questions, both from me and her friend.

She wanted to know who he was, why he was there, and she wanted to hear his voice in person. I tried endlessly to explain that her friend was not real, he was a shadow. It may seem wrong, but at the time I desperatly wanted the two seperated. It seemed easier to put Erik in the realm of fantasy than to admit that I was keeping track of a man living beneath the Opera.

One day I had come home to find Megan screaming her lungs out and pounding her fist's upon the wall. It had been a long, unconsolable night, for Erik was not there to soothe her and Meg refused to be consoled by me. I had finally been forced to close her door and let her cry until she fell alseep. The next year Megan was old enough to leave her Nanny and become a training ballerina.

She had the grace, the charm, and talent to become the new rising star when she was older. I paid her no special attentions and treated her just as any other student, but she knew I was proud of her. Two years passed quietly, and I worried about Erik. He hardly ever haunted the Opera, he stopped coming to our monthly visits, and when I tried to contact him he'd shut me off.

I couldn't hear his organ anymore, and the notes he sent were sparse. This, of course, all changed the night I heard of the famous violinist's death and how his daughter had nowhere else to go. I begged and pleaded the manager untill I was able to bring her from the orphanage to the Opera.

Two days later Erik came to me in my apartment and hugged me, he actually hugged me for no apparent reason and said thanks.

Thanks?