Chapter 6: Monster

The Phantom could not play. Try as he might, he could not bring himself to play. Tears blurred his vision, and anyway his hands shook so badly that they could not hit the right notes. In his frustration, he pounded heavily on the keys, repeatedly, adding his tortured scream to the dischord of protest his instrument gave off.

He was a monster! A terrible creature! And, like a creature, he screamed and stood; like a lion with a flaming torch tied to his tail. He dashed to his sitting-room, as he called it, filled with the haunting pictures of Christine, and ran at them in a blind rage. White-hot fury dashed through his veins like poison, as his hands reached forward and grasped a handful of his paper devotions and ripped them from the pile. Animalistically, he tore at them as though his fingers were claws, ripped apart her likeness the way she had ripped apart his heart. Scraps of once-treasured paper floated through the disturbed air like burning ash from a volcano of hurt, landing harmlessly in the water, on the floor beside him, or landing in his hair as if unwilling to let him be.

If there were words that echoed in those anguished screams, those moans of absolute loathing and emptiness, they were lost for the slurring, shrieking voice that propelled them outward. For what words could be put to such absolute dejection? Such a mad, furious sorrow that caused the Phantom to tear and tear until his hands bled from hundreds of tiny lacerations in his hands, that caused him to scream until he could barely cry for the pain in his dry throat. But his tearing, his screaming...gave him no satisfaction. He had destroyed almost all he had created for Christine in his fit, and yet he fell, sobbing hopelessly, to the paper-littered floor of his abode.

His mouth began to form soundless words, but no voice accompanied them. He shook his head in disbelief, in self-hatred too deep to express. For how long he lay there, in that unloving darkness, still but without rest, he did not know. His mind was barely coherent enough to form proper thoughts in the muddled fog of lacrimosa that had settled in the dingy streets of his brain.

Eventually he dragged his sorry carcass off of the floor, and he began to stumble forward, toward his bedroom. No, that was too far away; but perhaps he could make it to the peacock before he simply expired. He staggered up the stairs, his legs scarcely supporting his weight as he tripped along and ran headlong into the doorway of the curtained automata room. The curtain tore down as he grasped it for balance, and he fell into the room, at the naked, wooden feet of the automat he had designed to resemble his love. His only love, or so he had thought.

"Christine," he moaned, his voice regaining some form of sound, "Oh, Christine..."

Using her stiff form to raise himself upward, he cast his arms about her waist and lay his head on her shoulder. She was cold, hard, wooden...his dead wife, he'd thought of her. He even chuckled, such was his fatigue, his mania. "A dead wife for a dead husband," he said, and could not fight back the broken cry of pain and love that racked his breath afterward.

"You, at least, will love me...won't you?" he begged, looking into the vacant eyes of the oversized doll. He stroked her unliving cheek, kissed her unfeeling lips, let his tears fall on her artificial skin. Then: "...No," he choked, letting his forehead drop again to her shoulder, "You can't love me...no one can."

A contrary thought stabbed at the Phantom's all ready decimated heart, You'll never know, now, will you? The breath he drew was hateful, hurtful, and hopeless. Meg was gone forever, now. For Christ's sake, could he not simply have invited her for a glass of champagne? Could he not have allowed himself to pursue one final happiness? Did he have to ruin everything he touched?

"I'll never know, Christine!" he cried, loudly, "I chased her away. I chased her away, Christine! Why did I chase her away...when by all accounts, I seem to love her? I know I don't deserve happiness...but I wanted to...so badly...I wanted to kiss her...sweet mouth," his voice broke, "But I shall never know love...happiness..." his voice trailed off into a silent mouthing as he clung to the false idol for some semblence of uprightness. "I told her my crime...she will never come back. She will never love me. No one will ever love me...not even myself...especially not myself...!"

As his deformed cheek slid down the wooden side of Christine's leg, uncaring of splinters or discomfort, the Phantom felt that his tears would surely choke him, drown him, put an end to this bottomless pit of self-loathing and loneliness that he wallowed in.

"No one...will ever love me..."

Meg was in such a state when she finally stumbled in through the door that her mother was almost obliged to call a doctor, had Meg not so vehemently insisted that she do no such thing. Instead, Madame Giry held her poor daughter's shaking form as she cried violently into her chest, much like the way she had done when her father died, noisily and without shame. Whatever sorrow she felt outweighed any thoughts of self-consciousness. This sorrow, in fact, was so terrible, that it was impossible for the woman, to whom empathy was first nature, to keep her own eyes from shedding tears; to keep her own heart from breaking.

"Meg, hush," her mother forced out, but in vain. The distraught little Giry only cried the harder, as the two of them sat on the hallway floor. After struggling with the lock, Meg had fallen straight into the door, and then to the floor beyond, tearful. Her mother was there in a moment, in her night-dress, and with a freshly lit candle, to attend to her hysterical offspring. After a while, Madame Giry stood, and helped Meg to stand, as well. She brought the girl upstairs, to her room, and tucked her into her bed, and then rushed off, promising a mug of chamomile tea.

Once alone, Meg found that she could only cry harder. Her hands groped instinctively at her dampening pillow, as if hoping to find some comfort in their downy luxury. She was not used to feeling so many emotions at once - shock, fatigue, fear, longing... It had all happened so fast. One moment, she was closer to him than she'd ever been before; closer to loving him than she'd ever been before. The next, he was again the cold killer, the Opera Ghost of her childhood nightmares, screaming at her and chasing her away with horrible threats. It seemed like a fevered dream, and Meg desperately wished that it was. After all, she'd been so exhausted, lately...perhaps this was merely the vomitings of an unwell mind.

But the warm, crisp smell of chamomile woke Meg out of the helpless stupor she'd fallen into. The warm tea, seasoned with her bitter tears, did little to help her nerves, though it did soothe her aching throat. Seeming to sense that her little daughter desired privacy, Mme. Giry left the tray on her bedside table, and respectfully exited the room.

He'd killed Genvieve...Meg had not known her well, but the girl was barely four years older than she was...and the idea that she'd been so close to meeting the same unpleasant fate sent frightful chills down Meg's back.

And yet...somehow...Meg's eyes and nose burned with imminent tears, her throat filled with hot, choking fear and shame...somehow she still cared for him. She still cared for that cloaked man, that stranger in the shadows, that voice in her mind. But she knew, as she lay herself down on the pillow, her tea barely touched, that her mind was not at all to be trusted until she'd had a decent sleep. It took only moments for sleep to claim the crying girl from her misery.