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3
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She walked through a strange mirrored area which frightened her and made her confused. It was hard to see where she was going, whether she was walking into mirrors or not. After the mirrored section ended, the narrow path widened and led into a room adorned with red decoration and an old player piano in the corner.
She walked into the room slowly, still gripping onto the goblet as though it were protecting her in some way. The walls were painted red, the carpeting was red shag, the ceiling was tiled red, the only pieces of furniture, an old armchair and a small Ottoman, were red velvet. The only item which did not have the ruby tincture was the piano.
Christine walked over to the piano and seated herself on the bench. She noticed a red vase atop the piano. Inside the vase sat a dozen roses. She turned her head and looked at the wall behind the piano. On the floor in the corner, she was slightly disturbed to see quite a few paint canvasses. Some lay down on the floor, others were propped up against the wall. Some were completed paintings, others were in the process of being painted. All shared the same theme: Christine.
A small shiver ran down her back and she looked away from the chilling paintings. As she turned around, she saw the Phantom standing beside her. She gasped, almost fell from the bench. She wondered where he had come from, then saw a doorway on the other side of the room.
Christine looked up at the Phantom.
"Why are you here?" He asked, angrily. Christine squeezed onto the goblet, nervously. "Shouldn't you be off with that man? That man who loves you? That man who cherishes you? You've toyed with me one time too many. A heart can only take so much. Why are you here?"
"I was blind, I fear to say. I have learned my wrongful ways. I put you out of my head. But I think of you more instead." She raised from the bench and stood in front of him."The Phantom of the opera is there. Inside my mind."
The Phantom stared at Christine with a solid look. At once, he turned his head away from her and began to pace towards the doorway.
He stopped and turned back to Christine. "You tell me this today. Tomorrow will you feel the same? Game playing is overdue. How can I believe you?"
Christine approached the Phantom and stood in his way so he could pace no further. She raised a delicate hand to caress his disfigured visage and let it linger for a moment before removing it with haste. Then she placed her head on his shoulder and embraced the creature, pulling his arms around her to envelope herself in his body.
In almost a whisper, "Angel of Music please forgive me. Foolish was I, I abandoned my tutor. Clouds of disorder hindered my judgement. But now I am able to see clearly."
At first, the Phantom was alarmed by Christine making contact with he, the beast. But he could not resist feeling the warmth of his one and only true love against him. He was defenseless when it came to Christine.
He held her close and rubbed the normal side of his face against hers. After a moment of hesitation, a weak smile came over his face. "Christine... Christine... I cannot lie in the presence of beloved Christine. I... had waited so long to hear... the confession you had just reared."
A smile touched the lips of Miss Daae as well.
"Christine... you are sincerely brave enough to behold this face?"
Christine pulled away and looked him in the eye. "Never more have I seen such radiance," she said factually.
A tear came to the Phantom's eye. He ran his fingers through Christine's hair, cherishing every bit of her presence.
"The Phantom of the opera is there. Inside my mind,"(Andrew Lloyd Webber) Christine sang, feeling the joy of being with her tutor once more.
The Phantom placed a finger over Christine's tender mouth, hushing her. "Please. Call me Erik. I don't feel right with letting someone so graceful refer to me with such a frightful appellation."
Christine smiled. "Erik. What a lovely name," she remarked.
The Phantom gasped at her, unable to believe she could say such a thing. "No one's ever said that before."
"No one ever gave you a chance before," Christine replied, saddened by the horrifying past this man had to carry around with him until the end. She knew she certainly could not even bear half of the torment this poor soul had been through. All because of a silly disfigurement. People were so crude. True beauty lay in the mind and the heart. Physical appearances meant nothing. If only the world shared her views! Unfortunately it was impossible to inflict such views upon everyone.
"Christine. I love you," The Phantom said, knowing it perhaps was too bold. But he felt that his dearest was truly connecting with him right now. They were forming a bond at that moment that was like no other.
Christine was not shocked by the Phantom's proclaim of love, actually expected it of him. Yet she did not feel the same for him. At least not at the moment. Therefore, she did not want to hurt Erik anymore than he had been hurt in his life and tell him something that was a lie. She simply smiled at him. "Erik, you are swee--"
She was cut off by flames peeking out through newly formed cracks in the ceiling just as she had observed in the hall leading to the exit of the opera house.
"Oh my goodness, Erik!" She screamed, pointing to the flames above him.
He turned his head up to the ceiling to see the flames as well. The room was beginning to grow hot and the flames were coming down further.
"I thought your lair was supposed to be flame resistant!"
"I thought so too," Erik said grimly. He grabbed Christine by the arm and pulled her forward, the goblet in her hand flying out, hitting the wall and falling down on the floor. Erik whisked her away through the mysterious doorway opposite the piano. She shrieked, alarmed at what was happening. The doorway did not lead into another room, but to a ledge overlooking the murky waters beneath the opera house in the shaft that led down to the Phantom's exterior lair.
Fearful that she would fall from the ledge, she clung onto Erik, breathing heavily and whimpering. The ledge was only a small rectangle of area and there was nowhere else to go except plummet down into the shallow stream. They had only stood upon the ledge for a small moment before Erik suddenly reached upwards with one hand and grabbed a rope that had been unseen to Christine when they had went out onto the ledge.
Erik gripped Christine tightly around the waist with one hand and gripped the rope tightly with the other.
"Erik! What are you--" Christine began, but she was cut off when Erik leapt from the ledge. Christine began screaming, realizing that this might be the end for both of them. She continued to scream until she felt a sharp jerk upwards and saw that they had swung by the rope to another ledge. This ledge was lower that the previous, less of a serious drop to the foundation.
She felt Erik tighten his grip around her waist and then they were swinging again by the rope back to the opposite side of the wall once more. She was so nervous and frightened that she could not bear to look at the moving ground beneath her any more. She buried her face in Erik's shoulder and began to weep, hoping this would all be over soon.
They reached an even lower ledge and this time Erik let go of the rope. The rope dangled in its place, lifelessly, and Erik turned to the wall behind the ledge. There was a small protrusion on the bricks of the wall. One could not observe it unless they were standing on the ledge and Erik knew that no one had ever occupied the ledge before except himself.
He reached out, with the hand that had once held the rope, to the protrusion and pulled on it. The bricks had been fakes in a small area and like a cabinet, the compartment opened to reveal a dark shaft in the side of the building.
Erik took Christine's face in his hand and lifted it from his shoulder. He held her head upright and looked at her sternly. "You have to go through," He instructed, pointing at the opened compartment.
Christine sniffed, wiped her tears away and looked at the Phantom a moment before nodding and then kneeling into the compartment. She began to crawl, unaware of where she was going or where she even was, but she held a certain trust in the man, the Phantom of the Opera, and knew he never would hurt her-- Intentionally.
Erik kneeled into the compartment after her, shut the door behind him and crawled following Christine.
Christine continued crawling, wishing it would just be over soon. "In the darkness where am I? In the darkness I ask why? Frightening can be the darkness of life. Terror stalks until you shriek and cry. In the darkness I ask you why?"
"The darkness of life can be fulfilling, you'll see. The darkness of life is what I believe. In the darkness you ask why? The answer, my dear, is deep inside. But it is up to you... to find its domicile."
A shiver ran down Christine's back. She looked upwards and saw a small light burning in the distance. She would ask why no more, the darkness had been evaded by a glowing trespasser.
The Phantom saw the light as well and, having been through this cutout before, knew exactly where they were at the moment. "Just a little further," He instructed.
Christine crawled towards the light, wishing to bask in its luminescence, wishing for it to grow stronger, shroud the darkness and illuminate the unknown, cast her fears aside by shining them away with brightness.
The Phantom suddenly reached out his hand in front of her and began to push, what seemed to be to Christine, an invisible gateway. A door actually happened to be real where he was pushing and it slid open slowly under Erik's pressure, revealing a flame-filled room. Christine climbed down from the opening, cautious to the surrounding flames, the Phantom exited the opening following her removal. He took her hand in his and pulled her forth. "Come," he said.
They ran to the end of the flaming room until they reached the wall, with nowhere left to go. Christine wondered what was next as Erik reached up and pushed on one of the bricks in the wall. He tightened his grip on her hand and suddenly, the floor under their feet began revolving and they disappeared into the depths of the wall. The revolving secret passage ended in an opposite room. It seemed to Christine as though they were going around and around in circles and would never be free of the flaming opera house.
Tears began to pour down her face. "Erik... do you know what you're doing?" She asked, having gained some doubt in his knowledge of the underground level of the opera house.
The Phantom cast her a displeased glance before saying, "I know what I'm doing in this opera house as much as you knew what you were doing when you returned to me moments ago."
Christine gaped at Erik and wiped away some tears.
As much as he would have liked to comfort her and tell her it was alright, he knew that this was not the time nor place to do so. "We haven't time for this," He continued, pulling her along. They reached the next wall, Erik bent down and removed a grate from its position. He tossed it aside and gestured for Christine to go ahead through another secret wall tunnel.
She did as was ordered and kneeled down into the shaft, crawling forth as she had in the previous opening. The Phantom followed behind, watching ahead of Christine for the sign of the tunnel's conclusion.
Christine noted in the distance several horizontal lines which seemed to glow brightly. They were much brighter than the small light in the previous opening and it made her feel more safe to see a grander light.
She reached the horizontal light lines at the end and wondered what would be on the other side. Erik pushed the lines out of the way and they fell right off and disappeared below, revealing the other side of the tunnel. Christine gasped, turned away from the horrid sight and threw her arms around Erik for consolation.
There was no room on the other side of the exit, only a fall of a great length to the grounds of outside the opera house.
"Please don't make me jump. Please don't make me jump," Christine repeated over and over again to Erik, pressing her face into his chest.
Erik parted her hair away from her face and looked at her sympathetically. "There's no need to shed tears on such a beautiful face. Of course we will not jump. Even I am not that mad," He assured, taking out a noose from his back pocket in one hand.
Christine pulled away from him nervously, speculating on what he intended to use the noose for.
He chuckled, seeing her reaction to the noose. "You're too precious, my dear," he said, still chuckling. He moved past her and leaned out of the opening that with one false move would plummet below. As much as he hated the light of day, he knew they had to abandon his beloved opera house for good. He attached the noose to a protrusion on the side of the building, then turned back to Christine, took her in his arms, and jumped out of the tunnel.
She shrieked as they began falling, then they were stopped by the Phantom catching onto the rope he had attached. He swung them off to the side and they landed quite a few feet from their starting place. He reached up, grabbed onto the rope and began pulling. It snapped off of its holding and returned to his hand.
Erik attached the rope on another wall protrusion and they swung once more, almost to the ground they were, when their swinging was halted by the flames of the opera house seeping out through the walls and hindering their further descend.
There were only some feet left, anyway. Erik turned to Christine and touched his lips upon hers, feeling that if it were the end they'd at least have enjoyed their last living moments.
Abruptly ending the passion, flames pushed out of the wall, almost burning the two. Erik held onto Christine tight, then jumped from the building and onto the ground. They rolled onto a patch of grass and lay motionless for a moment, before Christine sat up and noticed the fiery opera house. She could not believe that they had, only moments ago, been inside the inferno and had come out alive.
Erik, who had broken Christine's fall, sat up after her, feeling pain soar through his body. He blinked several times in the light of day, surveying what was the outside. He didn't like it one bit. Everything was too happy, too cheery, too bright, too... not dark. He looked up at the opera house and sighed. Everything was gone now.
Erik's gazed moved from the ablaze opera house to the members who were trying to control the fire around the opera house. People. He hated people.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the only mask he had been able to salvage before leaving all of his possessions behind in the fire. After studying it for a moment, he slipped it on and felt less exposed.
Christine turned around to look at the Phantom, but saw that Don Juan Triumphant had returned. He had slipped on the mask while she had been looking at the fire. "I thought you had abandoned the facade."
"One never abandons a facade," Erik replied, gazing up at the inferno. "One only thinks that they have. In the end it is only the man who realizes that he will never be free from his facade who is totally liberated."
Christine nodded, understanding completely. "Erik... you've lost all of your things. It's such a shame."
"Items can be replaced." He caressed Christine's face softly with his hand. "Others can not."
She smiled under his touch and shut her eyes. When she opened them again, she was visited with an unpleasant image; groups of people were moving towards them, wishing to hurt the Phantom of the Opera.
A chant could be heard, "He's there! The Phantom of the Opera! He's to blame for the demise of our dear opera! Murder the Phantom of the Opera! Blood from the Phantom of the Opera!"