But then, why do I feel compelled to relive these things, otherwise so utterly forgotten? I think perhaps it is some unexpurgiated perversity in my nature, and that is all. I shall banish it utterly with these words, at least, so I believe. But I have said all of this before, and I left you, gentle pages, sweet unwitting, at a most unfortunate place.
Erik had just removed his mask.
All the horror that had drained from me earlier returned with a dizzying force at what loomed above me, what hovered not half a pace away from my own face. Hideous, terrifying, vile... all terms that may have been used, but fail to comprehend it at all. A parted veil of beautiful, thick black hair framed, for want of a better descriptor, half a skull. One half of his face was perfect, a red, cupid's bow of a mouth, a black eye that glittered haughtily at my terror, an aqualine nose. The other half it seemed as if the flesh had suddenly thinned and stretched to paper across the bone beneath, livid with bluish veins and neither lips, nor brows, nor hardly a lid for that one, pitted hole of an eye. His teeth leered whitely from that partial maw, the twisted, scarred remains of something like flesh, and I clasped my hands over my mouth to prevent a shriek. I couldn't shriek, much as I wanted to, I could not allow such a thing. We were past some kinds of pretending, but not others.
"So, we are even." He sneered, and the contempt in his voice almost made me wish I had shrieked, or cursed, or run, or something of the kind. But I percieved that the contempt was largely for himself, and I looked down, abashed.
"I suppose that is so." I looked up at him again, at iit/i, and I shuddered, and he flinched. I could not help it. There are some perhaps who find it simple to look past these things, who cradle deformed cretins in the gutters and shower lepers with love, unafraid of the flesh that rots from poxy limbs and slobbering faces, but those are angles and saints, not real people, and they have the luxury of kindness because they are not themselves monsters. It is easier to look down than up, you know. It could be argued that maybe I-- maybe he and I both-- were not really people anyway, but some other species of monster, but as I said-- it is not the monsters whose hearts open like that, and for the moment, I was slaughtered by the abomination that was his countenance, as surely as he was undone by the more secret abomination below my shift.
"So what happens now?" I asked him, looking past him, at the candles glittering in the mirrors. I sang the words, lilting and hopeful. It is easier to lie in lyrics, you understand. That is what acting is.
And he looked at me. I wanted to strip off the dress, so that I would be as naked as he, so he couldn't ignore the truth of me, hidden in white chiffon and gauze.
"I..." he started, and closed his eyes, "Sing for me." he whispered hoarsely to the vaulted cathedral ceiling of the cave, "Sing."
I rose from the velvet and came a little closer, picking up the mask which lay discarded upon the floor. The Proximity revulsed me, but I had very little choice. I handed him the domino, and he took it from me, flooding me with relief as he tied it back on, covering us both in our repsective costumes, Soprano and Tenor. I sometimes wonder what might have happened if I had done the other thing-- tossed the mask in the lake and stripped out of my gown, if I had forced the reality instead of dwelling in the familiar and comfortable shadow. I wonder, but I know that I could not have. I am not and never have been that brave, no matter what name I have worn. And he accepted my cowardace, being, really, at the end of the day no braver.
And then he went to the organ and I stood beside him and together, we sang.