"The story is good, but you need to sex it up a bit," the burly agent said from behind his desk.

Veronica could not believe her ears.

"The story of the Phantom of the Opera is about a man who has never known love of any kind. How am I supposed to 'sex this up'?"

"You're the writer," the jerk shrugged indifferently.

As Veronica drove home from downtown Dallas, she moaned in frustration.

It is not so horrid, Veronica. I suppose we could go into more details with the Persian orgies. We could talk more about Christine's looks and how much I wanted her.

The last thing Veronica wanted to do was to dwell on Erik's feelings on Christine when she was still alive.

"I hate this. I'm just not any good at it."

At what?

"Sex!"

I find that very hard to believe, my dear, especially when I sing to you.

"Well, that's different," she said, blushing.

Is it?

"Well, that's in the privacy of my bedroom. But I can't write a lot of profanities for the whole world to see. I just can't do it!"

Veronica, you are a mature adult. This is not such a monumental task. We want our book to be a success, do we not?

"Jeez, why can't you just scare the agent into taking it? Aren't you good at that sort of thing?"

I have found such methods can backfire. I learned that the hard way.

Veronica grit her teeth in frustration.


After arguing with some time with her ghost about whether or not to 'sex' the story up, she finally gave in. But she had to go to a bookstore to buy the most erotic anthology she could find for ideas since now she was truly out of her element.

Closing the door of her room, she began to pore through the stories. Good Lord, she was getting quite an education and getting rather uncomfortable about how the lewd words and imagery were affecting her. She truly was repulsed and stimulated at the same time at some of the short stories she scanned through.

"Erik, are you looking at this?"

There was no answer.

Good, she thought to herself, for the thought of reading this stuff with another man, even a ghost, was too much for her.

But ideas started to form.

Veronica added a few pages about Erik being forced to watch a Persian orgy, practically stealing a scene from one of the short stories she read. Then she added a section where Erik touched Christine in her sleep in a very erotic sort of way while singing to her. And she was completely making these parts up. But she assumed that Erik would correct her if he was offended by them.

With an effort of stoicism, she wrote the chapters out on her computer, trying not to think of all of the times she had to type the words 'breast' or 'flesh' or 'lust'. Again, she wondered if Erik was watching what she was writing. He must be, but if so, he was not making his presence known. Perhaps he was trying to give her a little bit of privacy with this embarrassing task.

Within a week, she managed to get the revised version of "My Name is Erik" back to the literary agent.

"Wow, this is hot!" the agent said, making her blush. "Now this might sell!"

The local publishing house bought the story, but it mainly sat along the back of the bookshelves in various eclectic stores around Dallas, ignored for the most part.

"So all of this work has been done for nothing?" she whined.

There was no answer from Erik at all. She had not heard from him in days. Was he angry at her for having failed him?

"Erik?" she called out again with frustration.

Silence...

"Well, fine, be that way!" she said childishly, trying not to think the worst.

With determination, Veronica began to type an original story all her own. She called it "Bride of the Phantom". It was inspired by all of those pornographic stories that she had to read in order to write that first book. At first, she just did it out of the sheer frustration of being deprived of her night visits with her Phantom. But then she started to get into the story. It started out simply enough. Unable to be with the woman he loved, her fictional version of Erik kidnapped the first beautiful girl that he found in the Paris Opera House. She was a sweet young virgin. He took out his frustrations upon her body, turning her into a sexual addict who craved his touch, which led to all sorts of different scenarios and positions. The story was written in a week.

This Erik was not like the real man at all. But if the readers wanted sensational smut, she would give it to them. She figured that if this book would sell with an audience, that would enhance sales of the other book. The real book.

The agent gave her no trouble at all with selling "Bride of the Phantom". Sex sells.


The Mystery Bookstore in Dallas quickly put "Bride of the Phantom" and "Erik's Story" in the display window at the front of their store. "Bride of the Phantom" was their number one seller in the local authors category.

Soon, the books were distributed by the big bookstores like Barnes & Noble and Border's.

Veronica Lindell started to become a local celebrity, but she wished that she had used a pseudonym. At home, her parents did not say anything but she could tell that they were embarrassed about the sort of book their daughter had published. At work, she would get all sorts of little comments and leers, bordering on sexual harassment. At church, the preacher practically gave a sermon against her.

All of her life, Veronica had fought to be recognized for her talent. Now that she was, she quickly found that fame was becoming a curse on its own. For every person who would come up to her claiming that her books were the best they had ever read, she had another person who would hand her a religious pamphlet, urging for her to save herself.

The most amazing thing of all was the message left on her answering machine about a month after publication. Tony Bradshaw wanted to meet with her to discuss the opportunity of making "Erik's Story" into a companion piece play to "Man Behind the Mask".

Veronica wanted to feel happy. She tried to feel happy. But the sadness that invaded her soul would not release her.

Sucess seemed so trivialsomehow without Erik there to share it with. He had been gone for months now. And there was not a moment where she did not call to him, where she did not dream of him, where she did not need him like a drug. But even a drug addict could eventually recover from addiction. For Veronica, she just felt like she wanted and wanted and wanted...with no end in sight to her cravings...and no relief...

When she would try to drown herself in her writing, the inspiration just wouldn't come. Her muse had left and there was no more love or life to write about.

Ironic that once more she had been abandoned by a lover. But he was no lover, he was a ghost! Yet he seemed more of a lover than any real lover ever could be. Why did he leave? He had not seemed upset about the kiss with Tony Bradshaw. If he had been upset about the erotica retelling of his story, he had no one to blame but himself. After all, he was the one who had encouraged her to follow the agent's advice to 'sex up' the story. So where was he? And would she ever see him again?