One last thing! Keep in mind that while history tends to repeat itself, we are sometimes…

Mistaken ©

Did you think that Erik was the most dangerous monster you'd find there? Welcome to The House That Garnier Built.

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Don't tell me this needs translating:

Le surnaturel

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Scene I

Focus: le monstre

As the water continually dripped downward, he shivered. He was still weak from the last time, still wounded and weary, exhausted to death.

Shadows were gathering, sending fiery alarms running up and down his nerves. Racing through his body to his brain, if all else was shattered, at least his medulla oblongata was functioning. Although that wasn't strictly true, it was altruism that had brought him through this. Brought him to this. An enduring love, all consuming and deadly, had seen him swept over the edge into a bottomless madness, a bottomless hell. It was an absurdly satirical thought.

He was no knight, his task was never glad; triumph was swiftly cut down to despairing existence alone. The vigil never ended, and there was no certainty that it ever would. He waited for her return. Hoping she would never come as much as he needed her. Split in two, two minds, two souls, two thousand pieces of a shattered heart.

He was her angel.

Down here it wasn't so difficult to believe. Down amongst the darkness, where the shadows gathered. Damned as he was, here he almost had a halo. Doubled beneath the weight, he would wait. Determined to hold the gates shut until the end of time.

The end of time was something he dreamed of before the mindlessness came over him. But now it was just beginning. The fire surged through him again. He had to be on his feet before it began. On his feet.

He was still at the gates. The catacombs gaped behind him. For a moment he turned his back and shuddered violently. His nerves were burning constantly now; he didn't have long. Rubbing his hand over his face, he tried to dredge up some memory, some image of her to carry with him. She was the reason he did not run. She was the reason he was not dead. She was the reason. She.

Her very name was a prayer and he had lost his religion long ago.

In more ways than one.

His focus dropped from its plain and into reality. Reality forced him to drop to his knees from the physical agony of standing. Searching the cavern, the surface of the lake for humans. The water had carried their voices to him; perhaps they were far enough to flee in time. Where? There! a flash of a light beaming across the water. It took a moment—too long—to recall language, words, speech. His voice was once his gift, once his curse, and had been unused for untold years. Except for when the agony ripped his soul out of his mouth.

"Go! Get out of here! Go! NOW! GET OUT OF HERE! GO NOW!" He screamed at them until the crest of the wave broke over him. Then his screams became the other kind.

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Scene I

Focus: le gardien galant

When Ralph saw her face again in the faint reflected light of day, he knew it was a mistake. He shouldn't have brought her. They shouldn't have come here. Her fingers were pressed tightly over her mouth still, as if to keep in her own screams. Fatigued more than he could ever recall, fatigued too much to even try to comfort her, he turned to Maxwell.

"Let's get some coffee," Ralph said. His voice was gravel; dully, he wondered if he hadn't screamed as well.

Ashen, Maxwell nodded. "None of us are going to get any sleep tonight," he whispered. The trio hobbled several blocks down and over and collapsed shivering into a curved booth. Huddled beneath the table lamp, drawing whatever warmth they could find into themselves. They sat up together in silence until the sun rose. Blinking, dazed in the warm, rosy light.

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I've held the junket twice.But I still have a complex so I'll leave this up for laughs:

The drama! Oh, the drama!

Confession time: I've got a Prima Donna complex. But unlike lovely Carlotta, who shatters glass for a paying audience, I'm running on benign schizophrenia and kind reviews. So while I think 'Ima too gouda for alla you,' I wind up sitting at my computer mumbling to myself, "Damnable, will they all walk out? Is it damnable? … (It's publicity and the take is vast! Free publicity!) But I have no cast/readers!"