Erik

My hands shake. My hands shake my wrists, which shake my elbows, and my shoulders, and then my chest. Invariably, my whole body shakes, as I lean over the basin, sick. Sweat drips from my forehead, and my hair hangs loose over my eyes. My hair. Not the illusion. My own.

The mask, and my wig, lie forgotten on the organ as I release the sickness into the basin. How long until it is over? My legs feel too weak to support me, and I cannot be sure as to how much longer my arms will as well. I wretch one last time before falling to my knees, my hands holding my bare stomach, my eyes closed, my mouth open. What…have…I…done?

She was there—she came, and she toyed with me. I always feared, and anticipated, the day she would learn I was Christine's Angel. Different scenarios would play out in my mind, and I had been confident that I could manage any reaction she would give me and further orchestrate each situation to my own liking. But I was unprepared, totally unprepared….

"No," I groan, my hands coming to my forehead.

My thoughts won't be contained. My mind darts to a place years before when I stood over her in the same way, towering in my rage and menacing in my power, as she lay terrified and injured on the ground. As soon as my eyes fell to her mangled leg, then, I vowed to never hurt her, or any other woman, ever again. As lovingly I carried her from the opera house to the infirmary, my hood hiding my face, she cried, and I swore to kill any man who would dare lay a hand on a woman in the presiding ardour of a violent frame of mind. My own transgression was forgotten. Her tears, her pain, were all I saw, and I knew I could never bear to see that again. Any man who would do what I had done would pay.

My rage is not only dangerous to those at whom it directs itself, but to myself. When the Phantom has command of my mind, the vows Erik once ordained become useless and forgotten. And when Erik fights against him, I am dangerous. I have hurt her again. After years of keeping to my word and honour, I have broken my oath, and nearly killed her with my lasso. As soon as my legs can hold me, I will burn it. It has severed the lifelines of countless men, gleefully stealing their breath, and with the same madness it caressed the delicate skin of my love's throat. It will never kill again. I will never kill again. The white mask gleams from atop the organ. Look at what you've done to me! My tears mingle with my sweat.

Or at what you've done to her, comes the soothing voice I hate more than anything else in the world.

A moan of dissent escapes my lips. "Please.…"

I am flooded all over with the image of her struggling forme against my bloodlust. The feel of her fighting body against your hand…her throat against your lips…her terrified breath against your face.

My temples throb as heat rises to my neck. You're disgusting, I say to myself, fighting to push the thoughts and images away. But my insistence that they vanish only intensifies the sensations. Memories and the emotions that come with them contrast each other in a turbulent battle pitting love against lust. My heart sees Madame's horror and aches to soothe her, to erase every violent touch and word I gave her if only to secure her peace. My flesh, though, burns, and my blood simmers, still feeling her skin, still wanting to taste her while fear overwhelms her, still wanting to strangle her, consume her, spend her terror to feed my desire, and—

"That is one oath I did not break!" I insist, forcing my mind to remember that I let her go, and that I am still honest before God because of it. I didn't take her. I did not…. The little boy she saved, the one who grew into a man, did not r—ra—my head pounds. The word will not even forme in my mind, not when it is so nearly relevant to myself. I can't even think it.

You cannot deny that your flesh hungers for it.

Inwardly I accuse, It's perverse.

It's pleasure!

"It's evil!" I shout, and my voice echoes throughout the hollow cave-like lair. The Phantom stills for a moment, and my heart pounds. My hands tremble. He isn't gone, though. He has more to say.

Evil…as though you yourself are not evil.

"Never," I growl, flinging a hand toward the mask. "The Phantom is evil!"

As though you yourself are not the Phantom?

I open my mouth, but my mouth is void of sound. I cannot tell myself that I am not the Phantom, because that is a lie. I am as much the Phantom as I am Erik, and I am as much the Phantom as I am the—

The Angel of Music.

I exhale as my thoughts spin toward a drastic conclusion. Madeleine knows of my deceit. She does not know why. She does not know I have done it because of her as much as for Christine. But she knows, and therefore, the Angel's ivory wings have drawn back to reveal the black cloak of a Phantom in disguise. The Angel of Music is no longer a secret, and I am no longer an Angel, not after this day. It is again only Erik and the Phantom. I can never be the Angel again. I can never look at Christine's angelic face and listen to her angelic voice again while deceiving her. She nearly worships me. She is too precious, too innocent, to deify a monster. What will I do to her, unknowing? What have I done already? Madeleine is right. I am going to hurt Christine, just as I hurt her.

Oh, Christine.

"I am a monster," I murmur through clenched teeth. My eyes feel heavy, and my body a deadweight, but my head is light. It has come to this, then. My entire life has been built toward this moment, this defining moment, where I discover who I truly am. I am a monster. A monster with a heart, but a monster nonetheless…or is it my heart that is the true monster? Erik and the Phantom were never two different people; they are the embodiments of my emotions with two different identities, created by my imagination so that I will never need to take full responsibility for my stupidity. Excuses. How I hate myself.

You won't burn the lasso.

My eyes fall to the red rope burns that taint the flesh of my palms. Red, and angry, for having tasted death and been denied.

I stand on my shaking legs and drag myself toward the fireplace, the rope in my hand. I will burn it, as it burned Madeleine, as it burned me. I am a monster, but monsters are entitled to redemption. Otherwise Hell would spill over and Heaven's gates would fail of disuse. The fire licks the atmosphere with greedy tongues, and its shadows follow in suit against the walls. It is perplexing, I notice, that both flame and shadow, two contrary forces, are so alike in such peculiarities.

The lasso is curled around my hand. Faint stains from blood long since shed have buried themselves into its rough, braided texture. The lives of dozens of men cry out silently from the bloodstains, but I am not sure what they're telling me. Whom all have I killed with it? Never an innocent man. The lasso has tightened only around the necks of dishonest men, like myself—the difference is that I owe the world nothing. Thieves, murderers, and the like. Rapists…which, as I have proven to myself today, I am not like. And adulterers. An adulterer is dishonest, and an adulterer is a thief, because he takes what is not his—and an adulterer is a rapist, because he takes it for his own selfish lusts.

That is how M Armande Giry met his end.

My eyes adjust to the brightness of the flame as I stare into it. I glower at the intense heat on my hand as I will myself to let the lasso drop. The first man I ever killed—Lombardi, my Gypsy master—was with this rope. As his large, dark forme struggled beneath my arms, I was overwhelmed and strengthened with the foreign sensation of power. My heart pounded as I heard, through the burlap sack, his desperate wheezes and dying grunts, ironic against the spinning carnival music and children's happy laughter outside of the tent, and the eyes of Compassion fixated on us with horror. In my hands was a human life, granted by God, and I had the power to end it without God's consent. Fifty years Lombardi had been given to waste away his life in drunken, thieving debauchery, and in that last moment that he knew he would die, I gave him his final chance to redeem himself before the Lord; I made him choose, in his heart, between Heaven and Hell, and then I ended him, trusting for his sake that he'd chosen wisely.

If he did not, then I only condemned a deserving man to his fate before God could send him there first.

But the lasso is not to blame for all of their deaths. No. The lasso had nothing to do with Gustave Daae, whom I killed for the sake of pity and grace—and it had nothing to do with the death of Madame Yvette, who was well-travelled in her tired journey to death anyway. I wanted my Madeleine back, and I wanted her to have Yvette's position as ballet mistress. Madame Yvette's demise was, indeed, a flourish of my own…though it would be selfish of me to take all of the credit. I merely left the window open in her flat so that the chill could claim her sickly disposition and do away with her on its own while I attended to other business. If I were to thoroughly purge myself of these murders, I would have to cut off my hands as well.

I will not do that. But the lasso is a beginning.

The heat is now searing against the flesh of my hand. Drop it. My palms are still raw from gripping it while it was around Madame Giry's neck—Madeleine's neck. Let it go. The bristles dig into the sore, red skin as I squeeze it. It will only hurt those you love, damn it! My teeth clench, and I gasp through them, "Leave me!" But the heat of the fire becomes too much for the tight skin around my knuckles, and my hand is not willing to acquiesce to my demands. I yank the lasso back from the fire and hurl it across the cavern, where it falls heavily into the curtains of my miniature Opera stage. The curtains cave in around it, and a pillar snaps. How bloody symbolic!

I stand in front of the mirror, and pull the drapes to the side. My eyes shut and I flinch as I catch the first glance at my face. I long ago learned the art of shaving without the aide of sight, and therefore I have not looked at my face without the mask in months. Forcing my eyes open, I behold the horrendous scarring. I am a monster. I cannot escape it, just as my hand cannot escape my lasso, and my soul cannot escape the Phantom. My face cannot escape the Devil's mark. How does my right eye function, with the lid sunken down in such a way? How do I sing, with my lip curled back in a permanent snarl? My dark hair with its pigment-dysfunctional patch of blonde recedes far into my mangled scalp, reminding me of my need for another mask: my wig, one of many. The corrupted flesh lets me know, again, why my mother despised me, why my visage was exploited to the world's sick appetite, why Lombardi is dead, why Madame saved me, and why she abandons me still.

It's Erik who is evil.

The drape falls into place over the mirror, and I walk away, away from anything that would remind me, and find myself at my organ, taking up my mask, and donning it once more.