The Phantom

I seize the breath from between my palms. The fingers of my left hand dig forcefully into the naked half face, and the fingers of my right hand do likewise against the stiff white leather. My left eye is dangerously exposed to their groping movements. I don't care. Nothing matters now.

I have scrubbed my hands until they are raw, desperately washing away any reminder of what I just did, of the sin I left spilt in the lifeless, dark corridor, where no one will ever know of it. I will never be clean. Nothing can remove the invisible stain from the flesh of my hands, the pleasures of my own flesh that will haunt me until my flesh fails me. Not even the tears that escaped mercilessly from my eyelids have cleansed me of my perversion. I have always abhorred tears. They are like blood, blood that has been drained of its crimson life and left behind only empty, crystalline shells of futility.

I called Christine a siren. I am not sure that she is one. I want her to be, so that the blame can lie with her, and not just myself. I want her to share in the responsibility of my sin, so that it may be her sin as well. But as my tears have ended and dried, I can only find confusion. I loathe being so unsure of myself when matters broach spirituality, and sin. But I am sure of one thing, and one alone.

Christine is to be my bride.

In fact, I have never been more sure about anything. It has taken me hours of self-loathing and prayer, real prayer, to a real God, to come to this conclusion. God did not answer my prayer. He only tormented me, and torments me still, with guilt. I know myself well, and I know that I cannot permit guilt to woo my senses and govern my actions. Guilt is a human emotion, and I will die if I succumb to it. You will kill me, God. There is only one way to purge myself of this.

My lust for Christine will not be contained, especially now that I have consummated it in the forme of pleasuring myself—in her presence—which is unforgivable. My lust has driven me to near insanity in the past, and undoubtedly will do so again. Until this day, I have learned to contain it, and have been capable of controlling my life and retaining my judgement and sparing the world Erik's wickedness. But I am like a dog who has tasted meat for the first time—now I crave nothing else, and it is irreversible. I will die, if I am denied again.

At first I raged with Erik, both aloud and in my head, over my decision. He admonished me for abandoning my vow to remove myself from humanity. I returned that my decision is owed to his own lusting and the power of it that a Phantom couldn't fight. He told me that I learned to escape his lust for Madame, and can do the same with Christine. I admitted that the first point was true, but I failed with Christine as I never failed with Madame, and to escape it is therefore useless. He told me that I successfully fell out of love with Madeleine, and the same method can be used with my pupil. I retorted that I was not in love with Christine, and so the two were not even comparable; also, I did resort to those methods, and they did not work. He replied by saying that one method I did not try was to distance myself from Christine as I did with Madame. I rebuked him for it, and reminded him that doing so would destroy her.

He does not like my answer. "But taking her as your bride will do otherwise? Are you MAD?" he cries within me. "You love her as if she is your own daughter!"

"I do not," I return. "You do."

"It is all the same, and you would be a fool to deny it. You—I, whoever—have bent your life on smothering your love for her, and shielding yourself from the lust that would endanger your victim."

I despise him when he confuses his thoughts with my own. He forgets that we are not the same. "I have been wrong in the past, and unlike you, I am willing to mould myself as life calls for it."

His fury wells within me, but I remind myself that it is his, and not mine. He doesn't care for my efforts. "It was my idiotic mistake to lose faith in myself so many years ago. Until now, I have thought that your dominance was best for me, and for Madeleine, and for Christine. Your impulsive nature is spurring me to doubt."

"Believe in me, as you once did." He has to know that this is for the best. I have to be at peace with myself. "This is best for Christine."

"She will never understand. She will never submit, especially when it is clear that I have lied to her."

I growl audibly. "Christine is under my control, and is easily manipulated. You saw how effortlessly I turned her from Etienne; she will obey my every command, as Madame Giry did not. If I were to tell her to sever all ties with her little friend Meg, or even Madame herself, she would do so without blinking an eye."

"How can you have no guilt over using her in such a way?"

"By reminding myself that the loss of her father has left her unstable and incapable of governing her own life. She needs me, Erik." He is silent for a moment, and I continue. "And I need her."

"You want her. There is a difference."

"And I will have her." He is unbearably irritating, and he does not appreciate me. I have always intervened in his life to protect him from himself, and only when he has fought it have I done something dangerous, or evil. The two of us cannot work together; it is natural that I have some semblance of control, so that he does not dictate my actions. "You forget so easily the disasters that always result when you rebel against my designs."

"There are some sins I cannot let myself commit! I may despise human beings, but I have somehow ended up loving Christine, even if you will not admit it. I cannot sit back silently and watch you devastate her."

I rest my chin in my palm and close my eyes. It is these times that I hate most; it is these times that I am most unsure if I am Erik or the Phantom. It is so much simpler when he is quiet; then, I am certain of my identity. But when he resurfaces, it is a great struggle to remember that I am also the Phantom, and if I remember that, I can maintain dominance over the human part of myself. "You would have me continue as the Angel until Christine no longer needs me."

"That is what I would have you do."

"Was it not you who were originally against such an idea?"

He says nothing for a moment, and I feel his resignation. "Until you convinced me otherwise. If I had known it would come to this…"

"I never would have begun."

He agrees with that, at least. "But what has been done cannot be undone. Now that I have deceived her irreversibly, there is nothing else you can do without hurting her."

"But surely you know that the past always repeats itself, and as long as we both remain unchanged and divided, she will suffer far more." A surge of love for Christine swells within me, and I fight against it. "Take your human sentiments back. I have relinquished them unto you as I want nothing to do with them." But Erik is stronger than the Phantom would like to admit.

Slowly, I feel as our roles are reversed, and I am no longer suppressed beneath his tyrannical hand. I should still fight against myself, but his words ring true, and I am finally beginning to see things from his perspective. If I were to remain Christine's teacher alone, he would always fight me, and he would regain control against my struggles, and something even more disastrous would transpire. I hate him, but I cannot get rid of him. I still don't know if my desire for Christine is my own or if it is the Phantom's. If it is his, I should never have given him control in the first place. If it is mine, he is stupid to succumb to my lust. But there is nothing either of us can do about this now. Understanding that he will never surrender to my wishes, we will never be united unless I surrender first.

"Good," he says.

I growl at him, because I hate that I have lost control over the two halves of my soul. In the beginning I saw an outlet, and a scapegoat, so that I might never blame myself; if one did wrong, I would sink into the other, and avoid all responsibility for the deeds of the first. Ordinary human beings have two sides to them: one soul, but two halves of it. The difference, I thought then, is that I would know how to use each half in accordance with my own desires. I now know that ordinary human beings are wise in that they have learned to work with both sides and accept full responsibility. Somewhere, I have lost that, and now I am doomed to deal with two conflicting psyches that are both very much me, but very much against me. I don't know who I am at all.

I stare at my bare, red hands, and look for my gloves.

After his resignation, it took several moments of Erik venting and throwing things before he chose to defer to the Phantom again. I protect him, and I want him to trust me, so I can at last trust myself. As Erik, I am much more feeling, but therefore much weaker, and as the Phantom I have less of a struggle controlling myself because I do not harbour useless emotions. It has always taken him time to understand this, but he eventually does. Fortunately for the world, it did not take long to be at peace—or at least accord—with myself, this time. Even after such certainty has been granted at my decision, I still reel with disgust at myself and Erik's pain for what I did hours before in Christine's dressing room. God can never forgive me, and I will never forgive myself…but at least now I know how to rectify it.

As much as you despise humans, you want nothing more than to become one of them.

I sigh. I thought I was at accord with myself, at least. I don't know what that meant at all, but I am willing to listen, if only to take my mind off of my perversity in Christine's dressing room.

You want a normal life, with a normal family. A wife would be the first step to becoming such.

I let my eyes roll in exasperation. I will not have a wife in the traditional sense. She will be my tool—there is not a more fitting marriage in the world, than that of musician to his music. Imagine what we could create, if only we do not let the common angst of an emotion-borne marriage hinder us.

He is arrogant now. You put too much faith in yourself. You want so fiercely to fortify the gap between us that you forget our connection. We are the same, and I do love Christine. You believe you can distance yourself from that, but eventually the love that binds me to Christine will draw you into its unrelenting embrace as well.

I refuse to believe him, because I refuse to claim such an idea as my own. It is ridiculous to think of him as wholly myself, because myself trying to convince myself is a notion I cannot fathom. Thank all things within Heaven and Hell that my thoughts are stricken to my head. If such lunacy were heard by others, I would have to kill them! Erik seems satisfied with that parting thought, as I can feel his satisfaction, and he settles into silence. I loathe him, as much as I have devoted my life to protecting him. He is the cause of all the pain that lingers in my memory. When I allowed myself to love, all I received was pain. When I banished love, I was left with memories of pain. I remember the horror and agony that I suffered at the hands of those I cared for—my mother, and Madame—and those I did not want to care about—Lombardi, and the world who was disgusted by me. I have learned from love, and I have learned that it is the very core of evil. I know that my soul is plainly composed of music. My marriage to my student will be that of a spiritual nature to satisfy my soul, and a physical nature to satisfy my flesh. Christine and I will be one in spirit and body, but not in heart. Never in heart.

Not even God can make me love Christine.