The Parcel
"My most darling Christine," the attached note read. "I have ascended to the point in my love for you where even my music cannot adequately sing of the heights and depths and dimensions of how wholly devoted I am to my worship of you, my need of you. Nothing I write, no matter how blood red the ink, does justice anymore to the hellishly divine passion of feeling that explodes within me as the climax of the creation of the heavens but only wickedly reveals itself as jagged shrieks of wretched lightning. Forgive the inadequacies of one who is but a man who loves you with the selfish purity of absolute perfection. I wished to have written you an opera, an aria, a melody, a motif, any slightest bit of that celestial art, but none would do. So please accept this small material token instead. In this world that is bound by space and time, it, and only it can best speak of the true expanses of my miserable love, my damnéd ardor. This, my idol, my dearest, is how I love you. Ever your most humble slave—Erik."
Christine could not keep away the forbidden smile that played about her lips as she pressed the paper of the note against her breast and sighed. The color of roses tinted the cheeks that were reflected in the mirror before her.
"Oh…Erik…" she whispered to herself, and her gaze turned to the lovely wrapped parcel on her dressing room table. The paper was gold, and it glistened in the flickering of the lamps as if it were itself on fire, burning, filled with how he loved her.
She pressed her lips to the note and set it aside so that she might unwrap the gift, which she did oh-so-carefully. The shimmering satin ribbons fell from around the box and her fingers found the edges of the lid. She lifted it slowly and set it aside, smiling again at the sight of the glimmering tissue that filled the gift. And as she touched it to move it aside, she only briefly thought it strange that the paper had the texture of wax, like paper from the marketplace, not like giftwrap at all.
She pulled out a bit of it and set it down on the table, and then she dug her fingers in to part the rest. She did not gasp when they struck something soft and hard at the same time, something covered in hair; in fact, she did not breathe at all. And as the folds parted to reveal to her the staring, twisted face of her former childhood friend, the necessity for waxed paper suddenly made sense to her. It was just how much Erik loved her.