1870. The last time we were in 1870 Erik had woke saying he wouldn't kill them, which we realized was the orphaned children of thieves.
Ch 17
Erik sat with his back to the Goddess and struggled to compose himself. He swallowed hard and glanced over his shoulder at the woman still sitting several feet away. The dream had been so real. He had seen the Sultana's jade eyes staring back at him, her fingernails like tiger claws reaching out to his chest.
For years he had experienced the same dread. She had not taken his face. She had taken away his humanity, his dignity, his spirit.
"Do I owe you more money?" Erik asked the Goddess. He fixed his eyes on a lamp with a beaded shade. The first thing he noticed was that it was crooked. He wanted to fix it.
He needed to fix something, to find resolution. Absolution….
"How much money did you bring with you tonight?" The Goddess asked as she sat on her knees.
"Nothing more," he mumbled.
The Goddess crawled across the floor on her hands and knees until she sat before him. She stared into his downcast eyes. "What else can I take from you?" she asked in his ear.
Erik shook his head. He shuddered as The Goddess breathed on the left side of his face. Her hand covered his and she rubbed her arm against his knee, moving like a cat in heat.
"There has to be something," she said, drawing out her words against his ear. "Or did you give it all to Christine?"
"How do you know her name?" he panted.
The Goddess smiled and pushed on his thigh, lowering his knee to the ground. She straddled his outstretched leg and dragged her skirt up to her thighs. As she moved he stared at her legs spread over his knee, at what he had wanted for years.
"How do I know about the chorus girl? About the little orphan left in the opera house?"
He shuddered at her words. The orphan.
"Did you want to bed her?" She took his hand and placed it against the left side of her chest.
"I wanted to protect her."
"From what?" the Goddess asked. She laughed at his words.
The Goddess allowed his hand to rest on her bare flesh, on the warmth of her skin where it escaped the satin confinement of her bodice. Slowly, as his hand balled into a fist, she moved his fingers down until it was against her naval.
"I didn't want her to be alone."
"And you were good company?"
"I don't know anymore."
The Goddess allowed silence to fill the room. Behind them, a backboard beat against the wall and a woman yelped, calling out a name muffled by the thin walls.
"Am I really your Goddess?" she asked.
Her hand moved with his until his knuckles grazed her skirts. His breath hitched in his throat as he stared at his hand, at her legs, at everything he wanted to experience. The warmth of her body through the fabric and the smoothness of her cotton clothing became too much to bear. Erik attempted to pull away but she touched his face with her free hand and paralyzed him.
"Am I what you worship? Tell me now."
"I can't touch you," he whispered.
"You can and you will."
"Please…"
"I am power, Phantom."
At last he pulled away and placed his hand flat against the floor. "I asked you not to call me that."
"No, you did not ask. You demanded and I denied. I do not serve you, Erik. You are mine. I may do as I please with you, as it serves my purpose and mine alone. Once you have fulfilled my desires I shall abandoned you, refuse you. If it pleases me, I shall kill you. Do you understand me?" She touched the bruise on the side of his neck. "Tell me how you earned this and tell me now."
"Please, I have nowhere to go," he whispered.
"They will wait for you to return beneath the opera house, won't they?"
"Yes," he said. He had started to shake again.
"How many men are waiting for you?"
He shook his head. One had been too many.
"When did you sleep last?"
"Three days ago."
"Eat?"
He shook his head. He had no idea. It didn't matter.
"You disappoint me."
"I know."
"No, Erik, you know nothing. The Goddess knows all." Slowly she moved her hand down his chest and down his stomach until her fingers rested where he wanted and hated it most. "You are mine. You will do as I say and not deny me. Is that understood?"
A spark flickered deep inside of him, a kindling of desire he had stamped upon for years in an attempt to kill it completely. Love was not something he was allowed. Sex had become a forbidden desire.
"Touch me," she said. "Feel what you want."
Fire roared through him, ripping at his inside, consuming everything within him he had tried to smother. He had never felt such power within himself wrapped in utter weakness of wanting. He wanted her, his Goddess. He wanted everything about her.
He closed his eyes and felt The Goddess stroke the spark into a flame, into a bright, hot point he could no longer ignore. His body stiffened, his mind winding around the last beautiful image he could find.
Christine…
He had not meant to hurt her. He had only wanted to love her, to protect her, to redeem a lifetime of horror, of mistakes, of solitude. He had wanted to love her.
In the end he had failed. No matter what he did, he had failed. He had left Persia a disgrace, he had left India a broken man, and he had left the opera house as a ghost.
The sharp throbbing of pleasure became a dull aching of unfulfilled need. The Goddess pulled away, leaving him alone.
Alone and ravenous for a feeling he had only imagined.
"I should be dead," he whispered against her neck.
"You shall live if I will it. I am a dark force, one which has little mercy for weakness. In the past you were different. In the past…what were you in those days? An architect, a musician, a lover to a dark Goddess?"
His eyes flickered up and met hers. He shook his head. She didn't know what he had been in the past, how far he had fallen, how long ago he had shattered.
"I didn't love her."
The Goddess felt his desire against her hand as she leaned into his chest and touched his left ear with her lips. "I have three eyes to see the past, the present, the future."
"Like Kali," he said under his breath.
She nodded, brushing her face against his rough cheek. "Through destruction there is renewal."
Erik closed his eyes and felt her lips against the corner of his mouth. "Not always."