Disclaimer: Again? Oh well… Phantom's not mine.
Chapter 6
Leah's eyelids flickered, then shot open, and she sat up with a start. She had had peculiar dreams, twists of the modern and the past.
There had been glimpses of tall dark figures with swords and guns, candles and fluorescent lights.
She looked at the black-painted ceiling above her head, and saw a poster of 'The Phantom of the Opera' from Broadway… Her poster of Phantom on Broadway…
Here eyes darted around her own room… her furniture, her posters, her CD player, her stuffed animals.
Where was the Lair?
She got up and looked down at her sweat-pants and long sleeved t-shirt, her normal pyjamas.
She went over and touched a wall. It held, but she still couldn't get her head around being home.
"Erik?" she called, but she was alone in her small, dim room. She ripped open the curtains to find her window veiled from the outside by a huge tree.
Turning to exit the dark place, she tentatively opened her door, and peered down the upstairs corridor of her house, seeing the door to her brother's room.
A low boom boom boom boom emitted from the closed door, the low sound of his music.
She walked slowly and quietly to it, still feeling like she was an intruder into someone else's life, into someone else's world.
Leah knocked, then rolled her eyes. There was no way in hell he was going to hear her knock over Linkin Park.
She pushed the door open a crack, and saw her brother sitting on his bed, with his tongue down a blonde girls' throat.
"Matt?" She said, pulling disgusted a face and catching her brothers' attention.
"What the Hell! Get out of my room!" He yelled at her over the 'music'. He picked up a basket ball by the side of his bed among the clothes and CD covers that littered the floor, and aimed it at her head.
Leah gasped and slammed the door, just missing the ball, which thumped into the wood and bounced away.
She didn't remember Matt being such an ass, but he was a boy... In fact, she didn't remember much about him, or anything about this house.
Standing on the landing, again she called louder this time, "Erik!" as she looked at the flaking paint of the ceiling, and the door to the attic.
Sighing, accepting her Phantom-Guardian was not around, she started down the stairs, glancing at the pictures that plastered the walls.
Stopping at the last one, she trailed her fingers over it; there was herself, her brother, her… Father? She shook her head and moved on.
She was famished and looked out a window to see the sun high in the sky. It looked to be almost mid-day.
Wandering aimlessly, she (somehow) found herself in the kitchen.
She fumbled with the pantry doors, assessing the food it held, when a voice rumbled from behind her. "So the Oh-So-Sleepy one has risen to join the living, eh? Yet you stay up to all hours listening to your opera-shit." A rough hand took the back of her shirt and whirled her round, a hand connecting with her cheek.
She lifted her own hand to her smarting cheek, seeing the man who now held her.
He wasn't exceptionally tall, or imposing; he was the kind of man one wouldn't look twice at, yet his deep brown-green eyes were familiar. She had seen them so many times before when she looked in the mirror she could not mistake them.
"Dad?" she whispered quietly, disbelievingly. His breath was rank with the smell of alcohol, his words were slightly slurred.
"Don't 'Dad' me, whore. And who's Erik? Another one of you thousand boyfriends?" He slapped her again, letting her go.
She fell to the floor, gasping for breath, the abuse startling her. She cowered on a seat at the kitchen table, which itself was strewn with paperwork with things such as 'OVERDUE' and 'LAST NOTICE' stamped on them. Old coffee cups and beer bottles were abundant, too.
Quietly a tear escaped, but she would not sob. She would not break down in front of this man and give him the reaction he wanted.
"Where the Hell have you been the past day and a Night? 'Been bashing your door nearly down, but I didn't get an answer… Out with your whoring friends?" He said as he staggered towards her.
"Where's mum?" She said with the strain of keeping her tears inside evident in her voice.
"Your mother!" He yelled, with his voice rising in drunken anger, "Bitch! Whore! You know where she is! How dare you bring it up! How dare you…" But he seemed to choke on his own rage and he hung his head. "God, I miss her…"
Then like a breaking dam, Leah remembered.
She remembered her life in the modern world, her rebellious brother, her drunken and abusive father, and her dead mother.
"Shit…" she murdered, "My life is shit…" and with that, she leapt from her chair and ran to the door, barley missing her father's groping fingers, and made for the stairs and her room.
She slammed her door, and leant against it, sinking to the ground. But no tears would come. It was as if she had known it all along, but it had been her own subconscious shielding her from it all. She couldn't cry, she found the feelings were nothing new.
Leah got up and lay face down on her bed, whimpering, "Erik, take me back, take me back… I know why now, I know… Take me, take me…" She curled up into herself, using her position as a buffer on the real world.
"Take me back to the dream, the alternate reality, whatever it was…" she whispered. Anything is better than this… she thought.
Waiting for the fold of sleep to enclose her, she screamed, long and loud; just to hear something other than her own breathing and her brother's music.
It was a long time laying in the dark for Leah before the sleep she so desired engulfed her.