So, Chapter One! Thank you for all your lovely reviews, favourites and follows! They really make me happy lol :-) Keep them coming!

Also, I didn't mention this in the Prologue, but the date, as it is mentioned in this chapter, was 18th February 1881.

So, here is Chapter One!

Chapter One:

CHRISTINE

Paris, March 13th 1881

Christine's POV

"Damn it!" I shout, slamming my hands onto my organ. My action produces the most deafening sound; my hands fly immediately to cover my ears, drowning out the sharp noise. It perplexes me as to why an instrument as beautiful and hypnotic as the organ can create such a disgusting racket.

Once the notes had stopped sounding, I gather up my sheets and place them in the black leather folder I keep all my sheet music for the opera I'm working on: Don Juan Triumphant. As always, it's about love, hate, tragedy and seduction – the story of Don Juan and his maiden Aminta. I've been working on it for about two-and-a-half years now; I can tell mine's destined to be a great opera, therefore I'm on track for finishing, which I'm hoping to be around July – six months from now.

I sigh out loud. For three days now I've been composing constantly, consuming music instead of water. I can do that for days on end. Music is in my blood, my body, my heart, my soul. I feed off it and drink from its heavenly delights. I am music. Music is me.

And that is why there is an undefinable wrath and resentment that burns me like a raging, relentless fire that's hell-bent on devouring every minute detail in its path when I cannot compose. Music is the only thing I really care for in life, and when its divine imagination abdicates my presence in favour of another undeserving earthly being I can't contain myself. I don't even try. There's no point.

Without music, I am lost.

I am gone.

I rise from the organ bench furiously, aggressively kicking the bench back; it lurches across the floor, producing a resounding noise, before finally toppling over. I don't care. I'll tend to it later.

The Don Juan Triumphant folder joins it on the floor – so do some other aria scores I've been working on. My footsteps are cacophonous, their individual sounds ricocheting off the dark, foreboding stone walls. When I reach my golden-edged mirrors that I stole from one of the earlier productions at the Opera Populaire, I rip off my white half-mask, pick up a silver candelabra – again, stolen from the prop room, to which I have discovered a secret way to come and go as I please, so I may take what I want – blow out all the candles, lift it high above my head, and rapidly smash it into one of the mirrors.

The sound it makes is ear-piercing, but one that I am used to. I have destroyed many mirrors in my repulsive, monstrous twenty-two years on this unforgiving earth, and every time my non-existent heart shatters with it, a little piece chipping away every time. There was once a time where every insult, every hit, kick, and black eye meant something; every time I would ask the question What is wrong with me? One feeble look in a mirror provided me with all the disgusting answers.

Dangerous shards of glass lay at my feet, having been erratically forced out of their set places. What little candlelight there is, every flame a laughable attempt at brightening this melancholy, miserable place up, reflect of the treacherous debris. They, illuminated, are almost beautiful. Beautiful, but deadly.

One of the candelabras inexplicably fall to the floor, crashing on the ground, causing the lit candles to flicker and die, what's left of my hope – a meagre amount – with it. It is almost dark around me. It seems I am condemned to live in darkness. Fitting.

Though of course, in some cruel twist of fate, there is just one solitary candle still lit. The one closest to the one standing mirror left. The one which lets me still see my reflection.

I turn, ever so slightly, to go and blow it out. I'd rather never see light again then to have the one still aflame where my likeness is reproduced perfect. A grotesque, hideous, rotting mess.

I collapse to the floor. Some of the remains from the broken mirror have no trouble penetrating the thin dress I wear, and they slash and tear at the skin and the prominent scars, all formed years before. There will be new ones to add to my ghastly collection.

I burst into tears, making no attempt to stop them from freely flowing down my deformed, repugnant face. I don't really know what sets them off; perhaps the realization that I didn't need a candlestick to break the mirror, my face could execute the act flawlessly all by itself.

I don't know how long I'm there; I don't care. It could've hours, days, years. . . It wouldn't matter. Who would care what happened to the monstrous Christine Daaé?

I was born October 31st 1858, at night, to twenty-four-year-old Madeline Daaé. I've been told that Madeline – to me, my wicked, vile mother is nowhere near worthy of the loving title that should've been bestowed upon her; yet she was given it anyway – was vivacious and bright, and had been brought up as a traditional gypsy in a forest near Rouen. She was a loving a married housewife to my late father, Gustave Daaé, who was tragically killed by a neighbouring gypsy camp. An altercation, I believe, between someone about territory. Apparently, my father was winning, but then an unexpected person from behind shot him in the head. He never knew he was dying before he was dead.

It left my mother devastated. She turned to whisky and some white powder – which I now know as cocaine – she procured from some of the carpenters she met in the forest when she went off in drunk stumbles. Everyone told her to stop, to be responsible; but she was uncontrollable. Unstoppable.

And, of course, everything has a response. A consequence. Every action requires an equal and opposite reaction. My mother knew this. Yet she chose to abuse the guidelines and do things that no pregnant woman should ever do. Things that will harm their unborn children. Nevertheless, Madeline Daaé did them anyway. She did not care about me. I doubt she even cared about herself.

The night I was born was the night of a pagan festival. Where the unsettled ghosts could returned to earth once more to end their unfinished business; all stalking the world simultaneously, searching for the one significant person that had wronged them. And all revenge was exacted, once and forever.

The other members of our gypsy colony all referred to me as the 'Devil's Daughter', the Devil's vengeance for some great wrongdoing that we were all unaware of. Or maybe I was – and still am – that terrible deed and retribution all in one painful existence.

Madeline's labour was five hours long, from precisely seven o'clock to midnight. Those times was yet another reason why I was ungodly, a child of Lucifer; the gypsies couldn't mentally comprehend that a child could have such exact times of birth. It was not labelled as a coincidence. No, it was a sign.

My deformity was the biggest though. All those little things – including my father dying in the middle of my mother's pregnancy – factored in the conclusion that I was a cast-off of Satan's. But maybe, in some beautiful, non-judgemental, alternate universe, those unfortunate happenings could've been overlooked. However, my face couldn't. It never could.

When my mother first saw me, she fainted from my ugliness. The woman assisting my birth is the one that wrapped me up in white blankets and soothed me to sleep while my mother was out black. But when she woke, she cried, "Where is my baby?! Where?" And the woman holding me handed me to her. She took one look at me, and screamed vociferously.

"That is not my child!" Madeline Daaé shrieked, enraged. "That is some scum of the Devil's! The Devil's daughter! Where is my child?!"

"This is your child," the woman said, picking me up and cradling me. A job my mother should have done. She tried to hand me back to her, but she refused. "What is her name?" she asked instead.

"That macabre filth you call my child! It does not deserve a name!"

"She is still a child; a beautiful one at that. And her name is Christine, after my mother."

"Fine then," sneered Madeline viciously. "Let Christine be your daughter, your responsibility. I want nothing to do with it."

"Her, Madeline; her," corrected the woman sharply, before taking back to the gathering, leaving my mother, weak and helpless, yet deserving all the same.

There was one person in the entire gypsy group that accepted me. Her. Mother. Not my biological mother; but the woman who cared for me and nurtured me like one of her own. Other children wouldn't play with me; my own acrimonious mother didn't care to see me; every time I left our tent I had to put a sack with cut-out eyeholes so everyone didn't have to glance upon my loathsome monstrosity.

My face is pure horror. The stuff of nightmares. Devils. All that is bad in this world is reproduced in my face. Twisted skin, shrivelled skin, no eyebrow to speak of, red and blotchy, a concave half a nose, stretching across the right side of my face hairline to the top of my upper lip. Deformed. Distorted. Mutilated. Misshapen.

It had defined my life.

And will continue to do so.

I received the black mask for my seventh birthday. It went all over my face. Mother – not my real one – said I only had to use it if I wanted. And I did want to use it. I used it all the time. It helped hide me from me. The pristine version of myself I imagined, and the malformed terror which was the reality. It helped me believe that I was just as beautiful as the other children; it's just that I was a bit different. Special, even.

And I the furthest from the truth I could have been. But at my young age, I did not realize this; I just passed the others' repulsion from me as jealousy. They weren't me; I mistook their relief for envy.

My childhood, which of course carried a few scrapes, was happy – I now put that down to seldom leaving my dwellings, and not being able to understand insults. However, sometime between my ninth and tenth birthdays I was abducted from the gypsy camp by three men, all dressed in black. They had masks on which covered their entire faces, like mine. It was for that reason I was not afraid of them. So when they asked me to go with them, I agreed. Willingly. Only later did I realize what I had done.

I laugh now, thinking about what those men must have thought of me when I told them I would go with them. They must have thought me. Naïve. Gullible. And I was. I was only a child.

This world is so cruel.

I was sold to a travelling circus. The manager laughed when he first saw me, after my mask had been ripped off, this time by utter force. I'll never forget the words I heard the manager say: "Oh, she's perfect, the vile devil. We'll put her in a tent called 'The Devil's Daughter', and we can make people pay ridiculous amounts of money just to see her face. We can because the public will pay. Ah, you've really got it this time boys; really got it."

The next day I was shoved into a small, claustrophobic cage.

I remember feeling cold and bare and alone; that was what I was. And I remained that way, being sneered and jeered at for two years. Until she rescued me. . .

"Christine? Christine? Where are you?"

Ah, the woman herself.

"Christine?" she calls out.

"Christine?" echoes her daughter.

"What?" I snap. I am in no mood to be disturbed. "What do you want?"

"Ah, Christine; there you are."

"Yes, I am here, Madame Giry, Meg. What do you want?" I repeat impatiently. I just want them to go away and leave me to my thoughts.

"Christine, there you are!" she climbs out of the boat she and Meg used to get across the lake separating my lair from the pathway leading up to the opera house and rushes over to me, Meg in tow. "Oh Christine!" she gasps. "What have you done to yourself?!"

So she noticed.

"What does it look like? I smashed a mirror, then fell down into the broken pieces," I reply bluntly, emotionlessly. No need to sugar-coat it.

"Christine! You promised you would stop doing this!" Meg exclaims.

My eyes wander from the shards of glass to Meg's form. Petite and thin, but fully developed as well. She still wears her tutu from rehearsals, and her golden blond hair is done up into a tight bun. She looks stunning. As always. An angelic ballerina.

"No Meg; you lectured me about the matter and then left before I answered you!" I correct.

"It was conspicuously rhetorical!" she responds indignantly, her incandescent blue eyes on fire.

"No, it wasn't! I tried to interrupt you to give my side of the story, but you wouldn't listen to me! Anyway, isn't smashing a mirror better than killing someone. Because I'm capable of both!"

"Neither way is better! Either way, you hurt someone!"

"Well, better it be me than them!"

"Silence, girls!" commands Madame Giry. I and Meg give each other one final disagreeing stare before preceding to look at Meg's mother.

"You girls will do no better if you continue to argue! Christine, can you get up?" I nod and do what she asks. "Right, come into the light." She looks around the dark place, and realizes there's no light, that the candles went out when I broke the mirror, so commands Meg to relight them. Meg then immediately produces a box of matches and flits around the place, like a butterfly, and soon the place has some light, enough for Mme Giry to do her work, yet still a poor excuse for light.

"Sit down Christine, and let me have a look at you." I do what she asks and offer up my arms and legs. She examines them, a pale and concerned look sweeping over her face. "Oh Christine, all your limbs are bleeding. This is bad. Really bad. However, it isn't anything I can't fix. How did I know to bring my bandages?" she says, the last sentence more to herself than me.

"Meg come here," she motions for her daughter to come, and then orders her to get her bandage kit from the boat. Meg complies, and minutes later she reappears, clutching a small bag.

"Here you are mother," she says. Mme Giry takes it off her, grabs some bandages from inside it and begins to wrap them around my wounds.

There is silence for a few moments. Until –

"Christine, why did you break your mirror?" Meg questions innocently.

"Why indeed," I reply. I search my mind for the right answer, the one that will give the most information and illicit the least amount of questions. "Because I couldn't compose."

"Has your composing spell finished for now then?" Meg retorts, a hint of a wry smile upon her face.

"How dare you mock me!" I exclaim loudly. "Why you little –" I try to stand up, but two firm hands clamp on my legs, making it impossible for me to execute the action I wish to do so.

"Christine, don't; you'll only make yourself worse," she tells me, before turning to her daughter and imploring in harsh tone: "And Meg, why did you provoke Christine like that? There was no need. Apologise now."

"Sorry Christine," Meg mutters meekly.

I force a bright smile just to unnerve her. "Apology accepted, Marguerite."

"Don't call me that!" Meg says, her brows furrowing.

"Christine; don't," Mme Giry says, and after that there is no more.

The deathly silence lasts for thirty minutes, but feels a lot longer. I start to plan new ways in which I can annoy the new managers, Andre and Firmin, who've only been at the Opera Populaire since February 18th, and I've already succeeded in extorting 20,000 francs out of them. But that, I realize suddenly, was part of the final payment that M. Lefevre had paid me in advance, on the first day of February, for that month and March. It will be interesting when the first of April comes, and the new opera is performed next season. . .

"All done then," Madame Giry breaks my thought pattern by telling me that she has fixed my wounds. I look down at my limbs to discover four thick bandages entwined around each of them.

"Thank you," I whisper, knowing that being gentle and caring will ensure that they will leave me quicker than if I was petulant and rash.

"Just promise me Christine, that this will be the last time you deliberately harm yourself," Mme Giry pleads. I look her in the eye. Somehow, we both know that it is a promise I cannot keep.

She helps me to stand.

"You're sure you'll be alright down here?" Meg asks. "I mean, it is pretty dangerous down here –"

"Yes Meg; I'm sure I'll be just fine," I interject, having no patience for conversations concerning my safety.

"Well alright then, Christine. Goodbye then," Meg says, obviously deciding not to argue back, but still having a reservation of uncertainty in her voice. She leans forward to hug me goodbye. I return her embrace with what little energy I can manage.

"We'll visit soon," promises Mme Giry before gesticulating towards Meg to come with her. "Goodbye, Christine."

"Goodbye, Madame Giry; Meg," I respond.

And with that, they are gone.

When I'm sure they have left my lair and are too distanced to see or hear me, I start to wander back over my organ. Even though my muse has left me, and continues to be gone, that doesn't mean I cannot play.

I start to journey over to my beloved instrument, when I accidently turn and catch my reflection in the mirror, and realize that it was off the whole time during Mme Giry and Meg's visit. What strength must they both possess to look upon a decomposing carcass!

I study my image for a matter of seconds, however that is more than enough time to set me off. The crooked nose, the twisted flesh around the eyeball, the part of my forehead where you can see my skeleton. . .

I collapse once again.

I am destined to live in hell.