I AM SO SO SO SOOOOOOOOOO SORRY I TOOK THIS LONG TO UPDATE!
That felt surprisingly good. I was out of town so much this summer; I've been so damn busy. I feel absolutely dreadful about making you all wait this long. But that makes me sound selfish, like I think I'm such a good writer . . . but half the time all I do is criticize myself! Now all I'm doing is annoying everyone with my own problems. I'll shut up.
Anyway, I just realized that you don't know how old some of my characters are. Genevieve is 9, Madeline is 18, Armand is 22, Erik is 37, and Henri is 41. That's just if you were wondering. Also, the new EXTREMELY IMPORTANT CHARACTER in this chapter is 50.
Yes, Madeline lives on in this chapter! Haza! I made this installment extra long for your reading pleasure.
And just out of random curiosity (a.k.a. a desperate attempt to get more reviews) can anyone guess what language the new character in this chapter is speaking?
This chapter is dedicated to my cousin Paul.
Chapter 14: The Cage
Madeline wanted to kill them. She would sit in her cage and glare at them all day, imagining herself slip through the bars and smashing the guard's head with his own ax. She hoped the earth would open up and swallow them whole so they would fall into Hell so as they burned she could run free. She hoped all of them would be hung, drawn, and quartered. She willed all of them to catch the Red Death so they would squirm and writhe on the floor in agony as blood spilled from their mouths and ears and eyes and nostrils and every pore on their bodies until there was no more blood left inside of them to bleed.
She especially wanted their leader to suffer these fates. He was the one who had put this operation together. He had done things to her she would never forgive. She hadn't seen him in about a day. He had a gang of ten men he had hired to kidnap her and they were now taking turns guarding her room. He's probably out getting drunk.
Suddenly the man sitting by the door stood up to show respect. That can only mean one thing . . .
"Hello, neska ederra. How are you this afternoon?"
Bakar walked in. He was the leader. He was tall and wore a black mask so she didn't know what he looked like. Madeline glared at him with utter loathing.
"Oh, zisne, why don't you move out from that corner? I can't see your beautiful face." Madeline crawled forward a few inches. "Ah, there you are." He leaned forward to look in through the bars like she was some animal at a zoo.
"Monsieur?" the thug by the door asked stupidly "Should I leave?"
"Do you like being male, or would you rather be a woman?" Bakar sneered. The thug disappeared do the hall. His boss turned back to the girl in the cage. "Why ever do you look so unhappy, perfektu lore? Is there something you need?"
"Air." She said simply.
"Air, you say? Are you having trouble breathing?" a hint of bitterness crept into his fake sweet voice.
"This cage." She continued to stare at him.
"Oh! Of course! I forgot to let you out this morning, didn't I? Goodness, however did I forget?" He took a ring of keys from his belt and unlocked the cage door. She crawled forward and he grabbed her wrist and pulled her out all the way. She stood and stretched her aching back. He didn't let go of her arm. She knew he never would.
"Uso, I have not heard I good song in a long while." He cooed "I miss your voice. Why don't you sing that wonderful aria again. What was it called . . . Ah . . . Ah per-something . . . Ah Perfido, that's it!"
Madeline had not had anything to drink all day. She knew she wouldn't be able to sing when her throat was so dry. "I'm thirsty." She realized the mistake she had made too late. A hand came down and slapped her face with a load snap.
"Did you just complain?" he shook her "Did you just complainto me, ematze?" Madeline knew he was going to punish her now. He had used a word in his native tongue, and this time it was not flattery.
"I've treated you like a queen this whole time and you complain?" he slapped her again. "You listen to me: I feed you, give you wine, give you your own room, give you everything you could possibly want, and you won't sing for me this once?" she didn't think one could hardly count saying 'I'm thirsty' as complaining, but she knew what would happen if she said anything. Bakar was yelling at her in his strange language again. He threw her back into her cage and locked the door. He took his whip from its place on the wall and snapped it threateningly a few times. "Disobey me again and I will be forced to use this." He stormed out of the room, stopping briefly only to tell the guard not to feed Madeline for the rest of the day.
She crawled to the corner of her prison and curled up in a ball. Her cheeks stung. He had punished her a yesterday, too, after she had told him the cage was uncomfortable and asked for some straw to lie on. That time he had used the whip. Her back was still stinging from the lashes. He had used it many times before. Whoever the man was, he was definitely not right in the head. He acted like he was better than everybody else, but sometimes she got the impression he hated himself.
He disappeared for most of the day and returned every few hours, allowing her to stretch outside the cage for a few minutes. As for the food, it was scraps from Bakar's meals; he had tried to get her drunk on a bottle of wine that tasted just like she had always assumed urine tasted like. The room she slept in was windowless and was guarded all day. When he said that he had given her everything she could possibly want, he meant that he didn't have enough time to go and find a woman who actually loved him. Madeline figured that even if he tried, every girl in France would refuse him.
She hated him. She hated the men he hired. Now she hated her own body. She hated her life. She wanted to die.
She tried to think of someone else to ease her pain. Her father was the first to come to mind. She could see his grey eyes gazing back at hers, sadder than they ever had been before. He was miserable. Madeline didn't like it. She tried to block out the picture of Henri by thinking of Genevieve. Her sister was so confused right now. Where's Maddi? the little girl was wondering. Who took her? What did they do to her? Where is she? Has she died? The questions made Madeline uneasy. Armand was too painful to think about right now. Someone else . . .
Erik. She could see him now: his strong body and perfect bone structure. She remembered that night at the opera house, when he had wore that handsome sleek black wig. She thought about his real hair, how it caught the light and made her think of fresh, clean hay and the wonderful smell it had. She thought of how he barely talked, and how mysterious he seemed. And his mask . . . she wondered what his life had been like, to make him think that he had to hide his face like that. She had seen it twice now, and his face wasn't nearly as hideous as people made it out to be.
And she couldn't help but admit that he was a better kisser than Armand.
---
Erik staked down the hallway, careful to stay in the shadows. This was the third day he had spent searching old abandoned houses. All the ones he had looked at so far only contained stray cats, spiders, and the occasional group of men who had passed out on the floor from drinking, along with various other reasons.
But he could tell this building was different. On the first floor, there had been men walking around as if they were on patrol at a prison. Upstairs, Erik could hear talking and laughing. He used the same method he had used downstairs to search the rooms. It seemed as if whoever had owned this building last had one day decided to put their foot through many of the walls, sometimes more than once. When Erik had discovered this, he could not believe how convenient it was. In the other houses, trying to get into each room without knowing what was inside proved to be tedious and a hassle. Now, he could just look in through the holes. Much more subtle.
Erik approached the wall and crouched so he was level with the hole, yet prepared to bolt if he had to. He gazed into the room beyond.
It was a dark room. Erik had to take a moment to let his eyes adjust. When it didn't seem as dim, he saw the space looked a bit like a study. There was a book shelf filled with old books in one corner of the tiny place. In another corner there was a desk with a small light. Erik could see a man hunched over some papers on the desk. He could not see the other man's face because his back was turned, but Erik could tell he was frustrated. He was leaning on his hand, his fingers entangled in his dark hair. He scribbled something down on the paper, then grumbled and scratched it out. He was still for a moment, then he stood up and began pacing back and forth, murmuring in a strange language all the while. Erik got a chance to look at his features. As soon as he did, he stepped away from the hole and rushed for the next hole.
It was the man Antoinette had described to him, the one who had shot him, mask and all.
It took a moment before he set himself straight again. Spending so much time away from my lair must have made me softer. Erik mused as he crouched by the next hole.
This time, the room on the other side of the wall was noisy and full. There was a group of men, about five or six of them, sitting around a table playing a game of cards. All of them were yelling and laughing in a boisterous, drunken fashion. The room smelled of unwashed bodies and rotting wood. As Erik watched, the thugs laid their cards out. One of them gave a cry of triumph and pulled the pile of coins in the middle of the table closer to his body. The others glared at him. One of them stood up and started accusing the winner of cheating. The other losers joined in. The winner protested his innocence and jumped toward the thug who accused him first and hit him hard in the gut. The others all leaped forward and before long the whole room was filled with the sounds of fighting. Erik could see that Madeline was not present among the fighting thugs, so he decided to move on.
The next hole was fairly big, about half the height of his torso, and the same width. He kneeled once again and looked in.
Straight ahead, he could see the bars of a cage. He realized that the hole was between the bars of a cage that was pressed up against the wall. Three bars actually ran right over the gap. On the other side of the room, by the door, there sat another thug. This one, though, was sound asleep. His heart began to race. If there was someone guarding the door (or someone who was supposed to be guarding the door), than chances were that something or someone was in the cage he was looking into right now . . .
He turned his gaze to the right and almost cried out. There sat Madeline, staring strait at him. Her expression was confused. Erik had no idea what to say. They stared at each other's eyes for a long time. The Phantom noticed that she did not look well at all. Her face was tired and her hair was messy and unkempt. Her clothes looked as if she had thrown them on in a mad hurry. Her dress was stained with blood and other grime. The bandages on her leg were gone. Her burn was fully visible. It had not improved in the least.
"Erik." Madeline said finally. It was not a question. It was a statement. She was stating the truth. Erik was here, right now. She knew him. He was the Phantom of the opera. He had been part of her life before this hell. She had been thinking about him, mere minutes before. And he was there in the flesh, gazing at her through a hole in the wall. She wanted to make sure he was real, that he wasn't a dream this time. But she was afraid to touch him. He would disappear as soon as her fingers brushed his skin.
Get a hold of yourself, Madeline! A voice said in the back of her mind. Your life is currently a nightmare, but it is real. Erik seems like a dream, so what's stopping him from truly existing?
Madeline realized that was her real voice talking to her. Not the voice of her fears.
Erik had, for the first time in his life, no idea how to respond. He had planned everything, except for how he was going to talk to Madeline. Suddenly, she started to crawl in his direction. She kneeled in front of him. Her face was now stern and focused, as it had been the day she had pushed him down the stairs. Erik realized how long ago that seemed to have been. It was a distant memory now. He had to stay in the present.
"I live in hell." The young woman said flatly. "I hate my life. I want to die. And I've been dying to say that out load for so very long." She burst into sobs.
Erik felt terribly stupid. This was moving far quicker than he was able to keep up. He managed to keep a calm expression, but inside he panicked. He had no idea how he was going to console her. He had never done such a thing, and no one had ever done it for him. His mind raced back to all the books he'd read. Had there ever been an instance like this in one of those novels? All the characters he could think of would've comforted each other by kissing intimately for about a quarter of an hour straight. That was clearly not an option.
Suddenly he remembered something he had seen at the traveling fair. It had been after a show one day. Everyone was leaving the tent and Javert was too busy picking up money from the ground to be watching his exhibit. Erik had watched a mother with two twin children leave. The siblings were about three. The little girl was crying. Her brother had hugged her in that sweet, clumsy way young children do. Their mother had knelt down, whispering reassuring words and stroking the girl's hair and face tenderly. The family had left the tent holding hands.
Erik knew it would make him feel childish. But then he remembered Genevieve. She was only nine years old, but she had not been disturbed by the prospect of being a hostess to a murderer. And she had a love, a strange and wonderful impulse to care for people. He wondered if all children were like that.
He hesitated, then reached out and took her hand. She didn't look up. Slowly he reached in again with the other hand. This time, he cupped her face in his hand. It was awkward, but what else could he do? Madeline stopped sobbing and looked up at him. There was another pause. Then she jerked away from him and crawled away.
"Please . . . don't touch me, Erik." She said.
Something in his stomach did a back flip. It made him feel sick, but not the fever-type sick. It was like something big and heavy was pushing down on his intestines. He felt concerned.
"What have they done to you, Maddi?" Erik used her pet name unconsciously.
She told him all about Bakar and his whip and all the terrible things that had taken place since he had seen her last.
"It's torture, Erik. I'm not allowed to leave this cage unless Bakar let's me out. And still, He keeps a firm grip on my arm. I hate him, Erik."
"Listen, Madeline." He took her hand again. "When I was a child . . . well, I know what it's like to have no freedom. I have known for a long time. In a way, I was not truly free until your father took me from the rubble of the opera house."
Something caught Erik's attention. He heard footsteps. They were distant, but coming in their direction.
"Madeline, I must leave you now. At eleven o'clock tonight, Henri and Armand and I are going to get you out of here." Madeline nodded. Erik was about to go, but she stopped him.
"I . . ." Erik looked at her patiently "Tell . . . tell Papa I love him. And Genevieve."
"I will." Without thinking, he leaned into the hole and kissed her briefly on the temple.
She watched him rush away. She felt a wave of something that could be considered happiness rush over her. She was going to be free!
She knew she was in Erik's debt now. That day she had given her a bit of relief. He had been the realest, truest, loveliest thing she had known for a long time.
Will the trio be able to save Madeline? Will Bakar fight back? Will Henri be able to fight by then? Why does turkey make you sleepy? Find out in the next chapter of: Petals of a Grey Rose!