Author's note: I apologize for the long break! Birthdays and holidays run rampant this time of year and it is only now that I am finally able to write. A little overview of this chapter - there are some heavy Kay elements in this primarily to tell Erik's background and how he came to be in modern time. Well, not yet, but we'll get there.
Enjoy!
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Chapter II
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I always knew that I had been born in the wrong time.
Though I was only a product of my parent's marriage bed, as were all the babies conceived in that time, I knew from the moment I drew my first breath that I was not normal.
A monster, indeed!
During my life, I had succeeded many times to live up to the name that the human race had dubbed me.
Monster.
Do you know how many normal men have committed a great deal more atrocities than I?
Have you seen with your own eyes the very pinnacle of evil in mankind?
Have you experienced the incredible rush of relief and power when you realize that you can and will defend your own life – even at the cost of another's?
No. You haven't.
You have not and will not know what I have known throughout my life.
You can never understand what it means to live as I have lived…
But I digress.
I was born the night of Christmas Eve, 1831. Ironic, isn't it? I always thought so, too. My parents were Catholic and apparently much happier before I came along.
They were a perfect match in a perfect world reserved only for the nobility.
How I hated them.
As the first heir in the Chagny bloodline, my mother's pregnancy was heralded as the 'most joyous of events'. If I had been born with a normal appearance, I would have been spoiled and smothered with more affection than the Shah of Persia!
My gender must have saved me from being disposed of altogether.
It didn't, however, keep my parents from throwing me into the deepest, darkest recess of their opulent chateau!
If they hadn't been so religious, I daresay they would not have supplied me with a wet nurse. It wasn't too hard to find some poor strumpet on the streets of Paris who had been unlucky one too many times…
Her name was Whilma.
She was an illegal immigrant from Denmark. More like she was dragged into Europe by slave traders.
When she managed to escape, she had encountered my father – of all people – who had promised her protection on his estate. She didn't last a week before his advances got her dismissed.
With nowhere to go and no employment to be found out in the countryside, she traveled to Paris, her belly swelling up with my father's bastard along the way.
In Paris, she found work at various inns and pubs as waitress and maid, but when she gave birth she found that unwed mothers were not very welcome.
A shame the child only lived to open its eyes.
Desperate, she swallowed her pride and joined the first brothel that would take her in.
Soon she had half the nobility between her legs.
That was how my father found her again. This time he said her position at his home would be permanent.
It turned out to be the truth.
She nursed me and played with me and even sang songs of her homeland in that cellar room. Only when I was called upstairs - on very rare occasions – did I have to wear the mask.
I can only guess that life had made her the strong woman she was.
But it didn't take me too long to understand that she was also my jailer.
Then it was all I could think about; that I was being kept prisoner and this woman was all that stood between me and freedom.
Ah, yes… The pure pleasure of that first taste of freedom that is so perfect and so divine, well, you would do anything for it!
Picking locks on doors seemed to be instinctual for me, and so my first nocturnal exploration of…the remainder of my home is still one of my most cherished memories.
By the time I was found out, I had been exploring the grounds and the nearby village for years! You could say I wanted to get caught – just once – if only to see the looks on their faces at my…talents.
Poor Whilma was beaten for my exploits, and if I had known that that was the way of the gentry, I would have devised a plan for her escape.
After my fifth birthday (or when I thought was my birthday) good old Whilma was relieved of her duties to me and transferred back into the service as one of my mother's personal maids.
The injustice!
Now that I was completely on my own and seemingly rotting away my life in a padded cell, I decided to run away.
Little did I know of the world, and little did I know of the diabolical nature of men.
Really?
You want to know more of my horror story?
What a brave little lamb you are…
I was caught by a band of gypsy rogues. They tied me up and only let me out to parade me through their circus thoroughfare.
Ridiculous, I know. But it happens.
It was not until they learnt of my other little gift of song that they stopped dragging me across my filthy cage. Then I got a bit smarter and would refuse to perform unless I was treated with a scrap of decency.
I had been raised to aspire to the saying that 'cleanliness is next to godliness' and so most of my life I had spent well kempt and well dressed. Even as a five-year-old upstart I could not fathom being treated as an animal.
And I would never be treated as such again.
My reputation for my voice and other accomplishments – such as magic tricks and odd inventions, as well as illusions and escapism – traveled far and wide over the years I spent in the caravan. It was not until shortly before I turned twenty that my performances reached the ears of the Shah of Persia, and when he sent the Daroga of Mazenderan to fetch me, my life would spiral into the darkest years of my existence.
Once you hear the screaming, it never, ever stops.
Torture, blackmail, assassination, execution, extortion, coercion and last but not least; experimentation.
During my service to the Shah I committed such atrocities that even I began to have nightmares…
As the Daroga and I had shared the treacherous journey from the jubilant fair of Nijni-Novgorod and he was assigned to 'watch over me', he and I had forged a mutually beneficial arrangement.
During the last phase of building the Shah's pleasure palace, the Daroga was given an order to have me executed for fear of me replicating it for some other ruler. Rather petty, wouldn't you say?
Fortunately the Daroga's sense of moral righteousness overcame his sense of fealty to his king and therefore aided my escape from the Shah's clutches.
Unfortunately, many other rulers had the same propensity as the Shah.
Mon dieu! I should have known!
Ah, well, as soon as I decided to retire from politics my health vastly improved.
A few years passed in the blink of an eye and before I knew it I was well on fifty! After I took up residence at the Opera Populaire in Paris I began to feel my life pleasantly floating by with each morphine injection I took.
I was a mess.
Of course, that Daroga had caught up with me and was also residing in Paris – although in a more conventional abode – and literally nagged me out of my poisonous stupor long enough for me to realize what I'd been missing.
You see, for every monster, there is a beautiful damsel in distress!
Christine Daae.
All of a sudden, the entirety of my existence bent over backwards for Christine Daae. A songbird so great that no one ever suspected – and just what an unhewn jewel she was!
No one – not even myself – gave her the time of day before she was roughly shoved into my consciousness by her well-meaning friend, Meg Giry. Shell shocked, the poor girl could barely sing above a whisper at first due to her nerves, but as she continued to sing her nerves dissipated.
And it was glorious.
And pronouncedly sad at the same time.
This girl had no soul. At least not when she sang. So, my interest piqued, I watched her from the shadows day and night – from every rehearsal to every mundane conversation she had with the other ballet rats.
Over the course of a few days I learned what one might learn in a month! She was the orphan of a modestly famous violinist, who had died just before she entered the Conservatoire (a misguided school of self-important pigs, if you ask me). Once graduated from there she had automatically applied to the Chorus at the Opera Populaire.
She was very shy and reserved and not at all stuck in that all-too common role of the ballet whore. No, she was the absolute most purest thing on this earth – and I would cultivate her talent so that in time she would grow to become the most celebrated soprano of all of Europe.
We were only half way there three months into her tutelage when that boy came and ruined everything!
Threatening to relinquish her from my mentorship worked at first, but the stronger the boy's presence became, the more he interfered with my plans.
At last, I had to let her go with him. I had tried everything to keep her with me! But alas, so beauty wants a creature like Erik.
I tempted the Fates, then. Just to see if I had the power to end my own miserable life. The mob came and went, leaving my House a wreck.
As always, the Daroga was quick to snuff out all my hopes and dreams before they would come to fruition. It's not entirely his fault. He was born with a right to dream.
A right to love.
Does a monster have the right to love?
Does a monster have the right to live?
I fear my darkness attracted the Devil Himself, for he came to me one night while I was in my drugged haze, attempting to numb the emptiness of her absence.
It was not as you would think – the devil coming to you to drive you astray – he asked me what I had to live for.
I couldn't think of anything since she was gone.
Then the devil said to me,
"What would you give to have what you've not?"
Beyond care at this point, I told the devil that I would do anything in order to reclaim Christine. It was my one and only wish besides to die.
The devil reached out and grabbed me by my wrist, which was impossibly burning hot, and sealed me with his mark upon my flesh.
The sign of the Eternally Damned.
The devil explained nothing and answered nothing, all but vanishing into thin air!
Exhausted, I quickly finished writing the letter for the Daroga to submit my obituary to the newspapers. The only thing that it would read was:
ERIK IS DEAD.
With that, the candle of my existence would be snuffed out and I would finally have the courage to put an end to my misspent life.
Oh, if only.
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I thought I had overdosed.
Evidently, I did not.
But when I awoke the following morning I found myself…different.
By different, I mean invincible.
No, I'm not a super hero, nor am I an alien villain from Mars.
I am Erik!
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Please don't forget to review if you would like me to keep writing. As you all should know - a critic is a writer's greatest inspiration!
In good faith,
Yours Anonymous