"Chance and chance alone has a message for us. Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out is mute. Only chance can speak to us. We read its message much as gypsies read the images made by coffee grounds at the bottom of a cup."
The loud click that signaled the extinguishing of the lobby lights echoed through the empty theater. Here the lamps had long grown cold, the ensemble tucked back into their dormitories and private apartments. The management had enjoyed a celebratory bottle of wine before departing loudly through the front doors. The floors had been swept, the seats dusted, the stage wiped clean. Everything was now silent and dark.
In box five, Erik sat slumped in his seat, where he had remained now for nearly five hours. The threat of discovery, nor the discomfort of his position were enough to rouse him from his silent paralysis, for he was now a man possessed.
That voice. My god. That voice.
The first two auditions had been abysmal. Young girls with voices already too strained by years of constant mismanaged use, grown harsh and ragged from poor training and overindulgences in diet and drink. They would remain in the chorus for the rest of their lives, happily blended with the other mediocrities until it made a passable murmur behind the stronger true talent. When the third took her place, he barely noticed. He'd already begun refastening his cloak at his throat, musing over his dining options for the evening, perhaps sneaking in enough time for a well-prepared and completely perfect Turkish coffee before retiring. After all, this little trip above hadn't been terribly unpleasant. Perhaps he could...
The thoughts were stopped abruptly in their tracks when the tiny brunette on stage parted her lips, flexed her chords, and released her first note.
After that moment, nothing could ever truly be the same.
He leaned forward slowly, seeking a closer look at the fragile being that somehow produced this sound. She was lovely, that much was true, in that sort of way that women only really are at that particular age. Rounded in the right ways with the creamy alabaster skin that retains a light blush with such aching intimacy. Tiny drops of blood in a bowl of milk, rising to the surface while the transient veil of innocence still clung to the flesh. She had the sort of loveliness that so quickly fades into more mature beauty. That loveliness betrayed her true form, for he would have dismissed the possibility that she could be something more than an inexperienced child playing grown-up at the opera, had he seen but not heard. The voice was her true beauty, and when blended with her features elevated her to the level of something supernatural. For a man who had spent his entire life trapped in the prison of imperfection, the exposure to something so full of crystal clarity pouring forth from such a viscerally appealing vessel was enough to arrest his movement. She possessed a pristine instrument, flawless, untouched by a single defect or sign of wear. She trilled when called for, her vibretto was without critique, and she flexed the full power of her range effortlessly. It was the voice he'd waited to hear, the voice he'd longed to hear for as long as he'd been able of comprehending sound.
Yet, her voice was completely devoid of feeling. She sang like a mechanical toy, something with empty insides. Emotionless. Somehow this stark contrast from the words - lyrics of sadness and longing beyond measure - disturbed him deeply. What had happened to this girl to make her so guarded, so blank?
He longed to reach out with his hands and pluck those notes from the air. Reshape them, guide them. Show them where to tremble, fill them with the aching emotion they were meant to convey. Like a sculptor, he wished to mold those blank and empty words into something beautiful. He wanted desperately to place his fingertips against her delicate throat, as if he would be able to control their release by touch, a vision that caused him to nearly gasp out loud.
Then she stopped, interrupted by that pompous ass of a manager, was congratulated, granted a position. She took her leave of the stage, and he felt a great vast chasm inside, something he'd never before known. It was like the first intoxicating dose of morphine, that voice. Something spiritual that settled deep within you, taking root. A beautiful dark flower blossoming deep, coaxing you to new levels of ecstasy, then withdrawing sharply, leaving you craven. Desperate. If her voice had been the height, its absence was the absolute depth. He sat empty, a shell of a man longing for her to come back. And he remained in that passive state ever since.
The chiming of the great hall clock, signaling it was now midnight proper, roused him at last. Erik stood up from his seat in a soporific stupor, opening and closing the door to the hollow column inside his private box blindly, descending the spiral stair in a dreamstate. It wasn't until he stood dumbly at the shores of the great underground lake that he came back to a painful new form of reality. All at once the world came rushing back in, flooding his ears with sound and sharpening his vision until he simultaneously wanted to cover both his ears and his eyes. Everything was so very bright, so vivid. How long had he existed in the dark? How long had he plodded on in this state of numb complacency? He was alive.
Alive.
For the first time in his lifetime of darkness, Erik believed fervently in the light, in the future, it was almost as if he could see it stretched out in front of him, as if he could gather it into his arms. As he left the gently lapping shore and set off for his home, he could feel that future ebbing and flowing with the water. It had eluded him thus far in life, but that seemed largely inconsequential. The fact was that it was still there, it was still attainable, and now he had found that great heavenly beacon that would guide him inland at last. The searchlight that would bring him, finally, to peace. Tomorrow he would seek it again, and so forth and so forth. Until he held it next to his heart.
Now that he knew it existed... that he knew she existed, he felt as if his life had purpose.
He had to see her, really see her, closely... not from the stage. He needed to be closer to her physically, as close as he dared allow. As he made the last part of his journey, the plan began to fall into place. Tomorrow morning, as the cast arrived for the read-through, a mysterious gas outage would render the chorus dressing room - an appalling place where they forced the girls together en masse to dress and prepare like common cattle - completely unusable. With the renovations underway in the eastern wing, they would have no choice but to send the chorus girls into the isolated north hallway. Through careful planning, he would orchestrate her placement. Moving her further and further down, to where there existed a single room near the scullery stair. The other girls would avoid it naturally, the fears of strange noises and lights were already legendary: results of his prior performances to keep one of his many entrances unoccupied. It would be easy to lure her into that room. Somewhere he could keep an eye on her, listen to her, and hope to quiet this strange desire. To finally know that peace he so yearned for.
Erik took a seat at his great dining table. He sat transfixed on something only he could see, his face growing slack and blank. It is true that all men have dreams, but those private musings and desires were not always equal. Erik was a man who had desired nothing but power, guided by it to impossible limits that would have driven a lesser man to madness. He considered himself above the pull of more ... iearthly/i delights, choosing instead higher pursuits. He'd also believed nothing was beyond his grasp, he just had to approach a problem with patience and intelligence until he deviled out the details. Unlike most men, who dreamed their great passions away at night, waking in the morning to find that they were foolish and vain, Erik carried his into the day, pursuing his goals with a cold relentlessness that refused to admit defeat.
Here, into the beast he had created, his one chance at salvation had stumbled. He would not let her slip away.