No More Gifts
"The Opera"
(Part I)

CHRISTINE DAAÉ'S (SECOND) JOURNAL

There is little wax left in my candle. I must be concise in my wording going forward, lest I lose what little light I have left and become forced to wait till morning to complete this tale. Thus I will not spend more than a single sentence on recounting my dinner with the doctor this evening; Erik, if you happen to be reading this, somehow, just assume it went poorly and never worry yourself about it again.

Now, without pause, just as my own life trudges bleakly forward even in this present moment –

I go on.

The opera had already recommenced before we made our way to our seats. What dim sconces rose up alongside us, fastened with hundreds of delicate screws set into the cracking marbled walls, lit up the darkened corridors with the illusion of illumination and cast the heavy pall of our shadows against the floor. Like monstrous specters hurrying to devour, or otherwise in fear of being devoured, we ran ourselves headlong into the night and poured ourselves gainlessly forward into the darkness created by our own unhappy silhouettes.

As I wrote before, Erik had his rank mouth to my ear the entire way. He had discarded with the black mask, for some reason, and so went about thrusting just the tip of his little glass nose into my hair as he whispered sweet little nothings out of obligation and nothing more. I, myself, nodded along to them out of obligation as well, which only increased the wet ferocity of his claims as we went along.

"Does Christine realize that Erik loves her more than any heart is capable of loving?" he asked more than once. The first time he posed the question, as he pulled me up the stairs with that dead iron hand locked around my upper arm, I feared it not to be rhetorical and struggled for a good minute to find an appropriate answer that would not upset him. Regardless of my silence, he went on with an unfazed air – but still, as I sit here writing, I wonder if he perhaps meant something more by that question.

Because really, Erik… at what point did you realize exactly what happens to a heart pumped full of more love than it knows what to do with? To a heart filled to the brim with an overabundance of stagnant affection, overburdened with a thick sanguinity, condemned to coagulate itself into a congealed and curdled carcass – never to be emptied, never to be staunched, never to be relieved, never to be consoled…?

When did you realize that Hell to you is actually a woman wrapped up in your arms?

Our journey through the corridors took us past several stragglers who had yet to relocate their seats. I blush to admit I recognized some of these old mens' faces from my days in the chorus, when I would accidentally stumble upon my colleagues engaging in some rather bizarre business affairs with them. Erik had been the one to explain to me back then, as the Angel of Music, what these 'affairs' entailed, as politely and deferentially as he could…

"There is no shame in it," the Angel told me in that all-knowing, righteous tone of his. "It is a service, and compensation is duly exchanged. But these affairs are not ones you need to concern yourself with, Christine. You need no protections or backings from these benefactors. You alone will secure your own golden future, which will soon alight with the most eternally brilliant of stars, all shining with rays bright enough to make up for this sheen of total darkness which obtunds and brutalizes this absolutely wretched world… in which you'll live out the rest of your mortal days."

"But other girls sing better than me," I told him, "and they still get passed up for every part. What if these lessons are not enough? Surely I can learn to put my mouth to better use and negotiate a better part this way, as they all do, and as you said there is no shame –"

"No!" The Angel's spectacular voice boomed around me. "You must not even think of it!" Then, softer: "Christine, you are very young – and very innocent. You hardly knew what they were doing. Are you suggesting this purely for career advancement? Or are you just curious the rougher side of love? If so, I promise you it is not an easy thing to swallow…"

I left my lesson that night feeling much like a scolded child, though I was confused as to why I was in trouble in the first place. In one breath, my Angel had explained the facts of sex as directly and straightforwardly as possible, reminding me that there was 'really nothing extraordinary about some pieces of flesh we all have' and speaking as dryly as a schoolbook as he explained the process of copulation and all its related actions (even as his voice quivered slightly each time he said such words as 'pudendum' and 'prepuce'). But then, in the next breath… he began speaking on a more abstract and oblique sense of the concept, with a touch of deridement, and made me promise not engage myself with any of the patrons.

"Even Raoul?" I had asked, for we had spoken of him many times before. "Oh, Angel, you know how I have missed him! Was it not by your ministrations that he has happened to come to this Opera house, so that at long last I may be reunited with my childhood sweetheart?"

He only doubled down on his stance after that, rebuking me for anything he could think of while keeping his tone eternally tempered. It is incredible, in retrospect, to realize that the Angel I spoke with was in fact the same Erik I came to know this past year… and how similar they were, at that! They were always so much the same, always speaking away from their true meanings and never quite addressing anything they deemed unseemly. In fact, the only true difference between them is that now I expect Erik to lie to me on each and every matter we discuss. The Angel, in comparison, I never thought twice about. I suppose… I truly trusted the Angel with all my heart. But I recognize now the self-serving criticisms he doled out to me – pretending he cared for my reputation while in reality only wishing to keep me to himself – and I feel… I feel… well, I feel very much taken for a fool. It hurt greatly, when I discovered the deception, to realize I had been abused so easily in this way. I almost wished I had received some of those mens' invitations with more grace…

But selfish or not, Erik was right. In his own way, of course. It was good that I did not follow the other girls' leads and leap into an arrangement with a patron or two. I didn't need to do that, because I had Erik. And, certainly, while Erik did train my voice and help me reach the heavens with my talent… that was not what ultimately secured my career. Money and threats did. Coercion did. And even more so: me becoming Prima Donna was never the point of this whole charade to Erik. He was intent on keeping me with him in his damp, soddering dungeon for the rest of my undoubtedly short life. Helping me with my career was just his way of appeasing me long enough to lure me safely into his clutches. Erik never even cared for opera before he met me.

Now, as for what has become of us, after all this time… I must wonder if Erik ever dared to dream past our initial meeting? Though he was of course the one who educated me on the formal particulars of the natural body – and all the ways it can be used in conjunction with that of another body, or even with one of a less-than-natural derivation – I suspect he may have been just as naïve as I was when confronted with the waning pedantry of our situation. It is one thing, after all, to tell a woman to love you; it is another thing entirely when she complies.

Regardless, I digress – let me return to the sight of those men whom Erik and I were passing by. There were five or six of them standing along the side of the corridor, a toddering ballerina at each of their sides. One man had thrust his thick, girthy cigar into his girl's hands for her to hold for him as he puffed out some smoke with his companions, her painted fingers hardly able to reach around the full extent of its wide circumference. Another man, smoking as well, offered a Sullivan to his girl by way of prodding it into her lips and demanding her to open up. She did so after a moment of reluctance, and teared up as he held the cigarette to her mouth for a long minute in punishment.

"I see we are not the only ones late to our seats," Erik commented absently, as he pulled us along past them.

Standing at the end of the line was the spiteful Baroness from before, who I recognized mostly by her tremendous fur coat and the bitter expression upon her face. Beside her was the Baron of Tremaine, who held her long, spindly cigarette between his two wrinkled fingers as he waited for her to finish dousing her throat in the two glasses of sherry she was still tightly fisting.

"Friends of yours?" Erik teased, as he caught me glancing in their direction.

"No," I said quickly. "I only recognized the lady from earlier – I bumped into her while waiting for you."

"Rather more like she bumped into you, I'd say," he said lightly. "That old bitch would do well to watch where she's walking, I think."

As if somehow overhearing Erik's rude comment, the Baroness's amber eyes suddenly swiveled to glare at us, and her miserable face contorted into the deepest rage I've ever seen on another person's face, save Erik's –

"Well, if it isn't Mephistopheles himself!" she snapped, drunk on her own wretchedness. "What are you even doing here, you ugly fuck? Come to ruin my night? Beastly, bungled bone-bag! Who do you think you're fooling with that ridiculous disguise tied about your sorry little snout? Take off that nose and show them all – make them all gouge out their bloody eyes when they see you're nothing but the devil incarnate behind it! I dare you, demon! I dare you to kill us all –"

Erik's arrogant smile fell quickly as she went on, hurling slurs with spiraling intensities at us even as we hurried away. Neither she nor the Baron followed us, thankfully, as we dashed ourselves into the darkness once again, but it was with a sinking heart that I found the Erik at my side to be an unnervingly quiet replacement for my previous companion.

"Erik –" I tried.

"Don't…" Erik said, refusing to look at me. "Please, don't say a word…"

"Is that how it always is when you go out?"

He shook me away. "Please, Christine, for the love of God, just… be quiet, for once in your life," he groaned. "Erik cannot handle both you and her perceiving him in the span of one single minute."

Consequently we walked the rest of the way in silence. I kept my mouth shut, though I wished desperately to console him, and after some time of walking he renewed his affections on me with an even greater vigor than before. I asked no further questions on the matter, and he offered no further explanations… at this time.