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Do I Dream Again?	By : LaurieBaker Category: M through R > The Phantom of the Opera > Het Views: 10050 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own The Phantom of the Opera, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 14
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Warning: This chapter has some sexual content in it. Proceed at your own risk.

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Even when the night was silent, the violin music kept playing in Christine’s head...haunting her...tormenting her...beckoning her...

And he’ll always be there singing songs in my head, he’ll always be there singing songs in my head...

Yanking the sheet off of her bed in tired frustration, Christine arose to her feet. Lighting a candle, she made her way to the living room, opening the front door in order to make her way up the staircase to the fourth floor, oblivious to the fact that she was barefoot, uncaring that she was wearing nothing but a flowing nightgown of the thinnest white silk. She was strangely unafraid as she made her journey. This was her fate. She knew that now.

She knocked on the door of the room on the fourth floor, the room that previously belonged to Mr. Tomkins...

There was no coy pretense with a slightly ajar door, not this time. No, this time the door opened widely until Christine could see the white mask glowing in the darkness. How that mask controlled her! She had caressed the mask lovingly with her curious fingers as her Angel of Music serenaded her with love songs in the darkness of his candlelit world. She had feared that mask, terrified of the gruesome demonic sight that lay beneath its covering. She had ruthlessly ripped away at the mask twice, once out of curiosity and the other time out of betrayal. How bitterly she had paid the price for her actions both times! What did the mask want of her now?

Christine knew the answer instinctively. Indeed, it was foolish of her to even ask such a question. The mask wanted her soul helplessly bound to it forever. The mask wanted her naked and in chains, kept in dreamlike servitude under its watch. And she was resigned to her destiny.

Of course, the mysterious violin-playing imposter behind the door had been her Angel of Music, her Phantom of the Opera...Erik...

The demanding mismatched eyes behind the mask beamed brightly from the darkness, taking in the state of her vulnerability, of her loose hair and sheer clothing, of her ultimate submission.

“Mr. Tomkins, we meet face to face at last.”

Although Christine tried to sound cool and collected, even sarcastic, she knew that it was hopeless to pretend. She could not hide the wild excitement trembling in her voice. Her heart beat so fast at the sight of him that she was sure she would faint. And this time, he affected her much more intensely than ever before. Perhaps it was because she knew that this time he had truly captured her, that there would be no knight in shining armor to save her, that there was no going back. This time, they had truly gone beyond the point of no return, as his song in Don Juan Triumphant so eloquently stated. He had trapped his prey at last. And she knew that her eyes were alight with her own passion in answer to his own. And he knew how she burned for him for she saw the acknowledgment in his eyes. Indeed, she could never hide from him.

“Come, Christine.”

She felt his beautifully shaped large hands reach for her own timid ones, capturing them with a sure grasp.

“I’ve been waiting for you...”

Erik enveloped her into the darkness of his room. Once again, they were surrounded by candles and pitch blackness. Once again, they were lost in that secret world that they alone only knew. But this time, there were no more secrets between them.

Slowly, he pulled her within the strong cage of his arms. Never had she felt so fragile as he trapped her within his tight grip. She gasped at the feel of his mouth fervently pressing against her neck in the darkness. Rather than struggling against those caressing lips, she tilted her head to the side, allowing him further access, permitting him to have his way. At last, she felt that familiar magic soaring through her body, making her knees weak with its strength. She clutched onto his shoulders feverishly, begging him to stop, begging him to continue. Yet all she could hear was tomblike silence and the insistent wet suckling sound of his mouth upon her tender skin.

Christine gasped when he gently pulled at the neckline of her gown, allowing it to fall down to her waist. The cold of the night air teased her bare breasts, causing her to shiver with forbidden sensation. She felt paralyzed as he touched her virgin flesh with his fingertips, teasing and goading her on to urgent madness. Her lips had lost the capacity for speech. She could only mew softly as his hands grew bolder, squeezing and massaging.

It was too much. It was not enough.

With the swiftness of a tiger, Erik swept her up into his arms, carrying her into the blackness of his bedroom.

“Your chains are still mine,” the masked man whispered. “You belong to me.”

Christine shivered violently, awaking in the darkness.

Only another dream...another nightmare...

Drenched in perspiration, her body ached fiercely with that strange sensation which she supposed was mere animal lust. She was in utter agony. How would she ever sleep when her body was subject to Erik’s whims, even in her dreams?

Experimentally, she touched the tips of her breasts through the silk of her nightgown, moaning at how sensitive they had become. Then very slowly, her hand slid down to that taboo territory underneath her drawers and between her legs. She was damp, horribly so. The evidence of her sinful longings both repelled and fascinated her. At the slight touch of her fingers, her body reacted as if it had been struck by lightning.

Suddenly, Christine remembered an incident where one of her less-than-pristine students had left a notebook on the settee after her lesson. Picking up the book and leaving a mental note to herself to return it to her student the following week, she was surprised to see a postcard fall out of the notebook. On it was a sketching of a naked woman, her hand probing between her outstretched legs while her head hung back in lustful bliss. Christine had dropped the postcard as if she had been burned. With a furious blush, she placed the card back into its place in the book, pretending that she had never seen the shameful image.

Yet Christine remembered that picture all too clearly now. Like that woman in the card, she would only need to touch herself there to relieve the ache. She would not do it so much as to receive pleasure, just enough to ease the discomfort. And then she would go to confession in the morning after a good night’s sleep.

Swallowing with determination, she rubbed herself with curiosity. Yet the feelings seemed to only intensify rather than ease. Perhaps this was God’s way of punishing her for daring to commit such a horrid act.

The most grotesque imaginings began to run through her head. She would go blind. Her palms would grow hairy. She would make herself mad and have to be committed into some terrifying insane asylum. Although she still ached, her fears cooled her ardor. With the strength of her religious convictions, she willed her hand away from that spot. She could not do such a horrible thing. It was the worse sort of sin. St. Aquinas preached that it was even worse than rape. Even though she had never seen it mentioned in the bible, she knew that touching herself there in such a lecherous way was a sin. Even if she was a woman and could not “spill seed”, there was still something wrong about it. She did not know the logic of it, yet she knew that it must be so.

Were a few fleeting moments of self-indulgence caused by a nightmare worth an eternity in hell?

Knowing any attempt to sleep would be futile, Christine set about dousing herself off with water as cold as she could stand it. She hated feeling this way. She hated it when her body no longer felt as if it belonged to herself.

Once she returned to the bed, she was determined not to look at the clock. She did not want to know just how much sleep she was losing. In this case, ignorance was indeed bliss as she had a full day of music lessons on the morrow. Tossing and turning, she lost track of the time. Even though she did not give in to her body’s demands, she still was tormented with the memories of her dream. And she cursed herself for being a silly fool. Erik was dead. Whoever that man was upstairs, he could not be Erik.

But what about Wuthering Heights? she asked herself. Merely the product of an exhausted mind and an overly active imagination. Obviously, she must have suffered some sort of hallucination or delusion. That was all.

With that reasoning, she felt somewhat released from her fears and at last fell into a short but merciful sleep.

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Christine was never all that fond of coffee; yet she made a large pot of it in the morning, consuming cup after cup of it as the day progressed. Yes, she felt jittery and a bit of a wreck, but at least she was awake.

Even so, her mind wandered as Jeanette, another one of her talented soprano students, sang her aria. The piece was from Hannibal, one that Christine had sung herself several times under her Angel’s...no, Erik’s tutorage. Once her song was completed, Jeanette looked at her with hopeful expectation. Christine was ashamed to realize that she had barely heard the singer at all, her mind wandering off in a tired distraction with memories of the past. What sort of a teacher was she?

“That was fine, Jeanette,” she answered automatically. “Just fine. Keep up with your progress, my dear.”

Jeanette beamed with pride at the compliment. Christine smiled with bemusement. Did she bestow compliments upon her students so rarely then?

“I am glad that you liked it, Miss Daae,” Jeanette chirped. “Especially since you sang this at the Opera Populaire so many times yourself.”

“Yes, child,” Christine nodded. “I am surprised that you found the sheet music for such a piece.”

“It was just recently published, I believe. And you know, the oddest thing occurred when I went to fetch this music, Miss Daae...” Jeanette confided. “At the music store, I asked for the sales clerk to play a selection of the piece on the piano. Just so that I could be sure that it was in the right range for me, as you know I have no eye for reading music. And there was a man there listening very intently. A very odd sort of man. I believe he was purchasing some resin for his violin. And he asked me how I had come across this music. And, Miss Daae, it was the strangest thing for the man wore a mask...”

The air seemed to suck out of Christine’s lungs before everything went black...

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Your chains are still mine...you belong to me...

Over and over, the words repeated until the timber of the voice changed into a female’s voice.

“Miss Daae! Miss Daae! Are you all right?”

Jeanette was shaking Christine to consciousness. By her student’s side was her landlady, Mildred Hobbes.

“Forgive me for fetching your landlady, Miss Daae,” Jeanette pleaded. “But I didn’t know what to do. You just blacked out all of a sudden and hit your head on the floor. Do you need a doctor?”

For a moment, Christine only looked about blankly, disoriented.

“No,” she whispered, flinching when she felt the throb from where she must have struck her head. “I think I am alright, my dear.”

The pain in Christine’s skull abated as she took in the sight of Miss Hobbes. The older blond woman was looking at her quite oddly with a sort of sulking pout as if she were resentful of her for some reason. She could not imagine why she should be the recipient of such a look. Hadn’t she paid her rent on time?

“Well, if you are sure you are recovered, Miss Daae, I really must go now,” Jeanette said.

Nodding as she rose to her feet with the help of the two women, Christine agreed that she should leave.

“Hope you ain’t gettin’ sick, luv,” Mildred Hobbes volunteered after the student left. “That would be quite bad for them singin’ pipes of yours.”

“I shall be all right, I think,” Christine smiled wanly. But she did not want to discuss her fainting spell for she realized that her landlady might help to ease her mind. Perhaps then there would be no more nightmares.

“Miss Hobbes, what do you know of the man that lives in the flat above me?” she asked abruptly.

Mildred only stared at her with an unreadable expression before answering with a forced smile.

“Why, it’s that old gentleman, Mr. Tomkins, dearie! Haven’t you been acquainted?”

“Miss Hobbes, I have reason to believe that man up there is an imposter!” Christine whispered, trying to remain calm. “That is not Mister Tomkins up there! I’m sure of it!”

“Why, of course it is, dearie. Who else would it be?”

Christine turned away from the woman, almost panting with anxiety. How could she explain what she had seen without the woman thinking her mad?

Then she remembered Jeanette’s story about the masked man at the music store.

Perhaps she was indeed going mad...
- 14
- 15
- 16
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Do I Dream Again?