Adult-FanFiction.org : Books

Ascent to Power	By : Hot4Gerry Category: M through R > The Phantom of the Opera > Het Views: 5436 -:- 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
- 1
- 2
- 3
Ascent of Power

By Hot4Gerry
Chapter One

Love Denied Does Not Kill 1870 to 1873
The lone dark figure dragged his pain wracked body through the dark Paris night. This was a pain the man had never experienced so acutely. This pain was caused by the love he had for a woman. Or rather love on his part. The matter of her affections for him had been in question until tonight. A woman so far beyond him she traveled with angels. At times he thought her the angel even when she used to ask for her Angel of Music as she searched for him in her lonely night time hours. She was the angel not him. He was far too demonic. A monster in face and deed. A monster he was born. Now as a monster he would die.
Why had he fostered the lie? How could he expect any good to come from the lie? He knew why he encouraged the deception. One time in his life he had given comfort and it had been accepted, even welcomed. His need to have some gentleness, to experience love drove him to foster the lie for so many years. He had received the love of the child. Later he wanted the love of the woman. He wanted to show her he was a man and not a ghost or angel. Just a man who loved her with all that was in him. Every breath he took was for her. Each note he wrote was for her. He had made the mistake of taking her to his home and letting her get close enough to remove his mask. Until that point she had been more than willing to stay with him. Even eager. She had responded to his few tentative caresses. She could accept that he was not her Angel of Music. She could even accept the reality of him as a man. She could not accept the horror of his face.
He was nothing more than a man. A man living in darkness his whole life. A man kept apart from society because his face did not meet the approval of those who thought less of him because of a deformity he did choose to burden himself with. Now the truth was shown to all of the Paris opera society who had been present on this his first and last performance as a composer and performer. It had all ended in a fiery catastrophe of his own engineering. There was no one else who held blame. It was all his doing. Every last hateful deceitful deed. As much as he blamed Raoul for all that had befallen him, in truth he could not even share his guilt with his hated rival.
Puddles from the thaw a few days prior still sloshed water as he walked soaking his clothes and boots. With the temperature dropping a thin coating of ice had begun to form. He had not thought to bring his cloak, hat or gloves. What difference would it have made anyway? His goal was not to survive but to perish. The man felt his life hanging by a thread in this land of the living. A thread he was all too willing to sever.
A few short hours ago it had begun to rain then gradually becoming sleet then turning to snow again and the mercury on the thermometer was headed downward. In his hiding place in the alley behind the opera house he had watched the chaotic mass of humanity trying to save the burning building. Almost four hours passed before he could leave his position behind the stack of crates in the alley. He found a little warmth in the debris around him. It gave him a little shelter from the weather while also blocking the wind. Water dripped from his clothing. His hair and skin were soaked as well. He shivered from the chilling rain that had turned to freezing rain then snow. He did not want to die here in this alley and be found and dragged through the streets as the oddity of the moment.
Once a proud man commanding hundreds of people at the Paris Opera House to do his bidding now he was reduced to the mess of a man who sought not to die in the streets or alley ways of Paris. He could not rest easy knowing all of Paris was viewing his face and his personal shame. Christine had already served him a nasty dish of humiliation. He hungered for not one scrap more of that bitter meal. He sought a safe quiet place to lay his head as he gave up on this miserable existence he had lived for thirty grueling years. Not a great number of years for the normal man but a seeming eternity for the deformed tortured soul dying from lack of love. Dying for tenderness of any sort. He had never felt the stroke of a loving hand. No lips had brushed tender kisses upon his face, his lips.
He had left his nearly destroyed home in the hands of the fire brigade and volunteers struggling to save something they knew in their hearts was already too far gone to make a difference. The gendarmes more than likely had gone into his home looking for him along with the local police. He saw many surrounding the opera house itself. The mob infiltrating his home in the fifth cellar had no doubt destroyed his precious realm of tranquility. The torches of the onlookers rivaled the blaze of the fire. The noise of the excited crowd roared louder than the gas light explosions. The raining glass did not deter anyone from staying and watching that regal building turn to charred ash. This was live entertainment and cost them not one sou.
The poor of the city thought it just that they were able to witness this end to a place where they would never find a welcoming gesture. If they could afford the price of admission they did not have the proper clothing to gain an easy or welcome entrance to the hallowed halls of the wealthy elite of Paris. The nobles did not rub shoulders with the common man unless the man were a servant drawing his bath or putting him to bed after a night spent too deep in his cups.
The merciful darkness shielded the furtive specter from those who hunted him with his death in the forefront of their minds. One painful tortured step after another, moving from one dark shadowed corner to another he made his way further from the inferno of the opera house. His opera house. His home. If he cared to look he could see flames shooting into the sky as explosions set off rumblings in the surrounding areas and the vibrations shook the windows several blocks around the burning building. He cared not that his former home was well on it’s way to ashes. No thoughts other than to seek out a peaceful place to die entered his immediate concerns.
He made his way slowly through the dark familiar alleyways. This was his domain. He had lived in the darkness of night for so long he could barely remember what daylight looked like. His skin was so pale from lack of exposure to the sun. Now he looked close to deaths door. Indeed he looked as if the angel of death had called him to follow him into that shadow world of black enternity.
The man leaned tiredly against a wall. He closed his eyes trying to block out the sight of the rushing crowd headed toward his former home. The Paris Opera House. He was far enough away that the sound of the explosions had become muffled.
Breathing deeply he coughed nearly going to his knees in weakness. His body shivered with cold. Strangely he felt hot inwardly. He seemed not to feel the cold as he had earlier. Shoving himself away from the wall he continued on his set path. Soon he would have his release from this life of pain. This torturous lonely existance. In his opinion he should have been allowed to die at birth. If his mother had not been so cowardly she would have ended his life as soon as she saw him. She had always wished for the strength to take his pitiful life but her religious convictions had stood between her killing her son and allowing him to taint the world with his presence. His mother had never let him forget how much of a burden he was or her wish for his demise. Often he had heard her pray for just such an occurnace. Her son being the spawn of some hellish demon had thwarted her at every turn.
He was no longer even aware of the cold night air taking the warmth from his body for the coldness in his heart had no rival. The pain in the man’s body was equaled only by the pain in his heart. A pain that made his chest feel as if someone had reached deep inside and ripped his still beating heart from him. A heart that had only known the pulse beats of love for such a short time. A life lived in misery finally had hopes of finding that one thing all humans have a right to expect. Something that normally starts with parents and ends with a family of one’s own. Love. Oh the simplicity of that sweet word. How he had longed to have that emotion returned by anyone. He had hoped, prayed, begged God to show him mercy and allow him this one thing he craved most. He should have remembered God had cast him to hell the moment his father's seed was planted in his mother's womb.
Love had never known this poor tortured disfigured soul until Christine Daae. Love had not been given or received. Until Christine he had only two loves. The loves of his life were his music and the opera house he made his home. For a short time he had fooled himself that Christine could love him. In the most painful way possible she had proved she cared not one whit for him. Her action of betrayal made it seem as if she almost hated him in fact. No one could do what she had done to him and have even the smallest bit of affection for the one they betrayed.
So briefly had he known the joy of his love for his angel. Only long enough for his heart to learn to share it’s beat with another. Long enough to dream of a life shared and now all lay in ashes. His dreams. His hopes. His love. Even his beautiful home The Paris Opera House. All gone in but a few hours of a plan born of a doomed obsession. A desperation. All lay in ashes under a thin layer of freshly fallen white snow. How innocent the white looked next to the charred ruins still smoldering in the darkness. The hiss of the melting snow as it fell upon the remains of that once grand building of music and dance gave evidence to the fire that had burned hours ago. Now all lay wet from the feeble attempt to save the fast burning monument to so much talent. The rain had doused the remainder of the flames while cooling the hot remains. The snow continued to fall heavily soon blanketing the ugly remains as if nature wanted to hide the blemish under her concealing pure white blanket.
That pure white beauty covered the ugliness of his evil deed. A pure white blanket to cover his sin, cover the shame of his failure to be a man. To have this deceiving blanket cover all his sins would be a kindness and mercy from the heavens. A mercy denied him throughout his life. As he trudged through the deserted alleyways he prayed to a God he often had doubts of existing to show him mercy now. He prayed for the depth of the cleansing snow to be so deep as to cover all until such time as the warming temperature melted that heaven sent blanket and the charred remains of the opera house had turned to dust. An unreasonable request but in this moment his thoughts were not clear or realistic. His body felt on fire but it shook with chills. His head hurt with tormenting images of Christine in the arms of her knight and savior. That damn boy with his charm and handsome perfect face. Each tortured breath he thought might be his last as his head began to swirl as if he had turned to many times in a circle. His skull felt ready to split with his fevered thoughts and pain.
God! How he wished he could go back and change things. Take back the last few hours. Change his lust dominated decisions. Now that a modicum of sanity was returning to him he saw the futility of his actions along with the destruction of all he held dear in this world.
Madame Giry and her daughter along with hundreds were homeless and without employment due to his blinding obsession with his Angel. He could place no blame at her door. The responsibility for this horror lay exclusively on his monstrous shoulders. A weight he would have to bare as he did so many others. His life was one huge burden. At times it seemed as if the weight of the world were on his back as if he were Atlas supporting that blue sphere in the heavens. Such was far from the truth. He was a mere mortal man burdened with a horrific face and equally horrific life.
Nothing was left but the pain of loss and hopelessness of all the tomorrows lived in loneliness and loss unless some kind fate granted his wish for death which he was sure was imminent. He had no fear of a long life for he knew he would die soon as his heart could not go on much longer under the stress of his pain. The burning searing pain surely must kill him. For hours he waited for death to claim him but that dark angel did not see fit to visit just yet.
Even in death he was a failure for his miserable life was to continue. Death had not been his reward. Failure to live wisely and failure to die a timely death this was his legacy. A failure in all things normal men have was an insult to his genius but love had taken all reason and sensibility from him in the moments when he thought on the life he and Christine could ultimately share. In those moments his genius had deserted him. He became an imbecilic boy. Careless with all that was important to him.
His lust for Christine and his desire for love of a woman drove him to ruin. His genius was matched only by his madness in this time of his quest for the one thing he wanted most, love. Such a puny emotion yet with the power to unman him, guide his actions and control his thoughts. Not that he was ever truly considered a man. Oh no. Demon. Monster. Angel of Music. Phantom of the Opera. This was not half the names he could claim as his own.
So many titles attributed to one man. With so many titles one had to wonder why he was not conceited or thought of as someone of great importance. At this moment he would like to claim the title of corpse. Not the living corpse as he was once called during his stellar career as a freak of nature in a sideshow. Heaven forbid not that. Oh to lay claim to death at this moment of his greatest pain would induce him to rethink his ideas of God not existing or being merciful.
All these random bits of his past played across his inner eye. God what a fool he had been. An aging fool. He should have remembered. Light does not exist in the dark. He was pure darkness. His angel was pure light. Christine the love of his life. The destroyer of his soul. The knife that plunged deeply into his heart came when she removed his one precious shield from the world, his mask. Further twisting of that sharp blade came with her words of rejection. The blade cut deep. Death was but a short distance away.
Beaten by love for a woman and her betrayal of his love for her had left him heartbroken and soulless. He felt he was surely at deaths door knocking at heavens gate or more likely hells burning pit considering all the sins he had committed. Yes, he would be in hell soon. No man could continue to live with this much pain. Death would be a welcome release for his tortured and twisted soul.
This was the state of the man that dropped tiredly on the doorstep of the one person he considered his dearest friend other than Madame Giry. If a monster could claim friendship Nadir Kahn was his one true friend. Nadir Kahn the person who knew him even better than he knew himself. The only other person he trusted with his true name and his very life.
Nadir Kahn had been in his life since his time in Persia as an assassin for the Shah and his demented mother. Those two people had contributed to the loss of a large piece of his soul and brought forth the deepest and darkest corners of his mind to create devices for torture and death. As a young man of eighteen he had left the safety of the opera house to travel the world. He had secured a position as an architect on the presentation of drawings alone. He hired a man as his agent to present his proposals for upcoming building projects. The young man had told the owner of the firm he was a recluse. His face had been badly scarred in a fire in his home as a child and did not like to appear in public.
Knowing a man of the caliber of this unknown architect could go to another competitor and gain a position the young reclusive man had been hired sight unseen. That had lasted for almost a year until clients demanded to see who designed the homes they would occupy. A man who hid from society may well have evil intentions. Illegal acts could well be hidden by his anonymity. That life had been disgarded without a backward glance.
Russia had been the next stop in his travels. For a time he performed as a magician who sang to entertain with his angelic voice as he performed his magic. His mask seemed part of his act so raised few questions. His mind was always seeking further knowledge than what was immediately available around him. He had been in Russia performing and amazing crowds with his magic when life again changed for the young traveler.
When Nadir Kahn had come to offer him the position as an advisor and architect for the Shah of Persia he eagerly accepted. He would design and supervise the building of a new palace and design different projects to dispose of criminals. Erik had been eager to explore his fascination for death and ways to bring it about. His interest was in the invention not the use of these devices. A talent he excelled in and drew the attention of the Shah’s mother.
A more twisted soul could not be found beyond the fires of hell. She was a true life monster. A soul so twisted it even rivaled Erik’s own tortured soul even at the height of his madness. Her penchant for blood had lured Erik to the point where he was almost lost forever. His hatred for humans and their cruelties had fed his rage for a time and he lost himself in the glory of taking even a minute portion of revenge on the humanity that had shunned and ridiculed him his whole life.
For a time it mattered not that the souls his devices put to death had no baring on how he had been treated in the past. What drove him was having his moment to know that in their last moments before death they begged his pardon and he allowed their demise without compunction. The defining moment and changing of his satisfaction to guilt had been when he learned that women and children had been put to death for no other reason than the evil demon woman took pleasure in the bloodletting. No true crime need be committed. The Khanum said you were guilty and that made it so. No trial and no defense. Just the sentence of death.
Never had Erik taken his rage and anger out on the weaker beings of his species. He revered women even though his experience with his mother and other female encounters had left him feeling less than a man and more the monster and demon as he had been told he was since he was a small child. Some ingrained integrity and goodness would not allow him to harm a child or a woman. He could show indifference to their passing but not aid in the ending of their lives.
Erik’s conscience would not allow for the slaughter of innocent women and children. The putting to death of a woman guilty of a crime caused him a moment of silent regret but the total disregard of guilt or innocence of those being put to death daily had taken his soul into a dark realm he feared he could not escape. Nightmares began to plague him and nearly taken his sanity from him.
To be put to death for a crime was one thing but to die for someone’s sick twisted pleasure was quit another. When the true use of his devises came to light Erik could not stand idly by and let it continue. He dismantled the mechanisms that made his devices work and refused to reassemble them.
So the beginning of the end of his life in Persia had started. With the help of Nadir Khan he had escaped Persia barely with his life but with a little of the treasures of the palace traveling with him. The bags of diamonds, gold coins and other precious jewels he considered ample compensation for his services. Yes, a few sacks of wealth in exchange for the abrupt loss of employment and home. To Erik it had seemed a fair exchange. The Shah and Khanum had not agreed. They could not make Erik pay so they chose to make his accomplice pay. Nadir had spent three years imprisoned by the rulers of Persia.
Escape had not been an easy task. Erik had suffered much torture and merciless beatings at the hand of the Shah’s mother before an escape could be planned and implemented. That woman’s darkness made Erik seem like a ray of light. Erik would never admit openly but he was somewhat frightened by the woman. He never showed his fear in her presence. A glimpse of fear in Erik’s eyes would have been the end as that evil woman would have fed on his fear and used it to control him. Such a beautiful woman on the exterior but so horrendously ugly on the inside. This was the woman who had set her sights on Erik the moment she set eyes on him as he entered the palace. Her lust for blood was only equaled by her lust to have Erik in her bed and under her complete control.
Having known he would not hold favor with the rulers for long he had set in motion ways to secure wealth that could be quickly gathered in case of a hasty need for flight. This forethought had allowed him to escape Persia with more wealth than one man could hope to spend in a lifetime. Erik considered it a fair recompense for the Shah and his mother’s misuse of his talents. Nadir helped him then and he would help him now.
The man at Nadir’s door was fearfully known as The Phantom of the Opera or The Opera Ghost. A specter alive but still a ghostly visage. He had haunted The Paris Opera House for over twenty years. A trickster let loose among superstitious volatile performers he had let his imagination have free reign.
Having a mother who could not even stand to touch her infant son to feed him caused a deep hurt and pain in him. A pain he thought never to heal. Her gift of the damn mask when he was but only an hour old became more than a way to hide his hideous face. It was a shield against those who would hurt him. With his mask he felt stronger. His mother could never understand how she could have a child that looked like he was part demon and part angel. His ability to learn quickly and his musical skills convinced her she had bore a child touched by Satan. Never once did it cross her feeble brain that her son could be a God given gift to the world with his talents for music and song.
Longing to rid herself of her burden but having religious convictions to prevent her ending his life she eventually salved her conscience by letting Gypsies take him with the promise of a better life among those willing to accept oddities in their mist. How the woman could have deluded herself had always mystified Erik. As a small boy he had been a piece of property the gypsies had placed on display in their sideshow as a horror from hell. He was The Devil’s Child. The Living Corpse. The title varied from time to time. The only thing that stayed the same was the cruelty.
Those hated names his mother would have agreed fitting as she considered him a demon born as a curse for some sin she had committed. That woman had never been able to look at her son with anything other than fear and disgust. She had been all to eager to accept the few coins in her hand from Jacques, the Gypsy king in exchange for her small seven year old son. The cloth sack had drawn curious looks as the caravan passed. The oddity of his looks catching Jacques eye as their wagons had driven by the yard he was playing in on that hot summer day. One of the last peaceful and carefree moments Erik would have for many years. One of the few times he had been allowed to leave his dark basement bedroom. An unexpected treat that led to tragedy for the small disfigured boy. With a few coins passing from one hand to another he went from purgatory to hell in a few short minutes.
The exchange of those few paltry coins of ill-gotten gain led to the next five years of torture for the little boy. Five years of gawking, horrified, and leering faces. Five years of near starvation for the body and complete starvation for the soul of the youngster who was caged and beaten and treated as little more than an animal No, that comparison is unfair for the animals were treated far better than the poor creature they caged and gave so little care. No, he was not like an animal. He was regarded as less than those beasts of burden and exotic wonder. He was a monster housed in the body of flesh and bone and sinew.
The one comfort of this pitiful creature was a figure of a monkey he had fashioned from bits and pieces he found left by the crowds of onlookers that visited his cage to stare and torment. He drew solace from this lifeless piece of discarded garbage. A comfort to a lost soul who had no love and comfort from any living human source because even as he entered the world he was destined for loneliness and heartbreak. To others it would seem to be nothing more than a crudely fashioned attempt to make a toy but to the boy if was a friend that he drew strength and solace in the hours after each night of display and beatings. To him it was a friend to give hope in his hopeless situation. A friend to tell his hopes and dreams to that he had long ago given up achieving only a small flicker remaining in his desolate existence.
At the age of ten he had been driven to fight back one night by a particularly vicious attack. The young boy’s anger finally could be contained no longer. A hate and rage so strong it gripped him in an unrelenting fury and fueled his mind to seek one thing and one thing only. Escape. Escape from his cage. Escape from his torture.
As his cruel tormentor stood outside his cage greedily picking up the coins tossed at the small heap of humanity. The boy had put his small arms through the cage and given strength in his anger he had killed the man in a strangle hold fueled by years of anger that built up to that one moment that pushed a young soul beyond endurance to the point of taking a life. The surge of power in that moment of pure hate gave the small boy strength beyond what his small frame should possess. The boy had no remorse. No guilt in the taking of a life. Until his anger cooled and the red haze of a murderous rage had left him he stood and looked at the still dead form of his tormentor. No thoughts expressed by a change in his facial features. No emotion showed on his face at all. The eyes void of all emotion. An empty vessel. A body without benefit of a soul.
If not for the pity of a young ballerina who had attended his humiliation on this night he would have been hung for his crime. The young ballerina, Antoinette LaSalle, had been at the fair with other ballerinas from the opera house looking for entertainment and fun. Instead what she found was a little boy only a few years younger than herself caged like an animal being beaten worse than any animal she had ever seen. His reluctance to remove his mask had brought the old Gypsy’s cane down on the boys back in vicious flesh tearing blows. Each strike of the cane upon the boys back had made her young girl’s heart cringe in pain as if the blows hit her own flesh.
The removal of his mask and the jeers from the men and horrified screams of the women and children in the unfeeling crowd had seemed to take what little life the small crouching figure had left. His dirty little body lay in the filth beneath him on the cage floor not moving. The only sign of life the fast rise and fall of his too thin chest. He lay in misery with his dark green eyes looking into her eyes begging for a mercy Antoinette at sixteen had no idea how to give as much as she wanted to. She had stayed long after the others left looking on in pity as the trembling and bleeding boy lay and knew he prayed for death. To her shame she gave her own prayer for his quick end. Better a quick death than this death little by little.
She watched as he crept up behind the man counting the coins that had been tossed at the boy in the cage and greedily gathered by the man more caring of the coins than the boy he beat nearly unconscious to please a crowd of ignorant humanity. She could have given warning but something had held her tongue and she watched in silent horror as events played out in front of her innocent eyes.
Having taken the man’s life the boy fell to the ground clutching his only friend a toy of some sort to his bony chest. The empty look in his eyes gave way to fear. The despair in his eyes and the pleading for one scrap of human kindness guided her young heart that fated night and held her tongue in silence as she witnessed this sin.
Hearing voices and the sound of men approaching she had searched the man’s pockets for and found a key that released the boy from his prison. She had led him through the dark deserted streets of Paris and hid him in the cellars of the opera house.
After that night she lost a small portion of her innocence. A small dark stain was on her soul but she had in all the years of her life never regretted those moments of guilty silence. Given the chance to go back and change it all she would not choose a different path. Even after Erik’s insanity and his destruction of the only home and employment of hundreds of people she considered it a fair exchange. A world with Erik in it was a far better world than one without his genius and music.
No, not for one moment had she held any regret over saving and releasing him. Her regret had always been that she could not get Erik to except he had more to offer than the small disfigurement that covered such a small portion of his body. Given the beauty of his voice and body he was more attractive than most men she knew. With his gift for composition and verse he could make an impact on the world for the better. That was until she had brought Christine into his small world.
That night of his first murder was the start of the boy’s new life. A life lived five cellars down underneath the opera house. This was where his love for music was born and his seductive and hypnotic voice came into maturity.
He became a ghost. Not quite seen but heard and most assuredly felt. The Phantom of the Opera or Opera Ghost. Too many names had been his title over the intervening years. Non labeled him a man. A part of the human race but still held apart from it. He was an apparition not a man. Or so he led the occupants of the establishment to believe.
So easily they believed this face to belong to the devil. In this manner they excused their intolerant attitude and lack of care for a fellow being. If he were a monster or possessed of evil the treatment he received they considered just. If they would but ask two questions they may have seen things differently. Who was the monster in this drama? The small frightened creature that had no defense against those horrible blows or the so called children of God who stood by and watched as ill treatment was dispatched for entertainment?
As he grew up he composed musical scores and original operas. The music was balm to his ravaged soul. He demanded they be performed. Singers and dancers were to be given parts as he saw fit. At first they guffawed at his audacity. This must be a prankster. Some practical joke taken to the extreme. The notes with the demands were discarded as so much rubbish. Soon they learned to take a more serious look at this ghost of their opera house. The accidents and near deaths brought them to their knees and quickly they saw the sense in capitulation.
They did not perform his operas for they could not have an unknown gracing their beautiful theatre but they decided to heed his advice somewhat on the running of the opera house itself. He made the demand for twenty thousand francs a month be paid as his salary. The money was to be left by Madame Giry in box five who even through her short marriage and birth of her child had remained a source of a tenuous friendship to this ghostly visage.
The young ballerina who once took pity on a poor caged child of the devil had grown up and married and had had a child of her own. A little girl named Margarite or Meg as she later became as Margarite seemed to large a name for such a tiny fragile girl. Antoinette Giry became the ballet mistress of the opera house after an accident prevented her from dancing again. Her husband’s death had left Antoinette free to spend more time with the ghost and for him the passing of her loved one was a blessing. Did he feel sorrow for her loss? Not much. He could only grasp that it was to his advantage as it allowed his friend more time to spend with him.
Life had gone on and Erik had terrorized the opera residents and got his way in the running of the opera by force and threats. This ghost wielded so much power over all the opera house. Life would have continued in this fashion if not for the arrival a little girl. A girl so grief stricken by the loss of her father she readily believed the voice from the walls and behind her mirror speaking to her was the Angel of Music her father had promised her. Alas it was only Erik trying for once to comfort a human. Her cries had touched his cold heart as no other had. Erik did not consider himself to be in the same category as others. How could he be with half angel and half demon marring his face? He had been told all his life he was a demon so who was he to dispute such statements? One look in a mirror gave strength to the harsh words condemning him to solitude and loneliness.
The entrance of that little girl with the chocolate colored hair and her warm sad brown eyes was the beginning of the end for Erik nay I should say the end of The Phantom of the Opera. With her coming a foul wind blew through the corridors of the opera house and brought devastating changes for all who lived there. The road to destruction took ten long years to come to the final death blow to the lives of all connected in his sad tale. The harbinger of doom had a name and her name was Christine Daae.
Even as a grieving child she had captivated the lonely young man Erik had been. As he matured and Christine did as well he went from wanting to teach her voice to soar with the angels to wanting to share the delights of flesh to flesh that other men took for granted. His association with Christine was doomed even before Erik had any interest other than as a tutor. Christine was not a strong person and had a weak character. She needed constant reassurance and attention. Erik’s very passion that promised his devotion into eternity was too overpowering for Christine. She wanted a gentler passion. Her childhood sweetheart was the one she chose not the poor demented fool who promised her the world and a life of passion and devoted love.
At first Erik only gave comfort to a small child by letting her believe the voice that reached out in the darkness to chase away the loneliness was the angel her dead father had promised her on his death bed would come in her time of sorrow. The Angel of Music.
He had invested so much of his passion in this one little vessel of humanity. Ten years he had watched her grow to a beautiful woman. A woman who stole his heart from his very chest and stilled the very breath in his lungs. He taught her to send her voice to the very heavens to compete with the angels. How could he do anything other than fall in love with this innocent beauty? A heart that had been black and cold now beat with the warmth of love. He had been so sure of her. After giving her his very soul and she embraced his talents and shared his precious music she had to return his love. Young at only seventeen to his thirty he thought their music and song would bridge any gape. His love for her would make any age difference insignificant.
He should have known. Fate had never rewarded him with anything but sorrow and pain why should he believe this angel could have been his? This light in his world of darkness would shy away from him. He should have protected his heart but in his foolish quest to have what other men have he had left himself open and unguarded. She had ripped apart what was left of his soul and left him an empty shell. Music could not fill the deep hole Christine left in his chest where his heart should have been beating a rhythm to match his music. Nothing could ever fill that void.
That boy had come to spoil his dream. Her dear friend from her childhood the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny. Oh, what bitterness that name brought to his mind. To speak it was like poison dripping from his tongue. That horrible noble young blueblood had taken Christine’s young heart and allegiance with little effort. Erik had witnessed their declaration of love on the rooftop of the opera house and set in motion events that led to the loss of life and the destruction of the opera house and the lives of all who lived and worked within it’s walls.
In his black jealous rage all sane thoughts fled his mind. His insanity reached a level that no one could make him see the impossibility of what he wanted so badly. Her heart had been won as soon as she saw the young vicomte again. His one thought was to get her to come and be his wife. Foolish impossible delusions of a man made mad with unrequited love. He had cut the cord on the chandelier he had rigged to fall as a precaution bringing it down in a blaze of glory on the heads of all the fools who had come to see his masterpiece he had forced them to perform. His first and only opera to be viewed by an audience. Don Juan Triumphant. No triumph had been his. Only failure graced his actions. He had thought it ingenious to replace Piangi with himself and declare his love to Christine during the performance. In his arrogance and lust for this little angel he had not counted on her betrayal. In front of those prying eyes she had removed his mask and exposed his vulnerable well kept secret. The one thing that could bring him to his knees. Revealing his face to the world. The shame and sorrow of his life. The awfulness of his monstrous face.
His anger had driven him to unspeakable actions. All the plotting and planning and he had been undone by the touch of her innocent sweet lips. Two intensely sensual and persuasive touches of her honeyed lips and he had fallen apart. Caved as only a man who has never known that soft salutation. He had crumbled before her and let her and that damnable boy go. Released them to go and leave him in his misery.
He had known it would be only a matter of time and his heart would kill him for surely no one could live forever with this strangling crushing pain in their chest. It stole the very breath from his lungs. He had flirted with the temptation to allow the angry mob of theatre patrons and gendarmes to find him in his lair but his pride would not allow them to display his horrible self for all to see. He would slink off and die alone as it was meant to be. He had rushed toward this day since he first drew breath and longed for it all the days in his mothers hate filled care. His life had been one long waiting period for his eventual demise. Thirty years awaiting his eventual death and relief from the agony of his existence in a world that did not want him or any part of him. Not his angelic voice and certainly not his heavenly music.
So that is how he found himself here lying spent on the bare boards of Nadir’s doorstep. Dying of love with his heart in seemingly irreparable pieces somewhere in the hands of the young diva who fled with her lover a few hours ago leaving her Angle of Music in hell.
The one being in all the world he knew who would allow him to die in peace and dignity lived behind that closed door. He would allow him to rid the world of his unwanted personage. Nadir would understand and allow him this mercy.
The trembling hand barely had enough strength to knock feebly upon the door. Two strikes upon the door then the weakness overtook the man leaving him spent near death.
Perhaps he had some of those Persian potions that would send a man into a darkness from which he never returned. That was Erik’s last coherent thought as he passed out and lay flat on his back with his face exposed in a way that would enrage him at any other time. Now in the moment of his greatest torment he could care less. He welcomed the darkness of oblivion for it offered a respite from the world of such cruelty toward a beast broken and humiliated by a lover’s cruel rejection.
The pitiful man lay in a drenched heap shivering from an unnatural coldness and fever induced chills. His breaths seeming to come in labored gasps. His chest rattling in a disturbing rhythm. This was the condition of the man when the door opened. The Phantom of the Opera. Opera Ghost. His human name was simply Erik. Erik’s guardian would offer assistance.
- 1
- 2
- 3
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Ascent to Power