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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
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I apologize for taking so long to update. Unfortunately, with my workplace going insane and my daughter’s first birthday party, real life has been entirely too intrusive upon my story. Hopefully, things will settle down soon!

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Erik had not been so consumed with rage since that fateful night at the Paris Opera House.

Be nice to me...

Those words, with all of their nasty implications, reverberated through his skull repeatedly as he glared at the landlady standing before him, hands upon her hips, waiting expectantly. Just who did this baggage think that she was to blackmail him...the Phantom of the Opera...into being some sort of sexual slave to do her bidding?!

Unwanted memories from those dark days of Erik’s past came flooding back to him. Try as he might to blight the hated images out of his mind, they returned to his psyche with full force. The gypsy carnival fairgrounds... the “Devil’s Child”... perverse men rubbing at their crotches as they watched the fat gypsy barker lash at his bare back with a whip...

Erik hated being used so coarsely as an object of perverse sexuality then...and he hated it now. Even so, his body involuntarily jolted when Mildred Hobbes, apparently taking his silence as encouragement, pressed against him, running her palms along his shoulders. He flinched from her touch, yet his dumb manhood stood at immediate attention. Despite the fact that this woman was wresting both control and choice from him, he was still all too human, having spent a life denied such pleasures.

As he suffered another one of her forced kissed, he found that her lips were not unpleasant. They were simply not ambrosia, like Christine’s beautiful lips. They were the wrong lips.

But why should he think on Christine when she had once more coldheartedly rejected him?

For a few insane seconds, Erik considered giving Mildred what she wanted so badly and then some. He would take her against the wall of her room like a common whore, using her callously and roughly, teaching her a lesson to toy with him. Even those sordid couplings with Elissa would seem like a sweet love affair compared to what he would do with this slattern. Yet the laughing look in her knowing eyes as she pulled away from the kiss cut his desires short. She was entirely too sure of herself, entirely too convinced that she had him at her mercy.

The realization was like a bucket of ice cold water splashed upon him.

No, he would not succumb to this brazen hussy and her demands! Just because he was doomed to hide behind a mask...just because he was an ugly and lonely man...did not mean that he was a pathetic desperate fool!

Mildred Hobbes had manipulated him into this position, deliberately wresting him away from his true love’s side with her lies about a horrible fire. As if that were not heinous enough, he was still sure that somehow Mildred had whispered words into Christine’s ear that made poisoned her against him.

The landlady’s perception of him was not only degrading but insulting. She saw him not as a man but as a stupid monster and wanted to be taken by him as such. Oh, he would make her pay for such a humiliation in a way that she would least expect!

So be it!

She would have her monster!

Savagely, he gripped her face and kissed her hard. While she moaned with surprised anticipation, he began to feel that other lust...bloodlust...

Oh, yes, all he would have to do is tighten his hands around her slim throat and squeeze. He would break her neck like a twig! Oh, yes, the bitch would dance to a different tune then, wouldn’t she? He craved to see her hungry eyes widen and roll back in her head as she fought for breath while he crushed her windpipe.

But then the image of Mildred twitching in the throes of death dissolved into another picture...that of Christine softly smiling at him with trust in her eyes as she lay quivering underneath him, surrendering to him completely...

Try as he might, he could not blight Christine’s haunting face from his mind. If Erik went back to his old habits of snuffing out people, no matter how useless they may be, he knew that he would lose any hope of ever winning her back. He had no religious or moral qualms about murder. But he could not take the chance of losing her forever, not when he was so close...

Erik almost laughed with self-disgust. Christine was now not only the unattainable love that he would never have, but had also become his conscience as well. At least, so it seemed.

Pushed to take another road, he then decided on an action that he heretofore would have considered unthinkable. Grasping at the mask which had served to hide him from the cruelty of the world, he deliberately ripped it off, revealing his ugliness in all of its wretched glory to this intruder of a woman. Rather than bracing himself for her revulsion, he invited it. Indeed, he used his cursed face as a valuable weapon against her.

Erik was not disappointed when Mildred’s large eyes widen with disgust and fear at the sight of his naked face. Of course, he expected nothing less. Never did he think he would feel satisfied with pleasure at the sound of her halting gagging gasps. Sadistically, he pressed the rotted flesh of his face against her cheek and mouth, holding her tightly as she squirmed against him in frantic terror.

“Nooooohh...” she moaned, hitting and kicking at him. “Oh, God! Get away from me!”

“What is the matter, sweetheart?” he growled. “You no longer want to play?”

Mildred’s shrieks dissolved into helpless sobs as she pleaded for him to release her.

“Do you not burn for the kiss of the Phantom, my sweet? Are you not mad with wanting?”

“God!” she shrieked out in fear. “Oh, God, help me!”

Satisfied that the woman had received her deserved comeuppance, Erik allowed her to escape his clutches. Like a flash, she had run through the front door and into the night.

Erik’s victory was fleeting however. Mildred was probably headed straight for the police. And if he could not rely on the permanent solution of providing Mildred with an unfortunate “accident”, he had no choice but to escape this boarding house at once.

If it were not for Christine, the solution would have been an ideal one, for he wanted nothing more than to bury himself back into the comforting bowels of the earth. As usual, life above ground with the human race was proving to be too much of a trial for him. Even in his darkness and solitude, he was less lonely in his makeshift home than he was above ground, forced once more to deal with foolish people who preferred to fear and hate him rather than make any attempt at understanding.

But what of Christine?

He would not even be in this wretched country were it not for her. Indeed, he had turned his whole life upside down for her. Even with all of her maidenly protestations, he could not allow her to leave him again.

No, he would take her with him! And she would be made to see reason! Surely, with some persuasion in a quiet solitary place, someplace with no loathsome intruders like Raoul de Chagny or Mildred Hobbes, Christine would come to see that they could not live without each other.

But first, he would have to relocate at once. The exercise should not be too difficult. Fortunately, since he had next to nothing in the way of possessions, he had nothing to lose. But he still had plenty of funds saved up for another home. After all, he had never intended to stay in this ramshackle boarding house for long anyway. He had only come here to fetch Christine.

After hurriedly returning to his room in order to retrieve his violin case, Erik went off in the night in search for a new home in this strange new country.

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As the days and nights passed in horrid silence, Christine merely went through the motions of life.

How long had it been? A week? And there had been no sign of Erik. As she had feared, he had apparently lost patience with her silliness and her indecision. He had left her for good, so it seemed. She had thought she had lost him in death. Now she lost him in a lover’s quarrel. And they had never even been lovers, she thought sadly as she sat upon her settee, having just completed a music lesson with Geraldine.

Sipping at her tea, sitting stiffly upright in a simple dress of black, Christine tried to fall back into her old routine of teaching and living quietly in peace. But it was no use now for there was no peace. It seemed that she would never know peace again.

She should have opened her door to him! She should have married him! She should have undressed and let him do as he wanted with her! Perhaps then these fires of passion would at last leave them alone and they could resume their lives somehow. Yet, she knew that some of the mystery of lovemaking had disappeared after he had kissed her body in that sinful way. She had hoped that having found that small amount of satisfaction, she could go on as before. She could go to confession, put that act behind her and stay pure. Yet she could not forget that night and what he had done. And she wanted...she wanted more and more...all that he could give her...

Tears of frustration and confusion rolled down her cheeks for the umpteenth time. What did it matter now? Now that he was gone...

Christine hated herself for crying. It was for the best that he had gone! Of course, it was for the best! Now she could live with herself, being pure in soul and body, devoted to her music and the memory of her father. For what would she be with Erik? A fallen woman in love with a murderer?

And she did love him. That much she could not deny. She loved him with everything in her. Yet love could not possibly be enough to heal the wounds of the past. It could not be enough to solve the inevitable problems that would arise in the future.

How could love survive with a man like Erik?

As much as Christine hated to think about it, she could not allow herself to forget that he had murdered. And as sad as his life was, as much as his mournful eyes and voice pulled at her heartstrings, she had to remember that he was insane. Once he had tired of her, would he not murder her too? The thought was a horribly bleak one, but one that she could not ignore.

Even now, there was a price on his head in London, it seemed. The local police had been repeatedly combing through the boarding house ever since his disappearance, paying special attention to the top floor at the room where he had been staying. What had he done now? Had he killed someone else?

One evening, the police had even come to question her, accompanied by Mildred Hobbes.

“Ask ‘er about it,” Mildred encouraged them. “She knows all about ‘im, she does!”

They began to interrogate her with all sorts of questions about her life in Paris and about the Phantom of the Opera. And even though Erik had lied to her and ruthlessly pursued her to London, she could not take part in trapping him again. No, she would never hunt him down like an animal nor help anyone else in such a cause. She had not been strong enough to be the woman that he needed, but she could at least let him live in peace.

“The Phantom of the Opera is dead,” she replied.

“But...” Mildred interrupted.

“The information is simple enough to confirm,” Christine continued. “He even announced his own suicide in an issue of a Parisian newspaper, L”Epoque. Now if you please, I do not wish to speak any more on it. The affair was very distressful for me.”

With respectful nods, the policemen let her be. Mildred Hobbes was not so easily persuaded.

“’E’s an evil one, that man is, dearie,” she advised with a sympathetic look in her eyes. “I understand ‘ow you feel, but ‘e’s no good. We’d all be a sight better off if he was to be locked away.”

Christine felt a cold rage towards the landlady the likes of which she had never felt before. She swore that she could have murdered the woman herself.

“You do not know of what you speak, Miss Hobbes,” she replied coldly. “As I told the police, the Phantom of the Opera is dead.”

“Even so, I’m goin’ to ‘ave to ask you to leave, Miss Daae,” the landlady said. “I know you’re lyin’ to protect ‘im, only God knows why you want to ‘elp a creature like that one. But I ain’t goin’ to ‘ave no trouble ‘ere, understand?”

Christine nodded brusquely.

“I shall leave before the week is out.”

Breathing deeply, Christine sipped at her tea again, trying desperately to fend off one of those inevitable attacks of nerves that had plagued her ever since that conversation with Mildred and the police. Never had she felt so wretched. She had no appetite nor could she sleep. And now she would have to find a new place to live. She had packed her clothing in her small suitcase, yet she could not seem to bring herself to leave. What of her students? What of her life here? What of Erik? Would he come here to look for her and not be able to find her? Did she want to be found?

Her resolve shattered, Christine set down her teacup, lowered her face into her hands and began to sob.

And then she heard it...

I am your Angel of Music...Come to me...Angel of Music...

Rising up slightly, she shook her head in denial. She was so overwrought that she was hallucinating. He had finally succeeded in driving her mad!

Wandering child, so lost, so helpless, yearning for my guidance...

It was him!

“Erik?” she whispered, disbelieving.

Christine’s senses began to feel sluggish mind as her body fell into a relaxed state of yearning. She recognized these physical symptoms. This was how she had felt that night when he had lured her beneath the Opera House. This was how she felt as she sang those scandalous lyrics of his Opera before all of Paris. She was once more under his power, subject to his will, being taken by force.

“No, Erik, not like this,” she whispered hoarsely, trying to fight against his cruel hypnotism. Yet the power of suggestion worked upon her like a drug that she had craved. It was a relief when she finally lost control of herself, for without presence of mind, there was no more fear or anxiety of the unknown.

Come to me, Angel of Music...

As docile and trusting as a child, Christine opened the door of her room.

Erik stood before her, disguised in his mask, cloak and hat. He smiled gently at the sight of her.

“How I have missed you, my sweet Angel,” he whispered with a smile as he stroked her cheek lightly with his gloved fingertips. Gently, he leaned over and kissed one of her tears.

“Do not cry, my sweet, for I am here now. We shall never be parted again, Christine.”

Unable to even remember why she should protest his touch, Christine shivered at the touch of his lips against her skin, sighing softly.

“We must leave here at once for I have found us a new home.”

He placed his cape about her shoulders and took her valise.

“I have a horse waiting for us out front. Come, we must hurry while there are no police about!”

Once more, Christine blindly followed her Angel of Music, uncaring if he took her to the ends of the earth.
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Do I Dream Again?