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Born Ugly: Book One	By : KassandraRamsey Category: M through R > The Phantom of the Opera > AU/AR Views: 1148 -:- 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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- 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Phantom of the Opera, and am making no money off of this story. This applies to all subsequent chapters.

A/N: Okay this is my first POTO fic, so be gentle. I guess my Erik is a mixture of all of them, although I did get the inspiration for this from Susan Kay more than any of the others. Oh, and don’t let the different names deter you from reading. By book Two Erik and Christine will have their rightful names.

Special thanks to my lovely beta Michelle, who is jumping fandoms with me to do this.

Chapter One

I’m different, always have been. I look different, act different, and think different. I make people nervous with my uniqueness, even though I was fortunate enough to be born in a time and country where diverseness is celebrated. If I had been born a hundred years ago, I would have died at birth. Life would have been much simpler if I had. However, of all the adjectives one can use to describe life, ‘simple’ has never been one.

Think as far back as you can to your very first memory. How old were you? Two? Three? More than likely, you were older. Five or six. Perhaps a few of you may even have a vague recollection of your very first birthday. What of me, you ask? I remember everything. Starting with the very moment I first opened my eyes.

I don’t know much about the woman who gave birth to me. I knew her name was Annie, and that she was a sixteen-year-old drug addict who died soon after I was delivered. A sadly typical story in this day and age.

She’d kept her habit during the whole of the pregnancy, and while she received peace in the end, I was forced to live and suffer.

The doctor who delivered me was expecting a deformed baby from the pictures on the sonogram. But even he could not help his shocked gasp as I slithered from the girl’s body and into his hands. I suppose I’m lucky he didn’t drop me. The first thing I ever saw was the horrified look in his dull brown eyes as he looked me over.

Born three months too early, I was small, underdeveloped, and sure to not last a day. That’s what the doctors told my grandmother anyway. Being a good Christian woman, she sent for a priest and had me baptized that afternoon.

Several doctors and nurses came in to look at me, curiously.

The left side of my face was as smooth and clear as any healthy baby’s would be, but the right side was not. My right cheekbone was inverted, causing the incredibly thin skin over it to sink into my face, leaving a hole. The pale skin was so thin that you could see each and every one of my veins from the nose level to a few inches above my hairless scalp. A throbbing pulse was visible in a knot a few inches above my left eye, and the skin beneath the eye hung down like it wasn’t attached right. Of course I had no idea at the time that I didn’t look right. I was a newborn, and my vision did not allow me to see more than a few distant blurs.

I heard words of pity, and was often referred to as a ‘crack baby’.

Daniel Rydel is the name on my birth certificate. The only person who knew the identity of my father was dead, and so I was simply given the dead girl’s last name. (Even now, I cannot bring myself past the hate to refer to her as my mother.) My grandmother didn’t want to give me her last name, but as she was assured that I’d soon be dead, she finally relented.

She’s always blamed me for taking her daughter’s life. The first time she held me, she called me a murderer. I didn’t know what that meant yet, but I remembered it. I always remember.

When I awoke the next morning, the nurses were stunned. Everyone was so sure that I’d die during the night, and I have to admit I took pleasure in proving them wrong.

My grandmother didn’t want me, but the priest convinced her to take me anyway.

“We could fix his face. A few plastic surgeries could have him looking almost normal,” a nurse told her as they packed me up to leave.

“He killed my daughter. God is punishing him for that, and I’ll not interfere,” she snapped, and roughly fastened me into a carrier. She was sure to cover my face with a blanket before we left, glaring at anyone who asked to look at ‘the baby’.

She took me to her house, which smelled of smoke and made each breath I took hurt like a knife in my chest. I had no crib or cradle, just a drawer from an old dresser. Luckily for me, she left the drawer on the floor, where the air was cleaner, and I was able to breathe normally again.

My mind was filled with questions, and I tried my absolute best to ask them aloud, but this ‘speaking’ thing was much more difficult than it had seemed. I quickly grew frustrated and started crying.

It was almost humorous watching her attempts to pacify me. A toy waved in my face, a bottle shoved into my mouth. She pounded my back, bounced me on her knee, but still I screamed and raged, not sure myself what I really wanted.

I quieted for a minute when she began to sing.

Rock-a-bye baby, on the treetop,
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock,
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,
And down will come baby, cradle and all.

Her voice was quivering and broken, and yet I was fascinated. When she stopped singing, I started.

My small mouth couldn’t form words, but I could make noises of different pitches, and soon the melody was coming from my mouth in perfect tune.

She threw me to the ground, screaming, and ran from the house.

The wind was knocked out of me when I hit the floor, but even after regaining my breath, I did not cry. It seemed pointless to cry when no one would hear me. I just lay there trying to understand my grandmother’s fear.

I must have fallen asleep, for the next thing I knew, the priest was lifting me from the ground.

My grandmother had calmed down, and was now humming and trying to get me to sing. However, last time I sang, I had been painfully dropped to the ground so I had no intention of repeating this error.

I started crying again, hoping that the priest could figure out what I wanted. Maybe he could help me communicate, or just explain this existence I found myself in.

He didn’t. He just prayed, and after I cried myself to sleep, he left.

When I awoke again, I cried with renewed vigor.

My grandmother cursed me for disturbing her at the ungodly hour of three in the morning, and thus introduced me to the concept of time. She bathed me, fed me, and then tucked me into the drawer again. I fussed a little, not wanting to sleep anymore.

She stared at me warily, and then softly started singing again. The sound of her voice again reminded me of the painful fall to the floor earlier that day, and I screamed all the louder in an attempt to quiet her.

“Fine!” she yelled, picking up the drawer and carrying it to a room I’d never been in before.

And then she did it. She gave me what I had spent the fourth day of my life crying for. She propped me up in the drawer, and sat me in front of the television.

The days blend together after that. My grandmother told her friends and neighbors that the television had been a godsend, and made the perfect babysitter. For once, I agreed with her. The first thing that occurred to me was the sheer number of words there are in the English language. After that was all the different ways one could say them.

When I was a month old, my grandmother began to leave me alone in the house for short periods of time. Never more than a couple of hours, but we got along much better after that. She acted much more kindly to me after she had been able to be away for a couple of hours.

I treasured the time she was away, for only when I knew that I was truly alone, did I speak. The words never sounded the same when I spoke them than when the actors on the television did. I was four months old before it occurred to me that this was because I didn’t have teeth.

I waited anxiously for my teeth to grown in, although when they finally came, I almost wished they hadn’t. There was constant pain and drooling, and we were both irritable from it.

When I was a year old, I was ready to walk. But I had to be careful. I knew from watching the babies on television that their minds were much simpler than my own. If I ever showed her my true intelligence, it would frighten her. That was what had happened the day she taught me to sing.

I sat up in my drawer and hollered for her.

“Gamma!” I called, knowing this was okay since I had heard a baby close to my age on the television say this.

The cigarette fell from her mouth, and she hastily picked it up, cursing.

“See what you made me do?” she demanded, pointing at the singed carpet.

I rolled my eyes, and she took an involuntary step backwards.

Uh-oh.

She was afraid. Apparently babies didn’t roll their eyes.

I rubbed at my eyes, doing my best to make her think the eye roll had been an accident, and she seemed to relax a little.

“You’re just seeing things,” I heard her mutter to herself.

She walked over to my drawer and looked down at me.

“Well? What do you want?” she demanded.

I stretched my hands toward her and said, “Up!”

She blinked in surprise, but stuck the cigarette into her mouth and lifted me up.

“Down,” I said then, delighted that we were communicating.

This time, she rolled her eyes, and began to lower me back into the drawer.

“No! Floor!” I cried.

She froze, and for a moment I thought that I’d gone too far. But then she lowered me to the carpet on my stomach, muttering, “It’s the TV, he’s just picked up some words watching TV, it was bound to happen.”

I was hoping she’d leave me alone again after that, but she sat in a chair and looked at me expectantly.

I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, and rocked back and forth a few times. I was doing something wrong. I felt the overwhelming urge to cry. Crawling looked so easy on the TV!

I took a deep shuddering breath, then lay down on my stomach, and attempted to roll onto my back. It took four tries, but I succeeded.

It was harder to sit up without any support, but eventually I did it.

I looked at my grandmother for some type of praise, but she just lifted an eyebrow and took a drag off of the cigarette.

I was frustrated, and wanted to cry again. I knew that if I started crying, I’d tire myself out, and I intended to be walking by the end of the day.

So I swallowed my pride and looked up at my grandmother again.

“Help me,” I said, probably a little too clearly.

“Help you what?” she asked skeptically.

“Walk!”

“Oh, is that what you’re trying to do? I thought babies were supposed to crawl first,” she said suspiciously.

“Walk!” I cried again, petulantly.

She sighed in annoyance.

“Alright, I’m coming.”

She stood up and walked over to me, lifting me to my feet by my arms. She held my arms up as I took steps. I was walking, sort of. It made me feel powerful.

“Okay, let go,” I said, and she dropped my arms.

I fell down and started crying.

“Oh, stop it! No one walks on their first try,” she told me irritably.

I quit crying, and lifted my arms to her again.

“I don’t have time for this right now,” she said, and picked me up to put me back in the drawer.

“No, please!” I cried, and she froze again.

“Walk!” I shouted desperately.

She sighed, then put me by the sofa, showing me how to hold on with my hands.

“Here, this is how my Annie learned to walk. Just hold on and walk back and forth by the sofa. Then when you’re strong enough, try letting go. If you fall, just pull yourself back up, and don’t cry! I’ve got stuff to do,” she said as she stepped back to watch me begin.

I did as she instructed, carefully holding onto the cushions as I moved back and forth. I looked at her with a grin, showing off my teeth. She gave me a hesitant smile, then shook her head.

“You shouldn’t be able to understand all that. It’s creepy,” she confessed.

I shrugged and said, “Don’t care.”

She left the room and I continued to practice. It ended up taking a good two days, but I finally mastered it.

After that, I was ready to explore the house. It was only one story, with three bedrooms and two bathrooms, but it still took a couple of days to learn it all. My grandmother watched me carefully as I did this, pointing out the things I shouldn’t touch, and even telling me why when I asked.

A few days later, she took me into the bathroom and showed me how the toilet worked. She never had to change my diaper again after that, which I could tell pleased her.

Over the next year, I learned how to read and write. Sesame Street helped me at first, but I quickly grew bored with it and moved onto teaching myself. I hit Grandmother’s books, and after getting tired of me asking what certain words meant, she bought me a dictionary. It was the most precious thing she’d ever given me.

I soon grew too big for the drawer, and so she reluctantly moved me to the guestroom—threatening me not to mess it up. I pointed out a few weeks later that I kept my room much cleaner than hers. She just glared at me.

Even with all of the knowledge I now possessed, I still had no clue about my deformity. I didn’t know what I looked like, as I was not tall enough to see into the bathroom mirror. It had never occurred to me to wonder about that.

A few weeks after I turned three, my grandmother and I were eating lunch when I asked the question she’d been dreading.

“I have to go to the store this afternoon,” she said casually.

“Can I come with you?” I asked, and she nearly choked.

“No, Daniel, I don’t think that would be a good idea,” she said, finally.

“Why not? You don’t have to worry about me misbehaving. Besides, I’m curious about the outside world. I want to see all of these things I’ve read about and watched on the television,” I said hopefully.

She sighed and gave me a pitying look.

“Oh, Daniel. I’m afraid you’ll never fit in out there,” she said sadly.

“What? Why not?” I demanded.

She seemed to think it over for a moment before answering.

“Well, the way you talk—for one thing. You’re only three-years-old, and kids that young aren’t supposed to be able to talk and understand things as well as you do,” she pointed out.

I rolled my eyes.

“I know that! I also know how to act like a normal three-year-old. No one will know that I’m different,” I told her smugly.

She laughed.

“You might be able to hide your intelligence, but you can’t hide your face,” she said with a smirk.

That confused me.

“Why would I need to hide my face?” I asked, feeling a knot of dread in my stomach.

She looked at me sharply.

“Have you never looked in a mirror?” she demanded.

I shook my head.

“I’m not tall enough,” I said, sheepishly.

As curious as I was about everything around me, it did seem odd that I’d never looked in a mirror.

“Well, come on then. Let’s get this over with,” she said, gesturing for me to follow her to the bathroom.

I followed slowly, knowing that whatever was about to be revealed to me would be unpleasant.

When she lifted me up and sat me on the counter by the sink, I suddenly wished that I’d never asked to go out.

The face in the mirror seemed too gruesome to be real, but reaching up to touch my sunken cheek, I knew it was.

“I’d like to be alone, please,” I whispered hoarsely.

She nodded solemnly and left the room.

For the first time since I’d learned to walk, I cried.
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Born Ugly: Book One