Unmasked

by Michelle Marcos

  I was afraid of this. I knew this moment would come, but I did not expect it so soon. Erik was mistaken. I did love him, more than he could imagine. But he was asking the impossible. I liked who I was around him, and how he made me feel. I kept no secrets from him. But now he was asking something of me I had no intention of sharing.

  "Of course I feel it, Erik. I love you just as much as you love me. But...” He stiffened at my hesitation. "There are many different ways people demonstrate their love for one another.”

  "Then you do not love me as I love you. I want to be one with you. I want there to be nothing between us. I want to get deep inside you, so that we truly become two halves of the same person. I want to please you and be pleased by you –"

  "Yes, Erik," I interrupted. "I feel those things, too."

  "Then why do you cringe when I touch you? Why do you seek to escape my embrace? Do you expect me to believe that you love me?"

  "I do love you,” I said, backing away towards the door.

  He advanced upon me like an animal about to devour its prey. "You do not know the meaning of the word. Love does not cower from the warmth of a hand. It does not run from the passion in a kiss."

  Yes, it does, I thought. Sometimes, it does.

  "It seeks out these things. It dies if it is not nourished by tenderness and affection. It feeds on itself."

  “You don’t understand,” I stammered, nearly stumbling as I retreated from his steely gaze.

  “Make me understand.”

  “Why must you be so discontented? Aren’t my kisses enough?”

  He snorted derisively. “You see a plant drooping for lack of water and you think a few drops will sustain it?”

  How many times did I dream about this as a child? How many fantasies did I have – as I sat in the dark, one-room cottage where I sewed until my fingers nearly bled – where a man would take me in his arms and demand my affection? But those images didn't portray me as I really am. In those fantasies, I didn't look they way I really did.

  I was almost at the door. "I do love you. Please believe me."

  "Then prove it." He was upon me in a trice. Seizing both my arms, he clasped me in a fierce embrace. His lips came down hard upon mine, crushing them painfully against my teeth. He had kissed me many times before, but never like this. His hands lost their tenderness as they traveled over my clothes. I fought to stay them.

  There was untold ferocity in his affections now, and a sharp pang of fear constricted my chest. He looked at me. There was a hunger in his eyes, a bloodthirst that roused dormant demons within him. The very eyes that I had admired for their depths of feeling now showed me the extremes of his carnality.

  Erik was gone. The man before me was the Phantom of the Opera.

  On that impulse, I bolted. He bellowed after me, but all I could hear was the voice inside my head. Coward, coward, coward. He was right. Everything he said was true. How could I make him understand?

  I turned the corner and crashed into his imperious, black-clad figure. This blasted maze was his playground, and he knew its passageways better than I did.

  “Do you think you can fool me?”

  I backed away from him, my heart hammering wildly. I did not know what form his revenge would take.

  He approached me with catlike stealth. “Do you think me so dull-witted that I cannot see what you are doing?”

  “Erik, please…” I begged, not certain what it was I was asking.

  “I have endured pain far beyond your imagination. There is not a thought in your head or an ache in your heart that I haven’t had a thousand times over.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” he said with an air of superiority, “that I can read your sentiments as clearly as if you had articulated them to me, which you obviously can’t. You run from me,” he said, with strained patience, “because you have convinced yourself that you are damned to suffer a loveless existence.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, hiding a twinge of vulnerability.

  “It is not my disfigurement that alarms you, but your own.”

  “You can’t understand,” I insisted, even as I cursed his perspicacity. “I just feel that the time isn’t right.”

  “Liar,” he said in a tone that reminded that this was not something I wanted to be found guilty of in his eyes.

  “It’s different with you. You cannot know what it is like to be me.”

  He laughed mirthlessly, folding his arms across his chest. “By all means, my downy young chick, pray explain to me what it is like to live with a physical deformity. I’m all attention.”

  His sarcasm angered me. “This body is my prison. I can do nothing to escape it.”

  “Your argument is compelling. Do carry on.”

  Now he was mocking me, and it made me furious. “At least I did not build a prison. I did not dig myself a hole and bury myself in it.”

  The barb deflected off him. “This,” he said, waving his arms around him, “is a world of my own choosing. It is not a prison others set for me. Can you not see the difference? You submit yourself to their idea of beauty, then condemn yourself for failing to achieve that false perfection.”

  “What do you expect? If a woman is berated for an ugly bonnet, or for sporting an unflattering color, that is easily remedied. But if she is ridiculed for being heavy, what can she do? It is like…being punished for the color of the sky.”

  “My point exactly.”

  “What else is there to do?”

  His voice rose. “Rage against it. Refuse to accept the limitations of civilized society. You can do that here. The moment you fell into the lagoon, you were baptized into my world. Here there is no prejudice, no judgment. Where light defines, darkness liberates.”

  He was right. Here, in this place, to live among the soiled and smelly vermin is preferable to confronting the scorn of people. Out there, life was more a burden than a prize. Liberation. Yes, I desired that. Liberation from my own solitude.

  “The contempt you feel for yourself is a palpable thing, and it is between us always. Let it go.”

  Let it go? I was the monster in this scenario, the one with the deformity which loathed to be touched. I saw myself as the opera director saw me, as Monsieur Frenet saw me, as Madame Bouchard saw me.

  Hideous.

  I turned away from him. “How can you ask me to share my body with you when it’s so…so…” I couldn’t finish.

  His strong, warm hands on my shoulders offered reassurance. “Release your shame, and it shall release you. It is the only thing standing in the way of your happiness. And mine.”

  But in this Erik was wrong. It wasn’t my shame that kept us apart. It was fear. Although I was apprehensive about the actual act of sex, it was as nothing to my fear of his repugnance. What if my body disgusted him? What if I aroused his charity, but not his ardor? What if his heart really yearned for Christine? I was drowning in a tumultuous sea of what-ifs.

  “Why are you trembling, chérie? Are you afraid I will hurt you?”

  “No.”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  I steeled my face, staving off the tears I knew would come. “Of losing you.”

  He turned me around to face him. “Oh, chérie. How can you lose me? Do you not trust my love for you?”

  I couldn’t help it; I felt heavier than I ever had before. Why hadn’t I listened to my Grand-mère? Why hadn’t I taken care not to eat so much? The millions of taunts I had heard throughout my life assaulted me all at once, and I buckled under the weight of them.

  “Yes, but I am gross and misshapen. I cannot expect such sacrifice from you.”

  I heard him laugh. “Sacrifice? There is no such thing between us. Your figure, my face – we are both Nature’s fools. Join with me, chérie, and our love shall avenge us against the evil that made us outcasts.”

  I let his words wash over me. I so wanted to believe him. But what we had built thus far together was too precious to jeopardize
. Even if there was a chance of greater happiness with Erik, I would not take it. I would rather live in a purgatory of what we had right now than risk a hell without him.

  “Marry me,” he said.

  Though it did nothing to solve my dilemma, marrying Erik was the natural response to my heart’s affection. I said yes.

  In characteristic fashion, Erik made all the arrangements that very hour. Later that night, we took a carriage ride to a house in a fashionable district, where we were married by a magistrate at three o’clock in the morning. I finally got to see Paris by night, but only briefly; we were back at the opera long before the sun came up.

  Some may find scandalous the haste and simplicity of our wedding, but I do not. The truth be told, I did not often indulge in fantasies about my wedding as most girls do. I did not expect I should ever be married, so I had no expectations to disappoint.

  Now that it was done, however, I was thrilled. Not merely to be a bride, as most women want; thrilled to be his bride. But looming over my happiness was the ever-present fear of the wedding night. The fact that Erik was now my husband only increased what I stood to lose.

  He led me to his bedroom. He was being very gentle, seducing me with words and soft kisses. But I was preoccupied with remembering each kiss, each whisper, each touch of his hand, as though it would be the last. It was maddening to prolong the inevitable, but I was desperate to enjoy what little happiness remained.

  When his fingers tried to unhook my bodice, a cold dread smothered me. “Wait,” I breathed, frantic for a way out. “Before we go on, grant me one concession, I pray you.”

  I looked about the room. There was an antimacassar draped across the back of the chair in his bedroom, and I took the fabric and rolled it up. I went to Erik, and raised the blindfold to his eyes.

  As I formed the knot behind his head, he stopped me.

  “This will not do,” he said, unfastening the blindfold and discarding it on the floor.

  “It is the only price I ask,” I protested.

  “Yes,” he said ruefully, “but it is not the only debt owed.”

  Amazed, I watched as he reached up behind his head, and tugged on the cord that held his mask in place. The ties fell on either side of the mask, but he held it firmly against his face with both hands.

  He stood there, his breathing growing more erratic, unable to release it. He did not look at me, but I could see that his courage was failing him. I reached out and gently put my fingertips on both of his trembling hands.

  Slowly, the mask fell away.

  My heart nearly broke with pity.

  Where there should have been skin, a gnarled, warped membrane stretched over his face, like the decayed flesh on a person long dead. Its unnatural colors of gray, yellow and pink bled together, like a watercolor painting left out in the rain. Instead of eyebrows, he had bony protrusions like the hoods over a snake’s eyes. And no nose. He had no nose.

  Poor, poor Erik. I could only imagine the kinds of taunts he endured when he was nothing but a helpless child. No one should be subjected to live with that abortion of flesh for a face. What accident of nature or man could have inflicted such suffering? Whatever it was, it spewed its fiery rage at Erik’s face, leaving him with only his beautiful eyes and perfect mouth to show that he was ever human.

  Now I understood. No one who saw him could help being horrified.

  Except me.

  I knew him too well to fear him, loved him too much to cringe in disgust. Instinctively, I reached out my hand to one distorted cheek, unconsciously wanting to smooth away the disfigurement. His head jerked back, as terrified of the touch as an ill-treated dog.

  “It’s all right,” I cooed, speaking to the frightened cur in him. Reluctantly, he stood his ground. My hand neared, and he began to shake, his breaths coming in long, labored draws, as though he was bracing for impending torture. His eyes closed against me.

  Softly, my hand touched it.

  And the man widely feared as the Phantom of the Opera disintegrated in tears.

  His legs gave way, and he fell onto the bed, sobs wracking his body. “You touched me,” he repeated, as though trying to convince himself that it happened. Impulsively, he kissed the palm of my hand, a gesture that endeared him to me a hundredfold.

  I lifted his chin, forcing him to look at me. I gazed into his face. I took my time, wanting him to see me do it, and be aware that I could see every inch of the face that he had hidden all his life. His sobs quieted. I brought my face down to an inch from his, turned his head, and placed a long, tender kiss on the vulnerable, naked flesh.

  “Erik,” I whispered. “My Erik.”

  He gave me a look of such monumental gratitude that tears sprang to my eyes. How wonderfully expressive was his face. The mask had been inscrutable, frozen in a forbidding reproach. But his true face was nothing like that. It was a prince’s face, under the barest veneer of beast. It was there, beneath the surface, like the promise of spring underneath a thinning carpet of snow. And I saw it, because I chose to see it.

  “I prefer you thus,” I said. “Will you do something for me, Erik?”

  He looked up at me, as if I was a goddess demanding a gesture of veneration. “Anything you ask.”

  I picked up the mask that had fallen to the bed. “Destroy this.”

  He stood up, staring at the mask in his hand. An expression of disgust flashed across his face. He returned his gaze to me, and without looking back, flung the porcelain thing across the room, the shattered pieces tinkling on the flagstones.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “For what?”

  His hand caressed my face. “For showing me the degree and measure of your love. And for bestowing that love on me.”

  I smiled up at him, and we kissed. What a pleasurable sensation it was, as if I was kissing him for the first time. He felt it, too, because I heard him utter a sound of such profound happiness that it made my heart quiver in response. We basked in the warmth of that moment for a long time. I almost wished that I could die then, so that I could carry that exhilaration with me into eternity.

  But we both knew that my unmasking would be next, and the realization of impending pain – for that is what it was – stole my breath away.

  He caressed my hair, as my nervous fingers fumbled with the hooks and eyes at my bodice. I took a tortured breath and started again. As my dress began to loosen, I turned in the opposite direction. After what seemed an eternity, each tiny fastener was unclasped.

  “Turn around.”

  His breath was hot on my neck, and it kindled strange sensations in me. If I hadn’t been so frightened of obeying him, I would have been seduced by the deliciously husky way he breathed these words.

  I did as he asked. He was so near, every inch of him touched some part of me. How could he stand to be so close to me, when so many men had avoided my touch?

  His face towered above mine, but it was bent toward me as if his face were some hungry flower turning toward the light of my sun. His hands pushed the fabric over my shoulders, and the dress shuffled off me. My hands crossed awkwardly in front of me. Only my corset and chemise remained.

  The back of his fingers caressed the exposed part of my chest, back and forth, sending shivers of pleasure down my spine. His fingers twined around the silken cord of my corset, and pulled downwards along the contour of my arm.

  As the ties of my corset unraveled, my breathing grew more labored instead of easier. How shall I ever endure this? Any minute now he would see the mistake he was making. My true figure would emerge, and he would see I was not like other females. My heavy breasts would plummet to the folds of my waist. My wide hips would overhang my gelatinous thighs. My skin, scarred by stretching in some places, dimpled in others, formed one continuous blemish over my entire body.

  The unlaced corset slid to the floor, and I froze, unable to breathe. Only my shift covered me now, my last vestige of modesty, and I hoped against reason that the sheer material concealed
my ugly nudity. Suddenly the sparse candles in the dark room felt like search lights, seeking out my every flaw and serving them up to his eyes.

  He paused then, and I dreaded what I felt sure would happen: he would politely excuse himself, and walk away respectfully to let me collect my clothes and what little was left of my dignity.

  He took a step back. I felt a tear rush to my eye.

  His hand gathered the fabric at my knees. I stopped it.

  “No,” I said, a sob escaping my lips.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he whispered.

  I insisted. “No further. Please.”

  His tone was gentle, but firm. “I will not settle for anything less than all of you. My love demands it. My love deserves it.”

  He raised the gown slowly over my head, and let it whisper to the floor. My eyes followed it there. I couldn’t bear to look at his face, didn’t want to see the revulsion that would be certain to snatch away whatever regard he had for me.

  Tears blurred my gaze, which remained fixed on the bundle of muslin on the floor. “How can you stand to look at me?”

  He put his hands on either side of my face, forcing me to look at him. “I love you, chérie. Everything about you. Because it has made you who you are. Can’t you see? The shape of your body has dictated the shape of your heart. And that heart is what has made you uniquely beautiful. I must be the most fortunate man alive if only I have the eyes to see that beauty. And that you have unmasked it to me – only me – makes me love you all the more.” He kissed me then, intensely, as if to drive home his point.

  For the first time in my life, my body was no longer the thing I despised, the bane of my existence, the millstone around my neck, my curse. I felt free to accept it, embrace it, as that which sculpted the person I became. Someone was in love with who I was, and I owed that, at least in part, to what I had called my deformity. Erik loved me not in spite of my flaws, but because of them. My shame vanished.

  We dropped to the bed, and continued our explorations of each other as newly born creatures. As he entangled me with his kisses, I stroked his hair, marveling at the silken texture of it as it glided between my fingers. The sensation of his fully clothed body as it moved over mine filled me with wanton pleasure. I let my hands travel over the expanse of his shoulders, the curve of his back, the crest of his derriere.