Scripted In Love’s Scars
A Phantom of the Opera Novel
Michelle Rodriguez
Copyright © 2015 Michelle Rodriguez
Cover Design © 2015 Jessica Elizabeth Schwartz
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1507645732
ISBN-13: 978-1507645734
DEDICATION
To Dr. Jan Bickel for instilling in me a love for music and singing that is poured into every Phantom story I write. You are my teacher, my mentor, and an absolute inspiration in all that I do. I would not be the person I am today without you in my life. Thank you!
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A special thank you to Jessica Elizabeth Schwartz for the stunning cover. This was the first shoot where I got to see you work and watch you be inspired, and the finished product is truly gorgeous. This cover will always hold a special place in my heart, and every time I pass the place where it was taken, I will think of hot days in June, a literary tea party, and getting yelled at by a museum worker. Oh, such memories!
And thank you to Erin Marie Brooks and Dan Moran. I feel so lucky to have met you both and to have seen you model and become the characters. You are both amazing!
Chapter One
Erik~
In all my years as a reluctant and unaccepted member of the human race, I’ve come to learn that life is actually a stagnant existence. We do not change, per se. The world changes. It evolves and shifts, and unless we follow suit and go along with the tide, we remain the same boring soul, perhaps a little more cynical for wear, but certainly not a spirit in motion, pulled along life’s well-cut route. To change and grow, we must want to. We must be willing to be secondary in importance to the flow of the universe around us. I have never been a person to live beneath anyone’s laws and physics, even God’s. No, I make my destiny; I do not let destiny make me.
As such, when the world spit at me and constantly tried to beat me down at every turn, I rose up from the ashes like the eternal Phoenix and became something new, something untouchable but equally unchangeable. I severed my ties to the world and chose to stay the same.
Most people cannot do that. As integral members of earth’s shifting patterns, they have no choice but to deal with its mistakes and foibles and Fate’s backhanded swing. Connections are weaknesses. Fall in love, tie a heart, and at some point, life will alter without your permission. Either a child will be thrown into the picture, and two will become three; perhaps a pleasant change, but a change just the same. Or maybe instead Fate will decide it hates you and take your love without consideration. Death, scandal, altered heartbeats. Pick a path. Every one means change, for good or for bad.
But…slice ties, abandon the world’s telling trails and you control your own existence. And life unavoidably plays by your rules. It stays unaltered, fixed, …but inevitably, it will seem stale. How could it not? To relive the repetitive routine day to day without hope for some undetermined factor to make a difference. I cannot grow as a person without other people, without a world evolving and encouraging me along the path of enlightenment.
What is a worse existence? One full of derision and abhorrence, pain, intolerance, and cruelty, but moving in some way? Or one that holds suspended in place, follows its custom-made pattern every single day without fail and without hope for modification?
Years ago, I decided the first choice as my answer and buried myself for my persecutors. Death without dying. But as time spun mercilessly onward and healed internal scars when external were permanently molded, I started to wonder if I’d made the right decision.
Cut off from the world.
At first, it was an easy path. I liked being alone, and since solitude was achieved by my own doing, I had control in how I spent my time and how I embraced the silence. I could return to the world at least to catch glimpses of day or stars if I wanted; I chose not to. It was simple.
Years in the molded niche I’d constructed for myself, and I didn’t change, didn’t grow. Instead, I started to shut down. Emotions turned off and faded into the deepest recesses of a heart, but when the majority learned in my years had been the ugly and vicious sort, that was no loss.
Apathy overcame the surface, and I never fought its possession. I wanted to be apathetic. It made existing tolerable. I believed I’d stay in that blank haze until my eventual death. And why not? What did I have worth existing for?
The music… That was the only detail of the world I knew I’d mourn when I was fully dead and in the crypt. I still felt in music’s sphere. But…music did not have a cruel tongue full of violent remarks and stinging attacks. Music had no free will as mankind did, and therefore could not forsake me. It was the only thing I considered a friend, but what a hollow relationship! I’d die someday, and music wouldn’t mourn my loss as I’d mourn if it abandoned me instead.
No friend, no foe, no attachments to a life not even worth living. I might as well have been the corpse I’d so often been called. To mankind, corpse was a derogatory insult; to me, after years living the equivalent of a corpse’s future, I found it a new aspiration. Be a corpse, but a real one this time. Corpses had the advantage of having no thoughts. I was eager for the day my brain would be as turned off as my heart.
But…well, sometimes even the best-laid plans are interrupted, and Fate finds a way to sneak in and change things against our wishes. Such was my case.
For years, I had taken up the role of Opera Ghost, a further push toward the future I wanted where ghost would be an applicable title. Initially, I had created the part for myself because I needed a means to politely get my opinions heard.
In theory, severing oneself from the world is doable. In theory, I repeat, because if you have foolishly chosen the pits of an opera house for your secluded sanctuary, unless deafness is also in the cards, life worms its way inside. It wasn’t much with so many floors in between, but I enjoyed the resonant echoes that trickled their way through the catacombs. When indoors, they were minimal, but music had a siren’s call straight to my soul and hypnotized my better sense, drawing me out of my grave to be its eager audience.
Yes, music, but what I heard in that opera house was not music. It was a far cry from it. Too many egos and not enough talent to back them up.
Rejecting the living world should have meant that I kept my distance, but this felt like a sacrilege to the arts. The managers of the opera were bumbling fools with no taste or ability to do more than cut paychecks. They put their opinions on a scale contingent with the monetary value attached. La Carlotta, famous name, diva. Forget the fact that she sang like a cat being strangled! She was given any role she wanted on reputation alone. It sickened me. She drew crowds because she was known for her attitude and arrogance. Her latest tantrums were leaked through the media outlets, and people came to see if she would sing, if she had gotten her way as she always inevitably did. And then they left the opera without the glory of the music in their ears, but with stories of seeing the great La Carlotta. Not hearing because how could one associate her voice with the essence of what opera was supposed to be?
I had to do something. Opera Ghost seemed an ideal manner in which to play both sides of the world. A ghost need not interact with the living beyond what it wanted. And I had tactics to make myself a viable threat so as not to be dismissed: notes, accidents that looked like child’s play compared to the tricks in my past, the occasional disappearance of a useless stagehand, although only ones truly deserving of such a fate. Play God. That was my mantra. Deem who lived or died and which commands must be followed. My role stole my growing ennui, and I felt I’d mastered the point between living in the world and controlling it.
Now there was one added activity I threw into my reperto
ire, and it ended up being the beginning of my inevitable downfall. I believed the best means to keep my pretense alive and menacing was to occasionally make an appearance. Ghosts materialized at times, didn’t they? It added the terror factor, and who better to carry my doctrine of fear than the gullible little girls of the corps de ballet? Those girls built my entire empire with their exaggerated tales. They were my unknowing allies and fans in our bizarre relationship because for as scared as they genuinely were, they propagated the rumors. Of course that also meant they blamed everything on their so-called ghost, but I took the bad with the good in this case.
Some of the ignorant stagehand boys were hopelessly enamored with the ballerinas and often snuck into their dressing room to claim un-given tokens as prizes. Missing ribbons was a rampant sin in the entire department. But fine. Blame the Opera Ghost. Make me your lusting, infatuated lover. I didn’t care about the petty thievery, and the stories spun so rapidly about the company that if anything, it made me what I’d never in my existence been: a Don Juan lothario. It gave my legend a dangerously seductive edge that it wouldn’t have otherwise had.
As I said, my interactions were as the ghost. From time to time, I would ‘appear’ to one of the ballerinas, finding one alone so as not to cause an uproar and doing no more than popping out of shadows. It was little effort on my part. Seeing a masked man made me a ghost because what mortal man would strut about in a mask? They made my image into the Opera Ghost and fabricated story after story of what lay beneath the mask. The consensus was a horror; it was the one detail they ever got right.
I played well with them, but they took my little game and wanted control. Foolish children! It became a new pastime among the tutus to dare each other into the lower cellars. Who could linger the longest in the ghost’s domain? Who would travel to the lowest cellar? Who would stand in the center of the deepest floor and call the ghost three times? Idiotic, childish nonsense. Only occasionally did I indulge them, merely as a way to capitalize on my title.
The ballet mistress’ young daughter was my favorite target. She was so easy to frighten; I barely had to do more than whisper her name, and she’d scream in this blessed high pitch that resounded through the entire opera house. She was unwittingly my greatest instigator and perpetrator of my existence, and as the daughter of the head mistress, she had more clout and believability than the other ballet rats. When she ran to the management with tears in her big, green eyes, gushing over the ghost, they listened. What an asset for me! My demands were met without argument because I scared a bunch of highly anxious, fanatic, hysterical little girls!
My reign went undisturbed from this pattern for a few blissful years. Life was my subservient slave. I was in complete control, and even if I’d shut down internally and put myself on a pedestal above the world, I let my love for the music draw me down from time to time, aiding it along and not letting it be squashed and demoralized the way I had once been by the world. As much as I could.
There were certain things I could not touch. I abhorred La Carlotta, but no one else in the company could fill her shoes, and the ledgers called for a diva. Without her, the opera would have suffered, so though I had to keep her on, I had her working by my rules. I kept her tantrums under control because she wasn’t allowed to have them. I gave the management their excuse to leash her. The Ghost commanded this or that, and though she argued and insulted in vibrant Italian, she had no option but to obey. I loved it. This proved I was a god. Omnipotent, all-powerful. Ghosts had flaws because even dead, they had connections to the living. I had none and therefore saw myself as invincible.
The largest egos fall the hardest and most violent.
Fate backhanded me and tossed me from my throne one unfortunate day with one choice and one action. One. And my world shattered.
I woke up that destined day knowing it was the start of rehearsals for the new production. I needed leverage to be certain my opinions were heard loud and clear. As far as I was concerned, the management worked for me, but threats and encouragement were a part of the job and my unbreakable persona. In the haste of the last show’s opening, I’d sat back and observed their triumph due to my guidance. There was little need for a ghost’s antics during a performance week. Now I had to re-establish my hold. An appearance was necessary, and as usual, the ballerinas were my top choice victims.
A new show meant new recruits. Fresh blood added in, new faces, new means to enhance my reputation and fame. It had become a tradition among the ballerinas to induct new members of their tulle brigade by subjecting them to a good scare. They favored forcing the new girls to take turns wandering the cellars and taunting the Opera Ghost to rise. A juvenile manner of promoting camaraderie and proving self-worth if you asked me, and I usually did not play along. I didn’t have to. The idea of ghosts alone left the new recruits a step from hysteria and frightening themselves, convinced they heard something, saw something, were touched on a shoulder or felt a cold breeze along their skin. All ridiculous nonsense when I kept nowhere near this immature display. New ballerinas were too susceptible to gullibility and peer pressure; why would I bother instigating it onward?
Today, however, choices were minimal, and I thought a quick appearance to a new ballet rat would at least stir the pot until I could track down the young Giry alone and truly start the inferno blazing.
Oh, this would be too easy! I barely had to lift a finger. The girls would throw the new ballerina into the first cellar and hold the door closed for a two-minute count. …It was cruel in the way children were mean to one another. To a man who’d been on the opposite side of real torture, it was further proof of immaturity.
As I lingered in the first cellar impatient for the induction to begin, I concluded that I’d wait until the last girl so as to achieve a deceptive level of comfort. Let the others make up their stories of intangible touches and calls, nothing to arouse too much panic. The last girl was my target. I’d make it look like a magical materialization with a lantern she’d never glimpse. No, this glow had to look otherworldly and would illuminate the mask first and foremost; who needed a genuine weapon when a manmade mask caused more trauma than anything?
As I readied myself for my grand entrance, I could already hear the screams I was about to cause. The idea alone swelled a peculiar anticipation. I never liked communicating with the world on their level, but like this, as the superior role of ghost, it was a thrill. To cause fear meant power. I had it; I adored it. Here was proof that I would never be a fragile, fallible mortal again. Why would I ever put myself on their plane when it was so much better to be a god?
I knew from a glimpse at the ballet roster that there were three new tutus in the bunch. And so I waited.
One, and she spent the whole time clawing at the door to get back out, hyperventilating with no reason whatsoever. Two, and she was a bit more composed until a spider climbed up her ankle. Then she screamed to the high heavens and claimed the ghost tickled her. As if I would ever touch one of the little brats! I took it as an insult.
Finally, three, and she was heaved in with a sound of a slammed door and the giggles beyond to accompany her entrance. I was too busy preparing my trick to give her much more than a passing glance, enough to make out the silhouette of another tulle skirt in the dark. Perfect, just what I was after.
In the blackness, the girl would see nothing, not until I ignited the light, and I was determined to play this exactly as I saw it in my head. Her gasped breaths echoed about the stone cellar walls. Scared already. This was going to be simple. A quick pop in and out, and she’d have stories to cry over with the other rats for the rest of the new production.
In all my extensive planning for this exact moment, I failed. I realized that only after the fact. I performed it with a hardened heart, playing my role as I had for years. What hadn’t been anticipated, what had never been even a consideration was that a factor outside of myself would sway my stable core. She was that factor. Unexpected, unplanned for, and with a power all he
r own, one she did not realize she possessed. It was strong enough to rip a god from his podium and expose his mortal heart. Damn her…
I struck my lantern light, knowing its gradual burn would make it seem as if I slowly faded into view, and then I simply stared and waited for her to turn and regard the growing glow. The hint of a smirk was on my lips. Screams, I expected: horror, terror, all extrinsic and beyond my being, none of it touching me. What I got was only internal, and I was suddenly the scared one between us.
I saw dark curls knotted back in a pink ribbon, a tiny build, slender and lithe with willowy limbs. She turned, and my world fell apart.
I was the one who gasped; I was the one terrified and horror-stricken…because I felt the full weight of emotions I’d spent years without strike me to my core. Like an earthquake that trembled along its fault line, it cracked my stone shield irreparably, making fractures that raced out to its edge and shattered protection. I felt exposed and vulnerable even in my mask because the figurative armor I’d worn about my heart was suddenly gone, and she was to blame.
The girl lost a gasp that echoed mine, blue eyes widening to fill the frames of dark lashes, and porcelain, pale skin blanched. My first thought was why if I bore my mask and had not shown my face. Why was I receiving such a response? Then sense caught up and reminded me with a strike to my dazed mind that I was the ghost. Of course I’d get this response; I wanted this response, didn’t I? But…where were the screams or tears? I got nothing but a continued stare, as we both seemed to respond with the same unqualified surprise to each other’s existence. I didn’t understand and had the strange urge to ask her if she did.
“Ten more seconds, Christine,” came a shout from the opposite side of a closed door, and the countdown began. I knew I had to leave before the other rats came to fish her out, but it took another long second before I could tear my gaze away. It felt ensnared upon her little, pink shape, scrutinizing and memorizing and letting her overwhelm me because it felt so wonderful.
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