She gave me everything, no walls or constrained heartbeats. She was the Christine I’d always known she’d be since the first melody she’d ever sung for me. Confident prima donna, gleaming from the inside out with a charisma not every singer possessed, alive and alight and extraordinarily beautiful in her pure essence. I adored her to the deepest recesses of my being, but when declarations tickled the tip of my tongue and longed to meet air, I bit them back and refused to let them fly the space between us. No, …she had a fiancé to consider, and I had a heart full of scars.
As our precious time drew to its inevitable end, I mourned her loss even as she stood before me, terrified of the first minute I would have to breathe without her. But she was the one to prolong when I dreaded letting go.
“Will you play for me, ange?” she softly pleaded, and I felt tears collect in my back of my throat at that longed-for request.
I never hesitated, leaping heart-first into a sonata that spanned the length of the keys and rode around my body in its circumference. I played and watched the music envelop and embrace her as my arms ached to. How often did it get to love for me? And when she closed her eyes and shivered with a tinge of a smile, I was in heaven.
This was half a dream because I knew eventually, we’d have to wake up, and what then? When I was unsure what had sparked this flame into existence, I was afraid to question and lose every second. So I simply played as if we’d fallen back through time’s line and were a year and a half in the past where Vicomtes had no faces, only titles and strangers, where we’d barely hurt each other beyond loving too fiercely.
And just like those past pleasures, she tentatively approached my piano bench. Confidence had evaporated, prima donna deflated and put away for her next showing, and the girl at my side was my Christine, blushes and innocence, uncertain to bear her heart so open, pinned to her bodice and exposed for the world to see.
This was what I‘d spent countless hours in the shah’s prison imagining, and as the scene pulsed with life, I prayed I wasn’t lost in imagination again. Maybe all this was a fantasy, and in reality, my tangible body stood at the back of the theatre, envisioning and mourning what was forever gone.
But she rested small palms upon my shoulders, and the breath fled my lungs as if I’d endured a punch to the gut, dropping my poised posture to a slouch. Oh, she had such power in those tiny hands! Bending reality into an arc and my will with it. One touch, her palms delicately set with never a hint of pressure, and I felt crushed by sensation’s wave. It swallowed me whole in its devouring bite.
I never ceased pounding my fingers to the ivory keys, so rapacious that the joints ached, and the piano’s belly vibrated with the ferocity. It was a song of need and longing, of the desperation I suffered to have her. …Why couldn’t I have her? Just this for always?
Her fingertips curled within my jacket material, a determined grip from a girl that I knew swayed with an unstable core. It surprised me, but not as much as what followed. One hand relaxed; I felt it ease out of material and lighten upon my shoulder. I never stopped my melody, not even when that hand set to my mask and deftly removed its barrier as if it meant nothing at all.
My face was exposed, and though I felt her gaze roam its ugliness, I never looked. I didn’t want to destroy when I could pretend, and in my spinning slideshow, there was no disgust or hesitation. …I liked that version better.
But she released a breath in a soft sigh as if she were content to see my hideous features, and before I could collect a courage I wasn’t sure I possessed, she leaned over my shoulder and pressed her smooth cheek to my damaged one.
“Oh God…,” I whimpered and shuddered the length of my spine as my fingers attacked a piano’s keys in compensation for the need that plundered my unprepared body. And she was so steady! I couldn’t understand when she’d grown such conviction. My little Christine had been a shy creature, a violet one wrong step from being trampled by the vehemence in my heart. Now…I was the weakened, timid one between us, a mass of shaking limbs and fear that gnawed my insides. She was so soft, so warm, and to feel skin against my deformity and know she’d put it there of her own free will… Those condemning tears trickled down my cheeks, wetting hers by default.
“Erik,” she whispered gently when she felt it, and her arms entwined about my neck as she hugged her bent body to my back, flush to my concave spine, keeping me in one piece with her strength as anchor.
I shook my head, but the motion nuzzled my cheek against hers and smeared my tears between our flesh. “No, no,” I moaned, and my body quaked with the violence of a sob. “No, stop. Please, God stop! What are you doing, Christine?”
Playing would have been a welcome diversion, but my hands trembled too harsh and gave wrong notes and dissonance that bellowed its cacophony and made me cringe. I hated to play like a novice; I was better than that. Emotion should exist through the music and the body, not become so jarring that it made music something suddenly unappealing.
I broke free of her loosened hold and darted a safe distance, glaring with my naked face to utter threats I felt valid. Our last battles had put her in firing position, and I’d allowed her to make anger mean something. This time I had no regret to heave it right back.
Fisting taut fingers before me, I pressed my face against my sleeves and swiped tears away, determined that I’d shed no more for her.
“What are you hoping to accomplish?” I demanded in a growl. “Last I was aware, we were in opposite corners with no hope of crossing the abyss, and now…tonight… What is this, Christine? Are you seeking only to unravel me? If my love is your punishment, is this to be mine? An existence where you use my heart against me in your revenge? You know exactly how to wind me about your little fingers; you know every weakness in my armor and how to poke through and spear the flesh within. Is that your intent?”
She looked so hurt that I almost recanted my harshness and pleaded forgiveness. But tears overflowed from the corners of her blue eyes, and she begged in a rush, “Condemn me! Please, Erik, I deserve your hatred! What I’ve done…”
“Christine… I don’t understand.”
Before I could pursue explanations, she dove toward me and hugged her little body to mine, and I was so shocked that I didn’t hold her back. My arms still bore fists as their punctuation, extended in mid-air at my sides and unable to flex and break. If they shattered their whole to five separate fingers, I worried my heart would do the same, come apart to shards and imbed in my skin. Cut me, bruise me, I’d been damaged and exiled, refuted and reviled, a man un-allowed to live his life. I’d endured every violence the world had to offer, but here was the point that would equal my demise. Christine, holding me with fingers fisted in my jacket and her tear-stained face against my sternum, …embracing me as if it were all she wanted.
“I don’t hate you,” she cried, rubbing her nose against my bones and engraving its shape. “I’ve never hated you. I thought you left me so easily, as if my heart meant nothing to you. You took away my choice to love you or say goodbye, and I was destroyed. I couldn’t reason what I’d done so terrible to convince you to go and abandon me. And I hoped and prayed like a gullible child for you to come back.” Her voice cracked with her frantic words, and in the exhalation of a sob, she cried, “How could I have known that you couldn’t come back?”
Couldn’t. That word spoke it all, and with a sharp intake of air, I caught her shoulders and forced her away. I looked in her tear-filled eyes, and I knew what I saw now. How could I have not deciphered it clearly before? Sympathy, pity, compassion. They were not my usual spread of emotions to behold. That was my excuse for my failure.
“Of course,” I sarcastically retorted. “Pity the freak. Humor his desires because he’s endured more pain than the rest of the world will ever know. Dear God, I am such a fool! And your good heart is eager to appease and qualify your regrets, to wipe guilt out of existence! This is exactly why I wasn’t inclined to share my traumas with you! They are mine to carry alone
because I know how to deal with their reverberation. But you are naïve to such things. You hear and think your compassion will change the world and mend every horror you cannot fathom.” Gathering rage in a tight ball, I heaved it at her. “You weren’t to know without my permission! Who told you? …Or do I already know? The daroga is a meddling bastard!”
She flinched at my vile curse but stood her ground. “You should have told me! All this time, I thought you ran away to bruise my heart as viciously as I’d bruised yours. And instead you were…beaten.” The word imploded with a sob that seemed rooted to her core.
I felt my skin flush red. Anger, humiliation. I was a man meant to be revered. I’d carved that niche for myself in the title of Opera Ghost. But this travesty dropped me below the level of humanity, a creature whose claim to emotion was molded in commiseration.
With a roar from the deepest well of my pain, I shouted at her, “I want love! Love, Christine! Not this pathetic offering of empathy and futile attempts at understanding. You can’t understand! Watch the hero fall; watch him drop into the pit and be ripped to shreds by their clawed talons! Ah, your heart aches. Any human being with a sense of morality would bear an aching heart because violence is just that horrendous and repugnant. It is a commonly shared reaction of gut instinct and a compassionate heart. I was beaten!” I yelled the crime and heard it echo the theatre; it was as ugly as music was beautiful. The letters came back in their resonation, and it felt as if I heard as well as said and lived it again, so I added more abominations, each to cover the last. “I was whipped until I bled, burned through each layer of skin, marked and scarred until my body was as much a revolting abomination as my disfigured face. I was beaten into submission like a worthless animal, and I endured it all because of you! I anticipated every pain and every brutality done to me because each put me closer to your heart. One more whipping, another crime atoned for, another inkling of forgiveness, and if God cleansed my soul, if He made me pure again, then I was sure I could have you as my blessing.”
Aggression faded into each sentence, and to watch her body shake with sobs, her eyes full of horror that had nothing to do with my face, I yearned to ask why. Humanity was vindictive and malicious; I’d thought she’d already learned that.
Her shaking arms lifted with rigid muscles as she buried her sobs against her forearms. Perhaps she didn’t want me to realize how violent her cries were, but her entire torso convulsed with their power, so I dubbed her attempt for naught.
Crying…for something over and done. Yes, it was brutal. I was depreciating how much I’d survived, but…well, I wanted to forget just as much. I wasn’t going to tell her that the pictures still haunted me, the pain that returned in tingles along my skin as if my body couldn’t fully pretend as I wished. No, …it still expected more pain to come. But whenever the horror peeked out, I forced thoughts to this place, to lessons upon the stage with Christine smiling at me, and I found something better. I’d been horror’s inflictor and then its victim, and I preferred to think I was enlightened and knew that something better could come from pain.
“Christine,” I said, softer and yet unable to conceal my desolation, “I realize it was ridiculous to wish such things. You are not mine, but it was the hope you could be that got me through. Will you condemn me for it? It was a harmless endeavor. For every time I’ve considered taking and making my desire all that matters, I can’t. I love you too much for such dramatics. Let it exist now as the futile prayer that played on my lips during my imprisonment, and nothing more. You are not mine,” I repeated and shook my head as I turned from her crying shape and sought my mask. It had fallen from her fingers, useless then, imperative now, and I bent to retrieve it and stared bitterly at its stark formation. How I hated the man it made me! I’d let it be my costume too long, and what was I without it?
“And what now?” Her question was coldly demanded as her arms dropped to hold her trembling body. “Will you leave me again?”
I heaved a breath as I replaced my mask, keeping my back to her until the persona was back in place. “I never should have returned. I should have known better. …I am too damaged even for the beauty music provides. I’d hoped to do good in some way, to absolve every abhorrent memory I wear written on my body and create something exquisite instead. The music…” I said it even as my eyes trailed her features. She was my something exquisite, but I couldn’t have her. Music fell short in that regard.
“And that will be all?” she demanded, shaking a defiant head. “You will leave me again without a goodbye and vanish from my life?”
“You have a fiancé to tend to you,” I reminded. “I am sure he will be accommodating.”
“No, …no,” she whispered. A handful of timid steps crossed the gap between us, and I didn’t scurry away as sense argued I should. She quivered and hesitated, searching my masked face, but her small hands lifted. I watched with unuttered intrigue, curious to her intentions as her palms fitted to my cheeks, one to skin, one to mask, her joints fluttering in their intrepid pulsations.
So near that her eyes burned as they dove into mine, and with tears wavering her voice, she spoke everything I was terrified to hear. “You were beaten,” again, a crack over that word, “and you were tortured, and the whole time, I was here, loving you…”
Chapter Eighteen
Christine~
“You were beaten,” my voice broke over that horrible word, “and you were tortured, and the whole time, I was here, loving you…”
It was a liberation to say the words and drive them into his doubting mind with a stare that shone from my very soul.
“Love, Christine…,” he muttered, the desire to believe prominent and beaming so powerful that I had to allow my gaze to wander the masked face I clasped between my shaking hands instead of soul-stealing eyes. “I returned seeking love and found that it had been given to another man.”
“I don’t love Raoul.” I hated even bringing up his name and forming its letters when the air felt sacred in this place, the spot I’d fallen in love with an angel.
My attention was riveted to his exposed bottom lip, and when it moved with spoken words, I was hypnotized on its changing shapes. For all his flaws, that detail was perfection.
“No? But you expect me to accept that you love this damaged carcass instead?” he queried and shook his head against my hands. His tears wet my fingers, and I longed to kiss them away… “I was ignorant to come to you and expect what I have left to be enough… What good is a saved soul in an ugly vessel? My face is a burden, but my body…it is a degradation. I’d sought to forget how deep the scars ran. I could play for you as I just did and make you beauty instead.
“…There were no pianos in that prison, no music, nothing but memory, and so often I’d devise compositions in my head for you, sing them in my sleep. They were compensation for the things I was losing in that hell. I’d return with a million more scars, but I thought if I gave you music and beauty through its sphere, it would suffice. I considered myself lucky,” he spat the word, “that the shah never touched my hands. He did not break fingers when ribs seemed a more integral hit. …I never cared about ribs; what good could they do me? But my hands were important for you, and that meant something at the time. Now…I denounce those saving thoughts and call them ridiculous. You have someone else to love you who can give you the physical perfection I never could. Even without new scars, my face was always a horror. You have better than that as yours now.”
I listened in tears and shook my head at every point I thought wrong, and when he finished, I vowed in utter urgency, “But I want the horror. Have I not proven that your face doesn’t matter? My God, Erik, I took off your mask but moments ago and was relieved to find its scars unchanged. I was terrified that…they’d hurt your face as well.”
“Only once,” he admitted. “That’s cheating in the realm of torture, and the shah prefers to make new marks, ones he can call his and not God’s.”
“Show me,” I bid and knew
how blatantly my heart was in my eyes as I reached for his mask again. “Don’t hide, Erik,” I begged as I drew it free and watched in fascination as his scars filled my view. “Please, not from me. I may have built invisible walls to my heart, but you use the mask as a tangible one, and I can’t bear that anymore.” My eyes traced his face as I let the mask fall from my fingers a second time, and in soft whispers, I beseeched, “Show me where he hurt your face.”
He was trembling before me, and the hand that lifted was racked in violent tremors as he brought it to the base of an exposed eye socket. I noted that he never touched his own face, as if he couldn’t bear to endure any feeling in that tender space. I was not as easily deterred, and as he lowered that hand again with a defiant denial in his shaking head, I brought my own fingers to the place and did not obey.
“I won’t hurt you,” I vowed, seeing him flinch before I ever even grazed a caress. “I promise, there is no pain in my hands.”
“Yes, there is. You can destroy me with those hands,” he insisted, but I was desperate to prove that wasn’t my only talent. My quivering fingers brushed delicately along the defined sculpture of bone about his green eye, and he shuddered and moaned at first contact. “Oh God,” he breathed, “your touch burns.”
I would have worried the burn was atop the skin instead of below, but he closed his eyes and arched toward my fingers, encouraging more with a soft whimper that tingled my ears. Unable to help myself, I made a firmer touch, full pads of fingers outlining the cavernous shape and studying his reactions with my hesitations piquing. “Is this all right? May I touch you this way, Erik?”
A cry passed his misshapen lips from merely my words before he collected thoughts and muttered, “Don’t stop please, Christine. No one…has ever touched me gently before.”
His admission made my heart ache in my chest, and with a rush of tears, I obeyed impulse and leaned close to press my mouth to the spot instead. He whimpered and went rigid against me, and I felt him fight the urgent instinct to pull away. His whole body pulsated as if a battle raged within, but I kept unmoved, lips in place, conditioning him to tenderness and waiting for him to calm.
Scripted in Love's Scars Page 20