Ch 2 – A Cappella
A/N: "A Cappella" "without accompaniment".
There were ghost stories told about the Opera House long before I took up residence there. By listening to the chorus girls gossip, I learned that there were few buildings in the world housing any sort of theater arts which didn't have rumors and legends attached to them. Theater folk are a superstitious lot.
In the very beginning, I had not thought of playing spectre - nor had I thought about wearing a mask. I was sick of masks. Living in darkness and in secret gave me the freedom to go barefaced for the first time – what a delicious sensation! Was this how other people felt always? At times, I nearly forgot about my deformity. There was no reason to be around people, and I had no desire for their company.
As everything does, that changed.
In my late teens, I began to watch the chorus girls with their lovers, and I began to be curious about what it would be like to experience such embraces. I became obsessed with mirrors, as if by studying the rest of my body I could find some explanation for the ruined horror that was my face. As far as I could tell, I was made in much the same way as any other man, and perhaps better than some – with the sole exception of my face. Why was this so all-important? The dancers barely looked at their paramours during most of their interactions.
I decided to experiment. My first mask was flesh-toned, and clumsily made. I picked out one of the ballet girls more or less at random, and allowed her to catch sight of me in a darkened corridor.
Of course she screamed and ran, damn her. Of course she did. Foolish of me to entertain the notion, even for a second, that anyone might see me as anything other than a monster and a freak.
I punished the ballet girl for her stupidity. I cut partway through the ties on her slippers. The ribbons snapped when she was en pointe and she fell.
Antoinette had something to say about that.
"Erik!" she said to the empty air in her apartments, knowing I'd hear, eventually.
"Madame Giry."
"That girl could have broken her ankle. As it is, it's a bad sprain. It may be months – a year – before she can dance again!"
"I see."
"Don't you care?"
"Should I?"
"You should, since you're responsible."
"Am I? And who blames me, since no one knows I'm here?"
"People are blaming the Opera Ghost."
"People blame the Opera Ghost for everything. People blame the Opera Ghost when a horse sneezes."
"This was no sneeze. Those slipper ribbons were cut."
I was silent.
"You've got to stop the pranks and cruelties," she said.
"Am I cruel, Antoinette?"
"You can be. You don't seem to know or care whether you are or not. It's going to get you into trouble some day."
I was beginning to find the conversation both tedious and distasteful.
"Thank you for your words of wisdom. I shall take them under advisement," I said, dryly.
I could hear her continuing to address me, but I was gone. I did not care for lectures.
She thought I was cold and careless, Madame Giry. I took pains to appear so to her. What no one saw, what no one knew, was that deep in the bowels of the Opera House, far down in the darkness, I often wept in solitude. As Christine would, later, I hid my tears. No one cared for them. I had learned the hard way that any show of weakness on my part was to be exploited and turned back against me. Far better and safer to appear uncaring.
If I was cruel, what was it that others were to me? I had been beaten, tortured, starved, burned – a thousand things I'd not care to name. It was not wrong for others to cause me pain, but it was wrong for me to cause pain to others? I did not understand this. I had no sense of proportion, nor any sense of actions having consequences. Where was I to have learned them from?
My next mask was dead white, the color of a bleached skull. I began to dress in black, to make the contrast starker. If people wanted me to be their Opera Ghost, I'd fill the role. I began to realize that others feared me, and I began to relish the thought. I'd feared other people; let it be their turn. Their fear gave me power, and I began to wield it.
I began to build my world.