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 Posted: Mon Feb 02, 2009 9:18 am
Ooc: This is a clichely named bit of "The Phantom of the Opera" fanfiction I've been writing for a few years now. The first few chapters, especially, are quite bad. But I still want reviews.
Bic: Inside My Mind
Chapter I- Angel of Music?
She was... a vision, one could say, when she came to the opera house that night. I was presently skulking in the rafters, as I tended to do when that abysmally idiotic Moncharmin was doing something I thought suspicious. The child was being closely followed by Madame Giry, that shy, wide-eyed little girl being led onto the vast, ostentatious stage of Paris like a chick being led to the edge of its nest to take flight for the first time. I remember distinctly how she shuddered as she stepped further onto the stage, the very echoing of her tiny footsteps only seeming to terrify her more. Her beautiful pale, almost silver Swedish hair was combed neatly around her face, only accentuating the timidity of her appearance.
Apparently spotting the fact that the girl seemed an inch from fainting, the very prudent Madame Giry quickly took the trembling girl back into her arms, leading her downstairs to the chamber where people of the opera light candles for their loved ones-(how I laughed when I first heard Moncharmin talking of the designing of this new room...love!)-to light a candle for her father, whom Madame Giry mentioned had passed away very recently.
Intrigued by this notion, I quickly followed them- having the agility commonly associated with monkeys or cats, this task is rather easy for me- and found the girl, alone, kneeling by a small, cream-coloured candle. I was watching her through a mirror of my own design- one of many- they are two way, and they pivot, so as to let people in from the outside... I do wonder what must have come over me when I made them in that way; surely no-one would ever be entering one of my mirrors from the outside!
A strange, rather strangled feeling began to well in my chest as I watched this poor little girl weep gently for her father, small, whispered prayers occasionally sneaking through her tears. Pity! I realized with a rush of self-disgust. From all of my years watching men fall from the rafters and breaking their necks, little ballerinas falling where they stood on the stage from the mere heat, and I felt pity for a little girl whom I did not even know the talents of! As I turned to leave her, abhorred by my own savage emotions, I heard the girl begin to sing softly...
"Pie Jesu, Pie Jesu, Qui tollis peccata mundi, Dona eis requiem, Dona eis requiem..."
I stopped as she sang... She was very well trained for her age, that much was true, and she sang the verse with such tragic emotion that I had to take in a heavy breath to calm myself. She had broken off quickly, her sweet soprano voice falling again into a flood of tears. She is so little, I told myself stubbornly as I turned back to the mirror, rather against my better judgment. None of the foolish staff at this opera house will even consider giving her lessons to sing at such an age... Why can't I teach her? There is no harm in that, teaching a child from behind a mirror... Quietly, so as not to surprise the child, I finished her Pie Jesu for her...
"Agnus Dei, Agnus Dei, Qui tollis peccata mundi, Dona eis requiem, Dona eis requiem, Sempiternam, Sempiternam requiem..."
I saw her look around the room in awe as I sang to her, her tears stopping almost alarmingly quickly. She stood up slowly as I sang, as though in a trance, her light blue eyes seeming to cloud over as she stared blankly to the vaulted ceiling of the room.
"H-hello?" she said in a strangely bright tone, as though the mere sound of my voice fulfilling one of her deepest dreams. "Who is that singing? Er…m-my name is Christine Daae... A-are you the Angel of Music?"
An angel! How cruelly ironic this girl was being... This loathsome living corpse who only survived in life by killing, she dared to call an angel! Oh, the ingenuous naivety (A/N: yes, that set of adjectives is completely redundant!) of childhood...
"Yes, my dear," I lied sweetly, watching an extremely wide smile break over her pretty face as I told her this. "I am indeed the Angel of Music. I was sent by God to teach you how to sing, now that your teacher has passed on." I heard her gasp as I finished my sentence.
"You know that Papa taught me to sing?" she breathed incredulously, clasping her hands at her breast, her eyes still roving about the ceiling.
"Of course, child- I know how far every single person on this earth has come with their music... And you, my dear Christine, have the most pure voice I have ever heard... If you promise to pledge yourself to me and my teachings, I promise that I will teach you to sing like one of God's own angels!" I finished this statement with a deliberate note of triumph- if I was to be an angel, I had to act the part! She fell to her knees as I finished speaking, tears beginning to flow from her eyes again, that wide smile plastered onto her now rather flushed face.
"Yes!" she sobbed to the ceiling, reaching up to it as though there were someone there, ready to embrace her. "Yes, I promise, Angel! I promise..."
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Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 2:50 pm
Very good job, Quoth! I really liked it! Especially the ending words, "Yes, I promise, Angel! I promise..." Very cool!
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Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 4:20 am
Chapter II- "Lessons"
I was rather surprised, at her first lesson, how absolutely subservient little Christine was to me- after the first time that I had conversed with her, I decided to merely throw my voice to sound as though she were hearing it in her mind, almost like a "real" angel- and from the time I told her to meet me in her dressing room for her first voice lesson, I sensed that I could tell the poor child to throw herself off the face of the earth, and she would do so without question, anything for her dear angel. She was so unknowingly obedient, it was actually rather sad to witness.
"Angel?" she said in her soft, tremulous voice, looking around the dimmed room as though doubting my coming. Again, I was watching her behind a mirror, that one barrier between what was her fanciful reality and the abhorring cruelty of truth. "Angel... are you there?"
"Yes, my dear," I crooned to her in a soothing voice, watching that bright, slow smile creep across her face again, "I am here. Shall we sing?"
"Oh, yes, Angel!" she cried brightly, choosing, oddly enough, to stand in front of the veranda mirror behind which I stood. As she stared at her reflection, it was as though she saw me, staring at me with those sweetly adoring blue eyes full of pure elation...
"I thought it best that we start with some hymns," I said to her a fraction of a second too late, causing a clear falter in my purposely omnipotent tone of voice that left me rather doubtful that I would be able to keep up this charade for very long. "Hymns are always a wonderful thing, for they inspire passion in mortals- they seem to find singing the praises of the Lord a very powerful thing indeed." I grinned savagely to myself as I finished speaking- since I was a small child, I had believed that there was no such a being. I had had right to. "Animals don't have souls..."
I was taken rather forcefully out of my reverie of old Father Mansart when the girl spoke again. "Yes, of course! I love hymns!" she cried blithely, clasping her hands together yet again. "What shall we sing?"
"'Ave Maria', by Johann Sebastian Bach," I told her decisively, watching for a flicker of recognition. "Surely you know this piece?" Apparently, she was suffering as much from thoughts as I at that moment, for she shook her head experimentally before looking more attentively to her reflection.
"Oh... oh, yes, of course," she said in a rather distracted tone, her previously sparkling eyes appearing to have dulled with whatever sombre thought she was having.
I had brought my violin to this lesson- only a minute amount of eavesdropping about the theatre told me that her father was a rather famous string-player- not only to serve as accompaniment, but also to bring a sense of well-being to the girl, to make her feel safe when she was with me.
"Sing," I whispered to her slightly imploringly as I placed the lovely instrument under my chin in anticipation.
"Ave Maria Gratia plena Maria, gratia plena Maria, gratia plena Ave," she sang as my bow moved smoothly across the strings. What torture it was to listen to her this time! She was singing smoothly and on pitch, of course, but there was no passion in this song like there was in the requiem! I had to continue playing, though- despite my already heated temper; I could not be so horrible to little Christine. Besides, if I yelled at her, she may not have liked me anymore...
"Liked me anymore?" God, I sound like a little boy attempting to impress a friend that he fancies! What power that that girl held over me without even knowing it- we would do anything to make the other happy, it was almost as though we were both in love, but I knew better. She was in love with the gentle, beautifully unearthly voice of the Angel of Music, not Erik, the "Freak of Nature," "'Angel in Hell,'" the "'Living Corpse,'" the "'Angel of Doom," "Opera Ghost..."
"Don Juan..."
Until this moment, I never realized just how many wonderful pseudonymns I have acquired in my time.
The girl continued singing in her crystal clear soprano as I played, blatantly singing her heart out despite all of the pain that she was unknowingly causing me.
"Ave dominus, Dominus tecum Benedicta tu in mulieribus Et benedictus Et benedictus fructus ventris Ventris tuae, Jésus." She even dared to smile to her reflection as she sang this verse, as though sure it would please me! I knew, then, that I would have to be strict to Christine for her to understand what I wanted of her- she was so horribly innocent!
"Stop," I ordered her sharply, the G that I had only just played on my violin floating almost hauntingly away into the tense silence that followed my command.
"Angel?" she asked in a terrified voice, looking, apparently intuitively, to the ceiling. "Wh- what is wrong? Did I miss an accidental?"
"Miss Daae," I began in a dangerously controlled whisper, "I need you to sing!"
"I'm trying, Angel!" she cried almost desperately, her pale blue eyes already shining with tears- did this girl not know any discipline with her father? I sighed exasperatedly and lay a hand across the eyeholes of my mask. Apparently, this would be a more difficult task than first expected...
"My dear, I need you to sing with passion," I told her more firmly, though I worked to keep the annoyance away, this time.
"I thought I was, Angel... I really did!" she choked while turning her tear-stained eyes to the floor in a gesture of unconscious submission.
“I need you to sing like you did for your father,” I said evenly, though I believe with a note of exasperation- the girl’s naivety was rather testing my awful temper. “I need to know that you are committed to me through your voice- only then can I possibly teach you as you wish.” The child seemed a bit startled by this command- apparently it was difficult for her to imagine singing as fervently as she had for anyone other than her father.
“I don’t think I can, Angel,” she admitted quietly to the floor, crystalline tears beginning to fall from her eyes. I realized then that I would have to teach her to sing from the beginning- I had failed to consider that her teacher had died and- most likely- her father’s teachings as well.
"Start at the top of the piece, my dear Christine," I said gently, breaking boldly through the suffocating silence that had fallen between us as she cried.
"If I need to possess the girl's soul to make her sing... so be it!" I thought savagely to myself as my bow began to slide unthinkingly over my violin's resonant metal strings.
Ooc: Sorry that this one's so God-awful. See, I got the idea for the next chapter long before finishing this, so... yeah, I kind of just blew through this one. sweatdrop
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Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 3:44 pm
Shut up! I like your Fanfiction! Stop dissing it! Or else! scream
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Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 3:52 pm
yeah! Shut up! It's good!
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Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2009 4:22 am
Ooc: I don't believe you, as evidenced by my own response to my new poll.
Nevertheless... here comes Chapter III! 8D
Chapter III- Magnetism (A/N: Yay for cheesyness!)
Over the next several years, my dear Christine's voice evolved into something wonderful, of almost mythical proportions. Even though her naivety could be very frustrating at times, I only grew to love her more-like a father would love his most beautiful daughter, one might say.
I noticed- with a painful twinge of self-scorn- that I had started doing all in my power to see her happy. If she claimed to dislike someone or something around the Opera, I would be sure that something was done about it immediately. I had not yet killed for her- God knows I still feel in horrible debt to Nadir after the rosy hours of Mazderan- but a sense of dark foreboding still seemed to hang over my thoughts whenever I did something to please her, as though deaths would one day be inevitable.
Of course, that was not all that I had discovered about my relations with the girl...
I believe I first deciphered the metamorphosis in my feelings towards Christine during spring... yes, it had been an exceedingly warm spring night, just after Christine had turned sixteen... She was smiling widely as she came to her mirror, elation practically emanating from her person. I even smiled to myself at this sight- it was the most blessed thing in the world to receive a smile from Christine, even if it was not really meant for me.
"Angel... oh, Angel, today I was asked by one of the other ballerinas- the curly-haired one, Romaine- to try to sing as Margarita from Faust... All of the girls said that I must have been blessed by God himself!" cried the girl in her exuberant tone of voice reserved solely for her attempts to impress me- I had never given out praise lightly with her, as she had been so unabashedly coddled by her father when I first tried to teach her.
But, that night, my mind- while still concentrating entirely on Christine- had not managed to properly process a word of her bright announcement.
"Indeed?" I questioned slightly off-handedly, leaning uncharacteristically on the side of the tunnel in which I stood- for some odd reason, I was feeling a bit fatigued in that moment. "Those girls should appreciate my triumph while they can." I suppose she thought that to imply that she would be a famous Prima Donna, as she smiled more blithely, her porcelain face lit up in an incredibly pretty manner. I do not know to this day exactly what I meant by that statement- I had been oddly distracted at the time.
"Thank-you," she said breathlessly to the mirror, clearly reveling in my strangely lavish praise.
It is here that I believe it happened. I realize now that I must have been gluttonously drinking in her appearance, for I distinctly remember everything about her from that night- her eyes, her large, sparkling eyes, were alight in the softest blue colour I had ever seen, well masking the girl's true level of intellect. Her long platinum hair was swept elegantly to the small of her back, tied loosely at the top with a haughty blue bow. The white gown she had been given for her birthday was fitted to her amazingly well- I remember being rather transfixed by the subtle rising and falling of her comely breast as she breathed. Her face still pulled into that jubilant smile; she broke me from my reverie with sickening force.
"Angel?" she questioned airily, seeming perfectly unconcerned, despite my long, imposing silence.
I noticed, as Christine forced be back to reality, that my heart was racing wildly, my hands clenched into quivering, sweat-soaked fists at my sides, and... well, I should say that I greatly appreciated the thought of the dark solitude awaiting me at the house by the lake.
"I am sorry, my dear, but I am afraid we must end your lesson here tonight," I told her with a level of calm that surprised me.
"Alright. Good-night, Angel," she said absently, untying her bow and tossing her thick mane of silvery hair around her slim shoulders affectedly.
I stormed rather violently through the winding passage to the last cellar, absolutely disgusted with myself. What more could I possibly want from my dear little Christine? I had successfully molded the girl's voice into a thing of awesome, godlike beauty, something that I alone could lay claim to... And yet, I found that that was no longer all that I desired from her.
I wanted Christine!
I always fancied her to be like a daughter or a niece- but a lover? The chivalrous ethics painfully hammered into me as a boy screamed that the idea alone was pure incest... Not to mention the simply repugnant number of years between us.
When I finally arrived at my sprawling home, I swear that the house shook from the force with which I slammed the front door- only a slight release of the massive tension that had arisen from my meeting with Christine. My face searing beneath the awfully heat-retaining black mask, I cast it aside quickly and ran my hands frustratedly through my thin raven hair, clutching it in a still tremulous, though vice-like grip. I had to rid myself of this damned anger….
Without another thought, I strode to my chamber, where the great pipe organ is mounted across from the dark coffin in which I sleep, above which long black drapes proclaim the notes to my favourite Dies Irae in ominous blood-red thread. I ripped open the score to my incredibly ironic work- Don Juan Triumphant- and began to pound out a series of savage chords in a thundering fortissimo. The music tested even my own senses, traveling through so many accursedly relatable human emotions that I felt slightly nauseated. It was a pain, as ever, to be thrust back into the mindset that, in the weakest of manners, I truly was, and am, a member of that repugnant race of beings.
Despite the release of anger I had achieved through my music, there was still a level of gnawing tension that- while experienced very few times in my life- always inspired in me the macabre desire to cut out my still-beating heart and crush these repulsive longings for something entirely beyond my reach. My heart again began to take up an inexplicably furious tempo as I moved away from the organ, towards another tall, intricately designed door.
I was instinctively drawn to the room opposite my chamber, containing my poor, unhappy mother’s possessions I had acquired after her death, along with a few items I had managed to whisk away from Christine in moments of overpowering self-indulgence. I had little- only a shoe-buckle, one of her flamboyant blue hair ties, and a note written in her handsome copperplate hand- yet these simple items bore such ridiculous significance to me that I rarely entered that room.
I sat with almost an air of shame on the edge of my mother’s brilliantly gilded golden-swan bed- the very bed in which I was born- my incessant heart making it entirely impossible to draw my mind away from the sweet image of Christine, sitting there so innocently before my eyes, completely unaware of the dammed desire building in the back of my consciousness for so long.... With Luciana- and even the khanum, though I doubt what repressed feelings I had towards the woman could be so named- there had still been that naive assumption that the feelings would pass in time. I had also hammered into my mind that it was impossible for any woman to feel anything other than fear, revulsion- or, again, in the case of the khanum, (and Javert, for that matter,) even repulsive lust- towards me.
But my enticing little Christine defied that law every time I met with her, bringing an absolutely fatuous sense of hope back into my loathsome mind, my mind that had been so plagued by the consternation of society when it saw what I was...
In a strangely trance-like manner, as though I had just begun feeling the effects of a heavy dose of morphine, my left hand- of its own accord, it seemed- began to move tremorously towards my heavy leather belt.
Did I dare do such a thing? And was it possibly Christine, she who had brought a bit of purity back into my life of eternal darkness, turning me to this? A million questions raced through my mind when I considered the decision in front of me, including- oddly enough- whether I would be punished by God for such an act.
Surely He, who had given me this life of torment, would not find me at fault for a moment of simple pleasure...
I laid back on my mother's majestic old bed carefully, an odd sense of power resonating in my mind, as well as the unknowingly seductive voice of Christine singing for me...
ooOooOooOoo-(A/N: These stupid things indicate the passage of time. Why? Because I’m weird, okay?! And I really don’t feel like explaining this in-depth. Live with it.)
When I again emerged from the small, now almost oppressively shadowed room, I had two immediate feelings- one was that committing that act with thoughts of my child, Christine, only proved the seriousness of my disturbing new feelings for her, and that I would never be able to meet with her again... but I had to. The girl would be devastated if she thought she had lost her dear angel's love...
The second- despite the fact that my mind was still reeling- was oddly sane. I believed that I had finally procured a new depth of emotion to incorporate into Don Juan...
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Posted: Fri Feb 20, 2009 2:41 pm
Very nice, as always! I like how Christine calls Erik angel. Just cause.
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