Betrayed

"And now, how you've repayed me....denied me and betrayed me....."

Erik, Act 1, Scene 10

So it was over at last.

He stood in the middle of the room, caressing the plain gold ring with restless, trembling fingers, his dark eyes staring sightlessly at the last burning candle on the mantelpiece. Two weeks. She had been gone two weeks, but it might as well have been two minutes or two months for all the difference it made to him now. Time passed in a sort of haze, enveloping him in a silence so deep it was almost frightening. Deadly, stifling silence. If he waited long enough perhaps it would choke him, and then he wouldn't have to worry about this curious lack of energy. Not that he worried too much about it...he didn't even have the energy to do that much anymore.

Reverently he touched her -- their -- wedding ring to his lips, then returned it to its accustomed spot on his little finger. He didn't know where his own ring had gone, which saddened him. He had bought them as a pair. One for him and one for her. He had been charmed by the thought of wearing matching rings, but then she left, and to be honest he would rather wear hers, even though it didn't fit on the proper finger...

But it didn't matter, really. She would never know, never appreciate that pitiful bit of symbolism.This wasn't a fairy tale, with a nice tidy epilogue to tie up all the loose ends. Nor was it an opera; the tragic villain wouldn't get a round of applause when the curtain came down.

This was his life.

Slowly he bent down and picked up his mask. Gazing thoughtfully into the empty eyeholes, he laughed at himself, very quietly. His life. Had it ever been a life? This creeping, sneaking, miserable existence, in a cellar, with those hateful rats... Shaking his head, he raised the mask to his face, trying to fix it in place. After a moment he gave up, and tossed it aside again. No, he had never lived. Sad. Perhaps he wasn't the genius everyone believed him to be; after all, it had taken him 50 years to reach that conclusion. He should have seen it coming, actually; one couldn't pretend to be someone else day after day without becoming that someone else eventually.

And he had become a ghost. Not in the literal sense of the word, of course, but he could change that easily enough. It wouldn't take much...he just had to decide upon a method. Speaking from experience, poison was rather unpleasant, and he didn't care to use the lasso on himself. A revolver would be far too messy, especially if a miracle occurred and she did come back. He would prefer her to see him with his face -- such as it was -- intact. Starvation then. Granted, it was slow, and he despised the weakness that came with it, but he had a good start; he hadn't eaten since...since she had left. Incredible...had it been that long already? He held his hands up in front of his eyes, and a faint smile twisted his lips. Yes, they were shaking. That was a good sign, he supposed...

What was he doing? He shivered suddenly, a wave of even blacker despair filling him. Did he truly want to die like this? To collapse amidst the torn and crumpled pages of his Don Juan Triumphant, the remnants of long-dead candles, the wreckage of his lovely pipe organ... Strange, how easily the black iron framework had snapped in his hands, like sugar sticks in the sun. He might have had one of those sticks when he was a child, or perhaps he just remembered watching another child eat one at the gypsy fair, while he sat alone in his cage...he had always wondered what a sugar stick tasted like.

He had hated that cage. He hated being alone. Alone, abandoned, discarded, lost, broken...like that damn music box. He had tried fixing it, just for something to do, but it had stubbornly refused to be fixed. He should try once more. Anything better than standing here and watching his own mind slowly slip out of his grasp. But where had he put it? Her room? The closet? The torture chamber?

He laughed out loud then, the sound harsh in his ears. Really, what was he thinking to come up with such a perverted idea? Or was he thinking? Was this what madness was like? He had thought he was mad before, but this downward spiral into oblivion was quite a bit different than what he was used to. At least he made sense to himself before...

Continue reading Betrayed