She jolted awake in the semidarkness, disoriented, the terrible familiar fear coursing through her veins like venom.

Clutching her pale fingers together, she felt a surge of relief to see the long bones of her hand covered by skin, albeit pale and parchment-like. The creeping, insidious fear, however, was not dispelled by the discovery of her entirely intact hand.

The room seemed to spin around her as she sat up. Her dress clung to her back uncomfortably in sweaty folds, and cold prickled her clammy arms. Her breath came in sharp gasps, her dream still all but reality. Christine's gaze darted like a hunted being's, taking in the coffin and the ever-present darkness – about to swallow her up!

There is a turning-point when one is exposed to one's fears relentlessly, we must surmise. A turning-point where the part of the mind that began by saying, pooh! That isn't real; you're just imagining it, ceases to disbelieve.The terror of the moment is so real and so captures us in its frightening reality that one must conclude that there is an instance when one's formerly sensible side begins to say, I know you're out there! But I'll try with all my might to stay alive!

Christine, having reached this point, experienced a moment of odd lucidity: she knew that she had to get out of the empty, dead cellars. The grave, as always, pulled her eye like a lodestone, and she stared at it with a perverse fascination. Her pink nails, ringed by dirt, dug into the back of her hand, giving her one last connection with the real world. Both ends of the passageway in the cellars stared at her, illuminated with sickly light and shading off into darkness. She had to get out.

Brushing her untidy hair back from her face and gnawing her lip unconsciously, Christine began to walk. She did not risk another look back at the awful grave behind her. She deliberately set one foot in front of the other, thinking of Raoul, thinking of coming back up to the light of day. She thoughts of happy things, of the red silk scarf that lay in her trunk, of her glorious wedding-dress and the day she had worn it. She pictured Raoul's face in her mind: smiling and joyful at seeing her. Was his face lined with worry at her absence right now?

A faint, metallic taste lingered, miasma-like, in her mouth, and she realized she had torn the skin of her lip. She raised a shaking finger to her chapped underlip and dabbed the blood away, shining like a bead on her fingertip in the wan light. Christine shuddered and wiped it away, where it left an eye-catching smear on her dirtied dress. She rubbed at her besmirched and bloodied fingernail, recalling another place, another time, when the monster had scored his own face with her little pink nails. She trembled, forcing thoughts of dead Erik out of her mind, like wiping away the blood on her lip.

She licked the salty wetness away, wetting her lips more out of nervousness than a need for cleanliness. She had forgotten all about her appearance.

If a passerby had walked in the vicinity of Christine in the streets, they would have thought her a waif. If someone had ventured down into the cellars somehow, they would have thought her a ghost of something dead: her dress was snagged from catching on things, during her fear-filled journey from the Rue Scribe to the well. Her face was tear-stained, her eyes reddened from tears of both fear and sorrow. Dirt smudged her smooth little hands, where she had involuntarily clutched for something in her nightmares. Purplish smudges, like the ends of sunsets, underlined her wide eyes, a testament to her fear and exhaustion. One would not have thought this Christine Daaé, the anomalous ingénue of the Paris Opera. Christine would not have recognized herself if she still retained her former childlike innocence. But now, in all probability, nothing could surprise Christine.

Christine thought nothing of this as she walked slowly and cautiously through the cellars, keeping the frightening thoughts at bay, a prison of her own mind as she trudged bit by bit through the subterranean passage. Her fears manifested themselves in every minute, every second that she traipsed through the cellar. It was a vicious circle. A rustle in the darkness, presumably a rat, would send her senses reeling and all her muscles would tense. Fear multiplied upon itself, and one small thing, one small rustle in the darkness, would send her thoughts whirling down a frightening track. She had to keep the terror at bay. She had to keep the terror at bay. This became almost a mantra, a little something that could divert her obstinate mind from visualizing those lurking fears. But it was a precarious balance, and one small move, one stray thought, could send her whirling into the most terrible abyss of all: the endless abyss of the human mind.

It was feasible that her carefully constructed concentration would slip. And slip it did, beginning with the innocent thought of quenching her mounting thirst with a glass of water. She could do with a bath, too, Christine thought with a naïve sigh. She recalled almost fondly the baths she had taken at the house on the lake, in the resplendent bath-tub.

A familiar icy feeling clenched in her stomach as she remembered the scissors. The scissors! Those big, cold, shining blades shone piercingly at her still from her mind's eye. The inevitable abyss of her anxiety loomed, and Christine fell deep into her terror, and it clutched her irresistibly in its clutching grasp.

Christine's shoulder-blades began to prickle. There was something, behind her, watching her. A shiver caressed her shoulders, and the suspense mounted in her chest until Christine could stand it no longer.

Gathering her skirts up in her two shaking fists, Christine began to run, her breaths coming in harsh sobs and her feet slapping against the hard ground. Her head began to pound, until she felt the throb of an impending headache throwing its aching haze about her already confused mind. A pallid, unhealthy sheen marked her forehead and her hair fluttered out behind her like a tattered flaxen banner. Tears blurred her vision, as she ran and ran and ran. The black creatures that tended the furnaces did not capture her attention as she flew by, for the only thing that occupied her mind was escaping the darkness, the prison of corporeal and mental things that had begun upon meeting Erik. Christine could have blamed Erik for the fear that now possessed her, for coming into her life and changing it irrevocably. But somehow, Christine didn't. Was it pity? Was it her enduring naïveté? Was it kindness? Perhaps all of these things. Who knew?

But Christine herself did not reflect upon these things. Decisions, even life-changing ones, took the space of a few seconds to achieve. This fear, the dread of Erik and the dread of the unknown, was every second, every minute, every hour she spend in the loathsome cellar. She could think of nothing else. Christine thoughts wandered ridiculously in her delirium. Everything that she wanted was waiting up in the light, and everything that would keep her from her aspirations, her wants, and her dreams, was waiting to snatch her up, here in the dark.

She had been running forever, and for no time at all. The grave was far behind her, yet Christine could still see Erik, see his grave, see his motionless fingers, and the skeletal bones of her own hand. She could still see the gravestone, bathed in a gruesome light like the blood that smudged her lips and her chin. The laughter was still ringing in her ears, and she had to get away. Christine's breath was beginning to come shorter, and it seemed that she could not draw another breath, but her feet kept running, and that reminded her of the force that drew her on and on towards her grave…in the dream…and Christine was afraid, and that kept her running, running, running.

Her last coherent thought had been the Rue Scribe. The key to the Rue Scribe had leapt into her hand – she did not remember putting it into the fist that didn't hold the clipping from the Époque, but she could feel it now, cold and heavy, digging into her clenched palm. Her hand was beginning to sweat around the key, its length growing slick and hot in her fist. It was her key, both in a literal and metaphorical way, for escape from the tangible prison of her body and the intangible prison of her mind. And so she clasped it all the tighter, smelling the characteristic repelling scent of the heated metal with gasping breaths, letting the edges dig painfully into her palm..

Christine had not been running for as long as she surmised, but the hasty and frenzied retreat she had beaten from the grave had taken its toll upon her. Still her pace did not slow, until the toe of her shoe caught upon something protruding from the earth. Christine stumbled and fell, her arms windmilling as her torso bend in an attempt to halt her descent toward the ground. She staggered, leaning forward as if retching, but caught herself upon her palms, her hands and her knees grating abruptly into the hard ground. Christine's hands began to sting, the skin scratched and ragged and red. She hissed in a painful breath, looking at the reddened skin and the patterns of grime that crisscrossed her battered palms from her fall. Wetting her chapped lips, Christine continued to hurry down the tunnel, not able to sprint any longer.

In her haste and carelessness, Christine had not noticed the small ping in the shadows at the moment of her fall. She had resumed running, not noticing the glint of metal from the shadows: the key to the Rue Scribe which had fallen from her hand.

It seemed hours, days later, when Christine could run no further. Her breath throbbing and puffing in her throat, her legs shaky, Christine began to slow. Coming to an exhausted walk, Christine pushed her lank hair back from her face, brushing at the beads of sweat that festooned her pale forehead and gasping breaths of the damp air of the passageway as if they were her last. A dull pain throbbed in the center of her chest with each breath. A bright smear of blood besmirched her bloodless lips, token to her fretful lip-biting.

Christine peered at the tunnel. It went no further, indeed, but ended. Christine wondered vaguely if this could be the mirror through which she had first entered the catacombs of the Opera. In her confused, hazy mind, she supposed that she could enter the Opera through her dressing-room and then from there find a cab to take her home. Sweet relief blossomed in the wasteland of desolate fear, and her need to get out seemed to become even more desperate, now that her proximity to freedom was so near, now that she could see Raoul and forget all about the terrible darkness and Erik's grave. Her need, her fear, that human desire for light and happiness, pushed her on, and she all but flew the last metres to the end of the tunnel.

A wan smile lighting on her face as she dashed to it, Christine clutched her little fingers together in a pitiable expression of absolute joy.

The blooming smile of just so many seconds before disappeared as Christine reeled back from the wall with a strangled cry. There was no mirror.

She would have to try to find the Rue Scribe, Christine thought. Yes. She could try to find the Rue Scribe. She opened the dirt-encrusted palm which held the key to the latter.

If faces could fall as they do in the aphorism, Christine's happy face would have fallen into the deepest abyss there was. No, she whispered, but it came out as a hoarse wheeze. The key was not there. Christine wondered how she could have deluded herself into thinking that she could escape these cellars, escape this vicious labyrinth, escape even the prison of her mind and body wrought by Erik's hand. There was no hope for escape. She could wander in here until she died of thirst, of hunger. She could scream for help until the walls bled. She could beat her fists against the cold, unyielding floor, but all of it would be to no avail. She would not survive long enough to find her way out.

Christine drew in one vast breath, and abruptly turned and vomited upon the floor, even her own body betraying her in the very end. She choked and sobbed, tears running rivulets in her grimy face. Her legs failed her, and she sunk down to her knees in despair, tearing the skin off of her kneecaps and falling in a mound of tears and blood. Her voice no longer failed her, and Christine Daaé gave voice to a scream that was the epitome of despair, the archetype of desperation. It began in the very depths of her being and found its way to her throat, throbbing and panting and bursting into a full-throated shriek that echoed off the walls and accompanied her in the expression of her uttermost grief. She dug her nails into the back of her hand until the skin came up in little flesh-coloured crescents. She would have screamed again, but her throat was raw and all she could utter were hoarse gasps. It frightened her. Everything was frightening. What had she done to deserve this? She thought desperately. Wasn't there some God out there that would save her? Though she knew that it was hopeless, she had screamed until the walls had bled, and she began to beat her fists against the floor in despair.

There would be no wedding for Christine Daaé. There would be no requiem mass for Christine Daaé. There would not even be a stone tomb with her name engraved on it.

Perhaps, in the future, someone would find her bones.