Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with ALW, Gaston Leroux or Susan Kay. Please don't sue me.
Author's Notes: This idea came to me very suddenly. I was in the car and suddenly I thought what if Christine wasn't prepared to believe that Erik was real? And because she is very ingenue-ish and naive, I had to tweak things a bit, and ended up with a much more serious story than I originally intended. This first chapter is an experiment, of sorts.
Leading Tone
Chapter One: My Name Is Christine Daae
The lithe form of the cat leapt down from the shelf to land with a soft thud on the carpet, settling down smugly to clean its silver-grey fur. A small pink tongue darted out to lick roughly at unkempt places, cleaning and smoothing.
As I padded across the carpet, I could feel the gaze of a pair of unblinking green orbs boring into my back. Reluctantly I turned towards the cat, tentatively reaching out a hand to stroke it.
My fingers stopped just short of the short silver hair. The cat gaze a loud, protesting yowl, and still I remained static, my hand suspended ridiculously in mid-air. My gaze met the confident emerald one of the cat…and I finally caved in to temptation and sank my hand into the soft fur, wondering why the medication wasn't working yet.
"You're not supposed to be here, Kitty," I said vaguely to the contentedly purring cat, "I'm not supposed to see you." Perhaps taking offence at the words, Kitty arched her back and stalked off with an air of affronted superiority. I watched her tail vanish under the bed and breathed a sigh of relief. Things always got better when they started going away.
Let me explain.
My name is Christine Daae, and I turned twenty this May. Five years ago, I was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
The doctors say it must've started with my father's death, when I was ten. I'll never tell them this, but they are wrong. Even when my Papa was alive, I heard things. Voices speaking in my head when no one was there, holding conversations that didn't exist. Sometimes I talked to them, and occasionally they talked back.
I used to report these little snippets of sound to my father, who would always laugh in his good-natured way and tell me that I was blessed. Special in some way. Well, I was special all right, but not in the way he told me I was.
My father was a superstitious man who believed (or at least pretended to believe) in all kinds of mythical creatures; I loved him all the more for it, and I still love him for it today. All my memories of him seem to be of the occasions when he would sit me on his lap and tell me stories. Together we left the grey world of reality behind and danced, hand-in-hand, through a rainbow world with fairies and ghouls, angels and demons.
Christine, he used to say, Christine, you are a very special little girl. The angels are speaking to you in your mind, don't you see? The angels have chosen my little girl.
After the diagnosis, years later, I wondered why he'd failed to see that there was something wrong with me. Now I realise that he thought I was just doing as he so often did- telling a story. Poor, innocent Papa would never have believe that his little girl had a mental disorder. It's wicked, but I'm so glad he never found out. Never lived to find out.
I call them dreams, as they are neither ghosts nor memories. I could always tell whether a person was dream or reality; once I was used to it, it was quite easy. Dreams were the ones who treated me like a normal person. They'd talk to me, and although I'd be terrified of what they might say, sometimes I'd talk back. The real people would mysteriously vanish whenever I went anywhere near them, frightened away, no doubt, by the notoriety of my disease.
It's very depressing, pathetic even, when the only eyes that can meet your own are non-existent ones.
I am luckier than many with the same condition. I often tell myself that, just for the sake of hearing the unsympathetic truth. I do not stay in a mental hospital, because as my therapist says, I am not a danger to other people, not prone to unexplainable fits of violent rage or jealousy. My guardian is a kindly old woman called Madame Valerius, an old friend of my father's. Yes, compared to other schizophrenics, I can consider myself to be very fortunate.
Still, sometimes at night I dream of what might have been. They are not, you understand, visions brought on by my disorder, but perfectly ordinary dreams, fragile, insubstantial, yet oddly satisfying. I can see my teenage self watching soppy movies with friends, eating at fast food restaurants, holding hands with boys. Studying for college late into the night. Singing onstage as my father wished me to. All the things that I have never done and will never do, except at night when I cross over the thin line that separates reality from fantasy.
And why am I telling you all this?
Because you aren't real either. You're just another dream, sitting at the foot of my bed, watching me. Your lips and ears aren't real. No ears to hear what I'm saying. No lips to tell anyone else.
And because of the medication, you won't be here when I wake up in the morning. So listen well to my story; for it is an extraordinary one, and I have limited time in which to tell it.
Author's Notes: I don't usually leave notes at the end of the story, but I just need to say that I mean no offence to anyone with schizophrenia, or anyone acquainted with a schizophrenic. I'm not trying to make it sound like a joke and I know just how serious a condition it is. So please, please, please don't be offended.