Saint Valentine by catcorsair

This is a very dark story, albeit surreal and fairly atmospheric, and not graphic. Proceed at your own risk.

Thank you for reading! Please review :)

Blood dries on the inside of her thigh from where he took her, gently, atop the lace duvet of the soft bed he has laid for her. She aches from the marriage, but her heart is bursting––

Because he loves her. He loves her so much, she thinks he would die to prove it.

"The mob will come," he says, mouth hot against her bare skin. His lips are on her nipples and in the hollow of her throat; his fingers move between her thighs. "You have to go."

"No," she offers, though she knows that she must. She has seen the mob before, during the terror of 1871. With Papa Daae's hand sweating in her own, she ran, hearing gunshots break the screaming silence, hearing bodies fall behind her. She watched children, young as she was then, trampled in the streets.

She knows to fear the mob.

"No," she says again, though her mouth is dry and her speech comes rasping. She hopes he cannot hear the betrayal on her tongue. "I have made you a promise, husband." This word settles like a lump in her throat. "Now, I must keep it."

He looks at her, mismatched eyes searching. Christine lowers her own as the heat rises in her naked breast. His body is bare before her, sprawled atop the disordered linens; scars run the length of his corpse's chest, his cock hangs, half-limp and long against his thigh. He bears the stain of her on his shaft and in the wet curls about his sex; her blood is brown on the bedsheets.

"The Daroga will have told them where you are," he says. She can see his pulse thrumming beneath his transparent skin and as it floods between his thighs, making a weapon of the still-wet thing against his thigh. When he climbs overtop her, the weight of it settles on her naked stomach, wet and heavy as it slinks against her skin. "They will come for you," he tells her, though his yellow eyes speak other words. "We must go, Christine."

But they do not rise from the bed. Erik runs a finger over her lip.

His naked face shows too many expressions; she cannot identify them. There are lines in the rot of his skin that deepen as he breathes against her mouth, "they cannot take you from me, Christine. You are forever mine."

Again, he enters her. She closes her eyes and turns her head as he moves against her, but when he finishes, she holds him close, feeling the tremors move through him like a current, feeling his muscles tense, then relax, as he sags atop her. She brushes her lips over the transparent flesh of his forehead. His tears are warm against her naked breasts.

And she sings to him, softly, her lips brushing the ruin of his naked forehead, her fingertips trailing down his spine. Soon his breath grows heavy, his heartbeat, steady in his hollow chest. His penis is limp, like wet clay against her belly as he curls around her, protecting, imprisoning; Christine wonders if the churning in her stomach is the beginnings of life.

She prays that it is not.

Later, she is awoken first: there is splashing, shouting, coming from the shores of the underground lake, echoing into the stone chamber where their disheveled bed is unmade, where their bodies lay twisted and conjoined in the golden candlelight. She does nothing, only listening, as she traces his scars with her fingertips; she knows the mob has come.

"Sooner than expected," Erik hisses, waking. "Christine, it is time." Suddenly urgent, he climbs from overtop her, pulling on his wrinkled trousers as he moves. His shirt hangs over the chair where he had tossed it as he said their marriage vows; he throws it over his corpse's head, hiding the scars and burns from her gaze.

Now he looks at her, yellow eyes bright and shining like glass in the horror of that face.

Horror.

"You must take the path to the furnaces, Christine, now," he tells her, his terrible mouth set in a hard line. "From there, I will find you."

He is gathering things in his too-long fingers, throwing items into a satchel he has pulled from beneath the bed, as Christine watches, frozen on her feet. The muscles of his back move and shudder beneath the thin cotton of his shirt. From behind, he looks as if he were already dead; thoughtlessly, Christine raises a palm to touch the sharp ridges of his spine.

"Run!" he roars, turning to face her. His eyes are wide as she curls her fingers again into her fist. There is pain in his voice and in his stare. "Stupid girl, what are you waiting for?"

Because they are here. First one, then several: brandishing torches and lamps, their shadows stalking on the walls as they infiltrate the living room, like so many spirits rising from the graveyard of the black lake.

"Out the back, Christine," Erik hisses. A red cord is held taut and ready between his white fists. "You know the way." Then his eyes meet hers and they are not urgent, not fierce; he is looking as he once looked, the same way he looked at her, that first night so long ago, when he took both her hands in his and begged her forgiveness for the Angel's lie––

The same way he looked at her, only hours ago, as he pressed his lips to her forehead, and the scorpion fell from her numb fingers.

The same way he looked at her as he tore into her flesh.

"I will never, never leave you alone," he says, reaching out to touch her chin. "Remember that, Christine. You are mine." Then, with the barest nod, he turns, and is gone.

But the delay has been too great; already, there are too many intruders to escape. In the hall, Erik shouts as they take hold of him; Christine can see his capture reflected in the shadows dancing on the bedroom wall.

Still, she follows him. Her nightdress sweeps over her bare feet as she walks down the hall, pandemonium growing and enclosing with every step. She knows she walks into Hell.

"Erik," she whispers, calling to him through the noise. "Erik!" He has broken from his captors. Bodies litter the floor at his feet; a heavy man struggles against a red chord at his throat, as Erik wrestles him against his chest. He stiffens, turns; his eyes go wide as the body falls and he breathes her name:

"Christine!"

In turning back, he has damned himself. Two men take hold of one arm, three take the other. Christine's lip is twisted in what feels like a smile; Erik frowns, yellow eyes staring, even as he is ushered through the jeering crowd.

Now Christine is consumed by the energy of his capture; men leer at his naked face even as they beat him, tear at him, force him to his knees. The grand organ at the far end of the living room is set upon and rent apart, its innards snapping and ringing like the bells of Hell as axes and pikes assault its mahogany belly; the violin, the cello, are left in splinters against the wall. In her absorption Christine does not heed them turning on her, the wandering ghost in her nightclothes, the only stagnant form amid the chaos of destruction.

"The whore rises from the monster's bed!" someone shouts, pointing, then another, brandishing high a burning pike: "she has conspired with the Devil for her fame!" Large hands grip her by the arm, tearing her clothes in their fury; long fingernails hold her by the waist, clawing beneath the straining fabric. The heat of a torch threatens her skin, as the light is shoved close; leering faces, some she knows, some who are strangers, are illuminated behind it.

"She is no virgin," chides another, and Christine winces at the hot sour of his spit on her cheek. Hands: too many to count, tear at her petticoat, her chemise. Her back is cold; she is pressed to the cold stone of the unlit hearth. She feels the familiar loose stone against her spine, the favorite she has run her fingers overtop on so many lonely nights, weathered smooth, and it is a comfort, as a knee is forced between hers. Somewhere that she cannot see, Erik is calling her name.

"She gives her cunt to Satan, willingly!" the jeering continues, to a round of unruly cheers as the buttons are torn from her nightgown. This one's face she knows, if not his name; though now his familiar eyes are bright with something more than hatred. "Look at her in all her glory! Our own Salome!"

And then quieter, such that only she can hear it among the clamour all around them, as hot fingers cup the curve of her half-bare breast, he adds: "I always did hold a shine to you, Miss Daae. Who would have guessed you would fall so low?"

Erik is shouting; his awesome voice echoes in the stone chamber, raw, feral, like an animal's before the pike. He is saying her name, and she clings to it, if only for something to hear. Through the crowd, like the parting of the Nile, she captures his gaze; tears are pouring from his rabbit's eyes. Now her thighs are spread wide, as a body presses against hers, as a thousand bodies hold her down, whispering, hissing at her, and still, he is shouting:

"Leave the girl, you have what you came for!"

His cries are met with raucous taunting. Fingers pry between her spread legs; men's fingers, hot and fat and rough. Others laugh, as a pair of trousers drops to the floor aside her scrambling feet. Then, a man's voice, cruel, as it hisses in her ear, "how foul must a woman be to fuck the Devil, girl?"

She has no answer to give.

"Christine, fight them!" she hears him, and the sound is desperate, agonized, breathless; Erik is struggling. "Damn you, fight them!"

Why? she wants to say. How is this any different?

One captor or another. One monster, traded for another.

She tells him with her eyes, instead, as hands grip about her throat, and her esteemed voice is smothered in insensate fists. The heavy heat of a soft stomach beats against her front, a wet mouth sour atop her lips, as more hands stroke her, touch her, tear at her, and endless voices scream and chant all around:

"how was Satan's cock, filthy whore?"

"feel how wet she is, the slut––"

"not so pretty now that you're off that stage, are you?"

"you're the Devil's bitch, and now you're mine––"

Her vision dances as her body is rocked against another, then another, and yet she can feel the curling of her lip as a smile paints her drawn lips. Because now, Erik understands, and as he is looking, and she can see it reflected in his yellow eyes.

When a hand clasps over her mouth, shoving its salted fingers between her lips, she knows she is still smiling underneath.

"Animals!" Erik shouts, as his awesome voice cracks, "damn you, disgusting, unnatural fools! Unhand me! Can you not see what you do?" But there are hundreds of bodies between them, thousands, and endless stew of faceless flesh. Erik is sobbing; Christine has heard it often enough to recognize the sound, even with her eyes closed shut, even with a stranger's hot breath in her ear. "Christine, hear me!––And you call me a beast?"

"Is that your bride?" one hisses, as his palm meets his Erik's cheek, though the sound is dull and lifeless behind the slapping strike of her own body against another's, again, again––

"Please," says Erik, and it is the most pathetic sound Christine has ever heard, "I love her––"

A crack, a grunt, a cheer, and barking rounds of laughter: when Erik next shouts, his words are thick and wet with blood. Hot liquid slips down Christine's bare calves to stain the floor at her feet.

And then there is a crash, as the sound of bullets striking stone echoes through the underground cavern. Grown men shout and flounder as dust and rock crumble into the crowd. Against Christine, a body grips her tighter by the biceps and grunts into her ear.

"To the police, I told you!" roars a man, tall, brandishing a dueling pistol above his head. His red astrakhan cap is like a beacon in the dark room; Christine remembers him from some place, some time that feels so long ago. His dark eyes sweep the space as he fires again into the stone ceiling. "Only the police! You are not vigilantes, but men!"

"Daroga!" Erik shouts, his voice strained as it rises above the sea of sound, "free her! Free her! "

Then a shot, as a body falls, hard on the floor, as the dark man roars, his heavily-accented words thick with hate, "disgusting beasts! How dare you! This is not justice!" Men shout and scatter, as Christine senses the air around her thinning, as cold, stone-smelling oxygen fills her nostrils, instead of the stink of flesh. Another gunshot breaks the cacophony; she gives a cry as hot blood spatters her lips and cheeks, and the body against her stills and slumps gracelessly to the ground. She stifles a laugh; at her feet, his trousers tangle about his ankles, as a pool of red slowly spreads from the empty socket of one wide open eye.

"Go!" hisses the Daroga, as Christine watches the blood pool between her bare toes. He takes a hold of her bicep and shakes her until she meets his dark eyes. Eyes like the haunted forests of Scandinavia, in the living, breathing dead of night. "Run, Miss Daae. You cannot save him now."

Her mouth tastes of copper; she licks her lips. "I do not want to save him," she tells the man with the deep-forest eyes. He frowns and touches her cheek.

"Sweet girl," he says, and his words sound almost like an apology, "then you are free."

Another shot: Christine watches the body fall without seeing. " Go! " The Daroga brandishes his pistol beside her at the enclosing crowd, clearing a path through bedlam.

They will find Raoul, she tells herself, as she slips behind a shouting man, then another, forgotten amid the mounting chaos, making her way to the path she knows will lead her outside unseen. Wherever he has hidden him away, he will be found.

She remembers his still, cold body laid out on the floor of this very living room, after Erik had dragged him from the water. As Christine traced the half-parted swell of his full, blue lips, Erik pulled her to standing by the wrist and swore he was only sleeping.

And then he kissed her, and called her his wife.

Hidden behind the iron grate of the secret retreat, the air is thick with the taste of metal. Cold water laps at her ankles; there is no current, no tide. More are crossing the water. More are coming for Erik.

Christine knows what they will do.

His eyes are searching, seeking her in the shadows. She has never seen him look so frantic; she has never seen him afraid. "Husband," she whispers, behind the metal bars, and now the word does not feel like a prison, "husband, look for me."

When his eyes capture hers beyond the grate there is relief there.

She can see his ruined lips forming the words. "I am sorry," he tells her, and now she can hear him in her ear; hear him in her mind, as clearly as she ever has. She is sure she always will.

At the center of the crowd, he is on his knees. Four men, more, bind him to the ground, though he does not appear to fight them. Another stands behind him, holding a chord taut about his throat. To one side, a young man wields an axe high in two white fists. Erik looks at none of them; his eyes are fixed only on Christine. He is begging, quietly, as his shirt is torn, and his arms are bound behind his back:

"Forgive me, Christine."

Again the mob closes in around him; as she watches, he grunts and staggers when the first stone strikes him, and yet he does not take his yellow eyes off of hers.

"I didn't know, Christine," he is repeating, even as a second collides with his side, then another, then a barrage of brutal rock, "I didn't know––"

A woman breaks from the crowd, and Erik's gaze shifts away to meet hers. There is understanding in that stare, as his head sags slightly on his shoulders; she advances, brandishing her torch before his naked face, as the jeering mass settles in around her, like predators, circling––

"I am Hortense Buquet," she says. Tears shine on the fat of her soft, wrinkled cheeks as she raises the sword of her torch; Erik nods. She gives a cry, and shoves the fire against his bare chest. The churning in Christine's belly feels like power.

There on the carpet, Erik is screaming, and somehow the sound is still musical, still divine; his fingers coil in tight fists as he beats them against the ground. Christine can see every muscle fighting beneath the torn remains of his clothes as the flames lick at the front of him; there is more life in that transparent skin than Christine has ever seen before, as it glows orange, then red, then black––

Buquet flings the torch onto the ground; it sputters and goes out. She falls to her knees, wailing, her hands above her eyes. Even from her hiding place, Christine can smell the nauseating odor of burnt flesh.

But it is only another mark, another scar upon that inhuman body. Erik's head is lowered, as his ravaged chest shudders with each rasping breath. When he lifts his head, there is new water in his yellow stare:

His Angel's eyes. Christine feels as if they are already watching from above.

"I love you," he whispers. These are his last words; Christine cannot return them.

And she cannot run. Not yet. Not until it is finished. Not until she has seen––

The Daroga is the only one shouting now, his wailing curses suffocated in the cheers and terrible laughter of the mob, as the young man at Erik's side raises his axe high before him, and the crowd closes in, blocking her view. The last Christine sees of him are his yellow eyes, searching, pleading, loving, loving––

And then they are holding his head in the air. It is a trophy; it is proof of the slain beast. It is Lucifer with his hundred searing eyes of flame, torn down by Michael on high. Christine watches his ugly head as it is passed from hand to bloodied hand, as legion clutch and grope and grab at the ruin of him, at his monster's face, digging their fingers into his twisted cheek and lopsided brow, painting his broken lip red with his blood. The Daroga is on his knees, his pistol abandoned at his side, as he covers his face in his hands and the revelers dance and cheer all around him; as Erik's head tumbles and swings in merry celebration, still his yellow eyes are fixed on Christine.

Erik is dead. But Angels cannot die.

And Christine will be free.

A/N: Saint Valentine?! But that's a romantic story!

Yes and No. The saint was (rather brutally) martyred in the name of romantic freedom from repression; aka: he died, allowing others to live the life of their choosing. Saint Valentine is remembered for performing illegal marriage ceremonies in Rome (and France, and so on––apparently there were several Saint Valentines) during a period in which the Emperor Claudius the Cruel (a man possessing zero chill or perhaps, far too much) had outlawed weddings and monogamous love.

When it was discovered that he was performing illegal marriages, Valentine was arrested and dragged before the Prefect of Rome, who condemned him to be beaten to death with clubs and to have his head cut off, and for that decapitated head to be paraded through the streets. (Incidentally, all on February 14 ~240AD: how romantic!)

Later, Saint Valentine's day––a holiday celebrating monogamous and pious love––replaced the earlier pagan festival, the Feast of Lupercalia, in which men drew women's names at random from a box over the course of an evening (for a guaranteed good time) in 496 AD by Pope Gelasius, who had apparently had it up to here with all that group fornication. I know a gang rape like... isn't the same thing as a sweet orgy at all , but leave me alone, I'm trying to draw ties here.

Thank you for reading, and for following along with this anthology. I am having a swell time. Please leave a comment/review to let me know what you think, or just that you appreciate what I do!I try to respond to every one.

-Cat