AN: I quite obviously do not own The Phantom of the Opera in any form of publication. I merely toy with what is already excellent.
This story was updated and edited August 14, 2009.
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He was in love with another, in desperate, obsessive, overbearing, gargantuan, possessive love, yet still he watched her. It never failed, every night, the same routine. She had been called one night, inexplicably roused from a dreamless sleep and a dreamless life. She had been chosen. Whenever that memory appeared, like a spectre in her mind, she would bow her head in reverence, in infatuation, in obession and in obedience.
While everyone else was fast asleep in the beds, she would lie in wait. Her dark eyes would glance at everything and nothing, waiting and watching. When she was called, she came. Without even a candle to light her winding path, she made her way to the stage of the Opera Garnier. Her delicate footsteps made no sound. Her mind was singularly focused, she would dance. Her best pair of pointe shoes adorned her feet, the staps crossing up slight ankles and defined calves.
She had always known the paths of the Opera, but the stealth and the silence with which she moved her his first gifts to her. She could have walked it with her eyes closed. It was not only her home, but together they knew it better than anyone else.
She would not dance to music, never music. For as beautifully as he could play and sing, he could not risk awaking any soul, save hers. Besides, when had one ever need music to dance? Never, not those who were truly gifted enough to dance, to really and truly dance.
Her nimble feet, agile legs, graceful neck, reaching arms and petite waist traveled across the stage. Muscles rippled as she pointed and flexed her body, rising up en pointe, then sinking into a heap on the floor. The way her hips rotated and her body swayed to a lack of music was sinful in its darkness. It was not ballet anymore, nor tango, nor flamenco, nor anything Eastern, it was simply dancing to a beat that fewpeople would ever hear in their lives. Only those who had truly tasted freedom after captivity would ever be able to understand. As much as she loved the dance of the day, there were a myriad rules to be followed. Point there, jump here, arch there, higher! Higher! Wrong! Again girl, lower, no, no, sweep out with your arms...once more, again! It was exhausting to dance in the day.
In her mind there was cello solo just there, the trilling of a flute a few leaps further, the brash beat of a bongo drum as she stomped quietly, then a clarinet hitting notes that she pirouetted in time to match, silence, then the crescendo of a powerful organ, then silence again.
It was not from the Opera, this music. All of Gounod, Verdi, Wagner, they could not touch her now with their adagios and arias. Her nose turned up at the thought. This music, however nonexistent, was above such condescension of the label, Opera. It was something darker, something that lurked on the edge of her mind and plagued her until she danced until her feet bled and her eyes cracked in fatigue.
He would watch her still, even as thoughts of his flaxen-haired songbird preoccupied his mind. Yet, the songbird was gone now. She had flown away with another of golden wings. She had gone away , but they both felt her presence. She was there, smoky on the edges, her aura dimmed by their combined darkness, but not lackluster in anyway. She could almost see her there, rich golden curls spilling over pale and graceful shoulders, robin's egg eyes glinting angelically in darkness, her mouth open in an eternal song of interference. He could see her. Angel, he reached, beloved, dearest, desperately he cried, oh my love, you have left me and I am alone. Alone again.
He watched as her dark hair spilled limply down her back, flying about in a way that could never be tamed. Her pale lids closed over protuberant obsidian orbs. Veins, purple, blue and green wound down her swan-like neck to her bodice and made their way to elegantly boned fingers. They were a complexity of a web, some map of oddities. Her swarthy skin had faded to milky pearl, she was exhausted and wan and thrilled and always dancing.
She felt him come closer, as she always did at this point, but did not stop her dance. Onyx ribbons flew about her skirts and bodice, a simple black gown swirling about her ankles, peeking only here and there. She was powerful and powerless when she danced, yet she did not stop even when she felt her control fading and his rising. She felt his unnatural eyes roam over her young and nubile body.
She was not beautiful and she knew this. He was uglier then hell, she knew. His inky mask, the color of pure ebony, showed only the visage of ravaged lips and sunken yellow eyes. Her ugliness was not such that she needed a mask, though she sometimes wished for one.
She stopped moving when she heard his footsteps and started straight ahead. It would not do to look for him, her eyes, mortal and weak, would not have been able to discern his frame in the darkness anyway. He would be displeased with her if she looked at him first; he was always higher, better somehow.
His tall frame and thin chest met her warm and exposed back as his hand crept up her throat and manipulated her jaw and lips. Her breathing was heavy and her chest, minimal as it was, strained against the coldness of his heavy and dark cloak. Warmth crept up her spine and left chills on her neck as she almost relaxed into him. He was all angles and harsh lines, the jutting of his hips dug into her and hisheart beat almost at her shoulders, such height he possessed.
His whisper was black and melodic, "Dance with me." She could feel his lips at her ear lobe, right beneath it, their twisted and torn flesh caressing her throat in a parody of a lover's caress. She shivered, half disgused, half overcome with something that deeply resembled what she knew of desire.
She danced with him, still.
She was a puppet and he held her strings. His hand curled about her thin waist and he bent her forward, her head lolled lazily as her knees bent on his command. His arms twined about hers as he sharply turned her to face him.
"Dance," he cried into the silence around them.
Her legs twined about his, he dragged her harshly across the stage, she rose up on her toes with her arms reaching for the ceiling, he soundlessly moved away from her, her feet traveled to him, his hands ran down her arms and shoulders, her arms moved effortlessly in a never ending twirl, he threw her to the floor only to ease her into his arms as she draped herself across him accordingly.
It always finished this way. She asked the same question every night, pleaded to him the same thing, so caught up in the dance.
"Take me with you," her voice was anxious, "Please, take me! I am ready!" her murmured pleas were full of a sincere longing, eager and hungry, "Take me!"
Tonight was to be different.
His eyes gleamed with something that she thought was malevolence, but could have been acceptance, perhaps delight…dare she think it love? No...not yet.
"Yes, Empress…tonight you shall come to your Emperor," he seemed to be smiling under the mask he wore, "it is time…"
Her hand did not tremble in his as she walked out of the shadows into the darkness of below. Her smile was radiant, though he did not see it.
The songbird had escaped her gilded, lovingly crafted cage earlier that night, and it seemed the ballerina was ready for her turn.
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On Madame Giry's wardrobe two slips of paper were pinned:
Dancer disappears at the Opera
Meg Giry, daughter to Box Keeper Mme Giry, vanishes without a trace. Two nights previous, the young mademoiselle was discovered missing, no possessions taken, except for her dance slippers...
The other, a worn parchment with a childish script.
Madam: 1825. Mlle. Menetrier, leader of the ballet, became Marquise de Cussy. 1832. Mlle. Marie Taglioni, a dancer, became Comtesse Gilbert des Voisins.
1846. La Sota, a dancer, married a brother of the King of Spain.
1847. Lola Montes, a dancer, became the moganatic wife of King Louis of Bavaria and was created Countess of Landsfield.
1848. Mlle. Maria, a dancer, became the Baronne d'Herneville.
1870. Theresa Hessier, a dancer, married Dom Fernando, brother to the King of Portugal.
1885. Meg Giry, Empress!
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I don't really know what to think of this. I just had to write it...please leave your opinions.
Citation:
Leroux, Gaston. The Phantom of the Opera. (pg. 212 - Mme Giry's Revelations)