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“Voices”
Act One:

I must have passed out because the next thing I remember was waking in a bed that wasn’t mine,  in a room that was definitely no place I’d ever been before.  I say up, and pulling the covers back, realised I was still in costume, the ballet one for the Hannibal rehearsal scene, my entire costume.  Only my toe shoes had been removed.
There was a dressing gown at the foot of the bed and slippers on the floor.  Some newly acquired sixth sense suggested I should put them on.  After a few minutes searching about the room I discovered a bath and I went to splash cold water on my face, still not quite awake.  I was drying my face when I noticed my reflection.
I wasn’t me!  And yet, I was.
I looked more like me at eighteen than me at thirty, even if it was a youngish thirty.  My eyes seemed darker, and blue instead of my usual pale green, my features a little more delicate.  I still wore the wig, which looked remarkably normal, given how temperamental the damn thing could be.  As I studied the me-but-not-me again I realised that the reflection I saw now was the same one as before the mirror shattered.  That worried me quite a bit.  Experimentally I lifted a corner of it and was relieved to find a bit of blonde hiding underneath.  Perhaps the lighting was just very odd here.  But where was here?
I wandered back into the bedroom, looking for another door, knowing full well I had to have gotten in that room somehow, but I found none.  Just as I was giving up my search three taps issued from the wall behind me.  A section of the wall that seemed elusively normal swung towards me, a door where there had not been one, revealing a man carrying several boxes and bags.  It was the man I had seen before I blacked out, minus the cape and hat, the man I performed opposite six shows a week….  But he wasn’t Scott, I was certain of that much, which suddenly left no other possibility for his identity.  That proved too much for me, I began to feel faint and started rubbing my temples.
I sensed more than heard him come close to me, “Christine, are you ill?  Sit down, may I bring you something?”
He lowered me into a nearby chair and I replied, “A glass of water, please,” before I realised he’d spoken French and I’d replied, in French.  I don’t speak French!  It then occurred to me that he’d also called me Christine, but when I opened my mouth to correct him, no words came out.
He returned and, handing me my glass of water, knelt before me.
“Oh, Christine, can you forgive me, I am not the Angel of Music, I am only Erik.”
Well, I’d guessed right, but now I also knew I’d lost it completely.  Something like an echo from a memory, the same thing that had suggested the robe and slippers, told me that I should stay Christine, that was my assigned role in all this and I must play her for all I was worth.  On the other hand I was also wondering if anyone could have slipped me some sort of hallucinogenic drug in the past twenty-four hours.  I felt like the X-Files come to life, expecting Scully and Mulder to come and whisk me back to reality.  I shook my head, no, this was too real, I was dreaming, hallucinating, or whatever.  I didn’t know how it happened, but I had been ripped from my reality and dropped into another time and place, and, apparently, another identity.
“Christine, you are far away, where are you?” he whispered, snapping me out of my thoughts.
“I’m sorry, Erik, I was, er… thinking,” I finished lamely.
But he didn’t question it and before leaving said simply, “I am your servant, Christine, you have only to ask and I shall do everything in my power to please you.”
The door closed behind him with the faintest click.  A few moments later I heard music drifting in from another room.
I decided it wouldn’t do to spend all day in my costume and so I flung open the wardrobe and selected the least complicated looking outfit.  Even with having done that it still took me over an hour to get the contraption on and after contorting my body into positions I’d never known any human could manage I still hadn’t gotten all the buttons done.
With an exasperated sigh I followed the music into the other room to ask Erik to do them for me.
The moment I saw him, leaning over the keyboard of the organ composing, I was seized with a sudden urge to remove that mask.  I knew exactly what to expect, what he would look like, I saw it often enough, but I suppose the difference between carefully applied and painted latex and actual skin was what drove my curiosity.
I hardly understood how it happened, one moment I stood over-looking his shoulder, the next his mask was in my hands and I was standing face-to-face with what seemed like anger personified.
And he was yelling at me.
I turned and ran back towards my room only to trip over a throw rug and my dress.  I landed on the floor in an undignified heap and tried to make myself as small as possible.
When I dared to glance up he was crouching on the floor beside me, looking for all the world like a lost and frightened little boy, burying his face in his hands.  Gently I placed one of my hands on his wrist to catch his attention.  As he met my eyes I handed him the mask and with a small, nervous smile said, “Could you please finish the buttons on my dress?”
Before he had time to answer I turned my back to him and pulled my hair over my shoulder, a moment later I felt his fingers closing the three or four buttons I couldn’t.

I stayed with him for a quiet and comfortable two weeks, acclimating myself to this new mode of life.
Every morning Erik waited outside my doors and I had him finish fastening my dress, but even though we had this small contact we never actually touched, not since that first morning.  He taught me things, about the world and science and so many other things as well.  I had been an average student; interested only theatre and music and fantasy stories, and I had attended a theatre conservatoire as opposed to a regular college.  I had known what I wanted to do in life and never bothered to learn anything else, especially since I did it well and was a relative success.  As a result I had quite a shock during my first music lesson with Erik.
It was immediately obvious Christine had been studying with him for an extended period of time because he began naming vocal exercises for me to do that I had never even heard of.  What truly surprised me was that I sang them as though I had known them my entire life.  I was even more surprised when he named an aria I didn’t know from an opera I’d never heard of and I sang that almost perfectly too.
Apparently some part of Christine had remained with me, so that I had some sense of direction, for I had access to any knowledge she might have had, even if I knew it was something I should not have known.
Underneath all these memories of her’s lay one final one, something beautiful and painful that I could only half understand.  It was a memory I could not place until the moment when I first heard Erik sing.
It was exquisite, so infinitely beautiful that it became painful and I felt I should weep that my soul would drown in that sea of beauty.  Then he motioned that I should sing with him.  When I opened my mouth what came out was not the voice I knew as my own, but one beautiful enough to be matched with his angel’s voice.  I fell in love with his voice in those few moments, how quickly it became as vital as the air I breathed.  I could no more live without it that a fish without water.
The only reason I didn’t stay after those first two weeks were that he told me I must leave, he had work to do, and apparently so did I.  Erik showed me the ways in and out of his home and sent me on my way.
Quite frankly, leaving terrified me.  I still couldn’t manage to button my dresses, I didn’t even know where I lived or when I was supposed to be at the Opera.
I emptied my mind and wandered off, hoping I would somehow end up at Christine’s place, where I lived, wherever * that * was.

A week later I’d figured out where I lived, my schedule at the Opera and how to get back and forth between the two.  I also managed to cope with the fashion.  And the advantage of living alone meant I could spend some time away from the stupid wig.  **When I get back to reality,** I thought, **I am * so * torching this wig.**
On the down side, I’d finally met Raoul, the pathetic little rich twerp.  I completely understand that he’s rather normal for his time period and stuff, but coming from my wonderfully modern point of view, I couldn’t stand him in the least.  However, I realised Christine wouldn’t think that of him, so I smile and act nice to him, all the while screaming obscenities at him in my head.

Anyway, things went along, I visited Erik as much as possible and his insistence I see Raoul as little as possible was a wonderful excuse for keeping away.
And then came that fateful performance when Raoul decided to sit in Erik’s box, even after I’d warned him he shouldn’t, not that he would ever actually have listened to me in the first place.
It was during act two, the scene where the little mute kid (me) grovels before the great star (Carlotta), (pah, ick, etc, etc), when the performance was blessedly interrupted (anything that stopped Carlotta was a blessing) by Erik’s disembodied voice, distorted by anger, echoing around the auditorium.
“It’s him,” I whispered involuntarily, “it’s E-“
My words were stopped when Carlotta whirled around and slapped me.
“Your part is silent, little toad.”
Now I was pissed.  First off no one had ever slapped me since I was five years old and took a pair of scissors to my mother’s original Oleg Cassini to make dresses for my Barbies, and that had been a slap on the wrist.  Second, I don’t take insults, at least not from people in front of me when I can do something about it.  The only thing that kept me from physically attacking and severely maiming her with my fingernails was Erik’s voice, once again, everywhere and nowhere.
“A toad, Madame, perhaps it is you who are the toad,” the statement punctuated by his maniacal laughter.
Carlotta went entirely white under her makeup, crept up to the orchestra and whispered something.  I couldn’t hear but soon enough the scene started over.  That explained what she had asked, and it only made me angrier with her, never, as a professional actress, would I ever start a scene, even one destroyed that much, over.  It was something that simply WAS NOT DONE.  Not that what I thought actually mattered, instead I seethed quietly and ran the scene on autopilot until I met with a pleasant surprise.
Carlotta croaked!  Okay, so I knew it was going to happen, but it was so much more gratifying to know she actually deserved it and wasn’t just acting.  Erik’s laughter mixed with Carlotta’s crying/croaking as she ran offstage and I just stood around feeling rather smug.  Erik was definitely handy to have around.
Andre came onstage just then, to announce I would not sing Carlotta’s part.  Then it hit me, the ballet.  Buquet.  Crap.  I’d always hated this part, not that Piangi’s death in act two thrilled me, but this one just seemed…ickier.  And then I realised that this time it was real, a real person was going to die.  That chandelier was going to fall.  At my feet.  I was going to betray Erik tonight.  Part of me screamed No!  It wasn’t right that I should do this to him.  The other part argued that I had to, I couldn’t change the story.
In the panic following Buquet’s death I was the only one who didn’t see a thing, on purpose, of course, I let Raoul direct me to the roof and issue declarations of love.  Knowing my fate in all this I didn’t deny him, but I didn’t accept with open arms either.
For a moment I turned from him, searching for Erik.  I knew I’d heard him earlier, I wanted him to see me, to read the truth on my face, that I hated what I was doing as much as he did.
“Christine.”
Raoul, and as I turned to look at him, wishing I could tell him to screw himself, he suddenly reached out, took hold of me, and kissed me.  After that he announced his great plan to take me away and it took all my resistance to scream “Hell no!” at him.
With the taste of his kiss still sour on my lips I pleaded having to go onstage and down we went, I with a heavy heart, regretting every moment I had spent on that roof.
The remainder of the performance passed without incident, but every moment of it I dreaded the coming curtain call, wondering whether Erik would truly go through with it, and knowing he was duty bound to.  Sure enough as I took my bow I looked up to see it falling straight towards me, guided by some invisible hand.  For a moment I wished it would kill me, spare me what I full well knew was coming, but at the last moment someone knocked me out if it’s path as it destroyed the stage.  Crystals scattered everywhere and when I lifted my head a tear-shaped one rested next to my hand.  I took it; tears streaming down my face, and imagined it one Erik had shed for me.
On to the Entr'Acte