Look With Your Heart and Not with Your Eyes- Phantom of the Opera Fanfiction

Chapitre Sept: Homme Masqué

I sit on the rafters above the stage waiting for the curtain to open.  Carlotta walks out onto the stage getting ready for it to open, tonight was the opening night of the newest opera of course Carlotta was the Prima Donna.  I look down in my hand is a bucket of fresh alive toads that will be dropped on her head as the curtain opens and in the commotion I will sneak away before I am seen.  It is a perfect plan and I will not be caught, after I escape the stage I will go on the balcony I discovered while walking around yesterday.  The balcony is on the ceiling of the theater and I can watch everything from up there since Christine took box five, soon no one will be in that box but me.  Out of the corner of my eye I see Madame Giry talking to the ballerinas, I can not wait to see her reaction to this.  Who will she suspect, one of the scene changers or someone else?  I look down at Carlotta burning holes into the top of her head.  I reach up to adjust my mask and then look back down to see Carlotta looking up near my direction I take a step back into the shadows more and she dismisses me and places her hands at her sides waiting for the curtain to open.  The curtain will open soon, any moment now actually.  I let out a silent chuckle as I ready the bucket silent as well.  I see the stage hands pulling on the ropes opening the curtain, just as it fulling opens and Carlotta is about to let out her first note I tip the bucket over letting the toads drop, I hold the bucket into my chest as I quickly and swiftly run to a secret entrance only I know of to the balcony.  I drop the bucket near where one of the ropes holding up the chandelier are and go through the door leading to the balcony.  I look down in triumphant as she screams and tries to shake the toads out of her hair but fail knocking off the wig reveling the green hair that the dye had done to her hair when I changed it.  

Right below me was the woman that caused me pain and blamed me for stuff I did not do, and the woman that made me get kicked out of here in the first place.  If she did not make up that lie I would not have been in the state I am in now, I would not be burnt, scared and can I say somewhat deformed.  Yes I know that is not what you would call what I am now, but I look like it.  My face is scarred and burnt, my eye is burnt so bad it is the color of obsidian rather than pale blue, places where skin should be flat and smooth was either raised or sunken in and rough.  I take my eyes off of Carlotta and try to find Madame Giry, which was not hard since all the ballerinas were around her some were actually crying.  Madame Giry was trying to calm them while looking up at the rafters than to box five then around the opera house.  She wasn't able to see me from where she was so it was  okay with her looking around.

I grow rather bored of the commotion and sneak back into the shadows, waiting for everyone to leave.  It happens rather quickly because there is no understudy for Carlotta and after that happened she would not preform.  Everyone leaves the stage and I make my way back to the rafters where I see Madame Giry on the stage still looking around.  I step back into the shadows observing her as she scans the stage and the rafters missing me each time she looks in my direction.  

Once she is sure everyone is out she calls out, "Erik is that you.  Are you really still alive?"

I look at her confused still hiding from her, who is this Erik she is calling for and why would she be calling for him if he is dead? 

"Erik it is just me, you don't 'ave to be afraid to come out.  I 'ave known you since I was a young girl Erik.  Step out of the shadows and tell me where you 'ave been and why you are coming back now," Madame Giry pleads.

I smirk wanting to play a game with Madame Giry.  I quietly take out a piece of paper and a pen from my pocket and scribble in hardly legible handwriting Erik is not here and drop it down if front of her.  She huffs and leans down and picks it up quickly reading it and looking back up.  "Erik please, I know we didn't end on great terms but please talk to me, at least more than a line written on a piece of paper.