The Final Act (A Phantom of the Opera Phan Fic)

Chapter One ~ In Which She Runs Away

Ella's POV

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All I could feel was bitterness. Intense, unending bitterness. It swelled inside of me. It caused me to ache within my very core. Never fading. Always growing. Bitterness. Complete bitterness. I was, in fact, burdened with hatred as well. Growing remorse. Frustration. Disturbance. Pain of all sorts. But they seemed to all be lessened as bitterness overflowed within my soul.

I looked back through my stringy, wet hair at the house that slowly grew smaller and smaller in the rear view mirror. Behind me sat all the memories and girlish ideas I once held dear to my heart. Now they seemed like broken dreams and stupidity. That small building that grew to the size of a pin head as I continued driving down the road was my home. But it was hard to consider it home, now.

In all honesty, it felt like more of a little piece of hell where I simply slept, ate, cleaned, and breathed the stale air that re-circulated. I could smell the smoke of his cigars still dancing in my nostrils, and it made me gag just thinking that he was there gleaning from what I had put so much effort into.

My fingers wrapped around the steering wheel tightly. I knew my knuckles were turning white, but it would have been hard to tell past the bruises and scars. There were always bruises and scars. I could never escape them. His violent outbursts were too great for me to overcome. Why had I not seen them before? How could I have been so blind? Love is blind, but can it be so blind to see that great a fault?

"Momma, I'm cold." I heard a little, pitiful voice call from the back seat. My hand went to adjust the rear view mirror, as I took in the sad sight of my little five-year-old drenched to the bone. He sat, shivering and teeth chattering, clenching to the only toy his b*st*rd of a father would allow him to keep: a stuffed teddy.

"I'm sorry, Arthur. I'll try to turn the heat up." I turned the knob to the heater, getting an awful groaning noise from the junkie car before a blast of musty air came spitting out from the vents. I choked on it a moment before cracking a window.

The cold rain drops sneaked through the little crack and hit my skin as I continued to drive forward. It had been raining on and off for the past two days, and the only reason I point that out is because the past two days had been like a greater level of hell to me. And now I hated the rain. I hated the rain with a burning passion. I just wanted some sunshine, some warm rays of golden light to fall on my face and warm me. That was what I wanted; not this bloody rain.

But life did not always allow one to get what one wanted, and I was not even near being the exception to that rule. It seemed that way from the beginning of my time on earth. My family was of no prestigious nature, not that I expected them to be; but life was more work than play and more struggle than success. With my father as a store clerk and my mother as a stay-home parent more than anything else, income was slim and pleasures were not a thing often met.

I was to be an only child, born Ella Marie Devitt, but in my eighth year of life my mother found herself to be pregnant with my sister, Dana Eloise. With another mouth to feed and still a similar income, life became even harder within the home. It was never peaches and cream, but one learned to live with it as best as they could.

If financial trouble was not enough, my parent's lives were shattered upon the passing of my baby sister. They had all been in a car accident, my whereabouts unknown to me. The impact of the crash sent Dana through the window and into an eternal slumber. She was only five. My father was impaled in the back with some metal, leaving him without the use of his legs. That left another man out of work and my mother to pick up the broken pieces that she did not have the strength to do.

It was truly heartbreaking to watch it all. As a thirteen year old, struggling to find where I belonged and fighting with the raging teen years ahead, I felt more lost than I supposed most people felt at that age. I worked along side my mother, almost becoming the mother as she worked to become the major income provider. Another struggle for us all.