Our Phantasy

Chapter 36

(Please read authors note at the end)

Raoul's POV

"Last chance!" Darius screams in my face. "Tell me where they went!" His fist connects to my face. At this point I barely feel it. This torture and questioning has gone on for what I can only assume is weeks. I know my face is black and blue and swollen.

I take a deep breath and keep telling myself I need to stay strong. I am getting everything I deserve. I'm a horrible person, and now I am paying for all my sins.

I beat the only woman I've ever loved, and became an abusive alcoholic. I killed Christine's child, and broke her heart. I tried to have her husband killed then take her for myself.

It seems that I cannot stop hurting Christine.

She'll be better off if I'm gone.

I wonder if she ever thinks about me...if she ever worries or wonders about what happened to her Vicomte.

Yes, although she never may be mine, I will always be hers.

That vision of beauty is the only thing keeping me from giving up. As long as I hang on, she will be safe.

It's funny how life works. Erik was the one who let Christine go because he believed I could give her a life she deserved. He will never admit it but he held a certain respect for me. He respected the fact that I could treat his love well and provide for her. I believed I could do that too.

We were both very wrong.

And now here I am. The 'hero' of the story. I'm alone and beaten while the 'villain' gets the girl.

Damn fairy tales and their lies!

There are no happy endings. There are no magical solutions to life's problems. There are no hero's or villains.

Just people.

People trying to survive. People trying to make it through their own stories, in search of their happy endings.

One mans happy ending may mean another man dies alone in the dark.

If that's how my story goes, so be it.

I've come to peace with the fact that I will die alone in this dark foreign place.

This is what I get for dancing with the devil.

So what does a man who is going to die do with his last few hours of life?

He reminisces.

I allowed my mind to drift back to the night it all went wrong.

I anxiously wait backstage as Christine sings the duet. I however was not paying attention to that, my focus was on box 5, and box 5 only.

That was my biggest mistake.

Perhaps if I had listened to the questioning police offers who were trying to point out the obvious change in casting that night would have ended very differently.

I realized what was happening, but I realized to late. This phantom had outsmarted us yet again, and now everyone was scrambling to try and find a way to bring him down. The one problem was that he was always in close proximity of Christine.

I wasn't willing to run the risk of her getting caught in the crossfire of this. I promised her that she would be okay. What a disastrous lie that turned out to be.

Horror over takes my senses as I watch this phantom get bolder and begins to respond to Christine's touch. The worst part about this?

Christine knows it's him.