The Phantom Ascending |✔| [Phantom of the Opera Fanfiction]

The Devil of Cornwall

They say that the Devil sometimes resides in Cornwall, flying in the sky, playing with his demons on the moor, dancing on the winds to cause shipwrecks.

As months passed, I stared at the Cornish sea on many nights, wandering restlessly, feeding the local legends, perhaps. I saw no devil but myself. I cared for nothing.

I had settled in an old abandoned mansion on the cliffs by the sea and played my old music on the piano in the attic. I had an arrangement with the local shopkeeper, leaving him notes with money and orders, and he would leave the packed goods near the cliffs. I kept out of the village just as the villagers kept out of my dusty mansion. They believed it haunted.

I was in fact a good fit for their local legend, for I lived in my own hell and a curse of darkness was well upon my soul.

Distorted, she had called it.

Did my distorted soul reflect my face? Or did my face reflect my soul? Which came first? Which caused which?

I could change my soul no more than I could change my appearance.

What was the purpose of my life now? I could not compose anymore. The world rejected me. My one love loved me not. Foolish days of illusion and hope were behind me. Was the decent thing for such a man to end his own miserable life?

No! I refused to believe so, the world be damned!

I sang my pain into the harsh Cornwall wind, to carry it away, far from the cliffs, but never far enough from me.