The Man Behind the Mask: The Sequel to Gaston Leroux's the Phantom of the Opera

Chapter Three: Belle Diable

  One week had passed since her escape and already Celi was thinner, gaunter, and dirtier than she had ever been. Her mousy hair was forming a matted net on her head, her eyes no longer gleamed with life, and her skin had tanned under the hot sun, burning and bringing out dark freckles across her cheeks and arms.

   She hadn't eaten since she left. The little bit of water she had was when she stepped out into the rain and opened her mouth. She looked forward to when it rained and was calmed by the feeling of it against her dry skin. Most of the time she took refuge in the shadows the sun cast against tall buildings, wishing for it to become night and begging for scraps or money, which she never got, as she was not yet as poorly off as other beggars in the slums of Paris.

   Luckily, Celi had common sense, it was this that would help her during her first two weeks of living on the street.

   She begged at shops and restaurants and received scraps. She found an old bottle and set it outside when it rained, though seldom was it ever full when she needed it. She soaked her dress once a week in the river Seine, at night to clean it, and it usually was dried by the next afternoon.

  Her large hazel eyes looked bigger, and possessed a hungry, frightened look in them. Her cheekbones stood out on her face. Her hands were slender and bony things, not the plump, soft hands of a child. She had transformed into a street urchin.

  Her days consisted of wandering in a Paris that was not as nice as she'd once thought. People generally threw things at her - inedible things for that matter - or yelled at her. A few went so far as to chase her. Others turned up their noses and pretended the filthy, half starved little girl in front if them didn't exist. She was invisible to them. Still, others offered her crackers or crumbs, and things that no one else would eat. Usually she would be given a burnt piece of moldy bread, an old piece of meat, or a bit of rotten fruit. The scraps were enough to sustain her life, but as she grew, they would not be enough to live on. Celi became malnourished and slowly started to waste away.

   She was able to go on like this for a month. Her humanity, nearly forgotten. What was her name? How old was she? Had she ever really had a mother who loved her? She couldn't remember how to answer the simplest of questions. Warm, protecting arms grazed her dreams as memories that were just out of reach, like cozy fires and food in her stomach.

   As Celi's body grew weak, so did her faith in everything. Only her hope remained strong. Nothing could last forever, this would end eventually.

  She did not know how right she was.

    Tonight was very cold, she curled up into the fabric of her threadbare dress, wishing for morning to come. Her light hair was a tangled mass behind her shoulders.

  Celi tried to distance herself from the cold. She thought back to the life she had had, struggling to remember what a warm fire felt like. Catherine's tall figure bent over the stove. She imagined she was back in that time. For a moment she was. She remembered the ballad... what it had felt like to sing it. She sang it to herself softly and slowly at first, then louder, faster, becoming surer of the sound.

"My heart aches, my soul quakes,

Missing your smile,

The sun hasn't been shining for me, in a long while.

Wilting flowers sit on my window,

The memories of lost summers, where did they go?"

  She continued on to the last note which was when she spotted something out of the corner of her eye. A moving shadow. A tall cloaked apparition was coming around the corner, their shadow falling across the cobblestone road, silhouetted, courtesy of the bright full moon. Celi held her breath, watching and listening.