The Underground Music (Phantom of the Opera Fanfic)

Chapter 12: The Little Sultana

Agitated, shrill screams reached through my ears and roused my muddled mind, as if shaking it to wake up.

My eyelids tried to open, but found it difficult to pull my eyelashes apart. In a panic, I wondered why, but then, everything seemed to flood back into my memory. That's right, I had fallen into the murky water...and Erik had fought something...my eyelashes must have gotten tangled.

As I pulled my eyelashes apart and finally opened my eyes, my ears stopped heeding the screams, and I thought nothing of them, passing them off as being nothing.

Until I saw the ceiling and realized where I was...then I immediately knew that the screams were something, and where they were coming from-

I was back in Erik's flat, and the screams were coming from...

The torture chamber!

I sat up from the familiar couch, and no sooner had I done so than I was attacked with a coughing fit, spitting up water.

"Erik!" I shouted. "Why is someone in your torture chamber? Didn't say you had given up your torturing ways, sir?" The prisoner kept screaming, and I couldn't recognize the language they- for I couldn't distinguish the prisoner's gender- was speaking. "And what is that abhorrent language they're speaking?!

"Is this how you normally wake up?!" Erik boomed as he came gliding into the dining room- or, as he calls it, the Louis-Philippe room...I prided myself with remembering that- and stopped to stand before me.

"Erik, who in the world is that?"

"She is your assailant, and my crazed admirer, to put it into crude terms."

"...Admirer? What, do you actually have a following of admirers?"

Erik seemed irked by how I had phrased that last question, as if he took it as an offense. Sighing, he answered, "no, she is not an admirer of my music. She is an admirer of... my other special talents."

"What 'other special talents'?"

He looked at me as if the answer should be obvious.

"Well, what is it? Out with it, sir!"

"Aren't you intelligent, Jennifer?! Figure it out!" He burst, impatient.

"..." I searched for a possible answer. In my mind, I skimmed through all of the newspaper articles about the Opera Ghost that I had accidentally seen from over my father's shoulder throughout the past two years.

Then, the realization hit me.

"Killing." I murmured, suddenly glossy-eyed.

He rolled his eyes. "Precisely. You see, this young girl is the Shah of Persia's eldest daughter, the Little Sultana. She, a psychopathic lunatic, became fascinated in my skills when I was hired by the Shah to be her own personal amusement, a gift."

"A-amusement? Killing? That's barbaric!"

"Listen. I was used for killings, like a lion in the Colosseum. I used my own personal tricks, and my own inventions...the torture chamber...the Punjab Lasso...the trick of the Siren...and she took a liking to each and every one of them. As I was her 'gift', I was obliged to teach her my ways-"

"Idiot! Why would you do that?!"

"Shh. You would not understand. Now, will you stop interrupting me?" He shot me an angry, frightening glance from underneath his mask.

I shrunk back. "Yes, sir."

"Good. Now, since I escaped those rosy hours of Manzenderan with the Persian, to escape my execution..."