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The hard stomp of his steel-toed boots bounced off of the mildewing walls in an unpleasant echo of doom. She felt as if he was chasing her in slow motion each uneven furious breath beckoning her to flee further down the narrow stairwell. And then came the cowardly impulse to run down the stairs which set him on fire. She snapped her head back to glance at the head of fire without a body. Chills ran up her spine as she witnessed the flames raging and fuming.
The faster she ran the closer he got. With the spiraling labyrinth at an end and the great lake in front of them, she panicked. Maybe she should have caught Erik off guard, turning and running past him but instead, she halted suddenly with her heals embracing the edge of the stone. He'd tried to catch her but he wasn't fast enough. His head of fire was quickly extinguished as the frigid waters covered both of them.
Erik screamed in terror when after sputtering and thrashing around from the fall, he didn't see Christine rising from the cold murky waters. Her body should have bobbed up from the water immediately. A threatening thought sent him diving frantically when he remembered the underwater trap he'd set for intruders. She'd have most likely gotten stuck somehow on the sharp rails of metal cage intended to lower impending foes to their death.
Through the green waters he could make out Christine, pale and still, her blonde hair looked like white muhly grass and her dress was expanded in a parachute of color that rose up just slight of her shoulders. And then he spotted the place her dress had firmly caught on the cage. He tried his best to pull it loose but it wasn't budging so quickly decided to pull Christine loose of her dress. It was getting harder to hold his breath but he didn't care he'd gladly suffocate or freeze if it meant getting Christine free from the approaching demise of his own making.
With each untied loom of fabric, he felt pins and needles prickling at the edge of his limbs and the sharp hammering pain in his head. He'd gotten her finally down to her undergarments and was relieved as the dress fell to the bottom of the lake and he with Christine firmly attached to his arm broke the ceiling of the water. He exhaled deeply spitting up heaps of water from his nose and mouth and then threw Christine's body harshly onto the stone. The wet slap of her body against the rock should have been a reassuring sound but the noise he truly wanted to hear was a sudden gasp of air, which didn't come.
Erik pulled himself up from the edge of the pool, and instinctively tilted Christine's head slightly up, pinching the bridge of her nose, and forced the entirety of his deformed mouth over hers and breathed for her over and over again. When this didn't work he pulled her drenched figure up and slammed his palm against her back, hoping the blunt force would evict the water from her lungs. After the failed attempt Erik laid her back down. His eyes burned with salty tears and snot ran down from his nose as he cried not knowing what to do next or how to save his precious love. She was helpless, innocent, an angel, and he was a murderous fucking bastard that couldn't save her from himself. In a frenzy of frustration and defeat, he threw his fist against her chest. Once and then over and over.
"Why Christine? Why?" he sobbed.
"You damn foolish girl! How could you fall in love with the devil? I've killed you. And now you're gone forever."
Studying her lifeless body, so undeserving of death he cursed the grim reaper and decided he couldn't give up just yet, so for the last time he held her head in his palm and blew all of the air he could manage from his devastated chest into her lungs.
Erik watched her unmoving face and waited hoping if by some chance God remembered the young orphaned boy who'd called out to him in the past, that he'd grant him one simple grace. But God wasn't listening and Christine's soul remained detached from her body. He wouldn't usually draw attention to himself in the cellars but he could care less as he screamed so loudly, his tortured cry was sure to be heard by somebody, if not everyone above. The sound of his anguish echoed significantly which seemed to follow down each mile of tunnel under the Palais Garnier.
He was ready to end it all then. A plan already hatching in his mind, he'd pull the chains that would lift the human-sized cage up, lock himself in, and let go. He'd end his life in the death trap that was meant for him all along.
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