Bravissimo

He'd Do it for Me

Christine-

I reach the Prima Dona room and go to my vanity for my makeup. All my flowers are wilted and dead, like everything else in this Opera house. I find the right shade and walk out of the room, ash filling my lungs immediately and I cough. I walk through the backstage and climb up to the rafters. Perfect, there's a rope that hangs from the ceiling in just the spot Joseph... died in. It's a giant knot you pull for reasons it can't work for any longer. I tug on it and nothing happens. I take the rope undo the knot and turn it into a very lose noose the perfect sized hole to fit your head through, and leave it there. The only person who'd know that it wasn't a hole but a knot you tugged, is dead. The looseness is very easy to change. I can already hear the official police report. 'The pull string just got too loose over time, Joseph must have fell and looped himself in, a tragic accident really.' I take a breathe and lean on the wall on the way down. Knowing his family won't have true justice for his murder, because of me... 

"Erik would do it for me." I reassure myself. I make my way down and walk under the spiral stairs. The last thing anyone saw me do was climb those steps. I make my way through the ruined stage and push away the tattered curtains. There he lay, Piangi, and I scrunch my nose.

"He would do it for me." I repeat and walk over to his costumed corpse and slowly undo the noose around his neck. "How you dealt with having such a wife Piangi, I'll never know." I say to him. And I take out my makeup. "It's a shame really, I have a feeling the new changes here are going to be ideal." This shade should cover up the purple and blue ring around his neck, the doctors will think it's just like the rest of his costume makeup. By the time the police get to inspect the body the blue and purple will have faded just enough, to seem like it's from him having choked on the smoke, like so many in the seats out front.

I leave the backstage and walk up the spiral staircase and I get butterflies remembering the feeling of singing with my Phantom. A one of a kind sensation. I loosen every rope that was around the one Erik cut to release the chandelier. Everyone who saw what he did has probably either left Paris, or is dead, and even if they weren't, they would keep their mouths shut on the details if they valued their lives. I walk out onto the stage and nervously bite my nails, something feels, familiar, not wrong but... familiar. I turn around and leave down the hallway back to the prima donna room and return my makeup to its original drawer. I open my mirror and hang Erik's noose on a candle holder and close the mirror shut. I walk back out to the stage and look down the hall and see the old clock is still working. 7:50 I have to set myself up now.
I turn around and let myself down from the stage and find a plank that's fallen from the ceiling, it's so heavy I almost can't lift it, and yet I do. I sit on the floor and wait for 8 o'clock, the exact time the police can legally come in and inspect once again in search for me and any remaining evidence. The time comes and I take a few breathes because I know the wind is about to be knocked out of me. I lift with everything I have and place it over my stomach, it's terrible and all my air leaves my body. I can't breathe. I struggle underneath it to find Erik's watch in my dress and find it next to me and squeeze it to feel the pulses of the seconds go by.
I hear the door open and the dogs and the whistles, each and every sound echoing in the opera room. My eyes force themselves closed and I focus on the tick's of Erik's watch and my heart beat goes slower... and slower.... slower.

"OVER HERE!"