Work Text:
Five stories beneath the ground, in an extraordinary home, an exceptionally tall man opened the door to an ordinary dressing chamber. He slid the door shut and reluctantly turned the gas lamp on the wall up to its highest setting. He quietly hissed and held his arm up to cover his eyes for a moment; after so many years, his eyes were ill equipped for such brightness, but alas- good light would unfortunately be needed for this particular exercise.
His eyes slowly adjusted enough to survey the room before him. On one end stood an elaborate armoire, flanked by a gilded antique mirror which was covered with a black curtain. On the other sat a large dressing table with an elaborate assortment of creams, tinctures, and powders organized neatly on its surface and crowned by another mirror covered in another black cloth. He seated himself at the table and removed his formal black jacket with a sigh- it would be most unfortunate for it to get stained or smudged by the messy work he was about to undertake. He reluctantly forced himself to remove the cloth covering the surface of the mirror, which revealed a spindly, ghostly figure clad all in black, its face obscured entirely by a dark leather mask.
At the sight of this image, the man clenched his fists until his nails drew blood. This, he thought, was unsightly enough, but what came next would be worse. He was at the verge of giving up on the whole damned enterprise, when the soft, gentle face of Christine - perhaps after this night, he hoped, his Christine- came to mind. For her, he thought as he undid the ties on the back of his head, I will try to be a man. Only for her...
He let the mask fall to the floor. Behold, the Living Corpse. How he hated what stared back at him! His face resembled something akin to the skull of a dead man left to rot for several months, and perhaps, in places, a piece of withered, rotten fruit. His misshapen head was covered - barely- by a layer of stretched yellowed skin, his lips thin and drawn tightly over crooked teeth. His mouth sank into the hole that served in place of a nose. The flaming yellow eyes, like those of a predator, glared back at him hatefully from pitted sockets.
It had taken him many years to understand his mother's fear and loathing of him, her only child, but as an older man, he felt she had been perfectly justified. Imagine, if you will, that your lover abandons you for a woman more befitting of his station, leaving just a piece of him for you to remember him by in your belly. And imagine that after nine agonizing months of loneliness and censure you give birth not to a darling bouncing baby boy, but instead to a nasty little creature that belonged more properly in a grave - wouldn't you go a little mad, too? Certainly, the monster’s childhood had been justified- keeping him locked away in the attic, a sack and later a mask wrapped tightly around his head; beating him whenever he was wicked (he must have been a very wicked boy indeed); pushing him away as he toddled after her, clutching her skirts… He shook himself from his reverie. Tonight, he must focus not on the past but on the present. He scowled again at the thing that stared back at him from within the smooth, perfect surface of the mirror, and began.
First, he pressed a cool, damp cloth from the washbasin against the irritated, drum right skin which stretched impossibly thin across his unusual bone structure. Patting it dry, he applied just a touch of a moisturizing cream; it did not prevent the painful welts and sores he had been plagued by for as long as he could remember (nothing did) but it prevented further irritation caused by the rest of this 'routine'.
Next, he carefully removed the lightweight leather nose from its little wooden box. The appliance was shaped with a layer of copper on the inside to hold its form, and covered with a thin pale leather on the outside. He lightly applied a trail of pungent adhesive around the perimeter of the gaping nasal cavity (taking great care not to get any inside the orifice -that was a lesson you only had to learn once) and pressed the false nose firmly onto his face. He sat fidgeting for several minutes, enough for the contraption to bond to his face.
Once he was satisfied with the placement, he set to work applying a pale, powdery makeup in a smooth layer across his entire face. To blend anything that would match his own waxy yellow skin tone was impractical, but a mixture of white and beige powders, when blended together, was nearly enough to conceal the lines where his prosthetic nose met bone and the unhealthy hue of his skin. To complete the picture, he drew two thin brows above each eyelid; no hair grew anywhere on his body except, curiously, his thick dark eyelashes.
There was nothing to be done about the rest, though goodness knows he had tried a great many things throughout his life. The eye sockets were a touch less dark thanks to the pancake makeup, but not by much, and his alarmingly yellow eyes still glowed brightly from within. Beeswax and castor oil could not give him normal lips, and the wicked cleft which tore up his mouth through his left cheek almost the clear up to his ear was beyond all help entirely. The rest of the his features- the sharp cheekbones, withered sunken cheeks, and the twisted, flattened ears fused tightly to the side of his skull- he had never found a technique sufficient to obscure.
With the routine nearly complete, he gave his reflection a quick inspection. As a younger man, he had experimented with many different methods for this entire process and was resigned that this was the best one could do. He still did not look "normal" by any means - uneven coloring, lumpiness, and distortion still marred the planes of his face and head. But he could nearly pass as a man who was merely old and ugly in an average way, and not as an unspeakably repulsive monster. His searching, exacting eyes met those of his reflection and narrowed critically. He tore his gaze away to he finishing touch to retrieve the finishing touch, a handsome dark wig, made of human hair, and pulled it gently over his own barren, wrinkled pate.
Once his face was complete, he walked to the armoire across the room and removed all but his undershirt and drawers. For one so ugly, he had always surrounded himself with things of beauty, and his manner of dress was no different. Acquiring and adjusting these pieces, however, had been a chore; he was so incredibly thin, with hips and ribs which jutted through the skin, that some clever tailoring was required to render them wearable. Thankfully he had learned to sew and mend at a very young age, unusual for a boy, for his mother assigned him the duty of maintaining and repairing his own clothing, most essentially the cloth masks he was required to wear lest he invoke her terrible wrath (this, too, he thought, was a lesson a person really only had to learn once-by the time he was five years old, enough kicks to the head and lost baby teeth were sufficient to dissuade him from disobeying this most sacred of rules!).
The soft woolen trousers came first, the garters to hold up the fine thick socks, the impeccably polished dress shoes- all in black of course, to match the rest of his outwear. He pulled on a fresh white dress shirt and buttoned up a brocade vest of the deepest burgundy, clipping his timepiece in place. He cinched a freshly ironed bow tie tightly against his thin neck and carefully did up the cuffs of his shirt before pulling over his shoulders the stiff black jacket.
Kid leather gloves covered his frigid bony fingers and distracted from their alarming boniness. And a light-oh, very light-spray of cologne to mask the smell of the mildew and damp earthiness of his subterranean home. At least, he hoped it did, having no one to ask. He placed his wide brimmed hat on his head with a flourish and returned to the mirror to inspect his handiwork. Not a sliver of ghastly skin showed from heel to neck, his clothing was impeccable and clearly expensive, and his face-his awful, awful face-could almost, almost pass as something acceptable to be seen in public. It would have to do.
His heart clenched inside his chest. It would have to do, and he only hoped it was enough not to frighten her, his angel. He did it all for her after all, she who had her pick of fine, young suitors, each one with handsome faces they could show above-ground! For months now she had begged to see him, begged, for the sweet child knew not what she asked. She had long stopped believing him to be an angel, if she ever had to begin with, but remained devoted to her Maestro, who she was convinced to be a talented and painfully shy composer and musician who wished to avoid the perils of fame. That had been her doing, her own beliefs which he had never once encouraged despite her constant attempts to wheedle from him any details, he thought defensively. He was not a habitual liar after all- well, except for the first lie about his celestial origins...
But what else could he have done? He could not have approached her as any normal man might, lavishing her with gifts of flowers and sweets at her dressing room door; she would be terrified and repulsed-and probably scream and sob to be cursed with such an admirer, and nothing was worse, nothing compared, to the screams and the crying...
He carefully wiped away the errant tears springing from his lidless eyes, which would otherwise ruin the painstaking work he had done on his face. No, this would have to do. He could hope - with what little hope remained after the forty some years his shambling corpse had walked the Earth - that his human disguise combined with the affection she had come to feel for her hidden teacher would be enough. Enough for her to look upon him without fear, and to hear his confession, the words of love that overflowed from his dead mouth.
He closed his eyes and forced himself to breath enough to compose himself. At length, he raised his eyes to the mirror yet again. One last check, and he nodded approvingly to himself, tipping his hat at his own reflection. "And now," Erik announced to no one as he headed to the door, collecting a delicate bouquet of roses from a side table, “to the Opéra".