Confessions Of A Vicomte - Entry Four · Jun 28, 03:50 AM

Dear Diary,

As each day passes in this torture chamber, I grow even more impatient toward my captors. It is very unlikely they will simply let me go. The guard is always doubled up now, because my last escape entailed a young girl who had ‘converted’ from being a Basher, and helped me escape despite the danger to her own life. I am ever grateful for all that the Lovers and Defenders have done for me, but it does not ease the pain of futile attempts to murder me that the Bashers are putting their whole heart and soul into – when they are not trying to woo the Phantom, Erik.

I’ve only seen him once or twice, but each time he was flocked by an enormous horde of phans. Despite everything, I feel a twinge of pity on him, not because of his accursed visage as much as what terror has been brought upon him in the forms of these young brats impressionable girls. Actually, I think I saw a boy or two among the crowd, a thought which plays in my mind more than I care to admit aloud.

They were all wearing masks or a variation thereof. They were all wearing black, red, or white. Each figure’s posture spoke very clearly of their intent, and each one insisted on singing lessons. I feel a bile raise in my throat, especially remembering what I spoke to the crowd.(They had all carried a very resistant Erik to the torture chamber, to show off their prize to their ‘Angel’.)

I said to them bitterly, “Why on earth would one seek a singing teacher who, in all matters in question, obsesses over his students to such an extent as to imprison them within their own mind?”

There are no words to express the look in Erik’s strangely haunting golden orbs as they bore into mine. There are, unfortunately, words for the looks which the Bashers gave me. One spat at me, and another gave me a rude gesture, saying, “Because! He will love me forever, and I will help him see that I carry a love more true for him than he could ever imagine.”

I am unsure at this point whether Erik was enjoying this shallow infatuation(for it surely is shallow, I have found. I am no head scholar, and I have been described as ‘naïve’. But I do study my surroundings, especially when my life is at stake.), or whether he was despising it. On further thought, I do believe he immersed himself within it, with no intent on it being a permanent set-up. My opinion is that, if he wanted them gone at any time, he would have been easily able to do so. One cannot, after all, blame him for finding amusement in the very foolish parade that followed him around like sheep to their dear shepherd, flocking around him and muttering confessions of love and devotion, each trying to win his affections. Affections of which I am always curious as to whether they exist at all.

He began walking out of the torture chamber, scowling as he passed at a particular nasty bit of paper stuck to the wall. It had my own face on it, with vulgar scribbles in bright-colors, giving me all sorts of disgusting items. “Take that down, for God’s sake.” Erik snarled, “None of us want vomit in here. Even in this weak excuse for an over-heated chamber, it’s not a particularly pleasant odor.”

Quickly, the girls scrambled around to rip it down first, several spreading their feet apart and declaring their own cleverness. Others took the opportunity to grip his arms and attempt to look serious and condemning at the silliness of their fellows. One girl(with her lips painted the darkest of blacks, and her hair with a queer shade that has no name), offered a sarcastic remark, which sent her companions in an uproaring applause. The girl gazed longingly at Erik, then left to go and – as she stated – to ‘compose more of my opera’. A girl (the one which had grabbed the paper from the wall and stuffed in into her pocket quickly) questioned about the piece, and the dark-lipped girl simply replied that it was called “Don Juan’s Immortal”.

With or without the picture of myself marred on the wall, I felt deeply sickened. My time with the Bashers had given me enough knowledge of their strange world to get the meaning behind the name.

~Raoul de Chagny

— MaskedNicci

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