I HAVE MY NEW COMPUTER! HERE IS A CELEBRATORY DRABBLE:
Shattered Sight
There was nothing Erik couldn’t hear. Rumors of the curse had pounded at his ears for days on end, but he’d paid them little mind. He had little if not nothing to lose. He had vowed to stay away from Christine and had left the gilded walls of the Palais Garnier behind long ago. He’d cast off the mantle of the Opera Ghost and now he was now both no longer a ghost and without an opera. There was nothing for him in Storybrooke. No love, no power, nothing at all. What could such a curse take from him now?
Unafraid, Erik sat atop an ancient gravestone and watched the mirrored shards fall, still contemplating the fate that would soon befall him. Would the curse of Shattered Sight make him evil? A murderer? A thief? He had been all those things for decades on end, never having been redeemed, even by his love for Christine. At the thought, cold tears fell from deep within his skeletal eye sockets…or perhaps it was the glass.
What point was there in worrying when he was already condemned? What stopped him from revealing his true nature to the people of Storybrooke? What had caused him to abandon nooses and trapdoors in favor of soup kitchens and church services? Were such luxuries not reserved for mortal men? And he was not a man, nor a woman, nor perhaps even human at all. What reason was there for him to think of himself as flesh and blood? It would have been so much easier to take the form of a wandering spirit, far removed from humanity. What was there for him in the world of the living?
He’d had nothing, nothing but an identity. Nothing but a name, the name he picked so that Christine would feel comfortable in his presence; the label he’d attached to the humanity he’d chosen…the humanity that allowed him to slacken the iron grip he’d had on the girl who had unearthed it. The name he’d chosen was a promise to that girl, a promise kept for 28 years. It had followed him as he breathed his last and was reborn again in Storybrooke. His name was still his own when all others had forgotten theirs…
…And now, no matter how hard he tried, the ghost could not remember it. What was it again? Nothing felt right, but who could blame him? Names were for the living, and he could hardly remember a time when he was not a corpse.
“Erik? Who’s Erik?”
