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Ballad of the Phantom's loneliness
Voici une modeste nouvelle que je viens de terminer d'écrire pour un de mes cours. Si l'anglais ne vous répugne pas, je suis ouverte à toutes les critiques!
Ballad of the Phantom's loneliness.
The
diffuse light of the candle glowed in the darkness of the room. Beside
it, a cool-staring man was sitting on a rich-looking black velvet sofa.
He was wearing an old three-piece suit making him looking as he was
returning right from the nineteenth century. But the most remarkable
thing about him was not his clothes but his face... Half of his soft
and exquisite features were hidden by a white half mask. You could have
believed he was getting ready for a bal masqué except his gloomy, grave
and glum expression. After a long while gazing at the flickering
blazing of the candle, he stood up and walked calmly across the place.
Diverse items cluttered the room in a so consequent manner that he
could not go further than three strides. During his stroll, he was
stroking with love the ebony desk, the candlestick, the feminine marble
bust and the red velvet curtains that kept the room in a perpetual
night. After three or four times of this ritual, he placed himself in
front of the lofty mirror enclosed with wrought iron and began to
contemplate his person intensely.
He cast his eye over his
appearance and stopped suddenly when his look skimmed over his half
hidden features. He could not recall the last time he had seen his face
without the white mask he was wearing. His deep-seated hatred had no
boundaries towards this slender object. This object was the symbol of
the distorted skin that brought him the aversion of his mother, the
disgust of his childhood friends... Carried like a dog, from town to
town, to be exposed in a fair : « Come! Come inside and contemplate the
Devil's child! ». Even this day, he could still hear the shouting of
the crowd looking at his disfigured face.
But one day, he
managed to escape from the fair which was set in the middle of Paris.
He ran, ran, ran until the wind formed tears in his eyes.
Then
he saw it for the very first time : the great Opera, so humongous that
it certainly was the perfect place to hid from the world and forget all
about humans and society that had brought him so much pain and despair.
He entered the Opera and, years after years, grew in age and
intelligence... But his grudge was buried deep inside of his heart. A
glimpse of a man dwelling in the depths of the Opera sufficed to fire
his crave for revenge.
« Phantom... » he thought, knocking the
mirror with his clenched fist. « They call me Phantom of the Opera...
They treated me as the ugliest animal on earth, and now, the want me to
be no more than a drifting soul... »
His hand reached a thick
rope dumped on the ebony desk and he tensed it until his bones could be
seen under the pale skin of his phalanxes.
« I am a man! » he
cried out loud « Tonight... They will pay, they will beg my pity.
Tonight, justice will be done, this rope will become the witness of my
determination, I swear it! »
The day after, the gates of the
Opera were closed. Every single newspaper talked about this major event
: a corpse was found in the vaults of the theater, hanged with a thick
rope...
