If you're drawn into a whirlpool, you don't have to resist.
Lonely, blessed with silence and darkness, Eric leaned against the wall and crawled down on it on a damp cold floor. He ran out of strength, all at once, as if they had been wiped out. I didn't want anything else: not to run away, not to think, not to remember.
I didn't want to live.
And the danger that the angry crowd would find him seemed so insignificant that he could barely grasp the last rational thought that it would be good to crawl away, and there you can indulge in black despair.
And you can just lie down and die.
Eric pulled his knees up to his chest and put down the seemingly cast iron head on them. His eyelids became heavier and his body started to grow into villages from the pervasive cold. I wanted to sleep.
That's when it happened for the first time.
Eric opened his eyes. It was light. Above his head was a familiar, cracked cave ceiling. And warmth. Warm as if he were...
With an astonished cry, Eric threw the blanket back.
He woke up in his own bed, and it was quiet around him. No armed crowds, no remote fire sounds, nothing.
It was as if everything he'd been through was a dream.
Eric walked around the cave in an uncertain manner. Something didn't add up. He glanced at the studio - he did: the model of the theater he had burned the day before was intact. And Don Giovanni's costume was still hanging on the mannequin.
Mystic.
But if yesterday's horror was just a nightmare, what to worry about? After all, in reality, everything will go wrong. Eric took a deep breath, drowning out the rest of his sleep from his memory, and went to the washroom.
...Later on, falling against the wet wall of a hidden corridor, he kept asking himself, "Was it a dream? And why didn't he listen to the warning? For once, the heavens decided to pay attention to the most unhappy of mortals, and he in his immense pride ignored their sign ...
And I shared it with him.
Eric opened his eyes and cried out - the cave ceiling stretched over his head. He was lying in bed again.
Without hesitation, he rushed to the model, safe and sound. Eric's legs buckled and he crawled to the floor with his arms around the leg of the table.
- What was that all about? - He asked in a weak voice.
It was like a performance that was repeated over and over again, every night, to the pleasure of the most honorable public.
The drama that was repeating itself for the third time almost never touched it. And when Christine kissed him, Eric did not cry. He reached out and asked her for a ring to see her coming back for that.
And then, looking after the boat that was sailing away, Eric felt nothing but homesick. How much longer would he have to endure this day?
So he hid quietly in a secret passage, but did not go far: turned into a corridor, which led to the wine cellar of the restaurant, located near the theater. It was usually crowded there, but now - apparently, because of the ugliness at the Opera House - the audience was in no hurry to have fun. And the service had no reason to go down to the cellar.
Eric got drunk. Not to the point of oblivion, but on his feet he struggled. And for some reason, it hit him in the head that all his problems will solve Antoinette, that she can tell the way out. So he took a couple of bottles and headed straight for her apartment. It used to be empty, but Eric rightly thought that the fire would get Antoinette into it.
- God, Eric, how did you... come on in, though, I don't want to be seen. - Antoinette dragged him into the house.
Eric vaguely remembered complaining to her about the injustice of the world, asking why he had to do it again on this very day when it all went to waste, and not the day when Christine first sang off the stage? Because it was the best day of his life, and of course this time he would have done things differently.
- Tell me, Netta, what would you have done if you had been repeating the previous day and nothing had changed? - Eric was lying on the table in Madame Giry's living room.
- That's how you lived," Antoinette said, and then she was afraid to cover her mouth with her palm. - I'm sorry.
- No, you're right," Eric shook the bottle, spilling wine on a polished worktop. - But still, what to do if there wasn't one tomorrow?
Antoinette thought about it.
- There are no consequences tomorrow," she finally said. - But these are all fantasies. Give me the bottle, Eric, and go to sleep. Tomorrow we'll figure out what to do with you.
I think he got to the couch somehow and collapsed on it without undressing.
to be continued ...