Asmodeus, a great king, strong and powerful, was supposed to have appeared with three heads (bull, man, ram). It had taken weeks to beg, borrow and steal the ingredients for the incense. It had taken days to obtain candles – real candles – from the undermarket: Unregistered products were forbidden by the Syndic.

Edmund Jenkin was not an old man but he was weary and reaching the end of his resources.  He had been waiting for his caller who was overdue by an hour and he was worried.  The weather was bad but that was not what concerned him.   What concerned him was that the time was bad, the days were bad, the enemy was breaking through in ways they could not have imagined a decade ago and he was concerned that these were the final days.

Eddie was a bright guy.  I met him at college where he was studying literature and poetry and he had a real passion for it all.  He had a gift with words and loved a well crafted phrase loaded with booby-trap cleverness.   

Do you remember when you were a child?  Alone and hungry and crying for a mother that was beyond hearing?

He was sitting untouched by the noise and movement around him, day-to-day face glued to his head, perfectly convincing.  His hands moved over the keyboard, marionette appendages on strings of habit.

I wrote this ten years ago (heavens!) as part of a Phantom of the Opera fan event. It’s a short piece of fiction set during the formative years of the eponymous character and is connected to the character of the novel as opposed to any of the movie or theatrical interpretations. It is also the short work I am most proud of as I believe it offers something new to the canon without in any way contradicting what was reported in the original work.