Chapter Text
Phoenix saw the Phantom crawling towards her, that ghastly melted face with the milky, bulging orb. Her brain was scurrying to catch up with everything that had happened; Philbin getting shot in the head with a bullet that had surely been meant for her, Swan trying to strangle her to death only to be saved by the Phantom swinging in to stab Swan repeatedly in the heart and save her. It all clicked into place; the Phantom, Winslow it really was him, had been behind the scenes guiding what was happening to her and trying to protect her from Swan. Somehow she had thought that the night he took her to the roof was some drugged out dream she had had, considering how little sense it made in the first place.
Now he lay on the floor, bleeding out, his one arm reaching out to her and his one clear blue eye pleading for her to recognize him, to be with him. She ran over to him and knelt down feeling utterly confused and helpless. She started stroking his hair as he fell unconscious and her brain desperately tried to piece together what she should do to help. No one else was going to help, the mob around her thought this was all part of the show. They were ignorant to the tragedy in front of them. Like they had been with Beef. She had been happy to overlook what happened with Beef too but now her eyes were open to the corruption running through the Paradise and she had to do something!
She looked Winslow over, feeling the blood sink from her head and a sickening wooziness come over her as she saw his mangled face. She quickly looked away and took a deep breath trying to focus on the bright yellow shirt of one of the excited audience members in front of her. Her mind was panicking, how was she going to help Winslow if she couldn’t even look at him without wanting to faint! She took a deep breath and prepared to look down again. This time she wouldn’t look at his face, even though it was ghastly it wasn’t bleeding so that wasn’t his biggest problem at the moment.
She focused on him again, looked over his back, there were no signs of injury so with all her might she grasped his side and flipped him over. He was too close to the edge of the thrust stage and his unconscious head lolled backwards off the stage and made a loud-sounding smack onto the wooden side of the stage. Phoenix cringed at the noise but any thought of his head was gone when she saw the gushing chest wound bleeding out onto the stage. She stumbled back onto the stage floor, and looked to the rafters trying to regulate her breathing. Well she knew what the problem was, and she had no idea what to do about it.
Trying not to look at him, or think too much about the wound, she moved forwards and pressed both her hands down on the wound. She felt thick blood squish through her fingers and she tried to block out the feel and the mental image it gave her. A faint thought in her mind said she should put something on the wound other than using just her hands to slow the bleeding, if he wasn’t too far gone as it was. She wiggled out of her cloth jacket, keeping one hand on his chest the whole time, and shoved the jacket down on the wound and resumed pressing. She knew she needed to get help for him but she was also afraid if she got up he would just bleed out.
Phoenix looked around trying to see who was close to her so that she could get their attention. She made eye contact with a girl in front of her and screamed out, “This man needs help!” Unfortunately all that came out was a low raspy speech that couldn’t dare be heard over the cacophony of the crowd. The girl in front of her squinted and shook her head, not understanding. Phoenix cleared her throat and tried again but again her voice refused to work.
Phoenix started to feel a new panic as one hand went up to her throat, smearing red on her pale neck, as she tried to form words that would not come out as more than a ragged whisper. Suddenly she understood with a dull horror that the contract Swan had her sign to promise her voice was coming back to haunt her. She felt a flood of new panicked thoughts fly through her mind of never being able to sing again and not being worth anything now. She swallowed hard and shook her head. Those thoughts would have to wait. She looked again towards the girl desperately and then motioned down to the man bleeding out below her.
The girl, still smiling and enjoying the “show” looked down at Winslow and slowly her face sank as she started to tug at her boyfriend to get his attention. The boyfriend finally looked over and gave a laughing smile while he playfully nudged his girlfriend, shouting above the crowd. “Awww, that guy is part of the act, just like Swan was!”
Someone from the stage stepped on Winslow’s leg and stumbled backwards onto him. Phoenix tried to push him off with one hand as the very disoriented person stumbled off Winslow, managing to step on him a few more times.
Phoenix, still seeing the couple looking at her, waved her bloody hand in front of them while trying to mouth out “Help!” The girl’s face turned sullen and she looked to her boyfriend. “I don’t think this is supposed to happen...” The boyfriend looked between his girlfriend, Phoenix and Winslow, bleeding out before grabbing the shoulder of a nearby friend of his and motioning to the stage. “We gotta get that guy out of here! He’s hurt and he’s gonna get crushed by this mob!”
Phoenix put all her weight onto her hands that were on Winslow’s chest while trying to push off anyone who came too close to her until the people she flagged down got to her. She didn’t know if Winslow was even still alive but she was going to do her damnedest to not let up on his wound. It was the least she could do for him. She felt so sick and everything was starting to swim around her but she needed to hold it together for Winslow.
The two men got onstage, pushing the crazed crowd out of the way, one grabbing Winslow under the arms, the other grabbing his legs. Phoenix tried to continue to keep her weight on his chest and move with them. She motioned with her head towards the backstage. She wanted to get him to one of the greenrooms. At least they should be able to keep him safe from the crowd until they could get help.
She felt so dizzy and light-headed as she walked in tandem with the people carrying Winslow’s body. She knew they were moving quickly but every second seemed to last an hour as she struggled to keep conscious. She looked up and tried to take a deep breath, desperate to focus on something, anything to distract her from Winslow’s gore. Her eyes first landed on Swan’s bloody body, still being paraded around by the mob and that didn’t help. The blood, his raw face and the fact that he had tried to kill her didn’t make her feel any better.
Next her eyes fell on Philben. Good riddance to him, but even after everything he did to her, seeing his face blasted apart, bits of brain painting the stage behind him, only sickened her more. She needed to focus or she would faint and then Winslow was a goner.
She looked down at Winslow’s face. Luckily she was facing his good side. She tried to focus on what was left of his face and could remember what it looked like that day they met. In Phoenix's life she had had a few times where she met someone and they clicked, like she had known them for years or had been living separate but in sync with them her whole life. She knew it was silly and that she really had no idea who this man was, but she liked him and she hoped she hadn't lost her chance to know him.
The group pushed past the masses of people enjoying themselves and theatre people freaking out and running around hysterically. Phoenix took one hand off Winslow and frantically pointed the way to the two carriers to the door that led to a greenroom. As they entered the greenroom some of the chaos and noise subsided. There were several people in that room yelling at each other asking what was happening, exclaiming about the deaths and upon seeing the bloody man being carried in, yelling about the phantom. The two men quickly settled him down onto a musty old couch. Phoenix was still pressing her jacking into him for all she was worth. Now that she had gotten him back here her mind blanked. She had no idea what to do. The two guys on either side of her ran off to go get help.
Suddenly a hand touched Phoenix’s back. A girl that had been one of the backstage techs who had worked with Phoenix, named Susie, came into view and looked down at Winslow. “He looks really bad!!! Do you need any…?” Phoenix grabbed the girl’s hands and forced them onto Winslow’s chest before she found herself falling backwards onto the green room floor.
The girl squeeked, “Are YOU okay!?” but she leaned forward to put pressure on Winslow’s chest.
Phoenix nodded from the ground and aggressively pointed to Winslow hoping the message would get through while rasping out, “Save him!”
The girl looked back at Winslow, quickly pulling back the jacket to look at the damage before replacing it and shouting, “Hey! Ally! Get me my sewing kit and a lighter!” The girl looked down at Phoenix and shot her a tight smile. “I got this, I worked as a nurse in Vietnam.”
Someone who knew what they were doing was in charge now. She could go to sleep. It would be okay. Then she was looking at the popcorn ceiling, watching it go fuzzy while darkness creeped in along the edges to finally consume her.
***
Phoenix woke up and didn’t know where she was, or what was happening at all. Everything felt grey and she wanted to vomit and die. She rolled over to her front and grasped hard cement while her insides seized and she threw up into the grass. While she was throwing up her hearing started to come back and she heard loud authoritative voices over megaphones yelling that everyone needed to evacuate the premises in an orderly fashion. Then Phoenix’s other senses started kicking in and she realized she was outside in Paradise’s parking lot. She pushed herself up into a sitting position, wiping off her mouth with the hem of her dress. She looked up and immediately made eye contact with Susie next to her who smiled at her comfortingly. “Hey there sweetie.”
Phoenix squinted bright lights from the emergency vehicles nearby were blinding her and a massive headache started to pound it’s way into her head. “Wuh, where, where is Wi--- The man you were taking care of?”
Susie bit her lip and looked down at her hands which were stained red. “I sewed him back together and the bleeding slowed down… but then the police came in and started ordering people around. They pulled me off him and carried me outside, along with you.”
Phoenix sat up straighter as panic started to course through her veins as the grogginess of unconsciousness wore off. She muttered in a in a horse whisper, “Did they carry him out!?”
Susie looked towards the Paradise as several stoned hippies were unceremoniously pushed out by the cops. “I don’t know, they are still pulling people out and it’s such a mess here. I haven’t seen him, but I might have missed him! A bunch of people were taken away in ambulances, he might be one of them…”
Phoenix got to her feet and looked around trying to find Winslow. She turned around and her feet didn’t want to work properly and she stumbled over them. Susie grabbed her hand and helped support Phoenix down into a sitting position again. “Take it easy there! We did the best we could. Now the police will take care of the rest.”
Phoenix collapsed on the rough cement curb and put her hands up to her head as she started to cry. The cool air started to give her a chill without her jacket. Between sobs her coarse voice muffled out. “Was he okay?”
Susie sighed as she rubbed a hand up and down Phoenix’s back. “I don’t know… If he was in the field hospital we would put him on some antibiotics and bed rest. He has a collapsed lung. I stabbed him with a needle and tried to push out as much air from his chest cavity as I could before I stitched him. I don’t think the stab got to his heart, otherwise he would have been already dead. Hopefully he can survive until they get him to the hospital.”
Phoenix started bawling. She had dreamed of her wedding day ever since she was a little girl and this, this was a giant fucking disaster. Susie wrapped her in a tight hug and rocked her. “Awww, it's going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay.”
A loud voice cut through her sobs and internal self pitying monologue. “Are you Phoenix? Swan’s wife?”
Phoenix sniffed and rubbed away tears with her palms and sat up straight to look up from the curb at a burly officer and tried to speak but it came out choked. She swallowed and nodded.
“Well, ma’am, you are the proud owner of The Paradise.”
***
The next three days Phoenix spent in shock in her studio apartment. Police came and got her statements, repeatedly. Mostly they asked who the masked man had been, how she knew him, if she had planned Swan’s murder with him, and most importantly where he was. This last part threw Phoenix for a loop because she thought that a badly injured man on a couch would be someone the cops would be able to easily find.
Phoenix was getting exasperated telling and retelling her story to the cops. She took a deep breath to calm herself before once again speaking to today’s interrogator. “The last person who knew his whereabouts was Susie Bracknoff. Last I saw she was stitching him up while I fainted from seeing the blood.”
The cop stared her down through narrowed eyelids, obviously believing she was lying. “You and Susie, both have your stories together, that's for sure.”
Phoenix’s throat hurt from trying to speak in an audible tone for the officer. “I know you’ve looked through The Paradise thoroughly, but that's the only place I can think of! If I knew where he was I would tell you! He needed medical attention and I sincerely hope he got it…”
The officer tapped his notepad impatiently on his leg and stood up from her kitchenette table. “We will be in touch.”
Phoenix watched the officer walk out of her dinghy apartment and close the door. She lay backwards on the bed and sighed. She wished someone could find Winslow. If they didn't, she was pretty sure he would be found dead somewhere in the Paradise. Maybe years from now someone, doing remodeling perhaps, would stumble upon his mummified corpse.
***
Phoenix also spoke to lawyers, repeatedly, and now they finally were ready to hand over legal ownership of everything Swan owned.
Phoenix came out of the lawyers office holding a packet of paperwork deeming her the owner of the Swanage and The Paradise, along with a very big loan that had been taken out by Swan to put together the show at the Paradise. Swan must have thought this show would sell out for years to come considering the money he had put into it.
Phoenix was confused and didn’t really know what to do. She did not like the Swanage with it’s small doors and too many memories of the monster himself and her time with him. She did not want to set foot into that place. She figured she should have bad memories at The Paradise as well, but instead she felt a gentle warmth towards the place. She loved its red and black corridors, the smell of it’s curtains, the heat of the lights beating down on the stage. It had been where she was a star, albet for only a few performances.
Nevertheless, over the time she had spent during rehearsals and backstage she had grown to love the theater and now in her distress over everything that had happened and her new life she found herself coming to the large empty building for comfort, and maybe it would give her a sense of direction.
The Paradise had been built from the ground up by Swan to his direct specifications. As a dedicated theatre and music student Phoenix knew the lore that a real theatre the venue must have at least one ghost upon which all unexplained happenings in the theatre could be blamed on. The Paradise was not even a year old and now it already had several ghosts so it could be considered a real performance venue. Unfortunately those ghosts were Swan, Philbin, not the two most positive presences to have in a theatre. Well if Winslow died here too maybe he could help balance that out.
Phoenix walked up to the Paradise on the fourth day after her ill-fated wedding. The Paradise had been built in a relatively quiet space at the end of one of the main roads from the city center so as to have enough room to build such a magnificent beast and was opposite one rather popular diner. While the diner had people going in and out of it the side of the street with the Paradise looked desolate and she wondered if everyone at the diner would notice one lone woman going into the quiet behemoth. She glanced across the road and found that no one seemed to notice or care.
Since moving to this busy part of California, on the busy outskirts of LA, in the hopes of being part of the music scene Phoenix hadn’t made many connections. Sure she knew a lot of people from the Faust rehearsals and she had a few one-night stands with some hippy free love types but no one that would notice if she went missing. She did check in with her parents every month or so but she was the oldest of three siblings and her parents were much more interested in the day to day of raising her younger two brothers rather than seeing what their wayward daughter who wanted to be a musician was up to in such a sinful place…
All this made her feel slightly unnerved that no one knew she was coming into this large, haunted, building with all of it’s secret passageways, dark secrets of who knows what Swan was doing, and high probability that she would find the corpse of Winslow Leech. She steeled herself as she looked in through the glass windows of the front doors into the shadowy building. The loss of her voice was definitely the closing of a door but maybe a new one could open. She unlocked the front door of the Paradise stepped into the lobby.
Phoenix was impressed with how silent everything was. She had never been in The Paradise when it wasn’t bustling with at least dozens of people going around setting up, cleaning, rehearsing, or goofing around. Often the sound of someone rehearsing or testing the speakers was blaring out of the theatre. The silence was eerie and it put her on edge, but this was now hers. She wasn’t going to let herself get spooked that easily.
The only light coming into the lobby was from the late afternoon sun coming in from the windows and making long shadows across the room. The smell of stale popcorn and theatre dust was thick as she moved forward. The floor was littered with trash as no one other than the police had been in the building since the incident.
She watched as confetti floated away from her dress as she strode towards the auditorium. Once she opened the auditorium doors she saw that, even in all the chaos, someone had thought to put out a ghost light in the middle of the stage before leaving. It left a bright warm light in a sea of dark. She thought about trying to find a switch to turn on the house lights but then decided she didn't really want to "wake up" the theatre. She had come here to be alone, quiet, undisturbed and the best way to do that would be by the light of the ghost lamp alone. As she moved forward and the large auditorium door closed behind her, she waited for a second for her eyes to acclimatize to the dark.
Being in a large room designed for so many people who were not there at the moment was strange and she felt almost like should be there getting to their seats, chatting and throwing popcorn at each other. The hairs on her body all perked up and she was straining her ears to hear any sound to indicate a fellow person. She took a deep breath, she figured the dim lighting was wigging her out and she hurried forward towards the light, as if the dark might swallow her up if she stayed in it too long.
She scrambled up onto the stage which had even more confetti than the lobby. Once on the stage she saw the light shining off a long slick blood stain going down the stage’s thrust. A shiver ran up her spine and she made an effort to not look at, or think about, the blood lest she become sick.
Phoenix wanted to do a quick search and see if the cops had been extremely uncompetent in finding Winslow so she headed to the right wing where they had taken him. She cautiously grasped the cold door handle to the dressing room off the stage and held her breath as she opened the door a crack and stuck her hand in quickly to flip the light switch. The lightbulb framed mirrors turned on with a flicker and a buzz. Phoenix let out her breath before taking another long inhale and preparing to see Winslow’s dead body still there, somehow unfound by the police.
She swung open the door and her eyes darted around the room. No Winslow, but there was a dark red blood stain on the couch, a testament to the fact that he was indeed there at some point. Phoenix did a quick search of the room, checking below the makeup tables and pushing some clothing racks out of the way, just to make sure he hadn’t crawled away to die elsewhere in the room.
Finally satisfied he wasn’t in there with her she took a deep sigh and made eye contact with herself in the mirror. She looked tired and puffy from crying. She had been crying nonstop, so upset and confused about how her life, which was headed straight for a high powered marriage and stardom, was now in tatters. She had been cheated and manipulated by Swan and she had shunned the phantom, Winslow, who had only ever been her friend and protector. He was there for her in the end, he had saved her, and she had failed him.
Fresh tears filled her eyes and she leaned onto the makeup table sobbing as she looked at herself. In her ragged voice she started muttering out her hate filled thoughts at her reflection. “Thought you would be a star!? You said you were willing to give anything! Well you it did Phoenix... Your voice is gone and people are dead.” For the last sentence of her diatribe she bashed her head into the mirror with each word, hoping that it wouldn’t break on her face but also feeling like she deserved for it to break on her face. Permanent scars that showed as a physical reminder two the world of how ugly she was inside. “Because of you… ”
Her reflection stared back at her hatefully. She didn’t have the guts to really hit the mirror hard enough to break on her face. She was a coward on top of everything else. She looked down and grasped for the leftover makeup bottles and tubes around her. Grasping a bright red lipstick her fumbling fingers ripped off the lid and she started writing with it onto her reflection in the mirror; GO TO HELL!
Panting and trying to catch her breath from her emotional breakdown she continued to stare hatefully at her reflection as she screamed with all her might. What came out was only a strangled rasp that further infuriated her. As she continued screaming her reflection started to smile back at her.
Then it spoke.. “That can be arranged.”
Phoenix blinked in shock and backed up stumbling and falling into a chair while making a choked yelp.
Her reflection let out a giggly, girlish, little laugh before smiling salaciously at Phoenix. “You can still be a star. You are young, beautiful and, now, rich and famous. Why not become the most amazing singer this world has ever known?”
Phoenix grasped the chair hard in her hands, her lips trembling as she spoke in just above a whisper, “My voice…”
Her reflection waved that away with a hand, “A contract took it away, a new one could bring it back. This time it would be with the boss instead of the underling…”
Phoenix leaned forward, her whole body shaking, “I, but… So many people died… I.. I am so confused…”
Her reflection crossed it’s arms and leaned forwards. “An opportunity like this doesn’t come everyday Phoenix… You can have everything you ever wanted, make those deaths not have been in vain. Make them mean something.”
Phoenix started to feel panic rising in her chest and she found herself rocking back and forth on the chair. “I, I don’t know I need to…”
Her reflection lost all its good nature and suddenly looked furious, “I offer you the world and you don’t know ?”
Phoenix looked at the floor as she started to shake back and forth harder. “I… I’m scared! I don’t….”
CRAAAACK!
Her head shot up to see the mirror was a spider web of broken glass, her image, and just her image, in all the shards. Phoenix, panting, got off the chair, stumbling and tripping as she ran out of the room back to the safety of the ghost lit stage.
***
Winslow let out a deep sigh of relief from behind the mirror, dropping the hammer he had used to shatter the glass from behind. He hadn’t had a chance to hear much of what went on, but he knew that Phoenix was being offered a deal in the same way as Swan, and he wasn’t going to let that happen. If he wasn’t in so much pain, so sick, he would have stopped that conversation the moment it started, but he was too slow, too weak. He grasped his chest wound and leaned against the small corridor wall breathing in small shallow breaths, absentmindedly wondering how many women Swan violated behind these one-way mirrors in the changing rooms. Taking a shallow breath he pushed himself off the wall, one hand still clutching his wound, and moved towards the stage with slow sloppy steps. He had to make sure Phoenix was all right.
***
Phoenix didn’t know if what she had just seen was real or some hallucination brought on by stress. All she knew was that she was trembling terribly and sobbing uncontrollably, her whole mind over powered with the urge to run, somewhere, she didn’t care where. She stumbled around the stage screaming with her nonexistent voice and bashing her fits into the sets that still covered the stage. In the dim light she tripped on the edge of one of the platforms and fell on a corner of one of the platforms. She realized faintly she had cut her leg and hand but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Then she saw it right in front of her laying where it was discarded from one of the crowd members that night. The silver mask. That did matter.
Her trembling hand grasped it. She looked at it in the dull light, slowly brushing her hand over the curve of the mask and then she cradled it to her breast and she continued to sob. Slowly she started to lay down, mask still tightly grasped in her hands as she continued to cry herself to a dreamless sleep, the first deep sleep she had had in many nights.
***
Her first thought when she woke up was how snug and cozy she felt. She nuzzled into what felt soft, silky and warm and smelt like curtains and the slightly sweet, powdery smell of makeup. Slowly she opened her eyes and in the dark theater the light of the ghost lamp felt painful. She sat up, still clutching the mask in her hands and saw she was covered in a black and silver cape. She felt a heat rise to her cheeks and her heart started to thump fast in her chest. Then a jarring robotic voice called to her, as softly as it could from the audience.
“Phoenix.”
Phoenix looked towards the voice and saw Winslow sitting in the front row. His face turned to the side to cover his melted half but for the first time she could really look at him without all the distraction, noise and drama. He didn’t have any black makeup on and he was a pale, gaunt, ghost of the lively man that she had met during the auditions so many months ago but he was in significantly better shape then when she saw him bleeding out on the stage.
Winslow gripped his chair hard as he hoisted himself into a standing position slowly and stiffly. His face and fluffy, dark blond hair were the only thing not covered in black and melting into the rest of the dark house. He slowly walked forward, his tall lean body hunched forward with his right arm wrapped around his chest and each shallow husky breath he took was loudly amplified by his voice box. He stumbled, wobbly, onto the stage, still keeping his face turned away from Phoenix.
Phoenix scrambled to her feet, the cape falling to the ground as she hugged the mask to herself. She didn’t even know how he was still alive, let alone walking. “Winslow…”
Winslow continued to walk forward, and put his left hand up to cover the burned side of his face. His shallow breaths over the voice box were somewhat maddening to listen to and Phoenix felt both overwhelmed by sadness and stress hearing them. Once he was about 5 ft away from Phoenix he held out his right hand, palm up. His one visible blue eye looked at her, his face tilted a little towards her to make eye contact and she could just start to see the outline of his damaged face behind his left hand. Then his gaze went down to her hands and there was a pleading in his voice that the voice box couldn’t completely take away, “Please…”
Phoenix looked down at the mask she was holding and she squeaked as she quickly held it out to Winslow. Winslow grasped it and put it on his face before turning to face forward, one blue eye looking shyly out of the mask towards her, a small, sad smile on his lips. “I didn’t think anyone was going to come here again so I didn’t think I needed the mask.” He swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing. “Thank you.”
Phoenix’s eyes were hot with tears and she rushed forward wrapping her arms around Winslow into a tight hug, his voice box poking into her. Winslow took in a sharp breath and body went rigid with pain for one long moment then he relaxed and hugged her back as tightly as he could in his pain-weakened state. His shuddering, shallow, robotic breaths came out and made his voice box vibrate between them with each labored breath.
After an eternity that passed too quickly for Winslow, Phoenix pulled back and looked first at his chest which was seeping blood through the hole in his clothes, the strange voice box, and then up at his masked face. Her voice was straining to get out the litany of questions she had to say in her horse whisper, “H-how? I-I thought you were dead! The newspapers said you were shot and died in the river months ago! And how did you get the chest wound! What happened to you!?”
Winslow slouched his back to be at eye level with her, his one pale blue eye showing through his mask filled with panic and sadness and his robotic voice clipping, “Phoenix, your voice! The--- the contract...”
Phoenix’s lip quivered, she had not thought about how Winslow would take the loss of her voice. She bit her lip to steady herself but then she started crying as she watched Winslow’s face fall further into horror and shock as he backed up from her. Shadows enveloping him. “No… NO! Swan has stolen everything from me! Everything!! Even your voice!” Winslow backed up from Phoenix several steps and his elbow knocked into a mike stand left over from the last performance. Winslow’s face changed from sad horror to furious rage as he grasped the metal pole tightly in his right hand and swung it around in a great arch before smashing it down on one of the large flower platforms still on the stage. Pieces of foam and wood went flying in the air.
Phoenix narrowly dodged the debris as she backed up in fear of the tempertantrom she was witnessing. She stumbled backwards on another platform and fell down heavily to the stage floor.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!” Winslow’s robotic voice screeched through his voice box, hurting Phoenix’s ears and then suddenly Winslow collapsed on the floor grasping his chest and trying to force air into his damaged lung, tears coming down his face.
Phoenix stayed on the floor on the edge of the ghost light’s circle of luminescence, terrified Winslow’s rage could come back at any moment, especially now that she was part of what had set him off. Slowly Winslow regained control of himself and his breathing. He looked towards Phoenix sadly as he wiped tears off his chin with his arm. “We are both broken now. Because of him.”
In little more than a whisper Phoenix spoke sarcasm and disgust covering her words, “I am sorry that the loss of my voice is a disappointment to you…”
He looked up at her, his mouth open in a soft o as he crawled towards her on all fours shaking his head.“No, no, no, no…” Phoenix shuffled away from him on the floor, further into the darkness. Winslow stopped moving towards her and his lip started quivering and his voice stuttering. “Uh---Oh… Ph-Phoenix. I-I am sorry. I am not disappointed in you… I could never be disappointed in you… I-I am disappointed in myself… I am so… so… disappointed in myself.” He looked down at the bloodstained confetti covered stage. “I am disappointed in everything I’ve done.”
His forlorn image moved Phoenix. She swallowed hard and stood up to walk towards Winslow. She crouched down, and placed a hand on his shoulder. “You did save me. You killed Swan…”
Winslow looked down at the ground shaking his head at himself. “No, Phoenix. This is all my fault.” He looked up at Phoenix and his lower lip quivered. “I told Swan to hire you because I only wanted your voice, your beautiful voice, to sing my music. You were too perfect for him, he didn’t want to hire you. I made him, and then when he put you in the chorus I made him put you on for the solo.” Winslow swallowed thickly and shook his head as he spoke. “I made him by… killing… killing Beef…”
Phoenix suddenly didn’t feel like she wanted her hand on Winslow’s shoulder very much and let it slip off. In everything that had happened she hadn’t processed that Winslow had taken innocent lives. “You were behind the explosion that killed the Juicy Fruits, weren’t you?”
Winslow nodded slowly as he continued to stare at the blood on the stage. “I also am responsible for the loss of your voice. Swan wouldn’t have made you sign that contract if you hadn’t done that solo. This is all my fault.”
Phoenix looked at the crumpled shape of Winslow as he was frozen on the stage questioning his life decisions. He was right, if he hadn’t fought so hard for her to be the lead she would still be some no-name backup singer, if that. Maybe right now she would be far away, working as a singer somewhere else, or a waitress. Probably a waitress, but at least she would still be able to sing and talk in something approaching normal. “I would still have my voice…”
Winslow hit his helmet repeatedly with his fist in anger. “It feels like everything that happened since I escaped prison until after I killed Swan was happening to someone else. It’s all a blur of anger, insomnia and pills.”
Phoenix shook her head as she backed up a few feet from Winslow. “That doesn’t excuse murder…”
Winslow refused to look up as he bit his lip hard and a drop of blood started to leak out. The thick taste of iron knocked Winslow out of silent revelry and he licked it up before starting to talk again. “Your right. It doesn’t. It doesn’t excuse me ruining your life and it doesn’t excuse murder. Nothing will. I wanted to commit suicide. That's where this wound came from.” Winslow put a hand to his chest with an angry thump. “But that didn’t work… First because of the deal I made with Swan, secondly, because… You saved me.” Winslow still wasn’t brave enough to look up at Phoenix.
Phoenix was thankful that he didn’t look at her for comfort because she was questioning if she should have saved him. What he had done was heinous and maybe she should have just let him bleed out. Him living was a misscarrage of justice to all of his victims. Yet she still didn’t want him to die.
Winslow’s speech was getting frantic as his lips quivered from the stress. “I crawled away hoping to die in peace from blood loss but that didn’t happen. I’ve been thinking that maybe they will blow up this cursed building and I’ll die that way.”
Winslow finally looked up at Phoenix. “But maybe I’m being a coward. No I know I am being a coward because I managed to hide instead of being taken in by the police.”
Phoenix swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Killing yourself would be the cowardly thing to do.”
Winslow looked down at his hands. “I… I would rather be a coward then go back to prison…”
Click.
The sound of a door opening in the lobby caught their attention. Phoenix quickly stood up and turned, wiping away tears and trying to prepare herself for who ever was coming. Soon the auditorium door opened, followed by Susie’s small outline backlit from the light in the lobby. “AAAHHH! Jesus-Josph-and-Mary!!! You scared me!” She squinted into the dark and moved a few steps in, “Phoenix, is that you?”
Phoenix took a deep breath and looked to her side to check on Winslow, but he was gone, leaving her alone one the stage. Phoenix looked towards Susie and settled for a wave as her voice wouldn’t carry that far.
Susie started to rush towards her, "Oh my goodness! What are you doing here!"
Once Susie was in front of Phoenix and in the stillness of the theater, Phoenix's voice was audible. "I wanted to be somewhere… safe. What are you doing here?"
Susie's face was contorted into disbelief at considering the Paradise safe, but she shook it off. "I figured someone should check on the theater. I don't know what you plan to do with it but, I like the big girl.” Susie fondly patted the stage, making sure to not pat anything with blood on it. “I wanted to make sure she was okay, didn't have anyone sleeping in her." Susie made eye contact with Phoenix and saw her disheveled clothes, makeup and hair which clearly indicated she had slept in the theatre and Susie suddenly realized how mean she sounded. "I uh, don't mean you of course. It is your place. You can do what you want in it… I just thought you would be at the Swanage…"
Phoenix started to shuffle, feeling suddenly self-conscious she started to brush dust and confetti off clothes. She was oblivious to the debris in her hair. "I-I don't like that place… That's the one thing I’m sure about. I want to sell the Swanage."
Susie nodded, looked at her shoes and bit her lip. "Oh. And do you want to sell The Paradise too?"
Phoenix looked around the stage, dimly lit in blue by the lone ghost light in the middle of the stage. "I hadn't thought about it..."
Susie sucked on her teeth, "Oh."
"I don't know what to do with this place." Suddenly Phoenix felt like she wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. “I don’t know what to do with me for that matter.”
Susie took a deep breath and launched into what must have been a speech she had been repeating over and over in her head. "I know a lot happened, with the Beef, and Filben, and The Undead all dying, and, uh, Swan... And the Phantom..."
Phoenix looked at the slick red and stained confetti on the thrust stage and felt her mind go blank.
Susie was picking up steam and her hands were getting in on the action, making a large sweeping gesture, “But there are still hundreds of people employed with the Paradise. We still have all of the sets and music. People loved Faust. We just need some new leads… Maybe, maybe we could try to run the show again…”
Phoenix blinked and her weary mind told her something important was being said and she should listen but she was getting none of it. “Excuse me, I wasn’t paying attention. What?”
Susie took a deep breath and collected her thoughts again. “I was saying, maybe, we could get new leads and run Faust.”
Phoenix looked at Susie and blinked. This was all too much for her to think about. She desperately wanted someone, some adult, to come into her life and deal with all of this for a moment so she could just go hide in a corner and cry. That's why she came to the Paradise in the first place, to be alone and cry, and after seeing Winslow she felt she had a whole lot more to cry about. Phoenix waited a moment, staring back at Susie’s expectant face, to see if a hero that knew just what to say would appear.
After about thirty seconds Phoenix accepted that no one was going to save her and she had to say something to stop Susie looking at her with a forced smile. Phoenix croaked out a delaying tactic, “I can’t remember when I last ate. Can we go get some breakfast?”
Susie’s face broke it’s forced joyful contents and a real look of worry took its place. “Oh, of course! How stupid of me to jump this on you before breakfast! And before coffee! Come on let's go to the Beacon!” Phoenix awkwardly dismounted the stage and together they walked out of the theatre, Phoenix looking back at the empty stage, wondering what Winslow wanted for the Paradise, and wondering how she felt about Winslow.