Author's Note: Own nothin', obviously.

I can honestly say that this isn't my best work- by far; this has little, if any, subtlety- but I felt like writing a back story for Erik, and have been doing it in segments during Church services. (I sing for an Anglican church, see, but I'm not Christian, and the fact leads to interesting thoughts, I think.)

So, this is an Errie backstory. If people like it and respond, I'll write more. If they don't, I may still write more, but probably won't post. I would appreciate comments, but it's not necessary.

Enjoy, perhaps!

Long ago as it was, I do remember when I was a good Catholic boy.

It was a very long time ago, but, yes, there was a period in which I believed in the majestic God and the pomp of the Church. It was a beautiful, if deluded, period in my existence, one which sometimes holds a strange appeal, though I cannot imagine where I would have been, had I followed the path that was set out for me in my own home.

My parents didn't care to see me since the beginning: I feel, now, that my mother cared more about keeping my face in its black mask then keeping me in warm clothes, and my father was never so unfortunate as to have to see me without it. But they wanted something for me. I suppose, now, that they thought I might be better if I turned into a being with a demon face, but the song of God on his lips. I was that boy for some time, after all. I received the only words of praise I had from my parents when I read the psalms in Latin and prayed for my soul.

We never went to church—my parents must have, once, for people called on them who could only have been insipidly well-meaning church-goers—but I saw a priest sometimes, when my parents left the house, and he had me sing. I was always entranced by the music above anything else to do with the church: Above the angels, or God, or the promise of Heaven. It was the thing that affirmed to me that there was a thing to place my faith when I doubted. What was this mystical, profound source of joy that none around me seemed to possess? My mother hummed sometimes; my father whistled. But these were not that exultant presence, the potent essence of beauty. It struck me even then, when I was very young. It was, in the same moment, magical and earthly, unlike much of the rest I was taught.

Church was what drove me from my parents' home, though my awe of music has remained.

I recall it well; one recalls these incidents in life which are novel, though I will admit to having never lived so comfortably that I tend to forget my days. Each is horribly novel. At any rate, I was sitting in my bedroom, contemplating the sounds. (That is always where I have fled and focused when there was nothing else in the world; thus, sounds remain obedient to my will to this day.) There was a mournful lachrymosa weeping on a lonely organ somewhere near to our home; a cat mewed pathetically at our back door, longing for the days when my mother was a young and happy wife who always set out a dish of cream. But, then, there were the voices of my parents. Both middle-register, plain and deliberate, the voices of ordinary people of the middle class, the decent class. They discussed me. I could tell, for they were loath to speak my name, but they talked carefully around a horror that had come into their midst.

"I believe that any goodness—any at all—can he had in the church," my father said, the sound of pipe smoke and his stuffed armchair weighing down his voice. "People will only have it that way. If the devil's in any other profession, it will be called 'the Devil's work'. Only God can be of any help to him."

The child's sense of hard justice and injustice stirred me at that. I knew and loved God, in my way, but never so that I would have dreamed of taking to religion, and nothing more. I had my own dreams, visions of a future touched with beauty in every corner, with art and construction and music. Why was it, then, that I was this 'devil' at any moment but when I spoke a Christian word?

I now realize that I had run the tolerance of my parents dry. Since that age, I have seen that love flees from one such as myself, one who is both strong-minded and hideous. It does well to spend the tolerance one is meted out, then, in small, frugal change; it doesn't last long, even then.

As such, the love of my parents—love of those who birthed me, who I know intentionally gave me life—their tolerance had fallen away in a scant eight years. My parents did not love me; my training in religion leads me to that conclusion. Paul's letter to the Church of Corinth, I recall, states in its didactic verses, "love is patient; love is kind." What patience or kindness was there in placing me in a perfectly safe, perfectly loathsome environment, devoid of any novelty? Paul goes on to say that "love does not insist upon its own way"; you see, then, how I've come to my conclusion about their forced care.

These are things I've seen now. Then, I was preoccupied with my future. I couldn't imagine it to be right. Even as a child, I wondered: Who was I, if I could only be accepted in the Church? I did not live in the church; I never intended to go to a cloister and pray at all hours. The Church is such a small, concentrated world, where one can think only on God, with the occasional glimpses into artistry born of adoration. But I thought of so much more than that, and my parents did not see it at all. What would they do with me when I was brought into the church? Would I never see them again? It seemed likely, as they never had me out of the house before. Would I be made an act, something for the churchgoers to stand and admire, for the extreme sin of ugliness turned to a work of God? What—

There was a knock at my door, then, and my racing thoughts slammed painfully against the front of my skull, stopping and bewildering them into a frenzied bemusement. My parents meant to make a proposal to me—I could feel it, the sickening idea heavy on the air.

No coward, I fancied myself, I opened the door to my father. He started a bit; I suspect, because it was dark in my bed-chamber, and my eyes were shining that gold they do in half-light and darkness. My father never got used to me, or any aspect of my ugliness. (I think I was a personal affront to his power of life-giving. What man wishes to discover he has tainted seed?) He recovered himself shortly, however, with a smile as false as his front teeth.

"Erik, dear," he began. I still can't quite figure why he tried endearments with me. Though I had once believed that my parents loved me, I never really thought my father held me "dear", as such. More that he wanted my presence because he had a hand in its creation, like a nonsensical piece of artwork from one's youth. If I was not cared for so much as that… well, he did have his respectability to maintain. "Your mother and I wanted to talk with you."

He didn't take my hand, but directed me to the living-room by a hand in my mother's direction, where she sat on her old-fashioned settee. I think her a fairly pretty woman to this day, with warm, reddish hair and grey eyes that took on a paler shade of whatever dress she wore. She was in blue, that day—I recall, for it was too serene a shade for the sharp twitching of her eyes from my father's face to my mask. Her voice, calm as she tried to be, managed to pinch the air about us into a higher level of tension.

"Good-evening, Erik." I seemed to have become a less-than-welcome guest. "Have you been practising your verses?" I was never an honest child—I am still none—so I nodded. "I'm glad to hear it. You do… love church, don't you, Erik? The prayer, and the music?" Another nod. I couldn't explain myself, then, when young, and struck into a sudden barrage of questioning that seemed so inevitable, so unreal. "You would like to sing forever, wouldn't you? You'd like to be a chorister of God?" I agreed silently once more, but, by now, my mother had suddenly ceased her rapid questioning. "Your father and I have been talking. We've decided that you're ready to become one; wouldn't that be wonderful, Erik?"

Something in me, a large part of me, when a child, agreed that, yes, it would be wonderful to sing the praises of God for the rest of my days; to be constantly surrounded by that awesome power of artistry. The child's mind can only hold so many things at once, and, as my mother coerced me, I had quite forgotten all my bitterness, only to be enticed by the promise of beauty.

I wonder if my parents thought I was facing a test, a choice of temptation or goodness, as Jesus is said to have done during his forty days. It seems that they were, to me: They stood—sat, rather—before me, and looked into my masked face with two pairs of bright, young eyes, one amber-brown and the other a gentle near-blue. They sat, staring at me, willing me to follow the path they wanted, to push me forth into a life that would bring us all into safety, if not happiness.

"What would I do in the church?" I'd never been there before. My home was all I knew at that moment, and, though that place wasn't exactly a comfort in itself, the church was something totally new and, thus, frightening. "I've never been."

"If anyone outside this house would love you, Erik, they would there," my father prompted, a smile forcing its way through his wiry moustache. "People would not like you outside it. But there, everyone loves one another, no matter how different. And there's always music."

His last words did tempt me; I stood in clear opposition to my parents: They saw goodness only on the religious path, and temptation in refusal. I think these days that it was the temptation of the glorious beauty I was offered that needed to be escaped, the temptation that would bring me into oppression if I allowed it to sway me. I was obliged to move beyond that exultant thing to stand for myself, to cry out with my own music, that which could sing of things outside the Glory of God. I needed to move past them, past it all.

As I say, I see it now. At the time, I only didn't want to be confined with new, unknown people.

"Will I stay there?" My voice as a child comes back to me when I recall that time. It was a nervous, flighty sort of soprano that seemed somehow incongruous with my dark hair—certainly with the mask. (But, then, I remain a tenor to this day; it isn't truly a surprise. It is just that one invariably pictures the boy soprano with an androgynous cherubim face and hair like summer sunshine.)

"You would sing there, Erik. You would get to live with all of the wonderful tunes you love so well. It wouldn't have to go home with Reverend Robert, as it does here. It would be everywhere, always." My mother softly whispered that. She had a certain way of speaking lowly to me sometimes; if she were quiet enough, could touch the edge of a loving tone. We were silent for a long while, then, I thinking about the path, and my mother seemingly lost in one of her quiet periods, a contemplative silence that made me think she had shut her mind off from the outside. My father grew impatient after some moments, however, and spoke,

"Reverend Robert shall be here shortly to take you to the Cathedral, Erik. You must tell us—ah, he's here," he said in his crispest voice, and hastened to allow Monsieur Robert into our house. He was a humble man, just like my parents, of middling stature and thinning brown hair. He had a warm smile, and a becoming baritone; I wonder if he, too, was brought into the Church by the coercion of music.

"Good-evening, Erik." He greeted me with more brightness than my parents did, before, but didn't seem to on that particular meeting. Something tells me it had to do with the idea of attaching responsibility to a thing like me, rather than simply being obliged to visit it every week. "Come now, we must be getting to the Cathedral. There are many people waiting to meet you." Reverend Robert moved to take my hand, then; I shied away, and I could feel him level his brown gaze on me.

"I don't want to meet people. I'd like to stay here, in my room. I've been drawing." I was a petulant thing from the first, but, then, I do not consider my parents' actions any less so. "I don't want to go."

"Come now, Erik," the priest coaxed me again, but drew back a step when I looked up at him. "Just come with me… you'll enjoy the music…."

"I enjoy it myself! I don't want anyone else!" I'd begun screeching, then, crying out in the way only young boys and girls can, and stomped my feet uselessly against the deafening rug. "Leave me alone, Monsieur Robert!"

My parents chided me for my refusal to respect Monsieur Robert, I recall, and then tried their even, peaceable attempts to have me fall into the church, with more of those phrases about how much I would enjoy it, and how much everyone there would love me. Such words only brought tears to my eyes and tearing at my own hair, willing myself to hear no more of what they said.

By the time I was hurling them "no" after "no" on their proposal, wailing like a beast and fleeing to my room, they had ceased. I didn't know what had happened, but my senses told me what to do: To be utterly alone. If I had to be forced into the arms of unknown people, I would not follow that path, lovely as it seemed.

I would leave, then. I would take my things, tears streaming from the mask, and crawl out my window into the night.

It seemed like a daring escape, running from them so that I could be liberated; it wasn't until I was older that I ever paused to consider: Why did they not try to stop me when I ran away?

A/N: Well... there you go. Random church rambling (except for the last 500 words or so.)

If you enjoyed it (or didn't,) I'd love a review! Reviews are the best thing ever, especially since I don't get many, with my unpopular genres.