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It was a normal day for Jekyll. He awoke, coated in the consequences of Hyde’s outing the previous night, on the floor of his cabinet. This was typical, cleaning himself and changing out of the ill-fitting clothes was nearly his morning routine by now.
It had not been a typical night. Henry Jekyll didn’t know that yet as he walked into the main area of his house, feet sinking into the grass soaked with the storms of last night.
He started to suspect that it had not been a typical night when he found himself assaulted by the memories of another man. Edward Hyde, to be exact. Again, this was typical, Jekyll often found out about his counterpart’s violent escapades through flashes that seeped from one man to the other. What was not typical about these specific memories was the presence of his friend, Mr Utterson.
His head was at an angle that could only be considered unnatural, yanked out of place by a haired hand entangled in the short grey hair that was slowly coming out into the hand. His face was contorted with anguish, silent tears running down cheeks reddened with mortification. The only noises were Hyde’s own groans, broken sobs that periodically broke out of the other man’s demeanour, and a squelching.
The memory faded, the noises of history melding into that of the mud. Shuddering with a coldness that penetrated deeper than bone, Jekyll continued his walk despite the refrained winces at the sound of each step and the creeping fear that almost brought him directly to Utterson’s door.
He didn't go to see Utterson, not then.
He didn't go see Utterson when he nearly dropped the plate he held as he again peered involuntarily through the windows of time into a life that wasn’t his own.
Hyde was careless, bordering on apathetic. (This wasn’t just for him). He forced Utterson against the external door of Jekyll’s lab, where Utterson had cornered him. The taller man barely managed an undignified squeak that might’ve been shock or protest. Leather and metal hit the ground in a cacophony that the open night seemed to swallow- Utterson’s belt. That was the only attempt Hyde made to make this easier for him, yanking Utterson’s still buttoned trousers over his hips and down his legs with rough hands. Utterson writhed in attempts to turn himself back around and stop the hands Hyde moved with a harried air, wanting to get through Utterson’s clothing.
Noiseless words spewed from Utterson’s mouth, never reaching Hyde’s ears but the motions of protest didn’t go unnoticed. (They didn’t go unappreciated).
Shattering on the ground, the plate suffered Jekyll’s return to the present. Poole was looking at him with a mix of horror and worry.
“Are you alright, Sir?”
“Quite, just a momentary loss of focus, nothing to worry over.” Jekyll brushed over the incident, stepping over the broken ceramic and quickly leaving the room, retreating to his cabinet.
The latch clicked shut behind him and Jekyll let himself slump bonelessly against the door, what had he done?
Hyde was shoving into Utterson, a rough and hasty movement, one that drew Utterson into unintelligible shouts of protest. Utterson’s squirming didn't do him any favours as he fruitlessly attempted to get away.
Curled flesh and bone struck the skin of Utterson’s face, the sting of impact raising Hyde’s erection further, blood pumping against Utterson’s skin. Wincing in pain from both the punch and the entry, Utterson blinked away tears that mixed with droplets of his own blood and of Hyde’s spittle on the canvas of his face.
One hand grasped Utterson’s chin, forcing his face towards Hyde’s, a wicked grin grew across the face that showed its owner’s morality without discernable features. Refusing to break the eye contact Hyde had initiated, Utterson fought harder as the shorter man began to pump. Horror and realisation and horror merged on Utterson’s face, a reflection of the usually well guarded emotion of the gentleman. This did not stop his futile attempts to free himself from the man buried inside him, Utterson nearly broke into a run but tripped over the trousers that were crumpled around his ankles.
Now holding Utterson from falling with by the nails closer to claws digging into Utterson’s jaw, Hyde took advantage of the positioning to thrust harder into Utterson, forcing him to swallow the noises of objection and abject pain with saliva that struggled to make it over the near 90 degree angle of his throat.
What had he done?
Jekyll found himself interrogated by his own conscience, demanding to know what exactly his counterpart had done, what Jekyll had released into this world.
Jekyll found himself at a loss. There was no extent of rationalisation that could cleanse this act that was worse than a mere indiscretion or lapse in judgement. This was planned, there was no doubt that Hyde had thought about this and had made sure that it would appeal to the darkest parts of Jekyll that he tried to pretend he had rid himself of. Hyde catered to every thought that entered Jekyll’s head, the ones he privately enjoyed and the ones he recoiled from in disgust, this was the culmination of a plan that had been brewing in his counterpart’s corner of their mind for long enough that Jekyll could have noticed, could have put a stop to it.
He hadn’t.
He hadn’t put a stop to it and now Jekyll sat trying to think of anything but the actions he had caused, indirectly, but he had caused them. If not by being as much Hyde as Hyde was him, by the neglect to put a stop to the distilled immorality that had festered in his mind, a ticking clock travelling towards an inevitable but completely avoidable goal.
Wincing with the weight of memory, Jekyll recalled earlier that very same morning when he had apathetically cleaned the remnants of Hyde’s assault of his friend (did he even deserve to call Utterson his friend anymore?) from his body that had returned from the transformation unscathed. How had he allowed himself to become so numb to the monstrosities he unleashed? How had he allowed the pillar of horrors that was Hyde’s plans to build into a temple of depravity?
How was it that he stood to the side when that temple came crashing down on the one person left that Jekyll could consider good?
He had grown careless, stoked his hubris with Hyde who was never caught and never known, he’d let himself fall too far. This was a stain on his soul that no mercy could clean, no repentance could save him.
Hyde grunted animalistically as he pushed further and further into Utterson, who’d let his eyes close and tears freely weep, pulsing with blood that he knew Utterson would be able to feel. Each beat of his heart would move his erection inside of Utterson, driving the pain and humiliation that make the pleasure that much sweeter for Hyde. Thoughts, both Jekyll’s and Hyde’s own, nearly overcame Hyde’s perception of the scene, but he forced his erratic mind to focus, to let everything boil down to this one moment of release.
“Never again.” Jekyll declared, his voice hoarse from choked breaths, “Never again.”
Pulling back from Utterson, Hyde let go of the taller man’s chin, letting the half naked man crumple in a way most people who’d met him would deny he was capable of. There was a sick sense of satisfaction that came from seeing the mess he’d made on and in Utterson’s body, it overlapped the satiation to create a space where Hyde felt invincible, and if he were to die, he’d regret nothing in the years of eternity in hell.
Jekyll moved as though he were possessed with whatever goodness in him had been absent since his first transformation. He didn’t burn the chemicals. He didn’t break any of the glassware. He simply turned the key in the lock and tossed the key into a pile of failed experiments. It wasn’t any destructive rebellion against Hyde, against what pushed him to attempt the experiment in the first place. Maybe it should’ve been.
-
Utterson had dragged himself back to his home in the growing light of dawn, meaning the streets were just starting to grow in populace as the working day encroached nearer. The indignity of being seen by one person, let alone crowds of them, was nearly enough to make him regret his decision not to brave the risk of opening the lab door to the same repugnant face as the one forever imprinted into his mind rather than that of his friend.
Gasps and pitying or disdainful looks followed him in his weaving through the most back alley streets he could find, attempting to avoid more humiliation than he had already endured; eyes seemed to catch on him and drag behind their owners as he scurried.
The familiar appearance of his door graced him with the safety of inside.
Scorching water washed over his already trice cleaned body, he sunk into the too hot bath and let the heat and pressure of holding his breath drown the noises he knew were just mental ghosts, burn away the skin that had been taken from him. The water only slightly cooler than fire washed away the handprints of sin and depravity. His skin rubbed raw and almost blistering from the heat, Utterson rocked in the cooled bath, knees drawn to his chest and his torso oscillating back and forth in the only soothing motion he could bear.
Body clean, but mind racing with the unending torture that was his memory. It had been hours since Hyde turned away from him with a sneer Utterson only saw through the haze of his own tears and shut the door to Jekyll’s laboratory, but it felt like years or no time at all, as if he were still held from the floor by the hand whose print was bruised into his chin. As if he were still being forced into unwilling promiscuity.
Utterson’s own heartbeat haunted him, a mirror of the one he could feel the pulse of inside himself, a constant reminder that this was no animal that did this, it was another of the race that claimed superiority, another man with conscious thought. This was no instinct, this was a decision.
Jekyll had decided to ignore his warnings about the dangers of Hyde and his offers of assistance, to whatever end was required, just as Hyde decided to assault Utterson in the matters of the devil right before the door of the man who offered him so much for what Utterson could only imagine was no good reason.
Sore, his eye begged for the attention it’d been neglected, Utterson found himself reluctant to give it as he was not trained in the medicines he would no doubt require, and seeking such treatment would lead to questions- rumours- which would be unnecessary when he could simply remain in the frigid water and wait for life to move on without him.
Life would do no such thing.
Eventually, the temperature got to Utterson, and he forced himself to leave the comfort and safety of his bath. Skin wrinkled and chilled to the touch, Utterson dressed himself.
After one too many glances of the marks left upon his body by the night, Utterson carefully removed the mirror from his bathroom, along with the others that hung sporadically throughout his home. One pile of framed reflections sat in the corner of a infrequented room, covered half-heartedly by a blanket, when Utterson crawled into the bedding he had piled upon his bed in an attempt to chase the chill from hours spent in cooling water.
Shivering in the enforced darkness of the cloth that went beyond his greying hair, Utterson tried to force his mind from lying in a mess on the grime-ridden ground. He was struggling for breath, fighting the panic and shame that threatened to overwhelm him in a taunting tsunami of humiliation, as if he hadn’t suffered enough of that already. Reeling from the past hours or minutes, Utterson tried to focus on the present as his mind circled the seemingly endless assault by the man Jekyll stood so firmly beside, mere metres from the dilapidated backdoor to Jekyll’s abode. The door had shut. It was over.
It was over everywhere but his mind which was looping the degradation in a torture almost as sick as Hyde’s actions themselves. Confronted in unison with being discarded, punched, every ripping push and pulse inside of himself, and the nauseating rush of fluid inside him and over his backside as Hyde pulled himself away, Utterson forced himself from screaming. His mind stretched around the overlapping memories that couldn’t wait for the others to fade before they began, forcing his focus to split and shatter.
Restrained from any more indignity by a hand clamped over his mouth, and the other desperately pulling his trousers high enough that he could begin his walk of shame from the scene.
Waking, the logical side of Utterson forced himself to recognise that it was just a dream. It was just a bad dream, Hyde had done nothing of the sort and was a perfectly respectable gentleman, Jekyll wouldn’t betray him like that. It was just a dream.
That idea lasted until he faced the sink of his bathroom and recognised the lack of mirror, knowing and dreading what he’d find if he went to the pile of mirrors he must’ve just dreamt moving. Maybe he’d begun sleepwalking, but his resolution faded, slowly, as the pain shooting throughout him forced him to question the resolute decision he’d made the moment he awoke.
Pulling the blanket from the mirrors burned his delusion to ash, removing any trace of it from reasonable thought.
Utterson’s face was bruised and reddened, distinct hand markings trailed below the neckline of his night shirt. There was no denying it was real.
Panic rising again, Utterson questioned what he had even been doing out that late at night, surely it was his own fault. Surely there was no one but himself to blame, surely this was an inevitable consequence of his bad decisions; his suffering was surely caused by himself solely, there was no one else to pin the blame of this horror on.
Raising his hands unconsciously to rub sleep from his eyes, Utterson found the skin around his right eye inflamed and leaking fluid, his right hand jerking away from the sensitive area before he could even notice it hurt.
Glancing at the reflection he didn’t want to observe, Utterson saw that the punch had pierced skin which was now swollen and red with the devil’s mark, there was no excuse he could make for the injury that could maintain his reputation (if it wasn’t already ruined). He would need to refuse any guest.
The moment of lucidity passed in an instant, the reality of the previous night broke through the walls he built up and he was on the hardwood floor, inching himself into a wall in the feeble hopes it could protect him from the dangers that he struggled to remember were hours dissipated.
Dark shadows crossed the eyes that leaked tears (he’d abandoned any hope of keeping himself from that particular indignity), the only warning Utterson got before nails only befitting that of a creature not a man dug into his flesh, the only warning before the face from which fire could not burn away the marks of Satan filled his blurred vision. The other hand hit his hip in a slap that stung and burned without mercy, before moving beneath the loose edge of his shirt- no longer tucked neatly into the top of the trousers that wrapped around his ankles like cuffs.
His torso would not go unmarred. Nails bit into sensitive skin that Utterson had no agency to protect- even as he fought and pulled on the arms that held him in place- grabbing fistfuls of flesh from skin that did not have fistfuls of flesh, leaving gouges in the wake of Hyde’s devil-tipped fingers.
Utterson’s head hit the wall with a hollow thud that he could barely believe to be real over the hands that did not yield to his desperate clawings and the unending movement. His hands (although he could hardly tell the difference anymore) at the skin around the bruised eye, scratching and ripping at the skin that was no longer his own, could no longer exist on his body that had been claimed in such a vulgar manner by someone who his had let himself be at the mercy of for the sake of curiosity. Panicked gasps left him in a voice he could only just recognise as his own, one thing that Hyde could not take from him even as the sound forced him back in time.
Every breath caught in his throat and tumbled out with more noises of dissent and the agony. All the air in the world would not be enough to fill his lungs as he fought against Hyde with every instinct he had left, the motions being dismissed as if nothing, as if Utterson was nothing. Every breath of the air felt like it pierced the lungs that could do nothing but expand uselessly against the reality of the position, neck twisted unnaturally over his shoulder and torso contorted to make up for the slack that Hyde would not offer and Utterson’s neck couldn’t be forced to, even as it his body weight pushed it to conform.
His heartbeat and Hyde’s pounded in Utterson, too loud in his chest and too forceful to be lost amongst the ruthless beating of Hyde’s erection into Utterson. The very proof of life used against him in a twisted fate that made him wish it were a funerary march.
Blood dripped down his face in a cruel mimicry of the fluid that had dripped down shaking legs as he tried to escape further humiliation before day broke.
-
Jekyll had sent multiple dinner invitations to Utterson, all of which had been declined without explanation, any other attempt to make contact with the lawyer had gained no response at all. Just as he was starting to suspect that Utterson knew the secret he hid behind, the true extent of his betrayal, Lanyon reached out under a truce of their disagreements to express a growing concern for the other man of their friendship group.
He had been ignoring Lanyon’s attempts at interaction as well. Jekyll’s relief at his secret being intact was short-lived, almost instantaneously taken over by a guilt at his selfishness and growing worry.
Individually, they offered another olive branch to Utterson, hoping against reason that there was a perfectly normal cause for his sudden reclusion, Jekyll privately wishing that he hadn’t witnessed Hyde’s actions- even as indirectly as the sudden flashes of memory- because then his ignorance would not be feigned.
Another pair of invitations declined, and Lanyon recalled witnessing a rather confused Enfield being turned away from a closed door when it came time for their weekly stroll.
These were not the signs of a simple disinterest in socialisation that came with busy seasons. Had it been Jekyll, the worry would’ve been halved, sudden reclusion had been a staple of his early social life, but Utterson, who was more often than not the instigator of any meet ups, did not have any past that made these behaviours anymore but more worrying.
Joining forces to persuade Utterson to allow them back into his life was the clear next step, Jekyll had no easy way to excuse himself in fear that his guilt would show so plainly on his face that the secret identity he’d vowed never to indulge in again would be exposed.
Lanyon’s knocks were boisterous despite the bad spirits that brought them together and to the door, they ricocheted from the wood through the house in a ratchet that Utterson could not ignore even in the deepest of sleeps, Jekyll half suspected the dead would not be able to ignore the cacophony. Mist formed as the two breathed, time slowing to the pace of a finger gently tapping the side of a leg in anxious await of what was to come.
Quiet rustling from the other side of the door seemed a thunderstorm of noise.
-
“Who is it?” Utterson asked as if the answer mattered, he’d turn them away indiscriminately.
He was almost presentable, other than the leaking wound around his eye, a bruise turned gaping hole by the irrepressible itching at the site of his shame, a constant throbbing reminder of Hyde, he was perfectly well dressed, only wrinkled from the hours he’d spent sat just inside his door (it was the only part of the house in the same condition as before).
“Jekyll and Lanyon, could you open the door?” Lanyon’s steady voice carried through the heavy wood of the door.
Repressing a laugh, Utterson answered only with a question, “Why should I?”
The pause that followed lasted a moment longer than it should’ve, the flippant attitude had shown through too strongly and Utterson found himself caught between desperately trying to reverse the words that showed far too much of himself and driving the point into their ears and brains until it was that was left of their views of him.
“We’re getting worried, are you quite alright?” Jekyll’s stilted tone struck Utterson, did he know what Hyde had done, what Utterson had brought on himself? Was he here to taunt him?
Failing to suppress his laugh now, Utterson replied, “Of course I’m absolutely perfectly fine, why would you possibly think otherwise? Why are you really here?”
Breathing heavier than he expected at the emotion of the interaction, Utterson found himself with enough time to count the particles of dust floating dispassionately through the air, the silence from outside nearly deafening. It broke slowly, a gentle rustling and popping of aged joints that told him Lanyon was sitting down on the doorstep.
“If you just let one of us in for a few minutes so we can see for ourselves, we’ll give you space if that’s what you want.” Lanyon’s voice was softer than Utterson was used to, the sort of tone Utterson could only imagine he used on patients.
“Fine,” Utterson knew his tone bordered on childish petulance, he paused before adding, “Not Jekyll.” in a quieter, more honest whisper.
Pushing himself to his feet, Utterson double checked his appearance was as presentable as he could care to be, before unlocking the door. A moment more of pause, and the doorknob twisted from the other side, Lanyon slipping through quickly before pulling it shut and turning to face Utterson.
Shock plastered across Lanyon’s face for a split second before professional blankness erased anything else, instantly guiding Utterson to sit down in his own home by a hand placed on his back that Utterson had to resist the urge to fight off, to reclaim the same autonomy Hyde had denied him. His discomfort with it must’ve shown, as Lanyon removed the hand from actual contact, just the ghost of a suggestion that didn’t quite contact him.
Lanyon said not another word until he had successfully scavenged the necessary medical resources from around Utterson’s home; Utterson didn’t dare break the tense quiet either, too unused to holding his emotions in check that he was scared of what he’d say. It was only when Utterson flinched violently from the hand nearing his bruised face and the screech of chair legs against the floor shattered the carefully maintained hiatus of noise, did Lanyon speak, “How did you get injured?” The question was light despite the heavy weight of the answer that tried to drag Utterson through the flooring to hell.
“I scratched at it; never stopped itching.” The non-answer didn’t seem to phase the doctor as he brought a dampened cloth- slowly, as if Utterson were a child or animal that would bolt if spooked- to wipe the dried pus, blood, and tears from the skin Utterson had ripped into, desperately attempting to scratch away any skin Hyde had touched, violated. Lanyon must have noticed Utterson’s involuntary reaction to the hand that was far too similar to Hyde’s while holding almost no resemblance coming towards him in a fist, as the doctor now held his palm open and kept the other in Utterson’s nervous eyesight.
Repeating to himself exactly what was happening, Utterson allowed the wound to receive the medical treatment it had begged for with every conscious and and unconscious movement of his face, a constant ache that threw him back into the memory. Lanyon cleaned the cloth before reaching back up and Hyde’s fist rang Utterson’s ears, forcing a break in his resistance where he was limp, dazed but far too aware of the movements behind and inside him.
Lanyon looked at Utterson in bewilderment.
The raw stinging of Hyde forcing himself on Utterson was enough to keep him painfully aware of what was happening.
Lanyon’s mouth moved with words that weren’t enough to breach the gap between Utterson and reality.
Hyde was grunting, his nails embedded in Utterson’s chin as he snarled with pleasure, his pace quickening with every pained noise that escaped Utterson.
“Utterson!”
The yell broke the illusion of memory, dragging Utterson from the history he was drowning in. “Sorry?” The question was half mumbled and nearly inaudible, he wobbled slightly in his seat, disoriented.
“What was that?” Lanyon’s voice was stern, an attempt to grab Utterson’s fractured attention and hold it long enough to at least get a meaningful response. Reaching out to rest a comforting hand on his shoulder, Lanyon found Utterson flinching away from the contact. He returned his outstretched hand to his lap, making a mental note of the aversion to touch.
Desperately regulating his irregular breathing Utterson tried to remember how to reply in a way to assuage any confusion or concern, “Just a- It was nothing, Lanyon, I’m perfectly fine,”
Lanyon only hummed in disapproval as he returned to cleaning the dried pus and dirt from Utterson’s right cheek, more carefully than before as he tried to avoid repeating whatever he had triggered earlier.
-
Jekyll paced. He never went more than a metre from Utterson’s doorstep, making his tight circling seem more frantic than it would have had he adopted a larger path. Why had Utterson only allowed Lanyon entry? Did he know?
It was ridiculous to be so preoccupied with his own reputation and secrets when his friend was clearly in pain and all his worried thoughts should be focussed on the other side of the door, where he was not permitted at Utterson’s request. He should be worried for his friend, not himself, it was just another example of the sinful selfishness he had created Hyde to indulge in.
Maybe he would be a better person again if he let Hyde out.
Hyde had brought Utterson to this ruin, this reclusion from his usual good doing, Hyde had driven him here. Jekyll had let Hyde do so, seen the horrors he inflicted every night of freedom, allowed it to continue. Jekyll had heard the whispers of fantasies run wild in the half of his head he cordoned off as Hyde, he had let them build without check. Jekyll had applied those fantasies to the friend turned victim. Hyde had done the actions for himself, he had done them to Utterson for Jekyll. Hyde had seen the most deeply hidden and absentminded thoughts regarding the lawyer that Jekyll would never let degrade their friendship. Hyde had breached that line in the sand and Jekyll watched. Hyde violated Utterson for Jekyll.
Maybe Hyde would be better if he was let out more often.
Shoed feet hitting cobbles sent thumping vibrations up Jekyll, grounding him in the present as time dragged its feet. Every second took a minute to pass and his nerves only grew with each one. What if Utterson knew and was telling Lanyon everything Jekyll and Hyde had done? What if Utterson hated him now? He couldn’t bear to lose both of his friends from this mistake of an experiment.
Maybe Hyde could lighten the burden.
Click. The door opened, Lanyon ushered Jekyll away from the house. Settling into an uneasy rhythm, they walked down streets that seemed unnaturally empty, as if they were slipping through the cracks of the world, between respectable and depravity, between the gallows and jury, between two sides of the same coin, walking the knife edge between either side of a prison cell while the world held its breath to watch where they fell.
“Well?” Jekyll finally broke the silence in a nervous question that seemed too loud when whispered in the deadened streets.
“I will not say, it would be a grievous breach of ethics,” Lanyon denied Jekyll the information, “I believe my bounds to medical secrecy is why only I was permitted entry.”
Jekyll remained quiet for another two silent corners, letting the words and the meaning that hid behind glass doors sink in. “As a friend, is he well?”
Lanyon didn’t pause in his step, but took a deep breath as if steeling himself for the one word that barely counted as more than an exhale, “No.”
More street corners passed in silence, only amplified by their soft footsteps that had no background noise to blend into. London was deserted, an impossible quiet had fallen over the city of bustle and movement, not even a rat dared to breathe out of sync. The tension was palpable, one that moved and compressed around the men, compressing them in a sense that no words could contain. A fear that no discipline could repress bubbled and erupted in them like a volcano threatening to bring civilization to ash and dust, to be forgotten in the impenetrable winds of time.
“He-” Lanyon’s breath and pace hitched, a clear sign of his moral questioning over the information he was tempted to reveal despite himself, “-seemed nervous about touch, I dare not say more on the matter, any conclusions you draw are your own.”
With the final denial of responsibility, Lanyon shut his front door, only a fraction from slamming, leaving Jekyll with his guilt that hung like a noose around his neck.
-
The dark creaked; a noise that sliced through the darkness and Utterson’s chest, ripping through bone and sinew to pierce his heart, tearing into the flesh like nib into paper, exposing more to the sharpness that didn’t stop in its mission to find and break everything that Utterson was.
Phantom hands slid under the sheets, grasping up his legs as if he were a harlot. Invisible eyes watched from the depth of the dark around him, Utterson curled the covers a little closer around himself.
He was alone. There was no chance that-
Touch crept across his back, a firm and undeniable sensation that set Utterson’s hair on end. His bed seemed to sink as if there was someone kneeling beside his body that pleaded with a God that wasn’t listening for unconsciousness. Heart still racing after Lanyon’s visit, Utterson tried to force down the reactions to the terror he would deny he ever felt, sweat soaked into his clothing against his denial.
Handprints of pain followed Hyde’s path around Utterson’s body, biting into his skin with enough force to ache rather than simply sting.
Clenching his eyes shut against the darkness that no longer seemed quite so empty, he heard his own breath in two rhythms, his and Hyde’s. A discordant harmony of pain and pleasure, both quickened, both waiting for the dam to break. Predatory, Hyde stalked only a millisecond behind, a constant peering that pressed into his back that forced him forwards towards a fate Utterson could only dread.
-
Sitting before the powders and liquids of freedom, Jekyll tried to remember his vow.
Surely it would be better to let Hyde out for a night, just enough to beat back the selfish desires that were creeping in.
It wasn’t worth it.
The longer left, the worse Hyde would be when (not if) freed.
It wasn’t worth it, the risk was too high.
He’d never get caught, there was no suspicion.
It wasn’t worth it, the consequences only grew.
-
Pressing his back against the headboard, Utterson resisted the beating in his open chest as he breathed in through clogged airways, forcing the air in without noise.
The rushing wind replaced the rushing from Hyde, Utterson fell to the floor as Hyde finished with him. Cold stone dug into where far too hot and unwanted flesh had been moments earlier. The cold seeped in like an infection that soothed and broke in one motion.
Utterson’s head snapped back, trying to shake the thoughts and memories from himself or for the sense of control hitting the wood provided, he didn’t know. He didn’t care to know, as he pushed himself further back and away from the creeping sense of him that lurked in the area beyond himself. He knew it was his mind run amok, but the fear grew unbidden.
-
Salt met tincture and bubbles hit the side of the glass.
Red, purple, green.
Jekyll watched the reaction with terror and anticipation warring in his mind.
-
An unnatural heat seemed to radiate from his body, but Utterson loathed to remove the covers that felt like the final layer between himself and the events that refused to pass from his thoughts. So it grew until he was sweating beads and trying to focus his eyes in the infinite darkness of night.
Limping to his feet, Utterson emerged a ragged man from the pile of flesh and fear Hyde had left like litter on the side of the street.
-
Jekyll let the weight of the glass sit in his hand, teetering on the precipice of choice.
-
Tears poured from his eyes as sobs finally ripped themselves from the chest that spasmed with each breath that didn’t form fully before they were wrenched from his body.
-
Burning tincture ripped down Jekyll’s throat. There was to be no denial now.