Young Writers Society

There was no stairway past the third or fourth floor, so additional height was covered by ladders left by the backstage crew and engineers. When he finally arrived on the roof, Edward threw his head back and laughed at a starry night sky, daring the celestial beings to strike him down in his reign of terror. The lustrous orb that filled the heavens with breath-taking light held audience with the vile creature as he strutted about like he owned the world.

“This is indeed a wonderful night and it requires music! But, unfortunately, the leading soprano has retired for the night. I know! How about a requiem mass for those villains to whom I owe a debt of thanks for this evening's entertainment?” Hyde asked the city at large. Taking the silence as an affirmative, the monster leaped on the back of the statue of Apollo's Lyre, a spectacular sculpture that topped one of the cornices of the Opera's peak.

Lifting his smooth-skinned face up to the night, Edward Hyde opened his mouth and began to desecrate the Dies Irae, the only requiem mass he knew. The dark and rich baritone echoed out through the darkness and embracing Paris in all her sinful glory. As the last notes left his throat, he smiled triumphantly at his offering. A soft clapping came from behind him.

“Vraiment beau, monsieur.”

Hyde looked over his shoulder in the direction of the voice. A tall, thin man dressed down in a casual black overcoat and a long scarf. Edward smirked. “Sorry, I don't speak French.”

“Indeed. You looked English to me.”

Astounded at the man's grasp of his native tongue, Edward slipped off Apollo's back and approached cautiously. “You speak excellent English for a frog.”

“It would seem so. It helps to be bilingual in my position. Though I am quite curious how an Englishman in such elegant garments winds up atop the Opera House.”

“I was bored and missed the performance, so I decided to entertain myself. I had an... encounter with some ruffians earlier and was honouring their cowardice.”

The visitor nodded and held up a gloved hand. “I'll ask no questions from you, monsieur. You have an excellent baritone, I must say. Have you considered a career in the Paris Opera, perchance?”

Edward laughed heartily at this suggestion. “Sir, I haven't been in this city a day. Are you suggesting that I seek employment with one of the oldest established musical companies in western Europe?”

“No, but I am offering it to you,” the man replied, extending his hand and giving an incredulous Hyde a crooked smile. “Armand Desmarais. I'm the manager of this fine establishment and that was my statue you were sitting on. I'm frankly rather glad you can sing, or else there would be several members of the Surete trying to drag you off it.”

There was a wolf in the house. It was larger than anything she had ever seen before. It had white fur and startling almond-shaped brown eyes. She wanted to run but her feet planted themselves into the ground. The creature did not look like it meant any harm so she tried to remain calm. Before it was an easel and a portrait of the moon. It was both dark and light. The light could not exist without shadows. They coexisted together for a reason. And sometimes it was to bring beauty to life. The wolf was Andrew. She felt it in the way he had looked at her. She felt it in the way he advanced towards her. The way his gait was full of ease and comfort and joy. A smile pulled up his lips at the corners, revealing his teeth. They were sharp and white but she did not fear them. He changed before her in front of her eyes. She was brought back to the night of the party. The way his eyes burned with fire. He leaned his head towards hers and soon their lips met. For some reason his lips were ice cold. She looked at him to find two cold blue eyes staring back. She did not need to look any farther to know who it was. Sir Harvey. She was kissing Sir Harvey.

Bare Bones wrote:“Yes. Tomorrow. Bye.” She looked up, noticing Nathaniel moving to lean against the front counter, his arms folded across his chest. Everything he did was hostile, where he moved and how he did, and the silence with which he did it. Today, silence was a bad thing, she mused. Today silence wanted to morph over her and take away everything she was. His eyes were on her, all over her body and straight in her eyes all at once, few people’s eyes could do that. There were some people who looked through you, but that wasn’t hard to do if you know how to feel the right apathetic indifference. Other people looked at you as if you were the be-all end-all; they drowned in all you were, taking you with them. Viola had never met someone who looked at all of her at once. People take snippets of you – eyes, hands, arm, shoulder, knee – but not the whole thing, never all of you all at once. Nathaniel gulped her in, spreading his sight over her like oil over water. He never moved in, never went deep, just slickly melted over her until she couldn’t think for the colour of his eyes. They were green, a tough mossy colour that seemed damp, and never shiny.

“Remember to call!” Jeanie’s hand touched her arm; a forgetful movement that she didn’t realise happened until it did, she looked surprised that she even made contact. “We’re friends now.”

“Yes.” Viola smiled, forgetting Nathaniel’s cagey eyes. “We’re friends now. Until tomorrow, bye Jeanie.”
The door shut with a quiet click behind her and she realised that it was dark, sometime between finishing lunch and walking out the lights had flickered on and the street was lit by lamps. Her car was down the street in the alley parking and walking there involved the uneven shadows of the street. Between each burst of light she clutched her bag against her side tightly, hands wrapped thought the looped straps.

There are women who hide in the shadows as well, she thought, ones who knew how you would hold your bag and who could guess how you would react. It is the women you have to fear after a while, the women who are caught up in such entrancing passions that they ignore everything but that which they must focus on. One day it is the banker who wears a black, pinstriped hat and tries to rush through the streets with a money bag. The next day it’s the woman you see each week clutching her purse to her side and striding somehow furtively to her car. It’s the women you watch for because they’re the least predictable; you never know what a woman is after. Men of course, her hands touched the cold metal of her keys and the car door at the same time; men were transparent for the most part.

Back in his city apartment the next evening, Cain stepped into the shower. With grim satisfaction he watched the water turn brown before escaping down the plughole. The feeling of warm blood on his hands had been the cleansing either of his soul. The spirit of nature was pleased, that he knew. He had fed her, and destroyed a leech of her precious resources, turning his greed into rich soil for the plants.
He hummed happily as he reached for the soap, watching the last of the congealed cleansing life blood slide off his skin. He was not worried.
There would be more soon.

14th June, 1885

Something terrible has happened. In a moment of weakness, I allowed Hyde to break free into this world once more. While his energies quickly burnt out, I remain convinced that his strength is mostly untested. But there are more pressing issues than my medical analysis of my darkness' capabilities.

The first of these horrifying matters is how Hyde managed to break through at all. I have taken no formula, nor do I possess the chemicals that I require to brew another batch. Either this means that Edward no longer needs the potion to tear down the barrier between we two or that he has insidiously found a way to ensure that I take the tincture without my knowledge, ensuring that I will always have the noxious chemicals lingering in my system.

It is a drug. If I am not cautious proceeding on from this point, I could lose my very soul to the libidinous nature of Hyde. It is far too easy just to give in to his wailing commands and indulge my hideous fantasies for moral-free killing and secret and shaming rendezvous that would be the downfall of any true man of society. Yesterday evening, I confronted him in what can only be described as purgatory. One of us must wait there until the other returns, but during that time, the other does not exist. I remember him leaving a monster, but returning as a child. Is this how Hyde sees himself at his weakest? A child who needs to be nurtured? What?

If I am to be the victor in this internal struggle, my best chance is to study his behaviour. The arsenic formula has mutated the way my body responds to the changes. I am more youthful in appearance, a man of thirty-five, maybe. Certainly not an aging elder member of society of fifty. Is this the work of Hyde, or is the arsenic formula truly the fountain of youth?

If that information were to become public, who knows what kind of trouble I may find myself in. For now, I must discover what atrocities Edward committed last night and make amends, if it is at all possible. I know, certainly, that there is at least one man missing his opera and entertaining suit and while it is very fine, it does not fit my much smaller frame. Perhaps, however, it would be prudent to put it aside, in case any more of these freak transformations occur.

My course of action is clear; I must find myself a surgery of kind and make once more a laboratory in which I will study these changes in great detail. I must also find a way of communicating with my alter-ego in such manner that he will understand that, for now at least, I mean him no harm. But we both have questions that require answering, the most potent of which is:

Why me?

Jekyll paused in his notating and thought about the question posed. Why me? Well, he had drunk the HJ7, it wasn't as if someone else had forced him to take it. But why Edward? This heralded concoction that was supposed to separate good and evil... why did it separate him from Hyde? Was it because he was a good man? Why?

The boy whose name I yelled untangles himself from the mess of wrestling teens and wipes his forehead. Smiling, he acknowledges, “Yeah?”

“What the devil’s going on over there?” I inquire with mock sternness.

His grin only increases exponentially. The tall, muscled Senior begins to throw his arms about in wild gestures as his explanation becomes more and more vigorous.

“See, Scott over there—the scrawny little Freshman kid—” John waved vaguely toward the chaos on the school’s gathering area, Ferret Green. I caught a brief glimpse of the Freshman of which my friend spoke and noted to myself he was hardly a scrawny kid for being fourteen. “—thought he could beat Jemmy in a wrestling match ‘cause he’d been his middle school heavyweight champ. Well, you know Jemmy; he’s been wrestling since before he could talk right well. So of course he can’t resist trouncing some sense into the kid. Of course, the moment he throws Scott the rest of the gang piles on and it’s one big free-for-all.”

Before I can answer with more than hysterical laughter, another boy rushes toward the fray and lays into the group right and left, almost with more vigor than the ones who had initially started it. The others all back off, and the fourteen-year-old instigator scurries like a whipped mouse in a retreat toward his pathetic knot of Freshmen allies.

Two of the Junior boys I hang out with a lot stride over to us, bruised and beaten arms slung across each other’s shoulders and with manically beaming expressions wreathing their faces. Both look exactly like each other, and have the same musculature to boot—meaning they are the toughest duo to beat in Blackfoot High wrestling history. The black-haired twins, Evan and Nat, have been dubbed Wiry Wrestling Wonders of the decade (and appear to have proved their worthiness for that title just minutes ago).

I grin back at them as Evan, the one on the left—at least I think it’s Evan—comments, “That was sure a good warm-up round for the match tonight.”

The other—maybe he’s Evan; I can never remember without looking at the tattoo on Nat’s left arm—adds casually, “Yeah. Though I think it needed a few more heavy-weights to really give us a work-out.”

All I can do is figuratively roll over with laughter at their casual exchange. It was like they were talking about a dish in the middle of being cooked. ‘A little more salt, maybe some onion, a dash of garlic…’

“Having fun crushing poor little Freshmen, you three?” I finally gasp out after their conversation continues a moment longer. They grin simultaneous, identical grins before I notice the boy behind them, standing with his arms folded across his chest as he contemplates us half with amusement, half with disapproval.

“Hey, who’s that guy?” I interrupt John’s response by asking. I gesture at the boy with my chin.

Gregory, unfortunately, does not have a narrator whispering in his ear, so he did not know how important this elevator would be. As he pressed the button that read ‘19’, Gregory’s mind was on more pressing matters, such as exactly what was going to be in this elusive box. As his stomach dipped in response to the rise of said elevator, he began to sweat yet again.
“Oh dear oh dear oh dear oh…” he muttered, pulling out a handkerchief to mop his forehead.
“Something wrong?” came a voice. Gregory jumped a mile, turning with a whirl. There, perched in the far corner of the elevator, was a petite woman. She looked only about 20, perhaps older. Gregory couldn’t imagine how he missed her, for she was very noticeable now that he looked. Donning a short pixie cut, the women had pure white hair, and was dressed in many various mismatched articles of clothing. She wore a long graphic tee that read ‘Currently Migrating: Do Not Disturb’ and a bright blue trench coat that swung below her knees. On her legs she wore black leggings and orange leg warmers, which looked as though creatures were devouring her legs. A jean skirt came to the middle of her thighs and three scarves, all of varying colors. Gregory stared slightly, blinking a remembering his manners.
“Ah…I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there,” he said, apologetically. The girl grinned widely.
“Oh that’s quite all right,” she spouted forgivingly, “You see, I am a ninja. You would not see me unless I wanted you to.” Gregory chuckled, until he realized the girl was serious. He then questioned her sanity.

Noises are heard from above and she stops, holding dearly unto the baby, barely allowing herself to breathe. The noises stop a minute afterward but she waits a few minutes to peak and see if the way is clear.
“You just need to get off this boat and you will be free.” She reminds herself.
Slowly, she peaks around the corner. No one. She peaks around the corner again a few minutes later and still, there’s no one.
Quietly, she steps out of her hiding spot, now fully exposed from a lamp. With one more look, she dashes out of the boat, down the deck, and into the dark city night.
Being mindful of the baby, she runs until she gets to a lighted café. Thankful, she comes in and sits at a booth.
Although everyone stares at the young girl in rags and the baby wrapped in cloth, she doesn’t notice, and continues to catch her breath.

A flash of lightning soared across the sky and then the belly of God roared. She could feel her knees knocking together, attuned with her hands clapping against her ears. Fighting back her fear, she clamped her eyes shut and stopped.
"I am not afraid," she whispered over and over again. It had been this way ever since she was a child. Her older brother Patrick would tell her that a monster was screaming in the sky because he wanted his princess back. She'd always believe him and say that she didn't want to leave her home or be a monster's princess. Now that she was older, she knew that there was no such thing as monsters and that it was only thunder. But the way the bellows of the sky split through her ears, shook her heart to its core. All the nightmares and tears she had shed when she was a child, came back to her in fragments. She could hear Andrew's voice. It was only yesterday when she had stumbled into his room, frightened of the lightning and thunder.
"Don't be frightened. It’s only the Angels quarreling."he had said and then she wasn't afraid anymore. Taking her hands from her face, Elizabeth opened her eyes and continued on her way home.

Feeling a little weary are we, Henry?

Jekyll opened his eyes and stared down at the silver tray that held a number of thin, measuring instruments. Hyde's face sneered back at him. As shocking as this was to him, the doctor didn't move and remained calm. “What are you doing awake so early?”

I was curious as to your progress. Can't a man look in on his brother once in a while?

“You are not my brother. You aren't even a separate person.”

But you had forgotten about your father's eyes, hadn't you? The green storms? Something that he had that you've never seen in anyone else. Except when you look in the mirror occasionally, right before or after a change...

“My father was a good man! I invented that formula!”

Indeed, but what about the arguments, Henry? What about when your mother pressed you to her and cried? Do you think she knew then what you were going to become?

“Stop, stop it now or I won't make the formula! You'll never be free again!”

Then I'll plague your mind and slowly drive you insane, you know I will. If you're looking for the answer behind me, perhaps what you should really be looking for is the answer to your father's eyes.

Henry smacked his hand down on the tray, causing the utensils to rattle and their holder to shake. When the tray stopped moving, Hyde had disappeared and he found himself staring at his own reflection once more.

Leaving the potion-making area, Jekyll returned to his room and withdrew his journal, thoughtful about both conversations.

15th June, 1885

Something has occurred to me that I had previously forgotten. A conversation between myself and my manservant Morgrim has jolted my memory into recalling that my own father's eyes flashed between the pale jade that I sport during the day time and the brilliant emerald that I wear as Hyde. The conundrum is, however, that my progenitor did not have the formula I concocted. Is it possible, then, that he had a version of Hyde himself?

I already know that if one takes the formula often enough, the transformations can occur without a new draft. The chemicals appear to linger in the system for a time and build up, like lime in a drain. Perhaps my father had a Hyde of his own, powerful enough to break through during those heated arguments in his study. I thought what I saw was jealousy in his face, but could that have been his own inner demon breaking through? Was my own, mild-mannered father the cause of all this catastrophe and if so, where, when and how did it start?

Perhaps Edward is right. Maybe my search for answers to my own dark lives lie in my family tree. It is possible that the change is an inherited thing and requires a catalyst. For my father, I fear, my mother's rage may have been it. Myself, I think the formula that I so foolishly thought would separate the good and evil in me.

How I loathe to discover all along... that I was right.