I revel to think of how scared Jekyll became after this night. I was not brought out and given his body again for a month after that and he hid away my clothing and the medicine that created me, though he kept them. I shouldn’t have been happy to be trapped with no use of my body, but I was. In a way I was being an influence, he was no longer doing what ever he wanted, my existence was changing him.
Eventually he forgot his fear and I was brought from the closet again, about a month after I had transformed him as he slept. With time he began to lust after the deeds he had been able to do and forget the danger of becoming me. Again I was wandering the street doing things that Jekyll dreamed of in the deepest recesses of his mind.
It was on one of these midnight voyages of exploration through the darker parts of the city that I met the old man. He was a silver haired elder of respectable appearance who accosted me in the most polite fashion to ask for directions. I think that may have been what made me so angry actually, though by now it didn’t take a lot to make me angry. I had grown so used to people facing me with horror that to have a man address me with a look of nothing but benevolence for some reason insulted me. More then that but my frustration with my own existence had grown, and I was also feeding off of Jekyll’s growing evil side. It was a combination of these factors that caused me to suddenly lash out at the harmless and defenseless man.
By the time that I was done with the man and had fled the scene there was no doubt in my mind that he was dead. Once my walking stick had broken on him I had trampled him underfoot just like I had the little girl a year before. I could still feel the man’s bones crack under my feet. He was dead and as the gloating Jekyll in my mind told me I was a dead man if I was found by the police. I didn’t want to die a puppet of a man like Jekyll. If I was to die it would be at my own hands or of natural causes, this I had long since decided, it wouldn’t be at the hands of an executioner for being an abomination Jekyll had created for his amusement.
I continued to be a cowering fugitive in another man’s body after this incident. No longer was I able to wander at night as had become my habit, not without every policeman in the city looking for me. It quickly came to light that the man who I had killed was a man of public prominence which made my crime of more interest to the police then it would have been otherwise. It was in Jekyll’s interest as well as mine not to have me caught by the police. Not only was there the public shame if his involvement was brought to light with a trail, but my death by the hangman’s rope would be his death as well since we shared a body, though they were different shapes. No longer was that potion that he had consumed so often in the past brought out of its draw and mixed and again I was almost thankful. I watched the world through his eyes and waited to see what would come.
The next few months Jekyll was even more sickening self righteous then he had been before. His hypocrisy, of which only I was aware, made him unbearable to even share a mind with sometimes. He went out of his way to be pleasant to his friends, to do good deeds, to donate money to charities; he was truly a model citizen. I was raving; I wanted to destroy this man by now for his ability to live a normal life when he had done the crime as much as I had. I was almost ready to throw away my own safety for this sake even, almost but not quite. I still had no wish to die by the hangman’s noose for a man like Jekyll.
To be continued...
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