(Following the mysterious disappearance of Doctor Jekyll, and the scandalous appearance of the murderer Hyde’s body in his cabinet, this note was found in Hyde’s pocket by Jekyll’s Servant Poole, and handed to the police.  It appears to be from a woman….)

I swear there is a whiff of sulphur about him, a cologne given to him by Lucifer, and when I smell that I know for certain he is back.  That faint, sickly chemical smell, nothing like anything normal I have ever encountered.  It catches at your throat and makes your head swim, pulls at something inside of you in a way that’s indecent, and you start to feel you are losing yourself to some strange vortex. It’s not normal.

Normal?  Normal I say. Don’t make me laugh.

Nothing is normal about you my dearest, oh, my Star of the Morning.

I just know when he has returned home, without a sound being made or a word being spoken.  He moves as quietly as a cat, and frightening as that can be, he thinks the first I know of it is when I feel his breath on my neck, and his stubble on my cheek.

But I know, I can tell, and like everything else about him, that sickly sweet concoction which he makes such a joke of dabbing behind his ears, sickens and pulls at me.  I could kill him with a stroke of his own razor, slashing till there’s nothing left to rise up like a beast and smite me down, but every time I get up the courage he fixes me with those eyes, that wicked, black-eyed gleam, of such mischief that God would call him a good companion.  And then I burn.

I love him so much I fear for my sanity, I could dash my head against the walls I need him so badly.  And when its over, and I lie bruised and coiled inwards, too sore to stand or use the water closet, that’s when he laughs.  That’s when he finds his good sport, and goes out merrily on his way, when my insides feel like they’ve been torn by twenty dogs.  And he knows I’ll be here when he gets back, won’t have moved, or told anyone, or sent for a constable, and that I die for him when he’s away. God help me.

I swear the devil gives him that stuff, a cologne and a love potion, the stuff he keeps in the handle of his walking stick, and stocks up from little vessels in his Valise.  He thinks I don’t know, but I’ve seen him, when he has those strange blue devils, the DT’s where he stares at his own hands as if he thinks they belong to someone else.  He laughs wildly, and says “Oh no you don’t!! Down, you sneaking dog, back into your cell!!”  And then he toasts me with it and dabs it lightly behind his ears.  The smell of it drives me insane, I can’t control myself.  He comes at me like a madman then, and I cannot have enough of him.  My Star of the Morning.

I never saw an ugly man so beautiful.  Sometimes I think he is the Antichrist, or the devil himself. The grace about him is unholy; I never saw a man move like that, so provocatively and so elegantly.  It’s preposterous, he is so ill defined and deformed, and yet he moves like a panther. My Star of the Morning is a beast with the manners of a gentleman, and the voice of an angel, but he uses that voice to speak like De Sade.

He found me when I was eleven, and I have been penned in by him for 8 years.  I knew what he would do before I even hit puberty; I had a schooling few would envy.  When my years kicked in I was trapped, and he used the sex against me, visiting four or five times a week, driving me wild with it as my youth grew to yearning to be a full woman.  But if another man so much as smiled at me he flew at them.  He has maimed more than one in his time.

I don’t like to think about what might have been.  Lord knows what I might have become if I had never met him, but I know what he has made me, and one day there will be a reckoning.  I have planned it long and hard.

I have had my eye on his valise.

Whenever he drinks that concoction he is refreshed, steeped in new and invigorating cruelty, and sometimes I see astonishment in his eyes in the wake of his own daring and malignancy.  I saw it late at night when he trampled over that little boy and nearly got lynched, and then when he killed that old Knight, Sir Danvers Carew.  He is wanted as a murderer throughout the kingdom, and he came in terror to me.

I cannot go to the police; I cannot bring myself to do it.  His hold is too strong.  But his fear of the gallows has made him careless, watching every shadow, as he forced me to hide him.

I, hiding Hyde.

He is fading and curses his chemicals. Somehow they are letting him down and he cannot discover why, blaming an impurity in his supplies.  Poor Edward, he does not know I have been siphoning off his potions, and topping up his vials with water.  It’s all I can do not to laugh when he curses and throws the bottles at the wall.

I have been doing it for weeks, and I see him getting weaker.  I know this draught makes him strong, so unimaginably wicked and strong.  He could fight off twenty devils when in the pink, and he is going to have too, as well.

I cannot give you up, My Star of the Morning, but I will have my revenge. I have almost a pint of your potion now, and in a few minutes I will drink it to the last and come into the room where you are sleeping.  We will see what invigorating effect it has on my own strength and wickedness, Edward.

Oh, I Can’t help loathing that man of mine. Perhaps you may never find this note, but I will make you pay for this life. Good Health, and  here’s mud in your eye……

Fin

© By Glenn James 2012

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 1st, 2012 at 12:09 am and is filed under Glenn James, Guest Authors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.