Lanyon and Henry Ch. 03

In retrospect, it seems inevitable that our passionate discourse would inflame a more carnal excitement, but at the time, I was dismayed by my body's instinctual response to her. I attempted to convince myself that our bond was entirely intellectual, but I increasingly found myself captivated by the gentle nip of her waist as it flowed into her hips. Her pale rose complexion. Her scent. The way her grey eyes widened when she was surprised.

I, who had fashioned myself a sort of scientific monk, destined to a life of solitary exploration, now found myself craving the very thing I had forsworn—a shared life of passion in the arms of a beloved wife.

I was torn between the logical scientist seeking to exorcise the ghosts of the past and the feral degenerate who clamored to loose his passions upon Lanyon. The doctor held sway, but the chains I had constructed to hold my baser in place—decorum, respectability, self-sacrifice, control—strained and pulled and began to weaken.

I found myself coveting her with a hunger that grew with every day. An addiction that neither alcohol nor intellectual analysis nor long hours in the laboratory could slake. And as my hunger grew swollen and bloated, I knew that my resolve was destined to fail.

To protect Lanyon, I distanced myself from her. I lingered at the College late into the night; at Cavendish Square, I exiled myself to the laboratory. But absence only made my passions more acute. Deprived of the flesh-and-blood Lanyon, my imagination played tricks upon me. I imagined her weaknesses less significant, her virtues more pronounced. I found myself fantasizing futures that I knew were not to be.

In desperation, I latched upon a plan: what if I could find a way to loose the demon of my earthy desires, far from the vulnerable woman I had promised to protect? With my passions exhausted, I could return to our safe, apollonian relationship, free from the inexorable pull of the beast that I felt whenever I looked at her.

I delved back into my research from Cambridge, but this time with a difference. My test subject was now going to be myself.

8 September 1893

My sweet sparrow surprised me!

When I awaken, she has already assumed the position: on her knees, hands clasped behind her back.

She hungrily consumes my sex. I smile, recalling her reticence of just a few months ago. A reticence long gone.

I believe she desires it even more than I. When I release in her gullet, she sucks harder, as if she would draw my very soul out through my root. I have to tug her hair to force her to disengage, and she laps up my leavings as if afraid to spill a drop.

She hides her hunger behind averted eyes, but I can taste it on her flesh. She is musky with need.

Her resistance is the seasoning.

Head down, she follows me through my revelries. She sits where I tell her to sit, stands where I tell her to stand. Not a word is spoken as I knead her breasts through her gown in a crowded pub. Her cheeks flush, ashamed at being put on display.

Her nipples are hard jewels. I squeeze them in my fingers.

Beneath the table, I find her swollen flower. She bites her lip, trying to hide her excitement as I stroke her to a cataclysm. She cries out in sweet surrender.

My demands increase, and still she resists me. When I press the issue, her eyes flash and I feel the point of a knife on my thigh. I clutch her arm harder and a spot of blood rises on my trousers. I release her.

Joy! Rapture! She is not yet broken. The game continues!

I seize her hair and lead her to the door. She cries and grimaces, but I can smell her arousal. Outside, it is but a moment's work to force her to the wall of the alley. To hoist her skirt.

She clutches the wall. She is a swamp, her garden overflowing.

I plunge into her. Hard. She hisses. Moans.

I bite her neck. Mark her as mine.

She grunts as I ram my root into her. Pushes back. When I finally release, I feel her shudder. She spasms and clutches the wall harder.

She knows she is almost mine.

She knows this night is but the beginning of another assault.

She knows that this wall will also crumble.

*

When I awake, I still feel Hyde's elation, his joy at his ownership of her.

I feel my own despair as I grow even closer to losing Lanyon.

Am I going mad?

*

At Cambridge, I recorded every detail of my experiments, from the dosages I administered to the ravages that my subjects suffered. Every twinge and cramp, moan and scream went into my ledger. Even so, I was completely unprepared for the agony I felt when I began experimenting on myself.

The first step was shattering my psyche. Night after night, I administered ever-increasing dosages of my minerals and compounds, clenching my teeth as the long-buried monsters of my past came to the fore. I had grown accustomed to nightly visits from the spectres of Afghanistan, but I now felt fresh terror at the phantoms that plagued me as I untangled the threads of the man I had become.

The human mind is designed to see the world through one set of eyes, to process it through a single set of morals. Yet as my soul broke into shards, I found the forces within me—the cool-minded doctor and the hot-tempered adventurer—fighting for control. I had felt both of them before. The adventurer bore a resemblance to the knight-errant who had compelled me to take my romantic ideals to Afghanistan; the doctor, of course, reared his head when those ideals died in my surgery.

Shoulders weighted by a lifetime of rules and religion shrugged, transforming into a body lightened by a total absence of moral strictures. Eyes that measured every decision, calculated its moral cost and reward, squared off against eyes that saw life as a lighthearted stroll through a garden of pleasures.

After splitting the doctor from the bohemian, my next step was forcing my body to variously align itself with each of these forces. And that was where my physical pain began.

The poisons were precisely chosen and carefully measured, designed to inflict the greatest amount of torture without causing permanent injury. Intellectually, I knew what I was going to experience—I'd seen my test subjects suffering. Heard their screams. I thought myself prepared.

I was foolish.

It felt like every organ of my body was simultaneously stretching and tearing. My muscles pulled in on themselves, and my stomach tightened until I thought it would burst.

I was clasped in the flaming grip of a demon. I could only take shallow breaths. My skin burned.

It was a moment. It was a lifetime.

My muscles strained as if they would tear themselves from my bones.

When pain is too great, the mind will shut down, forcing the body into unconsciousness to protect itself. But my mind refused to grant me release. I felt a beast awaken within, felt him eat the pain and grow stronger. Stretch himself within my brain until it seemed that he would burst forth from my eye sockets. I clasped my hands to my head, desperately trying to keep it from exploding. I gasped, feeling my lungs crushed as if by an alien hand.

I screamed, my throat tearing with the wail of a baby born anew.

I cried, searing acid tears pushing forth between my fingers.

It was a moment.

It

was

a

lifetime!

And, finally, it was over.

When my eyes opened, it was as if I was seeing the world for the first time. My vision was crisp, singular. I felt easy. Smooth.

Oddly, I was reminded of Afghanistan.

I was divorced from the weight of dusty morals and antiquated rules and admonitions; I understood how the world worked.

I hiccupped a laugh and felt the glee burst forth from my lips.

I was light.

I was air.

I was myself, and yet I also was another.

I laughed again and our giggle became a victorious crow. I bounded to my feet, delighted at our strength. If I jumped, we could touch the moon.

Our heart thundered. Strong and passionate, pumping rich blood and desire through our body. Distantly, the Jekyll part of me wondered if our heart was spurred to greater strength by a need to overcome the poisons within our body. The other me felt that thought and laughed, reveling in the sensation and caring not where it came from. All he knew was that he had a strong heart. A beast's heart. A heart hungry enough to eat all the world.

Our nose twitched at the smells pouring in through the open window. All the filthy, ripe, living flesh of London, begging to be tasted. Dressing himself in our coat and hat, he made his way to the door and out into the hungry night. The Jekyll part of us faded into something like unconsciousness.

*

When I awakened, I was alone in my head and once again in command of my body. My memories of the prior night were vague and scattered. Images of drinking halls and opium dens. Vague impressions of deepest pleasure, of unimaginable lightness.

I recalled the expressions of distaste my alter ego encountered on the faces of our fellow travelers of the night. It seemed there was something instinctually repugnant about him, and so he found himself relegated to the lowest classes of drinking establishments, where there were men and women whose consumption of whiskey and opium dulled the repulsion that they might have experienced at his dissolute form. Together with his new companions, the changeling who had seized my body feasted on the dankest delights that the city had to offer.

I had occasionally imagined a life of unrestrained lust, but the moral strictures of my childhood stipulated that such joys were forbidden; such impulses were to be met with stoic refusal.

My alter ego had no such compunctions.

Over the following days, I would awaken with hazy memories of frenzied, violent couplings with companions who charged little more than a pennyful of whiskey. Once, when my doppleganger flipped up one of their dresses, he discovered that his companion was not equipped with the traditional female equipment, but rather sported the appurtenance of a male. Without hesitation, he entered her nether aperture for a brutal joining that—by her oaths and moans—appeared to be enjoyed by all.

But sex was far from my second self's only pleasure; he seemed to revel in every sensation, delight in each experience as if it was his first. In the society he sought out, passions ran high and restraints were few. A glance at the wrong maiden—or the wrong young swain—could quickly lead to the exchange of harsh words, followed by blows. My double often found himself exchanging fists, a pastime that he found delightful. Some assailants later became his boon companions. Others, I think, found their way into the Thames, never to return. The memories are vague...

*

As I had predicted, my nightly transformations helped to clarify my mind during the day. Our body, once purged of my darker desires, was able to attend to my experiments with crystalline precision and a renewed vigor. At the same time, my lust for Lanyon waned, and I was able to regain our prior relationship, without the heady overtones of obsession that had tainted our interactions of late.

However, while my alter ego's nighttime revelries helped me function more effectively, I also began to crave those dissolute evenings that I could but barely remember. Unfortunately, they often left me exhausted, my body bruised and battered. Yet, even amid my physical discomfort, I still craved them.

In the ensuing weeks, my double's excursions began to threaten the safety of our enclave on Cavendish Square. One morning—after yet another night that I could not recall—Poole informed me that a dissolute fellow, Edward Hyde, had forced entry into our home, demanding some papers from our laboratory. Poole had ejected him, but demanded to know how the impudent young man was acquainted with me. I gave him some vague explanation about the loan of some funds—a loan which, I assured my servant, had been paid in full.

Poole was hardly reassured by my response.

As for me, I was astounded: my other self had given himself a name—and a clever one at that. Edward was my middle name, bestowed upon me to honor a deceased grandfather. As for "Hyde," it was clearly a droll reference to the changeling's concealment within my form. I began to wonder about the intelligence of this person with whom I now shared a body.

Rumors about Hyde began circulating in Marylebone, culminating in the early morning assault of a young child. With the constabulary on alert, I grew concerned about the vulnerability of our home, and those worries seemed to seep through to my alter ego: Hyde changed his hunting grounds to Soho, where the community was more aligned with his dissolute appetites.

I hoped that his relocation would restore peace to 17 Cavendish Square, but it was not to be.

One night, long after Poole had absented himself to enjoy his nighttime revelries and Mrs. Willoughby and Lanyon had retired to their chambers, I remained in my basement laboratory, where I once again consumed the potion to call forth Hyde. Unfortunately, Lanyon heard my cries and chose to investigate. I recall yelling at her to leave. Then the pain overtook me.

*

My dreams that night were short, but vivid. I felt my heart soar at the feel of her flesh. The taste of a woman.

That woman. The woman.

Then I remembered nothing else.

*

When I awoke, Lanyon was by my bedside, her eyes raw and red-rimmed. I wanted to speak, but was struck silent. What had happened, and how could I begin to apologize? What excuses could I give?

My head felt like it was splitting open. Reaching up, I felt a large lump on the back of my skull. It was neatly bandaged. "Did you treat me?" I asked. My voice seemed strange to me: a coarse whisper.

She nodded yes, her eyes wide.

"H-how long have I been asleep?"

"You've been... asleep... for a day," she whispered.

The silence stretched between us, filled with secrets and lies, regrets and recriminations, until I could endure it no longer. "How much did you see?"

"I saw... everything," she said. "You are... him. Aren't you?"

I closed my eyes. I wondered again what the beast had done to her. What I had done to her. "Yes," I muttered.

"Why? Why did you...?"

What could I say? How could I explain that my desire for her had driven me to seek escape in my dark side? That I was responsible for the monster who had, in all likelihood, molested her?

I rolled over, so I would not have to see her questioning eyes. Her sense of betrayal. Behind me, I heard a muffled sob, followed by footsteps as she fled from the room.

*

My body healed quickly, but my spirit took longer to recover. After that first morning, Lanyon didn't return to my chamber, and avoided my laboratory as if it was a charnel pit. For my part, the return of my strength and the dissipation of my headache brought a renewal of my darkest impulses. This time, however, I chose not to answer; in fact, I resolved to banish Hyde from my home and my life.

As soon as I was able, I scoured my laboratory, disposing of my potions and compounds and removing the detritus left behind by the frenzied experimentation of the prior months. I was aided in this endeavor by Poole, who seemed as eager as me to excise the fiend's presence from our home. As we worked, I told him the tale of everything that had occurred in the prior months. In his eyes, I saw something that resembled compassion. Perhaps even pity.

But Hyde was harder to banish than I expected.

A month after his assault upon Lanyon, I was once again in the laboratory, hard at work on a new project. While I had abandoned my plans for transformation, I was still obsessed with finding a way to control the angels and demons that battled within every man. This time, however, I resolved to develop a compound that would quiet the demons without feeding them. Something to tranquilize the user—a sort of liquor or laudanum, but without the loss of cognition that accompanies inebriation.

As with most of my endeavors, it was exceedingly ambitious—perhaps overly so. Over the following days, as one avenue of inquiry after another proved hopeless, my frustration grew. One night, facing yet another failure, I felt all the anger and disappointment of my failures bursting within me. I was suffocated by my weakness, my impotence. I surprised myself by screaming as I hurled an Erlenmeyer flask at the far wall of the laboratory.

I crumpled to the floor. Yet again, I was a failure. My heart pounded and I struggled to breathe. Panting, I clutched my head. It felt full, crowded with thoughts that were screaming to be released. Was I never to achieve my goals? Was there always to be another impediment in my path?

But then a calm coolness began to seep into my brain, smothering the pain and fever. Why was I wasting my nights in a laboratory, working on yet another failed experiment, when all of London was stretched out around me, its myriad wonders awaiting my delectation? Why, indeed, was I wasting my energies maintaining the façade of Jekyll when the joyous world of Hyde was at my fingertips?

I was bliss. Bliss and lightness.

*

I awoke the next morning in an unfamiliar chamber. It was a rented room, with scarred wooden walls and a general air of neglect. I was tangled in stained and sticky sheets, clasped in the arms of a young woman I had never seen before. Her lank, heavy hair lay across my chest and she was redolent with the scents of too much cheap gin and too little soap. I endeavored to gently extract myself from her clutches, but it soon became clear that I needn't have worried: whatever revelries she had entertained the night before had left her all but dead to the world.

My clothing was strewn across the floor, and I quickly attired myself. Leaving the lodging house, I realized that I was in Soho, near Hyde's old haunts. I had some memories of the area, and was easily able to find my way home on foot—a blessing, given the emptiness of my wallet.

On my long trek to Cavendish Square, I struggled with a growing disquiet. The previous evening, my body had transformed without my potions, much less my consent. When I returned home, I rushed to my laboratory, where I extracted a quantity of my blood and began testing it for mercury, strychnine and the other elements that I had previously used to transform into Hyde. None were in evidence.

A week later, I again lost consciousness and again awoke in a strange bed, penniless and exhausted, with clothing that stank of smoke and sex and cheap liquor.

Five days later, again. And, again, three days after that.

I hypothesized that, having instructed my body in the mechanics of transformation, I had set it loose from its moorings. Now it was doing as it had been taught—transforming into a strong, robust form in order to conquer what it perceived as a cruel and difficult world.

When I first suffered a spontaneous transformation, I prayed that it was an anomaly, but subsequent events proved that it was but the beginning of a most upsetting process. I had hoped that time would cure to my condition, but it was not to be. Tracking the occurrence of Hyde's visits, it was clear that, if the trend continued unabated, I could expect Hyde to completely overwhelm me in short order. I had no way to halt—or even slow—the disappearance of my very personality, my soul.

To make matters worse, my alter ego was still showing an interest in Lanyon. In flashes of memory from his time in my body, I saw her through his eyes, asleep in her bed.