Torn Fragility

“...I rushed to the mirror. At the sight that met my eyes, my blood was changed into something exquisitely thin and icy. Yes I had gone to bed Henry Jekyll, I had awakened Edward Hyde.” Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde~ Robert Louis Stevenson.

This time the change was too sudden for me to uselessly try to combat its effects and like water seeping into sand my sense of self became unclear. And within a matter of mere minutes I was cut off, shut in and barricaded against further interference.

My brief escape had come at a dear price.



I pressed my ear to the door frowning in concentration as I did so. I tried to still my rapid breathing that sounded too loud in my ears. Finally my breathing calmed and I could make out what was being said from inside.

“You don’t have long,” an airy feminine voice was saying. “She’s already suspicious and those damned pictures of hers! You do realise what they’ve done to you don’t you?”

There was a slight pause in which I assumed she was looking at Smith for a nod or shake. Not that he even bothered with such things.

There was a drawn out exasperated sigh. “Look at you! A week ago you almost had this...now...you’re your pathetic weak old self again. It makes me sick to think he’s winning this fight.”

Who could this woman possibly be? And how in the world did she get in there?! I didn’t even try to make sense of what she was saying; I would try later when I wasn’t so concerned with the fact that someone had just broken into the house.

I hurried to my room and a minute later I was back with a jingling set of the house keys Hannah had left me in dire emergencies. I stilled their conspicuous music with a clamped hand and after a furtive search through the silvery group I gingerly inserted the key marked, ‘Mr Smith’ into the keyhole.

And with a rusty click turned the lock and opened the door. But I had come prepared just in case the intruder proved to be...troublesome; in my free hand I carried my heavy long nosed BB gun that I had been given for my thirteenth birthday. I used to shoot at the baboons when we had still lived on a farm, but I hadn’t used it in a while and hoped this woman was harmless.

The moonlit room quickly came into view as the door banged open, the keys dropped to the ground and I stood shaking slightly with a badly positioned gun in my hands.

I expected Smith’s familiar face at least but the only face I saw was that of a dark stranger near the piano stool. There was no one else.

As I quickly scanned the room my heart began to beat rapidly as fear clawed at my throat. No Smith and no woman. Those I could handle but not a strange man.

Even in the dark his eyes glowered and when he stepped forward I suppressed a scream. He was Smith. But Smith in full health, without any disfigurement, without the usual stumbling straggling step.

And I didn’t like it but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t move from the spot I seemed to be rooted to as my fingers loosened unwillingly from their grip on the gun. It clattered to the wooden floor breaking the intense silence and still this imposter moved forwards, at last looming over me, at least two heads taller, thick curly hair hanging slightly in the menacing eyes.

This was a nightmare. This was the exact same man I had seen in my dream last night, his face filled with hatred of a kind that was hard to imagine. I whimpered and managed to move, to step backwards into the open doorway.

Only there was no open doorway. The door was closed and when my fingers scrabbled at the handle I found to my horror that the door was locked as well and the keys were no longer lying on the ground at my feet. When had all of this happened? This was definitely a nightmare.

“Going somewhere?” someone breathed into my neck. My heart flew into my throat as I was roughly spun around to face the owner of the voice and my arms were pinned to my sides as two pitch black eyes held mine captive.

“You’ve ruined everything!” he whispered fiercely, close to snarling.

“Wake up,” I finally managed to say yet I had the sudden conviction that the pain in my arms, as his fingers dug into my flesh, was all too real. But if this was not a dream then I could...

I brought my knee up into his stomach, sharply, and just as he let go wincing, I brought my fist swinging into his jugular leaving him gasping and stumbling back. I took my chance, fleeing to my room and locking the door behind me with my own key. The keys! I had left them there; he could easily get in here now. I have to get out somehow.

As I began to push the window open there was an inhuman roar at my door.

“Rose!” the monster at my door shouted furiously and began to bang against it. I worked faster and finally managed to open the window wide enough to get through. Rust flaked, I levered myself onto the sill, and swung my legs over onto the tiled roof. My sweaty hands lost their grip and I lost my footing. But the roof here was relatively level and only the pain in my hindquarters could attest to my fall. I heard the door burst open behind me and I quickly crawled towards the edge.

Two storeys below was the lawn and some scraggly looking rose bushes. I was just about to make up my mind to crawl to a lower lying roof and climb down from there when I heard an inhuman roar from behind and I twisted around.

Only to come face to face with a monster. A nightmarish creature that couldn't possibly be real.

I was caught off balance as the shock hit me. I was still wondering what had just happened when a terrifying pain shot through my body like lightning before I was swallowed up into oblivion.