Chapter Text
Memory is a strange thing. It lingers not because it is true, but because it matters. It curls around the edges of consciousness, sharpening some moments, dulling others, whispering lies so convincingly that we mistake them for reality. I’ve learned this the hardest way possible. I’m Evelyn Mercer, a barmaid in Soho, and I remember Edward Hyde.
London called him a monster. Society whispered about his crimes and unnaturalness. And yet he existed precisely because society demanded he did. The city itself, with its strict codes of respectability and rigid class divisions, created men like Hyde. The upper classes could falter behind closed doors; Hyde acted openly. His existence made polite society comfortable in its hypocrisies. He reflected everything they refused to acknowledge.
I was seventeen the night I first saw him. Leaving the Seven Bells tavern, tired and aching, I walked down the narrow alley behind it. Fog pooled thickly along the cobblestones, swallowing the lights and the distant clatter of carriages. Footsteps echoed unevenly, but they remained precise and insistent. Then he appeared. Not monstrous, as the city rumored he was, but small with bright eyes, and a smile that made my stomach twist.
He caught my wrist lightly, not enough to hurt, but enough to hold my attention. “You walk alone too easily,” he said softly. “Someone might think you believe yourself to be safe.” And then he let go, melting into the fog. I ran, but the memory didn’t let me go. His smirk and his words lingered with me for longer than I’d like to admit.
I had been taught to make myself small long before Hyde ever saw me. My parents had died when I was young, leaving me to navigate a cramped apartment above the tavern. I worked from dawn until the streetlamps flickered to life, wiping tables, pouring ale, and enduring the casual cruelties of patrons who had learned to treat women like property. Every insult, every touch, every dismissive glance chipped away at my patience. London demanded obedience, and I had no choice but to comply, even as a silent fury grew inside me with each passing day.
In the months that followed, I began seeing him more frequently. Sometimes he was a shadow in the corner of a street or a figure lurking in the fog. Each appearance forced me to question my own perceptions and morality. Society had taught me to obey without ever claiming my own space or frustrations. Hyde showed me the opposite.
I began cataloging him in my mind, noting the patterns in his appearances and the subtle cues that came before. He never harmed the innocent. He only punished the guilty, but every time I saw it, I still felt a strange mixture of terror and awe. There was justice in his actions, however violent they may have been at times. He was a reflection of the things London wanted to deny. The presence of Hyde changed me. I began to notice hypocrisy in everyone around me. Hyde existed to expose it all, but he also exposed the rage I had buried inside myself.
One evening, I returned home to find a man staggering toward me in the alley. He grabbed my arm, laughing roughly at my startled protest. Hyde appeared behind him, visible only to me. “Say the word, and I’ll break his hand,” he whispered. I refused. But instinctively, he acted anyway. The man fell, clutching his wrist in pain. I was horrified, but another part of me felt a rush of satisfaction.
Then came the news of Dr. Henry Jekyll. His estate would be auctioned to cover debts. Rumors said that Jekyll and Hyde were the same. I was drawn to the house, compelled by memory, curiosity, and something darker I didn’t wish to name. The townhouse stood like a corpse with boarded windows, sagging under dirt and decay. That evening, the fog in the streets was thick enough to disguise me, so I slipped inside.
I entered through a side door to a stale waft of air, laced with the suffocating scent of mold and chemicals. The study on the second floor had seemingly been abandoned in haste. Papers were tossed haphazardly about the room, glass shards from vials littered the floor, and a cracked mirror draped in yellowed cloth hung across from the desk. I sifted through Jekyll’s journal, piecing together fragments of obsession, confession, and fear. My heart sank as I read his words and faced the truth I had buried all this time: “Hyde is not merely a product of chemistry. He is the manifestation of a lifetime of repressed desire. He thrives where shame festers. The more I deny him, the stronger he becomes.”
As I lifted my lamp toward the mirror, the sheet fluttered. A shape formed behind my reflection, vague, but familiar. Hyde. My breath caught. I dropped the lamp. It clattered across the floor, the flame flickering dangerously. When I looked up, the figure was gone. But the whisper remained, curling through the air like smoke from an extinguished flame: “You remember me. It was you who invited me after all.”
After that night, he followed me more insistently. Footsteps echoed when I walked alone. Shadows shifted unnaturally. Mirrors frosted and rippled. My wrist ached where he had touched me. I told myself that my memory was just playing cruel tricks on me, but each encounter reminded me that I had unknowingly invited him into my mind and given him space to grow.