Irritation

Irritation

Edward Hyde was irritated.
He walked briskly along the street in his anger, barely looking where he was going.
He could feel Jekyll’s growing displeasure with his actions.
Hyde grit his teeth angrily. If Jekyll didn’t want him to act the way he did, why did he make him?
Hyde sighed.
He knew why Jekyll was angry with him. Jekyll had no control over Hyde’s personality nor could he have predicted it. That fact that he couldn’t control Hyde at all scared him. His conscience was interfering with him enjoying the freedom of being Hyde.
Hyde could understand that.
He just wanted to seethe, to direct his anger at someone.
Something had been bothering him of late.
His existence was not a natural occurrence. He was born of test tubes and beakers, the physical embodiment of the hidden qualities of Henry Jekyll.
Regardless, he looked like any other human being, despite an admittedly small stature. But, for some reason, when people looked at him, they were immediately repulsed, as if he had some horrible deformity. Something in them identified the unnatural phenomenon that was his existence. They couldn’t help but hate him from the moment they set eyes on him.
At first, it hadn’t bothered him. He almost enjoyed the fear that he could strike into people’s hearts.
It made him powerful.
It made him real.
But, after time, it wore him down like a rock under a steady flow of water, dragging pieces downstream in the relentless current.
Each sneer, each muffled gasp, each horrified face he passed on the street cut into him like a knife.
Hyde didn’t notice when his pace quickened, he was too deep in his thoughts.
What had he ever done to those people to deserve such hate?
People he’d never even met treated him like old enemies!
He had done wrong many a time, he admitted, but not enough to warrant this kind of hatred and fear from everyone that saw him!
He had never even—
Hyde’s thought was cut off abruptly as he rammed headlong into a young girl turning a corner. His speed knocked her to the ground and he stumbled back a step.
She laughed once at her carelessness as she sat up.
“Sorry about-” she began, but gasped mid sentence when she saw Hyde’s face, immediately averting her eyes to the ground. The split second that Hyde could see her face, it was filled with undeserved fear.
She was afraid of him!
She was disgusted by him!
She never even met him!
She didn’t even know his name and yet his very presence disgusted her!
Something deep within Edward Hyde’s mind snapped.

The girl muttered a quiet apology for running into him. Eyes still fixed on the ground, she made movements to stand up.

“No.” Hyde said flatly. He then kicked the girl square on the chest, pushing her back down, her head hitting the ground with a soft “thump”.

“I think,” he continued, voice dripping with rage. “If I’m to get so much loathing , I should at least earn it first.”

The girl’s eyes were locked on him now, wide with fear.
Without another word, Hyde shifted his weight to the foot he had been using to hold her down, crushing down on her stomach.
The girl howled in pain, clawing at his foot in attempt to stop him, tears streaming down her face.
He continued to walk across her as if she wasn’t even there.
Her tortured screams rung out in the quiet air, attracting the attention of many of the people near them.
Hyde ignored them.
He let her make the noise his heart was making.

The End