The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: The Classic Tale and an Anthology of Twists, Retellings, and Sequels

By S Shane Thomas and Stephanie Barr

Enjoy the classic tale of a man confronting his own morality through scientific experimentation in Victorian London. Robert Louis Stevenson has lived and died, but the legacy his work created is alive and well! Discover fifteen retellings, each short story twisting the classic tale into something both new and familiar. Where will the dark side of the human psyche emerge next? Venture across fantasy kingdoms, on steampunk gadgets, through scenes of horror, and into the virtual realities of our near future.

Today’s emerging talents take this classic into the furthest reaches of imagination to see what lurks there and how to face our inner demons and the demons society makes of us.

• Language: English
• Publisher: S Shane Thomas
• Release date: Nov 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463808849

S Shane Thomas

S Shane Thomas has fond childhood memories of creeping out of bed to watch anime until the sun came up. He has fond adult memories of creeping out of bed to write the Anki Legacies Adventures until the sun came up. He road trips, hikes, and hangs with his wife and sons after the sun comes up.Mail List: Http://eepurl.com/cQc861

Book preview

They got it all wrong about me.

I’m Hyde; I’ve always been Hyde.

Crushing my own childhood under my feet without turning back.

Unafraid to be cruel, terrified of my own heartlessness,

Hated, maligned, worthless, angry, pathetic, sharp-tongued Hyde.

I experimented. Of course I experimented!

First this treatment, then that,

then this other one that mostly worked —

We shook the fortress of identity, Hyde and Jekyll.

Black-cloaked bodies battling in the cobblestone streets,

Cane against skull, shouting and striking,

Blood seeping between the stones,

Until Hyde retreated and Dr. Jekyll took her place.

Jekyll studied with counselors and teachers

to learn the tools of being human

to master control of Hyde’s over-human impulses.

My treatments relied on certain medical professionals,

who, in a fit of disagreement to responsibilities

lowered the efficacy of the formula in my own interest.

Madness! Ridiculous! Who does that!

Within two days, Hyde slipped her bonds.

She beat the humanity out of me for a week.

I earned every hit.

Crazy worthless girl trying to be normal.

...

When I called upon the physicians, I wore my Jekyll suit,

but Hyde fought with the doctors.

She wants to live, but not like this.

The treatment-keepers

changed my course of treatment with one email

We didn’t know.

I knew. I know.

I am once again Jekyll, but for how long, I only wonder.

I did not seek out this duality of nature,

nor do I shrink from it.

I warn all comers that Hyde lives within the Jekyll skin,

but most do not believe.

We like to believe, the civilized world,

that Dr. Jekyll is normal,

and Hyde the result of sins against god.

That addiction and depression and anxiety are choices.

That we are neither chemistry nor biology,

but conscious acts of will.

But I was born with a brain as broken as a diabetic’s pancreas

And I know which skin fits naturally

And which skin I put on each morning

with a handful of pills

And neither of us, Jekyll or Hyde,

will escape this tale immortal.

anne m. gibson is a ux designer and general troublemaker just close enough to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania to think a wander through a revolutionary battlefield is not noteworthy. In addition to designing websites, she writes science fiction and fantasy, runs a small publication about web design, plays competitive pinball, and watches the terriers destroy things.

The Manticore Affair

by Tom Morganti

Our light supper at the club was rather a bore as a result of all the bigwigs having left town for the summer season. The Spanish Flu was wreaking havoc in the city that year after the war, so it was probably in one's best interest not to remain in the thick of it. Get out while you can. Every man for himself. The medical profession certainly wasn't having much luck in knocking the plague back. Camphor and carbolic can only take things so far, I suppose.

We, the members of The Group, met in our traditional spot, the smoking room, at a low deal table, 17th century, with our drinks in front of us and our cares off somewhere in the distant future. Lacking any official duties save these, our self-called Group chose to talk politics and, occasionally, some philosophy. Also a fair amount of gossip, I am ashamed to say.

Look now, if you would. The Group there, drinking. We are, viz.:

Colonel Malcolm Dudley, recently decorated and happily retired from the RAF; sixtyish and, according to the general consensus, more than a little shell-shocked. But the colonel is very good at hiding that. He has a habit of regaling us with stories of his time over France, which make for some interesting and colorful discussions at times. Note how his hand trembles ever so slightly as he reaches for his G & T.

Richard Winterbottom, thirty some-odd; our resident playboy, with a wealthy pater in Essex who made every effort to keep his young scion as far away from the front lines as possible. Successfully, in Richard's case. The war with Germany was for those who could not pay, just as it has always been with wars. Richard's desk job at the Admiralty has recently been budgeted away, however. No bother. This frees him up with more time to spend his daddy's money, just as he is wont to do. Richard is by far the most sensitive member of our little four-square band.

Myself, also present—I shall remain anonymous, or as anonymous as a poor medical student is allowed to be. My reasons will become clear later on, but suffice it to say that I eschew attention of any kind. I also detest cats.

As the least solvent of our informal enclave, I try not to let it bother me. Poverty, in my experience, is neither a virtue nor a sin. It's merely inconvenient. But it does make one very glad for one's rich friends. And I should know, since I've made something of a career of penury.

And, last, in absentia, the leader of our troop: Sir Edgar Percy, peer of the realm, Eton, Cambridge class of '01, etc. etc. A friend (and not infrequent houseguest) of the royal family and, until a few months ago, an Englishman residing in Persia. There, among the verdant fields of date trees and pomegranates, he duly represented the King's interests before the Qajar dynasts of that great and exotic nation.

No, Sir Edgar is not present at our gathering. Therefore, I have no qualms with regards to discussing him further. Such niceties and lances leveled at bad form are only ascendant among the social elite. And, with the exception of Sir Edgar, our Group is as lowbrow down and dirty as any rugby scrum. Besides, it's not gossip if men do it.

Edgar Percy was born into money, pushed out complete with a golden caul, one might say. Even in jolly old England we've got our Old Wealth and our Newly Rich, although the dichotomy is less stark than that of the so-called classless societies of the colonies. Percy was quite definitely old money, right down to his fundamental inner core of noblesse oblige. And, as a consequence of inhabiting this enviable niche, he was given the plums that eluded the rest of our crew; including Richard who only placed a distant second to our friend.

One rather juicy plum was Percy's job: he was Royal Attaché to the British Embassy in Tehran, a purchased position. The Percys (who hailed from out Wiltshire way) were involved in various lucrative professions, ventures and industries the world over. Because, in these modern times, one must do something. Banking, hostelries abroad, high finance, jurisprudence, the Percys had a finger in every pie. In addition to (somewhere in the distant past) an MP from Old Sarum, ostensibly that rottenest of rotten boroughs.

As to Percy's time in the East: to hear him tell it, the assigned situation proved to be a page out of Alice's Wonderland. His duties, if they could be called that, revolved around social events—state dinners, royal balls, glad handing mostly—that and presenting the best face of the Realm to the locals. But he also had an unofficial task, one set by his father; that is, to be on the scene for the House of Percy, to put down stakes as they say in America. As the Russians withdrew from the region, the Percys became fixed upon a single goal in the East. That single thing was petroleum. Yes, there was big money to be made in Persia, more money than could be imagined in the byways of Kensington, Chelsea or Pimlico. Or the halls of Buckingham Palace for that matter.

Persia. That fragile and storied land; according to the engineers and rock-hounds, it was sitting atop the largest subterranean deposit of pure oil in the known world. A cauldron of oil, so vast, so deep, that it would put Texas to shame if the reports were to be believed.

As to oil in general: the proverbial handwriting was on the wall over that one. Coal and steam would soon line up to follow out the horse and the carriage. It was already happening. The Percys were determined then, to get in on the ground level. And that ground that they sought so desperately was in Persia.

Fabled, ancient Persia: cradle of Zoroaster and Xerxes, a paradise of sublime fragrance and poetry, a land of mysteries; a land whose history spanned not only centuries, but millenia. The Invincibles were locking shields with the Spartans at Thermopylae at a time when our own native sons were still living in mud huts and beating each other to death with stones. Theirs was a great civilization in the true sense of the word. And the irony here was not lost upon Edgar Percy. He'd studied his Greek, as had we all. Finally, after 2500 years, the British Empire had achieved the upper hand. The oil was there for the taking, or so it seemed.

Percy, I should mention, had no children and had never married. At the age of forty he had no other hobbies to prevent him from taking full advantage of the ripened times, to boldly lead his family's enterprise forward into that newly opened land.

That is, until he met Mahasti......

Mahasti......I saw a photograph of her once, a picture that Percy carried in a locket about his neck, suspended from a thin silver chain. He had described her beauty to me, but I'd no idea just how truly beautiful she was until I viewed that small sepia-tint for myself.

She was a goddess. And so very young. I was not surprised that he had been smitten with her, but the girl was easily twenty years his junior. Kohl-rimmed eyes—eyes as black and moist, as wide and deep and shining as ebon jewels. Her features were as if sculpted from marble, with high cheekbones and a perfect oval face, dark mane of luxurious silken hair. I suspected (and rightly so, according to Percy at the time) that this picture that he kept so close to his heart failed to do her justice. It was plain to see that Edgar Percy, for the first time in his life, was hopelessly in love. He may be forgiven his rashness.

Mahasti......She had been born into a royal line, related distantly to the young Shah who would, some years later, assume control of the country. In spite of her genealogy, little else was known about her. Percy and she had met at a banquet or an official function of some sort, and the decorous Sir Edgar apparently didn't ask too many questions. To his detriment as it turned out. As we shall see.

The dream was not to last, however. These were trying times in the land of milk and honey, with much disruption and a decidedly unsettled edge to it all. The Great War had not been kind to that corner of the globe with its partitioning and infighting. As the Ottoman Empire crumbled and then collapsed, the powers that be feared the conflict they had initiated might bleed across the borders. Rightly so. For safety's sake and for the good of the family, Percy's father had his heir apparent recalled. Blood, in this case, being thicker than oil.

Upon his return to England, Sir Edgar was quietly reassigned within the homeland that had birthed him. He took it in stride, reacquainting himself gladly, almost joyfully. For he returned to England with his love, his Mahasti.

Soon after, to the amazement if his family and friends, Percy announced that he was engaged to be married. The enigmatic lady of Persia had landed a very big fish.

Our Colonel Dudley actually met her on one occasion, this mystery woman. Their introduction took place at a veterans' function put on by no lesser a light that George V himself, at some posh venue in the West End. Richard and I would have been quite out of our depth at such an affair, but Dudley, being a flyer, was one of the firmament, and a war hero to boot. How he raved about her afterward. I'll admit that it somewhat discomfited me at the time to hear the colonel gush about her, to listen to him describe her down to the minutest detail. To speak in such a way about another man's prospective wife struck me as unseemly. You would have thought that Dudley had designs to marry the girl himself.

Which is why the events of that October night at the club, with we three sitting there in our overstuffed chairs, nursing rye and gin and smoking our cigars—why it was so damnably odd. I'll tell you about that now. It won't take long.

----0----

We were wrapping up, and I do mean that in the strictest and most literal sense of the word. A dense clammy fog had rolled up from the river which not even the newfangled electric lights could cut through. The air was uncommonly cold for an autumn night in London. The few passersby that had ditched the local pubs hustled past, bundled up against the chill.

Richard had hired a hackney and generously offered us a lift. We slapped ourselves and rubbed our hands vigorously, waiting on the sidewalk before the club, attending to our pocket watches every few moments. It was very late and it was Richard's cab or nothing.

Just as we were about to give it up on the hack ever showing, a full coach came clattering out of the darkness. It slowed in the middle of the street, pulled by a pair of ancient dray horses, their breath steaming. The three of us approached to board.

Without warning, the coach's door flew open, nearly knocking me to the ground, I being closest to it. A slight commotion then, inside the cab, and who should fall out of it but our erstwhile missing friend, Sir Edgar Percy. The man was not looking too chipper in my estimation and I wondered if he might be drunk. His tie was unknotted and askew, his greatcoat rumpled as if he had been in a brawl and worked over by hooligans. The face he presented to us was florid, sweating; he was panting heavily as if he had run a great distance. It had been less than a week since we'd last seen him, yet Sir Edgar appeared to have aged ten years since our previous meeting of The Group.

He tumbled into Richard's arms and the three of us half-carried him as we sought to re-enter the club. It took some very loud pounding of the front door to rouse the butler who had understandably retired for the evening.

After regaining entry we gently set Percy down in a chair and the colonel moved to the sideboard to pour the poor bugger a drink. This Percy downed in a gulp, then he listlessly tapped his glass for more.

Good lord, man, Dudley said with genuine concern while refilling the glass from the decanter. You look like the fag end of a very short rope...what the devil has happened to you?

Percy drank, slower this time, then heaved his body back into the upholstered chair. In the incandescent light of the parlor, he now appeared to have gone ashen and grey. The apoplexy he'd shown earlier had passed. His breathing evened out a bit and he licked his lips as if to speak, but no words came. Richard crouched by the arm of Percy's chair.

What is it, Edgar? Talk to us. When you didn't show tonight I feared that something must have happened.

We waited for you, I added. We'd have been gone long before this.

Percy mumbled, nearly incoherent.

Dreadful...it's dreadful...

What's dreadful, Edgar? What is it?

The man then pulled himself forward, chin still to his chest and spoke as if talking to his drinking glass.

I fear...I fear that I have made a terrible mistake...a terrible error... He appeared to be crying.

Dudley chimed in, always the cheery one.

Whatever it is Edgar, we'll beat it. We'll all help you get through it. Tell us if you can. Speak to us, please.

There's nothing for it...Christ Jesus, where do I begin...

Two hours. For two solid hours he spoke, without interruption from us. The butler had gone back to bed, allowing us to fend for ourselves. The club was as silent as a tomb except for Percy's sotto voce. The room's steam radiator came on and ticked out a rhythm to his whispered cadence.

What Percy divulged to us in those hours that night was bizarre in the extreme. I doubt that I would have stayed to listen had the other fellows not been present to buck me up. By the end of the telling, Percy seemed drained of vitality, spent and wasted. He lay like a rag doll, head back and eyes glazed, his tongue finally still.

Dudley returned to the sideboard to get three more tumblers. I wondered that he hadn't done so sooner. He poured three whiskies and arranged them before us, setting the carafe down in the center of the table. We were all much in need of a drink at that point.

And while you visualize that, one exhausted man and three others drinking, I shall tell you exactly what Sir Edgar told us.

----0----

As I stated earlier (and which I'm sure you are tired of hearing), Edgar Percy was in love. Not simply the kind of love that comes to a man in his middle years, when the object of his affection is fully half his age. Although that most certainly was the case. Sir Edgar Percy was completely and irretrievably, totally and irrevocably, gobsmacked in love.

His Persian princess, Mahasti—he never referred to her as such, but she was exactly that—a princess; this Mahasti was like some rare orchid transplanted atop a dungheap, set down in an alien landscape to breath the smoke-filled air that was post-war London. With her arm in his, Percy's delicate flower was thus presented to society at large, hobnobbing at all the traditional (however reduced) summer venues—the Opera, the Theater, the Racetrack. Cruel irony, that last one, as Mahasti was very much like a prized mare, proudly trotted around by her fiancé to all the most tony affairs of that season. Yet she seemed to revel in the attention shown to her. Sad to think that, between the wartime dead and the raging pandemic, few people of her own age were still upright. Doddering octogenarians and bejeweled matrons made up the majority of her most ardent admirers. But this seemed not to faze Mahasti in the least. The girl was just as charming as if she were being introduced to rakish cavaliers and courtesans.

Percy, by his own admission, kept his beloved on a short tether. Never took his eyes off her, in fact. There is nothing so tenuous as the hold that a man of a certain age has (or has not) on a beautiful young girl. Adding to his anxiety was the fact that Mahasti was a prize that came with a very large dowry of her own.

He had set her up in a rented Georgian house, very large, very stylish and modern, in the West End, somewhere off lower Bond Street. His visitations were discrete and scrupulously chaperoned by the maid that Mahasti kept, with other assorted servants in attendance as well. Not a hint of impropriety. Sir Edgar knew that the family would not tolerate any 'funny stuff.'

As to his relationship with her, Percy didn't tell us much. He didn't have to. Dudley, as I said, had run into the couple at the heroes' fete. The colonel was struck at the time by how close they'd seemed. 'Like a single being' was the term he used to describe them, I believe. If Mahasti pined for the jasmine-soaked oases of her home, she certainly didn't let on. She appeared perfectly happy to have her well-connected statesman by her side or, at the very least, seemed content with their arrangement. More content, perhaps, thanks to the bustle and bright lights of our metropolis. Content in spite of all this city's filth and its dank, dreary weather. London is a dark town, even at the best of times. In hindsight, her attitude may have come as a result of that darkness. But more later. I found it odd that Percy spoke of her person in such couched terms, and there is more to that. We continue.

On one fateful evening, well after midsummer, Percy chose to call upon Mahasti at her new home unexpectedly and unannounced. He unlocked the door and entered the apartments to find Mahasti completely insensible, lying on a divan in the parlor. Rushing to her side, he became quite distraught when he was unable to revive her. The girl's breathing was shallow and labored, her bosom rising perceptibly, but just barely so. Next to her, on a small table, sat a hookah, recently employed. A nearby calabash with its lid removed held a dark grey leafy substance, a 'noxious herb' Percy called it. A drug of some kind. He suspected her of having smuggled this aboard the steamship, hidden in her luggage along with the water pipe. Both the drug and the pipe were new to him. His greatest fear was opium or some other soporific, that she may have overdosed on such a thing. But he had seen opium in its raw form, and what the gourd held resembled nothing that he was even remotely familiar with.

He quickly removed a flask from his pocket and daubed his handkerchief with whiskey, holding this beneath her nose. The girl's eyelids fluttered slightly, then she moaned as if she were trapped within a bad dream. Percy examined her more closely then. He noted that his beloved Mahasti had changed in subtle ways. Her eyebrows were fuller, more arched and fiercer-looking somehow. With a discernibly more feline cast to her normally placid face. Coarser.

Percy fought off his revulsion. Gently, he took her hands in his, and rubbed them in an effort to rouse her from this cataleptic state. He spoke to her in her stupor, repeating her name over and over.

Mahasti then woke with a start, withdrawing her hands, pulling away suddenly as if she were in abject terror or subject to some unnameable fear. Her lips, usually so luscious to his him, curled back in a grimace, a snarl like that of a ravenous wolf. The flash of her teeth caused him to reflexively back away. She glared at him with wild eyes in a manner that she never had before. Cruelly, maliciously.

Then she softened, gradually coming back to herself, becoming once again the woman that Percy loved. Any sane man would have turned tail and run for his life. Instead, he took her into his arms and wept, and tears filled Mahasti's eyes as well.

And so he calmed and consoled her, held her. But he could not forget what he had seen in those fleet seconds before her return to him, that other look as he described it to us, that terrible rictus of fear, teeth bared as if to rip out his throat. The glint of bestial malignity in her eyes

He spoke with her in her native Farsi then. She admitted to taking the drug, the concoction in the calabash. Then, still dazed, she told him the whole of her pitiful story. She told him everything.

And so, with that ahead of us, we return.

----0----

The hour was late, nearly 11:00, but we resolved that this queer nocturnal meeting of The Group would not disperse until we felt that Percy was back on his game. These things that he had told us about his betrothed were of grave concern to us. Richard spoke first and broke the long silence.

You can't be serious, Edgar...be reasonable. Surely you don't believe her.

I am quite reasonable, Richard, he muttered after a time. She said she was not human, and I do believe her. You weren't there to see it...the drug...the change in her...it's the drug that she used on herself to return to normalcy.

Edgar, seriously...

Really, old boy, interjected Dudley, a manticore? What the hell is a manticore anyway?

At this juncture I stepped aside and gazed through the rime-encrusted window, half expecting to see a face there. I confess, I found Percy's tale quite disturbing and I was embarrassed that it had unnerved me so. To the degree of watching for phantoms in that cold and fog-drenched darkness.

You weren't there...you weren't there...

A manticore is a Persian hobgoblin, Malcolm, I explained. Half lion, half scorpion. And if what he says is true, Sir Edgar hasn't even seen the full of it yet. I was calling upon my knowledge of medieval bestiaries, aware that I was running the risk of sounding like an idiot, even as the words left my lips.

But it's absurd. The girl's not right in the head, man. The hemp or whatever it was; you said as much yourself.

She uses the drug to quell it, Malcolm! To subvert her true form!

That's insane, Dudley whispered, quite insane.

Well, said Richard, insane or not, the girl's got a damned serious delusion, regardless of what's to be believed or disbelieved. Her attachment to that drug cannot bode well for either of you.

What do you plan to do about it, Sir Edgar? I asked, turning from the street. Surely the wedding is off, is it not?

Percy became quiet then. He reached for the tumbler and drained the last half inch from his glass.

I shall return to her. I shall help her find a cure for her affliction. I love her, he choked, Mahasti...oh, Mahasti...

There was nothing for it. No convincing him otherwise. His demeanor was one bordering on obsession. I'd seen it before in clinicals. There would be no talking him out of his resolution to return to his addled Mahasti, his soon-to-be bride. The three of us met each other's gaze over the head of Sir Edgar. We would have to do our best and see to it that he went no further.

We left the club and walked, the four of us, intent on delivering Percy safely to his rooms that night. The now freezing air sobered us a bit.

Once we had Sir Edgar securely at home in bed, Richard gave strict instructions to his valet to keep him there, and we left. As Richard, Dudley, and I continued on down the street, we spoke among ourselves in low tones.

It's distressing to see him like this, said Richard. I don't like it. Edgar has always been such a level-headed sort. This is so completely unlike him.

I've never seen him so...so...twisted up, added Dudley.

I, on the other hand, kept my impressions to myself. I've been in the world long enough to know that love can do strange things to a man. Turn him. Make him say and do things that would seem to be madness by the clear light of day. And I had known addicts—to opium, to cocaine. Some of the 'best' people, in fact. Their hallucinations and fantasies are what keep this city's alienists in business.

With the authority of Occam's Razor on my side, I concluded that this Mahasti, radiant and lovely as she was purported to be, must be one of these.

We'll need to watch him, added Richard, "unlike him or not, or 'twisted' as you so aptly put it. I believe our friend to be in great danger from this woman. We must do all in our power to see that he stays away from her.

----0----

We met again at the club later in the week, and a long dismal time it had been for all of us. We were in constant communication with his man who assured us that Percy had not left the house. Richard had looked in on Sir Edgar the previous evening, as per our agreement and to request his presence at the club. Percy had reluctantly agreed to come, but only after some cajoling. Richard was convinced that our Sir Edgar had returned to himself. Yes, he would come. And Percy swore that he was keeping his distance from his Persian princess. Richard took him at his word. So we waited.

When he failed to arrive at our meeting as promised, all of us feared the worst. In this, we were not disappointed. The butler intruded just as we were on the verge of taking some action about it.

A telegram, gentlemen, the butler said placing the note on the table before us. The three of us stared at the paper on the china dish, no one making a move to pick it up. It was one of those moments before something happened—you know the kind—a tipping point from which there would be no turning back. And I know that each of our heads held the same thought.

Richard was first to overcome the inertia that froze us there. He opened the note with hesitation, read it to himself and then to us.

He's asked us to meet him at the girl's residence. Meet me at six. 228A Stratford Place. EP. That's all the telegram says.

Good lord, he's going to her! He's going back. Dudley rose slowly.

We must go, I said. It's five now. If we leave soon we can get there before he does. There's no predicting what that woman will do.

Agreed, said Richard. Malcolm, have you got your service revolver handy?

In the club safe, yes.

Bring it along, would you?

Why, Richard? I asked uneasily. Firearms have a tendency to make me decidedly nervous.

I haven't a clue as to what to expect. To be prepared, he answered motioning the butler. Hail us a cab if you would, please.

Dudley left us to fetch the revolver...the look on his face...

It's a rum deal, this, muttered