Title: Field of Innocence
Chapter 1: For Every Good Death, There Must be an Evil Birth
By: hpnjdevanescence
A/N: Hey, all! Didja miss me? No? Meh, I kinda figured you wouldn't... oh well. So, anyways, this is something new... but something that you are probably going to enjoy...sooo... onto the story!
Disclaimer: Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde are not mine, unfortunately... if they did, I'd have lots of monies, and then I could go and buy those nice boots at Hot Topic that I want so bad... which, (cough) I did get!
Henry lifted his head; his father was laughing, and his mother had just given a shriek of happiness. He looked back down at the paper he had been scribbling on. Like most seven year olds, his drawings were indistinct to most adults and other children his age; even to himself the brightly colored swirls made no sense. However, if you are the artist of that drawing, someone with an active imagination, or someone who appreciates that kind of nondescript art, you can see that the picture depicted a dreamland with clouds of cotton candy, raindrops of sweet syrup, and trees whose branches dropped low to the ground because the berries of confections were large and heavy. However, the boy being written about is Henry Jekyll, whose blood is in no way affiliated with the schizophrenic Henry Jekyll that resided in the early twentieth century.
No, this Henry was a kind young boy who liked the fairy tales his mother told him, fictional as they may be, and enjoyed the different sports his father watched on the television and read about in the newspaper. He recalled how, one night, during a rather exciting game, his father had a stroke. A few weeks later, Henry had greeted his father at the doorway that his mother had just knocked on.
"Yes?" he called. His mother walked into the room. She was a lovely woman, with brown hair and natural blonde highlights. Her brown eyes were filled with tears of happiness, and the corners of her lips were in a smile that reached her high and proud cheekbones.
"Honey, when you get the chance, come downstairs, your father has made a breakthrough with his experiment!" Henry's eyes popped and he gasped.
"He has? Oh, that's great!" He followed his mother down the stairs. Ever since that stroke, his father had devoted his tinkering in his chemical lab to his rare disease. Doctors had been unable to help him, for they could not put a name on his disease, nor could they treat him with medication of any kind in fear of making his condition worse. For two years now, Henry had listened in fear to his father's incessant coughing and hacking, and his bones rattled whenever his father paused on the stairs, his breath coming harshly in gasps as he wheezed. His father was standing in the kitchen, a glass vial in hand. Henry dashed over to him and hugged his father around the midriff. His dad smiled, and patted Henry on the back.
"Henry, this could be one of the greatest days of my life... if anything like this happens to you, Henry, remember... do not give up hope. Hope will hold you up high and place you on a pedestal for all to see your great work; hope will give you endless possibilities that you can find no where else. Hopefully, this will work, and you can see just how far your dreams can take you.
"Well, let's try this and see if it works." His father held up the blue-green vile which was smoking slightly. He set it up as to use the new chemical as an injection. He held the needle near his forearm, and slowly brought it to rest within a vein. He shut his eyes, bit his lip, and pressed down. The chemical was in. He pushed the needle in ever so slightly, then pulled it out. Henry had always paid great attention to his father's studies, and something dawned on him.
"Uh, Dad? Shouldn't you have checked the... the... thing for bubbles?" His father's face tensed a moment, then relaxed into a smile.
"Ahh... Henry, you worried me for a moment. With this particular injection, bubbles will have no effect on me whatsoever. Though, that is a good point. I should check for that next time."
Unfortunately, there would be no other times for his father to use his new medicine. Henry was overcome with sudden wooziness. He grasped onto the chair he'd been standing by. He tried to catch his breath, but he could not breathe. He found himself losing his sight, his vision was quickly blurred and blackened as the world spun around him and the cold linoleum floor met his face.
Jade gazed at her reflection. She was like the typical seven year old girl, who enjoyed to dress-up like her favorite Disney characters, put on globs of make-up that made her look ridiculous to most adults, but to herself and her many screaming, high-pitched voiced friends, cherry red lipstick, bubble-gum pink blush, and blue eye shadow made one look like a fashion model. She wore a plastic tiara, encrusted with pink, orange, yellow, and white plastic circles. She wore a blue dress, much like Cinderella's dress. She turned to face her five closest friends, and they gasped in delight.
"Wow, Jade!" one girl said, and stood up to admire her fine lipstick application. The other girls followed the first, and they were crowded around Jade. She grinned widely, revealing two gaps were teeth should have been. Yet another wave of gasps whispered about them, and a girl with dirty-blonde hair in a braid looked at her mouth with wide eyes.
"You lost another one?" she asked.
"Uh-huh!" Jade nodded. She looked in the corner, where six boys their age were standing, chatting quietly amongst themselves. The other five girls looked at them, and the boys came over when they heard about Jade's missing deciduous tooth. One boy, Eric, grinned at Jade.
"That's nothing," he said, widening his grin, "I've alreaheth lost shore theef." True to his lisped words, there were four gaps in his mouth.
"Oooo!" the girls chorused.
"Well..." Jade said slowly, walking over to a pillow on the ground, "Sins you are our record holder, you know what this means, right?" She picked up the pillow and the other girls followed suit with pillows from Jade's bed. They chased after Eric, each trying to hit him gently with the pillows. Jade tripped at one point, and was knocked unconscious as her head cracked on the beside table.
Henry woke on a white bed, a stench of over-cleaned linens in his nose. He opened his eyes, his vision blurred. He looked to his right, where a huge red something was floating in midair. Odd. He blinked again, and the something seemed to have a rectangular shape to it now, with a thin, long tendril that stretched out to his arm. He blinked again, and the hospital room came into view. Grey walls surrounded him, and the something he'd been staring at was a sack of blood. He was hooked up to an intravenous needle. He moved his head to the left, and saw his mother staring at him, her face tear-stained. Henry was about to say something, when he noticed something funny about his mother. She was normally decked out in bright, vibrant colors. Today, though, she wore black.
"Hrrom..." he tried to speak, but his voice was very groggy. He cleared his throat, and said,
"Mommy... why are you wearing black? I've never seen you wear it." Something obviously had to be wrong. His mother was wearing black, and he rarely ever called her Mommy. He most often stuck to Mother or Mom, but hardly ever Mommy. It had nothing to do with the fact that he wanted to sound older than he actually was, but that he was very concerned about her. His mother's face flushed slightly as she held back tears. She longed to tell him the truth.
I can't tell him... she thought. The truth would kill him... but he did ask... he'll ask were Brian is, anyway...
"Honey... your... y-you..." she tried to tell Henry about his father's demise, but she could not bring the words to her throat. Tears rolled down her face as she reached out and ruffled Henry's hair mournfully. My god, he's exactly like his father...
"Mom... what's wrong?" he asked. He rarely saw his mother cry. The last time she did was when Henry had mistakenly run out into traffic, not knowing to look both ways. Henry hadn't been hurt, but he had been close to losing his life at the small age of four. Funny, though, how she could bring herself to smile now, but not then. Maybe it was to soften the blow, to comfort him, as the truth would kill him, tear him apart. Henry always looked up to his father, always wanted to follow in his footsteps and to top it off, Henry was the splitting image of his father.
"Henry... i-it's your father... h-he's... dead..." she broke into sobs, tears flooding her face. Henry's eyes widened in shock.
"No... n-no... not Dad..." he began to cry, too. Death is an odd thing, especially when it is someone who you love. You know that person is gone, and regrets come to your mind as you try to convince yourself that they'll always be with you, that they'll never leave you. You think to yourself about how they are in heaven now, watching you from above, bringing comfort to the wounds that they created with their death. But having lost more than one person, you may begin to doubt what you originally believed. Is there a heaven? Is there a god that will watch over your deceased loved one? Depending on the strength of your faith depends on how you feel.
Henry and his mother sat there, crying on each other's shoulders. She felt slightly guilty because there was till more that Henry did not know. The doctors told her Henry had fainted from a lack of blood. For a reason that none of the doctors could figure out, his bone marrow had stopped its production of blood, and the dead blood cells in his body could not be replenished. Shortly after he fainted, the blood he'd lost was slowly coming back, but not fast enough. His father had donated blood to Henry, and that loss of blood had killed him, another thing the doctors could not explain.
Bridgett woke up, lying on a hospital bed. She blinked several times, trying to figure out what she had missed. She remembered herself in mid-trip, then was unable to remember anything before that. Though, somehow, she saw her friends chasing after Eric, saw the gaps of teeth in his mouth, say her reflection in the mirror. She had watched all of this through her own eyes, though the girl that stared back at her was not Bridgett. It was Jade.
Huh.
As Henry's tears died from his face, so did the sadness inside of him. He felt anger building a small flame in his heart, spluttering and weak at first. As the truth sunk into him, however, the flame was stoked and brought fresh, new ones, until they were bright and roaring. Then, a most peculiar thing happened. At the peak of his anger, he felt it melting away, fast. But it wasn't simply his anger. He felt as if he were melting into himself, that he would collapse into himself. Then that dissolved too. All that was left was the pain. Great, sharp, stabbing pain erupted all over Henry. He screamed, startling his mother. He'd never screamed like this before. His own terror and pain scared the shit out of him, and he tried to calm himself, but it was impossible. White-hot knives cut him open and sawed at his skin and the very blood within him felt like fire rushing through his veins rather than blood. It was an unimaginable pain that shocked and spread through him.
His features changed painstakingly slowly. His eyes were turning from his warm, gently brown to two inky black holes of despair. Henry's neatly trimmed brown hair was growing darker by the minute and lengthening rapidly. His screams were changing with his voice, which was becoming slightly deeper. Henry stopped his yelling and felt as if his body was being stretched out, the sinking feeling still residing inside him. He stared as his fingers shrank in width and became very long, much longer than they normally were. He cringed, it felt as if each limb and extremity was being pulled out of its socket and being pulled away from the rest of his body. He glanced, terrified, at his mother, who had recoiled in fear. He felt annoyed at this, this wasn't fair. His mown mother, the one who was supposed to love him, to care for him, to be with Henry in his times of fear and pain. And yet, there she was, wincing and coiled up in the corner, looking away from him, fearing for herself and no one else.
"Coward!" Edward shouted at her, "You bloody coward!" Edward Hyde was born on that day, pissed and raring to kill. She looked at her son, petrified, still not moving, and tears flooded down her face. She had to run, she had to move, get herself out of this place, but she didn't. Edward (to be called Eddie for the sake of the author's fingers) looked at his right arm; the IV was still imbedded in his flesh. He ripped it, out, toppling the cart that carried the blood sack. He sharply pulled on the plastic tube. It snapped, blood sprayed everywhere, on the walls, on the bed... He raised the needle above his head, marching towards the woman in which he could not call his mother. He plunged the needle into her heart.
Stab.
One swift motion...
Stab.
Another to follow the first...
Stab.
Her screams entwined with Henry's screams in Eddie's head...
Stab.
Noooooo! Not my mother... no...
Stab.
She finally stopped screaming, cut off suddenly as if it were string being cut from a sewing machine. She fell to the floor, her body twisting and twitching, when finally all movement stopped. Eddie became aware that he was panting, hard. The needle was very small, very difficult to push through her flesh, and it became slippery with the blood that covered it. He slowed his breathing, and turned to the mirror on his right. It was covered in blood, like almost everything else in the cramped room, and he saw not himself, but Henry. He was sobbing, his head buried in his hands. Eddie laughed at the pitiful sight, then punched the mirror with his fist. The shards flew everywhere, even into his own fist. He cried out, fell to the floor, then pulled the shards out, one by one, watching as his blood splattered on the floor. When he was finished, he looked back up at where the mirror was. Stalactites of glass hung from the frame, now, small droplets of blood hanging off it.
A/N: Well, that's all for now, I'm afraid. Wait… I'm not scared! REALLY! (phht, I so lie). Anyways, hope you guys enjoyed, this story's gunna go pretty far, so hopefully you'll put up with the long chapters. See you!