Longworth & Yaeger

a tribute to Jekyll & Hyde (and Dark Shadows)

It was a shallow urn but heavy — yet picking it up, his arm flew ceilingward like it held an empty bird’s nest, and the scientist knew: the potion was taking effect.

He sniggered. The absurd ceramic ring in his hand even resembled a nest.

He flung his child's cremains across the laboratory and the urn shattered on the brick wall. He cursed long and loud, but that would never wake the dead.

Such scorn for what had been his petty victory, his fickle insistence on no proper burial… His chances of reanimating ash stood as good a chance as calling a ghost from a grave.

Such rage now at his bitter little snakehipped wife, whom he’d made his own lab assistant — who had treated his drink tonight, she must have! No … this was not the control he’d wanted. But it would be all right because it felt good now. The onset was complete, right down to the lecherous black mop of hair and mustache as revealed in the mirrors round the room.

This feeels good!

Now Cyrus Longworth's kindly but idiocentric personality was swallowed up, his humble physical aspect beginning to contort, and he would relish nothing more than a good swagger about the misty streets of Collinsport as John Yaeger, the callous fiend of superhuman strength. But he was no puppet at play. This was real!

Yes, in and out of the Blue Whale he’d go … to the docks where a tipsy wench often strolled stray.

Or to Widows Hill, off of which the grief-stricken flung themselves into the restless waters below, bypassing the niceties of funeral or urn.

He would find other flesh. Other spawn.