Chapter Text
Wednesday’s POV
I simply do not believe in anniversaries. They are nothing but calendars shrouded in sentiment. I think they are nothing but reminders of dates that humans insist on treating like rituals. But the living will have their memorials, and the dead will endure them. I, by chance, find myself caught up in the unseemly space between both parties, so I keep a schedule.
It has been ten years since I ended Tyler’s life. Nothing about that pleases me to this day. No anniversary can soften the decision I had to make.
Before my mind wanders off further, I focus on finishing the sentence. I finish the sentence and dot the final 'I' as though sealing off an injury. After that I place my pen on the edge of the desk. I do not trouble myself to read the line through; I never read conclusions immediately. I know conclusions work out best when they are left alone.
My study is surrounded by draft pages that are stuck into towers. They’re grouped according to the succession of failures leading up to my most recent success. The critics refer to them as my trials. I refer to them as growth. Every part of those drafts shaped my current successfully published book.
My room is filled with candles that light the room. The wax has formed on the candle holders. I take a look out of the window into my garden. It’s a foggy night, which seems fitting for the date. The roses in the garden have started to rot. It’s almost elegant. The ravens outside look restless. It always feels like they seem to have very intense opinions regarding the moon that rises over my garden every night. I interpret their insistence as reassurance. It is the living who require interpretation.
My mind goes back to my study. It smells like ink mixed with ashes. On the wall opposite my desk hangs a framed clipping of a newspaper. It’s about my book ‘’The Anatomy of a Hyde. The book has made me successful in a way only the public can understand. It has made me able to buy this house; it even encouraged men to deliver me contracts for my next books. I signed them right away.
Success, by the common mind, is a concept I find boring. It’s dull and renders the patient inconveniently conscious.
I close the leather journal containing the first draft of the next book and band it with its ribbon. The study becomes louder when I stop writing. The sounds feel intense. I take in every one of them. The tiny hiss of the candle wax, the rain tapping against the glass of my windows and even the creak of the wooden floor.
The clock on the mantle grinds to the exact minute it did ten years ago. Time has always been predictable. Time is the only factor that will remain steady in life.
I stand up from my chair. It’s a Victorian relic that was a gift from my parents. I walk to the chair in the corner of my study. It’s covered with the black dress I chose for this evening. It’s practical but fits with the memorial.
When one visits the dead, one should dress as if they might file a complaint. My hair remains braided into precise lines. Some insist the style implies I am frozen at sixteen. They are wrong. I maintain my braids because they prevent hair from interfering with work. Nostalgia is not a factor. Nostalgia is an infection.
When I have changed into my dress, I walk downstairs. I stop in front of the mirror in the hallway. I look at my own eyes. There’s an absence of emotion in them that used to irritate me. But I’ve grown used to it. I put on my gloves before making my way to the front door.
I’m about to step out of the door when I notice a small parcel. Inside the parcel is a white hyacinth bloom, recently severed. The hyacinth is an unsubtle choice. Please forgive me, says the language of flowers. I do not speak that language except when weaponising it; still, the hyacinth has a bruised, honest scent that I respect. It apologises without expectation. Plants are superior to people in this way.
I step into the night. Leaving my house behind. The house used to be an orphanage. I purchased it because it came with an institutional melancholy and a cemetery that strayed conveniently onto the property line. The gates are ornamental. Almost as a suggestion of containment rather than a mandate. I do not lock them. The dead find their way home whether one invites them or not.
I make my way to the small cemetery that belongs to my property. The rain seems to intensify while I make my way down the gravel path. It softens while the rain falls to the ground. The ravens relocate to follow me, their bodies hunched.
The cemetery is small. I know every stone and every person that has been laid to rest. I even know every error on the stones. Some were carved by hands that trembled too much with grief. Others by hands that had never known either and were therefore careless. Tyler’s marker is one up for debate. I demanded his stone to be plain. I wanted his name on it, with his date of birth and the day of his death.
The man who carved the stones suggested an epitaph to me. I suggested he’d obey or he’d lose a few fingers. Let’s just say he complied. The only extravagance is a small hyde flower engraved along the lower left edge. I wanted it to be there.
Sometimes my mind wanders to the question of if I did the right thing. I never know the answer.
I kneel on the damp moss and lay the hyacinth at the base of the stone, adjusting the stem until it aligns with his gravestone. The rain strikes the petals of the flower.
“I do not believe in speaking to stones,” I say, “but I believe in remembrance.”
If Tyler is here, it is as a chemical argument. Calcium, phosphorus, leftover iron. Somewhere, a worm has an opinion about him. I do not in any serious sense expect a reply. Still, the cemetery is a better listener than most people I have met.
“Ten years,” I tell him. “You’re not here anymore to count, but I am.”
Of course I don’t get an answer. But it’s almost as if the rain is answering for him. I turn my face up, letting a few drops of rain hit my eyelashes. It doesn’t sting.
It is not the first time I have come here, and it will not be the last. I’ve come to the conclusion that even my mind loves to run in circles.
Tyler died where the trees met the lake. As he was dying, his lungs struggled to remember how to breathe, and his eyes searched for mine. In the end, my hands were on his face. I remember that clearly, because sometimes I can still feel it in the middle of the night. The memory of his bones beneath my fingers. He was no longer filled with Hyde. You could see it slip back into the darkness. The boy who was still there looked shocked. He let out a tiny sound as his breath left him.
The police report called it self-defence. The town called it justice. Even the students of Nevermore called it necessary. I never thought of it that way.
When you use a blade for a long time, a certain ache sets in. It starts in your fingers and moves to your wrist, slow and steady. It’s not exactly pain. No, more like something that won’t go away. I still feel it sometimes when I’m signing first editions at bookshops. One time a woman with shiny nails said that I was “so brave, reliving that trauma for art.” She meant well.
I keep a list of moments that, if they had gone differently, might have changed everything. Making lists helps me feel some control. They make the chaos seem smaller, easier to face. If I hadn’t followed him that night. If I’d picked a different weapon. If I’d let someone else go first. If I hadn’t believed I could end it so cleanly. If I had, just once, doubted myself.
I’m very good at being sure of things. Unfortunately, that’s not always a good skill to have. People often mistake it for cruelty. I do have cruelty in me.
I place my gloved hand on the stone. The cold seeps through the leather and into my skin. My nerves send a simple message: it’s cold. The skin on my wrist tightens. I like feelings that remind the body it’s still alive.
“I’m not here to apologize,” I tell the name on Tyler’s grave. The hyacinth seems to disagree, but I let it believe what it wants. “I’m here to give a report.”
Here is my report: I’ve built a life that my sixteen-year-old self would have found embarrassing. I own a house. I pay people to fix the roof. I go to my publisher’s parties just long enough for gossip columns to get a photo of me turning down snacks. My schedule is full,apologise,” always full. People ask me to speak on panels, and I only agree if the topic is to my liking.
Enid sends me postcards covered in glitter that always seems to escape into my books, my clothes, and even my tea. I don’t mind; it makes me laugh. She writes about her small victories: proud students, wolves that drive her wild, and quiet Tuesdays that make her hopeful for the rest of the week. She ends every card with a rainbow sticker. It’s so sincere it almost feels dangerous. She always asks if I’m taking care of myself.
I am taking care of myself. The body is a tool, and tools rust if they’re not maintained.
Xavier writes too, though his letters are more like sketches. They’re bits of memory, faint confessions. He signs his name as if he’s saying sorry. I reply once for every four letters he sends. That keeps the balance.
I get fan letters too. Some ask for hope; others ask for blood. I prefer the ones that ask for blood; at least they’re honest. I also get letters from mothers who’ve lost children, asking if I believe in forgiveness. I file those under “sentiment” and “knife care”. The two categories overlap more than you’d think.
People tell me The Anatomy of a Hyde saved their lives. Sometimes I wonder if it’s also killed someone. Books can be quiet killers. You never know which line might push someone over the edge they built for themselves.
A drop of rain slips between my glove and my sleeve, running down my arm like it knows where it’s going. I let it fall and imagine it drawing a line between who I used to be and who I am now. It’s a pointless thought. Both versions of me live in the same head.
“Do you want to know the worst part?” I ask the gravestone. The worst part changes from day to day. Today, it’s this: his last breath warmed my fingers. My body remembers warmth as betrayal.
I picture Tyler’s face when he smiled. It was that strange, careful smile that looked like he’d learnt it from a book and was testing it out. I don’t like sentiment, but I can still list what was good about him. Tyler was pleasant, but only in pieces. I lay those pieces out in my mind. His laughter that always came a second too late, as if he had to fetch it from another room; the way he held cups with both hands, trying to warm both the drink and himself; his posture, trying hard to be tall but ending up only looking young. When the Hyde inside him woke up, those same pieces didn’t disappear. No, they just rearranged themselves around something darker. That’s what made it dangerous.
People like to see the world in pairs: monster or boy, guilty or innocent. I would have loved the world to be black and white. But I know it’s not that simple.
A raven lands on Tyler’s grave. It shakes the rain from its feathers and stares at me with eyes as black as coal. Then it makes a rough sound.
“No,” I tell it. The raven blinks, offended, and hops over to a nearby cross so it can glare at me from above.
Rain has soaked through my coat and runs down my back in a cold stream. I stand up. Kneeling looks too much like praying, and I don’t stay in that position for long.
“Report concluded,” I say before leaving the cemetery.
On the walk back, the fog presses against me, heavy with rain. My boots stick to the ground with each step, pulling free from the mud. The gate squeaks when I open it. My ancestors would probably approve of my house, though I try not to think about their approval too much. It tends to make people value the wrong things.
Inside the entryway, I take off my gloves and set them on a porcelain tray. Water drips from my coat onto the tile in slow, steady taps. I don’t clean it up. The floor has survived worse. I pull off my boots carefully.
In the study, the candles have burnt down since I left, their flames small and tired. I relight the stubborn ones. The flames flare up with a quiet hiss. Fire is wonderfully simple. It understands hunger.
On the desk is a letter I didn’t open before leaving. The envelope bears the Nevermore crest, sealed in black wax. I try not to get sentimental, but this kind of intrusion deserves attention. I think about ignoring. But my curiosity gets to me, so I open it.
Principal Weems is dead, so she couldn’t have written it. Whoever took her place signs the letter “Acting Headmistress L. Fairweather”, a name so cheerful it annoys me. Her handwriting is thin. The letter invites me to an alumni event. It’s not about literature but clearly about money. It adds, in that fake-sincere way only administrative letters can, that The Anatomy of a Hyde has “sparked meaningful conversations among our students about accountability, monstrosity, and healing.” They underlined healing, as if I might miss the point.
I set the letter beside the opener and place a small paperweight on it to keep it still.
The invitation has nothing to do with the anniversary, but the mind connects what it wants to. I can’t help noticing that the same people who once saw me as a warning now see me as a product. I don’t celebrate the change from monster to marketing tool. It says something about the sickness in the culture. It’s something worse than whateverlived inside Tyler’s skin.
…
I return to my journal. I open it and write down two words: Ten years. The ink spreads around the page. The blur looks beautiful.
I don’t plan to sleep, but the body makes its demands at the worst times. I blow out most of the candles, leaving one burning to watch over the room. I walk to the phonograph. I only keep music that feels clean and precise. Tonight I choose Bach. It’s a partita that lines up my thoughts. When the bow touches the strings, even the air seems to remember it has a spine.
I lie down on the fainting couch that has never managed to make me faint. I close my eyes; there’s no point in staring at the ceiling. The music smooths the knots in my mind. I let each note come and go without trying to hold onto it.
Maybe I slept. If I did, it was the thin, uneasy kind of sleep you get after surgery when the body borrows rest it doesn’t trust.
I wake with the feeling that something in the room has changed. Not much, no, just a shift in pressure. The candle flame stands straight, alert. My skin warns me: the air is a little cooler, and it tastes faintly of iron, the way it does when lightning is about to make a point. I sit up.
…
I turn my attention to my desk. That’s where I see the cause of the change in the room. There’s a small square of old fabric, waiting next to the invitation from Nevermore. The cloth seems to be folded with care. It’s dark, and the edges seem hand-stitched. Whoever left it didn’t disturb the dust. I never trust intruders who are so neat.
I stand up and walk to my desk. The music has shifted into a sad, logical rhythm. I think about throwing it away, but I can’t stop myself.
I pick up the fabric. It’s heavier than it looks. It smells faintly of smoke and something else I try not to recognise. The scent is a mixture of damp earth and wet leaves and even has a hint of animal. It smells like the place where Tyler died.
I unfold the cloth. Inside is a silver pocket watch, tarnished and engraved with a strange looping pattern that draws the eyes in circles. If you stare long enough, the design forms a shape. It’s not a serpent eating its tail, but something sharper, a loop that never quite closes. Along the edge, tiny letters are carved with care. I know the script. It’s old, part of my family’s history. Goody Addams never believed in gifts that weren’t also punishments.
The watch isn’t ticking. I know it never will. Both hands are set to midnight but are not perfectly aligned. The second hand hovers above the face like a small, restless blade.
A torn piece of paper lies folded with the cloth. The edges are brown with age, the tear uneven as if someone ripped it out in a hurry. A sentence is written in reddish ink: We are instruments; the question is who plays us.
It’s an intrusive line. It annoys me. But it’s not wrong.
I don’t ask how it ended up on my desk. Someone must have placed it here. Which means they wanted me to have it. I press the watch’s stem. It clicks softly before the lid opens.
The glass doesn’t show my reflection properly. My face breaks apart, multiplies, then settles on a version of me that looks both younger and more tired. The glass isn’t normal. No, it’s been polished with something that remembers other faces, other nights. For a second, the numbers on the dial shift and then settle back into place.
Inside, the gears try to move. Among them is something that shouldn’t be there: a strand of black hair, coiled tight around a gear. It’s been placed there deliberately. If this is some kind of sick joke or revenge quest, it’s a personal one.
When I close the watch, the metal warms against my hand. I dislike objects that just show up out of nowhere. Especially ones that smell like him.
I’ve seen devices like this before, in journals that should’ve been destroyed with their owners. They weren’t watches then. No, they were mirrors, rings, or knives with hollow handles. The idea was always the same: time, like flesh, can be cut. And cuts always have consequences. So do scars that heal the wrong way. Until now, I’ve been sure to leave the wound from that night closed.
A thought is forming, though. It isn’t wild; nothing about me is. It arrives in order, step by step. What if the cut could be undone? Not the entire night. No, that’s impossible. But only a single moment. A choice. A breath I shouldn’t have taken. That it was mercy and redemption. The funny thing is that I don’t believe in those.
What tempts me is precision. My mistake wasn’t killing him. My mistake was thinking his death solved the equation cleanly. Ten years later, the leftover piece still stares back at me from the mirror and asks if I know how to finish the maths.
Suddenly the watch feels heavier in my hands. I can feel my pulse rise. It beats faster than it should. I breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth, trying to calm myself down.
…
At the window, the rain turns to sleet for three exact seconds, then back again as if the sky can’t make up its mind. The ravens go quiet. The candle flickers, then steadies itself.
“Well,” I say aloud, “if this is an invitation, it’s a very rude one.”
A less careful person would wind the watch. A more sentimental one would call Enid. A truly cautious one would bury it in the yard. I do none of those. I set the watch on the desk and draw a chalk circle around it. I’m not cautious or reckless. I’m simply curious.
The chalk circle isn’t for protection. Chalk has never saved anyone from a family curse. The circle is for observation. If the watch moves while I’m watching, I’ll have proof. I trust evidence more than instinct. Instinct is useful, but data is the structure that lets movement happen.
I sit and open a new page in my journal. I title it Hyde Temporal Variables. I start a list of what I remember happened that night. After that I find myself drawing the woods, how they were that night. I sketch the fracture line across the boy’s face when Hyde left him. I record the colour of his lips, the temperature of the air, and the exact weight of my guilt then and now for comparison.
…
An hour later I drop my pen and read what I have written so far. I glance at the watch. It hasn’t moved beyond the circle. It lies there, perfectly still.
I reach out to touch the watch’s case, then pause. Not out of fear, but because touching it would mean I am crossing a line.
I stand, go to the window, and unhook the latch. Cold air slips in, brushing the sweat at the back of my neck. I let it question me for a moment, then close the window. I do not agree to its terms.
…
When I turn around to my desk, I notice that the chalk circle has smudged. For a moment it looks like a fingerprint. I wipe it away, trying to convince myself I am wrong.
I pick up the watch. The second hand is moving. I never wound it.
I don’t drop it. My fingers tighten around the grip of the watch. I can feel the metal press into my skin. Inside I see the strand of hair around the gear pull tighter. The hands of the watch twitch. Not toward one or twelve, but to a point in between that no real clock should recognise.
Suddenly a sound fills the room from nowhere. It’s a faint bell. It’s not loud. But it makes the air tremble. Even the remaining candle that is burning flickers.
The watch seems to open on its own. The face doesn’t brighten. No, it sharpens. The numbers shift, losing their familiar shapes and becoming something else. The second hand slices across an invisible mark. When it finishes the cut, something in the world changes. Barely visible, but enough if you focus. You could miss it if you wanted to pretend it wasn’t real. But I am fully awake.
…
I somehow find myself thinking about Tyler’s grave. The hyacinth I placed near the grave slowly drowning in the rain, the ravens watching like judges, and the way his last breath warmed my gloves. I think about the sentence on that piece of paper: We are instruments; the question is who plays us.
“I play myself,” I say out loud. It isn’t exactly true, “And sometimes I let the knife play me.”
The hands of the watch meet at twelve, then slide beneath the surface of the face. In their place, a new shape appear. Something I’ve only seen hinted at in forbidden notes: a small notch at the edge of the dial, just big enough for a single drop of blood.
Of course. Everything asks for a price. The world doesn’t run on charity. I know it needs my blood. So without hesitation. I use the same knife I used on Tyler. It rests in a thin drawer I rarely open. The blade is spotless. The handle still fits my hand perfectly.’
It settles into my grip with a familiar, shameful ease. The kind that comes from a sin practisedappears. too often.
I prick the tip of my left index finger. The drop of blood forms neatly.
…
When the drop of blood hits the watch, the room seems to shift. The floor, the shelves, and the ceiling move half a step to the left while staying exactly where they are. I feel a strange satisfaction, the kind that comes when an impossible equation suddenly makes sense. The watch absorbs the blood.
My heartbeat changes, syncing to a rhythm that isn’t mine. The candle stretches its flame upward, as if waiting for a verdict. The house answers with a soft creak of its beams. Something unseen moves downward. Through the roof, through me, through the floor.
I don’t faint. I don’t kneel. I stand still. The smell of wet leaves grows stronger. The room cools by four degrees. The watch warms by one. My finger throbs steadily. The air hums with a sound too low to hear. If I said Tyler’s name now, it would have edges.
I lift the watch. It feels heavier.
I look into the mirror above my fireplace. It shows my usual face. Until it suddenly flickers. I see a younger version of myself appear. The girl was ready for battle, her hair braided tight, her mouth set in a straight line because curves were for lies. Then she fades. I don’t reach for her. I don’t miss her. She’s still here, carried forward through ten years of living. Haunted by guilt of something that happened ten years ago.
I slip the watch into the inner pocket of my dress.
In the fireplace, the last coal exhales and dies. The scent is sweet, like a memory corrected.
I sit down behind my desk before picking up my pen. I start writing in my journal: Variable introduced.
Outside, the ravens start calling again. They sound almost excited. I don’t allow myself excitement. No, it feels too close to panic. Instead, I allow precision. I focus on the moment exactly as it is: the ink drying, the candle steadying, the watch defying stillness, and the blood drying on my fingertip. What comes next will be planned.
It is still the tenth anniversary of his death. For the first time in ten years, I feel something shift. After I finish writing, I pinch out the last candle. I can feel the brief sting, but I welcome the pain. After the candle is out, darkness follows. I can feel the watch in the pocket of my dress.
…
Somewhere near the cemetery, the ground shifts. Like something has stood up and remembered it was once a boy who made coffee for a living.
Tomorrow, or whatever word fits when time stops behaving, I will return to the grave. If the hyacinth has survived, I’ll take it. I’ll begin the experiment not for forgiveness, but for accuracy. If the universe thinks it can be rewritten, it can endure my edits.
For now, I have work. A schedule. A watch that isn’t really a watch, and a knife that has already told one truth.
Ten years is a clean number. A grave is a precise address. And I am, above all, an instrument that tunes itself.
I wipe the blood from my fingertip onto the edge of the journal. It leaves a dark, neat line.
I sleep for one hour and twelve minutes. In the morning I will begin.