The Passover: Jekyll and Hyde

Author's Note: To fully understand this story you must know that while reading Jekyll and Hyde the following quote reminded me of The Passover from the Bible."At the further end, a flight of stairs mounted to a door covered with red baize, and through this, Mr. Utterson was at last received into the doctor's cabinet." During the Passover Jesus told the Isrealites to search for a lamb to sacrifice and spread its blood across their front door so that during the night, their first born son would not be killed. When Mr. Utterson found Jekyll in his cabinet behind the door with the red baize on it, I pictured him consumed by fear of something dark trying to catch him while behind that door. So I wrote a story in the perspective of a first  born son in an Isrealite family during the time of the Passover to express the fear, sacrifice, and darkness of it all.

Slicing through the innocent skin, the knife invites a flow of blood. Each trickle stains the flawless wool with their individual paths, encountering rigids and leaving their traces behind for another to follow. Drip by drip the blood continues and finds an end to its path when it drops into the wooden bowl just beneath the lamb's raw neck.

 Mother collects our gatherings and brings the bowl into our house. I find myself hesitant to leave the lamb whose life was just selfishly taken for the sake of another. If it weren't for me, the only and first born son, this lamb's life would not have been spared. But my mind wanders to the darkness of what could take another life tonight. My life.

I turn around, walk to the house, and never look back.

Every second that draws me nearer to the time of night eats away at my nerves. The thought of something so powerful, something that could take my life in seconds, lurking throughout the streets outside my house... sends a chill down my spine.

I have to remind myself that a promise is a promise. The lamb's life was spared and tonight we will proceed to the spreading of the blood across our door. Nothing can touch us. Yet the possibility of a broken promise, a mistake, a slip, still consumes my mind.

* * *

As the darkness falls over the world, we prepare for the final step; the final step before all there's left to do is wait. Mother brings the bowl outside of the house and dips her fingertips in the warm blood. Slowly she raises her arm and brushes her fingers against our door frame. The blood fills the dents and holes of the rough wood and dissolves into its sponge-like structure.

While the blood dries and makes itself one with the wood beneath it, we hurry inside and prepare for the long night ahead of us. We lay out gatherings of hay on the cold ground of our living area and cover them with cloth. On a night such as this, any distance from my mother and father would take away my sanity.

A cold sweat drenches my clothes, giving me the noise of each salty drip leaving my shirt to focus on. I try to keep my mind on the rythm of the drops.

Drip....drip..drip....drip....drip..drip.

I wouldn't have ever imagined its presence to appear so obvious, but the immediate heaviness in the air alarmed me that it was near. Passing through the very streets that the children carelessly play; the streets that are now abandoned in the paralyzing fright of its own powerful charisma.

The presence grows greater and greater until my ears pop from the humid pressure growing in our small cement room. And suddenly, like a gush of wind, its gone.

Screams from afar fill my ear canals like chirps from crickets after sunset. Scattered and unorganized, yet distinct and with purpose. While the shouts of horror arise, all I can do is thank the little lamb whose life was sacrificed for the sake of my own and pray that he would one day forgive me.