Jekyll and Hyde
This is a piece I wrote a few years ago about the morality of fiction writing. I swear it's not boring – I mean, it has pumpkin-spiced murder in it!
One night I dreamed that I found a severed head under my bookshelf.
Unable to sleep, I turned on my Kindle to read something soothing that contained no decapitation – hardly a tall order, I thought – only to find Dracula (decapitation of vampires), Tales of Terror and Mystery (the line ‘but where, pray, is Myrtle's head?’ is self-explanatory) and The Father Brown Stories (three cases of beheaded corpses). The one safe book was Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – hardly a bedtime story.
I supposed I should have expected it: my reading list has always reflected my latest writing expedition, which at the moment is a story about a Victorian lady investigating a series of murders committed by a reanimated pumpkin-headed corpse that decapitates villagers to create more pumpkin-headed people. In the end, the Victorian lady runs away with the creator of the monster (an equally misanthropic doctor) and the pair set off to plague society with their creations.
It was only after the nightmare that I realised how gruesome my story was. Was I justifying and romanticising serial killing? Would I join the ranks of writers whose works were being censored? Should I put political correctness before artistic freedom? Perhaps there’s no right answer, but when I got out of bed the following morning, I knew I wouldn’t alter my story. In inveterate people-pleaser, writing is the only place I allowed myself to be selfish, and I wasn’t going to let anyone take away that freedom.
Until I started high school I was home-schooled. I was precocious, different, and everyone felt it. My peers found me intimidating so I resorted to keeping my head down and understating my abilities. It was during that time that I began my story of the pumpkin-headed fiend.
Something in my chest loosened as I wrote – and unleashed all my stifled resentment and pain, making heads roll and monsters howl.
I wrote about a young woman who had been raised to be quiet and sensible, who found freedom in creating monsters that could act in a way she couldn’t against the tide of humanity. What her monsters were to her, my stories are to me.
So, let me tell you modest and genteel Jekylls: don’t let anyone say you can’t be an evil Hyde in your writing.
About the author: Amanda spends her time writing, drawing and being far too excited over reference books about Victorian food. This is the first piece she has dared to send to Mslexia since her many embarrassing poetry submissions at age 13.
Thank you @nalesnik-z-morela for asking to read it, I'm flattered you'd want to after I described it as 'a piece about the morality of writing'!
This piece was published in the Mslexia magazine's Elevenses newsletter.
