Reflections on a Perverted World

Author's Note: I had a hard time coming up with a creative form to put this new post in. Mrs. Woods gave me the idea of taking a novella that is written to give an understanding of all the characters and giving the perspective of one whose view isn't given. So these are an excerpt from the journal of Hyde.

18 October 18—

What is it? Why must people stare at me so? I used to not look on life with such distrust. But not now. Not anymore. For a time, I avoided their gaze. Then I began to cover my face. But the stares seem inevitable. For hours, I gaze into a mirror, looking for the flaws they see. The only deformity I see is one behind the eyes, a deformity born of a pitiless rejection from a cruel world. Now I leave the theatre only at night, in search of the various chemicals on which my identity now subsists.

20 October 18—

Oh, the selfish nature of man. What was I but on one of my midnight errands, walking quietly by myself, eyes on the ground as I was wont at these small hours of the morn. I walked on, pondering life, when in an instant a child stepped into my path and was knocked down. No sooner had she fallen when I saw a man I seemed to recognize, and I began to walk towards him, to ask him to help the poor child up. For what with my hunched back, even such a slight task as this fails me.

But seeing me continue without helping the child in a moment he was upon me, and seized me roughly about the collar. In another moment the rest of the house was awakened and was upon me, a veritable mob, looks of terrible malevolence upon their faces, ready to stone me at the slightest provocation. I tried to explain myself, but they would hear none of it.

In the end, I was forced to offer up 100 pounds of my own reserves to right the wrong. And how readily they accepted this token that was nothing more than a bribe! Oh, the greed of man. What seemed to them a brutal assault of an innocent child could in their eyes be righted with a purse full of gold in their pocket. Did they think to give the child any recompense? No! Of course not! The corruptible nature of man is such that he will go up in arms over an injustice to the point of fanatical rage, and yet in an instant is pacified by a dirty pouch full of money. I now leave them to their ways; I care no more for the considerations of base, sordid, corrupted men.