A Fine Bogey Tale

When you see something move out of the corner of your eye? Probably his tail slithering behind him back into shadow. When you hear wind roaring at night but see no wind? Probably his wings pulling him higher into the sky. When you think you hear movement outside of your room at night but find nothing? It’s not easy for him to maneuver himself with four clawed arms and four clawed feet. He roams near my home but he sometimes goes other places. He hides, he steals and he’s always there. What is he? Just another man like you.

He held the vile in his hand. He prepared to try my first attempt to try and make a serum that stopped my evil urges. He also had similar urges. We were both bad people on the inside and, oh though we didn’t know it yet, my potions would bring our evil out. But his evil was much darker, much more evil if there is such a thing. He sipped it. He could feel himself changing. He could feel his extra arms growing out of him, his new wings bursting through the skin of his back. Blood was running down his face from his new sprouting horns, he couldn’t see anything; he could smell only the copper smell of the blood and could taste only that copper taste. He grinned new, pointed teeth.

I awoke to my partner, who I had just seen changed in a dream, shaking me and staring at me. I had apparently been screaming and crying out for help. He thought I was having a nightmare.
“No, not a nightmare,” I explained, “I was picturing the first transformation.”
“Good or bad?” he asked, smiling hopefully.
“Good,” I lied.

Now it was happening for real. Just the same as in my dream. The red, grinning, sharp-toothed face of my assistant changed. I didn’t scream, I wasn’t surprised. My potion had failed, it had done the opposite. It had brought the evil out of him to a point I hadn’t thought possible. He looked at me.
“It’s so good. Drink it,” he held the vile out in between his claws. As the blood everywhere on his body began to dry he looked black as night. What was I to do when I felt as if the devil himself was commanding me to drink it? I took it from him and gulped it down. I changed, but not as much. I shrunk, became hunched over, I wasn’t me anymore. Once I was finished he looked at me, still grinning. “Good or bad?”
“Good,” I answered in my new form. I was no longer Dr. Jekyll. I was now Mr. Hyde, free to carry out all I ever dreamed of. I felt younger; I felt more of a man. And my assistant? The window was open and he was gone. He felt the same and he already decided to carry out those evil dreams. He was just another man like you.