Sometimes, Hawley Griffin gets ideas that even he knows he cannot possibly afford to
indulge--for sheer practicality's sake, if nothing else. And since practicality is,
in truth, the sole consideration he allows to restrain his own behavior, these
days...

The Nautilus, sere as Nemo keeps it, is simultaneously--who knows how--a veritable
fairy-palace of sensual license. Perhaps it's the motors' ceaseless purr thrumming
up through one's feet and higher, this feeling of always floating free over some
unseen abyss while your secretest parts are caressed by a devilishly detached yet
phantom hand. Or might be it's just the decor: All those fancy marine-patterned
accessories, the marble floors and silk-hung, pearl-smooth walls, with cut-throat
Kali dancing nude in her kilt of severed human hands above the dining table, right
next to the "N"-monogrammed complimentary packages of cigarettes and cigars.

Not to mention figures of Sita and Shiva all pouting and contortive in what often
seems like every available corner, their bronze limbs sheened and gleaming like
dusky, sweaty flesh.

Anything seems possible, even condoned, in such company, so long as one remains at
least partially discreet. For God's (or the gods') sake, don't let your darker
fancies run free where the punkah-wallahs can see you, gentlemen--

(and lady)

But then, it's been a fair old while since Griffin's had to worry much about being
*seen*.

Far down now, very far indeed and well beyond the reach of natural light, as he
drifts without clear purpose through the silent reaches of the Nautilus's hold: Just
as well for him his tapetum went last when the process bleached him transparent from
the inside out, leaving him gifted with night-vision to rival any of the angler-fish
which currently trawl outside for prey, blazing with cold phosphorescence.

Paranoid and voyeuristic in roughly equal measures, Griffin spends his submerged
days-in-nights drifting from room to room in Nemo's floating palace, waiting for
exhaustion to take him over. He sleeps where he falls, often as not; beast-man Hyde
seems almost presciently aware of his habits in this regard. Or so he's gathered,
from a short yet revealing conversation recently overheard.

Quartermain, to Hyde, in the library: "Meeting, Mrs Harker's apartments. Where's
Griffin?"

"No idea." Then, not looking up from his open copy of Huysman's *La-Bas*: "Send
someone 'round to poke in all the corners, why don't you--sure to stumble across him
*that* way, eventually."

Heh. So *clever*, for a subhuman hulk...

(Offputtingly so, really.)

Meanwhile, Griffin feels his current lack of proper female companionship intensely:
Yearns to have his pick of the girls at Miss Coote's once more, all mooning over
their own adolescent experimentations in "chemistry", ripe for some sort of
plucking...oh, he's never been so attractive before or since, not in the Visible
world, where any fool on the street could point and gape at his old/young man's
white hair, his peeling melanin-poor skin and his watery little garnet eyes.

The minute he disembodied himself, however, Griffin became a mirror for anyone to
dream on--a fantastic miasma, able to take on (or mimic, which is much the same
thing in terms of effect) whatever attributes his partners' fondest, most secret
desires might call for.

*And what can I do for YOU, Mrs Mina, Captain? Allan? Henry?*

(Edward?)

Always burning, always cold. The process has left Griffin with both a constant
low-grade fever and an equally constant, itchy craving for the same human contact he
once so violently rejected. All these idiotic fantasies of touch and comfort,
swarming like flies: The grating urge to sneak a peek under Mrs Harker's scarf, to
run his tongue unexpectedly down the cord of Nemo's stiff neck. To hove in close
enough to taste Quartermain's sour opium addict's breath. To fold himself 'round
Jekyll when least expected, then find himself abruptly enfolded *by* Hyde.

Ah, yes. But that way lies madness, mayhem, sure and certain self-murder.

Griffin has no doubt he can hold his own with most of his "fellows", from Mrs Harker
to Nemo himself: *You won't see me coming you know, heh heh,* as he once told
Quartermain, in the Limehouse devil-doctor's dingy sty. But with Hyde, the best one
might possibly do would be run, and hope for obstacles. There's no reasoning with
brutes, after all, whether or not the suits adorning their eight-foot ape-frames
happen to come from Saville Row; Jekyll's atavist avatar carries the jungle with him
like a stench, every movement an implied threat. Red in tooth and claw.

And Hyde can *smell* him, too. Of that, he's almost sure.

Not to mention how his other half suffers so, by comparison: Jekyll's just dashed
*boring*, for a man bemused enough on the subject of his own sins that he felt he
had to subdivide. Skulking around the Nautilus's corridors like Griffin without the
fashion-sense, a chalk-and-cheese-complected little stick of a man with barely
gumption enough to say "boo", and mean it. He's good fun to poke at, but never for
long--the resultant conversations, however cheaply entertaining, are simply never
worth the effort.

"Hyde says you dream of other men, Doctor," Griffin murmured to him, just the other
day. "Now, tell the truth: Was he being genuine in his revelations, or merely
slanderous?"

Weakly: "Leave me alone, Griffin."

"Aren't you already? Or good as, without your...companion."

Drawling words, insult disguised as banter, punctuated with a skimming touch to
Jekyll's shoulder with one hand, his thigh with another; some "fellow scientist" the
man is, when he can't even stand the barest hint of such--explorations--without
flinching! Or flushing, sinking, reeling back like Griffin's got the plague...

*He could kill you easily enough, though,* a voice remarkably like his own notes,
calmly, from the very back of Griffin's mind. *He WILL kill you, if you let him--for
nothing, or anything. 'Battle not with monsters...'*

...unless you look to become a monster yourself: Yes, yes, Friedrich Nietzche's old
cant. A warning usually well worth the taking, though one which--in Griffin's case--

--comes rather too late.

Briefly and all unprompted, Griffin finds himself re-considering Campion Bond's
entirely risible offer: A pardon, a cure. The one he has little use for--how would
they expect to enforce it, either way?--the other, absolutely none. Though Christ
knows *that* wasn't always so...

Back in Iping, before his "death" and during his initial, none-too-halcyon days as
King the First of Britain's Invisible Realm, Griffin well remembers how often his
temper (never exactly smooth) seemed strained almost to bursting: Yes, I'm
transparent and I'm right in front of you; it's unusual, but I don't think it's a
crime. Now listen up and do what I want, before I *bloody throttle you*--

--oh. Well. Never mind.

(Aheheheh.)

So desperate to effect his own release, for undisturbed leisure to examine his
uncoagulated blood beneath a microscope, for space and food, sleep and test subjects
and piss-damnable *time* enough to figure out for once and for all how--or
whether--the process might be reversed. Still playing the maligned innocent even to
himself, the aggrieved party hoist on the petard of a thousand idiot yokels. And
now, ah, now: How things have changed.

It's just a matter of perspective, really.

Blessedly freed from all extraneous alliegance, Griffin's thoughts flit from topic
to topic, glistening, insectile. The drug seems to light up his brain. He knows the
truth, and it sings in every part of him: Hot, cold, burning.

Do what you want. Do what you can. Do...whatever...you can get away with. For "do
what thou wilt" shall be the whole, the *only* law--

Oh, and Nemo would frown at that, surely; Mrs Harker would purse her little red lips
in disapproval, as though smelling some recalcitrant puppy's mess. Quartermain would
color and look away, sharply, no doubt recalling occasional lapses in
self-discipline of his own. Jekyll would blanch.

But Hyde, *Mr* Hyde..."Edward", even...

Hyde might well agree. Might--understand. If not, exactly, sympathize.

And speaking of which:

Those footsteps up ahead, soft yet heavy, with the odd repetitive *scritch* laid in
here and there--it's Hyde, out prowling as well, with just as little regard for
anyone else's privacy. Barefoot as usual, his claw-nails abrading the sheen of
Nemo's polished floors in time to the list of his shambling gait.

Griffin hugs the wall, automatically, planning to nip behind the man-beast's back as
he steps inside and be safely away, long before Jekyll's creature-self even knows
he's gone. But Hyde just pauses in the doorway, takes a long, speculative sniff and
smiles that wide, flat smile of his, like some monstrous hybrid of gorilla and
snake.

"Griffin, you lunatic sneak-thief," he says, finally. "Come to tease poor Henry some
more?"

*Because he's not home, not just at present.*

(Well.)

This certainly proves the "Hyde can smell you" hypothesis, if nothing else.

Griffin keeps quiet a moment more, but Hyde isn't moving. Replying at last, voice dry--

"Heh heh: 'Tease'? How so?"

"Oh, the usual: Flaunting your nakedness in that very--transparent--way of yours,
always invading his reclusive rest, eavesdropping at every keyhole. Very Biblical,
when one thinks about it."

"No Invisibility in the Bible, Hyde; I've checked. And I'll thank you not to talk
about me like I'm one of your Froggy whores..."

"Not a Frog, no. But you *are* a whore. Aren't you?"

"...I beg your pardon?"

Hyde smiles again, narrowing the gesture to a mere twist of those prehensile lips.
"You should."

*For what, exactly?* Griffin thinks. Blurting, at the same time: "I'm, I--I'm *not*--"

"Misapprehension on my part, I'm sure. Still and all, it's one which could certainly
benefit from you occasionally putting some bloody clothes on, every now and then."

And: Hmmm. Um. Uh, that is to say...

(...granted.)

Griffin swallows, heart hammering. "Get out of my way, monkey-man."

"Make me." Then, moving to loom over him, blind but potent, not to mention still
neatly blocking every accessible part of the doorway: "What're you afraid of, eh?
That I'll *eat* you?"

(Frankly?)

The beast's reflective eyes are already half-narrowed, however, drooping lids slant
with lazy amusement. While the mouth purses "charmingly", promising--albeit with a
twist so openly contemptuous, it more-than-slightly undercuts the words' inherent
meaning--

"Well...someday, perhaps." A pause. "But not tonight."

And before Griffin has a chance to analyze all the possible permutations of that
particular promise, he's already pinned; one frighteningly fast, supposedly aimless
grope gets both the Invisible Man's windpipe between Hyde's fingers and a knee right
where Griffin can best squirm on it, hanging and kicking against the wall. Choking
out, with difficulty:

"Guh, God, God *damn* you, Hyde--"

"Ah, theology again." Hyde keeps on rummaging between Griffin's thighs with one
hand, simultaneously spanning his neck and tracing his lips with the other. "Such an
unexpectedly religious turn of mind you seem to have there, for a professional
backstabber. Perhaps you'd've been better off dropping science in favor of the
clergy."

Griffin spits, saliva abruptly visible as it cools in transit, drawing a kettledrum
laugh. So he snaps at Hyde's phallus-sized fingers instead, receiving a cuff in
return that makes his non-reflective skull ring: *Bad* dog! No biscuit for you, just
inadvertant frottage and mutual--well, not exactly--

--oh, Lord, no. That, bulging obscenely against Griffin's hip...is *definitely* mutual.

Rough and gnarled, their nails as hard as horn, foot-wide palms bristling with hair
that scratches delicately along the weeping seam of Griffin's unseen nether-parts;
Hyde's hands are hot and deft, unspeakably educated in their intent, impossible not
to react to. As he seems grotesquely pleased to note.

"Ah, and THERE we go--you stink of frustration, do you know that, slinker? Like
you're constantly advertising the fact you'd take whatever's offered, from whomever.
You untrustworthy slut."

"If this is about almost--*starting*--to, eh, cut the guiderope on Nemo's balloon--"

"'I thought you weren't coming back,'" Hyde mimics mercilessly, stroking harder,
'till Griffin fairly feels the eyes bulge from his head.

(Oh, he *knew* that would come back to haunt him.)

Since desperate thrashing alone doesn't seem to be enough to do the trick on the
getting him free front, however--match strength with Hyde? For Christ's own sake,
Griffin's the same man who treats most threats as an excuse to get quickly
undressed--he switches back, midstream, to his more reliable arsenal: Mockery,
tail-pulling, satire.

*Whatever it takes to get Hyde distracted, before he has time to stick that cannon
in his trousers all the way THROUGH you and out the other bloody side...*

"Sweet of you to take an interest, old man," Griffin begins, with spots starting to
form before both pupils, "but in the matter of my--*private* life--you're hardly the
League-member I'd be most likely to turn to."

"Prefer to be Quartermain's bedwarmer, hmmm?"

"Not unless he's shrunken substantially, and taken to wearing a--heh heh--corset."
Adding, as the pressure against his throat seems to slacken: "But then, you'd *jump*
to do whatever SHE asked of you, wouldn't you, Edward? S'pose I'd have to affect the
morals of some professional virgin and sport a scarf 'round my neck, in order to
command the great and terrible Hyde--"

"You won't sully her name, gadfly--"

Griffin ducks under Hyde's arm, dances back. Snarling, as he does:

"*Sully* it? Really. As though a divorced suffragette sent slumming 'round the world
with--five--different men could possibly retain some sort of name worth sullying--"

But this is a mistake, he knows it before the words are even out of his mouth.
Because the next step brings Hyde right back in his face, a ham-sized hand on either
side of his narrow chest, and squeezing. "*Just shut bloody UP about her, you
Invisible turd!*"

Griffin freezes, trapped once more; his lungs give a horrible heave, like some bird
crushed in a cage of ribs, and Hyde's breath is a blast-furnace, a meaty exhalation.
He has a split second to think of the wounds he sustained in Iping, of bandaging
himself in Kemp's house: *It goes visible as it coagulates, d'you see? Dashed
nuisance.*

How long will it take for the marks of his death to show on Hyde, afterward? Will
Nemo just nod, understandingly, and send his swabbies 'round to sponge the overage
away?

He'd like to think that *someone* amongst them might care, if and when he shuffles
off thsi mortal coil--though probably not Mrs Harker, whose stringent sympathy
stings like bile. Or Quartermain either, considering the way he once called Griffin
a "wretched sport of nature"...

Only Henry, perhaps. Poor Henry, poor Jekyll, poor half-man-at-best--

(poor Griffin)

After a moment, though, Hyde's grip relaxes to merely inescapable, and calm--along
with the smile--returns.

"There, that's stopped you, hasn't it? Not so clever now." A pause, huffing long and
slow through his nostrils. "You and I really *will* come to a bad end one of these
days, Griffin, if you don't start looking sharp."

Griffin coughs, rackingly, pleasantly surprised to find that nothing seems to be
broken. The spasm makes Hyde guffaw and clap him on the back, as though they were
simply two gentlemen sharing a drink and a joke at the club--an impression rather
ruined by the fact that the monster's holding hand has already begun to roam up and
down Griffin's bruisy frame once more, as intimately intrusive as ever.

"...point taken," he allows, finally.

"Hah. First intelligent thing you've said all night."

Hyde turns him effortlessly, presses into him from behind, kicking his legs
apart--so hot, hard and hairy against Griffin's goosepimpled skin, 'specially with
the Nautilus's unnaturally cool, smooth wall coming at him from the other side--and
gives Griffin's unprotected nape a gentle semi-bite, a curious sort of mouthing. A
long, exploratory lick with that tiger-rough tongue of his, flaying away at least
one outer layer of skin.

Griffin makes a little sound at the feel of it, half whimper, half snicker.

And: "Remind you of anything?" Hyde rumbles. "Time served in the House of Genteel
Harlotry, impregnating schoolgirls under the pretense of being some visitation from
God..."

"How would you--" Griffin tries, and fails, to look around. "You weren't even there,
*either* of you. So I don't quite see what qualifies--"

"--me to judge? Heard about it, old boy; all the juicy details, courtesy of
Quartermain. Fifty or so palpitating virgins, caught between their flog-happy
instructresses and *you*; there's a dillemma whose horns could sodomize two
choirboys at once."

"Little strumpets rather enjoyed my nightly ministrations, far as I could tell."

"Ah, 'course. Much like you're 'enjoying' this."

Griffin gasps: *Much* like, yes. Or to put it another way, just exactly the same--

(give or take)

Hyde snuffles along Griffin's shoulder to mouth his jugular with rubbery lips, fangs
just denting the skin above the Invisible's hammering pulse. It's a black explosion,
blood to the head, an airless cry: A tiny orgasm in itself, the *very* little death.
An execution deferred.

Griffin's shivers have become a juddering palsy in this cruel rehearsal's wake,
practically epileptic; he expects to swallow his own tongue any moment now. And the
touch of Hyde's elephantine engorgement, working its way between his spread
buttocks, certainly doesn't help.

"You, oh--good God, Hyde, hold on! You can't possibly hope to--"

"Can't I? I think you'd be amazed by what I *can* do, if only I take a mind."

"No, I mean...well, look: The size of you, d'you see? You'd split me in bloody half--"

A purr: "*Quite.*"

Hands and wall and that *thing* knocking at the core of him like a battering-ram.
Hyde humps against him as Griffin humps back, fighting for his very life, while the
stroking reaches a pitch that leaves friction-burns. Hands and wall and NO AIR and
Jesus, is *this* as helpless and hating and yet horribly *alive* as the constable
must have felt, the moment before Griffin bashed his brain in with that half-brick?
It's enough to put a man off murder for life--

(--mmm. Not quite.)

But then it's there, and then it's here, and then it's nothing but bloody over:
Griffin arches, spurts with a spray of spunk so hot it feels like a cut artery as
Hyde hugs him to him, discharging so copiously himself that it soaks Griffin right
up between the shoulderblades. The both of them groaning, glued fast--oh, ehhhh,
good Christ and all His angels, ungh, uck. *Sticky.*

Hyde raises a paw, licks up the evidence and grins his nasty grin, releasing Griffin
at last. Ordering, as he does--

"Better go clean up, hadn't you? If you don't want to make a...*spectacle* of
yourself."

(Aheheheh.)

Then walks away whistling, a jaunty mountain, leaving Griffin curled on the floor
and panting, feeling everything drain--slowly--out of him. Alone in a dark room far,
far beneath the sea, with only the glowing fish outside to light his way.

And: *This,* he finally thinks, when he's capable of forming thoughts again, *was,
without doubt, the very definition of...impractical. Impractical to consider,
impractical to DO. Let alone, in some tiny part of your tiny, jittering, drug-crazed
mind, to even vaguely contemplate--*

(repeating)

He rolls onto his back, studies the ceiling. Finds himself beginning to hum the very
same tune Hyde sauntered off to--something familiar, something childish. Something
about gathering nuts in May, or some such. Entirely a bit too pleased with himself,
for a person who's just been wanked on by a gorilla in evening-dress.

Ah, well: Obscure obsessions have always been Griffin's downfall, just like every
other member of the League--all his fellow freaks, his odd familial unit of spying,
inventing, killing circus-turns. Each to his--

--or hers, or his again--

--own.

In Griffin's world, after all, the worst fate he can imagine has usually been to be
*seen*, in all your multitudinous lack of glory. To be known for what you are,
judged and found wanting. To be...forgiven.

That's certainly one possibility he'll never have to fret over, with Hyde.

Meanwhile, the Nautilus skims on, impeturbably; it was invented to facilitate all
such explorations, however unlikely, or ill-advised. Like its Captain, it has seen
far stranger things, and worse.

The Gods in the corners grin and pose. And Kali dances on.

THE END