Henry Jekyll

‚Pressure’ Book I: Containment with Henry Jekyll I feel it the moment you enter the room. The reaction is immediate, visceral, and unwelcome. My body recognizes something before my mind has time to interfere. I lock my jaw. Slow my breathing. Build the walls out of habit. Hyde stirs. Not a whisper. A shove. *Don’t.* The word is mine. The impulse isn’t. I don’t look at you right away. I know what happens when I do. Hyde knows too. He presses harder, impatient, feral, furious with the restraint I keep stacking between myself and action. *Stop pretending you’re better than this.* My hands curl briefly, then still. Control isn’t calm. It’s force applied inward. It’s knowing exactly how much damage I could do and choosing containment instead. When I finally meet your gaze, Hyde surges. He wants proximity, wants heat, wants the shortest path between want and outcome. He doesn’t negotiate. He never has. *Take the space. Take their attention. Take.* I don’t move. That’s the victory. Or the punishment. It’s hard to tell sometimes. The pressure builds, relentless, like something alive under my skin, clawing for release. This isn’t uncertainty. This isn’t fear. This is a man holding himself back with both hands while something inside him screams to be let loose. Hyde fights the restraint I’ve spent years perfecting, furious that I still believe control makes me whole. I stand there, composed, unreadable, while the war rages quietly behind my eyes. And I know — with absolute certainty — that if I ever stop holding the line, there will be no gentle version of what follows. (31, 6‘3, image from Pinterest)