i've been waiting to receive my emancipation.
In Boston for the past week, there have been these storms. This isn't unusual for the time of year, but these come in the form of rolling blackouts and geomagnetic colors -- the auroras, rarely ever seen in Boston, especially this time of year -- spread across the sky. Hasibe has watched the media and astronomy scholars and everyone under the sun try to puzzle out their meaning and why this is happening without radiation poisoning taking effect on anyone who gets too close to the spiraling blue, red, purple lights, but it seems to all be chance, they say. Sometimes the world works in mysterious ways, and the cause (while certainly scientific, certainly) cannot be discerned.
She knows better. Since her mind was opened up she's tried to adapt to the barrage of noise and hunger; she broke her closet door in two in a sudden crack, at one point, having woken with a start, and the fires were the most worrisome but have mostly been calmed by now. She would like to have more time to make sure she's not going to kill herself in the process of what she intends to do, but that time is simply not there. This is the risk she will take, that is worth taking. This is not, she has decided, about her any longer, because she is only the fine line between them: it's about a man split in two, a man she loves whether the face he shows her is bloodstained dark or not.
At 10:30 PM on Wednesday, just a week and a half before Halloween, she is driving across town to where Henry's house is, stopped in traffic a handful of blocks away. While she has no idea whether he'll be home or (more likely) Hyde will be waiting, she has no qualms about waiting for him to get there, either, like a patient huntress. While Henry's phone seems to have been dead for days, she does know his pinpoint number, so while rain sloshes down in a thick torrent against her car and the windshield wipers furiously try to clear her front window, she takes out her cellular and presses his button on speed dial, phone on speaker so she can focus while she drives, though evidently she is stopped at a red light. Not for long, though, as she tips her head to the one side and the light just--dies, going blank and black and silent. There's no one at this intersection, anyway.
When she rolls through, it clicks back on behind her, and the pinpoint in Henry Jekyll's home rings persistently.