LOST IN THE REALMS OF MADNESS
AN ACCOUNT BY HENRY JEKYLL M.D.
written in the third person
edited by Dennis E. Power

Being an account of the journey of Henry Jekyll M.D. of his visitation to outré dimensions and entrapment therein with some observations on the habits, culture and nature of the inhabitants of these outré realms.

 
    In late 1909, having ended his sojourn in New York City in the United States of America rather abruptly, (1) again thanks to the interference of Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll decided to depart for shores he hoped to more welcoming. He traveled to South America and thence to Australia. He picked Australia as his final destination because it was sparsely populated and said population were mostly convicts who would be less likely to scrutinize or ask questions should Hyde come bursting forth. If Hyde lost control then the only people injured would be criminals.

    However he soon discovered that Australia, especially in the Melbourne and Sydney areas resembled for the most part typical English cities. These were not rowdy frontier towns where lawlessness was lax. Jekyll first sailed into Melbourne and found that his upper crust, English background fit in quite nicely. For a few months anyway. Melbourne had the usual temptations of civilization, including drink, gambling and prostitution.

    He also found the Australian temperament, while still having a veneer of English detachment was also more apt to become violent. They were also more prone to casually use insults and foul language in their everyday speech. Jekyll found himself drawn to places of bad repute. In one rather seedy pub/boarding house called Magwitch's a young Australian jokingly mocked Jekyll's efforts to win over a young lady, using crudity and curses to make his point. Highly offended, Jekyll felt Hyde's personality slipping out from his control. Jekyll managed to slam the cork back on the bottle of his consciousness but by then one man was dead and his companions were sorely wounded. The rest of the patrons had fled in terror; the owner had run for the constable. Jekyll heard the owner (2) give a very exacting description of him.

    Jekyll  fled north to Sydney. He found Sydney while still a paragon of English colonialism, a rougher, more bustling city. With all the immigrants it reminded him a bit of an American city. There was a Chinatown district similar to London's  Limehouse. When he felt his Hyde begin to surface every so often, he would self prescribe a visit to an opium den. The opiate soothed away his rage and anxieties, quelling the presence of Hyde.

    During one such visit to an opium den, Jekyll blearily became aware of an elderly Chinese gentleman staring directly into his face. The Chinaman quickly lay back on his pallet and went back to his own opium pipe. Jekyll had the nagging feeling that he should know this person but could not place him.

     One evening  few days later while Jekyll was exiting  Dawkins' gaming house) whose motto on the door was "We don't pick your pocket!"), five men pushed him into an alley and threw a fishing net over him. The men were yelling at him in accented English and attempting to quiet him by hitting him. Henry Jekyll's control slipped away as rage consumed him. Edward Hyde emerged, ripping the net apart and he killed four of Jekyll's would be abductors. Hyde ran after and caught an old Chinese man that was directing the abduction. Jekyll battled for control and emerged. The older Chinese man slipped away as Jekyll and Hyde fought an internal battle.

    Jekyll noticed a ring upon one of the dead attackers. A chill went down his spine. He heard a constable's whistle and ran from the scene of the crime. Jekyll regretted not letting Hyde kill the elderly man. The elderly man was one of the henchmen of the Devil Doctor whom Jekyll and team members had run against in 1898. He had heard that the Devil Doctor had returned to Asia and had been crippled but that could have been just a rumor.

    Yet, whatever the truth the Devil Doctor's organization seemed to still be functioning. Jekyll decided to once again pull up stakes and hit the road. He traveled by rail to Brisbane. He took rooms in the better area of town, reasoning that he would be able to spot the Devil Doctor's agents more easily that way. Jekyll stayed at the Transcontinental Hotel. He was startled to see a photo of Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes behind the desk. (3)  The clerk informed him that Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson had been guests at the hotel in 1888. Jekyll had not been there for two days when he spotted a tail. At least he thought it was a tail. Buying a few supplies and a horse, he headed out of Brisbane for the bush.

    Late afternoon, just outside of Ipswich, he came across a traffic accident; a wagon had overturned, seriously injuring the driver. Four men, one of whom appeared to be a young constable albeit curiously a half-caste, were attempting to lift the wagon off of the victim. Jekyll dismounted and gave them a hand. His added strength made the wagon seem much lighter. (This may have been the result of his lycanthropic strength).

    Jekyll informed the men that he was a doctor and that he would treat the man. He told the four rescuers what he supplies he would need and two of the men and the Constable went to fetch them.

    Jekyll boiled the water that the men brought and sterilized the rags.  The driver had a couple broken ribs and a compound fracture of the leg. Fortunately none of the major arteries or veins were ruptured.Dosing the patient with some of his supply of laudanum, he and the men straightened the leg, pushing the bone back into place. He stitched up the tear and they bound the leg in cloth and bark strips that the Constable had brought. Jekyll then sealed the leg with a cast of mud and clay, using sterile water as a base.

    Two of the men were passing colliers; the third was the owner of a house near to the accident. He told Jekyll that they could take the injured man to his house for the evening then in the morning, Jekyll and he could take the patient to his families holdings near Darling Downs

    The man who guested Jekyll and his patient was Johan Mengel. His wife Mary came bustling out of the house and helped Jekyll and Johan carry the unconscious man inside the home where they rested him on blankets on the floor. Jekyll was surprised that the young Constable who had followed them had not helped carry the man inside. He stood outside the door by the horses and wagon.

    As soon as the patient was settled down, Johan told the Constable he could come inside the house but not to touch anything. The Mengels gave him water and a half a loaf of bread but had him eat out by the wagon.

    Jekyll was treated to a full meal. He ate two thirds of it and asked if he could give the rest to the Constable

    Mary replied it was better than throwing it away.

    The Constable eagerly ate his plate. Johan Mengel sat outside in a straight back chair and smoke while he watched the young police officer eat. Jekyll declined tobacco.

    "Hey drongo, you're the half caste boy with the fancy moniker from the orphanage, eh?"

    "Yes, sir."

    Johan laughed, "Doc this here half-breed boy is an Emperor!" He winked at Jekyll. "Tell him your name, boy."

    "Bony, sir"

    "Tell him the whole thing, ya larrikan"

    Rolling his eyes, the Constable said, "Napoleon Bonaparte, sir" (4)

    Johan Mengel broke into hearty laughter. His laughter was interrupted by the moans of the patient. Jekyll followed Mengel inside. Bony stayed outside the house, looking in through the open window.

    "Dreamtime is here. All the time is dream time. Constant the dreaming. Doorways to the Dream. Treasures of the Gods, Gold of the Gods! Trash becomes cash! Dreamtime is here. All the time is dream time. Dreaming always." The patient muttered, sweating and moving about on his pallet in a combination of feverish pain and narcotic delirium."

   " Well, at least he knows he is dreaming". Jekyll stated with a small smile.

    "No, sir he refers to the Dreamtime. The Dreamtime is the beginning of knowledge, from which came the laws of existence. For survival these laws must be observed. The Dreamtime is also a native belief about the creation of the world. Long ago the ancestor beings rose from beneath the earth. The earth was then a flat plain in darkness. The ancestor beings moved across the world, creating as they moved. Out of the nothingness they formed substance in their journeys, they created the landscape, the mountains, the rivers, the trees, waterholes, plains and sand hills. They made the people themselves, who are descendants of the Dreamtime ancestors. They made the Ant, Grasshopper, Emu, Eagle, Crow, Parrot, Wallaby, Kangaroo, Lizard, Snake, and all food plants. They made the natural elements; Water, Air and Fire. They made all the celestial bodies; the Sun, the Moon and the Stars. Then, wearied from all their activity, the mythical creatures sank back into the earth and returned to their state of sleep.

    "Sometimes their spirits turned into rocks or trees or a part of the landscape. These became sacred places, to be seen only by initiated men. These sites have special qualities.

    "The Dreaming refers to each person's connection to the Dreamtime, his life's journey.

    "It is rumored that this man's people have on their lands a site sacred to a long gone tribe. This site is one of the places where the Ancestor beings rose from and returned to the Earth. It is said that this man's family sends gifts to the Ancestor Beings and they gift them with gold."

    Johan Mengel stared at the half-caste police tracker for a second and burst into another gale of laughing. "Stuff and nonsense! I am to bed. See you in the morning Doc."

    Jekyll looked at the boy questioningly. "Do you believe this story Bony, about this man's family?"

    The half-caste police officer drew himself up straight and said, "No, sir I am an educated man, I am civilized" With that he went to sleep in the wagon. He would be gone in the morning, back to his station, no doubt.

    In the morning the patient was fully conscious if in a great deal of pain. Jekyll doused him with laudanum. The man introduced himself as Marvin Awickerman. He offered to pay Jekyll ten pounds of gold if he would take care of him until he was able to move around on his own.

    His funds nearly depleted and believing that the isolation without temptation would help keep Hyde in check, Jekyll agreed. Jekyll tied his horse to Awickerman's wagon and drove it deeper into the bush.

    Marvin's family holding was indeed near Darling, although it was an isolated and self-sufficient. There was a house and a farrier's shed next to it. There was also a large barn filled with various crates and supplies, looking like a warehouse stuck in the middle of nowhere.

    Awickerman told Jekyll that someone from his family was supposed to man the station at all times but his cousin had just taken off and left the place flat. The family's main estates were in Port Middlebay.

    Awickerman told Jekyll that if he help him fill the orders then there would be another five pounds or perhaps ten pounds of gold in it for him. Jekyll agreed. In the carpentry shop they made a crutch for Marvin Awickerman.

    Awickerman then lead him to a rocky hill near the house. Upon the face of the windswept reddish rock was an aboriginal design. It was a black circle comprised of a single line in a spiral etched into the stone and stained with pigment. Held fast in some rocks was a large wooden box filled with pieces of paper wrapped around rocks. Awickerman filled a burlap sack with the paper-covered rocks.

    Each paper had something scrawled on it in a clumsy and barely legible handwriting.  There were single items or multiple items. For example some of the items they filled were; three sticks of dynamite and four extra large rubber bands,  large steel bear trap, two springs, etc.

    Marvin Awickerman had Jekyll pull various items from the warehouse shelves. Those things that were not in stock, Marvin Awickerman either made in the carpentry or farrier shop or wrote "not in stock"

    They loaded up the cart and drove back to the hillside. Jekyll suspected that Awickerman was insane from the isolation and desolation but played along. He took cover when Awickerman tossed the rubber bands and unlit sticks of dynamite at the black spiral. The items hit the spiral, seemed to freeze in midair for an instant and then disappeared.

    A few moments later a large lump of gold came rolling out of the spiral. Awickerman picked it up and then threw the bear trap into the spiral. Another lump of gold followed. They did this until the wagon was empty except for the gold that had taken the place of the trade goods.

    Over the next three weeks, Jekyll learned something of Awickerman's family, although, he suspected that not all that he was told was the truth. Awickerman's Grandfather volunteered to emigrate to Australia, bringing with him his wife, four children and an orphan ward. He had been a ne'er-do-well businessman and accountant in England and had been thrown into debtor's prison a few times which accounted for the voluntary emigration. He felt certain that in Australia something would turn up.

    The family had squatted on this land at first, attempting to farm the dry, baked soil. Although his grandfather had been a kind, even-tempered man he had become totally frustrated with his failure as a farmer and flung a hoe at the spiral  design on the rocky bluff. Thinking it was a native curse on this land. It turned out to be the family's salvation. The hoe disappeared. Awickerman's son was hot to go after it but Awickerman stuck his head in the spiral and immediately felt nauseated, disoriented and in total darkness. He forbade anyone going in there.

    A day after the hoe had been thrown through the spiral, a piece of paper was found blowing across the ground. It had apparently come from the spiral. "Was able to use hoe as trap. Speeding bird stepped on end and wood smacked him in the face, killing him. Name remuneration."

    Awickerman asked for gold and tied the note onto a rock and tossed it in the spiral. He received a nugget about the size of a fist. Another note came through asking for another device.

    Awickerman discovered that he had a knack for creating items that the notes asked for in a carpentry shop or forge. He also began to warehouse other things requested by the notes that were not otherwise available. As the family's fortunes grew, they moved to Port Middlebay where Awickerman became a prosperous merchant and eventually a magistrate.

    Yet he felt an obligation to the mysterious writer of notes and had one of his sons or and eventually sons in laws man the station for a four month period. This duty was passed onto the grandsons as well.

    Marvin Awickerman had sent a note off to his family via a passing bushranger; he explained what had happened and the fact that he was being help by a friend.

    There was a steady flow of gold and occasionally silver through the spiral on their end. The site of so much gold brought forth Jekyll's baser instincts, he felt Hyde begin to rise. He quelled the urges and dipped into his laudanum supplies.

    One morning about four weeks after Jekyll and Awickerman had arrived at the odd station in the Australian bush, two riders entered the stockade fence. They were dressed as typical Aussie bushmen with felt hats, moleskin pants, woolen shirts and thick boots. They also carried rifles and sidearms

    Rifles drawn, they approached Awickerman and Jekyll.

    "This the bloke, Mr. M?"

    "Yes,  take him pretty far from here and make it quick and painless. He has been a good deal of help to me. Awickerman answered and then turned to Jekyll with a sorrowful expression. "You understand Doc, it is out of my hands. You know too much."

    As Jekyll flamed into rage, Hyde began to emerge but a gun butt to the head knocked both identities insensible. Hyde awoke just as the moon was rising, the illumination felt exhilarating, although it was hard to enjoy it hog-tied and slung belly first over the back of a horse. Hyde emerged with a roar, snapping his bonds and biting a chunk of flesh from the horse. The horse screamed and reared flinging Hyde and the rider to the ground.

    Hyde made short work of both of the men; despite taking a couple of gun shots. He disposed of one of the screaming horse by breaking its neck with a punch. Hyde rode the remaining frightened horse back to Awickerman station house, following the trail by scent.

    Awickerman was no where to be found nor was the gold. He searched through the house and found none of the gold. He did however find some correspondence and saw Marvin Awickerman's real name. Jekyll remembered that name from somewhere but could not place it. (5)

    He thought about torching the station but decided that the fire would be too noticeable so took some food and other supplies. He rode past the spiral carving and noticed a chunk of gold there. Jekyll dismounted to retrieve it. His vision suddenly went red as a clap of thunder burst through his ears and chest. Jekyll was dimly aware of Marvin Awickerman standing some distance away with dynamite sticks in his hands.

    Edward Hyde sprang to his feet with a curse despite the torn and burnt flesh and broken bones of his body.

    Marvin Awickerman desperately lit and tossed another stick of dynamite at Edward Hyde. Hyde felt himself flung backwards by the midair explosion. He hit the spiral carving with a sickening thud, hung suspended for a second and then fell for a timeless time.

    Disoriented and nauseated, hurting from a dozen wounds that would have killed a normal man, Hyde fell through a polychromatic mist, a region of utter madness and shifting shapes, of fluid forms and liquid landscapes. In the ever changing forms, shapes and designs that floated before his eyes there were instances where they were nearly recognizable but even attempting to shape to this disorder caused mental anguish.

After falling for what could have been hours or days, Hyde finally popped out and landed in an explosion of dust on hard ground. It was a bright summer day or so it appeared the sky were an oddly bright blue and the sun an intense yellow shade. The bright pastel colors of everything so far as he could were overly brilliant and the shapes were askew. For it was like he was trapped in a watercolor or chalk painting. There was a faint shimmer, almost a glow to everything. Even the dirt was overly bright. It felt solid yet fluid, almost spongy.

    The landscape resembled a surreal version of the barren lands he had just departed.

Hyde lay on a dirt, sparsely grassed bit of land next to a road covered with black pavement, on either side of the road were craggy, eroded cliffs. His back was leaning against a wooden post that had a metal cylinder atop of it.  Hearing a sound from the distance he saw a dust cloud moving towards him at an incredible rate of speed. The dust cloud stopped right in front of him and dissipated instantly. Standing before him was a large bird looking like a cross between a roadrunner and an ostrich. The bird was also strangely shaped and colored. From out of no where a sign appeared in a prehensile wing tip, Accelerati Incredibilulis. The bird then emitted a loud beeping sound and the dust cloud formed and moved on down the road at a great velocity.

    He then heard a sound of pinging and saw another incredible site. Closing fast on the bird  was an animal that looked like an upright humanoid wolf. He had a napkin tied around his neck, a knife and fork in either hand and was hopping down the road on a pair of giant springs attached to his feet. The bird stopped in the middle of the road and the wolf creature increased his speed. The springs caught in a crack in the road, snapping the wolf-like creature back hard enough to flatten him against the pavement. He became  a thing resembling a furry flapjack with arms and legs, still carrying a knife and fork. Like a weird furry crab it scuttled after the speeding bird.

    The combination of his injuries and the dizzying sense of dislocation made Edward Hyde faint.

    Henry Jekyll awoke lying on a four-posted bed with a feather mattress. Next to the bed was a nightstand that had upon it a lit lamp with a paisley shade and glass pitcher of water. He was in a cavern of some sort, yet the lamp was plugged into the smooth rock of the cavern wall. Dry mouthed Jekyll drank some of the water, to find it cool, yet oddly greasy and with an odd taste.

    Wandering around he found the cavern to have several rooms, all sparsely but tastefully furnished.

    He entered a library with stacks and stacks of books, in the center of the room was a large overly stuffed armchair which sat upon a Persian carpet. Next to the armchair was a tall lamp, a small table and an ash receptacle. Sitting in the armchair was the humanoid wolf, which has so shocked Edward Hyde that the memory of the event bled over into Jekyll's consciousness.

    The humanoid wolf sat with his legs crossed, reading a book. He wore wire frame glasses and smoked a cigar.

    Feeling Jekyll's presence, the humanoid wolf placed a marker in his book and placed it on the table.

    "You do not look like a rocket." spoke the humanoid wolf in a cultured almost British sounding voice. " I ordered a rocket, are you supposed to help me build one."

    Jekyll sat down hard on the cavern floor. "What are you?

    Grinning doggishly, the humanoid wolf said, "I have been called many things, Carnivorous Vulgaris,  Road Runner Digestus, Eatibus Anythingus, Famishus Famishus, Eatius Birdius, Eternaliii Famishii, etcetera, etcetera. I prefer to be called Wile E. Coyote, Genius."

    Peering at Jekyll over the rims of his glasses he remarked, "We don't have many of your kind here and I never expected to see one pop out of my mailbox."

    Jekyll soon discovered that he had landed a bizarre analog of the Southwestern United States. (6) The Coyote told him how he had started placing orders in his mailbox and would receive items inside it. The mailbox would expand to accommodate items larger than itself. Originally he had just placed the orders in the mailbox but the Retail Company had insisted that he tie the orders around rocks. Jekyll attempted to squeeze inside the mailbox and return to his world but the mailbox would not expand for him.

    The Coyote was aware as were most of the inhabitants of this place that there were other planes of existence besides their own. Of course, they believed that this was the true existence and the others were pale imitations. Coyote told Jekyll there were various theories and belief systems floating about in the Tooniverse, the two main ones were that the world was the result of Dreaming Gods, or God. Various names were attached to him or it, The Render, Georgorr and The Gardner. Others posited a Great Animator- Giver of Life and Form. (7) Coyote leaned towards the latter, although it did not explain why the other planes of existence had such odd and restrictive physical laws.

    Coyote said he had heard of rare cases where humanoids like Jekyll had came over and he had even heard of cases where people from the Tooniverse had gone over into the other planes but he did not know how or where. Wile E. Coyote said that one of his Coyote cousins claimed to be able to travel back and forth between the worlds but he was such a liar, Wile E. did not believe him.

    Jekyll helped Wile E. Coyote with one of the plots of his eternal quest to get a roadrunner as the bird was called. Most times he failed, with Jekyll's help he succeeded. As squeamish as Jekyll was about eating a possibly sentient creature, he did so because he was starving.

    They stripped the bird down to the bones, the flesh was quite odd, having the same indefinable quality as the water but it was filling and to a degree nourishing. Jekyll's body was able to digest the roadrunner although it was something with which he would never become accustomed.(8)

    After he finished eating Wile E. Coyote sat picking his teeth with a toothpick; his stomach distended to such an extent that he looked nine months pregnant. He played some Brahms on the Victrola while relaxing. The Coyote soon fell asleep. Seizing his chance Jekyll tied up the Coyote with some rope.

   Jekyll sent a note through the Coyote's mailbox that he had made certain that Awickerman and his family would never see another ounce of gold. Jekyll knew it would at least cause them some anxiety and/or hardship until the Coyote managed to free himself. He thought at first that the Coyote would starve to death as tightly trussed as Jekyll had tied him and felt a bit guilty about that. However as Jekyll had found out death was not permanent in this plane of existence (which he began to believe was a circle of hell not described by Dante) only a few hours after the bird had been picked clean to the skeleton had flesh begun to reform on it. By the end of the day, the Roadrunner had been completely regenerated; it shook itself off and disappeared down the road in a cloud of dust. As he would discover like most events in the Tooniverse, how long it took for a regeneration was not a constant, sometimes in was instantaneous with the bird forming from the outside in or top to bottom or inside out.

    Jekyll did not feel so guilty about the Coyote when he started down the road, hoping to find some sort of civilization.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde found themselves in that region of Chaos known variously as Doodleland or the Tooniverse. The inhabitants called it  that for no apparent reason than they called themselves Toons. Living in the Tooniverse was something that only the very strong-minded or those who possessed some forms of madness already could have withstood without going insane. Jekyll was in a place where time and continuity do not necessarily coincide. A place where cause and effect often bear no relationship, except of course by marriage.  Physical laws are ever changing and matter is fluid.

    Jekyll and Hyde were in Chaos, literal Chaos.(9)

    Dr. Henry Jekyll eventually made his way to a section of the Tooniverse with some analog to New York City. This was one of the more stable regions but as with every other place in the Tooniverse, it was subject to some degree of change. Inanimate objects could change design, color or even gain sentience and mobility. Jekyll heard rumors of humans like himself being trapped in the Tooniverse; he also heard tales of differing levels of the Tooniverse and differing versions of it existing side by side. He dismissed the latter as rumors.(10)

    Although there were cycles of day night and seasonal cycles, they were erratic and arbitrary. They threw his circadian rhythms out of balance. There was no time sense in the Tooniverse,  a human being in the Tooniverse was,  barring accident,  practically immortal and unaging. Yet who would want to live forever in that madness!

   Jekyll discovered that the life expectancy of a human being was not too great. Toons could suffer any number of fatal accidents and not really die, however if  a human being smoked a cigar that turned out to be dynamite or was run over by a steam roller or a train or fell from the window of a 88 1/2 floor building, they would die. The corpse would eventually break down into its components and the raw material would be absorbed into toonstuff.

Trapped in this horrifying dimension, Henry Jekyll decided to devote his scientific knowledge to allow him to fit in by becoming a Toon. He had heard rumors of Toons becoming human, albeit briefly through sexual contact with a human being. Although he could have studied how this was accomplished by actually participating in such activity, he was afraid that the release of his passions would release Edward Hyde. He also found the idea unnatural and nauseating.

    By using tissue and blood samples of humanoid Toons, Hyde began to use the materials from the Tooniverse to create a serum. However because he was using chemicals derived from toonstuff, it had an off effect. The chemical portion did in fact turn him into a Toon but into a temporary Toon version of Hyde, more monster than man.

    Some smart aleck Toon kept painting over Dr. Jekyll's name and replacing it with Dr. Jerkyl. Dr. Jekyll went to get some paint remover and had only returned in time to see his formula affect other creatures in the Tooniverse.

    Apparently two sentient Toon dogs had chased a sentient Toon cat into the laboratory. The cat had drunk some of the formula and had been transformed into a Hyde type creature. The Cat had ripped to pieces one of the dogs who ran from the lab. His partner urged him to return and face the cat. The cat had departed but a fly had drunk the formula and turned into a giant Hyde fly. It tore the Toon dog to pieces as well. (11)

    Jekyll enticed the cat to visit his lab by leaving out a saucer of milk. He then took a tissue and blood sample for a piece of fish. Jekyll made some modifications to his formula and drank some. Unfortunately it still turned him into a Toon Hyde.

    As Hyde tore through the neighborhood, the cat chased a little sentient canary bird into the lab. The canary bird drank some of the formula and became a giant yellow Hyde. The bird kept reverted back and forth. As soon as the bird reverted to his normal self the cat would chase and capture him. Whenever the bird's fear of imminent death became overpowering he would revert back to the Hyde form. The canary Hyde eventually ate the cat. The cat of course recovered in a few hours and convinced himself it had only been a dream. (12)

    Feeling that he would never achieve a break through without a test subject, Dr. Jekyll decided to get a rabbit. He carefully fed carrots to a rabbit at a nearby park for days before gaining the sentient rabbit's trust. He painted a glowing picture of the luxuries that the rabbit would have if he came to live with him. Dr. Jekyll lead the rabbit to his room, which was indeed luxurious and plied him with carrots, washed down with carrot joyjuice.

    When the rabbit had passed out Dr. Jekyll took a blood sample that he added to his formula. He tried the formula once more. It still had the same effect, however like the bird his transformations from one state to another took place rather frequently. The strange monster that kept appearing terrified the rabbit. It is only after witnessing the transformation that the rabbit  realizes that the Doctor is the monster.

    The Doctor promises not to drink anymore of the formula if the rabbit will stay. Jekyll notices that the rest of the small amount of formula he had left was gone, he asked if the rabbit drank it. Insulted the rabbit storms out of the house.(13)On his way back to his hole he transformed into a Hyde rabbit while still retaining his persona. People ran screaming from him and he could not understand it. It is only after returning to his rabbit hole and seeing himself in a mirror that he realized what has happened. He returned to Dr. Jekyll and they found an antidote for Bugs Bunny's condition.

    After his cure, Bugs Bunny would return to visit Dr. Jekyll every so often. Without proper chemicals freed of Toonstuff, Dr. Jekyll felt that his task was almost hopeless, yet he persevered having little else to help him keep what little remained of his sanity. He had come to hate his place and all of its insane inhabitants with a passion.

     It was from Bugs Bunny during one of his visits that Dr. Jekyll learned of the Tooniverse's rift into what Jekyll called the real world. The rift was known as Toon Town.

    Bugs stood in Dr. Jekyll's lab watching him work on his human into Toon formula. Noisily eating a carrot and kibitzing.

    Pointing the carrot at Jekyll he asked, "Say, Doc, why you wanna be a Toon anyways?"

    "Because I am tired of being alone, I want to fit in."

    "Okay, but I don't know why you don't just go live with humans like yourself"

    "What! You know where there are other humans?"

    "Oh, yeah, a whole world full of 'em, well, mostly."

    With an inarticulate scream Jekyll grabbed the rabbit by his furry chest and dug his fingers in hard while screaming directly into to the rabbit's face in the overblown style Jekyll had learned over the years in the Tooniverse.

    "Why didn't you tell me!"

    Bugs extracted himself from Jekyll's grip with a falsetto screech of "Hey, don't wrinkle the merchandise!"

    Composing himself, Bugs answered Jekyll's question, "I didn't tell you cuz you didn't ask."

    "How do I get there!"

    "Keep your shirt on. Jeepers, Doc keep that up and you're gonna blow a gasket. Come on I'll take you. I learned how to tunnel into other worlds my great uncle Whitey."

Bugs then tunneled into the floor of the lab, down, down, down, up, sideways, up, down, sideways… Well you get the idea, After tunneling the thorugh the entirety of the chaos realm, Bugs exited in Toon Town.

    Jekyll grabbed the Bunny by the throat and squeezed. Bugs head turned red as an apple and swelled three sizes larger. His eyes popped out of his head on springs and bounced to and fro.

    Jekyll released the Rabbit and his head and face returned to normal after a good shaking.

    "This is not the human world."

    No, Doc you walk down this road, right to that gate right there. He pointed to a large wooden gate that resembled a medieval drawbridge. A sign hung in the middle of the air pointed at the gate, "This Way Stupid!"

    Jekyll hurried down the lane and through the gate and exited into the Los Angeles of 1938. It was the real world, solid, unchanging, married to physical law and linear time. Jekyll wept but quickly quelled that emoton lest Hyde take advantage.

    He soon discovered that this was not his world but it was much closer than the Tooniverse had been. It was a human world but one in which Toons had been integrated into the history since the dawn of time. Toon Town was one of four or five areas where the Tooniverse bled into this particular universe, the others were in Arkansas, Tokyo, Germany and China. Although Toontown was the largest and it appeared to be the only one with a direct connection to the Tooniverse.

    Jekyll had to adjust to living in a world populated with humans and real materials again. Unlike the Tooniverse his wants and needs were not readily met merely by a sort of wish fulfillment. He had to find a job, a place to stay and a way to work on his research. He decided to continue with it since there was a subculture of both humans who wished to be Toons and vice versa.

    Under the name of Harry Jackal, Jekyll took a job with one of the largest employers in the United States, Acme Industries.

    Jekyll took a job in their chemical research laboratories. Shortly after beginning work, he noticed the ubiquitous presence of  the firm's owner, Marvin Acme in the form of portraits scattered through out the factories. Jekyll felt that he knew this man from somewhere. The face was extremely familiar. After staring at it for several weeks, he suddenly had insight. Take off several pounds, take off twenty-odd years and add more hair and Marvin Acme was a spitting image of Marvin Awickerman. Jekyll did not know if this Marvin Acme was just a person with an uncanny resemblance to Marvin Awickerman, this plane of existence's doppelganger or the one who exiled him in the realm of madness called the Tooniverse.

    Jekyll hired a newly formed detective agency to investigate Marvin Acme, a pair of twin brothers, Valiant and Valiant. Teddy Valiant handled Jekyll's case.

    Marvin Acme, actual name apparently Marvin B. Awickerman had arrived in Los Angeles circa 1910. Ostensibly his origins were Australian but they could find no records of him having arrived by ship, nor did the cities of Adelaide,  Sydney or Brisbane have any records on Marvin B. Awickerman.  Awickerman shortened his name first to Ackerman and then to Acme. He also rather quickly lost the Aussie accent.

    Ackerman began his career as a purveyor of novelties. He became one of the first employers in the country to utilize the then looked down upon Toons as anything but servants or manual labor. Ackerman had a genius for getting the Toons to create new items out of toonstuff and mass producing them in Toontown. He also had a great gift for designing unique combinations of toonstuff and real world material. His business expanded rapidly beyond mere novelties and into manufacturing foodstuffs, building material, weaponry, transportation, communications and many other ventures.

Acme Industries became one of the largest employers in the United States with factories abroad. In addition, Acme Studios was one of the first motion pictures studios, Marvin Acme sold his controlling interests to R.K. Maroon his junior partner and the studio became Maroon Studios.

    Marvin Acme had acquired the land rights to Toontown in the early twenties before the land boom and so held a virtual monopoly on the use and importation of toonstuff. It angered Jekyll to no end that while he had been languishing in an insane asylum called the tooniverse Marvin Acme a.k.a. Awickerman had grown rich and powerful.

    According to Teddy Valiant, Marvin Acme put on a happy go lucky, buffoonish front but it was a front, he was at heart a rather ruthless business man not above sharp practice, price fixing or undercutting competitors. If he had a flaw it was his predilection for Toon women, especially redheads. Although when the women became a nuisance, Acme would pay them off. There were a couple of Toon women who claimed Marvin Acme was the father of their children.

    Of these, one of these women later recanted and left Toontown altogether to live in the Tooniverse. If she had a kid it was born there. Jackal hired Teddy Valiant to locate this kid if possible.

    Jekyll's stay in the Tooniverse became in his mind one of continuous torture, he began to hate Marvin Acme even more than he already had for exiling him there, he also came to despise the Toons and all they represented. His chemical researches were geared towards the twin goals of destroying Marvin Acme and his source of wealth, Toontown and possibly even the Tooniverse.

        Jekyll knew rationally that Toontown probably represented the only chance he had to return to his home plane of existence but was irrational enough not to care. He first discovered that what he had learned in the Tooniverse was going to be of very little use here because Toons inside the universe rift of Toontown and those Toons in the real world were different than Toons in the Tooniverse. Passing through the dimensions somehow changed them; they acquired more concretion while still being extremely malleable. This also had its variations.

    Toons from the Tooniverse could transform themselves into any shape or size  they wished, many retained one basic shape out of preference and to conserve energy. However Toons born in Toontown were more constrained in their abilities, they had varying degrees of limitation as to size or shape.

    Toons born in the real world were locked into one malleable form, although they could alter their bodies into various shapes and sizes the body would eventually return to its original form when they had exhausted all of their energy. For example if run over by a steamroller the body would flatten to an extreme degree of flatness, width and length but would eventually flow back into its original size and shape. Then there were the hybrids, Toons with human ancestry were often locked into forms which malleable to a degree as were all Toon bodies could not really change shape or size through any effort of their own. For example say a humanoid Toon has an anvil dropped on his head, the head will flatten and possibly be driven down into the chest cavity. The head will eventually regain its previous size and shape but had the Toon tried to flatten their head merely by will power they would most likely have failed. Also the more human ancestry a Toon had often determined if they could create thought or word balloons, though most Toons suppressed these when among humans.

 All Toons however were nearly impervious to harm in the real world; their bodies retaining, however limited, their shape changing abilities, an extreme plasticity and regeneration. It was not until Jekyll isolated the common element which all Toons used as the binding agent to create their malleable bodies, albeit unknowingly. In 1940 he created a substance that would, in time,  wear away part of at Toons' body but it was missing a vital ingredient.

    Meanwhile Teddy Valiant's search for Acme's kid continued and finally bore fruit. Valiant advised Jekyll to stay away from this kid, even Valiant's Toontown contacts didn't want to have much to do with him. Ignoring this advice Jekyll as Jackal arranged a meeting in a small dive in Toontown.

    Jekyll did not know much about Acme's family history but there must have been something wrong about it. Acme's genes had helped create what could best be called an aberration among the Toons, a Toon with thirst for mayhem and a hatred for Toons and humans in general. In human terms he was psychotic.

    He called himself Dominic Starr and claimed variously that his mother had been the sister of Brenda Starr or that he was descended from the criminal Belle Starr. He was tall, thin with neon red eyes. Although half human, his hybrid nature was not readily apparent. He in fact appeared to be a Tooniverse born Toon, able to manipulate his body into almost any size and shape. Although many Toons were rather violent, since they could not do any lasting damage to each other they had very little regard about causing bodily harm to one another,  Dominic was one of the few Toons that Jekyll had met that was deliberately malicious. He sought to hurt Toons as much and often as he could, often using logic and patience for a maximum payoff of pain and agony. He was almost afraid to unleash him on the mortal world yet as it would turn out, knowing he was half human and that his father had rejected him made him easy to manipulate on an emotional level.

    Jekyll was able to draw out his self-hatred especially for being a Toon, believing it was his Toon nature that had caused his father to reject him. Jekyll told him that he thought he knew who Dominic's father was but it would take some time to find out for certain, he invited Dominic to stay with him while he conducted the search. Dominic was not the typical Toon and asked what Jekyll would get out of it, Jekyll told him money. If his father was whom Jekyll suspected there should be a rich reward. To make him more suitable for life in the mortal world Jekyll gave Dominic moral instructions. Like many psychotics he took this to heart and became a fervent believer in law, order and discipline as defined by him.

    When Jekyll thought Dominic was sufficiently acculturated to the mortal world he told him who he believed was his father. Jekyll had thought hard about how to handle this, a soft approach or a direct confrontation. He let Dominic decide.

Dominic made himself a pest at Acme Industries through repeated attempts to see Marvin Acme.  He was finally ushered in on his sixth visit. Marvin Acme at first thought that Dominic's claim was a practical joke played on him by one of his cronies, such as W.R. Hearst, C.F. Kane, R.K. Maroon or J.B. Cord. When Acme realized that Dominic was serious in his accusation, his affable demeanor immediately altered into that of a hard-nosed businessman.

    Acme demanded to know if Dominic had any proof of his allegations. When Dominic admitted he had no proof, Acme told him to leave. Acme stated bluntly that he did not have any children, especially any Toon children.

    Dominic threatened to go to the press with the story. Acme laughed in his face and told him to go right ahead. Dominic tried to sell or even tell the story to all of the leading newspapers. None would touch it. They were either Acme owned, had large Acme advertising accounts or were owned by his Acme's friends. Not even the Toontown Tattler would publish the story, although Sid Hutchling's Blush and Hush scandal rag printed a line of sinnuendo about the claim. Sid Hutchlings immediately retracted the story and took a long vacation.

   Dominic's next plan of action was to try and get a court order for Acme to take a blood test to prove his paternity. None of the Judges, even the lone Toon judge, would rule for it. Dominic vowed to one day become a judge and dispense true justice.

    When Dominic persisted in making a nuisance, Marvin Acme paid a few gorilla and elephant bullyboys of his acquaintance visit Dominic, twist him like taffy and tie him into knots. When this failed to discourage him, Dominic was arrested on a trumped up charge and thrown into the Toontown Jail for a Million Bajillion years.

    Dominic spent two years in solitary confinement, plotting his revenge. He was released early when he promised to join the army if released. During his Army physical Dominic managed to convince the human doctor that he was effeminate, had flat feet and a bad ticker. He was labeled 4-get it!

    Dr. Jekyll was surprised to hear from Dominic Starr after an absence of two years. In the interim, he had come closer to finding a way to destroy Toons and also to make the ever elusive Toon to human or vice versa formula. Dominic wished to meet Jekyll in Toontown on a matter of the utmost importance. Jekyll reluctantly entered the realm of madness once more to meet Dominic.

    Toontown was in an uproar; somebody had robbed the Toontown National Bank for a zillion simoleons a few days before. The Toontown police were out of their depth as they were when investigating crimes of any magnitude. They had hired two human detectives, well known for solving Toon based crimes. The two human detectives had found Donald Duck's Kidnapped Nephews, had cleared Goofy of Spy charges, tracked down the notorious bank robbers Rocky and Mugsy, found the missing heir of the Fudd fortune and they had uncovered a gremlin sabotage ring in defense plants.

    Teddy and Eddie Valiant were hired to investigate the robbery. Teddy Valiant spotted Jekyll as he passed by the crime scene in front of the Toontown National Bank. He nodded to acknowledge him. Jekyll nodded back.

    Dominic Starr was staying in a dilapidated, thankfully non-animated building. It had originally been a grand hotel but had fallen on hard times was currently a tenement house.

       Dominic was staying on the twenty-seventh floor that had once been a grand ballroom with a full orchestra. A few of the instruments and a grand piano lay swathed in layers of dust and cobwebs.

    The first thing that Jekyll noticed however was the dozens of cloth bags stamped with $ and the name of the First National Bank of Toontown.  Dominic sprang over to Jekyll with a giggle in his high, grating voice.

    He began to explain his plan for destroying Marvin Acme and Toontown and getting revenge on the humans that had helped them out.

    He had robbed the First National Bank of Toontown because Marvin Acme was the Chairman of the Board. Acme also banked quite a bit of his money in it. Best of all The bank's funds were not covered by the FDIC. This would strike a blow to Acme and to the Toons.

  The money would give him operating capital to acquire power so he could go against Acme by using the Toons he claimed to love but secretly hated.

    Henry Jekyll only half listened to the plan for he could hear the police moving in, the dragnet scrapped the streets and sidewalks of Toontown, and he heard the Valiant brothers directing the search.

    Dominic had unwittingly placed Jekyll in great peril. If Jekyll was connected with Dominic and with this robbery his identity of Harry Jackal would be have to be abandoned. He would loose his position at Acme Research Laboratories, and so possibly loose all chance at getting revenge upon Marvin Acme and upon the Toons.

    Since his arrival in this world, Jekyll had kept his personalities in balance or rather with himself as totally dominant by judicious use of a chemical made of real world and Tooniverse elements. It was gaining some use among human psychiatrists for their patients. Acme marketed the product under the name of Sane-Up. They also had an anti-depressant drink known as Peppi-Cola. Yet despite having drunk one earlier in the morning, Jekyll felt the fear, anxiety and rage grow within him until it became a pain in his stomach, heart and limbs.

    Jekyll lost control. Just when he thought he had forever bottled the Djinn, Edward Hyde roared back into consciousness.(14)

    If Dominic Starr was startled that thin, elderly Dr. Jekyll suddenly became a large, hulking brute he did not demonstrate the fact.

    The "good" Doctor may not know how to handle you but I certainly do," Hyde told the Toon, contemptuously biting out the world good. Hyde lashed out at Dominic who eluded his blows by forming his feet into giant springs. Dominic hopped around as Hyde smashed down walls, broke holes in the floor, punched large gaps in the ceiling. Hyde picked up the piano and flung it at Dominic. Dominic folded himself like a box accordion and the piano flew over his head,  it smashed into the large viewing window and part of the wall. The silhouette of the piano was left in the smashed window and broken wall as it fell out into the street.

    Hyde heard screams of pain from twenty-seven floors below.

    Nice changing trick, see mine!" Dominic giggled as his hands grew into two giant buzzsaw that swept towards, and after Hyde. He was immediately on the defensive and could find no opening between the weaving of the blades. Hyde threw old musical instruments, band furniture and chunks of masonry and wood at Dominic.

    Dominic rabbit punched Hyde in the back of the head a giant boxing glove on a third arm he had grown, sent out of the window and around the building to come in a window right behind Hyde. Floored was surrounded by twittering birds that flew in circles around his head. The boxing glove formed into the grasping claw of a novelty grab-it machine and picked up Hyde swinging him past the x crossed boards nailed over an elevator shaft.

    Hyde fell twenty-seven floors to land in the basement. Little flying bells now accompanied the twittering birds circling his head. Edward Hyde clawed his way up the elevator shaft. He found Dominic and most of the money gone.

    There was one sack of banknotes pinned on the outside was a scrawled message, "Have a good time on me."

    Edward Hyde thought about tracking down the obnoxious Toon and tearing him apart like taffy or using the money for some pleasures that Jekyll denied himself.  Hyde decided that if he ran across the Toon during his pleasures he would take measures then. Until that time there was food, drink and women to be had.

    Henry Jekyll awoke in a woman's bed. Not a woman exactly, a female humanoid Toon. The woman bore a great resemblance to the Toon film star Betty Boop except she had a larger, crooked nose. As Jekyll surreptitiously moved around the dingy apartment looking for clothes, he found a couple of filmstrips. They showed the woman and Edward Hyde in various stages of dress. There was dialogue provided by the woman who had released word balloons. Jekyll believed that these were snapshots that would assembled into a Tijuana bible. Luckily he did not appear in any of them. Tossing them aside, he found oversized Hyde clothing and put it on.

    Looking like a tramp, Henry Jekyll hurried out of the apartment and out of Toontown altogether.

    A newspaper, the Toontown Crier showed that he had been gone for a week. The paper discussed the funeral of Teddy Valiant who had been investigating the robbery of the Toontown National Bank when a piano had been dropped on him. His brother Eddie had suffered a broken arm and leg but would make a full recovery.

    So Teddy Valiant was dead. Another soul to be added to account of the damnable Hyde.

    Jekyll returned to his job at the Acme Research Laboratory with the story that he had been unexpectedly called out of town on a medical emergency in the family. Since he was the boss and since his work history showed no other such incidents, he was allowed to use the time as vacation.

    He finally achieved a breakthrough in discovering a substance that would literally dissolve the Toon's real world or Toontown body. A trek to the Tooniverse and getting one of the Toons to drink it however produced nothing more than puffs of smoke coming out of the ears.

   Jekyll although a scientific genius was not a great strategic planner so he was stymied as to how to use the formula to hurt Marvin Acme and the Toons. He could carry out acts of sabotage, ruining Acme's production or go about spraying Toons but those actions would end in his being caught and jailed. Besides he still wished to create the conversion formula which he considered a more humane method of getting rid of the Toons than outright extinction. He almost regretted having broken ties with Dominic Starr.

    Jekyll discovered however that those ties were not broken. In late 1942, a tall man dressed all in black, including boots, pants, suit, shirt, cape and fedora and sun glasses came to visit him at his apartment, pushing his way inside. His skin was bit blotchy and his teeth were oddly iridescent. "Harry Jackal,  Prepare to meet your Doom!" said a low-pitched gravelly voice.

    Reaching into the black suitcoat, the visitor pulled out a gun and fired it at Jekyll. A flag with bang on it popped out the barrel. High pitched laughter that hurt Jekyll's ears rose from the visitor's mouth. The black gloved hand removed the sunglasses and a rubber mask revealing the white, insanely red eyed face of Dominic Starr.

    "Dominic!" Jekyll gasped.

    "The name is Mr. Doom, you have a secret identity, so do I." giggled the Toon. He wished to know how Jackal's research was coming. Jackal did not want to tell him about the Toon solvent as of yet, believing Doom would have used it immediately.

    Jekyll told him that he was close, very close.

    Mr. Doom asked if Jekyll was stymied by a lack of research subjects, namely Toon and human subjects to test his materials on. This question proved to Jekyll despite his outward appearance and insane behavior that there was some type of intellect in that skull.

    Jekyll admitted that was part of it but getting subjects would be dangerous.

    Not it you have an in with the Chief of Police. Mr. Doom answered. He went on to explain that things were falling into place with his plan to destroy Marvin Acme and his legacy of Toon created material and his pride and joy of Toontown. He had hired Freddy Valiant, brother of the late Teddy Valiant and the increasingly sauced Eddie Valiant. Eddie had taken Freddy into the business after Teddy's death. Freddy was not as virtuous or strong willed as his brothers. He would take cases sub rosa for cash and not let his brother know about it. Freddy had a couple of weaknesses, gambling and Toon women. Both habits cost him a bundle.

    "Toon women!", sneered Jekyll.

    Noting Jekyll's disgust, Mr. Doom formed himself into a voluptuous woman for a second and winked at him.

    Giggling again he told Jekyll that Freddie not only went for Toon women he went for humanoid barnyards, that is those Toons shaped like humanoid animals.

    Jekyll felt sick but motioned for Mr. Doom to continue. Freddy began to investigate Marvin Acme's acquaintances on the off chance Marvin was up to something no exactly legal. Freddy struck pay dirt when he saw an acquaintance of his leaving Marvin Acme's home. The acquaintance was Dodger Rabbit, a cousin to both Bugs Bunny and to R. K. Maroon's new find Roger Rabbit.

    Once every three days Dodger Rabbit would leave Acme's home with a large, heavy sack. He would then go to the First National Bank of Toontown and exit with large stack of simoleons. Freddy trailed Dodger in the bank one day and saw him exchange gold bars for cash. Dodger would leave the bank and hit the casinos, hurdy gurdy parlors, juke joints and hooch mills in Toontown or Los Angeles.

    At Mr. Doom's request, Freddy Valiant strong armed Dodger Rabbit, running him through a clothes wringer until he spilled the beans.

    Dodger was stealing the money from Acme. Acme had hired Dodger to be a courier. He was supposed to be taking the gold through Toontown and into the Tooniverse to Wile E. Coyote's mail box and dropping the gold in the mailbox addressed to someplace in Australia. Since Wile E. Coyote began ordering directly from the Acme Industries catalog he no longer dropped gold in the mailbox   Bugs Bunny had been Acme's courier until recently. Tired of his endless pursuit of the roadrunner Wile E. Coyote had on at least two occasions tried to capture, kill and eat Bugs Bunny. Bugs did not want any part of that action and quit the mule job, suggesting his ne'er do well cousin, Dodger.

    Mr. Doom explained how he went to visit Dodger Rabbit but as Dominic Starr and told him that he would end in the slammer unless, he did exactly as Starr told him. Instead of wasting his money frivolously, he wished Dodger to place it in a few off shore accounts in Cuba and the Bahamas. When Dodger had accumulated several thousand dollars of Acme's money he was to go to Cuba and contact Dominic where upon they would split the money fifty-fifty.

    Dodger was afraid; feeling that quitting would alert Acme to his embezzlement. Dominic explained that extradition from Cuba was rare so even if Acme squawked there wasn't anything he could do about it.

    Dodger Rabbit had done as Dominic demanded. When he arrived in Cuba he had a bank balance of 20,000 smackeroos. He withdrew a couple hundred and opened a line of credit for two grand. He hit the tables at the Kookycabana and promptly dumped three grand. When he went to extend his line of credit he was informed that his original line of credit had been denied. He would have to make good the money. Dodger Rabbit discovered that his bank accounts had been emptied and that he had not a cent to his name.

To make matters worse the owner of the casino where he had dropped a bundle was Tom Tom Le Tuit, the Chief of Police. Tom Tom slapped Dodger in jail. Lo and behold, there was a warrant out for Dodger from the United States. Dodger had embezzled a lot of loot from Acme Industries.

    Dodger was extradited and sent to the U.S. where he had, according to Mr. Doom's statement begun serving a long sentence for embezzlement.

    Mr. Doom had long term plans that he did not bother to tell Harry Jackal, he did tell him that much of the Acme gold went into Tom Tom Le Tuit's pockets allowing him to become the Drug Kingpin of the Caribbean. Mr. Doom told Jackal that Tom Tom's connections could get Jackal any type of pharmaceutical or chemical they needed.

    Jackal shrugged, but so could Acme.

    Mr. Doom giggled and pressed a carnation spritzing Jekyll's face with water. Jekyll frowned at himself for falling for this old Toon trick for a few seconds prior to loosing consciousness, realizing on the way to darkness that the liquid was not water but chloroform.

    Jekyll came to consciousness with a throbbing headache in a dark, stuffy place. Attempting to sit up he discovered that he was restrained tightly around the arms and legs. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness he realized that he was in a straitjacket in what appeared to be a padded cell. A rope was also wrapped about him. He began shouting to be released.

    When no one came and when he became frustrated and angry Jekyll began to lose control. Edward Hyde burst out of Henry Jekyll's clothing and tore the straitjacket to shreds, yet he remained bound by the rope. Cursing he kicked, rolled slithered and battered across the room managing to get one arm free of the rope. Hours later, or what appeared to hours later, he managed to get the rope off of him.

    Hyde then began to tear at the padded material of the walls, only to discover it would not tear, with some effort he could pull it out of shape but it would snap back. Pounding on it with his entire strength also had no discernable effect.

    A low-pitched gravely voice spoke over a hidden speaker. "Amazing material, toonstuff. Practically indestructible yet it can be malleable as a Toon wishes it to be. Yet you will find a way to destroy toonstuff so we can be rid of Toontown once and for all. You will also find a method to turn Toons into humans so I can be rid of this body I hate.

    "Before, I believe, you lacked incentive. You've claimed you wanted vengeance against Marvin Acme and to destroy the Toons but it was all a lot of talk. Now I on the other hand am a man of vision and of action. I will make your dreams a reality."

   " I have no idea what you are blathering on about! Hyde shouted furiously. "Come here and I will rip your head off!"

    "Come, Come, Dr. Jackal or should I call you Jekyll? Everyone knows you are Hyde and vice versa."

    Hyde screamed threats and obscenities.

I had hoped that this confrontational therapy would cure you of your affliction since we haven't the time for conventional therapy. Time for the shock treatment.

    The padded cell shimmered and the thick padding became grids of toonwire. All electrified. Hyde bounced around the room on large jagged currents of electricity like a ping pong ball in a dryer.

    Although the treatment continued for some time Hyde would not admit to being Henry Jekyll. The voice told Hyde that he could avoid the pain by going back to whatever dark recess of Jekyll's mind he had originated. The voice said that if there was the slightest inkling that Hyde was about to come out, Jekyll would be restrained and subjected to this treatment.

Edward Hyde showed the better part of valor and shrank, gradually forming into Henry Jekyll. Jekyll was aware of what had transpired and had felt much of Hyde's pain. Jekyll was given Sane-Up to keep his personalities in check. However he was a virtual prisoner of Mr. Doom and his partner Tom Tom Le Tuit.

     Jekyll was imprisoned in Le Tuit sanitarium, charmingly named Loco Grande Casa.

Tom Tom Le Tuit provided Dr. Jekyll with test subjects through the insane asylum. People would be arrested and then committed. Once committed they were, if deemed worthy, given over to Dr. Jekyll.

    Two of the Toon subjects were a pair of mice whose intellects were dramatically heightened by Dr. Jekyll's introduction of human DNA into their systems, although they also became rather unhinged by the experience. They escaped and would plague the world in years to come with many annoying but ultimately futile attempts to rule the world.

    Among the few human subjects was Freddy Valiant. His crime had been making a play for Tom Tom Le Tuit's girlfriend, the Toon film star Lupe Chihuahua. Since Lupe was a female dog, although quite humanoid in places, Jekyll did not feel much sympathy for him. Besides, Valiant wanted to become a Toon.

    The Toon conversion formula proved elusive however. Doom was becoming impatient and decided to start using the shock treatment on Jekyll as an incentive. Desperate to avoid this torture, Jekyll told Mr. Doom that he had made a breakthrough in the Toon solvent.

    Mr. Doom told Dr. Jekyll that as according to plan he was now Judge Doom. He had used some of the Bank robbery money to buy the election for Toontown's single judicial seat. Jekyll created a batch of the solvent and watched as Judge Doom picked up an Acme oversized wooden mallet that the interns used for patient motivation and it dropped into the vat. It bubbled away to streamers of colors.

    Giggling in his toonvoice, Judge Doom then dropped a live but not sentient Toon mouse into the mixture. It too, amid squeals of pain, dissolved into oily smears of color.

    Jekyll felt slightly sick when the next test was a sentient Toon, a blackbird whose crime had been trespassing in one of Tom Tom Le Tuit's farms where plants used for making narcotics were grown. Jekyll noticed that despite the struggles to survive, the Toon did not conjure anything to help him,  such as thought balloon to knock the Judge out. Jekyll reasoned that the pain of being dissolved was so great the Toons were not able concentrate on that ability.

    Judge Doom christened the solvent dip. With it he would be able to rein in the madness in Toontown, make the Toons aware of their own mortality and create fear and terror. Once Toontown was no longer such a hot property, Acme's profits would slip, Judge Doom would then be also to leverage Acme into selling Toontown or a least a portion of it, when that happened, Judge Doom would destroy Toontown and thus ruin Acme Industries.

    Jekyll thought this plan to be rife with logical holes and a bit silly but he considered the source. Of course he told Judge Doom nothing of his thoughts. Judge Doom felt generous and told Dr. Jekyll he would not have to be subjected to the shock treatment.

    Dr. Jekyll felt relief, which Judge Doom noted for he added with a toonish giggle, not more than once every two weeks.

    Dr. Jekyll observed something strange that turned out to be the key to the solution.  It was well known that in the real world and to a lesser extent in Toontown, Toons could laugh themselves to death. Their physical forms would keel over and a spirit form would drift out of the body, manifesting most often as cartoonish angels or devils. Then the Toon angels or devils would then drift out of sight in an upwards or downward direction.

    Jekyll saw a Toon laughing so hard that his spirit kept rising out of his body, yet the spirit would snap back into the body. This was something Jekyll had never heard of. The second odd thing was a Toon patient came to the sanitarium who was by all accounts and medical data deceased. However it had mobility, motor function and could vocalize despite looking like a rotting corpse. There was little cognitive ability however and it was highly suggestible.

    One of the guards, that is interns at the sanitarium told him that this was a zombie. If a Toon drank too many zombies he would become one. If the supply of the drink were stopped the Toon would eventually return to normal with no ill effects. Jekyll investigated further a zombie was comprised mainly of rum, the drink that the laugher had been drunk on had been rum and coke. Rum seemed to be a common factor but it did not make any sense. Jekyll slowly realized that it was logical only by the standards of this universe.

    Jekyll investigated the laughing to death syndrome a bit further. Toons who laughed themselves to death ended up in the Tooniverse but were usually never again able to manifest themselves in the real world, except as Toon ghosts. It as if their physical body was forever lost to them. Jekyll did not understand the mechanics but apparently when a Toon traveled outside the Tooniverse the physical laws of the universe to which they traveled imposed upon them a more physical form which was somehow unique to them.

    The extreme laughter breaks a Toon's connection to its unique shell, its physical manifestation in the real world when that is broken for some reason the lesser physical more energy form of the Toon from the Tooniverse was released and drawn to the Tooniverse. Yet dipping destroyed even the ghost form of the Toons so when underwent that process they were totally destroyed. Therefore Jekyll reasoned that even the ghost or quasi energy forms of the Toons in the Tooniverse bore some physical similarity  to those bodies that manifested in the real world.

    Part of the problem lay  with the differences in the material make up of toonstuff: raw toonstuff, Toontown toonstuff and real world toonstuff all had the same basic make-up but manifested on each level of reality differently.

    The Tooniverse was more of an energy state comprised of raw toonstuff or raw chaos, as he called, therefore in the Tooniverse Toons did not physically manifested as a solid, living tissue but rather a semi-physical body. However the bodies that Toons manifested in Toontown were more physically solid, solid enough actually to be susceptible to the Dip and for Toons to mate with humans and have offspring. In the real world Toons possessed bodies that were for all practical purposes living tissue despite being virtually indestructible and extremely malleable and ductile.  This was a crucial difference which took Jekyll a long time to discern the mechanisms involved mainly because the very concept of such interspecies relations disgusted him so much he found it a reprehensible line of research.

    Toons who mated with humans in Toontown and in the real world, despite whatever form they took remained Toons and had normal sexual responses and normal reproductive responses.(15) There was even the possibility of producing hybrid offspring. Although it was not generally discussed there were a couple of particularly nasty STD peculiar to Toon and Toon/human sexuality in Toontown and the real world: laughing crabs, ants in the pants, flesh-spots and ink-loss.

    In the Tooniverse however Toons having sex with humans became human. It was however not instantaneous and the sex had to be quite a lot over a short period of time. The effect was also relatively temporary. The practice was frowned upon by Toon society but since the human to Toon ratio in the Tooniverse was practically non-existent, there was no real danger of the conversions becoming widespread.

    Jekyll discovered the key element that converted Toons into humans during Toon/human mating in the Tooniverse was the infusion of human blood serum. In some manner he did not understand when a human and a Toon had sex in the Tooniverse, and it had to in great frequency over a short period of relative time, Toon-matter absorbed the human blood serum. This set off a chain reaction that caused the Toon to become fully human if only for a short time.  Why did the Toons become human and not say a fully living rabbit or whatever creature they appeared to be? To his great confusion, he discovered that the Toons had some elements of human DNA in their bodies, the basic stuff of the Tooniverse in fact had human DNA analogs in it. (16)

    You may of course find it hard to believe that Henry Jekyll knew anything about the DNA but nucleic acids had been identified and researched since the nineteenth century. In  In 1943, American Oswald Avery proved that DNA carries genetic information. He even suggested DNA might actually be the gene.

    Yet Jekyll's attempts to work with the human DNA analogs in toonstuff failed, he could not get it to respond the same way twice in any logical fashion. When he realized that Rum was a key factor he began to understand his problem. Rum was a key factor for its chemical base but also for what it represented. He could not use real world science or logical thinking to achieve a solution to this problem but he had to find a blend of science and Toon science. In essence he was making a combination of a chemical compound and a magic potion.

    So he wracked his brains for the alchemical knowledge he had compiled when attempting to make his original to separate himself into two persons. Using alchemical methods as his base he began to design a potion that would work for either Toon or human, which would after ingestion have completely changed a Toon into a human or vice versa by triggering a molecular chain reaction of the main component DNA. He was close, very close when Judge Doom visited him for an update in late 1946. Judge Doom was infuriated that Jekyll still had not found the correct formula for the Toon conversion program. He thrashed a nearby Toon potted plant into Toon jelly with his cane.

    "My plans are close to completion and cannot be stopped. I will soon be thanks to your failure one of the few Toons left in the world."

    Judge Doom explained how he had formed a partnership with several of the large businessmen, rivals, customers and outright enemies of Marvin Acme. Doom had convinced them that he could acquire Toontown and move it to a more centralized location so that toonstuff could be more easily exploited.  The land that was currently Acme Industries and Maroon Studios would be a clover leaf of the new interstate highway system and with this new system in place toonstuff could be more easily and less expensively transported to Acme's customers.

    Judge Doom planned to use R. K. Maroon to force Acme to give up or sell Acme studios, failing that he would kill him. Once Doom had acquired the rights to Toontown he would wipe it off the face of the earth with 5,000 gallons of heated dip, pumped at enormous velocity through a pressurized water cannon. It was only a matter of time before each and every remaining Toon was either dipped or converted to humanity.

    Jekyll asked what Doom hoped to accomplish by destroying Toontown, not that he had any real objection.

    Firstly Doom would achieve vengeance against Marvin Acme and destroy his legacy of using combined materials. Secondly the eyesore and region of madness known as Toontown would be forever expunged from Doom's consciousness. Thirdly, toonstuff would become quite rare and eventually obsolete. In a few days or weeks the bottom would drop out of the Stock Market, as businesses which relied on toonstuff would no longer be able to function. Businesses that relied on real world technology and materials would again surge to prominence and Judge Doom would ride that economic wave straight to the bank.

    Doom grabbed Jekyll by the throat in hand that had become a vise. "Do not disappoint me Doctor I need that Toon Tonic and soon!"

    Judge Doom had hoped to help distract Marvin Acme by having Dodger Rabbit broken out of jail. However the rabbit's proved only to negligible to Acme. The only Rabbit he was interested was Jessica Rabbit, Roger's humanoid Toon wife. Doom asked R. K. Maroon to make Jessica Rabbit distract Marvin Acme.

    Dodger showed up in Cuba and began pretending to Roger Rabbit as part of a ploy to make the Roger more susceptible to persuasion through blackmail. Dodger ran up debts at Tom Tom Le Tuit's casinos that the Judge promised to make good.

    Despite Judge Doom's acquisition of Maroon studios and the surrounding lands, despite his murders of Marvin Acme and R.K. Maroon and his attempt to frame Roger Rabbit for those crimes Judge Doom failed. He not only failed in his attempt to destroy Toontown and Acme, his actions lead to the Toons via Marvin Acme's will gaining control of Toontown, Acme Enterprises and the monopoly on toonstuff (17)

    Judge Doom was destroyed by some of his own Dip courtesy of Eddie Valiant and Toontown became the common property of the Toons. Valiant finally believed that justice had finally come to the Toon that had killed his brother Eddie. As fate would have it Valiant would soon meet up again with his long lost brother Freddie.

    Two weeks after Judge Doom's demise Jekyll formulated a conversion potion that worked. Toon Tonic first turned Freddy Valiant into a Toon. Jekyll discovered that there were certain minor chemical differences between a normal Toon and one created by the formula. He thought the differences insignificant.  Freddy Valiant made an even bigger play for Lupe Chihuahua. However Lupe's boyfriend Tom Tom Le Tuit did not like that so he kept buying Freddie free drinks.  They were Zombies and soon robbed Freddie of all free will and made him into a zombie.

    Kirk Enigman, a motion picture star friend's of Tom Tom Le Tuit's,  used a small hand held motion picture camera to record a bit of his vacation at Tom Tom Le Tuit's mansion. He also caught Freddy Valiant working as a poolside waiter while a zombie Toon.

    Initial reports of the new drug were favorable but did not have the massive demand that Le Tuit would have liked. While there were some humans who would like to become Toons, it appeared that most would not. The drug tested more favorable among the Toons who had some inclination to convert to humanity.

    Most Toons that lived in the real world did so  because their more substantial forms also had a greater sensory range. In the Tooniverse while they could taste, smell and had tactile sensations, they were mere shadows of what was felt in the real world. However in the real world the Toons were looked down upon as second class citizens, often regarded little more than the animals many Toons were shaped as. They often made two thirds less than a human doing the same job, often had to live in restricted housing, in some areas were not allowed to purchase liquor, etc. Then there were the Toons with human heritage who were often locked into odd or freakish bodies; Kurt Enigman was one of these. These were all contributing factors that made many Toons lean towards becoming human yet not many chose conversion. Despite how bad many Toons had it they were complacent because in their Toon forms they were did not age and were practically indestructible.

    Le Tuit and Kirk Enigman created a market for the Toon Tonic by creating panic among the Toons, by making them aware of their own mortality. Kurt Enigman convinced two of his actor acquaintances become his front people for a new company marketing a new type of gun. The two front people were Yosemite Sam and Foghorn Leghorn. The company was named Colt Cock; its main product was dip tipped bullets and fragmentation bullets with a dip core. The death toll among the Toons began to rise, as more and more were shot and killed by dip tipped bullets.

    Le Tuit and Enigman were going to let the panic rise while they created a network in the United States and the Caribbean to manufacture and distribute the Toon Tonic. Needing a prominent, legitimate partner to front the distribution of Toon Tonic in they chose David Selznick Jr., the Hollywood Producer. Enigman knew he was strapped for cash as he attempted to make his Toon/human musical version of Gone With The Wind.  To test the validity of the tonic, the head of Selznick's Studio Security, a former western Toon star known as Pepper Potts took the Tonic and became human.

Once everything appeared to be coming together, Le Tuit decided to clean house. He had Dr. Jackal, as he knew Jekyll, brought to his mansion. Tom Tom was decked out in his Chief of Police uniform. He told Jackal that he would not have him around with the knowledge in his head unless he was certain of his loyalty. He told Jackal to drink the Toon Tonic and then drink some Zombies. Jackal refused. Smiling with crocodile teeth, Tom Tom Le Tuit said he thought that would be his answer. Tom Tom pulled his sidearm out of his holster and shot Jackal point blank in the chest.

    Jekyll  became conscious when he hit the cold, salty water.

    A laughing Toon boat headed back to shore. Tom Tom had shot Jekyll and dumped the body in the ocean. Jekyll swam back to shore growing angrier at each stroke. By the time that he had reached the shore, all vestiges of Sane-Up had been burned from his system and Edward Hyde emerged. He put the blame for their predicament squarely on Dr. Jekyll's shoulders and on Sane-Up Cola. That stuff did regulate a person's emotions but it also made them so damned passive, the stuff had made Jekyll a zombie without him knowing it.

    Hyde made his way to Tom Tom Le Tuit's mansion intent of killing Tom Tom with some dip tipped fingernails. He found Tom Tom had left for the United States to make some arrangements for a warehouse and to finalize the deal with Selznick. Lupe Chihuahua was still at the mansion and she was weaning Freddie Valiant off of the zombie drink. Hyde had little trouble bullying her into revealing her plans, as soon as Freddie was back to being a normal Toon, she and he were going to go back to the U.S. and hide from Tom Tom.

    Hyde convinced Freddie that in order to support Lupe in a lifestyle she was accustomed he would need a lot of money. He could do this by selling Toon Tonic. Hyde told Freddie that Dr. Jackal had left the formula with Hyde before he had died and it was locked away in Hyde's head.

    Tom Tom Le Tuit was a control freak so it was unlikely that he had given the formula to anyone else. To make certain that Freddie and Hyde were the only ones to benefit from the formula and keep the secret of the Toon Tonic out of the other hands, Freddie had to locate Tom Tom's copy and get rid of Tom Tom. Freddie had no moral qualms with the last part.

    As it turned out Tom Tom Le Tuit had given the formula to someone else, to David Selznick as part of the price for his partnership. Selznick had kept the formula in a silver box on his desk. It had disappeared after a meeting Selznick had with his three main candidates for the male lead in Gone With the Wind, Clark Gable, Kirk Enigman and Roger Rabbit. Selznick was cagey and hired Eddie Valiant not to find the box so much as to discover who had taken it. If Valiant should find the box, he should of course return it.

    Freddie Valiant decided to let his brother do the legwork while he worked on the periphery. Eddie Valiant's investigation was alternately hampered and helped by both Freddie Valiant and Pepper Potts, both who wished to get the Toon Tonic formula and go into business for themselves.

    Eddie Valiant's snooping came close to finding Freddie Valiant. Eddie found Lupe Chihuahua working in a small cantina catering to insect Toons but believing Freddie was dead, he thought that the Toon that matched a description of Freddie was their sister Heddy. He believed that Heddy converted to a Toon to better fit in with her husband, a police detective who was also a humanoid bull Toon.

    It was Roger Rabbit after all who had taken the silver box on Selznick's desk, it had been knocked into his pant's cuffs and he had not even noticed it. While helping Eddie investigate the Toon Tonic and also to see if his wife was having an affair with Clark Gable, Roger Rabbit concocted some Toon Tonic and drank it. He did not much like being human.

    In the course of the investigation, Eddie Valiant witnessed the murder of Kirk Enigman in a pitch-black house, saw Dodger Rabbit killed in a Toon cemetery and found the body of Tom Tom Le Tuit in a warehouse. All of these had been killed by dip tipped bullets. The warehouse had been prepared for mass distribution of Toon Tonic. Enigman's killer was Pepper Potts, out to get the formula for himself. Potts went so far as to kidnap Jessica Rabbit and her sister Jo to hold for ransom for the Toon Tonic formula. Having gotten it, he announced he was going to kill Eddie Valiant, the now human Roger Rabbit and the two girls. A fight ensued in which Potts shot Eddie Valiant and practically beat Roger Rabbit to death. Roger managed to electrocute Potts. Either the high voltage electricity or death turned Potts back into a Toon.

    Dodger Rabbit and Tom Tom Le Tuit's killer was Freddy Valiant. Although he claimed to have killed Dodger Rabbit to protect his brother it was because Dodger knew too much about the formula, he knew of Freddie Valiant's relationship with Tom Tom Le Tuit and because he was also making a play for Lupe Chihuahua. Tom Tom was killed for vengeance as well as practical business reasons.

    Eddie Valiant confronted his Toon converted brother and despite Freddy's protests, destroyed the Toon Tonic formula. He however let him go free; feeling that being a Toon was punishment enough. Freddie was pleased his brother was as predictable as always. With the only written copy of the Toon tonic formula destroyed, Freddie and Dr. Jackal were assured of having a virtual monopoly on the stuff.

    Freddie and Dr. Jackal were very selective as to whom they converted at first, preferring humanoid Toons who were prominent in the business world or entertainment, who were close enough to being human so that the change would not be so noticeable. They charged heavy fees for this service. With some of the capital, they began a moderate mass production.

    By early 1948, the world was practically unrecognizable. The introduction of dip and the Toon Tonic had thrown the integrated human/Toon society of this world on for a pratfall. The world had chugged along unconcerned, running headlong into the twenty-first century when it looked down and realized it was treading air. It crashed with a puff of dust. When the dust cleared, dip was outlawed, of course the legal system, police agencies and the military began to use dip in its daily routines. Toon Tonic was declared a controlled substance. Its manufacture, distribution, trafficking and possession were made illegal. The United Nations voted on a worldwide ban of Toon tonic and dip.

    Strict racial laws were quickly passed in several countries and in several states of the United States that prevented crossovers of Toons or humans. Under these laws any person having been discovered to have switched species was jailed (or in some nations killed) and their citizenship rights revoked. Hate groups formed seeking out secret Toons in human form. The Koo Koo Kluck Klan, a humans-only terrorist organization formed on a Georgia Chicken farm began attracting many followers. The Koo Koo Kluck Klan and a few other groups of that ilk, spouted a creed of strict segregation of the Toons, the mandatory imprisonment of, or execution of any suspected Toon or human convert and death to any Toon found outside segregated areas. They secretly lobbied the legislature for the dipping of Toontown and thus erasing this threat of the mongrelization of the human race.

        A junior senator from Wisconsin announced that he had information that 234 Toon to Human converts had infiltrated the United States Government especially in the State and judicial branches. He was instrumental in getting the HUAC formed, the House Committee to investigate Unauthorized Animation Conversions.

    The repercussions of dip and Toon Tonic reached even to the Tooniverse.

    As related the humans turned into Toons showed distinct differences in their chemical make up from natural Toons, even those Toons with human heritage. These differences did not add up to much in Toontown or in the real world but they did make a difference in the Tooniverse. When these altered humans began making their way into the Tooniverse via Toontown they became part of the chaotic matrix. Their normal interaction of breathing, eating, exuding waste, dying and resurrecting mixed their different toonstuff with the natural toonstuff in a more integral than did the same products exuded from those normal humans trapped inside the Tooniverse.

    The altered human's toonstuff began to infect the very matrix of toonstuff. In the short time that the altered humans entered the Tooniverse, Toons started to change, becoming in many cases more violent than before, one particular case was a cat and mouse formerly known as Ignatz and Krazy Kat. When Krazy Kat  accidentally blew them up along with an altered human Toon, they reformed as an extremely sadistic mouse and a masochistic cat named Itchy and Scratchy. Prior to the human infection of the Tooniverse, Toons hardly ever bled when they committed acts of violence upon them but afterwards bleeding became more commonplace.

    Tooniverse scientists came to the conclusion that the altered humans were infecting the purity of toonstuff, that if continued the Tooniverse would lose its unique nature, becoming a "real" world. Horrified Toons organized and sealed off all entrances and exits to the real world, cutting the Toons in Toontown and the real world adrift. Any altered human Toons were expelled into the real world. Fearful of any type of contamination, the Tooniverse made one standing law, humans and Toons could not have intercourse. Although the Toons who had temporarily changed into humans through this method had never presented a threat to the matrix of the Tooniverse, the Toons did not want to take any chances. To enforce this law and to ferret out altered humans, the Toons via Dr. Whiskers imported Frank Harris, a young human who had been about to die in a motorcycle crash. (18)

     Without access to the Tooniverse, Toontown and the few remaining Tooniverse Toon in the real world became the only source of toonstuff. Without toonstuff to bolster most of its product lines Acme Industries and its subsidiaries faltered and went into bankruptcy. By the end of 1949,  Toon Tonic was a highly expensive and highly sought after product, especially since the Toon chemicals to make it were extremely hard to come by.(19)

    Edward Hyde had once more withdrawn into Henry Jekyll. Jekyll as Dr. Jackal made Toon Tonic in mass of quantities in an illegal laboratory inside one of the few remaining sections of Toontown. Much of Toontown had been converted into raw toonstuff for the necessary industries. Jackal's laboratory was raided by a joint Toon and human raiding party lead by Dick Tracy, Agent X-9 and James Christopher. Surrounded and certain to face life imprisonment for aiding and abetting conversions and Toon Tonic trafficking, Jekyll dove into a magic mirror given to him by the Queen of Hearts upon her conversion into a human being.

    She had told him that depending on the light refraction, it would send him to one of several parallel worlds.

    Jekyll heard a bullet strike the mirror when he was half way through it. The dip tipped bullet stuck inside the toonstuff mirror and began dissolving it. Jekyll fell into polychromatic mist once more. There was not any sensation of falling but rather of forward movement as if one step lasted several hours. He emerged in the crowded storeroom of an antique store. There were several mirrors there all of several designs. Jekyll touched the face of all the mirrors but they were all silvered glass. Where ever he was, he was stuck.

    Jekyll peered out of the storeroom. This was a rather high-class shop with well-lit display cases and polished marble floors and walls. On the walls hung tapestries depicting ancient Toon history and mythology. The proprietor of the antique shop was a Toon! A six-foot beetle, shiny and black with a pastel red head wearing a tailored four armed Brooks Brother suit.

    He watched the Beetle until he was distracted in putting a display case in order and slipped out of the storeroom moving rapidly.

    The beetle looked up startled, remarking he had not heard Jekyll come  in the store.

    Jekyll remarked he was just browsing for a gift. He made a show of looking at several display cases before thanking the beetle and exiting.

    Shock as deep and profound as the first time he had exited the Tooniverse and entered the world of 1930's America hit him as he exited the antique store. The cars were smaller and more streamlined in designed. The clothing was also more casual and lightly built in an array of colors and shapes. Jekyll clutched a metal box for support. He saw that it was a paper box, following the instructions he bought a paper....for fifty cents!

    The date was March 23, 1983. Jekyll found a park and sat on a bench. When his jaw was dropping in amazement and shameful admiration at the often scantily clad women passing by his bench he scanned the paper. This plane of existence was different in many regards from Jekyll's own, from the one containing Toontown or from the Tooniverse itself. There did not appear to be a Toontown, except as regards to community neighborhoods such as a Chinatown, Little Japan etc. but there wasn't a place where toonstuff held a place in this universe and there wasn't any connection to the Tooniverse as far as Jekyll could tell. Toons had been with humanity since the beginning of time but so far to the scientific community of 1983 they defied explanation as to their origins.

    Toons were quite different from the Toons that Jekyll had known. Rather than being almost indestructible, they were quite fragile having parchment like skin. The only connection to toonstuff that they had was the ability to create thought and word balloons. However unless preserved, these disintegrated in a few hours. They could also create temporary malleable duplicates of themselves called doppelgangers. It was the doppelgangers that were run over by steam rolllers etc. While interspecies mating was possible Toons and humans were not biologically compatible thus no hybrids.

    As in the previous plane of existence Toons are second class citizens and had to fight for the rights to vote, living desegregated areas, equal wages etc. While Toons were pretty much integrated in society, their work in the entertainment industry was much like it had been in the previous world, with short film series and daily strips shot and written by renown photographers.

    A small news item caught his eye.

Object D'art Demanded By Iranian Republic.
An object variously described as a teakettle or a lantern is a bone of contention between the United States Government and the Government of Iran. The object is of Persian origin and came into this country through unknown means. It gained notoriety because of its involvement with the Roger Rabbit Murder Case.

    Reading the article, along with its background articles on Roger Rabbit and other characters in that case, Jekyll found that that in this world Roger Rabbit had been murdered by his employer Dominick DeGreasy. Roger Rabbit had seen Dominick DeGreasy shoot and kill his brother Rocco DeGreasy. Dominick DeGreasy could not live with guilt and killed himself, leaving a suicide note detailing his killing of Dominick DeGreasy and Roger Rabbit. (20)

    The disputed lantern had been owned by Roger Rabbit normally his estate would have gone to his wife Jessica but relatives of Roger Rabbit had claimed that she was not entitled to the estate on grounds abandonment. Jessica later dropped the claim to Roger Rabbit's estate as did the Rabbit relatives when it became apparent that Roger Rabbit's debts outweighed the amount of his estate. Most of the estate was confiscated for unpaid taxes. An estate appraiser had discovered that the teakettle was actually a priceless Persian oil lamp. Since the estate could not provide provenance the Iranian government claimed it as a stolen archaeological artifact. Due to the strained relations with Iran the Persian lamp was being by held by the U.S. Government until a legitimate government of Iran was in place. Until that time the lamp would be on display at the Los Angeles Museum of History.

    As humorous aside they also ran a small article in which a woman convicted of art forgery claimed that the Persian Lamp was actually a magical lantern as depicted in the Arabian Nights. The lamp was supposed to only work for Toons however. The newspaper dismissed her account by stating that the lantern had never sprouted a genie when held by either human or Toon museum authorities. Jekyll supposed that the newspaper had included this story for its human-interest article and to further discredit the woman, Carol Masters, who since her release from prison had been an outspoken advocate for Toon rights.(21)

    Jekyll was inclined to believe her story and was going to track her down as soon as possible. If the story was true then it was possible that this was a way for him to finally get home.

    Jekyll memorized the name of the place where Carol Masters worked, the Toon Advocacy Center. He passed by an antique store that claimed we buy old money. He turned the fifty dollars cash in his pocket into seven hundred dollars, believing all the while he was getting a raw deal.

    Jekyll made his way to the Toon Advocacy Center which turned out to be a dingy storefront organization off of Hollywood, an area now gone rather seedy. He found Carol Masters less than enthusiastic to discuss the Persian lamp with him until he asked how she had found about it being a magic lantern. She launched into a diatribe against Eddie Valiant. He had claimed to be her friend and even had arranged to get her a reduced sentence if she would roll over on Hiram Toner, a fence of stolen artwork. Yet it had all been a ploy to bed her. After having wormed his way into her heart, he had told her the true story of the Roger Rabbit case, how Roger had murdered Rocco DeGreasy and had been murdered by a genie who had also killed Dominick DeGreasy. Eddie had gotten the genie to produce a suicide note blaming Dominick for everything.

    The genie had earlier granted the DeGreasy brothers three wishes, making them human and creating the DeGreasy entertainment syndicate. The wishes were however wearing off when Rocco was murdered, had the DeGreasy's lived they would have been exposed as Toons and their business had been spiraling into bankruptcy for some time.

    Jekyll asked how Eddie Valiant had gotten the genie to grant him a wish if the lamp only worked for Toons. Masters shrugged. The genie was already out of the lamp and fighting with Valiant. Valiant had threatened to destroy the lamp by dropping it in salt water unless the genie granted that wish. After the genie granted that wish, Valiant dropped the lantern into a saltwater fish tank and killed the genie.

       Remarking that he did not understand how Valiant's not telling her the whole truth had been a ploy to bed her, Jekyll was subjected to a contemptuous rant. The gist of the rant was that because he was a man Jekyll of course would feel that way but Valiant had arranged matters so that Jessica Rabbit could not be charged with anything. Carol Masters was convinced that Jessica had killed at least one of the three victims.

      Jessica had of course show her gratitude to Valiant and then dumped him, on the rebound he had gotten involved with Masters.

    Steeling his nerves,  Jekyll asked Masters if she knew where either Jessica Rabbit or Eddie Valiant was located. After she had given Valiant his walking papers he had left LA to become a private detective in another locale, she thought he had gone into partnership on the East Coast but was not certain. His new partner was either a talking dog, a chimp or some other odd Toon.

    Smirking a bit, as for Jessica Rabbit, now using a derivation of her real name Jessica Marvelous could be found around the corner.

    Jekyll thanked her and walked around the corner and found himself outside of a shop specializing in pornographic materials. He saw life size cardboard cut out of Jessica Rabbit. She looked much like the Jessica Rabbit of his previous experience albeit harder and sluttier at the same time. She was nude but for a hand covering her pelvic area and an arm held across her the front of her large bosom.

    He saw a display rack containing a few magazines and plastic rectangles called videotapes. The tiles were suggestive, Cat and Rabbit- Fritz and Jessica pet each other! Lewd, Crude and Still in the Mood, Naughty Toon Nurses, Jessica and the Three Pigs. The videotapes were entitled Jessica Marvelous Times  and Any Man Will Do and if he Don't.... starring Jessica Marvelous and Holli Would.

    Jekyll controlled his rising anger and urge to vomit. A flyer near the rack stated that Jessica was currently performing at the Stripped Paint Club. Jekyll copied memorized the address and went to get a bit to eat. Suppressing Hyde always left him ravenous.

    He ate in a non-Toon restaurant called J. Wellington's. (22) They specialized in beef products which Jekyll found suitable, although he could never get used to the manner in which American's overcooked their beef.

    After finishing his meal, Jekyll hailed a cab which was driven by a Toon and a foreign Toon to boot. Alonge Agu was one a Tottenhot, of the African Toons who looked like a parody of their Human counterparts. Although he spoke little English he knew enough to know where the Stripped Paint Club was located. As Jekyll expected it was one of those dance halls called a Burlesque Parlor. However as he soon discovered the women did not do the subtle strip tease that they had done in the 1940's era but rather they started out nearly naked and did  very suggestive, sensual dances.

    He had hoped to find an opportunity to talk to Jessica Marvelous. As it turned out he was in luck, she was available for what was termed lap or couch dances.

    He chose the latter for its privacy. In a small dark room, she flashed him a perfunctory smile as he paid her three hundred dollars. As she began to squirm on his lap, Jekyll whispered, "Do you know where to find Eddie Valiant?"

    Jessica Marvelous stiffened. Her violent eyes flared into flames, her pupils contracted into small daggers.

    She was so angry she forgot to suppress her world balloon, which shot out of her mouth directly at his head like a bullet. "No, I don't and if you are a friend of that son of *%X*&* then you are out three hundred dollars!"  Jekyll heard the words but the balloon censored them.

    Jessica Marvelous began to stand up. Jekyll grabbed her shoulders and held tight, whispering, "I don't know him and we may not need him but I think I can make the lamp work"

    Jessica relaxed and her eyes grew soft and misty. Jekyll felt befogged by her eyes.

    "If that is true, then you may get a refund on your dance and much more, Tell Jessie all about it"

    Jekyll almost spilled his life story but fortunately had enough experience with Toons to master his emotions once more. He told her that he was a Doctor specializing in Toon studies, his main area of expertise was in Toon psychic powers and Toon physiology. Jekyll said that he thought he could revive the genie of the lamp.

    Jessica began nibbling on his ear when he said he was an expert on Toon physiology, a thought balloon with pages from the Comic Sutra flashed before his eyes. A bribe no doubt to secure Jekyll's cooperation.

    Jekyll pulled back from Jessica's embrace, which took some doing considering the space that her chest took up.

    "All I require is one of the three wishes, you may have the last two, although I would suggest you save the one you wish the most for last." Jekyll said as he slid out from under her.

    Jessica stiffened, "Have you been talking to that bastard Valiant? I kept my promise to him and showed him a night of unparalleled passion in exchange for Roger's lamp and the damned thing wouldn't work anymore. Then there was the lawsuit that forced me to give it up before I could figure out its secrets."

    "What is the secret?" she cooed. Little musical notes wafted through the air before fading to mist.

    Jekyll smiled humorlessly, "All I require from you is a place to stay for the night. Any supplies I can find in the morning before we visit the Museum where the lamp is on display"

    Jessica smiled warmly; Jekyll could feel the heat rising from her lips and elsewhere on her body.

    "A place to stay hmmm, and I was beginning to think you weren't interested in little old Jessie." She gave Jekyll a deep lingering kiss that flooded him with electrical warmth. His shoes were smoking at the end of the kiss. "I suppose you want a down payment on your services"

    Jekyll's rising passion made Hyde awaken. Jekyll summoned his will and forced Hyde back down. He told Jessica that payment would not be necessary. All he needed was a couch to sleep on.

    Slightly stunned she agreed. Jessica was not used to being turned down by anyone.

    Jekyll nursed a couple of soda pops while Jessica performed. In between her routines and personal appointments, she would visit Jekyll's table. She stopped trying to vamp him after two more visits and began to talk more freely with him.

        "I suppose you think I am a tramp. I guess I am. I came straight out of Dogpatch and into Hollywood hoping to be an actress and model. I could not get legitimate work so I posed for Tijuana bibles and smut books. Rocco DeGreasy found me when I was doing underwear ads. I gradually moved up to legitimate modeling and began living with Rocco DeGreasy. I had one date with Roger Rabbit, at Rocco's request; he wanted to sign Roger to a small contract working for next to nothing as a comic foil. To my great surprise, Roger asked me to marry him and I accepted. Rocco DeGreasy gave Roger a large, long-term contract although he professed not to know why.

    "After a year, I no longer loved Roger, I moved back in with Rocco he told me about the lamp, about how he had been a Toon. I read up on the lantern and took a class in mythology. I never equated Rocco's lamp with Roger's teakettle until it was too late. Rocco needed me to use the lantern to stop him from becoming a Toon again. I went along, although I intended to use all three wishes for myself.

    "After the DeGreasy syndicate fell apart I was out of work, Roger's estate also proved to be worthless. The scandal attached to me because of the triple murders made me unemployable as a model or actress. Many were suspicious of my involvement in the murders and would not hire me because of that."  Reaching into a tattered Gucci bag she took out a silver plated cigarette case. She held it open to Jekyll but he declined. She slipped out a  violet colored cigarette that matched her eyes. Frowning that he did not light her smoke, Jessica summoned a flaming thought balloon and held it to the end of her cigarette.

    "I drifted back into the adult entertainment industry. To be truthful, I rather enjoy it." Her violet colored eyes twinkled like little mischievous stars. She blew a cloud of smoke from her cigarette that reminded Jekyll of the illustrations from the previously seen comic sutra. Only these smoke puffs were animated little figurines. Jekyll broke the smoky stag film with a wave of his hand. Her tinkling laugh sent chills along his spine.

    Jekyll had no illusions that given the chance, Jessica would betray him and take the lamp for herself. She was very bewitching and very nearly made him break his vow never to lower himself by having relations with a Toon.

    Yet he remained strong and did not allow Hyde to emerge. Although Jekyll had the feeling that Jessica Marvelous was just the type of woman who would enjoy the ferocity and brutal handling of Mr. Hyde.

    The struggle not to succumb to her wiles made sleep difficult, as was the fact that her small apartment did not have separate sleeping quarters. She had neglected to tell him that she only had a sleeper bed. She was being frugal and saving her money for investments, hoping to get in on the stock market boom.

    So Jekyll slept still clothed, next to the living sexual fantasy Jessica Marvelous who professed that she slept in the nude for dermatological purposes. There was also a Toon cat shaped like Felix which kept purring and rubbing against Jekyll.

    The struggle for control was nearly lost when he found himself joined by her in the shower. He turned the cold water all the way up, rinsed off and exited. Her skin had turned blue and thought balloons dropped icicles onto the shower stall. Yet she smiled warmly with amusement.

   While Jessica fixed herself a breakfast, Jekyll walked to a nearby convenience store to get supplies for his Genie reviving potion. When he returned, Jekyll borrowed a small bowl from the skeptical Jessica and mixed his solution. He then poured it into the eye drop bottle he had also gotten.

  Jessica watched this proceeding with detached amusement, leaning up against her kitchen counter while smoking cigarettes. "I have played along with this because just maybe you know what you are talking about but I don't see how banking powder, glue, alum, face cream, mineral oil and ink are going revive the genie." Jessica finally remarked.

    "To be succinct and general without going into a detailed dissertation on the necessary chemical reactions, the saltwater poured inside the lantern was a corrosive which caused the genie to lose form. Neither the water or the Genie was found inside the lantern when examined by appraisers. Nor was the genie was ever actually seen inside the lamp when in the course of daily routine, for example when people used it as a lantern or teakettle, we must therefore ask where the genie resided. The genie is normally a resident of another universe or extra-dimensional space. During the time of Solomon, as you will have learned from your studies in mythology, the Djinn were bound to objects such as rings, lanterns and amulets. As such they were not allowed access to  this universe except when summoned and physically connected to their binding object. Yet they were also bound in their extra dimensional space to the area corresponding to this universe and so were imprisoned there."

    Jessica Marvelous shook her head and smiled in confusion. "I am afraid I don't understand. If they go to their home dimension normally how are they imprisoned."

    "Think of it as being like Alice Through the Looking Glass. Only in this instance, Alice can go back and forth through the looking glass but on either side she can only move as far as her body extends."

    "I am afraid I must bring up a subject that may cause you some anger."

    Jessica smiled but the smile was harder, she gestured with her cigarette. The smoke formed an arrow and word balloon, Go on!

   " In the wishes, to make certain that Djinn does not renege on his agreements with us, make certain that the last wish will free the Djinn from his imprisonment and yet not allow him to roam freely in the real world. So in reality, I have one wish, you have one wish and the Genie gets one wish. If you allow yourself to be greedy, we will end up with nothing."

    Jessica agreed readily so Jekyll was immediately wary.

    "How are we going to get a hold of the lantern, break in at night? Will you knock the guards out while I distract them" A thought balloon of a nude Jessica posing with the Museum's reproduction of Michelangelo's David floated up. Jekyll was distracted by the image enough that Jessica had to clear her throat to get his attention.

    "No, actually we will walk up to the display case, break it, pour the solution in it, summon the genie and get our wishes. If we succeed, we will be safe from prosecution, if we fail," Jekyll paused and smiled almost affectionately at Jessica. "If we fail, I am certain that you will have little trouble convincing anyone that I somehow forced you into the dastardly deed. You will more than likely escape unscathed, I will go to prison."

    As Jekyll laid out his plan, Jessica smiled in what he thought was genuine warmth. Her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkled.

    "I like that, it is a bold, dangerous plan. Gives me shivers". She shivered most enticingly. "If you fail, I will visit you in prison, or at least send you some of my art work." She winked.

    Jekyll forced himself to continue and put any such thoughts out of his mind. "You must remember to phrase your wish so that you will be back in your apartment when it is granted and to phrase the second wish so that it goes into effect after the third"

    "Since you have an idea of what I should say, why don't you lay it out for me, "

    "First wish will be for me, I wish this Dr. Henry Jekyll present here and now to be to returned to the time and place he occupied before entering the spiral between worlds."

    Jessica looked at him with a bemused and disbelieving stare.

    "Second, I wish for the genie of the lamp to be freed of his geas on this lamp and to be allowed to roam the world of his origin without restriction as soon as he completes wishes one and three.

    "Thirdly, I wish to be totally and biologically human standing in my apartment with a birth certificate that attests to that fact."

    Jessica nodded approvingly, "That should cover all the bases." A smoky, hooded look came into her eyes. "I take it you are leaving and not coming back, so when will have the time to consummate our relationship?" Jekyll felt a wave of heat welter up and float across the table as she projected her sexual desire towards him.

    "Never I fear, for it is now time to leave"

    Jekyll thought he saw true disappointment in Jessica's eyes but since she was a consummate natural actress, he thought she might also be using subtler tactics.

    Jessica drove them the to museum. Access to the lantern was easier than Jekyll had thought; it was in a single display case in the center of a room with various Persian artifacts. There were only a few visitors in this wing and a few guards making desultory rounds. Most of course believed no one would be bold enough to make an attempt like Jekyll and Jessica planned to do. Jekyll noticed what appeared to be small cameras placed everywhere in the room and Jessica told him there would be all sorts of alarms.

    Jekyll wrapped his hand in a handkerchief, stepped over the velvet ropes and smashed the display case with his hand. He poured the reviving solution into the lantern's spout as he stepped back.

    Alarms were going off and guards were running with drawn weapons.

    Jekyll stepped back telling Jessica to grab onto the lantern, while still keeping his hand on one end. His other hand slipped around and encircled Jessica's slim waist, she smiled in surprise until she felt a sharp point pressing against her side.

        "I have a glass shard which I will use to rip open your oh so lovely but so fragile flesh if you say the wrong thing. I know enough about Toon physiology to know that a large enough cut is fatal unless taken care of immediately. Now call the genie."

    "Genie, come forth!" Jessica shouted in voice, husky with excitement and fear.

    Smoke billowed forth from the lantern and an extremely well muscled man dressed in a turban and three-piece Armani suit stood before Jekyll and Jessica. As Jekyll had suspected this genie was not originally from this universe but rather from the Tooniverse and so displayed the qualities of a Toon from there manifested in the real world.

    "We need time to talk", Jekyll said as the guards began to call for him to lay drop the lantern and get on the floor.

    "Wouldst that be wish, if so only a Toon may make it so"

    "No, it is not a wish it is a suggestion so that we may discuss something which will be mutually advantageous to all us. You would like to be free of the lantern I take it?"

    Four guards now surrounded Jekyll and Jessica, screaming ever more frantically.

    The genie blinked in surprise. "Speakest thy piece." Jekyll noted that the guards had all frozen in place.

    Jekyll quickly explained his three wishes. "Ah forsooth, that should indeed free me from this prison. Proceed, Toon woman"

    Smiling Jessica launched into a quick verbal exchange that Jekyll realized were wishes for fame, wealth and to be human. She must have realized that he would not harm her. He instead launched into his own litany of wishes that caused the genie to shake his head in confusion.

    "What we have here is a failure to communicate. I must grant her wishes because she is a Toon, yet on the other hand I cannot allow the man's good intentions to go answered. Since you are both touching the lamp and since you touching each other I will combine the three wishes. However since I could not understand most of what you said, except the section about me becoming freed, which was oddly clear, I will interpret the wishes as I see fit.

    Jessica looked frightened, "That isn't fair"

    The genie chuckled, "Actually it is as fair as you deserve. Reading your hearts, I can see your true desires. He wishes to return to his home world, she wishes to be human, both wish to forget the past and have new lives and oddly enough both wish to remain with one another."

    Hearing the latter, Jessica and Jekyll looked at one another with wary but delighted surprise.

       " I will make it so". Genie laughed with sadistic glee and Jekyll and Jessica clutched one another's hands and smiled at each other waiting for their wishes to come true.

    As Jessica began to change into a completely human woman, Jekyll also changed, and this change was echoed in Jessica. The expressions on their faces grew blank as their eyes grew dim and unfocused. They could not move a muscle although they could still see, hear and breathe.

    They were in a richly carpeted room upon the wall of which hung expensive tapestries. Pillows were strewn everywhere. Everything in the room had an odd shimmering quality to it. Yet Jekyll and Jessica were unable to react to it, they could only observe  their surroundings.

      A muted whummp as air was displaced in this enclosed space. Standing before the genie and the wailing twosome was a tall, thin man with a large nose and close set eyes dressed in leather boots, leather tights, a linen tunic and peaked hat. An epee in a scabbard was attached to a baldric.

    The man blinked in surprised taking in his surrounding with a whistle. "Boy, did I screw up this one. I am in an animated universe! How the heck did I do that!"

    "You didn't good Physicker, I rerouted you from your journey on an errand of mercy. Before you lie two individuals who have accidentally traveled from your plane of existence. Unfortunately they appear to have left their minds in another existence. Their minds are blank and they are bereft of memory and need aid. If you agree to treat them I will send you on your way. If not, I hope you enjoy living in a genie's den."

    The man smirked. "I would have helped without the bribery. Their state coincides with Doc Chalmers' theories. Let's go! My wife is expecting."(23)

    The genie winked at Jessica and Jekyll, "Goodbye, you two"

        Dr. Henry Jekyll's and Jessica Marvelous' memories and personalities were snuffed out like a candle flame in a wind gust.

Afterward by Dr. James Grimson, Ph.D.

    I was asked to write this afterward because I am familiar with the work of Dr. Shea having used some of his techniques in my own "radical" therapies. I also have some experience at altered states of consciousness as described in part in the early works of Dr. Reed Chalmers, which believed that the psyches of schizophrenics and paranoiacs were partially transferred to a differing plane of existence. Although as it turned out his theory was wrong in the sense of there being an actual shift of the psyche to another world, his basic theory did allow Dr. Shea and Dr. Chalmers to shift between universes. Although to this day very few people take their accounts in this area seriously.

    The mind of the patient does not physically shift into another universe but rather it becomes so attenuated to one or more universes that the often vastly different histories, physical laws and perceptions would cause conflict with natural function. Now in most of these cases the perceptions of these other planes of reality were not the cause of the mental dysfunction but rather a symptom of it.

    In my youth I was a partial sufferer of this dysfunction as I underwent Tiersian Therapy here at the Wellington Psychiatric Unit. It was actually through using conventional therapies and by learning to filter the perceptions of the other universe so that it would be applicable to my experience that I could be cured of my dysfunction. (24)

    Although I have never even truly endeavored to find the root cause of this particular dysfunction I believe it is a certain mixture of neuron dysfunction brain chemistry that causes some schizophrenics to have contact with such concrete "imaginary" worlds and others not.  Generally except in the most extreme cases, combinations of pharmaceutical and psychological therapies will eradicate most of these psycho-universal overlaps.

    In Late 1949, Dr. Harold Shea showed up with two grown patients he admitted to the Garden Institute. He claimed to have found them wandering on the side of the road as he was on his way to a costume party, which explained his odd clothing. The patients were admitted as John and Jane Doe. Their clothing was of an odd cut and material and they carried no identification. Efforts to identify them came to naught. They acted and behaved like infants, they were even wailing and crying when Dr. Shea had them carried out from his car.

    Jane and John Doe learned rapidly once they began to grasp the concepts that most babies eventually grasp. Jane Doe never recovered her memory but she adapted to a new persona much more rapidly than her companion did. She adopted the name Jennifer Marshal. A stunningly beautiful woman she embarked on a short lived modeling career while dating Alexander Walters, one of the doctors at the Garaden Institute. They were married in 1951.

    Jennifer became a model, fitness expert and marketed her own line of cosmetics. She bore two children, John and Margaret in 1954 and 1956. Although she could be a ruthless businesswoman, she was said to have been personally charming and kind. Rather than submit to surgery, (she had a morbid fear of being cut)  she died of cancer in 1986.

    John Doe was however a different case. He initially began to recover as rapidly as Jane Doe or Jennifer Marshal but began to exhibit schizophrenic tendencies. He believed that he was Dr. Henry Jekyll of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde fame. At first Dr. Shea tried to work with this using a modification of the Chalmers theories and created what was a precursor of Tiersian therapy. Although he did use his technique of having a patient identify with a character from literature or mythology and then rid himself or herself of aberrant behavior this particular therapy did not work with this patient. John Doe also imagined he was Mr. Hyde, at which times he would become sexually predacious, violent and irritable. According to some accounts by the staff of Garaden Institute John Doe would physically change during these episodes, although after the first onset of such attacks, John Doe was heavily tranquilized until the episode passed.

    John Doe was treated with typical somatic therapies of the time, including insulin shock,  electro-convulsive, hydrotherapy and various pharmaceutical therapies, none seemed too effective. (25)

    It was not until after reading Dr. Thigpen's case study of Eve (26) that he suspected that he might be dealing with a Hysteria, a form of diassociative dysfunction. After a couple more years of intensive therapy,  Dr. Shea was able to get the patient to dismiss the notion that he was Dr. Henry Jekyll or Mr. Hyde and integrate the beneficial traits of those personalities into one single psychologically normal personality. The patient named himself Alvin Samuels and he was released in 1955.  With the Garaden Institute's endorsement he was able to find work as a medical researcher having undergone the necessary training while a patient at the Institute.

    After Dr. Shea and his family disappeared from their home in 1960, contact was lost with Mr. Samuels.

    In 1998, the above document was found in a wall during renovations of the residential section of Wellington Hospital's Psychiatric  wing. It had apparently been written over a number of years, probably whenever the Jekyll personality had emerged. Had the document been found earlier it is possible that Mr. Samuels would not have been released since it would have been thought that his delusional state was more pronounced than previously thought. There was also the odd fact that Mr. Samuel appeared to be younger when he was released than when he had been admitted. Most agreed that Samuels was not as old as originally stated by Dr. Shea, in his fifties but rather that the trauma he had suffered had temporarily made him appear much older than he actually was.

    My theory was that Mr. Samuel having lost his own personality through trauma and having the necessary neurological and biochemical structure to contact an extra-dimensional personality did so and was dominated by him, as I had been as a youth. Like Mr. Samuels I eventually broke free of the control and established a stronger, functional personality. I hope that Mr. Samuels was able to free himself from contact with his extra-dimensional personality as well. (27)

    Dr. James Grimson, M.D. Ph.D.
    Associate Director Wellington Hospital Psychiatric Clinic
    June, 2001
 

   The above piece of fiction is dedicated to Chuck Jones and Mel Blanc for a body of work that will bring laughter for many generations.

    Special thanks to the Wold Newton Institute's Australian Agents, Brad Mengel and Loki Carbis for providing information about Australia and the use of their ancestors. Any mistakes or false information that crept into the narrative was my doing.

    Also a special thanks to Mark K. Brown, Art Bollman and many others whose various comments on cartoons, Greatheart Silver and other subjects unwittingly provided me with inspiration.

NOTES

1. For Jekyll and Hyde's adventure in New York of 1909, see Tooth and Nail, Dark Horse comics
2. According to land records in 1909 the owner of Magwitch's name was Carbis not Magwitch; he had been barkeep under Abel Magwitch and when old Magwitch had never returned from England, he had sort of squatted the pub.

3. Dr. Henry Jekyll was acquainted with Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson having crossed paths with them during his original episodes as Mr. Hyde. (See Estleman, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holme)

4. This young Police tracker would become the hero Arthur Upfield's interesting series of mystery novels set in Australia. Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte's connection to the Wold Newton family was established by genealogist extraordinaire Philip Jose Farmer. His father was none other than A.J. Raffles. See The Incredible Raffles Clan  by Brad Mengel for more details

5. Through contacts with the Wold Newton Research Institute's branches in Emerald, Queensland and Sydney, Australia we were able to discover the provence of the property Jekyll describes in his memoirs. The owner's name had not been Awickerman, Ackerman or even Acme. The name is however quite well known. The land is held by the Micawber family that was until recently the richest family in the world, eclipsed by Mr. William Gates. The Micawber's main corporate holdings used the name Acme and the corporate symbol was the Roadrunner. Marvin Awickerman a.k.a. Marvin Acme was in reality Marvin Micawber. See The Micawber Family

6. Although the Hopi, Zuni  and Navajo tribes of the American Southwest also have tales of  their ancestors emerging from beneath the Earth and creating the world after their emergence, it is unlikely that there is any sort of connection between them and the similar origin myth of the Australian Aborigines.

7. Diligent research by the editor has discerned the possible names of Wile E. Coyote's dreaming Gods, Charles Render from Roger Zelazny's Dream Master, George Orr from Ursula Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven and lastly and this one was a doozy to discover Alex Gardner from the film Dreamscape.

8. Although the food of the Tooniverse was edible to Jekyll and digestible, he was never able to become comfortable with the fact that in this chaotic universe death was only a state of mind. Although there were many animal level Toons, that is those with a rudimentary intelligence on the order of animals, it was possible for your meal to make sounds at you or even more disturbing suddenly acquire sentience as you were eating it. Also since in the Tooniverse even though digestion worked and the natural bodily functions were possible all of the matter, including waste products were toonstuff and so had the potentiality of forming into living Toons. It was a most singular and unpleasant sensation to have your own excrement talk to you.

9.The two main forces of the Universe are Chaos and Order,  Pure Chaos is formless, ever mutating. Pure Order is solid, static. Existence is a balance between the two, by blending the two forces creation is achieved.

    The Ancestor Beings of Australia created the world from Chaos merely by traveling through Chaos, self creating what they wished or needed.

    This origin tale is echoed throughout the Multiverse.

    A mad dwarf leaves the Courts of Chaos draws a Pattern into the raw stuff of Chaos and creates a Primary world from which all other worlds are Shadows. (Zelazny, Roger, Amber series)

    Earl Aubec of Malador rides out from the Cliffs of Kaneloon into the swirling stuff of unformed Chaos. His journey creates the Young Kingdoms. (Moorcock, Michael The Dream of Earl Aubec in the Weird of the White Wolf, Daw, 1977

    Chaos takes many forms: formless mist, an evil empire where animal masks are worn, a nation supposedly formed on order yet whose deadly policies cause millions of deaths. From the works of various authors were are lead to believe that Chaos is bad and Order is good, yet in reality both being mere states of existence are not intrinsically good or evil.

    Chaos can be and often is quite benign.

    The Tooniverse is the raw stuff of Chaos given form. There is very little of Order in this plane of existence, just enough to give it shape, substance and sentience. Its size and shape are like everything about it relative but all in all it is vaster than most universes because it is limited only by imagination of its inhabitants. How or why it came into existence we cannot even begin to speculate, only we can only accept the fact that it does exist and is real.

10. The Tooniverse is in many ways analogous to the universes we know, even to the point of having similar geographies to earth. The Tooniverse also bleeds into a few other universes, often in the form of rifts, which takes the place of holes, caves, mirrors and the spiral on the cliff wall in Australia. The Tooniverse's presence on these worlds is slight and except in rare cases, a being from the Tooniverse cannot physically manifest in those universes. Some of the universes in which the Tooniverse manifests are very nearly like the physical universe we are familiar with although there are some fundamental quirks in the laws of physics that allow the Toons to physically manifest.

11. Dr. Jerkyl's Hyde Warner Brothers, 1954, Directed by I. Freleng.
Starring Sylvester, Spike and Chester

12. Hyde and Tweet, Warner Brothers, 1960, Directed by Fritz Freleng.
Starring Sylvester and Tweety.

13. Hyde and Hare, Warner Brothers, 1955 Directed by Il Freleng. Starring Bugs Bunny.

14.The Hyde that emerged was the flesh and blood one. The Toon Hyde that Jekyll had become in the Tooniverse had been a combination of eating toon food and using toon chemicals over a long period of time. In the "real" world and in Toon Town, Hyde was the same handsome fellow that he was in the world of Jekyll's birth.

15. In the Tooniverse as with most things the laws of reproduction are subject to whim and change. While the  normal reproductive cycle does happen, Toons can also have unsolicited, surprise visits by the Toon Stork. Rumor has it this is why Snaggle-Puss was often exiting stage left!

16. The acquiring of a human physical body through sexual activity has a parallel with the Ogs. They in fact account for one theory of how the chaos energy field that comprised the Tooniverse acquired human DNA or its energy analog that manifested in toonstuff. The Tocs and Ogs were trapped in the Phantom Zone for millennia. In one celebrated story one Mover lead several of both factions into a quantum sinkhole he believed would lead out of the Zone. They are twisted, torn and confettied as they pass through the singularity. Their intellects and personalities were destroyed, leaving only pain, rage and a terrible hunger. They emerged in the corridors of Time, following their Movers like mindless pack animals.  They become known as the Hounds of Tindalos.

    Other Tocs and Ogs entered other quantum sinkholes, one of which lead to the Tooniverse. Their intellects, forms and energy were absorbed by the chaotic toonstuff giving the toonstuff the analog of Human DNA.

Another source for the Human DNA was in the occasional Humans who became trapped in the Tooniverse and died there. Unlike Toons who could be reformed out of the toonstuff, Humans just decayed and their material forms were eventually absorbed by the toonstuff.

17. Marvin Acme had always told the Toons that he would leave Toontown to them should anything ever happen to him. He even carried a semi-legitimate will to prove his point. It was only semi-legitimate because it was unsigned and unwitnessed. In reality Marvin Acme intended to leave Toontown to Acme Industries so Toontown resources could continue to be exploited. Acme carried the fake will around with him to show Toons and engender their trust, goodwill and as extra incentive to give their all for Acme.

    Marvin Acme was aware that someone or some group was buying up the publicly held shares of Acme Enterprises stock. He had already fought off two similar takeover attempts. He was not especially worried since he always retained 51% of the stock. They could however try and force him out by tying him up in endless, futile meetings and fact finding committees, so to avoid such measures Marvin would usually poison pill Acme by making the stock prices drop drastically and scare away potential pirates. All he needed to do was ask the Toons for a work slowdown or to create inferior toonstuff.

    Marvin liked to know who his enemies were so when Jessica Rabbit finally agreed to play patty cake with him, he knew he was being set up. When he was called to view the blackmail photographs, he was only slightly surprised that his old friend R. K. Maroon was behind the take over bid. He refused to sell Toontown and vowed to fight any take over bid.

    Marvin went to his office at Acme make arrangements for a work slow down, he received a phone call from a frantic R.K. Maroon. Maroon told him that he was being played for at patsy too, that if Acme agreed to sell his property or Toontown that Toontown would be destroyed.

        After Maroon rung off, Acme received another phone call this time from Judge Doom. Doom wished to discuss Acme's stubborn insistence on holding onto a soon to be condemned property. Acme told Doom that he had just made his will a legal document. Should he die, Toontown would be inherited by the Toons. It was actually a ploy to save his life that Acme signed the will not because he really desired for the Toons to have Toontown.

    When Acme went to investigate a noise in the warehouse, he returned to find the will gone. Evidently his security measures of writing the will in disappearing reappearing ink was not effective. He found Judge Doom in his office, demanding to see the will.

    Acme told him that it was in a safe place.

    Judge Doom's face distended and a high pitched grating voice said, "Well, Daddy, let's not have secrets". The judge's hands formed giant mallet which he smacked Marvin Acme in the head. Acme truthfully could not tell were the will was at despite being smacked about. Angry, Judge Doom accidentally cracked Acme's fragile human skull, killing him.

    He dragged him down to the warehouse floor and dropped a safe on his head. Without the will he would gain Toontown by probate.

18. Frank Harris was one of the main characters of Cool World. Although the film alludes that the reason  a ban on human/Toon mating existed was because the Toons feared that the universes would bleed over and create chaos, in reality it was because they feared becoming like the human worlds. The scene in Las Vegas where humans were becoming Toons and vice versa was mere metaphor on the part of the animators.

19. For those who are interested here is the formula for Toon Tonic. If you wish to concoct some, hopefully you have an in to the Tooniverse. 2 parts ethyl methy U-bethyl, one part oxie moxie Biloxi, splash of chlorofloro boro-boro, coca-cola, rum, one human hair, one toon hair and one aspirin.

20. Of course this was not really how it happened as any reader of Who Censored Roger Rabbit knows but this is the explanation that the general public of this world knows.

21. Carol Masters had been a well regarded photographer of daily and sunday strips however she succumbed to greed and became involved in selling fraudulent art work.

22. Had Dr. Jekyll realized who the owner was he might not have been so inclined to eat there. J. Wellington Wimpy, a Toon owned this restaurant.

23. The man pulled out of his inter-universal traveling was Dr. Harold Shea. L. Sprague DeCamp and Fletcher Pratt depicted a few of his exploits in the works of The Incomplete Enchanter, The Castle of Brass, and The Wall of Serpents. Also in The Enchanter Reborn and The Exotic Enchanter by L. Sprague DeCamp and Christopher Stasheff. Dr. Shea and his mentor/companion Dr. Reed Chalmers are related to the Gulliver family.

24. Dr. James Grimsson's episode of youthful psychiatric therapy was recounted by none other than Philip Jose Farmer in Red Orc's Rage. A speculation about Dr. Grimson's family can be found here.

25. Although Harold Shea was a depicted as a theoretical psychologist at the Garaden Psychology Institute he like Reed Chalmers was also a trained Psychiatrist. The Garaden Psychology Institute was part of the Garaden Hospital complex in near Cleveland, Ohio. The Garaden Institute was originally chartered as a theoretical institute but it also became a full-fledged psychiatric institution in the late forties. By late sixties due to budgetary concerns and the annexation of the county where Garaden was located, the Garaden Institute became part of Wellington Hospital in Wellington, Ohio.

26. Dr. Thigpen's seminal work on multiple personality disorder or disassocative Identity Disorder was popularized as the book and film, Three Faces of Eve.

27. Unfortunately this does not seem to be the case, as seen in Hyde and Hair, part three Hydden Self.

WORKS CONSULTED

Bakshi, Ralph, Cool World, Paramount, 1992
Beck, Jerry and Friedwald, Will Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to Warner Bros. Cartoons, Henry Holt and Company, 1989
DeCamp, L. Sprague and Pratt, Fletcher, The Complete Compleat Enchanter, Baen,1989
Farmer, Philip Jose Greatheart Silver, Tor 1982
                        Red Orc's Rage, Tor 1991,
Wolfe, Gary K. Who Censored Roger Rabbit? Ballentine, 1981
                         Who P-P-P-Plugged Roger Rabbit? Villard 1991
Zemeckis, Robert Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Touchstone, 1988

Created 7-2-01
 

All rights reserved. The text and design of this page are ©  2001 by the author, Dennis E. Power. No copying or reproduction of this article or any portions thereof in any form whatsoever is permitted without prior written permission and consent of the author.

HYDDEN TIME
A TIMELINE OF EVENTS IN THE HYDE AND HAIR ARTICLES
 

PART ONE: THE HYDDEN LINEAGE

PART TWO: HYDDEN HERITAGE

PART THREE: HYDDEN SELF

PART FOUR: HYDE AND HEIRS

PART FIVE: LOST IN THE REALMS OF MADNESS

PART  SIX: HYDDEN PAIR

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