So. Much. RESEARCH >.<
This is a short story about one of the most notorious serial killers of all time: Jack the Ripper. It's not in his POV, unfortunately...I think that would've made it more interesting. But as any writers know, you must go with your inspiration, and mine led me to write it in Eliza's POV.
By this time, you may have guessed that I really like the Victorian era.
Whitechapel (the city, not the death metal band) was a pretty messed-up area in 1888. Racism, theft, murder, things like that were pretty common. There were actually a lot of other murders around the time of the "canonical five" (the murders that were believed to be orchestrated by him). The five bore the most similarity to each other: slit throats, intestines hanging out everywhere, etc. And they were all prostitutes, too. The story ends with the last of the five, Mary Jane Kelly, meeting her untimely and rather gory demise.
The police received hundreds of letters from people pretending to be Jack during the time between the first and last ones, but three of them stood out (the creepiest of which I included in the story). To this day, no one's been able to figure out his identity, though it's still under heavy speculation.
This isn't my best work since I was so pressed for time completing it, and I don't really like the abrupt ending, either. I guess it's up to you to decide what happens next :P
Hope you like it!
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31 AUGUST
1888
The
killings began at a despairingly unacceptable time, when Elizabeth Cartier
finally entered into her eighteenth year of existence. The body—if the
glistening, sprawling, obscenely red mass could be called as such—was found
during the day’s wee hour, which perturbed the new young woman, since she was
born at around that same time. What a
horrible coincidence, Eliza had thought. One lives, another dies, and the
world only stops for the latter of the two.
Outside,
the Whitechapel sky was a deepening indigo, though the wee hours had passed
long since. Eliza was alone in the parlor, slurping tea. She was enveloped in
her father’s great vinyl chair, and the candle’s flame was a dancing yellow
teardrop balanced atop the wax. Loneliness was gnawing; her family had taken to
bed hours ago, but she was restless, eager to hold on to the last wisps of the
day.
Embroidering
lessons had been absolutely dreadful, to say the least. She’d been forced to
sit by Bianca Lovett, who spoke of the murder in a way that ill-befitted the
situation.
“They
say the slain lady was a whore,” Bianca had hissed into her ear while Madame
Broussard was gone fetching more yarn. “She had two big ol’ cuts travelin’ down
deep in ‘er throat. And whoever did the deed had taken the blade to…” she’d
leaned in close, conspiratorial, “the private
areas.” Then she’d covered her mouth and giggled.
“Her
name was Mary Ann Nichols. She had a husband and children,” saucer-eyed Cathy
had whispered, pale hands atremble. “The poor, poor thing. Doesn’t matter if
she was a tramp…no one deserves a death like that!”
Eliza
remembered the glitter in Bianca’s eyes, the sinister upending of the corners
of her mouth. It had been horrid. How could one glint an eye at a death? At a murder, and one such as this? Eliza had
felt herself shrink at Bianca’s morbid fascination. She didn’t want to know the
things Bianca took pleasure in; rather, she wanted to un-know them. She wanted to put them in a gunnysack and burn them
all to ash to blow in the wind. That
would be a nice birthday gift from herself to herself.
Eliza set the teacup down on the nightstand. She rose,
rubbing away the wrinkles in her nightgown. She was flooded with warmth from her
tea, almost uncomfortably so. She bent over to blow away the candle, brushing
mousy brown hair behind her ears.
And then.
A dark movement out the window, a fleeting whiplike shift
of the shadows. Eliza stopped, stiff as rigor mortis. Heart pounding. Eyes
searching. It was a few seconds before she took a step back, and another, and
another.
There it was again.
She should have left then. She should have blown out the
candle and retreated to her room, should have shut the doors and swept the
drapes closed. But Eliza was a curious one, and she walked toward the window,
peering out.
Into a face.
Squealing, Eliza stumbled clumsily back, narrowly avoiding
the nightstand with the still-alight candle. Instantly she slapped both hands
over her mouth, so hard that the lower half of her face stung, and her eyes
squeezed shut, and she willed the face to disappear, to slip away, away, never
to be seen again…
“No,” she whispered, “no, not me, please, not me, not me,
not me…”
She could have repeated this for a minute or for an hour,
for the way fear invades time and distorts it beyond recognition. It was still
there when she peeled open her eyes. Shaking, she realized the it was actually a him, and a seemingly nonthreatening one at that.
The only sounds were her ragged breaths, her bludgeoning
heart, her fear pealing.
Then his lips moved.
Barely. Eliza couldn’t make out the words, but his face was
such a mask of wretchedness that set afloat specks of pity in her. His lips
moved again, and though the fog of his breath on the glass concealed it, it
didn’t escape her this time.
“Help me,” he was
saying.
Before she could stop herself, she ran to the door.
* *
* *
“What’s your name?” she asked him.
The boy downed the entire glass in one gulp, dragging a
hand across thin, chapped lips. He seemed slightly older than Eliza, tall and
slight, with a shock of dark hair atop his head. “Nicholas,” he answered. “I’m
Nicholas.” He looked at her. “And I’m…sorry I scared you.”
“Nicholas.” Eliza had heard the name before. Recently,
even. Her brows narrowed in thought. She didn’t know many boys by the name of
Nicholas. There was one who played the fiddle at the corner by the cooper’s
shop, but this wasn’t him, of course. The only other one she could think of…
“Nicholas!” she exclaimed, then slapped both hands over her
mouth again. She was silent for a moment, anticipating her mother’s approaching
footsteps from the hall, but no sound came, thankfully.
Nicholas
cocked his head to one side, birdlike. “You know me? From where?”
“You’re
the one Reverend Tyler took in, aren’t you? He brings you to church every
Sunday. I see you quite often.” A horrible—but not altogether
surprising—thought occurred to her. “Did…did he do this to you?”
Reverend
Richard William Tyler headed the ecclesiastics at the church the Cartiers had
attended for years. Putting it mildly, the man simply terrified Eliza; she was
convinced his size was directly proportional to the amount of fire and
brimstone he pounded into each sermon. Eliza could never fathom why such a
severe man could have such a substantial following. He preached condemnation
and hellfire, mentioning seldom the austere God other ministers droned on
about.
Nicholas
refused to meet her gaze. He focused on the tile floor and was silent for a
long time. Then, he finally looked at her. “You can’t tell anyone. Anyone.” His words were scraping.
“But…”
“It
wouldn’t make a difference.” Nicholas’s entire countenance hardened. “Whitechapel
is corrupt. The police are corrupt. Tell them, and he’ll shove enough money at
them to keep them silent.” He ran a hand through his dark hair. “It wouldn’t
make a difference,” he repeated through gritted teeth.
“Then
why do you stay with him?” Eliza almost cried. “Why not run away?”
He
laughed gratingly. “Who would take me in?” When Eliza couldn’t answer, he
continued. “The streets are deadly. No one can even go to the market without
fear of assault. At least I have a place to stay with him, clothes to wear. At
least I’m not lying dead in some damned alley being picked at by dogs.”
The streets are deadly. The
murdered woman made a reappearance behind Eliza’s eyes. Mary Ann Nichols.
Surely, life was better than a death like that, even in filthy, festering,
disease-ridden Whitechapel.
Wasn’t
it?
The
helplessness was infuriating. “Why—” she began, but stopped herself. She wanted
to invite him to stay with her, but it would be foolish. What if the good
Reverend came to retrieve him, and not peacefully? What would happen to her? To
her family? She severed that train of thought quickly, abhorrently.
This—cleaning his wounds, feeding him—would have to mark the extent of her
kindness to him.
She
would let things remain as they were.
“Let
me help you,” she said, and reached out to him, but soon regretted it as her
fingertips came in contact with the cold of congealing blood. Still, she
ignored it and brought the candle closer. Jagged cuts zigzagged up and down his
arm, and beneath them, Eliza barely made out the ghosts of other scars if the
same pattern.
She let out a breath. “What happened to you?” she
whispered.
Nicholas was silent—but obediently still—as Eliza examined
the wounds. She poured alcohol on a rag, despite the pungent, antiseptic stench
that burned her throat. She worked as gingerly as she could, but Nicholas still
flinched and dragged in a breath through his teeth as the liquid soaked the
wounds.
Eliza
bandaged them carefully, like she’d seen done so many times. When she was
finished, she bit off the bandage—gently—and tucked it beneath. “There. Should
heal much faster now.”
His eyes were blue, blue. Bluer than melancholy, her mother
would have said. And melancholy they were. It was filling them, and the wind-like
force of it stilled her. “My name is Eliza, by the way.” she said, lowering her
own brown ones.
A smile pulled at the ends of his mouth. A real smile,
nothing sardonic or subtracted from. “Nice to meet you. Though I do wish it
were under different circumstances.” He slid off the table, landing, catlike,
on his feet.
“You’re leaving? Already?” Eliza asked him.
Ethan lifted an eyebrow. “You would want me to stay?”
Eliza blushed. Of course he had to get home. Or, the
place he’s currently residing, Eliza thought. To call Ethan’s living situation a true home would be a gross
overstatement. She took the candle and led him to the double doors.
“I have…responsibilities to complete,” Ethan continued, “so
I’m afraid I can’t stay and chat. I would if I could, though.”
“Will I see you again?” Eliza asked.
“Hopefully.” He gave her another smile. “Thank you,” he
said.
“Be careful.” She opened the door for him and watched the
night swallow his retreating figure until he was out of sight.
9 NOVEMBER
1888
Three
more killings. Three more candles snuffed out.
These women were prostitutes as well, and they had been
murdered—mutilated, savaged, dehumanized—in
much the same way the first victim had been. Throats clean-cut, innards a
nightmarish mishmash of crimson rope and congealed blood. Eliza lay claim to no
religion, but nonetheless counted herself lucky, if not blessed. They had
happened mere streets from each other, and what if it befell her? She found
herself marveling on more than one occasion at the slipperiness of existence.
How wavering and delicate life was, like smoke from incense.
How
a slash of steel to the right place could render it a simple speck of dust:
here one second, gone before the next.
The
authorities had received hundreds of letters from people claiming to be the
killer. Jack the Ripper, the Leather Apron; both names he’d been so kind to
give the public. But why would anyone don such a mantle? Of course, the vast
majority of the letters were hoaxes. But three had stood out, and Eliza was
fortunate enough to hear by far the most chilling of the bunch, written in
penmanship that better befitted a young schoolchild:
From hell
Mr Lusk,
Sor
I send you half the Kidne I took from
one women prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nice. I
may send you the bloody knif that took it out if you only wate a whil longer.
signed
Catch me when you Can Mishter Lusk.
News
traveled fast in Whitechapel, and Lusk, the head of the Whitechapel Vigilante
Committee, had himself received the letter—along with the boxed half-kidney.
There had been no murders since then, not that anyone had begun to take it for
granted, least of all Eliza. She’d taken to sleeping with her brother’s knife
under her pillow, lest the same fate come to encompass her.
A
stick of butter from widowed Mrs. Winslow was in her hand as she ducked down
the alley toward home. Dorsett Street was unusually quiet that early morning,
and Eliza welcomed it with open arms. The past few months had been a horrid,
gore-riddled tangle, and the peace could have hailed from another place,
another time entirely. She walked by the occasional cur nosing about for its
next meager meal. She’d brought no money, so when milk-eyed vagabonds moaned
and stretched gnarled hands to her, looking away only made her slightly guilty.
Her
mind fluttered back to Ethan. What was he doing now? It was a question that had
latched itself onto the back of her mind the morning after he’d come to her.
She’d had little interaction with Ethan since that night two months ago, only
seeing him passing about the offering platter during church. Since that night,
sitting quietly through it with her family became quite the task. She wanted to
jump up and scream “Abuser!” during one of Tyler’s fire-imbued sermons. As
sorely as she was tempted to do it—to rip away his mask and reveal the pulsing,
ugly truth beneath it—she knew she’d be laughed at, dismissed, possibly put
away. She had not a shred of evidence against Tyler—how she hated the name now!
Not only that, what would become of Ethan if everyone did believe her? He’d be turned out to the streets. Eliza sighed,
wishing as she approached the window to a hotel room.
And
that’s when she saw them.
Ethan
and—dear God—Reverend Tyler.
Ethan
was half-eclipsed by Tyler, who had almost a foot and a half on him in height.
Tyler’s hand was wound around Ethan’s arm in a death grip. Tendrils of his
voice escaped the thin walls, and Eliza did not have to listen closely to hear its
dripping malice. Quickly, she pressed herself against the alley wall, praying
that she had not been seen.
“And
what are you, boy?” Tyler was growling.
“Nothing,”
came Ethan’s reply, barely audible.
“I
said…” Reverend Tyler grabbed Ethan’s shirt in two giant paws, hauling him up
and slamming him into the brick wall. Even from where she stood, Eliza heard
the horrible, resounding crack of his
skull. Tyler leaned in close, foam spraying from his mouth as he gritted out, “What are you?”
“Nothing!”
Ethan shouted hoarsely. “I am nothing!”
Tyler,
all pulsing veins and flaring nostrils, drove Ethan’s limp figure against the
wall, over and over and over, the sound like some twisted drumbeat keeping his
rage in time. Eliza’s heart broke with every strike; her fists clenched and her
helplessness ground within her.
Ethan’s
shirt still in his fists, Tyler said, “I’m glad we’ve come to an
understanding.” He thrust the boy away, and Ethan hit the ground and bounced
slightly, all flailing limbs. His groans and sobs permeated the air.
“Get
up, whoreson,” Tyler snarled. “You are of no use to me lying there like a
drunkard. We have responsibilities to complete tonight.” He dealt Ethan a
savage kick to the stomach, and Ethan’s body curled tightly around the pain.
Eliza heard his coughs, drawn out and rasping and wet-sounding. She was in
tears, fighting the urge to charge in and kill Tyler herself. The butter was
becoming crushed in her fist. Never had the desire to kill someone been so
bright and strong, and the new sensation terrified her.
We have responsibilities to complete. Hadn’t
Ethan told her that that night two months ago? It chilled her, to think of what
those responsibilities entailed.
But
she was about to find out.
Swallowing
hard, Eliza listened closer. For a few seconds, no sound came from the room
save Ethan’s coughs and cries. Then, another, smaller sound came, and Eliza had
to strain to make it out.
Was
that…a woman’s voice?
Eliza
dared look into the window. Ethan had somehow risen to his feet and stood
unsteadily by Tyler. Their backs were turned to Eliza. There was a small space
in between them, just enough to see a something on the bed.
“Look
at her,” Tyler said. “Life is a gift from above, boy. She has profaned herself
in the eyes of God and thus made hers worthless and sinful. Instead of opening
her home as a true woman should, she has opened her legs for any man who will
satisfy her wanton desires. She does not deserve to continue with her
squandered existence, does she? Does she?”
Ethan’s
reply was a jerking shake of his head.
Tyler
moved out of the way, and to Eliza’s horror, a woman was bound by her wrists to
the bed. She was kicking and writhing, trying desperately to free herself.
Eliza swallowed the bile rising in her throat. She knew the woman. She’d seen her stumbling down the streets at night,
swigging spirits and calling out vulgar offers to passing men.
She
was a lady of the night. A prostitute.
Everything
came crashing down then. The realization was blinding, and Eliza felt it like a
blast of sunlight to the eyes.
Tyler
and Ethan had murdered those women. Together, they were Jack the Ripper.
Tyler
returned, brandishing a large blade. The woman’s pleas stopped for a shaved
second, then turned into screams.
“In
a way,” he continued in spite of them, “you’re doing this to your own mother.
Wasn’t she one of these foul, disgusting creatures as well?”
Tyler
handed the knife to Ethan, who nodded blankly. The woman’s screams grew in
volume and wrenched Eliza’s heart.
“We
have a duty to our society, Ethan. We are its caretakers as well as its
inhabitants. It is our God-given responsibility to rid ourselves of this vile, lustful
thing. This filth.” He made a wild
gesture of disgust at the woman. “And you must do your duty as well. You must
carry on my work. But first, you must practice.”
Eliza
gasped. The entire thing was wrong. A part of her was screeching at her to run
as fast as her feet could carry her, but she could not tear herself away.
“I’m
sorry,” Ethan said, voice quavering. He stepped closer to the woman, and her screams
and oaths grew wild and bestial, something that Eliza was doomed to remember to
her final day.
“I’m
sorry!” Ethan cried again. He raised the knife.
No.
No.
Ethan
hesitated, his arm freezing. His shoulders heaved.
“Dammit,
boy, do it!” Tyler grabbed Ethan’s wrist and yanked it down. The blade slid profanely easily across the woman’s throat, which then began to vomit red. Abruptly, her screams
stopped with Eliza’s heart.
Tyler
released Ethan’s wrist. Ethan tore into her body like a rabid thing, slashing
and stabbing and slicing. The blade hacked mercilessly at her face, her torso,
her legs and arms. Flecks of effluvium and rivulets of blood flew off of the
woman and coated the walls, covered Ethan, covered Tyler, whose hands were
raised in perverse supplication.
She
kept repeating it like a mantra: He can’t
do this. He can’t.
But
he was. He horribly, revoltingly, sickeningly was.
The
frailty of life, billowing in front of Eliza as would a sail during a
thunderstorm.
She
heard someone else screaming, though it was distant and muffled as if it were
underwater. She looked at the red, prostrate once-body; it couldn't have come
from it. Then it dawned on her; she was the one screaming.
Both
men turned to her.
Eliza
froze, rooted to the spot. She began to back away just as shock blossomed on Ethan’s red-splattered face and his mouth formed her name: “…Eliza?”
And she ran.
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