Wednesday 4 April 2018

1. The Beginning of a Chronicle

September 8th, 1888, Hanbury Street 29, London.  

I hear the soft sounds of gurgling when my hands tighten around her fat neck. Her already puffy face swells up even more. She stares me deeply in my eyes, her eyes locked to mine as I feel the adrenaline pumping through my veins. Slowly but surely I feel her life fading away, every last bit of it squeezed out of her overweight body by my very own hands. I grin with glee when her last breath of air leaves her body. 
I grab my butcher knife tight and firm. Then I start slashing at the woman's throat much in the same way a butcher would behead a pig. After several brutal slashes, her neck is completely severed. Blood starts dripping out of her arteries. 

Drip, drip, drip... 

I move my attention to the lower parts of her body, gently running my knife past her breasts towards her abdomen. I rip open her dress and gently spread her legs. Then, with an aggressive and abrupt stab, I plant my knife deeply in her uterus. Shivers of joy shoot down my spine. My hands feel tingly and my heartbeat starts rising. With a big rip, I create a deep cut from her uterus all the way to her belly. Once more I strengthen my grip on the knife and give it another hard tug. Like a child opening a Christmas present, I rip her open, quickly and with much excitement. With precision, I completely remove her uterus and her bladder. The smell of shit and piss penetrate my nose, but the feeling of sheer euphoria refrains me from giving a damn. I start to rip out her guts and pull them apart, then throw them all over her fat body.
I stand up and take a good long look at the scene I just created. As I take it all in, a tear starts rolling down my cheek. A tear of pure, raw emotion. I haven't felt so alive in a long, long time. Tonight truly is a blessing. I am but a humble person, nobody will remember my real name. But my stage name will be remembered. 

Jack The Ripper. 

Come morning, I will be at the cover of every newspaper. Authors of the future will write chronicles about me, beautiful chronicles of darkness.


The next morning, Annie Chapman was found by the Metropolitan Police in the backyard of 29th Hanbury Street. The bobbies called two coroners to the scene. An older gentleman who goes by the name Dr. George Bagster Phillips, and his younger assistant Dr. Calvin Benjamin Watson.

Dr. Calvin B. Watson, 42 years old, lives on Charles Street in an apartment on the second floor. Watson was born in a well to do Protestant family. After he graduated from the University of Cambridge, Watson went on to be an assistant coroner of Scotland Yard.

Watson was abhorred when he found the body of Annie Chapman. Never in his life had he seen anything quite as grotesque. He wondered to himself who , or what, could possibly have committed such an obscene, brutal act of debauchery. This was not the first time Watson saw a victim of the Whitechapel murderer, but that didn't stop him from feeling sick to his stomach. Something like this is not something he could ever get used to, but it was part of his job, so he collected every bit of courage he had and started examining the body. He noticed the victim was strangled to death with an abnormal amount of strength. This was the third Whitechapel victim, the third time the victim was strangled to death before any of the mutilations happened, the third time there were no signs of resistance, and the third time nobody in the vicinity noticed any screams.

Earlier that week, Dr. Watson did an autopsy on the body of a man named Thomas Duncan. He came to the conclusion that Mr. Duncan was almost completely drained of all his blood, yet he had no signs of any cutting or puncture wounds on his body. Dr. Phillips jokingly said it must have been the work of a vampire. Dr. Watson was not a very superstitious person, he considered himself quite the skeptic. He remembered the stories of Spring-heeled Jack and how it annoyed him when people seriously entertained the thought that Jack could have been a devil. Yet the autopsy of Mr. Duncan kept haunting his thoughts.
But why did he have to think about that now? Could there be a connection? Surely Mr. Duncan was not a victim of the same killer as Mrs. Chapman, the M.O. was completely different. Yet Watson couldn't shake the thought of there being a connection.

Stories of the new Whitechapel murder victim started spreading like wildfire. Each newspaper had their own ideas of who, or what, the Whitechapel murderer could have been. Some people believed the murderer was an escapee from the Bedlam Hospital for the Mentally Disturbed. Some people blamed the Jews. Others were convinced the murderer was Irish. 
A great many people believed far more outlandish stories. Stories of the murderer being a werewolf or a vampire. Stories of the murderer being a ghost of the past, acting out his grudge on unfaithful women.

A few days later, the Whitechapel murderer finally got a name: Jack The Ripper.

It was on this day that Dr. Calvin B. Watson — together with an Irish police constable and two brave women — took matters into own hands. The four of them started investigating the Ripper murders on their own accord, none of them believing the official stories, all of them convinced something far more sinister was going on.