Saucy Jack

Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols, 1st victim of
"Jack the Ripper".

I will soon get my doss house money. See what a jolly bonnet I've got now?

---Polly Nichols

He had killed the first one in Buck's Row, in Hanbury St. It had been a tasty job.

It had been outside of the Frying Pan where he had first spotted her. He had made no move immediately, but simply had followed at a close distance, making sure to always blend back into the darkness, into the wall. It was not as if he was actually worried that she would catch on to his pursuit. She was too drunk to ever notice much of anything around her.

It had taken a steadily mounting fire within to convince him that he was the Angel of Death. In Hebrew legend, he knew that his name was Azrael. Now, he had so many warring voices in his head, it simply made no difference. Here, he was simply Bloody Knife.

He never knew their names until the Police News made careful report of it later. He did not even understand them as proper persons...only as walking boils to be lanced. They were verminous, all of the East End was verminous and goddamnit he meant to drive the rats out of Hamlin.

So many squalid little tenements, public houses, dance halls, and tiny shops presided over by beady eyed little Jews...it brought him such a feeling of vast, engulfing fury he felt as if he could spit fire at all of them, wiping them clean in one blast of judgment; making Sodom burn with the embers of holy indignation.

Polly, he thought as he sat in his upstairs lodging, staring off into space. The first one had been named Polly. Well, she had been a gross, lewd creature...haggard and repulsive, and to think that some low men were willing to actually pay her money for sex. It was enough to make him feel queasy.

He had approached her as a gentleman, wearing the convenient disguise he had managed to piece together for himself. Normally he was quite pale, the hallmark of any man who worked long hours hidden away in an office. However, he had obtained a sort of make-up from a mortician in his acquaintance-- and when he spread it around his face and hands he looked, by the description in the papers, like a “foreign gentleman”.

He had to laugh at that one. Gave him real fits.

No Englishman would do such a thing surely.

It was August 31st. It had been a Friday, early morning hours. Nevertheless, what did time really matter?

He had approached Polly when she was barely able to stand.

"How much would it be for a gentleman to take his pleasure?"

She was intoxicated, and exhausted. He had not known it at the time, but she had just been turned out of a common lodging house at 18 Thrawl Street, Spitalfields for not having the 4d for a bed. It had been a long day of drinking and walking for Polly, but now the day was over, and the night was His.

"Oy, I barely got energy anymore to even stand, let alone sell me tired cunny to you. But I gotta 'ave me a bed tonight, luv. Come on, over 'ere, we can make a gentlemanly agreement. Wots your name, luv? My, you are a dark man. You aren't a bleeding Joo, are you?"

'No. I am not a Jew. I am dark, because I am full of secrets."

She clucked her tongue and turned ahead of him, staggering abit in the darkness. He realized fully, for the first time, that the streets had grown dead. He could only hear the clomp of hooves on brick several streets away.

"My, bless me, you are a strange one! Well, I know a place just round the corner abit. We won't have any problem there. What's your name, dearie?"
"I-I don't have one. You can call me Saucy Johnnie"
"Well, Johnnie, you can call me Pretty Polly."
She led him through the glorious darkness toward an opening that led to stables, situated between a row of houses and a school. There was only the single gas lamp to give any illumination to his work. She turned and braced herself against the wall.
"Go on, luv...let's be quick about it. I ain't got all night..."
But then, she never lived to see the day.

Oh, the first one was such a beauty! Such a real treat! I gave her no time to squeal, and her tired old cunny could never have given me the pleasure that her death agonies did. I could feel myself slide down my leg, hot, and hit the ground...but how careful I was, hardly a drop on me. I slit her throat from ear to ear then laid her down and slit the abdomen, and stabbed the filthy cunt that she tried to sell to me...

No one had noticed a man walking bloody through the streets in the early morning hours. But then, it wasn't as if he had to escape on foot.

The night enclosed around him. He was being of pure righteousness...Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, creator and destroyer, and this was the Kali-Yuga: the age of destruction, the aeon of all-consuming darkness.

He had studied secrets of the Orient, had been initiated into a Secret Brotherhood, but that had only been the beginning. His Lodge had been the tip of a vast iceberg, whose limits he could only dare guess. They had shown him a way to power and the inner workings of consciousness, and now he saw; now he fully understood.

There were adepts that had pierced through the veil between one world, and another. They were the Illuminated Ones, who truly understood the will of Jah-Bul-On, and required each initiate to take a solemn oath binding them to this Great Work. He had taken the oath, and been shown the secrets to traveling through the gates---

Moreover, there had been no returning. I was aware from that moment on that I need not be bound and constrained by the same laws of physics that dictate the world of ordinary men. There are no limits now. The Judgment Day draweth nigh. I am simply a voice crying in the wilderness, preparing the way for He Who Cannot Be Named.

The next one had been "Dark Annie", nine days later. That was how she introduced herself, and she had been feistier than the last one. They had haggled for a bit, over prices, and he had even been spotted that time. Nevertheless, what did it matter now, there was no catching him.

It had been in a yard behind a lodging house in Hanbury Street. This one was, physically, even more repellent than the last. She was vermin. He wanted to exterminate her, praise God.

The door had been unlocked; the creaky old shambles was being let to a small army of people. He followed her quickly through a short passage to the yard, and then she had customarily lifted her skirts for him.

This one was even more a sensation of bloodletting than the last. He had cut the throat from right to left, a great jagged smile to pierce the flabby white neck. Then he had torn flesh from the abdomen, disemboweling his dear Dark Annie and leaving strings of intestines thrown over the right shoulder. He had left even more fatty flesh over the left shoulder. He had then begun to remove the women parts, the sinful parts, taking her uterus and part of her vagina and bladder. In the words of Dr. Bagster Phillips, which he had read in The Lancet, "Obviously the work was that of an expert-or one, at least, who had such knowledge of anatomical or pathological examinations as to be enabled to secure the pelvic organs with one sweep of the knife." Well, that really was the icing on the cake!

He had finally finished his work by rearranging her rings and pocket money between her legs. As a final flourish, he left two new farthings there.

"For Charon," he had whispered. Then he left his first clew: a leather apron. It was all such a funny little game. It gave him real fits.

They thought that it must have been a Jew.
A Jew.
A Jew.
"Achoo!" he said to himself, laughing, ready to take up pen and paper again at any moment. All he heard about anymore on the streets was that he was a seedy Jew butcher, because everyone knows that an Englishman could never perpetrate such a crime.

He was unstoppable.

He had done that one just before dawn. It was always good to see the sun come up, to begin a new day. To have new adventures, and to spill fresh blood.