The Secrets of Whitechaple

Chapter 4

I stand there a while just staring at it. I begin to look around the room; a small table, washing basin, a bed. I see a door directly across from me. It lays in my path to the door so I just simply step on it. 

I reach the door and open it. An alley. What an odd place for a residential building to lead to. No matter, it is much more convenient. 

I turn back to it, a plan already set in my mind. I take off my cloak and begin to roll up the sleeves of my white button down shirt as I walk closer to it.  

I grab it by the ankles and begin to pull it towards the door.

"I 'aven't 'een 'im since tewsday." I hear a woman's voice and immediately halt all movement. 

"Maybe ya should just 'ive up on 'im then." A second woman's voice.

The room is dimly lit and that fantastically placed table covers its body as the women pass. However, they don't bother to even look in my direction. Even better. 

I continue to pull its body towards the door that leads to the alley way. Once I am through the door way I keep pulling its body until is is on the opposite side of the door I had just came form and  a little ways down the alley for good measure. 

Now that I am in the light of the alley way instead of the dimly lit rat trap, I can see that when I had thought I had stabbed it chest I have in fact caught it in the upper abdomen. That's why it took so long of it to die. Doesn't matter, either way it's still dead. 

I reach down and pluck my surgical knife from abdominal wound. As i do this, blood begins to ooze out and I see it twitch. So it's not dead after all, I guess I'm going to have to update my journal.

As this runs though my mind, I move to its left side to begin my work. 

I begin to press my knife hard into the skin of her neck until I see blood pour from around my fingers and drip down her cooling skin.

*      *       *

I glance at myself in the mirror above the wash basin as I place my hands in. For a second I think that just maybe I'm doing something wrong. That maybe I shouldn't have done that. These thoughts only last moments, Frances's faces crosses through my mind and all of second thoughts disappear and I remember why I'm doing this. For her. For my love. For her memory. For her honor. 

I begin stubbing my hands aggressively trying to rid my skin of everything that has touched that thing now lying dead and mutilated in the alley way just outside the door.

I pull my hands from the wash basin and pat them dry on a near by piece of fabric that I pick up. 

I towards where I have dropped my cloak in the excitement of tonight's activities, and pick it up. I brush the dirt off the expensive fabric as I walk towards the small table that resides in the center of the room. 

I pull my parchment, quill, and ink from the inside pocket of my cloak and set them on the table. My cloak is then draped across the back of the chair that I will take a seat in. 

I sit down and begin to work.

I cross out where I had written how long it took it to die and rewrote the new, more accurate time i remember form when I had removed my knife. Under the new time I begin writing in detail just exactly what I had done to it. As I do this I recall it vividly. 

*      *        *

I slit its throat shallowly form left to right just enough to her and incapacitate but still keep it alive. Then I took my knife to the previous wound I had made in its abdomen and roughly pushed the knife back in, I ripped the knife down the rest of its abdomen in a hard and jagged cut. It squealed faintly. 

The squeal only made me angry causing me to slash the bottom of its abdomen from side to side. It squealed again. I slash it again. The same exact way but a little higher this time. This cause and effect went on a few more times until it got the hint and shut up. 

I spoke too soon. It began screaming with a new found strength. I needed to shut it up. I took my knife back to its throat and made another incision mimicking the earlier one from left to right, severing its vocal chords and effectively killing it this time. 

But now its dead and so is my fun. Or is it. 

*       *        *

After I have written down what I had done to it while it was still alive I had to take a break to rest my wrist. It was tired for the furious writing I had done in order to keep up with my fast paced memory recall. 

When my wrist had regained its strength I wrote down under everything else that after I had slit its throat and killed it, I stabbed it again in its right side three times. A little earlier I had not understood why I had done this but I do now. I was angry that it still had the strength to scream even after all I had done to it. Things like that are weak and pathetic, they shouldn't have the strength to keep going after something like that. I will just have to try harder next time. 

I stand up, pick up my cloak for the chair I had just got up from and slipped it on. I pick up all of my supplies from the table and put them back in their original spot in my pocket.

I take one more glance around the room, breathe deeply, and exit out the door that the former living prostitute Mary Ann Nichols had brought me through near the beginning of our time together.