Jack

In The Flesh by @Jennifer_L_Oliver

When I returned to campus, everything seemed different. Surreal. There was a disconnect between me and the world around me. Like being in a dream yet you're wide awake. But maybe the only thing different was me. After all, it's not every day you find out you're the descendant of an infamous serial killer and you have psychic powers.

I'd gone home for the weekend to do some laundry, and visit with the parental units. I mean, come on, I'm not some horrible kid who only goes back home when she needs clean clothes. I do visit with my parents. Obviously, they forgot I was coming though, because they'd left on an impromptu weekend getaway. I wasn't complaining. It meant I got the whole house to myself. Living in a dorm is noisy and crowded. No privacy at all. Especially since I got stuck with the friendliest, chattiest, girly-girl roommate ever to exist. So a couple of days at home all alone? Not a problem. Until I decided to go through my grandmother's stuff in the attic.

I was looking for some old Halloween decorations we had. I figured I could take them back to the dorm with me, spruce up the place a little. Possibly scare my roommate with a few creepy plastic spiders. That thought alone make it worth digging around in a dusty attic.
That's how I found my grandmother's journal. Well, collection of journals, really. They went all the way back to my great-great-great-grandmother's diary. Reading them was life-altering, in more ways than one. Our family had secrets. Two, to be precise.
The first was hard to believe, and I wasn't sure I did. Supposedly, each generation bore a female medium - someone who could see and commune with the dead. And on their 18th birthday, her powers manifest.

I was an only child. An actual miracle child, to be honest. My mother wasn't supposed to be able to have children. But out of nowhere, she got pregnant with me. So here I am. An only child, and the sixth generation of Addleson women. Which meant I was a medium. Or soon to be one. My 18th birthday was coming up on October 27th. Next Friday. 

But that wasn't the only shock I had reading through the journals. There was a good reason my family kept this one a secret. My great-great-great-grandmother, Rose Marie, was a murderess. And not just any killer, mind you. She was infamous. She was Jack the Ripper.

It was all there, her confessions, written on yellowed pages in clean cursive handwriting. How she chose her victims, what she did and why. Wouldn't you know it was over a man? My great-great-great-grandfather. By Rose Marie's accounts, he was a gambler and a drunk. And he if wasn't spending his money on booze, then it was being wasted on whores. She grew tired of it all. Started following him, watching him, and writing it all down.

Her early entries and descriptions were void of emotion. More like I was reading from a medical or scientific journal instead of the diary of an almost 20-year-old woman. I expected anger, bitterness from being betrayed. But none of those emotions were visible in her words. Just a distant cold report of what happened. 

The killings started by accident really. One of old grandpa's "women of the night" caught Rose Marie watching. Told her she had to pay for the "show" but Rose Marie refused. They fought, and before she knew what she was doing, my grandmother pulled out a knife and stabbed the prostitute twice in her neck. Before the woman could recover, Rose Marie ran home. She found out later through a newspaper article that the woman had lived, but she'd given old grandpa's description as her attacker instead of the truth.

It was at this point that things started unraveling for Rose Marie. The rush of stabbing that whore, the power over life and death, the blood on her hands, it all excited her. She wanted to feel it again. So she continued following her cheating husband, and attacking the prostitutes after he left. Taking her rage out on them rather than him. Killing them, ripping out their insides, taking pieces of them... Soon she felt it was her duty, her job to rid the world of this filth. She wrote letters to the newspapers and the police. Gave herself a name even. But there was a side effect she hadn't expected. Their ghosts.