Whitechapel Vengeances

Welcome to London

London, 1888 was an intense time to be wandering about the streets, especially in the summertime. Cobblestone streets slicked with filth, buildings hemming you in on either side, pedestrians and carriages fought for space in the roads and lanes, much like they had for centuries.

In the sketchy East End of London the term "overpopulated" was explicitly defined in the area that had experienced an influx in population from the many migrating Irish seeking a new life. I cursed under my breath as I tripped—yet again—over my skirts and nearly face planted into a pile of feces (the case on whether it was human or animal was still up for debate.) My partner, Jean hadn't seen as he'd been too busy.

"I really do wish you'd take things more seriously, Jean," I huffed as he paused to flirt with yet another shopgirl. I hooked my arm into his ignoring the side-eye and glares I got from many a passerby. This might've been the poorer end of London, but there was still a racial divide, blurred as it was.

"Could it be ma cher, that you are perhaps jaloux of these fair beauties?" He teased, I suppressed the urge to sucker punch him by simply rolling my eyes.

"Believe me Jean, I'm far from jealous of whoever you bat your lashes at. We've already tried the dating game. It didn't end well," I unhooked my arm as I said this and heard Jean sigh despondently, but I didn't feel guilty. He was my best friend there was no doubt about it, I loved him dearly, but there was no romantic essence between us. At least not on my end. "I just need you to have your wits about you while we're doing this job. It really means a lot to me."

"You say that about every job," he muttered.

"You know I love my job," I jibed, Jean and I were Chroniclers. Time traveling historians who went back in time to be firsthand witnesses to events that had only been able to be learned about from secondary sources. There were always twenty-four Chroniclers at any given time along with their partners, and becoming one of them had been my lifelong dream since I was three. Now that I was finally one it was like playing dress up and going to traipse about in time. This wasn't a job, this was fun.

"Does it not bother you?" Jean laughed, "That if you'd actually gone through your natural lifespan, in your natural timeline, surviving and living healthy. You'd currently be fifty-seven."

"Not as much as it should bother you that you'd be one hundred and seven," I quipped back. Jean's face turned pale and I laughed patting him on the shoulder amiably. "Don't look so down Denim Jeans. I'm sure you would've made a cute old man. If you didn't die in the rebellion." A disapproving huff from Jean told me that he didn't agree, but I was still amused.

Another thing Jean and I had in common was that we were people out of our time. I had found Jean as a fourteen-year-old boy escaping the Vendeé Rebellion in 1794 back in France. I would later find out that I myself had been adopted by my dad as a baby from Tysons Corner, Virginia in 1831 during a discipline act following the Nat Turner Rebellion. Both of us had escaped our fates and lived in the comfort of the twenty-first century in the year 2066. It was more jarring for Jean then for myself as I couldn't even remember my original timeline.

"Ugh, we've been walking for hours Charlie. Can we just chalk it up as a loss?" Jean groaned. "Why are we doing this?"

"I can't believe how completely disinterested you are Jean?" I said ducking into a filthy alleyway where a group of stray cats slinked out of a second prior. "We are on the trail of one of the most famed serial killers in all of history. You and I could be standing in the very spot where Jack the Ripper stood!" Jean looked at my feet and raised an eyebrow unimpressed.

"Well if Jack the Ripper stood in merde all the time I don't want to follow him," he snickered. I looked at my shoe and saw that I was indeed standing in an enormous pile of unidentifiable fecal matter.