Whitechapel

November 9th, 1888

Like a doll at the mercy of a ruthless child, Mary Kelly lay in complete disarray on the mattress of her bed. Dressed in a cerise gown to match the sheets that envelop her, she lay on display for the men surrounding her. Four silhouettes loom over her in her rest, admiring the garnet embellished furniture, walls, floor. Fragmented upon the ground lay shards of glass, reflecting the moon's futile effort to illuminate the room. She lay as fragmented across the room as the scraps of glass, a distorted puzzle of flesh that would never be put together properly again.
    James Maybrick stood, barely able to keep his dinner down as he peeks at the carnage. Fiddling with his pen, he thinks back to how lively the woman had been just barely a half hour ago. She had been a beautiful wench. Unable to pay her rent, she had graciously warmed up to the likes of Kominski at the sound of a full pocket of copper coins, inviting the man into her bed without a second thought. Ignorant to the shadows lurking just past her window. There were only a few moments between the initial crash of the window bursting into fractals and the sinner's commitment. She was barely able to make a peep before his dagger, like the claws of a bloodthirsty animal, ripped through her skin. In only a few moments, her terrified viridescent eyes glossed over, leaving nothing but a single tear as evidence of her animation.
    "We should go before someone calls murder," Maybrick hums, shifting towards the window, eyes fixated on the ruby liquid tranfering between his daddles and the nib pen.
    Kominski, busying himself with posing the cadaver sensually, tosses a wicked glare back at Maybrick. "Y'can leave, ye flapdoodle," he snarls before returning his attention to the woman, ravenous eyes scouring the bloodbath as though it was a full-course meal. He sniffs the air, breathing deeply in the scent of iron permeating the air like an abhorrent perfume.
    "Aye, you are a mighty meater, Maybrick," Klosowki hums blasély, retrieving a few long, thick flaps of flesh from the bed and placing them on the bedside table. "How is it that you can stomach the killer's blow but wussie out at making this wagtail more beautiful?" He smiles slyly, a tinge of accusation coating his words. He sits on the bed, looking tenderly at the woman, caressing what was left of her thighs. The tissue was flayed to reveal the bone, his fingers coated in coagulating scarlet liquid. "She's right beautiful now. Not a morsel of fat is left." He hums, cupping her cheek. Her face so callously brutalized that she was nearly unrecognizable. "She can't peep another word," he purrs, turning his icy gaze to Maybrick. "The perfect woman, would you not agree?"
    As though he'd seen a phantom, Maybrick's complexion turns chalky. Stricken, he manages to utter, "You're a bunch of ratbags, the lot of you," before hastily retreating into the dead of night through the window whence they entered.
    Tossing a crooked, gnarly-toothed grin at the stout man's fleeing form disintegrating into the darkness, Kosminski guffaws, "Pigeon-livered jollocks."
    "So quiet," Klosowski muses, turning on John Druitt. Clad in all white, save for the russet streaks of color winding around his body, a lock of the woman's amber hair protruding from his breast pocket. Druitt stands as still as a pole, seemingly ignorant to the argument that had just occurred. Any of his once exuberant aura is now nonexistent, drowning in the darkness that binds his mind to the knife. In his hands hold a singular kidney, it's twin cushioned on the heap of meat ornamenting the bedside table. Beside the mess lay the dagger, immaculately polished metal peering through beneath the deep russet fluid coating it.
The queer man stands, eyes leaden as they scour the surface of the organ. "I sliced the cortex," Druitt replies hollowly, his voice but a mere whisper. "A failure, true to my family's words." So meek, the man stands, isolated in the corner of the room. Despite his towering figure, he seems barely larger than a mouse as he fixates on the flawed cut across the russet organ.
    Scoffing, Kosminski stands, stalking over to the leggy man and snatching the kidney from his grasp. Dangling it out in front of his face, his grin wide in all of its chipped and yellowed glory, "Don't matt'r 'bout how thems look," he states, whirling around to grab its pair from the table. "Th' lads in th' market 'll want these marked or no! D'snt matter the looks of em." Further inspecting the pair, barely a scratch could be seen. Only a slight slice marred the surface, hardly noticeable in the poor lighting.
    "No! That is not the issue!" Druitt wails, throwing his hands in the air with abrupt ferver, eyes burning with animosity. Like a caged animal, he paces, erratic in his hand gestures, "If I can not handle such a simple surgery, how will I ever prevail and prove that I am worthy of being a Druitt? Nay, such a simple task and yet I do nothing but fail!" He laments, his fingers pulling roughly on his tawny hairs, "Fail! Fail! Fail! What a failure I will be to my professors when the morrow reaps the night away, leaving all but a single shadow to rest! The shadow, my incompetence! My everlasting sorrow of disownment by my own blood!"
    "Dear friend, I beg of you to relax!" Klowoski beseeches, spreading his arms wide as though it would aid him in spreading his message. "You are but a mere black horse in the running, ready to conquer and reclaim your surname and please your family! In but a mere year you will graduate with your medicinal certificate just as they have!" Clasping his hands together, ever so earnestly, he pleads. Yet his eyes bare his true apathy. "Please, brother, silence your mind and mouth of such absurdities!"
    Snapping out of his feral state as quickly as it had come, Druitt hums thoughtfully, "I suppose you may be right, but such imperfections taint my soul and mar my confidence forever." Wiping the blood off his hands onto his pants that were a tad too tight, he sighs, worn, "Pardon my outburst, dearest friends. I wish nothing but to honor the scalpel."
    "Says ya, y'leasing-monger," Kominiski sniggers. The haggard man does not stop his prying hands as they search through the once-woman's undergarments, seemingly only mildly bemused by the commotion behind him. "Such flattr'y but no substance, yeah?" he questions pointedly, raising a panty from the drawer and stuffing it in his pocket shamelessly.
A scowl crosses across his complexion for only a moment. "I will hear nothing from such a devil incarnate," Klowoski counters, peeling his attention from the distressed man. "May I not aid a friend in distress without your criticism, you rancid bum?"
"Yer lies 're filthier than 'll ever be," Kominiski gibes, turning his attention to search through the bloody mess covering the bed. "I'm not blind or deaf, all y'wanted to do was te shut 'im up," he states rather matter-of-factly, turing to sift through the pieces and flaps of flesh on the table attentively, as though he was taking inventory. He examines the circularly skinned areas of two particularly bulbous portions of meat. Beginning with just a chuckle, a maniacal roar of laughter thundering through the quiet. "We---we've lost one of her nips," he cackles, near-tears as he flaunts one slice of skin in the air. "What a
Wincing at the sudden clamour filling the room, Druitt and Klowoski trade a rather uncertain look. "Right, well. You are quite disturbed," Klowoski notes as though his sexual insanity, general lack of hygiene, and overall disheveled appearance had not been proof enough.
"I do agree." Then, pausing thoughtfully Druitt adds, "Though I suppose we all are a bit mad."
    "I'd say!" guffaws Kominiski, eyes wide and crazed as he flings the small flap of skin harshly across the room. There is hang, glued to the wallpaper from the tackiness of the blood clinging to it.
    "Murder!"
    Dead silence envelops the room. All blood, of the living and dead, flows like ice at the cry outside. The dreaded question fills the minds of the men, shrouded in blood and shadows, tearing at their souls. Had they been caught? Eternal damnation for their misdeeds was a term they had all welcomed with open arms. A fair trade for a careless life void of repercussions, but they were quite disinclined to accept jail time in which they would waste away their prime.
    Whispering hoarsely, "Back slang it!" Klowoski flees, with the other two in tow, through the window with practiced ease. Dissipating into the night, they cast not a single backward glance at their masterpiece.