Whitechapel

November 28th, 1888

A lone man stands, peering into the river Thames. In the dead of night, it is silent. Smog chokes the stars, leaving the sky as shadowy and ominous as the water below him. It is said that bodies are seen floating down the river every so often, but he has never seen that happen before. Scanning the water, he sees nothing but the slight rumple of the current. Not a head. Not a torso. Not a drop of crimson blood tainting the dark hazel water.
Druitt stands, clad in the same outfit he wore yesterday. He had not gone home yet. Nearly an entire day had passed, yet he could not bear to return home after the fiasco that occurred. He would never be able to look at his neighbors in the eyes again. "Did they hear anything? Did they hear everything?" he questions the wind as it brushes past him. "Where am I to go now?"
His family would disown him if he were ever jailed. "I would never blame them if they did. I am the family disgrace," he hums, pacing down the length of concrete with slow strides. In his hand rest the pen which he used to write a letter. A letter of resignation to his university. "I am below them. I could never have been as successful as they are. I will always be a disgrace." He tosses the pen into the water. It is swallowed whole, now at the mercy of the brutal tides.
He hums, thoughtfully, eyes puffy and red from sobbing. He looks down at the lockets, securely fastened to his left wrist. "I, being a Druitt, must follow the path that will lead my family to greater respectability," he hums, thoughtfully. A tune he had been fond of when he was a child. A tune he had loved before the greater expectations of his life came crashing down. He crumbled under the weight of such a renowned family. "Tonight I lift your burden. I cleanse you of the sin that I am."
With a leap, he falls. Down, down, down. The wind whistles through his hair, howling in his ears. The snap, crackle, pop of his joints and bones disfiguring as he hits the water cuts through the silence like freshly popped popcorn at a traveling circus. He is swallowed into the murky hazel waters, never to resurface.