Whitechapel, London 1888.

‘How could I have possibly arrived in this situation?’ my mind wandered as I stood before the people who I thought had once been my friends, cared about me, loved me even. Though admittedly they didn’t know what I really was. No one knew.

I knew that the circumstances looked bad and there was little I could do to explain the events that had led to this very scene without some time afforded to hear my words. I was knelt over the woman’s body, blood covering my suit, shirt, and hands. I also clung onto a long, bloody knife as though it was the tether keeping the woman connected to the land of the living.

The woman had clearly been walking the streets as a lady of the night. I never had any issues with the profession though I knew it was a dangerous one. As I said though, I was never one to judge.

“He… he killed her!” a posh-looking gentleman in a dark suit yelled and pointed directly at the knife in my hand. I looked at it inquisitively and then abruptly dropped it when I realised what he was talking about.

‘Fuck,’ I thought inwardly as I knew how this all looked.

“Listen…” I started, though before I could even begin to explain myself, a woman shrieked loudly as she reached the crowd and saw what everyone was so interested in.

“M… m… monster!” Another woman yelled.

I didn’t mind the screaming so much, but the pointing was a bit over the top to my mind.

All that had happened was simple: I had been walking along the street on my way home after a very long day studying the human form, when I had stumbled across this lady lying still on the ground. I had tried to help her, lifting her up when I had noticed the knife. Of course, the moment I had picked up what was obviously the murder weapon, someone had appeared to see me in this very compromising position. People always seemed to show up at exactly the wrong time.

“That’s Thomas!” I heard a man’s voice from the crowd call out my name. “He’s the surgeon over Westminster way.”

Whoever it was had been correct of course. I was indeed Thomas, though I was surprised that anyone else would recognise me so easily; my role as a surgeon not being particularly illustrious or noteworthy.

I looked back down at the woman who lie lifeless on the ground. It was clear that her throat had been cut from left to right, extinguishing her life in one expert slice.

“Grab him! Quickly now!” Another man’s voice came from the ever-growing crowd of people. No movement accompanied the order though and I peered out at the disgusted faces, each looking directly at me with horror evident in their expressions.

“Are you avin’ a fucking laugh or what?” A woman practically screeched. “After you mate, I ain’t getting nowhere near that thing with his mouth all like that.”

I wasn’t sure what the woman had meant, though I wiped the back of my hand on my chin. I felt the warm, sticky telltale signs of blood coating my chin and I held my hand up to look at it in the combination of the moonlight and the few lanterns that dotted about the crowd.

My hand was coated in deep red blood and I could see long spatters and sprays snaking up my sleeve, though my dark suit was keeping that fact from all but the keenest of eyes.

I looked away from my hand and back toward the crowd. Then I heard a loud hissing noise as though from a snake about to strike.

It took me longer than I would have liked to admit to discover that, the sound was coming from me.

Then I felt something deep inside of me, something primal: a base urge and a hunger that I could not control. It consumed me, burned me from the inside out and there was nothing that I could do to silence the pain of hunger.

It encompassed me, taking a firm grip of all of my being and as the world turned to silence all around me, I realised something strange: I liked it. I wanted to be controlled by this bloodlust inside of me and before I knew it, I had buried my mouth into the bleeding neck of the woman on the ground, sinking my sharp teeth into her throat which offered little resistance.

In the distance I could hear screams, though the whooshing in my ears combined with the taste of the blood that quenched my thirst deafened me to the world around me.

Nobody tried to stop me. They wouldn’t dare.

The woman had been bled dry in but a moment and when my attention returned back to the watching crowds who had been unable to act through fear, there were now policemen approaching with outstretched arms and truncheons held to the ready.

I didn’t care. I felt so strong now that my hunger had abated. Too strong for these people I knew, and I leapt into action, headed directly at the crowd of onlookers. I knew they would move for me, how could they not?

I escaped into the darkness, my feet taking me away from the whistles and shouts of the policemen as they came to their senses, realising that they were supposed to chase me. I was so much faster than them though, I practically glided across the cobbled ground as I moved.

I was gone, a spectre in the night.

~

I rounded the corner and slipped in through my front door before pressing my back against its hard wood, panting as the adrenaline of the moment left my body.

“What the fuck?” I whispered aloud to myself in the darkness.

I slumped down to the ground and placed my head in my hands. Immediately I drifted off into slumber, and slept far better than anyone could’ve expected given the events that had happened tonight. I didn’t even try to fight it.

I was abruptly awoken by a pounding on my door, it shook so hard that I fell forward, though managed to hold my balance and raise myself to my feet.

“POLICE! OPEN UP!” came the loud shout to accompany the knocking. I regarded the door and wondered how much of a beating it could withstand to allow me a few moments to disappear, though the answer was very clearly not very long as it splintered under a kick from the people trying to enter my home.

I ran up the stairs two at a time, my heart pounding out my chest. It was the only thing I could do.

I ran to my front bedroom window and opened it, searching for an exit, though as I did so I saw a crowd of both people and police below and afront my house. They couldn’t have missed me.

As my front door finally gave and policemen began to stream into the ground floor of my house, I heard the scream.

“It’s Jack the Ripper! There he is!”

“Don’t call me that!” I replied half pleading. “Don’t call me Jack!”

Jack, or ‘The Ripper’ was the name given to a murderer and even if nobody would listen to me, I knew the truth: there was another, and it was my duty to stop him before he could kill again.

The end.