Take, for example, wee Eddie from the butcher’s shop. Carla’s heart went out to him so much that she'd on occasion tossed him a free one. Dear little Ed, about as far from being a gentleman as England was to France, would save up his pennies for months before tripping along to the shadows of her patch, sweaty-palmed and meek, looking for nothing more than a strong-handed wank and a cuddle. It almost would have been a pleasure if the poor fucker weren't so bloody ugly.
With a gentleman it was never a pleasure. It was nothing but sick shite. Violence. Indecency. Indignity. Carla was no angel by any stretch of the imagination, but she still had good high-church values. Or would have had, of course, if her love of drink hadn't outstripped all else.
Of late, it seemed, any clients were rare, though, so when a gentleman came looking for her, she wasn’t going to say no. She didn’t know what big a mistake that was then …
… but she knew now.
Carla, like everyone else, blamed the recent murders for the drought in business. They were the most troubling thing to hit London since the Great Fire. Everyone knew about them, and everyone was on edge. Five girls, all friends with whom she'd shared a bottle, had run afoul of her gentleman. They'd been mutilated. Bits of them had been removed and taken away. They'd been gutted like sows in seconds. Letters had been sent to the press. Authorities were taunted. It took strategy, precision and a malevolence Carla couldn't even begin to understand.
That same gentleman had decided to claim a very special part of Carla while she lay like a torn and festering rose on the bloodstained cobbles. As her vision receded into blackness, Carla felt a long, slender knife tear into an all-too-familiar place beneath her skirts …
… he was a gentleman, after all.
Her eyes flicked open like a switch.
She was still lying where he had left her, in the cold, filthy dark of one of Whitechapel’s many backstreets. Those who had happened by her corpse had wisely ignored her, probably more concerned for their own lives than her dignity. Her blood had congealed into the stones. Her heart didn’t beat, and her flesh felt even colder than the scum of frost coating her dress. Carla was no longer alive, of that she was sure.
But she wasn’t dead, either …
With no heartbeat, there came no panic, and so Carla rose from the ground with relative ease and nonchalance. Her first steps were a little unladylike, her limbs refusing to shake off a certain manly shuffle she associated with ironsmiths, but soon her seductive stride returned.
Her beauty remained untouched; the same finely cut cheekbones in life, now a little paler, still framed perfect features. Her eyes, a striking bright gray, were even more piercing now. Her hair had fallen from its braided bun and now streamed in dishevelled waves down her back. Of all her charms that remained, her heartbeat was the most notable absence – that and her manners, it seemed. A deep, gnawing hunger clutched her and her lips were slick with drool. A low moaning sound escaped her, something between a burp and a growl.
She decided she needed a drink to sort herself out. Carla made her way to the pub.
She cared nothing for her peculiar appearance or predicament. As she passed through the deserted streets of London’s East End, their rich cocktail of smells seemed more appealing than usual. A dense, salty mist from the fishmonger's swamped her. The butcher’s shop, where wee Eddie worked, offered an even thicker, more alluring stench, spoiled only by the sickly, poisonous sting of the florist’s stock on Whitechapel Lane. Carla felt even more hungry than before as she battled to hold on to those more fleshy aromas that stirred the pit of her guts so magnificently. Utterly famished and still thirsty for gin, she approached the pub, pleased that its lamps still burned.
Inside, Carla could hear familiar voices. She struggled to remember things and people that once meant everything to her. The taste of gin and wine. The smell of sawdust and sweat, tobacco and snuff. The scarred wooden tables and faintly polished bar. The clinking of glasses and bottles. The sounds of laughter and voices, stained with pent-up aggression and a loathing of poverty.
Carla battled against the hunger, fearing that it would consume her completely the way her thirst for gin often did after a good night’s takings. Her old self still felt pangs for merriment and joviality that her new self neither knew nor cared for. Everything was different … yet nothing had changed.
Frustrated and hungry and angry and queasy all at once, Carla battered clumsily against the doors of the pub, desperate to get inside where more delectably-repugnant fleshy smells awaited her …
The Gentleman in the corner sat with his head bent over the table, hat still on. A small black case lay by his side. He did not glance up as the draught from the opened door carried in the East End’s distinctive fragrance. One hand was curled gently around a small glass of wine, the other rose slowly to his shadowed lips to offer a finely-scented cigar. The tip of the cigar brightened briefly as he inhaled, then darkened again as he tipped its ashes onto the floor. He was the picture of calm propriety, yet inside him burned a violent and insatiable lust for chaos.
Scattered around him, oblivious to his presence, drunken slummers talked of The Gentleman’s ongoing work in Whitechapel. A rumour was circulating that another body had been spotted. Another woman, gutted. In one corner, a large red-faced man played out the latest murder with all the finesse of Shakespeare’s Falstaff, wielding his pipe as if it were the Ripper’s deadly blade. The Gentleman smiled. From behind him, several older women, one speaking almost incoherently due to her rotted teeth, spat and shrieked at one another, each competing for the limelight by exaggerating their story of what had happened with greater and greater extremes of ridiculousness. They were calling him The Ripper, yet many of them talked about him as if he were nothing less than The Devil himself.
He liked that …
The Gentleman lifted his glass as if to drink to another night’s fine work. He contemplated that it might be his last, for a while, what with having gathered together most of the parts he needed. In fact, what with tonight’s particular takings, he had more than enough. He drained his glass dry, patted his lips with a handkerchief, then stood.
From another table, four sets of eyes followed his every move, alert and silent, whilst another woman remained hidden from him in the shadows. He clocked them all, yet offered no reaction. He could almost smell their sexes. They were, no doubt, of the same ilk as the others. Whores riddled with equal measures of darkness and beauty. Indulgent of vice, yet still, somehow, pristine. These women held a special place in The Gentleman’s heart, and he wanted to show them just how much he loved them … but not now. Not tonight. Not for a while. He had other work to do. Dark and powerful magicks had to be called upon to create an ultimate beauty. Everything needed had been collected.
As The Gentleman stood up, one of the women rose also.
Then came the knocking on the door …
Lisa was sweating heavily; the voices in the pub swirled around her like fog, threatening to kill her silent chant. Beneath her cloak, her face was bright red. Blood pooled in the canals of her ears and whites of her eyes. One hand shook profusely. The other left a bloody trail across the bar table as her fingers dug deep into the old wood. She was as close to death as the corpse she had manipulated was to life.
A student of the dark arts for many years, Lisa had worked long and hard to reach this level. Every text she had studied warned of the penalty for dabbling as she had, but she had never dreamed it would be like this. Still, she persisted, digging deep within her broken heart to wreak the righteous havoc that was so desperately needed in Whitechapel.
He had to be stopped.
Four other women surrounded her, the rage and fear in their hearts mirroring the carnage ravishing Lisa’s very being. Yet, they remained po-faced and discreet, supporting Lisa with nervous resilience. The bar’s noise continued to swell around them; the smell of liquor and tobacco rife throughout. All four women broke out in a sweat now as their friend and colleague gasped once, th
en twice, before her cloaked body began to tremor in a manner most unladylike.
Then came the knock.
It was old Tom who opened the door, finally, but he didn’t seem to recognise her. Carla was used to the sorry old sod grinning and drooling inanely at her every time they met, but this time, on seeing her, his face came over dreadfully pale, and a short yelp left his pickled lips before he ran into the street in a panic. Others followed suit. The normally lively pub emptied in seconds as Carla stepped inside. Even Al, the pub’s landlord and all-round local heavy, made for the door screaming like a baby. Before long only one table was left occupied, and one man remained standing.
A gentleman. Her gentleman.
Carla’s eyes burned a deep and dark red now, the bizarre violence filling her utterly. A gout of blood suddenly spurted from her lips and plopped onto her chin. She craved this man, this gentleman's flesh like she had never craved anything before. She craved his smell, the feel of his skin, the very taste of his heart. She longed to unwrap his body.
Like a wildcat, she pounced, but he was quicker. He side-stepped easily out of her feral reach. As Carla sprawled forward into the shadows, knocking clumsily into a table, her gentleman snatched up his little black case.
She righted herself, shaking her head like a wounded animal, before pouncing again. The Gentleman produced a long, gleaming blade. His eyes, bright with lust, remained fixed on her. He tipped his hat then beckoned to her with one hand.
She rushed him again. This time as he stepped to the side he thrust his slender blade deep into her belly with all the grace of a matador. Carla stumbled. The gentleman wasted no time. He grabbed the knife's handle with one hand and her delicate shoulders with the other, and in one fluid motion he ripped her open from pubis to breastbone. Carla watched bemused as her innards slopped nosily onto the sawdust floor. The Gentleman looked at her contentedly as he brought the blade to his nostrils and inhaled her scent.
But Carla wasn’t done.
A smile curled across her face. Her gentleman had expected her to die. She pounced again, this time taking him by surprise. His perfectly polished boots slipped in her gore, and as he lost his footing, he toppled right into her waiting grasp.
Her teeth tore into his face as if it were mutton pie, stripping cartilage and bone. He wrapped his arms around her in a perverted embrace, and she felt him reaching into her gutted torso, his hands trying to gain some kind of purchase to push her away. She could taste the ghost of his fine cigar in his blood.
The Gentleman roared. Carla silenced him when she tore his larynx from his corded throat. Thick curtains of blood spilt onto his white shirt. Carla worked her teeth and her fingernails, peeling, tearing and unravelling every inch of her gentleman. She unpeeled him in the sawdust like a palpitating artichoke, making small mewing sounds of contentment as she worked and ate.
The five women at the table sat motionless. The creature they had all known as Carla Jenkins was spread-eagled on the floor, gnawing on every scrap of flesh and bone left of the Gentleman, scraps that poured out of her torso even as she swallowed them. His black case sat useless and open on a nearby table, the surgical instruments glistening under the gaslights. The spine of a book was also visible. "Frankenstein by Mary Shelley," the women would have read had they been close enough to make out the lettering.
Lisa was the first to get up. She removed the cloak from her ravished face with one shaking hand. Another woman immediately rose with her, steadying her with her arm as the frail, magick-worn woman stumbled. With the help of her friend, the weary witch shuffled over to the blood-stained mess that had been Carla Jenkins. Lisa stretched her hand down to caress the feral woman’s long, wet locks, feeling the dark energy from the Gentleman’s blood as it seeped from her friend’s hair onto her own hands.
For a moment she felt the raw evil that had raged in the Gentleman’s heart surge through her own, evil she had worked so hard to purge from Whitechapel. A tear trickled down her cheek, smarting in its damp trail, and she looked again at her friend.
“Oh Carla …” she said, her heart heavy. “Oh Carla … why did he have to do this to us?”
The other woman whispered softly into Lisa’s ear, gently trying to lead her away from the mess that had been her lover.
“Come on now, love,” she said. “It’s done now. It’s done.”
Outside, a respectful silence descended upon Whitechapel. It was as if the East End mourned in a sign of solidarity with the women of the night it knew so well. Darkness kissed and caressed the breeze, finally spitting its choked up emotion as rain gathered in the air.
Somewhere close, a tall, nervous man approached a woman standing on a street corner.
It was business as usual.
THE END
SEAHOUSES SLAUGHTERHOUSE
By
Rod Glenn
Video shop owner, serial killer and self-confessed film fanatic, Han Whitman was used to death. He had introduced quite a few to it, but even Han was somewhat perturbed by the dead rising.
Was it bad form to rise again after being killed? Han thought so. Downright bloody rude too. He prided himself in politeness and reliability. He was always polite to his victims and as reliable as clockwork at killing them. So this … this was just bad form …
“We’re here,” Han said after driving through the small shopping centre of the Northumberland coastal town of Seahouses. Shopping ‘centre’ might’ve been a slight exaggeration; it was essentially one street filled with chip shops, arcades and gift shops.
The sign read, Seafield Caravan Park.
“Oh, you really know how to treat a girl,” Cara said with a smile.
Han gave a sideways glance of feigned annoyance. Feigned, of course, as in the six months they had been dating, he had been unable to get even remotely annoyed at her for one second. Even when the demands of the relationship clashed with the old serial killing malarkey. Bless her. And for a copper (yes, Old Mother Irony does play a cheeky hand), she was bloody hot. More than a little likeness to Uma Thurman.
This was actually their second trip to Seahouses and Cara knew damn fine that the caravan park was very nice and that it had a well-equipped spa and gym.
Han pulled up to the site office and jumped out of the Jeep Cherokee, leaving the engine idling.
The office was bright and airy and the mid-morning sunshine was pouring in through the expansive windows. No one about though.
“Hello? Anyone about? We’re checking in to one of your holiday vans.” He turned around and looked back at Cara waiting in the car. She mouthed, what? to him and his response was a shrug. He turned back to the desk to find an old woman now standing behind it. Surprised, Han said, “Hi … erm, checking in.”
The old woman seemed to stare through him for a time and then abruptly burst into a rattling cough that sounded like a cancer-ridden vagrant being strangled by a schizophrenic cat.
She finished by swallowing hard, which conjured images of a cantankerous curse-wielding gypsy from a certain Sam Raimi film. With an off-white handkerchief covering her mouth, she said, “Sorry, dear. There’s been a horrible bug going round this week – seems like the whole town’s got it.”
Han drove through the site to their designated van, passing rows of new and gleaming vans set in perfectly manicured lawns. There were plenty of parked cars outside most of them, but very few people about. Strange for an unusually hot bank holiday weekend.
After unpacking, they took a stroll down the beach. They passed a young couple playing with a baby near the water’s edge. Dad was making a little sandcastle which the baby kept smashing with a plastic spade, causing both parents to giggle at one another.
Jesus, Han thought.
“Might be us one day,” Cara said, nodding towards the happy little family.
Han’s first response would normally be, I’ll kill you if you get pregnant, but that seemed inappropriate, given his hobby. He had no intention of killing Cara, whether pregnant or not. Although
, it wasn’t out of the question to run for the hills if she got up the duff. Instead, he muttered, “Hmm.”
Cara laughed. “I’m winding you up, man. I’m just getting started in my career. I’m not looking to mess with that – or my figure, for that matter. Not for at least another five years or so.”
They approached an old man who was standing in the middle of the beach with a dog lead in his hand and a blank expression.
Cara glanced quizzically at Han.
“You okay, mate?” Han offered.
The man continued to stare into the middle distance in the direction of the dunes, seemingly oblivious to their presence.
“I said …”
Cara cut him off. “Leave it,” she whispered.
As they left the man behind, Cara glanced back. He still hadn’t moved. “Maybe he’s upset – lost a loved one recently or something. I’ve seen it before.”
When they walked back along the beach half an hour later, the old man was gone. They continued into Seahouses and, after a wander around some of the gift shops, found a small pub called The Olde Ship Inn.
A couple of burly men were stood at the bar, chatting to the barman, but the place was otherwise empty.
“What can I get ya?” the young barman asked with a friendly smile.
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