Jackal's Point of View
Sometimes I can still feel the heat or smell the burning scent of metal and flesh. But only sometimes; like tonight, for instance. Here I sit in the corner of my glass prison not cackling or shouting insults to the Angry Princess or the Bound 'Woman', just sitting. Then I smell it, that subtle tinge in the recycled basement air. Like the dog I'm named after I flare my nostrils to take in that familiar smell. Soon, unbeknownst to me, I'm crouched on my haunches; caged head thrust forward, eyes darting from one side of the basement to the other. The faint scent wafts my way again and I rise to my feet, my mind no longer in this place and time. My twisted arms wrap around me, my torn ragged fingers grip my sides as if I'm still restrained in the now useless straitjacket. Of course, at this moment in my mind, I am, in fact back in the basement of Borehamwood and the flickering, creeping orange-red glow of the flames is all I know.
Soon I do just as I did oh so long ago, I screech, I scream my fear and secret relief out for all within hearing distance. My mind is a jumble of half-formed thoughts as the flames only I can see leap ever higher, slowly destroying the walls of my cell. Fear grips me with an icy hand, a welcome relief to the heat thrown off by the fire. I can feel, somehow, the stares of the other spirits as I relive my mortal turmoil. Strands of my matted inky black hairs get caught in the rusty metal bars of my head cage but for once I don't notice. It's not like I cared much about it that night either. My breath quickens and I'm prepared to scream again. But as I take in the needed oxygen, grey smoke unfurls from the flames, slowly choking me. Coughing I try in vain to turn my head, only to bang that blasted cage against the walls of my cube. But to me that cube is the dingy basement cell at Borehamwood and my fellow ghosts murmurs are shouts and cries of the escaping patients.
The smoke stings my eyes, making them water and I relish the cool feeling of tears trailing down my face. The fire has made its way slowly across the room and I know it's only a matter of minutes before I am its latest victim. Victims…the faces of those I've slaughtered like cattle flash across my vision and their dying cries for mercy become my own. I howl, I curse the very heavens as the red writhing mass of heat crawls toward me. A quick whispered prayer crossed my scarred lips and my gnarled hands clutch the material under my fingers even tighter.
By this time the licking tongues of fire have reached my feet and are working their way up. With a quick toss of my head I open my mouth and scream. I can feel the rough material of the straitjacket burn into my flesh and underneath it my flesh and bones are melted and eroded. It is like millions of red hot pokers stabbing my skin, then being twisted farther and farther in. My pain-filled howls grow louder and vaguely, through the haze of memory I hear someone, a female, crying. 'Maybe its Jean, she strikes me as the only one sympathetic enough to actually cry for me, a rapist and murderer.' I think as the imaginary flames reach my waist. By now I have become somewhat numb to the writhing, twisting death I'm being subjected to yet again. The first time was much, much worse. This is only half of what I actually had to endure. 'Because those imbeciles didn't want to save the Devil's Spawn, as they called me then. Ah well I had to face my demons sometime, didn't I?' I thought with only a hint of the old bitterness/anger I once possessed.
My chest and stomach hurt, causing me to glance down. My upper torso was now engulfed in flames and I watched, morbidly fascinated as the metal and canvas were burned to my skin and bones. My last scream was cut short as the glowing heat encased my throat and the metal head cage. Desperate for some relief I shut my eyes against it as the front of the cage was melted away. Then, as if it hadn't happened at all, I was back in the basement of the glass house. Around me I heard the women, even the Pilgrimiss crying. I was shocked that any woman would cry over me and yet here were women I might have killed when alive, crying buckets over me reliving my death. Royce, one of the others who died by fire, gave me a look of sympathy and I cringed. I needed no one's pity, no one's tears. In response to their reactions I snarled and lunged at the glass door of my cell. This, unlike other times, didn't deter any of them. Finally I decided to speak of, if only to stop the foolish hysterics of the women.
"It didn't hurt that bad, it was over quickly." I calmly remarked as if simply telling about the English weather. Jean was the one who answered me, her soft voice laced with tears. "When I died it hurt like nothing I'd ever felt, it consumed me from the inside out." I sighed. "Well I was, by that time, no stranger to violence and pain. Death was a welcome relief to the horror my life had become by that point." This time it was Dana who added her two cents. "I felt, at the time, that death was freedom from pain but it ended up being the most painful thing I had endured yet." Royce nodded his assent and spoke. "I never expected to die that day but thanks to tampering that's exactly what happened. It felt like years before I actually died though."
"The Lord doth not give us more than we are apt to handle." croaked Isabella from her cell near Jean. I snorted. "And as you all know by now I was never on God's good side." Her only reply was to turn her back to me and hiss "Hell spawn." I laughed darkly. "Yes I think that sum me up nicely, thank you very much milady." giving the Pilgrimiss a mock court bow. Jean glared at me and I had to drop my pitch black gaze to the floor, cowed just a bit. A nagging thought in the back of my mind prompts me to speak again. "Is there anyone you miss from your life? I had no one to lament over my timely and appropriate demise, in fact I'm sure everyone in my area of foggy London celebrating the death of a monster."
Royce opened his mouth to answer my question but, surprisingly Horace cut him off. "I too had no one to mourn me, not that I expected anyone to. I was, after all a deformed serial killer." I nodded in agreement. Horace and I got along better than I and the others because we had similar lives. "I know I was missed, for awhile at least but eventually only my parents remembered 'the great Royce Clayton'. " Royce sneered as he leaned against the wall of his cell. "I was nobody when I was alive. Who would miss me?" Dana asked her voice full of the self-hatred that led to her suicide. "My husband and kids miss me, as I do them." Jean said softly her expression wistful. She was the only one of us who had anyone still alive to care about their death.
As the others drifted off to conversations or their own thoughts, my mind whirred with questions to never be answered. If I had been alive in a different place and time would I have died the way I did? Would anyone have mourned for me? If I had had the luxury of 'friends' as a child would they have cried upon hearing my demise? I highly doubt it. Sometimes fate has bigger plans than any mortal caught in her web could ever dream of….if they dream at all.
AN: this was just a little idea that popped into my head and I decided to run with it. This is also my 30th story. Woohoo! Please make me a happy author and review.