THE FULL MOONS PART 2. LONDON DUNGEON. DAY THREE
"Where's Cora?"
The three women stood amongst the bad egg smells and groaning of plague victims while in the background a bell rings and someone shouts 'Bring out the dead, bring out the dead'.
"Well she was definitely with us in the torture chambers".
Granny smiled. This was a 100 years of London history and she felt she had lived it all in a few short years. Yeah she saw that Cora was eyeing up the straw bedding, she was so tired today.
"I'll go back and fetch her, but hey you girls go ahead through London's sewers, catch up on the other side".
The smells of Old London were reproduced quite realistically. So much so Ruby was almost gagging.
They came out of the sewers to Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, where meaty gentleman would go for a short back and sides and become Mrs Lovett's best pies in all of London!
Past Dickens London and further into the grim.
"Whitechapel next Red?"
Mulan's love of London history flowed.
"Oh yes, Jack the Ripper, London's notorious serial killer. Officially 5 victims but nothing is certain as he was never bought to justice..."
Ruby adored it when Mulan got into nerd mode.
"...there has been over a hundred suspects, including Aaron Kosminski, James Maybrick, and there is a doctor, a royal doctor at that, the Freemasons-"
At this point an actor, posing as Jack The Ripper crept in front of Ruby, tipping his top hat with a husky 'helloooo' Ruby was so into Mulan it made her jump.
"AHH!"
Mulan, on auto, knocked him flat out.
Visitors were appalled "SECURITY, SECURITY".
—
Cora, sound asleep on a bed of smelly straw in the torture chambers, surrounded by a group of giggling school boys, who were amazed at how realistic the sleeping witch looked. Until that is one got curious and poked his foot in her back.
"WTF!"
Granny came across Cora trying to chant a toad spell at a hysterical school boy.
"Cora, my dear...what's that smell?-"
Irate teacher emerges.
"What on earth is going on here, how dare you, please stop shouting at him, you are upsetting him"
Granny smiles sweetly at the teacher.
"My partner is a little overtired and rudely, if not violently, awoken-"
"She is verbally abusing him with...with...with god knows, what is that she's saying anyhow? Is she unwell? What's that smell?"
"Perhaps we should step away into the Great Fire of London and discuss this quietly?"
The teacher wasn't game.
"SECURITY...SECURITY!".
Granny and Ruby sat on a wall outside London Dungeons waiting for security to release Cora and Mulan. At least it stopped raining.
—-
My supplies are low. We live in such a lazy age. I like to feel the leather that I buy, the quality of fasteners, the ease of zips, the firmness of the heel, your chosen weight of buttress nails. You can never have enough of these. You can't do that online. It's cold, intangible. I have no time for this internet business. I like to do business face to face. I like the feel of real money in my hand. Besides, I like to covertly people watch on the tube and scoff at the ridiculous contraptions on their feet. Watch the older women preening and wonder if they have a son that they despise as much as mother despises me. Powdering the lines around their mouths that scowl, the sun damaged crêpe necks sitting below sagging chins. Just like mother.
I must get away one afternoon to my suppliers. Oh how I love that journey away from the disappointment I see in her watery old eyes. On my return I always bring home two hot meat pies. It disgusts me the way she eats a hole through the middle, the gravy dribbling down her chin. I can't stop staring until she wipes it. Then pushes the plate at me saying you finish this rubbish. Yet still I bring the pies.
She picks at her food like a bird, her skinny body is brittle, I wonder how it doesn't break under the shriek of her complaints. That is a vision I shall keep.