Told you I'd be back, didn't I? This is based off an outtake for an original story that was inspired mainly by The Lovely Bones and Sin City, which I then adapted for the MR-verseYou can probably tell. And yes, it's also heavily Jack the Ripper inspired, though he certainly wasn't the only person to go around murdering prostitutes in the 19th century. Please note that I in no way think the same way as these characters!
GhostsShe walks with a swagger, one hand on her hip, cigarette smoke in her voice and a smile staining her lips. She is young and pretty and everything about her is as false as the smile she wears.
"You look a lil' lonely there, sir," she says, breathing smoke into my face along with her liquor-stained entreaty. Her head is turned towards me, but her eyes slide away and end up focusing somewhere over my shoulder. Possibly she has a child at home, some screaming whore's brat that is left with a neighbour while she walks the streets so they can eat another day. Maybe she has a whole brood of them, playing with dice until their mother returns.
"What's your name?" I ask.
Her eyes drift back to me, her smile not faltering for a moment. "What do you want t'call me?"
Her eyes are bored, glazed. She's done this thousands of times before.
"What's your name?" I ask again.
"Travesty."
Like hell it is.
She's tired, she's desperate, she's got money on her mind. Her mouth is fixed like a queen's portrait, independent from her. Only her eyes say what she feels. She doesn't want me. They never want me.
"Lovely to meet you, Travesty."
She steps closer, drawing fog with her from the alleyway as if it's an extension of herself, soot blackening her hair until it's achieved it's ebony sheen, the moon above bleaching her skin white. A creation of the city, an inhuman thing.
"Likewise, I'm sure."
I raise the knife.
She dies without a sound. &#&#&#&#
Inspector Claquesous"Stabbed in the side," Perraine concludes to me after examining her for a moment. "Up between the ribs and into the heart. Lucky, really. Death would have been more or less instant."
The woman is dressed in grey, and she lies on her back almost as if she was placed rather than fell there. Her head is to one side, her black hat staining as it floats in a pool of crimson. Aside from the death wound, there are no sides of a struggle. A cigarette lies some metres away, it's tip ground into the wet cobblestones.
"She probably didn't know what was coming," Perraine comments as he straightens himself, one hand clapped to his back. "Oh, I'm too old for this sort of early morning weather," he grumbles, smoothing down the vest that sits tightly buttoned over his ample belly. "Claquesous, next time there's a case like this you're going alone."
"Of course," I say generously. Perraine is getting on a bit, poor chap. He takes some tobacco out of his pocket and fills his pipe, while young policeman Depard, still wet behind the ears, waves some curious onlookers away. Nothing like a murder to brighten a Sunday morning, I think. Especially in Montmartre.
"You got any idea who she is, then?" Perraine asks me, pointing at the girl on the ground. I glance at her body quickly. Tall, long limbed, dark curls and hollow cheeks, all her features sharp as razor blades. She's vaguely familiar.
"I can't say I've talked to her before," I reply, referring to the various whores I've been forced to interview throughout my career in the police force. "I've seen her around the dancehalls when we were investigating the murder of that Russian dancer. I think," I continue, pointing to the red windmill across the street, "she might be a Rouge girl."
"Ah yes," Perraine murmurs knowingly, taking a puff on his pipe. "The Moulin Rouge."
There's something about his tone that I don't like. "What exactly are you implying?" I demand. Somewhere Depard is arguing with one of the barkeepers about moving the body.
Perraine shrugs, taking a puff on his pipe while a carriage rattles by, heading for more prosperous streets. "Nothing at all, Claquesous old boy. Go to the Moulin Rouge, find a girl and see if she can identify the body."
The early morning fog is clearing slightly, making the blood stand out even stronger against the road. In the house above, a curly haired young woman leans out the window to hang her washing on the line that is suspended across the narrow street. She stops when she sees us down below and leans her elbow on the windowsill to get a better look. Clearly modesty is not valued here; the woman is wearing nothing but a chemise and corset from what I can see.
"Get some clothes on!" Perraine roars, red-faced.
"Oh aye, 'Spector. I'd rather 'ave a nice, warm coat on t'day, but me only frock's dancin' on the line just there," she calls back with a glassy laugh. "Some gent wen' an' spilled gin on it."
She shuts the window with a bang just as Perraine rips the pipe out of his mouth in indignation. "Of all the nerve…"
Depard, who's still examining the dead girl, pulls his boot out of an overflowing gutter and cautiously tugs on my sleeve. "Erm, Inspector?"
"Yes, what is it?" I snap.
Depard jumps visibly, then nervously motions towards the body. "It's, um, sir, well, I don't know if it's important, but I thought you might like to know…"
"Know what? Come on lad, speak up, I can barely hear you."
"It's, well…" the policeman shuffles, clearly embarrassed. "She's smiling, sir," he manages finally.
"I beg your pardon?" I move closer to the body, bending down to look at her face.
"She's smiling," Depard says again. "Her face. Look."
And then I see it. The girl's face is stretched into a coquettish grin, devilish, slightly hesitant. It's only her eyes that are full of pain. &#&#&#&#&#
TattooOf all the things I'd do in my life, I never thought one of them would be visiting Travesty in the morgue. I never thought I'd visit anyone in the morgue, at least not someone I knew.
You're never really prepared for it.
Travesty stares at me while she lies on that cold slab, as empty as Satine was when she finally died. The church had it wrong, there is no God, no soul, no heaven, and after we die we're just empty shells, full of nothing.
Some bumbling police officer asks me to identify the body. I say Travesty's name while looking at her face, because it's the last time I'll ever say it with her there. The policeman laughs.
"What's her real name, then?"
What's her real name?
"I don't know. She never told me."
Travesty… I never knew your name.
"Any idea who might want to kill her?" the policeman continues to ask, bored.
They have to ask these questions, but they don't really care. "We're whores," I say. "Everyone wants to kill us."
They let me go eventually, knowing they've gotten nowhere. The street welcomes me back like a friend, rain weeping down onto my face. I don't cry.
Travesty, I'm so sorry.
&#&#&#&#&#&#
She walks toward me slowly, another sweet-mouthed temptress. Her hair is red, the colour of old rust, and in place of a smile is a pair of huge, little-girl eyes. A different sort of evil, but she's pretty enough. Her voice is cracked with shame.
"In need of a girl, luv?"
"I'm always in need of a girl."
"Huh." She pauses, one hand playing with the plaits she's got looped on the either side of her pretty little head. "I'm Schoolgirl," she says half-heartedly. She's a passionless one, all right. "Got a smoke?"
I offer her a cigarette, watching her cold monkey hands as she grabs for it like a starving child. She puts it too her lips, watching the embers glow as she brings a match to the rolled paper. "Thanks, luv."
Her eyes flick to some point behind me, and she steps aside, watching. Something clamps around my neck- an arm, I think- covered in shades of yellow, red and green.
"Get him, Domi, go on," a saltwater voice yells. There's a flash of silver and-
&#&#&#&#&#
"Did you get him?""Yes. Schoolgirl's a good decoy."
"Was he the right one?"
"I don't know… Might have been. Pity there's no such thing as ghosts, eh?"
"Aye. Put him under the stage with the others."