A/N: I don't own Sweeney Todd or London or the Boogeyman.
It was horrible, it was gruesome; repulsive, reprehensible, insane, disgusting, nausea-inducing, completely impossible to understand... And yet, it was there, on everyone's lips, in everyone's minds, it filled the alleyways like an unholy breeze, dirty and cloying, making you shudder as it passed by.
They hated it, and yet, they loved it. They couldn't do without it. They pressed their slimy noses against the grimy glass, and stared with eyes burning with dark hunger, trying with indecent effort to see a corpse, an arm, a finger, blood, any sign of the carnage wreaked in the small house. They wanted to gawk at each left over pie, storm the bakehouse and scream in fake horror as they observed the scene with a ghoulish glee.
It consumed them, this tale of blood and demons and burning flesh. That neighbor who disappeared, had he gone for a shave? What about whatshisname, the beggar who stood on the street every Thursday and Friday? He hadn't been seen for a month. Had their mouths consumed him, this man they used to give a 5 foot berth to?
A little shop, the one everyone had frequented, where they had laughed and talked, eaten and drank... that shop was now a freak show, a house of horrors, the ghosts and figments of imagination performing hourly. The police were adamant ushers, insisting that this lively show was closed.
It was indecent, it was crude; they wallowed in the thoughts of gore and death, of anger, violence, hatred, and rage. They relished each detail, and when there weren't details enough, they made their own, the carnage increasing with each telling.
That fact that the barber was dead made it safe. The fact that his landlady was dead made it intriguing. The fact that it was so completely against any morals people might pretend to have, the fact that it was so horribly violent... it made it unbelievable. So they wallowed in their imaginations, because here was a real life boogey man. Because the danger wasn't real anymore, they could pretend it was, and examine it, turn it into a tragedy, they could distort what had happened to the point where they might actually become sympathetic towards the deadly duo.
And so the sickly words floated through the air like a malevolent plague and tongues stripped their victims naked to the bone.