Chapter Three: Elizabeth Stride aka 'Long Liz'

A/N 1: The message is an excerpt of the (in)famous 'Dear Boss' letter, received on 27th September 1888 at the Central News Agency, London

A/N 2: There's no denying that this story bears some resemblance to Blackdragonsghost's wonderful 'Crimes of Passion'. Once again, I'd like to point out that I didn't 'steal' the basic plot (women get murdered, Damien suspects Gerald), though. The two of us just had a similar idea at roughly the same time. Thought about abandoning the story altogether, but couldn't bring myself to do it. So please bear up with me and don't flame me, okay?

A/N 3: Many thanks to Silvereyedbitch for helping me with the last sentence and the medical details concerning the carotid artery.

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Jaggonath, 26th September 1254 A.S.

"Please, oh please, my love. Stop this madness and come back to me. It's not too late to turn away from evil."

Soft but so very persistent hands tugged at his shoulders, and the annoying sobs did one more thing to set his nerves on edge. Why the hell were those bitches always crying and pleading? He couldn't have this now, not with the task laying ahead of him that demanded his undivided attention.

Without wasting his breath on a reply, he turned round and casually slapped the troublemaker in the face. It wasn't a heavy blow. Leaving bruises on those beautiful but prematurely aged features didn't seem a wise thing to do under the given circumstances. But it was enough to silence her. The woman he had loved once, as far as he had been able to feel love after all he had been through, staggered back, her tearful eyes wide with shock. He had never hit her before. But during the last weeks, he had done a lot of things he wouldn't have thought himself capable of in the first two and a half decades of his mortal existence. And had relished every moment of it. In the end, it didn't matter, anyway. Womenfolk were weak, prey born to be devoured and only fit to satisfy his needs. This one wasn't an exception of the rule. Up to now, he hadn't really considered involving her in his exhilarating occupations. In their social position, the inexplicable disappearance of a spouse might arouse wholly undesirable suspicion. But you never knew. If she went on pestering him, he might be forced to reconsider his course of action.

But for now, there were more urgent matters at hand. Not sparing the least bit of attention on the stumbling steps approaching the door of his study, he bent over his novebony desk again and read through his latest work of art.

'Dear Boss,
I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they wont fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits. I am down on whores and I shant quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games...'

The young man chuckled maliciously. How he amused himself at the utterly ridiculous speculations about his identity! A butcher, a physician, a member of the government, a high-order demon, a follower of a particularly nasty pagan cult... Nothing could be farther from the truth. And this message would give the police food for thought again. Deliberately, he had included several grammatical and spelling errors to mislead his persecutors. Not that it was truly necessary. In terms of intelligence, the officers in charge were so far beneath him that they would never uncover his secret. But setting them on the wrong track and watching their doomed efforts was a joy all in itself. And his true stroke of genius was still to come. The pest of a healer called Damien Kilcannon Vryce who had dared to stick his nosy olfactory organ into his affairs once again would hopefully get the shock of his life. He wished he could see the bastard's face when he came across the tableau set up for his benefit. But one shouldn't be impudent. Just imagining Vryce's utmost horror would keep him in high spirits for many days to come.

His delicate, perfectly proportioned features which had beguiled so many women marred by an ugly sneer, he added the finishing touches to his letter, ending it with 'Yours truly, Jack the Ripper'. A somewhat fitting alias which had crossed his mind in the early hours of the morning when he had lain wide awake, savouring the sweet memories of ridding the world of those worthless strumpets for good. What a pity he had had to take certain precautions in order to prevent an unwelcome interruption at his second kill! As tedious as the incessant female whining could become, in this particular case he wouldn't have minded his victim's sobs, pleads and screams of agony adding spice to an already most pleasurable experience. The icing on the cake, so to say. But those terrified blue eyes watching his every movement as he had cut her open and had removed the damnable tool for reproduction had to some degree made up for the restraint he had been forced to exercise.

And there wasn't a sliver of doubt that he would rip warm, living human flesh again. So very soon. He could feel the nigh to unbearable want to maim and torture rising up inside him like the irresistible tide flowing in, the burning hunger to drink in his victims' pain and terror, and he shivered with the sheer force of his need. The days of submitting to futile moral concepts, of abiding by the law and desperately trying to suppress his urges were long gone, and he could finally be what he was supposed to be. But before he could indulge himself, he had to make some important arrangements for the big event.

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Dutfield's Yard, Whitechapel, Jaggonath; Sunday, 30th September 1254 A.S., 1.45 a.m.

Faced with the second murder victim within roundabout three weeks, Damien muttered a vicious curse under his breath. All the heroic efforts of the police to arrest the killer and his own investigation in the matter had come to nothing so far. And now the son of a bitch had struck again without anybody being an inch closer to the murder clearance. Tracking down an unknown offender in a big city like Jaggonath was like looking for a needle in a haystack, and one could only hope that the madman became overconfident and made a mistake which would finally enable them to catch him before even more hapless women had to die for his sadistic pleasure.

From what the warrior knight had gathered from the present witnesses, a salesman of jewelry called Louis Diemschutz had entered Dutfield's yard around one o'clock, driving his cart. At the entrance, his unhorse had shied and refused to go on, and probing forward with his whip in the darkness, Diemschutz very much to his dismay had come in contact with a motionless body. Quite at loss what to do, he had entered the neighbouring Working Men's Educational Club and had called for help. Returning shortly afterwards in the company of Morris Eagle and Isaac Kozebrodsky, he had had to discover that the woman was neither drunk nor asleep as he had initially believed, but lay in a pool of her own blood, dead as the metaphorical doornail. The distraught men had instantly alarmed the Metropolitan Police, which in turn had sent for their surgeon, Dr. George Bagster Phillips.

By pure chance, Damien had visited the elderly physician to whom he had taken a liking in the late afternoon. Talking about everything under the sun from the Ripper case, the living conditions in the East End and what could be done to improve them to medical case studies, they had completely lost track of time, and when the huge alter oaken grandfather clock in Phillips' living room had chimed the eleventh hour, Vryce had readily agreed on staying overnight. But as so often in the life of a member of the medical profession, their sleep had been much too short for their liking. And here they were now, once again examining the mortal remains of an occasional prostitute who had fallen prey to the twisted bastard each and everybody was starting to call the 'Ripper'.

Damien had been told by a shaken bystander that the woman's name was Elizabeth Stride, and that she had been forty-five years old at the time of her death. But missing all the teeth in her lower left jaw, she looked distinctly older. In stark contrast to the previous cases, her clothes were completely untouched, with the notable exception of a silk handkerchief round her neck which appeared to be cut. The incision corresponded with a deep gash in her throat of about six inches in length, partially severing her left carotid artery and hence doubtlessly the cause for her death. Supplying the brain with oxygenated blood, this artery was vital, and aside from the massive blood loss bound to be lethal in a short matter of minutes, the lack of oxygen to the brain would cause almost instant unconsciousness and then coma. Other than this fatal blow and a more superficial cut through the tissues on the right side of her neck, there were no recent external injuries visible on her corpse.

Unsettlingly close to throwing a tantrum born from sheer frustration, Vryce gritted his teeth. With regard to the fact that the body was still warm, the Ripper could very well have been around when Diemschutz had appeared on the scene, an assumption supported by the odd behaviour of his old nag. In all probability, the salesman's arrival had frightened off the killer before he could start cutting Stride to pieces as he had done in the case of Annie Chapman. But loth to spare his victim's life, he had dispatched her before making a clean getaway.

But maybe his getaway hadn't been so clean, after all. Squinting his eyes, the former priest gently lifted the prostitute's right forearm. And froze to utter motionlessness, not even breathing. The angel of death had come quickly to Liz Stride. But evidently not quickly enough to prevent her from trying to fight off her attacker. And in her desperate struggle for survival, she had provided the only real piece of substantial evidence they had ever come across save those insane letters whom many believed to be frauds, anyway. Naturally, at death the woman's muscles had relaxed, and she had let go of the corpus delicti. But there was no mistaking to identify the object of interest still clinging to the sleeve of her dark cloth jacket: it was a strand of long, jet- black hair.