Chapter 37
Fogg's Asylum
Once the carriage had limped to the stone steps of the asylum entrance, the Beadle shifted, glanced towards the captive Johanna--who was slowly slipping into unconsciousness from loss of blood, pain, and draining bereavement--and stumbled from the coach.
"Watch the girl," he called over his shoulder to the driver, "and restrain her if she attempts escape again."
"After the blows yeh 'anded her, I doubt she'll budge an inch," the man grumbled, swathing spit between his teeth.
Brow raised, Bamford swiveled on his hip to spite the hired driver with a sneer of superiority. How could anyone not be disgruntled when the girl had thrown herself from a moving carriage, most likely broken her arm, and screamed bloody murder until inquisitive Londoners swarmed the scene? Did the bastard have any idea what kind of trouble the little siren would have stirred if they had recognized her identity? And what of that foolish barber, staring at the girl like she were a precious, coveted fragment of heaven itself?
Echoed screams first greeted the Beadle when a hollow-faced male answered the asylum's door. He wore a sullied, white coat, sprinkled with crimson splatters at the rim, and a haggard expression as he slid a hand atop the door panel.
"Can I help yeh , sir?"
Another scream within the darkness of the building, that trilled and died with an abrupt groan.
"I require a meeting with a Mr. Fogg, the keeper of this establishment, I presume, on behalf of the honorable Judge Turpin." His posh tone could only crack when, at the far end of a hall, a woman was dragged by her scalp as her lower body trailed the ground. She had no arms, and vomited blood that smeared her limp legs, leaving a scarlet trail as a mark of her path. White bone glistened from the stumps of her shoulders.
The worn keeper turned his grey face to the scene, sought the source of the Beadle's discomfort, and returned his gaze forward. There was a spark in his eye, and it appeared to be...humor."Ah, yes," he replied as a wiry smile creased his mouth, "the Judge came by but a few hours ago...said 'e 'ad a lovely bird for us to cage. A mad one at that..."
The Beadle cleared his throat. "Yes," he said and brought his knuckles to his lips as he gave a light cough. An odor of filth-laden bodies and rotting corpses began to seep outside, a smell that summoned a memory of Newgate's gallows where the freshly dead were left to hang for weeks until their eyes, noses, and lips had weathered away. "I do wish to confront him first, however."
"Of course, " the man said in the same odd, empty voice. He made no effort to move from the spot, but eventually budged when the Beadle tried at an awkward side-step around him.
When the two entered Fogg's asylum, the stench became thick and the air, dank. The keeper, who seemed accustomed to such an environment, paced past cluttered cells, footsteps wandering through the lost strands of air. "If you'll follow me, sir."
Beadle Bamford made sure to avoid peering into the cells to his right, contaminated with patients devoid of hair or other body parts or simply their minds, and pursued the man until he paused beside a small door, the wood moldy and rotting away, insects leaving weathered holes on its surface. Without knocking, the keeper pushed his way in and beckoned for the Beadle to enter.
Mr. Fogg was seated at a desk in similar condition to his office door, twiddling a quill pen between his hands and smearing ink onto his bony fingers. The room was darker than his asylum's halls, in bleak comparison, a lone candle as its source of scarce light. There were no books, no windows, merely a desk and a chair, a single fireplace where amber coals glowed after being previously stoked. All shadowed by the flicker of the candle's insignificant flame.
The grim doctor's black-rimmed eyes rose to Bamford, shot to the keeper, and returned to the desk. There was a slumbering hesitation. "If you wish to see a showing , sir, you will have to wait till the morn. I must replace the children who dropped dead during the last performance."
Mouth dry, Bamford rasped, "I'm not here for a show, Mr. Fogg. I am here to deliver a patient."
Fogg kept his gaze trained on the black ink smearing his thumb, as if nothing struck him odd any longer. "Another child for me to tend to," he sighed, then a greedy glare dashed toward his visitor. "Is it another freak I can display? I prefer deformities, facial deformities, that is. The people do love that. But if the child is simply mad, I can always put it in a cage for showcase."
"No, sir, the girl is not a freak...but she is mad, nonetheless, and should be placed here to maintain the peace of society until cured."
"We do not cure our children here, sir. This is an asylum for the mentally deranged, not a hospital."
Unable to respond, the portly man nodded his head, staring at a roach limping to the heel of his boot.
"Well," Fogg broke the silence and gestured to the empty space around the Beadle, "where is she?"
Brought back to reality, and aggravated at the very least at his own stupor, Bamford huffed, "The girl's in the carriage outside of this establishment...but during her struggle, she slipped and bloodied her arm. Be warned, this one's a spitfire. "
"Spitfire...only the dead in fresh graves utter the word. A bird's wings are easily clipped, gentleman, and their eyes put out so they flutter to their deaths...bring the birdie in. Let me examine her."
The words tightened around the Beadle's mind, choking out other thoughts, and just when he thought the bemusement could not get any worse, he broke his own discomfited silence. "I will require your help retrieving her from the carriage, though. You see," Bamford paused, " the girl is not all there."
Mr. Fogg grinned and bared his yellow, gapped teeth. "Ah, good sir, none of us are all there."
The Beadle almost regretted asking for Fogg's assistance as they paced through the dim hallways, as Fogg rattled on barred cages of his children and squealed in delight at their coarse howls.
The keeper shouted over a woman's wailing, whom the Beadle realized was discarded in a cage to the side of the hall, "What was your name, sir?"
"You may refer to me as Beadle Bamford, Mr. Fogg..." A man's thin hand shot from the darkness of an adjacent passage and clawed at the Beadle's coat. As if singed by the fingers of Satan, Bamford yelped and jumped back, hands held high to ward off assault. A pair of tight-lipped nurses wrestled the patient away from his prey, down the hall, to an iron door where the clinking of chains rattled through the watery air.
Shaken, his pace doubled into a desperate race for the exit, the Beadle jogged to the asylum doors and gasped for air upon thrusting them open. The usual, polluted London night was an oasis compared to the fowl stench of death just behind him.
After a few more shrieks and echoing laughter, Fogg emerged from the building's darkness and observed the outside world. He searched the streets and buildings, and a cloud shadowed his face, a twisted sense of longing that could never be indulged. "That's your buggy, sir?" he croaked and directed a hand towards the carriage beyond the asylum's steps.
"Yes," the Beadle whispered, the breath of his words shaken. He descended the steps with his upper body turned slightly to the side in order to keep Fogg in plain sight. "Keep in mind, she's--"
"Deranged? Yes, sir, I'll keep that in mind."
The Beadle's jaw locked as he came to the carriage door.
The driver, leaning on its side, gave his employer a lazy nod. "Hasn't stirred an inch, sir, like I said."
Without responding, Bamford twisted the door's knob and opened the door, revealing a slumped back Johanna, head askew and her cheek pressed to her shoulder. She pried her eyes open and drew a sharp breath as the Beadle stepped aside, allowing the ominous Mr. Fogg room to step forward.
"Hello, silly birdie," Fogg cooed, wasting no time in bringing his fingers to her face, stroking her as a twitch tugged at his thin brow. "What have we here?" he asked when his eyes fell to the bloodied flesh of her arm.
Johanna emitted a choked cry from the back of her throat when the asylum keeper took her elbow in his palm and rubbed his fingers over the oozing gash. Then, with a bemused grin, he took his finger, covered in the girl's blood, and poked it into his mouth. "You're a tasty one." Still smiling, he slipped his arms behind her back and beneath her legs, lifting her from the seating, murmuring, "Come, sir, I do need your assistance with the diagnosis. I should think it foolish to house a child without proper analysis."
The Beadle's eyes flicked to the stone building, looming in the darkness, its walls aglow beneath the moon's rays. How it stood, bending and swaying with the weight of its inhabitants, how the screams of the insane seeped from the windows and into the dead night. How the hell did the man expect him to go back in there?!
Stirring in the stranger's arms, Johanna gave a vain push at Fogg's chest, murmured for her father, and submerged into momentary unconsciousness.
"Little birdie," Fogg began, ascending to the asylum's bulky doors with a meek Beadle trailing behind, like a dog with his tail between his quivering legs, "hardly weighs anything."
As if Bedlam were some sadistic form of Hell, screams, moans, cries, and begs greeted the group as they stepped through the doorway into the faint, candle-lit halls. Watery filth squeaked beneath the Beatle's boots, he cast a caged child a meager smirk, clinging to the strands of his impudent supremacy rather than submitting to his childish dread.
"Now, Beadle Bamford," Fogg said in his conversational tone, oblivious--or accustomed--to the horrors around him, "would you say the child has any feminine impulses to be thin? It would seem that she's rather tiny..."
"Yes, Mr. Fogg, very unnatural for a girl her age, might I add."
The man gave a deep nod of his head, in both recognition to the Beadle's words and in greeting to one of his dreary staff members as they carted a bucket of murky blood down the way.
"Of course. Then you agree with me, sir, if I were to diagnose the child with Anorexia--the desire to be thin beyond healthy means?" With the heel of his dripping shoe, Fogg nudged his office door open, and observed the area for a place to deposit the girl.
"Well, you are the doctor," Bamford snorted, his humor now terror at the sight of a mat cast aside on the floor, a hemorrhaging corpse sprawled on its surface, and a bloodstained nurse peering down at it while wiping the gory crimson onto her apron.
"Oh, now, what is this?" Fogg sighed, stopping before the mess to observe.
"Freshly dead, Mr. Fogg. The morgue was otherwise filled, as was the stockroom, so I brought the body here for your good judgment. " She gave her employer a queer sort of stare, much like a child expecting a treat when they knew they did not truly deserve it.
"Ah, yes," he said, jolting as Johanna fidgeted for release, "put the poor child with the 'wayward' women. God save the mark!"
A corner on the woman's lip tugged upward and, hauling the body from the stiff edge of the mat, she dragged the corpse from the room, displaying surprising strength for a women. One would think after years of maintaining malicious and violent patients, a nurse would have the strength of any grown male.
"Wayward women?" Bamford inquired when the room had been cleared of all intruders.
"Pregnant...usually prostitutes infected with consumption..." Fogg replied, his voice absent minded as he stepped forward and set the wriggling Johanna into his wooden, rickety chair. "Now, child," the man instructed with a grab at her wrist, "I wouldn't suggest you do anything rash...I will have to restrain you and we don't want that, now do we?"
Tears pooled in the girl's eyes and she glanced at the Beadle, accusation in her face, pleas written in her eyes. The Beadle turned away, dodging her eyes and evading any guilt. She deserves it, his mind whispered, but the reverberation of the "children's" howls drove out his reassurances.
"Now, Beadle, sir, how would you describe the child's behavior?"
"Er...uhm...well, I would say she is... defiant, unintelligible...," he tore his mind for liable symptoms, "absolutely gauche..."
"Hmm," the doctor hummed, uninterested. "Anything else?"
"On more than one occasion, she has attempted to flee her home...and...," a spark entered Bamford's eyes, a visible notion, " and engaged in licentious approaches involving her guardian. "
"Licentious, you say?" Fogg repeated with a newfound interest. His grey eyes travelled to Johanna's pale face, wavering with fatigue. "Please, sir, do continue."
"Not even an hour earlier, she claimed to have been acquainted with her deceased father. Delusional, mental case, this one is."
"That isn't true!" Johanna cried, shooting forward in her seat. The breath slipped from her throat at the abrupt movement and the shadows of the room cloaked the men's faces.
Calmly, Fogg leaned her back into the chair, and spoke; his tone was almost soothing. "Is this true, child? Do you often hear your father's voice, or see his face even?"
"Sir, please--" she sighed, too utterly exhausted to find her voice after her screams had blistered her throat.
"You do, there is no use lying to me. And your father is obviously a male."
"Yes, but--" She wrung her limp hands and blinked back tears when the man's voice overrode her own.
"So, I would be correct in saying you have delusions of nonexistent people, specifically of the male gender?"
Unable to speak, Johanna jerked her head into a shake, her eyes scrunching in misery.
With a smirk, the doctor turned towards Bamford. " Nymphomania. I am sure of it." He leaned towards the desk, grip still strong on Johanna, and groped for his pen. Once he grasped it, he reached forward and scrawled the diagnosis on a blank scrap of parchment. "I believe the Judge mentioned that the child's name is Barker?"
"Yes, Johanna Barker."
"The Judge's ward?"
"And such will remain obscured, Fogg, or health regulations will have a pristine interest in your establishment." A sneer crept onto Bamford's face, crude and leering. There was no detectable effort of even trying to hide it--or he would have had to check himself into the asylum.
A smile stretched on the man's face. "But of course, sir." After the notes had been taken, the doctor returned both hands to the girl's bloody arm. He trailed his fingers over the bone, like a finger prodding out beneath her skin. "Beadle, on the top right corner of my desk, there will be a straitjacket. Please hand it to me."
Despite the searing pain in her body, the girl, entrapped beneath Fogg's hands, writhed for freedom. "You said you would not put me in one of those," she blubbered, a stream of long withheld tears seeping down her chin.
One hand reaching towards the withheld straitjacket, the other slamming Johanna's head into the back of the chair, Fogg exclaimed, "My God, a hysterical, nymphomaniac, anorexic at that!"
Snorting with laughter, the Beadle knelt beside Mr. Fogg and handed him the jacket. "It is Turpin's wish that you keep the girl restrained as long as possible."
The man nodded, preoccupied with wrestling the girl's arms into the sleeves of the restraint.
Shrieking with sobs, Johanna pushed at her assailant and held her arms to her chest until Fogg wrenched her sore arm forward, received a scream of agony, and in her weak state, lost both arms to the binding fabric. The jacket was large on her, the sleeves stretching long past her wrists. It reeked of a foul odor, a stench that entwined with Death and its decaying victims.
It took mere seconds for Fogg to secure the straitjacket on Johanna--tightly around her ribs as he did for all of his new children--and once he had, she held her head low and simply wept, as if tears would bring her arms from the restraints, as if, somehow, they would convince her that she was not mad, and her father was not a mere illusion for her eye to entertain. He was living, breathing, and she had seen his face amongst the crowd because he had been there--hadn't he?
"She shall be locked away with children in similar condition until you return for her, sir. For the time being, are there any particular treatments you wish for the girl to endure?"
Endure--it took on more appeal if treatments had been replaced with torture.
"Little food. Little drink. Absolutely no open-air under any circumstances. I believe that is all the Judge has requested."
"Certainly." Standing erect, Mr. Fogg motioned towards the door, his tone of genuine warmth. "Dear sir, it truly has been a privilege. I will look after this poor undesirable for as long as need be. Until then, adieu. I do believe you remember the way out." He returned his eye to the girl, but glanced to the side. "Mind your surroundings."
Before the Beadle could bring himself to leave the room, let alone stand straight, his gaze seared Johanna's clouded eyes, noted the horrors that were reflected in her dimming youth. "I shall return soon, child, and when I do, I suggest you beg forgiveness from your guardian and give consent to his marriage proposal. You shan't live long in these conditions should you refuse."
She saw his lips moving, heard the words he spoke, but not a syllable of false-sentiment could fool her wise heart. Instead of responding to his advice, as sincere as it could have been, she whispered, "You saw what happened. You saw what he did to me...," her breath fell shaky, "yet you stood by and stared...You let him hurt me."
Eyes bugging like a frogs, Bamford lowered his head until his chin brushed his chest, a grown man caught in the wrong. Quiet, speaking to his own sour conscience, he replied, "There was not much else to do."
Silence's air was thick and weighty, and then broken by the notorious Mr. Fogg. "Do be glad, birdie. You are with your own kind. Remember every sigh you draw drains a drop of blood from your heart; and you need all the blood you can save. Now, bid the kind gent goodbye and we shall get you settled in."
The child, both arms bound to her chest, blood seeping through the dirty cloth, her face distorted with unbefitting torment, let the words crawl between her teeth. "Goodbye, sir."
If spoken resentment could kill...
"See to it she is locked away immediately," the plump man said, shoulders broad while he breezed through the door as if to ward off any lurking horrors that lay beyond his vision.
When the Beadle had departed, and the doctor was free of watchful eyes, he wrenched the girl forward by her bloody, bound arm and wound a fist in her silken hair. "Shall we see how tasty you really are, my sweet, sweet birdie?"
Down the hall, across from the rooms of caged prisoners, raving, moaning women, men rolling on straw and filth, Johanna Barker's screams flew to the Beadle's ears, ringing in his mind, flinging open the caskets of his deceased memories, beckoning the apparition of dead faces, a dead mother and father--their child that he had agonized beyond conceivable means.
Surrender a whoreson guilty of murder, and he will hang the fortnight without a moment's deliberation. Turn in a thieving whore and her breaths will abate at the hands of justice. But send a sane child into an asylum, rip her from the pieces of her innocent family, shatter her with the assault of her guardian and his best mate, and never wonder why she was receiving such punishment? Just turn one's head and blindly punish, punish, punish until she willingly collapsed into the marriage bed--or until she received a short, ill-delivered death?
"Where the fuck is the justice in this?" a miniscule voice piped up in his brain. It was the--dare it be said!--dreaded voice of reason.
And still, a mouse forever enslaved by the big, bored cat, Beadle Bamford scampered to the asylum's exit, into the night where the weight of London's darkness was lighter than the guilt that forever sought him out, like a ghost that would never leave him to rest.
186 Fleet Street
If it were not for the fact that Sweeney Todd' s first customer was a British soldier, he probably would not have mustered the malice to split the bastard's neck open to begin with.
But the man was a soldier, and he had killed him, and ever since that jolting, electric pulse shocked every nerve of his body at the feel of blade snipping tendons, he found himself no longer in control of his feral impulses. Nay, he was no longer in control of himself. There was a raw hunger for more, for this power that he had been denied all of his life, a fiery thirst that he could only quench with a corrupt man's warm blood.
Customers would pour in like monsoon rain since that day, and he would converse lightly with them, asking questions that most men would take for granted in any conversation, be they civilized gentlemen or convict scum. "I am sure a handsome shave will benefit any decent, family man. Pardon me, though, have you any children, sir? A wife, perhaps? Foolish of me not to ask in the first place, sir." or the less prodding, but equally effective "Such an exotic hairstyle, sir! I dare inquire, are you from London?"
And if the customer had answered 'yes' to cherishing at least one living family member--be they near or distant, son or daughter, wife or betrothed--they would, unbeknownst to them, receive a pardon from death itself. Family would save them, that and their nearby homelands if luck was feeling generous that day. Londoners also received the pardon, though quite a few would die choking on their blood should they have proven fraudulent and devoid of breathing kin.
Much to his pleasure, Todd tended to target those who conjured unpleasant memories. If a priest would waltz in, and he was not entirely common in London, Sweeney would recall the tooth-pulling session he had endured in Botany Bay, when his daughter was tossed about as the Priest ignored the crying child, demanding his ache be tended to. If the proceeding customer was a lawyer from a distant area, then his mind would travel to the Old Bailey fifteen years prior, the very day he had been sentenced to Australia without a lawyer to even speak for him during trial. Why not actually commit the crimes he had been falsely accused of? Fair game, fair kill, that's how he saw it.
He had a purpose now: slaughter every unwanted fragment of his past and stow away those he held dear. Never indulge in the past, but never forget it. Never kill a man who held a trace of humanity, for the sake of preserving it, but never forgive those who had ruined him and his family. His "girls" as he had once called them.
Minutes later, when the oven was hot and the kill was fresh, Mrs. Lovett, enslaved by her affection to her darling barber, would begin to bake the victims into meat pies, store them for her hungry customers (who had swarmed her shop at the mention of her Grand Reopening, claiming "Lovett's back!" as they gorged themselves to fatigue), and swab the barbershop's floor and chair clean of crimson death. The boy, Tobias, was of great help around Lovett's shop, but when the child would attempt innocent jests with the barber, he would receive a cold frown and a simple word or two of dissuasion. He was never entirely harsh with the child, the innocence reminded him too much of his family to be cruel, lost to the city aflame.
It was humorous, Sweeney thought to himself, the world they lived in. The baker could try as she would at protesting excessive slaughter if only to maintain his health, with the prospering income set aside, and he would simply charm her with his wits, or alarm her with a foreboding step towards her slight figure. Not that he would hit her, nor would he even touch her; never would he hit a woman in his life, especially after his daughter...
Then of course, there was that particular issue. His daughter, the child he had fallen to his knees for, wailing and lamenting, screaming and demanding that the Fates return her to him or suffer the consequences of their cruelty. And They had refused, They had kept his daughter stowed away in Their greedy embrace.
So what had he done in return to counteract the unjust punishment? He fucked with the Fates, of course! Now it was he who held the power, the lowly convict that had once been held down and forced to submit to strength he could not withstand. He was a tyrant of the world, a silent predator amongst the herds of oblivious Londoners. He was Death, his razor was Death's hand, his eyes were Death's kindled glow, and his restless soul was Death's core. The Fates could only observe him as he slaughtered the world, each slit throat another memory of his sacred child lost.
"Look here Fate, feel the helplessness I once felt, and watch me butcher your children."
Strange, though, he would find a break in his work, and a thought stir his mind: Even if, by some miraculous act, he had claimed his daughter back, how would he find the will to stop this bloodbath? Did he even deserve to drag an angel into his own personal Hell when she deserved so much more than what little he had to give?
Their last encounter, the night Johanna was bleeding on the street and stolen away by the Beadle, had been his last living day. Lucy was a familiar pain, but the fact that he could no longer remember her face somehow stole some of the hurt away. But Johanna? No, if a single man passed by his shop, a tiny girl's hand in his own, it would be as if his own razor had plunged into his chest, twisted, and carved out his heart of stone, heart of blackness. The parental spark of protection had long since died, he no longer felt the desire to hunt for his missing child, a child whom he was unworthy to call his own. Anthony was in search of her, anyway, and though he would return to the shop days at a time, worn and devoid of happy news concerning the girl, Todd felt her safety would be in good hands if she had been found. For now, he had to keep the memories at bay. They would be the death of him.
It was best, he soon realized, that she and her mother quietly slip away with time. Of course her face would remain plastered in his cracking memory, of course he would always love her with all of his washed-out sentiment, but he could never be the man he once was. He was not capable of being her father; that part of him had withered and perished.
Death could never father an angel.
It was a humorous world they lived in. A child; a stranger. A father; a killer.
Humorous indeed...
Todd rubbed his razor free of any smudges and blew a speck of dust from its tarnished surface. The moist crack of a man's skull sang in Todd's ears as he gazed into the pit of the trapdoor, smirking at the heap of flesh that was once a disowned architect, hailed from France. True, he had no personal quarrel with architects, but he had set aside, oh, a quarter of his entire life piecing together buildings for snobbish settlers. The thought of that, while he was shaving the stubble of the Frenchman's beard, had just ostracized any control, and so he could not resist gashing his neck until the man's windpipe shown under the red flow, like a tube severed in half.
The man had not struggled, but rather forced his fingers to the open slash in his throat, and so the rapid gush of blood turned sluggish. He had tried to scream and his voice was lost to the swoosh of his life, pouring out of him, and his eyes rolled in the back of his head as Todd stomped on the trapdoor pedal. The chair rocked backward and deposited his guest to his final doom, and as if it were a breathing thing, returned to its proper position, upright and welcoming.
And when the deed was done, and the blood was cleaned from his hands, a knock sounded from the barbershop's door.
Todd felt a faint, quirky smile on his lips. He motioned for the man to enter and waited. The bell's of the shop door jingled and faded as the customer stepped forward, removed his hat, and embraced the barber's stare.
Startled, Sweeney felt his neck strain at the sight of the wealthy man, the inquirer of his business in Dunstan's market after his contest with Pirelli and the lone man who spoke against the Beadle, commanding Johanna be assisted as she screamed for her father; the tragic night that had murdered him. Already, Todd felt his impulses retreat, and the man's fate was secured.
"Mr. Todd," the man said in that same, perfectly pronounced tone.
"How do yeh do, sir?" Sweeney replied, helpless against the raspy scrape of his words. Damn it to hell, this man was bloody familiar!
"Just fine...a shave, though, if you are free."
"Yes, have a seat, sir." He patted the chair's wooden edge and observed the man as he sat through squinted eyes. He took the man's hat in hand and tossed it in the corner, uncaring that it fell to the floor with a feathery tap.
The bowl of cream shook in his right hand , and he had to steady himself at the elbow with his left. Before he could apply the lather, though, the man asked suddenly, "You were the man that protested in the street against that girl being taken away. I'd say it was a month or so ago, and the scene did stir up quite a commotion."
Defiant veins bulged in Todd's hand, the one grasping at his razor until it rattled with his furious heartbeat. "And unless my memory fails, you were right beside me protesting."
The tension soon spread. "Yes, so who was that girl, Mr. Todd, and why have you not found her?"
For a split second, Todd envisioned slicing the man's throat to pulpy ribbons. He hissed as his razor closed in on the quarry, "I did not get your name, sir."
"Why is that when I stood outside your shop, I saw men go in, and fewer come out?" the man continued, unrelenting. "Why is it that yeh 'aven't even rescued your daughter from that Beadle son o' a bitch, but gone off your bleedin' rocker instead?" His accent submerged into a rich, Cockney one, and he turned to glare at Sweeney, accusing daggers flying from his eyes. There was no sign of stiff sociability any longer, a mere facade the gentleman must have been playing at. "So where's your girl, Sweeney Todd, and 'ow the 'ell are yeh gonin' to get 'er back?"
Doubling the stranger's hostility, and the idea of Joanna endangered taunting his mind, Sweeney shoved his blade into the man's face, inches before his skin. The silver reflected in both men's eyes. His voice was throaty and low, a threatening hum of words. "Your name. Now."
The aurora of tension was then smashed to pieces as the man doubled over, deep chortles rumbling from his chest, then growing to a uproarious crescendo as he wiped at growing tears of mirth. He turned to glimpse at the barber, hollered yet again, and fell into another fit of hysterics. Scratching at his shaven chin, his grin broad, he chuckled to the barber, "Aw, come now, Ben! Yeh mean to tell me a bloody shave and a fancy coat stopped yeh from recognizing your good mate John?"
Ha, damn I missed this character! Come on, reviewers! It's John! If you like it, if you love it (even if you hate it, but that's a discussion for another time) then review it!! Have a taste of Bitter Freedoms in its glorious chapters, when convicts roamed the Earth! Please do review, feedback is love! Thank you all...