Chapter 38

186 Fleet Street

"Bloody--you...sh--shit," Sweeney stuttered, the flat of his razor plopping against his thigh. "John?"

"Yes, Ben, I think we clarified my identity," John said, switching to his prim tongue, then heaving out another hearty minute of quivering laughter. "Though I am more formally known as John Horrigan as of now, the surname of me daughter in-law for the sake of an alias." He lolled his head back onto the seat's scarlet cushion and stared upward at the silent barber, eyes lit like the Australian sun where they had first met. "And yeh thought a trip upland would have taken longer than an itty bitty boat on the mighty Atlantic. Look at us, same place, same time...and I'll bet I got 'ere before the likes o' yeh!" The chair squeaked as he placed both hands on his knees, hair obscuring his eyes as he guffawed and squelched.

" Dammit, John, I would have killed you..."

The laughter subsided instantly, like a hand had grasped the sound and choked it to death. "Yea, Ben, about that...that killing bit." Sitting straight like a gent, but without the noted effort to be formal, John twiddled a cuff of his shirt and muttered, "I'd seen yeh change over the years, son. I've seen that crazed spark in your eye like a native's bonfire on the coast. You'd have lost your mind earlier if it weren't for your girl." He shook his head as the disconcerting gloominess of the situation settled in, like sand submerging to the sea's crusty bottom. "Christ, yeh went half mad worryin' over 'er every day, but when she was taken a year ago... yeh changed...and that spark returned." The man's voice was strangled to a hoarse murmur, "Now, yeh are different man altogether. I don't know what more yeh could 'ave been through to 'ave changed yeh so much, but 'ere yeh are, and their ain't no changin' fate. Nothing really frightens me anymore, mate...So tell me the truth, Benjamin Barker; 'ave yeh been killin' your customers?"

"My name--"

"And don't give me none of that Sweeney Todd horseshit!" His voice rose, the voice of a disgruntled criminal. "I want an answer, and I best hear one now!"

A defiant brow arched. "And if I am killing them, John? What do you intend to do? Go to the law? Because I can thwart such a claim with a more realistic one. Word of escaped convicts tend to get around..."

"Oh, hush that up, Benjamin, you're acting like a tot." There was laughter in his words, but beneath it all was the smothered whine of fear.

Sweeney crossed his arms over his broad chest, now possessing the appearance of a tot. His mouth nailed shut.

"Well," John grunted, bringing his hand up to stroke his beard, and lowering it upon touching naked skin, "like then and now, yeh need your girl to bring yeh back to sanity before yeh catch your death. So," he stood, studying London with a wary eye, "where is the little lady?" He broke the stares and glimpsed towards his previous bunking mate...long ago...

Again, that same blade cut deep into the barber's breast and drew out his iron heart, a bleeding pulp in a murderer's hand. "I don't know," he admitted.

"When I said yeh were mad, it was an understatement...My son, you're fuckin' insane. Benjamin Barker does not know where his daughter is? His Johanna? Has the antichrist blotted out the sun? Is the sky crashing down on our heads as well?"

"Kindly shut up, Mr. Horrigan, your jests are tempting me," spat Todd, brandishing his razor as Mrs. Lovett would wield her rolling pin. Course, he would not be able to kill the man, the reason he had made it out with his life, and he cursed his silent gratitude--a mere reminder that not all of his naïveté had been purged.

Backing away, gloved hands held high to mask the calluses and notched ruby scars, John retorted, "All I'm sayin' is that it was never like yeh to simply cast aside your daughter. I think if it I hadn't cared for yeh both, I wouldn't even be 'ere."

"Surprisingly," Sweeney said beneath his breath, the venom in his words pure in entirety, "you're not the first irritable person whose told me I've completely abandoned my daughter."

"Well God grant that other irritable person a long life of...of-of irritating yeh!" John hollered childishly, fresh out of replying counters.

As if Fate decided to step in at that moment, thus mocking a wary Mr. Todd and flaunting the upper hand, Mrs. Lovett tapped on the door and, without awaiting his harsh "no" or some other rejection in that form, glided in.

"Mr. T, I was thinkin' of runnin' to the market for flour," she began, took note of the customer, and murmured her pardons, humble and hushed. Her eyes embraced the floor.

"Not at all," John smiled, "I was just speaking to this good gentleman concerning his business. It is remarkable that you allowed him to stay here, truly remarkable to give such a talented soul a room--"

"Save it," Todd snapped, sharp glance peeling from his razor, "she knows who I really am." The dark, uneasy gaze floated back to the blade, seeking the shine from its silver surface in order to fill the light devoid in his eyes.

A shocked grin was all that gave away John's surprise; that and his gaping, large eyes. "You mean to say that you know his true name..." The Englishman's accent was still intact; his scruples towards the barber remained.

Oh, the sorrow, such is the ways of an ex-convict, Todd thought, bitter and cynical as he toyed with his blade, catching the light, bouncing the glow around in his hands.

Placing her hands on both hips, a grin of her own taking form, Lovett chirped, "Yea, I know 'e's Benjamin Barker." Her lips faltered and fell. "And I take it yeh do too..." Her empty tone offered plenty of room for explanation, and John seemed to have taken the hint amiably.

"My name's John, formally known as John Horrigan, and Ben 'ere was my bunking mate in ol' Botany Bay. Saved his arse nearly as many times as he's covered mine!"

She sighed a chuckle, more of a melancholy than amused gesture. "Mrs. Lovett, sir." Lacking the understanding of personal boundaries, Lovett floated forward and wound her arm tight around her barber's shoulders. His grimace went ignored either by her choosing or her insensibility.

"Anything else yeh know about 'im, darlin'?"

"I know that 'e was once a lovely father, but that was in days of yore, wasn't it Mr. T?" She gave him a challenging squeeze of his arm, and with a growl, he ducked away from her embrace and glowered at the framed London view.

"I take it you're the other--'ow did he say it?--irritable person that's been buggin' him over that?"

A flash of vulnerability crossed the woman's face, undetected in her smile, but burning in the glint of her brown eyes. She would have scolded herself had she been unacquainted with the barber's brooding demeanor or harsh words, the insults that he spat like hellfire. It was perfectly clear to her, he only needed her for the business, or an alibi when foul-play occurred just above her head. But was there nothing that she could do to gain his favor, even a sliver of respect in her beloved barber's eye, not only as a business partner, but as a source of solace as well?

She glimpsed at the side of Todd's head; he caught her from the corner of his eye, flared his nostrils, and snapped his gaze away.

"Yes, I suppose I am the other irritable one," the sting in her chest disappeared, or simply receded like a common coward, and she added to her confession with stiff satisfaction, "and proud of it, mind yeh!"

Struck dumb, a sharp hand of stupidity pummeled John's face. He exclaimed, "I like her!"

Sweeney turned to offer the baker a fleeting grimace, as if by someone exclaiming her worth in their eyes proved she held actual appeal, a value that he had been blind to since he had stepped foot into her shop. Maybe there was more to the woman; but, hell, he did not see as other people did! Darkness was of better vision than anything else. Light beckoned the truth; everyone yearned for it, no one could bear it. If a baby was born blind, he would not know he was blind, or even understand the mere concept, until someone explained he was, and that there was a world beyond his sightless hands. Sweeney Todd knew that world, but chose to obscure it.

"I think, my dear, with our combined forces," John's perfect accent swayed under a stampede of chuckles as he swept Lovett's hand into his own, "we can convince our dear Mr. Todd that he needs to get his mind in check...Shall we initiate the agitating, Mrs. Lovett?"

"Course, love," she gushed, taking the opportunity with fresh enthusiasm.

Turning on his heel, clutching his razor, the sky framing his looming figure like a portrait of the Devil, Todd snarled, "I'll kill you both and think nothing of it."

"Alright, Ben, I'm usually a tolerant man, but your petty threats are beginning to irk me."

"Now you feel my aggravation. Warm congratulations to you."

This time, without even a driven attempt at comical relief, John released the baker's hand and began a hostile advance forward, full stride unfaltering. "Yeh act as if yeh don't care, as if yeh can live life just fine without your own girl. Johanna was the reason yeh saved your breath in that shit-hole, the reason yeh held on to a splinter o' that humanity. "

The comment toppled the barber's barriers and pierced his heart with a sharp tip. Tears pooling in his throat, Sweeney traced the piercing edge of his blade across his sleeve, dangerously close to sinking the silver into his own pale flesh. "She was," he choked out.

John shrunk back, well aware he had bludgeoned the barber's silent wounds to a bleeding point. "Alright," he said, something hidden in his tone until his next words were spoken, "how we gonna get 'er back?"

"I told you, I don't know where she is, dammit!" There was no longer a trace of sorrow in his tone. Anger had blotted that bugger out.

Desperate, racking his brain for a predicament Sweeney could understand, John bellowed, "Barker, think of the Rocks! The place that nearly destroyed all of who yeh were! Think of the Rocks, remember how it felt, caged and helpless! Now place your daughter in that thought, beside those men, hurting her and hurting her like they did to you!"

Sweeney met John at the center of the floor, two intent dancers ready to waltz to their death, and clenched his large fists. "Don't you dare, John..."

"How else can I make yeh give a fuck about your own kid?"

"Boys," Mrs. Lovett warned from behind them, a daring foot inching forward, "I ain't afraid to take yeh both down with a meat cleaver."

John sighed, squeezed his eyes shut, and retreated to Mrs. Lovett's side. His expression bore agony, as if his surrender plunged him into the stinging recesses of the underworld. "I can see you're a bit irritable and until yeh decide to put your mind to finding your child, rather than slaughtering the whole goddamned world, I'm shutting up..."

Body still drawn forward, Todd bared his fists like a street fighter eager to riposte an oncoming assault. His teeth ground together, gnashing, and his jowl strained until bullets replaced the fleshy muscle of his jaw.

"I'll keep an eye out for your girl, alright?"

Fully aware he was acting like a violent fool, Todd reclined into his corner seat, pressed his fingers to his eyes, loosening the stony muscles of his back. He raised his head upward, attempted what he could at smiling,--it was like needles diving into his skin--and said, "Daughter in-law, huh?"

"Yea, my son got hitched years after my transport, can yeh believe it?" The two embraced a warmer topic, though Todd still felt a bitter twinge of jealousy that he had no news to give concerning his own family--positive news, least to say.

"And," Todd coursed his fingers over his 'stress streak' as Lovett had called it, "how is your family?"

"Ah, glad to have their father and husband back, no use denyin' it. My poor Ruth nearly choked on her own tears at the sight of me, and my son, Edward, his little wife had already picked up on calling me 'father' after the situation was explained. Now I'm apparently her "estranged uncle" living with them. Girl's quite well off, too, gave my family the best of the best, and helped me assume the role of a proper gent."

"Everyone is content with concealing your identity?"

"Everyone. My family, my son's wife, and not a person suspects! 'er family is outlying, yeh see, so assuming their title ain't so difficult." The same, broad smile took place as he jut his thumb towards Lovett. "And if their tutoring has taught me anything, it is that a gentleman usually offers a lady his chair when they are conversing."

Scowling at John's etiquette lecture, but feeling a pang of remorse nonetheless, Sweeney motioned for the blushing, bashful baker to sit in the barbering chair. She sent the padded seating a shake of her head, russet curls bouncing across her squinted eyes--the only eyes he could remember in prison--and leaned over the armrest instead. "Thank yeh both," she said quietly, a flush to her cheeks, looking more and more like a timid schoolgirl each passing minute. Yet, instead of gushing the barber to death concerning trivial things like income, decorating the dining area, or that Toby boy, she was poised, feminine, and... calm.

Perhaps the antichrist really had blotted out the sun.

"So," the barber began, unable to stop his eyes from dashing to the baker, waiting for her to interrupt him. When she had not, he blurted out the remainder of his sentence, leaving her with no opportunity to cut him off. "Anyone else make it out alive?"

"Plenty," John leaned back, "but never enough to suffice. "

"Seemed like everyone had...been killed," Sweeney noted. His voice was quiet, mournful.

"Naw, there's plenty of us walkin' around. Yeh just 'ave to open your eyes and see 'em. Convicts don' t like being noticed, but if yeh squint, there they'll be."

Sweeney grunted, "Peter told me you'd been killed as well." A stabbing memory of a child by his side, rotting in the sun, tore him from the room...He was on the Atlantic, the salt was burning his eyes and open wounds, his feet were bloody and aching, liquid acid rose to his throat as the waters churned and swayed, his bones felt like knives under his skin when he breathed, and the stench of festering flesh sank deep into the pit of his stomach.

"Oh, Peter? Christ, did yeh find the tiny rascal? I swear on my life, that child gave me a heart attack when we were cornered!" John studied the room, waiting for the teen to appear from nowhere, healthy and sound. "Where's the boy, then?"

The pause was pregnant, carrying the child of ill-delivered news. "Dead...Clung to me arm a week while we were stranded on the waters after he...gave in..."

Silence had woven its mark on the room. "Dead?" John said in verbatim. His face twisted with grief, the grin long since forsaken, and the gradual rise and fall of his eyes indicated Todd should elaborate.

"After we had separated that night in Cape Town, I was apprehended...they took me to the seclusion cells with dozens of others. I escaped," he frowned, warning John not to question how he had managed to evade certain death--the memory still repulsed him, though he continued such slaughter now as a daily ritual, "and when I was running for the docks, Peter found me along the way. We slipped into a boat and sailed...didn't know where we were 'eaded, though. And after a few weeks, he just died...couldn't handle it anymore. I thanked him, and pried his hands from me, and he sank deep, deep into the water, until I couldn't see 'im anymore...Would've been dead too, but a sailor managed to spot me on the seas. Anthony Hope, 'is name is..."

The tale was short-lived, yet brimming to the surface with simmering emotion. Lovett and John sat still, their mouths opened O's, and there was a silence that felt like a thousand different forms of holy hell. "I've said it before, and I'll say it again," John muttered, rubbing at this eyes as if to rid himself of bloody sights, "Ben, from the moment I first met yeh, I wondered how the fuck yeh were still alive." He turned to Lovett, a bashful, but strained, smile on his lips. "Pardon me language, love."

Instead of responding with her girlish, chirpy demeanor, she simply stared at the barber, such clouded grief in her eyes, he had to dodge her stares and concentrate on the dusty aged floorboards. (Was it even possible that his two angels had trod upon that very floor?) He had bloody sights of his own to evade.

After rubbing his face raw for the third time, sighing for the fourth, and closing his eyes for the hundredth time--putting it lightly-- John shifted and stood. "I best be off now. I told Ruth I'd be home in an hour's time. Worried sick 'bout me whenever I leave, God bless 'er."

Todd wobbled to his feet, gaze lost in the soiled, cotton clouds of London.

"Speaking of which," the man began, a brighter hope lighting the room, "did yeh ever find your wife, Ben? Lucy, I believe 'er name was?"

The barber's head sunk and the tips of his eyebrows met at a sharp ridge. His skin wrinkled with winding torment--torment sparked by the truth that he had hoped to avoid, to cram into the corner of his mind and spurn. The truths that he wanted to blind himself to. "...Judge Turpin," his voice shook like it carried the weight of the earth and sun, plummeting to blackness, akin to the shade of his eyes, "he raped her," his fists tingled with electricity, it shocked his blood, "he drove her mad," a beast began to prowl and crawl at his ribs, "and he hanged her in the back of Newgate."

John spoke quickly, clinging to a dying hope that he could wrestle the man's justifiable anger with comfort. "I could go to Newgate, get some information on her death, perhaps give yeh some closure--"

"She was unidentified...nobody knew 'er..." Of all deaths to undergo, and that was how his beloved, sweet, virtuous Lucy had met her end. Tormented and murdered, left to die, so broken, so alone...

Truly at a loss, John shook his head. "So what's the plan, Sweeney Todd? Yeh gonna try to get back at the Judge or somethin'?"

"I'll see myself dead rather than a failure; I'm going to kill him." Todd declared, barely realizing Mrs. Lovett had slipped from the chair and hovered by his side, waiting, watching, listening...

"Yeh? You're gonna kill Judge Turpin?" The ex-con babbled, eyes wide and glassy. "One man against a goddamn tyrant? I'm afraid I can't let yeh do that, Ben, cause not only is that reckless, it's a bloody fool's wish, a plea for suicide, and if I didn't love the idea so fuckin' much, I wouldn't agree to help yeh."

Sweeney was not stunned beyond thought at John's willingness to go along with murder, not by any means, but it was safe to say his breathing slowed to a crawl and he could almost taste his heart in his mouth. "I don't need your help," he began.

"Hogwash, Todd, look inside and see that you're filled with it." He fought another grin. "Let me know when yeh think yeh 'ave the bastard and I'll lend a hand."

Sweeney grimaced, "First, I don't know where to find you. Second, I'll not let yeh help when you have a family to think of, and third--"

"Let me stop yeh there, sonny. I may have a family in jeopardy, but it's not for reasons yeh think. I 'ave a son, nearing your age when yeh were arrested, with a wife and a child on the way. Can I honestly live a comfortable life knowing that the hand that manages the likes of London is corrupt? And as for the finding me bit, seek me out in St. Dunstan's market in the early afternoons. My family adores goin' there on the weekdays. It's where I found yeh, ain't it?"

Opening his mouth to reply, but with no words yet selected for speech, John, yet again, silenced the barber.

"Please, Ben. If yeh don't want me help, then fine, but at least seek me out so I can be there. I need to see the man, the blue bastard who almost ruined my life, put to an end. Give me a little closure, if yeh will."

Mrs. Lovett interjected, another crushing blow to her business partner's willpower. "He really ain't askin' for much, Mr. T. And he's 'elped yeh quite a bit."

Todd's face turned towards the woman's, scorn sprawled on his glowering eyes and pursed lips, then swiveled to John, greeting him with the same perturbed expression. "Fine. I'll seek you out."

"And I'll keep an eye out for your daughter. And yeh," he added, coat trailing in the air as he swiveled to Mrs. Lovett, "will 'ave a pleasant day and keep me good man in check."

She chuckled, and Todd's lips quirked. Had he ever heard her laugh so much in one day?

"I'll do so, sir, and probably die tryin'," the woman swore. Her coarse, dry hand grasped the barber's.

John's eyes flashed to each face, a corner of his lip twitching upward into a smile. His gaze remained vacant, empty. "Thank yeh, doll."

After retrieving his hat from the floor--groaning that "his back screeched at such labor" while doing so, and frowning towards the silent barber--John made for the door. "Try to stay out of trouble, Mr. Todd," he said over his shoulder, any kindness now washed out from his face as he took note of the clutched razor. For once, John appeared older than he looked. "And remember to seek me out."

Todd nodded, feeling no desire to speak. His voice had drifted somewhere between his mind and his throat.

Fogg's Asylum

An asylum. A home for the mentally deranged. A prison for the stable minded. Where fear has complexities no one dared contemplate, where the children were dragged by their necks to meet their death...some welcoming it, some resisting it. Those who resisted would soon submit. They all did.

It had been a month.

Johanna found herself amidst the realms of lunacy, floating between reason and the susceptibility, the surrender that would lead her by her hand to calamity. Locked in a cell that smelled of bodies and mold, pain and tears. It smelled nothing like home, it smelled like all joys were nowhere to be found. It smelled like heartless souls had wandered and laid claim to the prison devoid of sentiment, of warmth, of even a meager beam of light.

It would not be so hard--close one's eyes, kneel onto the icy stone, a fallen angel in prayer, and open one's arms, waiting, yearning.

Let Death take you by the hand; let him walk with you.

The first week had been horrible, yet somehow durable. The lack of human communication continued to irk her, but she had lived quite a while lacking such, so it was not a detriment from survival. The scarcity of food or water, fresh and clean at that, was not much of a problem at first. She barely ate anyway. The darkness was perturbing, but a light would begin to shine as she thought of Anthony and her father. They had seen her, they would save her. She did not have to worry; it would only strain her...As she waited.

Another week, and the infection had begun to spread.

One usually associates infection with sickness, a disease that rapidly contaminates a body, and steals fragments of life each passing day, each batted eye or quivering breath. But if one thinks long and hard, contemplating the difference between sickness and lunacy, a conclusion would be reached. They're one in the same.

Lunacy: the incurable infection.

And, God, did it spread like wildfire.

Days prior, Johanna would have measured time by her own trivial hunger, or by the weighted droop of her eyelids. Since then, her senses were wired, and she no longer nibbled at the moldy bread or sipped the stale, foul water. She could barely settle herself into the filthy, straw-scattered floor, barefoot, a lone silent soul amongst hoards of panting, stuttering lunatics. Locked in a room with numerous women, yet so alone, and so betrayed. One week, no one had come for her.

And when her senses became a mutiny against her will, and she reached for the water or bread, a soft voice in her mind, gentle and loving, would whisper, "Come, sweetheart, put that down. Do not eat and do not drink. For if you do, we cannot be together ever again."

Then the mutiny against her heart would unfold. "Yes, papa," she would find herself sighing in return to the solitary voice that resided in her head, though she could have sworn to have felt his breath tickle her ear.

The women, the Lord's scorned and rejected offspring, found an interest in the girl who was not like them; a fresh soul to dirty. They touched the girl, clawed at her, screamed all accusations they could summon, words that held no meaning to sane minds, screeches that spoke volumes to the mad. Why, Johanna could discern their voices, though their mouths were closed to intelligible words, are you not like us? Come, Johanna, and forget. Sink down, sweetie, and let the children be your friends.

She found herself listening to them, slowly uncurling her fingers from the memories.

Infected.

Let the children walk with you.

Days crawled and limped into endless nights, a silhouette would stand guard by the cell's door, speaking in the voice that Johanna could distinguish from anywhere. "Give in, my love," her father's voice caressed her thrashing mind, calming it like a wounded animal, "I want you to join me."

Oh, how she wanted to join him as well.

"Please, my dove, fly home."

But as the weeks passed, he never came. No Anthony, no father. Not a soul, not a care.

Her thoughts fell, her will was crippled. Death could not be all that bad, she would think to herself, pensive. Death never excluded a single being, he was a peaceful retreat of welcome when the world was all too much to bear. So why had her father demanded she refuse Death so long ago, when Death was always present and her father had forsaken her?

Three weeks, and she had acquired changes that seized control over the course of a lifetime.

Insanity was tangible, it could be felt seeping into her blood, it could be seen in the eyes of every unfortunate in the asylum--even its workers--and it could be heard, through her father's voice, soothing her, coaxing her to complete the forbidden journey. To cross over from life and salute her demise.

She had never refused her father before; why should now be any different? Even though she was as loathed as a bad memory, as discarded as a scrap of waste, what right did she have to refuse her father's wishes?

The air was thick, the room was cold, her stomach was hollow, and her eyes were trained on the ceiling as she laid flat on grimy, encrusted hay, sometimes brushing against a foot or a hand, sleeping with her gaze open and locked on nothing.

It had been a month.

Her life was slipping away with each shaky beat, her eyes were glazed over with exhausted tears. She could feel her skin sliding over her bone, and then stretching tight; her cheeks plunged into her skull. Golden hair was now the color of soiled hay, of the murky sewage in the corner of the cell. Her limbs ached, her joints creaked. Her pale skin was blackened by dirt and ashes...because the city was on fire...and Fogg's asylum was the hungry furnace that fed it.

She was the children's blinded bird, twittering and flapping down...into the deep...

And though Johanna whispered the names of every person she had known and cared for each night, before her body was disabled for a brief, purloined sleep, Johanna could feel that the memories were diminishing; and she could no longer remember the boy in Botany Bay who had adored her yellow hair, or the man with a limp who had dried her tears the first week of labor, or the women she had befriended in the small, sewing factories. Her father was now a ghost that haunted her from outside the door, holding his hand out to her as she sobbed and clung to the bars, reaching for him in vain.

Faces were fading. Names were forgotten. The Judge and Beadle floated in her nightmares, lingering, and looming. They would not go away. The ghosts would never go away.

But she remembered her father's face, simply because he stared at her from all the unreachable places; in her dreams, beyond her cell, just outside the bars.

It had been a month, and Johanna felt she had been born in Fogg's asylum. One month, and

she was counting her breaths

she was relinquishing,

and she was dying.

Come, Death, you are my father now.

Har-di-har-har, joke's on the demon barber (much sympathy for little Johanna. Don't worry, a little sleepover in an asylum can't last that long...*gulp*...) Reviews are love, so please drown me in it!