The Ripper's Wife(45)
The whore whimpered and I slapped her.
“Please, guv’nor, don’t spend ’pon me clothes!” she cried, hoity-toity as a duchess in velvet instead of a cockney slut in wretched rags. But it was enough. The illusion was shattered. I wanted to cut her head off! If only I had a knife! I put my hands on either side of it and twisted, wishing I could tear it off with my bare hands; I wanted to hear her flesh rip and see her hot red blood fall down to mingle with the cold rain. I rammed even harder; I wanted to make her bleed, the way my wife-whore had made my heart bleed. I imagined her in bed with Alfred Brierley, him on top of her on that dirty doss-house mattress, thrusting into her, the two of them coupling like a pair of naked savages in the worst slum in London. For a moment, all I could see was red. BLOOD! RAGE! RED! All I could feel was lust, excitement, fury, love, and hate all tangled up together in an impossible knot. I imagined myself standing there, at the foot of the bed, watching them, my prick fast in my fist. I’d never been so excited—or so angry—in my life!
“Particular, aren’t you?” I sneered as I pulled out and slapped her dirty skirt down and spurted all over it. It gave me far greater pleasure than spewing into her filthy hole ever could!
Her lips trembled and tears rolled down her bland, boring, round as the moon face. Her eyes, I saw now, weren’t blue at all but dung brown. She was a barley blonde barely sixteen by the look of her, probably fresh up from the country; she still had too much flesh on her to have been in Whitechapel for long. I pinched the big pink udders spilling from her bodice just for spite. She was nothing like my wife, God damn her! I threw her to the ground and pissed all over her and then I kicked her and left her whimpering on the wet cobbles.
I couldn’t kill my wife-whore, but the world is full of whores, worthless little whores I could kill and make suffer. All the little whores of London no one gives a damn about will pay for the sins of the Great Whore!
Tomorrow I will go shopping . . . for a sharp and shiny knife.
12
I returned to Liverpool under a heavy veil, the train jolting my bruised and battered body for four brutal hours. I had to fight every moment to hold back the tears and bite my already burst and bloodied lips to keep from crying out. I had never been more surprised than when I awakened that morning, crumpled and bloody in the corner of our hotel room, to find myself still alive; I had thought surely Jim had killed me. I had never seen him in such a savage rage, the eyes of a madman staring out of his head, just like a real-life Jekyll and Hyde.
Jim sat beside me, absorbed in a medicine company’s catalog, using a pencil to circle the items he wanted to order. Through the whole miserable four hours he never said one word to me. He hardly even looked at me. That was fine with me. As the wheels of the train kept turning, so was my mind, making plans, important plans to change my life. I’d stood as much as I could, more than a body should have to; I just couldn’t go on like this. I’d found a new love, and now I wanted a new life.
I would go to Alfred Brierley and take off my veil and disrobe and show him what Jim had done to me. Alfred would kiss every bruise and curse Jim for the brute he was. I would tell Alfred everything, sparing him not one single detail of the violent ravishment I had suffered at my husband’s hands.
As soon as I could safely manage it, I would see a solicitor. My mind was made up. I would take my children and leave Jim, divorce him, and never set eyes on him again. I would best all the Currant Jelly belles and marry Alfred Brierley myself. We could live in Paris, where people were much more open-minded about divorce. Hang the Currant Jelly Set! We don’t need them! We could have a perfectly wonderful life without them!
13
THE DIARY
I can hardly write, my hands are shaking so, just like this infernal train! I watch them move, I stretch and curl my fingers—hands of ice, heart of ice!—and grip the pen, but I hardly feel them; it’s like they belong to a stranger! Sometimes I feel the stab of pins and needles and think the feeling is about to come back, but it never quite does. If only they weren’t so very cold! I have to wear gloves, and that makes it harder to write. My stomach aches as though it were being gnawed from within by rats. I can hardly bear the pain or stand upright. The agony! I’ve had to take more of my medicine than ever.
I was in Manchester on business. But after the business of the day was done, I could not rest. I kept thinking about my wife-whore alone back in Liverpool. I kept seeing her lying naked on my bed, opening her legs wide to Alfred Brierley, crooking her finger and saying sultry soft in her syrupy Southern drawl, Come here, and pointing down to her golden thatch, inviting him to play with that pink pearl of flesh. Oh, Bunny, I wish I didn’t love you so! It’s torture—but what exquisite torture!—both loving and hating you!
I sat alone in my hotel room, drinking red wine mixed with my medicine, sitting there entranced, watching the white powder swirl in the heart of its ruby depths. I couldn’t stand it—the lust and the rage, the longing, the loathing, they were all tied up in a tight, Tight, TIGHT knot! I took a strychnine tablet and then another, washed down with bloodred wine. I couldn’t get the pictures out of my mind. I kept hearing their lust grunts, seeing their bare limbs entwined and her golden hair spread out across the pillows as she thrashed in the throes of passion. The knot kept getting tighter and tighter. I longed for release. But more, much more, than my hand on my prick could give me. I had to do something! Destroy or be destroyed! So I went out, looking for a whore, one hopeless, God–damned and forsaken slut to stand proxy for my wife-whore.