The Ripper's Wife(57)
The papers are full of my naughty deeds, but, curse them, they keep crediting them to this Leather Apron! How dare he try to fill my shoes! I shall have to send my letter soon and set the fools straight! I bought them all and read them aloud to Mary Jane, taking fiendish delight in her fear. I’d never seen a woman not facing my knife so afraid. I wanted to whip it out and show her, let her feel it cold against her throat, or maybe her cunt, but her terror excited me so much I gave her my cock instead, to comfort her, the dear little whore. She wanted more, and I wanted more, and we gave it to each other. We suit each other so well!
Some think I’m a doctor driven by some unholy madness onto the streets, to use my skill to kill, to take instead of save human lives—if you can even call a whore human. And then there’s this “Leather Apron,” a whore-hating Jew boot finisher. Already the whores cower and creep about cautioning each other to “beware of The Knife!” and “watch out for Leather Apron!” I didn’t see it, but apparently there was a leather apron folded under a water tap—I also missed that, or I could have washed my hands!—not two feet from where I slew Dark Annie. The street lamps in Whitechapel are so scant, it’s a wonder anyone who goes about at night can see their hand before their face, or Jack’s knife, when it comes out of the dark.
I shall have to send my letter soon and set the fools right or else this poor fellow might end up a gallows dancer.
I’ve fooled them ALL—police, press, and populace, and all the witless whores who live in terror of my knife. I’ve made the City of London the City of Fear, the City of Frightened Whores! I’ve baptized it in blood—whores’ blood.
The gentlemen of Scotland Yard are running around like chickens with their heads cut off. The blind leading the blind! Catch me if you can! I howled with laughter over Punch. There was a cartoon of a blindfolded bobby playing blindman’s buff with a group of ruffians and beneath it the caption “Turn round three times and catch whom you may!” May—the first three letters of my surname, right there in the paper for all to see, a clue hiding in plain sight—May, clever, clever, so bloody clever! They’ll NEVER catch me! It’s so frightfully funny!
Across the breakfast table the wife-whore shudders and swoons over the headlines and wonders, “Why don’t the police do something? ” I comfort her as best I can. I, the most hated and hunted criminal since the world began, play the loving husband and pat her shoulder or hand, kiss her cheek, and tell her that our police force here in Liverpool is one of the finest in the world and such things could never happen here—I’m not such a fool as to soil my own backyard! —or to women of her class; the whores of Whitechapel die as they live, on the knife’s edge of danger. Every time they toddle drunkenly up to a man and say, “How’s about a poke, Old Cock?” they’re taking their lives into their own drink-trembling hands. They’re asking for it every time!
How my dear little wifey frowns and worries over those damned dead whores! Bedraggled hags who are better off dead! If she only knew that it is her own sins I am punishing, every little no-account whore I kill is dying in her stead! They die so she can go on living, so our children’s names will never be sullied by her sins and my crimes of punishment by proxy, so I will never make the mistake of bringing my hate home with me. What would she do if she knew? Would she give me, and herself, away? Would she think of the children like I do? She’s such a selfish bitch, my wife-whore, she would act impulsively; she doesn’t have the sense to stop and think about tomorrow. She would only think of the moment, the lives lost, and the blood spilled, not that it might stain our children. The bitch is lucky to have me; I think of everything.
I’ve mailed my letter. I’m tired of reading about Leather Apron and speculation that I’m a doctor or a mad butcher and that no Englishman could ever do such a thing. Others trying to snatch the gory glory away from me! It’s time for me to take it ALL back!
Before I sent it, I couldn’t resist adding a postscript:
Dont mind me giving the trade name Ha Ha.
wasnt good enough to post this before I got all the
red ink off my hands curse it.
No luck yet.
They say I’m a doctor now Ha Ha!
Soon I will be more famous than the Queen herself. Now there will be no more talk about “The Knife” and “Leather Apron,” only Jack—the Ripper!
I’ll no longer be an unknown killer, a knife plunging out of the pea soup fog and darkness, slashing at whores’ throats, sagging udders and hungry bellies, and filthy flea-crawling cunts; now I have a name. Mothers will caution their kiddies: Jack the Ripper’s going to get you if you don’t watch out; Jack the Ripper’s going to get you if you don’t come inside right now; Jack the Ripper’s going to get you if you don’t eat all your vegetables, mind your manners, and say your prayers. They’ll never forget me; they’ll forget Michael’s jolly jack-tar, but they’ll never forget me! You can take all your sea chanteys, sentimental ballads, and humble hymns, Michael, and shove them up your arse along with Fred Weatherly’s prick. This name, taken with my medicine, will make me invincible. NOTHING can stop me now! I’m Jack, Jack the Ripper, my knife is my scepter, and I reign as the Red King over this Autumn of Terror. Long live King Jack; long may he hack!