The Ripper's Wife(70)

I keep telling myself I will be better in the spring—the season of rebirth will replenish, renew, and restore me. I will be born again in the spring. It has always been my favorite season. I will feel better when the flowers bloom and the robins sing outside my window. By the time spring comes, I will have made all the wrongs right. We will be a happy family again and lead a happy life.

The wife-whore has sent me a letter, a long and lovely letter that brought tears to my eyes. She begs my forgiveness for all her mistakes, the debts and Alfred Brierley; more than anything she wants us to make a new start. We’ve said the same things so many times before, dare we make one more attempt? That’s what I want too—a new start! New Life, New Love, Love Renewed! Oh, Bunny, my dear, precious Bunny, you’ve awakened springtime in my heart!

I will give up Mary Jane, fond of my ginger tart though I am. I hate to leave her in the lurch, but we must part. Fishmonger Joe has already walked out on her and the rent is nearly thirty shillings in arrears, and Uncle John is losing his patience.

Fishmonger Joe caught her in bed with another whore, her friend Julia, “havin’ a harmless little frolic, not hurtin’ a soul,” Mary Jane protested. They’d even offered to let him join in, moving over to make room between their naked bodies, stroking their nipples and spreading their thighs wide to entice him, but he demurred. “He’s such a prude, Joe is!” Mary Jane snorted with contempt as she related the details of their parting. He’d been so angry he’d punched his fist through one of the windowpanes to keep himself from striking her and wouldn’t even linger long enough for her to bind his wounds.

I want to do something for my spicy ginger tart. I have destroyed four whores; let me now save one. I think I shall see if I can find the money to pay her passage back to Ireland, to give her a fresh start too in a land of green that reminds me of spring. I’ve heard her more than once before warning young girls, “Whatever you do, don’t you do wrong, an’ end up like me.” She’s only twenty-six; it’s not too late for her to change her life. She’s clever enough to crawl out of the gutter and stay out!





I’M GOING TO MAKE EVERYTHING ALL RIGHT!!!

I WILL ATONE FOR ALL MY SINS!!!





I’m tired of being Jack the Ripper. I want to throw my knife in the Thames and vanish into the fog as suddenly as I appeared.

I’m tired of being James Maybrick too. I’m just tired. TIRED, TIRED, TIRED! I can’t STAND the strain or the pain anymore! God help me! IT’S KILLING ME! Lightning bolts stab my brain, the rats gnaw, and my bowels and belly churn and burn like Hell is already inside me! I feel the demons’ pitchforks stabbing; they spin my innards around like noodles upon a fork! GOD HELP ME!





I JUST WANT IT TO STOP!!!





MY GOD, WHAT HAVE I DONE?

WHAT HAVE I DONE?

OH GOD, WHAT HAVE I DONE?





When I opened my eyes, I thought I had lost my mind. I thought I was lying naked in a slaughterhouse, embracing a hunk of dead meat, a freshly slaughtered cow, but, God help me, it was Mary Jane. Blood gummed my lashes and flies buzzed in my ears. Sticky redness blinded me; I could hardly see. Blood was in my nose, in my mouth, in my hair, covering my whole body as though I had bathed in it. All was red in Mary’s Jane room. The walls ran red with gore.

I wanted to believe it was all a bad dream. A nightmare from which I would soon awaken. I wanted to forget, but it was all coming back to me . . .

Walking in the rain, wishing it would cool my fever . . .

“Come along, my dear; you will be comfortable. . . .” My spicy ginger tart leading me back to her room, undressing me, and, for me, lying down, opening her legs, all juicy and pink....

She was drunk and sleeping. She never had a chance to scream. When I plunged the knife in I saw her green eyes open wide with fright and surprise, over the edge of the sheet, just like I had first seen them staring at me over a newspaper. “Oh . . . murder . . .” she gasped, that and nothing more, as her head lolled back and the blood gushed out. She lay back unabashedly for her new lover— Death—limp with limbs a-sprawl. My ginger tart . . . she surrendered so easily to the knife . . . no fight at all.

All the Devil in me must have come out to play....

Her lovely face was gone. I—it had to be me—had cut it away in strips. Only her death-glazed green eyes, staring up blindly at the blood-spattered ceiling, and her long ginger-gold hair, sopping up the blood like a sponge, remained to show that she had once been human, not just a butchered beast. Her b-reasts, nose, and ears were on the table, beside the bloody heap of her intestines, and other piles, blobs, mounds, and strips of flesh I couldn’t and didn’t even try to identify. What did it matter? Even if I could put it all back together, like a jigsaw puzzle of flesh, it would not bring her back. Her liver lay between her feet, knees bent, thighs agape, as though she had just given birth to it and her cunt had spit it out in a bloody mass onto the sheets. Her thigh was bared to the bone, nicked by my knife, like someone carving a notch for every lover. Her left hand reached into her empty abdomen, like a greedy child groping for some hidden prize, but there was nothing left.... Blood dripped like red rain to pool on the floor beside and beneath the bed. The thin mattress was soaked through, dyed red, the harlot’s color, saturated, still wet, with it. I had even—it must have been me, though I cannot remember actually doing it—scrawled my wife’s initials, a crude FM, written in blood on the wall amidst the spatter. Will anyone even notice it amongst so much blood and carnage?