Page 15 of Venator Mortis

I can’t.

Darkness bends at the waist, his face a few inches from mine. Close enough that I can see the familiar blue eyes staring back at me.

Alcott’s eyes. Quickly I am taken aback as a brief kiss lands upon the tip of my nose. The gesture is so absurd that it leaves me stunned.

“Good night, brother. Death before Dishonor.”

His voice softens. Almost becoming familiar. Almost Alcott, then he throws the razor blade into the washroom sink.

“Don’t forget.” His smile becomes menacing once more. “Polar bears are white.”

Then something strikes my face. A towel.

Darkness vanishes into the hallway, back to the shadows where he came. An unsettling feeling curls within my stomach, and I cannot hear the retreat of his footsteps.

The room returns to its normal ambiance as the warmth returns, and the silence is fucking deafening.

I sit motionless in the bath as droplets of water fall from my hair into the still waters. The towel he had thrown at my face, submerges into my lap. There is not an ounce of calm. My heart hammers against my ribs as relief and anger twist together inside my chest.

Relief that Alcott remains unharmed. Anger that Darkness knows exactly how to break me. A thought cuts through my mind, sharper than a scalpel.

Perhaps you should be more concerned with your own reckless behavior. The guilt settles heavily beneath my sternum. As always. As if it had never left.

8. Red String - Lazarus

Running in Circles

One entire wall of my office has ceased being a wall, it has become an obsession.

Newspaper clippings overlap maps of Whitechapel and Lockham. Photographs are pinned beside handwritten notes. Red string stretches between murders, victims, dates, and locations until the plaster itself has disappeared beneath my pursuit of one man.

Jack the Ripper. I refuse to call it a murder board. It sounds terribly uncivilized.

“Investigation board” has a much nicer ring to it. The locations of his killings, the victims he had chosen, and brief details of their backgrounds. He chooses ladies who service others with their bodies. Ladies like my mother and those I grew up with. Those like my oldest friend Delphi. I have sworn to avenge her death in addition to those of the other women he has mercilessly massacred. These women were my friends, my companions, those who provided a chance to feel wanted. A chance to feel a bit of love, one moment in time. I stare at Delphi’s picture, one I had paid for her to have. Her hair flows freely, her smile as bright as a spring morning and no care or worry on her beautiful face.

Now snuffed out by a terrible being that lurks within the our city alleys. What kind of being becomes a creature like this? What kind of child becomes this sort of man? Monsters are rarely born. They are cultivated. Tapping two fingers on my lips slowly, I think of what this animal might look like and what clues I gathered from my own findings of crime scenes and scouting the bobbies’ offices. I peer up to scribble some notations of possible leads and potential theories:

• Victims: women in prostitution.