Enlisting the long coat as a buffer between the blood and the clothing he had on underneath it, Ethan pulled Mary’s body closer to the edge of the bed nearest him then turned her face to the left. In his mind, even in death, she could still watch his mastery as long as her eyes were open. Picking the knife back up from the table, he then positioned his left knee between the now open and separated legs of his victim. Reaching up with his right hand, he grabbed her right breast and pulled it up from her body, providing a defining line to use as a guide then began slicing it from her ribs, quite like old western tales of Native American’s scalping their mortal enemies. Cutting in a circular pattern around, under the breast tissue, all the while pulling the nipple and surrounding skin straight up and back towards Mary’s face, he cut until he completely severed the breast, leaving in place only the exposed ribs and thorax. Almost fully off balance, Ethan caught himself in a tumble with his right arm, breast in hand, just above Mary’s left shoulder, her dead eyes staring at her own body part. He quickly repositioned himself, repeating the act in the removal of her left breast. He held the second one in his hand, seemingly weighing it in as a “pound of flesh”, amazed by both the texture and heaviness of it.
“Well, I wouldn’t want to carry these around all day.” He said in jest.
Ethan turned and placed the second breast down near her right foot then jabbed the tip of the blade into her calf about five inches above the ankle and just pulled in through the skin and tissue up to her knee. He then turned his focus to fileting away the surface on down to the bone from her right knee along the inner thigh up to and partially including her right buttocks. Standing next to the bed, he then performed the same cut on her opposite inner thigh. Laying the knife beside her for a moment, he turned to the bedside table, gathering the rolled out brown paper and rags he had used to conceal the knife, moving the package over to the table by the window. He returned to the bed, lifting each fileted portion of her inner thighs, laying them flat, neatly on the mostly vacant bedside table, careful not to disturb the burning candles. Once a man on a mission, now a monster in a methodical mode, engrossed with the procedure, there wasn’t a single shred of human decency in the horrible acts he was performing, no hint of remorse. Even psychopaths would deem him a psychopath.
Stepping over to the rags, Ethan grabbed one to wipe the blood from his hands, as it was making it slippery to hold her skin and the knife handle. Meticulous in his madness, he repeatedly wrapped the rag around each finger, to clean every crevice, any place in which it had already begun to coagulate. While doing so, he peered out the small windowpanes overlooking Millers Court, thinking about how beautiful it was at that time of the morning, how lovely the wet cobblestone appeared, a street illuminated by gaslight streetlamps. Across the courtyard were two adorable kittens rummaging through a few discarded wooden restaurant crates. It made Ethan smile. He watched them playfully scurry around for several minutes before backing away, viewing his own distorted reflection in the rippled glass. Staring into his own eyes, into the mind of a madman, he walked over to the fireplace then set the rag atop the tinder Mary prepared for him in advance, planning to warm and comfort her artist.
Before continuing his required chores, Ethan hovered over her disfigured form, focusing his eyes on the area where both elongated cuts along her inner thighs met. Unaware of his facial expression while he stared at the woman’s vagina, it disturbed him to imagine how many men had penetrated this twenty-five year old. Imagining all sorts paying for the pleasure of what was, at least at one time, a sanctified orifice intended for the union of two people in love. Was it fifty? Was it a hundred men or more who had stuck her with an unclean erection along their return from a night of drinking or a stinky, sweaty work shift? Who would want her? He was doing Mary a favor and perhaps dissuading other women who were considering this line of work by discouraging them from walking the streets, instilling the fear they would be the next to be butchered. Perhaps his work in this Dark Age had even affected the future decisions of young Maggie, history influencing her personal story as cosmic ripples resonating in the 21st Century. The vast majority of men who worked with her down in The Valley at the Flicker trials, including Colin, wanted her and would fuck her if she let them for a price. She could retire, not wanting to continue her education. In the depths of his warped, twisted mind, he fathomed himself her Savior, perhaps performing a public service for all womankind, it had been a true labor of his love for the opposite sex.
Ethan picked the knife back up from the edge of the bed and went back to work with even more focused, resolute determination. Using his right hand, he felt around her torso, finding the costal arch between the ribs where he would continue cutting. He first cut into her abdomen just below the sternum, making the incision just wide enough for Ethan to stick the four fingers of his right hand down into it, right up to the knuckles, giving enough of a hold of the skin and tissue to pull up at it and away from the body. The temperature in the room was biting cold. Resting his hand inside of her for a few moments to warm his fingers, he then lifted the gap and continued in a sawing motion along the line below the ribcage on each side. Before the section became too long and hard to hold onto, he carved a large section off by slicing across her stomach, freeing the section of flesh, allowing him to place it neatly on the table atop the two filets of thigh already there. The surface of the small table became his personal butcher block as he cut away the rest of the exterior of her midsection then down to the pubic area, carving the large piece in two, again for easier handling. In time, he’d place those pieces on the table, as well. The dual action of slicing, pulling away the flesh reminded Ethan of a tough fatty steak he once had at a pub in Bristol, no doubt attributed to Mary’s younger, tighter form as opposed to the others he had ravaged, all of whom were almost double her age. It could also be that by now, with time to spare, applying more painstaking scrutiny to his work, he was more attentive to every detail permeating all of his senses in the confines of this private little room. A visible steam lifted from the viscera into the chilled air. The smell of bowels and blood filled Ethan’s nostrils, as it had with his previous victims. The odors of death had become a familiar, almost intoxicating aroma to him, the scent of a woman.
Placing the knife between Mary’s legs, with all her internal organs exposed, he needed to recreate the photograph he had memorized from the police and historical files. Using both hands, Ethan lifted her intestines out of her body cavity, placing them on the right side of her torso next to her hip, only grabbing the knife to sever the connective tissue, completely removing them from her abdomen. He’d take his time removing her uterus and kidneys, positioning them along with her right breast beneath her head like a fleshy pillow. He cut out her liver, laying it at her feet then removed her spleen and placed it to her left side on the bed. Once again, he put the knife down to gather up a few rags to wipe off his hands and the handle of the knife. Like an artist in his studio he took a few steps back from the body, his body of work in progress to inspect it, making certain of the precise positioning of the organs and segments of flesh he had removed to identically duplicate the historical photographs of the crime scene.
Suddenly Ethan felt a little hungry, having worked up quite an appetite. Taking a break, he was able to find some leftover fish and potato Mary had from her earlier meal near the fireplace. He took a pause from the work and stood, pensively peering once more out the window. The kittens were gone. He picked at a small package of food as if he were relaxing at some park on a sunny day without a care in the world. There was no pressure from Time in this place. No interruptions or constraints. He could quietly work, savoring every bite as well as every nuance of the event, a final required effort in commitment to the instilled Scope directive to maintain historical integrity, creating a scene in its original conditions before exiting the stage. Taking one last bite, wiping his hands on his overcoat, Ethan turned back toward the lifeless corpse lying on the bed. He wasn’t done with her, not
yet. Poised on the edge of the bed, careful not to sit on the spleen at her hip, he leaned in close to her face to speak with a ghastly figure, a mangled ghost.
“Thanks for the meal.” He said softly before leaning in, kissing her on the lips.
Abruptly pulling away, in spite of the fact that she wasn’t protesting his intimate advance, he paused to reflect on her eyes. Realizing for the first time that Mary did not have green eyes like his Maggie, he’d found himself shocked by the revelation. Instead, her eyes were pure blue, as deep as the sea; liquid crystalline blue eyes. He leaned back in and kissed her once more, running his tongue across her motionless lips. He tried. He really tried to make it work between them, but she was no Maggie. She was too easy. She was a whore.
The word “rage” is usually reserved for the irrational actions of the sane. What was building inside Ethan went far beyond this description, well beyond reason. He began shaking violently from the anger he felt, the kind of anger only betrayal could manifest. Grabbing the blade once more, Ethan leaned back in towards Mary’s face, but not for another kiss. Mumbling under his breath, he brought the knife up to her eyes as if to show her the object of his vengeance.
“You bloody bitch!” Gritting his teeth, the words spewed as pure venom. “Fake, fucking slut. You are not my Maggie. You will never be her. I see your façade. You will not fool me again. You will not look like her, not anymore.” He then proceeded with her defacement, vile and vulgar in his intent.
He dug the knife deeply into her lips in vertical cuts, puncturing, shredding and spreading apart the tissue, running down to her chin with cavernous cuts due to the blade length and its force. He then shoved the blade through her upper lip, piercing her nose cartilage. An overwhelming rage, the raw emotion of it caused him to cry. Mary was a bitch, a common slut. They were all disgusting bloody whores and they deserved what they got from him. They deserved more but as Time had cheated him with the others, this one would have to suffer the justified indignities for all the rest of them. He continued, slicing off her nose, serrating the skin atop her cheekbones. Her eyebrows were carved away as he kept cutting, slashing across her face until nothing was left of her identity but a mixture of twisted flesh and tissue and muscle. As his tears flowed like blood, Ethan stood from the bed, slashing along both of her arms, lashing out in animated ways, the inner pain of these women toying with his mind and his heart. His heart! Ethan stuck his right hand back through the incision, past Mary’s sternum, grasped her aorta, pulling down as he applied the knife to its connective tissue, freeing her heart from its valves. Since she fucked with his heart he would tear hers out of her inert body. He stood up, backing away from the gutted shell of a carcass, placing the heart and the knife on top of the rags and brown paper set open on the table near the window.
“Oh! Murder!” Hearing the cry from outside, Ethan peeked through the window expecting to spy a witness gawking inside at the gruesome scene. Nothing. Perhaps it did sound too far away for someone to have been peering in. He began to wonder if, in his rage, the outcry was again in his head, like the cries of “murderer” he heard in his room on Bakers Row. Still keeping vigilant watch at the window, Ethan took the lower part of his coat, lifting it up to his face to wipe away his obstructing tears with the fabric lining. Dropping it down again, the wool brushed against the chain of his watch, reminding him to check the time. 4:04 a.m.
What little light emitted from the candles on the table or the streetlamps outside, Ethan noticed the expected bloodstains on the fabric of his coat. He took one more rag from the parchment paper and washed his hands clean as best he could with the water from the kettle in the fireplace then dried them with the rag before throwing it into the tinder along with the blood-drenched coat, extra papers, rags and finally, Mary Kelly’s heart. By striking a match from the matchbox nearby, he ignited all the items in the fireplace. As the fire began building higher, Ethan could better see his artwork in the room as he began to carefully and perfectly position the body in the manner it would be discovered later that morning. Turning her head to the right side, her left arm across her gaping stomach, her legs spread and the right knee bent, applying the images of history burnt into his psyche, to set the scene “as is”, there to be revealed to the horrified witnesses and authorities due to arrive in several hours, this final fait accompli for the world to accept. Yet, he was likewise burning new memories as he paused for a time, staring at what was once a woman, gazing at his work, his dirty but necessary job well done. It was his masterpiece of origination and replication in its truest and highest form of flattery to the original artwork which, as it turned out, was an original creation of his own, after all. Admiring the view, it was almost beautiful as an act of perfect evil. Light cast by a now raging fire revealed something he missed in the darkness, bloodstains still remaining on his hands.
Daring the risks of overstaying his welcome and tainting his gilded association with Time, he stayed lost in the moment, reflecting on the fact that “it” was all done! For more than two months he had survived an existence in the past. It was a journey begun with the most invisible of intentions, planned to perfection. It simply wasn’t the plan of history to give this traveler such a pass. The frightening fee was his soul and mind to fulfill the predestined, ordained ordeal of ritualistically and gruesomely murdering these five women. Ethan stood silently still in the tiny room with his last victim when internally the sudden shock wave of implication and condemnation hit him like a meteor from the sky and brought him to his knees.
There was, for an instant, a glimpse of his former “self”, before his hands were forced into this heinous role and subsequent perversions of character and morality. It manifested itself in a momentary panic attack as he struggled for oxygen. Ethan’s chest tightening, his vision constricting into a tunnel form, he closed his eyes and recalled his training in self-discipline with the military brigade officers of the FTC. The training he had received was meant for a much more benign scenario but it was nonetheless adaptable to any case, including gathering himself in the aftermath of his actions, realizations and forthcoming role he would have to play upon his return home. Amidst the insanity and loss of identity over these many weeks, Ethan could still muster enough of a scientific mindset to understand one thing. He had to return through the Flicker. He never existed in this time in history. He was never here. He was only a stain like the stains on his hands and immortal soul. He was only a visitor in time and it was time for him to go home.
Opening his eyes, he had effectively regained control of his breathing and focus on what still needed to be done. His confidence restored to its distorted proportions, he rose to his feet to take one more look around the room to make sure it was truly picture perfect for the local authorities to find. The fireplace was fully ablaze with the burning evidence. It was the proper time to say goodbye to Mary Jane Kelly, to the room, to this world and to this century.
In the early morning hours, the cold, damp elements bit his cheeks and nipped at his heels as Ethan took the path back to his lodging. Deprived of the long coat he burned to ashes, the blade in his pocket, he tucked his hands under each armpit and kept his head down, marching along at a brisk pace; a processional of one. The term “short-timers disease” applied as the countdown to his departure from this era had begun, his return to a 21st Century world was no longer measured in months, weeks, or days, but instead, in hours. One, two, three, four, five, six. A militant cadence he established was a much needed distraction, a disciplined approach to this journey, dragging him along, back from the lunatic fringe his mind had reached the edge of during the final murder.
“Control it. Easy lad.” He tutored himself through an anxiety check. It was not just a twisting of his psyche. He was plagued by the nagging paranoia of detection, being so close to completion of this mission. Thus far, it had gone without incident, no glitches in the system yet an irrational fear of becoming somehow compromised in the final hours took hold in his mind. To be thwarted by some shor
tsighted action on his part so close to completion or to carelessly falter after more than two months of determined, diligent and cunning movements would be an unbearable failure. He knew more than ever before, this was the time to be most cautious, avoid tempting fate, to be prudent in every step he took. His final destination, Flicker.
In A Flicker Page 45