I bite down on fur and into muscle. Hot blood dribbles onto my chin. The rat squeals, its little heart hammering between my fingers. It would be merciful to break its neck, but I like the wiggling. Keeps the meat warm. Flesh pulses in my mouth as I tear sinew from bone with my serrated teeth, swallowing without chewing. The first mouthful, the second and the third. By the fourth the rat is limp in my grasp, its shiny, black eyes hollow and its jaw slack. It has more dignity in death than any human I’ve ever eaten. What a shame such a small thing won’t sustain me, because I’d rather feed on these animals than the squalling vermin thirty feet away.
Minutes crawl by. Air sticks in my throat, stale and unpleasantly warm. A gas lamp two buildings away sheds enough light that I can see the corpse in my hands. I pick out a bone and suck the marrow, leaning my shoulder against dirty brick. The ground is damp and sticky, reeking of piss and shit. It makes me miss the slaughterhouses – at least their stink’s natural. A boarded-up window sits above my head with ‘God save us’ repeatedly carved into the first plank of wood. I stroke the words, smearing them with my stained fingers.
Noise from the mouth of the alley startles me. My hand drops. I bare my teeth. There’s a gasp and then I see them, two intertwined silhouettes, far enough away that I take a breath. The smaller one hoists up her dress but the other silhouette stops her. They talk but I can’t hear what they’re saying. It must upset the woman because she snorts and steps back. Her skirts rustle as they drop to the floor.
“I got other customers,” I hear her say. “Ones that’ll pay.”
The other silhouette doesn’t answer. Doesn’t move. He’s tall, six foot at least, and so pale that his skin almost glows in the dark. I can’t see his clothes but I imagine a pocket watch, its silver chain hanging from a buttoned waistcoat, and a silk cravat. He’s not the first gentleman I’ve seen fuck a whore and he won’t be the last. My interest wanes.
Then he moves. Swiftly. Silver flashes. It flashes again. The prostitute gurgles, hands flying to her neck. Pain. Fear. I sense both as she bleeds, and her attacker does too. It must be as satisfying for him as it is for me because he doesn’t finish it.
There’s shock and disbelief in her rigid posture as she falls to her knees, her hands a shimmering black. Death is slow to reach her. Enjoyable. She doesn’t squirm, but she doesn’t plead either. When the moment finally does come, I’m wet between the legs and panting. Her last breath is the caress I need. Pleasure spills from my core, easing the ache. The carnal part of me, the part that belongs in the sea, is soothed. For a heartbeat, I feel peace.
It’s fleeting. The yearning returns as swiftly as it departed and it weighs heavier on my chest than before. Feeding on humans isn’t enough – they’re so insignificant that to take a life means nothing. There’s more purpose in murder for indulgence, but not much. Where’s the satisfaction? The superiority? Hunting prey that doesn’t put up a fight is like riding a flat wave. The death blow has to be earned for the high to last.
Fabric tears. My thoughts scatter. The murderer is crouched by his victim’s body with his back to me. He’s balancing on the balls of his feet, which is an ability I envy him for. Three months on shore and I can barely walk. The prostitute’s hand lies palm up by his boot, and whatever he’s doing moves it. Silence clings to him as he works. It makes me paranoid about my own breathing. Would I win if he turned and saw me now? Would his knife hurt?
There’s a plop. I hear him mutter “fuck” before he stands up, kicks the body and exits the alley without a backward glance.
I linger by the window, tracing the etched plea until I’m sure he’s gone. Then I stumble over to the corpse, using the brick wall to steady myself. With the lamp flickering far behind me I can barely see, but visibility is good enough that I can make out what he’s done to her. Her neck has been slit twice, the cuts deep but tidy. There’s not as much blood on her collar and bosom as I’m expecting. The majority must have got onto her hands.
The ugly tear in her abdomen, on the other hand, is weeping. Not a trace of skin around the area is white. It looks as if claws have ripped her open from the inside, bringing organs with them. The skin has been peeled away from the incision, folded neatly over, and guts bulge from the cut, threatening to pour out. They’ve been dislodged by something – probably the murderer’s hand.
Further down, her skirts have been hacked in half to reveal her genitals. Unlike the rest of her, they are untouched. Glistening. I can see the moisture even in the poor light.
“Did you enjoy dying?” I ask her, cupping the soft flesh in my hand. It’s still warm, pliable, even though her heart is dead. I lick her arousal off my palm, pausing to savour it. Raw. That’s how it tastes. Like home, and the first bite of a kill: the rush of triumph, the salt, the first mouthful of foreign blood. Hunger bellows at the memory, demanding that I feast on another’s cast-offs if it will sate me. I’ve gone too long without to argue.
Using my nails to part the way, I dig into the prostitute’s exposed abdomen. The first solid thing I find slips out of my fingers the minute I tighten my grip. Too many bodily fluids. My second attempt, I burst whatever I’m grasping when I try to pull it out of the body. Irritation usurps my patience. Curling my nails, I pierce a sack of some sort. It’s the opportunity I need. Using the broken lining as a handhold, I yank as hard as I can. The organ comes loose.
It’s delicious – very chewy, but flavourful. The best meal I’ve had in a while. Without my immortality, it’s too dangerous to risk hunting. They hang killers here. And like any pitiful mortal, a noose could easily end my life. Three hundred years – gone in a swing.
“Up with the sun I am, ma’am,” I hear a cheerful voice say. It’s close.
Tearing a strip from the body’s maimed skirts, I hide my prize inside and clutch it to my chest. The voice is getting louder but the accompanying footsteps are unhurried. I have time. Casting a final look at my abandoned meal I snarl, my useless gills flaring. There’s nothing I can do. I can’t carry it without leaving an obvious trail. And even if I could, the additional weight would cripple me. I’m unsteady enough as it is.
Weaker than your food, I scold myself. You’re a disgrace.
I lower my head and flee.
Cool water tickles my bare toes and as the tide withdraws, froth leaves white bubbles on my feet. Sand covers the backs of my calves like algae, gritty and uncomfortable against my skin, but I don’t move. I can’t risk it. The call of the sea is strong, especially on a full moon, and a second of weakness is all it’d take for me to breach the terms of my exile. To ruin Gaea’s life as brilliantly as I’ve ruined my own. He wouldn’t survive on the surface – not like I have. Humanity would corrupt him.
Gulls squawk, soaring above the water and circling the creaking pier, their wings white flags in the endless sky. I feel significant under their watch, like I still belong in the world I know and not the one I despise.
The stars are hiding somewhere too, but the dense smog that London belches into the sky every day has obscured them. It’s impenetrable. Stifling. How the humans bear it, I don’t know. The fumes make my eyes water.
Above my head an inn dangles, its weight resting perilously on rotten stilts and a rickety pier. There are furrows in the planks. Brown, flaky streaks. Holes from where rope has been nailed into the wood to tether ships to shore. The structure’s unstable and a stench of gutted fish and unwashed man wafts from it, but it shelters me from the rain and it’s close to the water. As much as I loathe to admit it, the nights aren’t as lonely -
“What ’ave we ’ere? A pretty lady, sitting all by ’erself?” a voice slurs from my right and my shoulders stiffen.
He staggers forward, stopping only when his inflamed groin is pressed against my hair. I feel its heat on my scalp, even through his trousers. It sickens me. Why seek pleasure from a stranger when you can give it to yourself? And why debase the experience by rutting like animals when blood is more arousing than skin?
“Leave,” I say without looking at him.
“That’s not a real welcoming attitude now, is it?” he scolds. “I got money. Good money.” Shuffling, his hand in a pocket, he finally drops two coins down the front of my unbuttoned dress. They’re lukewarm, as if he’s had them in his mouth. “See? I’m paying me dues upfront, all formal like.”
Lifting a corner of my upper lip to reveal a canine I glare at him, dick be damned. He recoils, eyes wide and eyebrows raised, putting much needed distance between us, but he doesn’t run. Either he’s paralysed with fear or I’m not as hostile as I pretend to be. I fear it’s the latter. I’m proven right when an arrogant grin appears amid his unkempt beard.
“You’re one of them freak show gals, ain’t ya?” The prospect seems to excite him. He rubs his hands together, his breath a grey shroud in the open air. “Don’t worry. I’ll treat ya no different to how I would a normal gal.”
There’s a rusted pile of chain on my right. Maintaining eye contact, I curl my fingers into a link, preparing to hurl it if I need to. Clawed feet scamper onto the top of my hand. Dawdle there. A tiny nose nudges one of my knuckles and it tickles. My struggle not to laugh attracts the man’s attention.
“Whatcha got there?” Craning his neck, he sees my weapon and snorts. “Not gonna do you no good. My skull’s awful thick.”
“Are your genitals?” I ask, before chucking them at his bloated crotch. It’s a clumsy effort; I underestimate how heavy they’ll be and miss him completely. My fingers howl from the abrupt strain, and my unprotected stomach joins the symphony when the chain unceremoniously plonks down onto it.
By the time I realise he’s scented blood I’m flat on my back. Restrained by firm muscle. Legs pinned. The sand parts under my weight. My own hair blinds me. I can’t scream because suddenly my mouth’s bone dry. Fighting seems futile, but that doesn’t stop me from thrashing. My whole body defies him. His sleeve brushes against my lips, but my teeth sever the fabric. I rear up instead, arms battering his chest, nails scouring any vulnerable skin, but he rolls me onto my side and ties my wrists together with his belt. Then my back’s on the ground again and my arms are trapped underneath me.
Water tugs at my ankles, as if trying to drag me to safety. Fabric rustles. Tears. A gull screeches directly overhead. I feel him down there, taking what doesn’t belong to him, and it makes me feel small. Powerless. His beefy palms spread my thighs, despite my struggle to keep them closed, and while he doesn’t laugh, I hear it anyway. Mocking me. Mocking my weakness.
“Get off,” I manage to whisper, knowing it won’t stop him.
His cap falls onto my stomach, and I get a brief glimpse of a stark bald spot on his scalp before he shoves into me. Screaming’s beyond me in that suspended moment of agony. I force myself to wait. To breathe. And as each rough thrust shreds my insides, I stare at the chain on my stomach and think of Gaea.
A hand gently brushes the knotted hair from my face. I’m so exhausted that I lie there and do nothing: a corpse with a heartbeat. Rebellion will cost me the little energy I have left, and I can’t bear to lose it. Not after losing everything else.
“You can cry if you really need to,” the stranger says and I blink. There’s no drunkenness in his voice. He’s articulate. Resolute. A gentleman, probably. You’ll be rubbing elbows with the lower class tonight, my Lord I think spitefully. Picking scraps from a labourer’s leftovers.
A broad smile appears on his face. “Your eyes are doing the most curious thing.”
“Do it,” I say.
His brow furrows. “Do what? Rape you? I think you’ve had enough of that for one night. No. I want something else.” He gestures for me to wait as he strips off his coat, spreads it on the sand and kneels on it. When he’s made himself comfortable, he claps his hands and leans forward. I must look bewildered because his smile stretches into a grin. “I saw you watching me earlier. In the alley. You piqued my interest, so I hung back. Saw your teeth. I was willing to dismiss them as a botched job, but now there’s your eyes. No human iris could swell like that.”
My brain’s slow to comprehend the entirety of his speech. I clutch at the one thing that makes sense. “You killed that woman.”
A shrug. “It’s an itch I get. Doesn’t do any harm in the long run, as long as I stick to whores.” When I remain quiet after that admission, he sighs. “You can hardly judge me. I watched you eat that whore’s uterus like it was a bag of roasted chestnuts.”
We stare at one another then, neither of us willing to take the conversation further. He adjusts the brim of his bowler hat and I see his face for the first time. The darkness obscures most of his features, but his eyes are visible. Two pools of black, each disturbed by a single spark. Shark eyes. Not a drop of mercy in them.
He puts a hand on one of my gills, flattening it, and I hiss. Almost immediately, he backs off. “What are you?” he asks, wide-eyed and excited.
The question startles me. What am I? Ever since my tail was hacked from my body, I’ve been less than what I was. No longer a siren, but not quite human. The worst of both, in fact. “I’m unnatural,” I spit. “Mortal, when I was once immortal. Weak, when I was strong. Prey, when I was predator.”
“You’re a victim of circumstance,” he says, taking a folded handkerchief from his pocket. “There’s no shame in that.” When I don’t answer, he shakes the cloth open with a flourish, hands it to me and motions to the mess between my legs. “Whatever you decide, it’ll be better done clean.”
I sniff the fabric suspiciously. A strange odour emanates from it, one I can’t place, and as it infiltrates my system things grow distorted. Sand flickers. The pier’s stilts bend like seaweed. A gull transforms into white ribbon as it glides. My vision darkens, and I reach for the man in a panic. The last thing I feel is his hand on my chest, holding me down.
I wake up strapped to a metal bed frame, the rope around my wrists and ankles slack enough to allow movement, but not escape. I attempt it regardless but succeed only in tightening the knots and cutting off my circulation.
Tutting echoes in the room and I tilt my head to the right, where the murderer is bent over a wash basin watching my reflection in a shaving mirror. It’s jarring, seeing my deterioration laid out in the glass. The girl it shows bear no resemblance to the woman I was. She has dim, blotchy skin, bloodshot, weary eyes, and a face made of nothing but bone. Her hair is slick and tangled, black where it should be brown. Muscles that used to respond effortlessly, ache when she bends or lifts her arms. Her frailty is tangible – I can almost see it smothering her.
The man throws a towel over the mirror and turns to face me.
“Looks are superficial,” he says. “Your appeal lies in something quite different.”
I glance around the room and choke on saliva. There are murky glass jars everywhere – balancing amongst burnt-down candles and aged letters on the mahogany writing desk, stacked atop one another on a tattered, leather-upholstered chair, piled on a lop-sided vanity missing two of its drawers, and arranged haphazardly on the lip of the washing bowl.
There have to be fifty jars, each filled to the brim with a mist-like fluid and body parts. Unblinking eyes, with not a single iris matching another. Severed fingers, some without nails and others without skin. Tongues, engorged and discoloured. Tufts of brunette and blonde hair. Ears – both human and otherwise. A pair of bruised testicles. A breast, where the nipple has been sliced off and stitched back on.
Then there are organs: darker, richer and well-preserved. My mouth waters. Two brown, veiny hearts, one significantly smaller than the other, bob side-by-side on the chair, their jars touching. Beneath them, a speckled liver shares its resting place with bloated rolls of small intestine. Blackened lungs and a wrinkled kidney teeter on the vanity, their weight offset by a stack of hard-covered books and unopened packages. A shrivelled penis is jammed between an eye and four ears on the desk, and beside them are tincture bottles, stained red, blue and brown alternatively.
A chill seeps under my skin as I realise the nature of the lair I’ve been confined in. “You’re a Ripper,” I murmur, staring at him with no small amount of awe.
“It’s a good thing to be, if your tone is anything to go by.” He rolls up his sleeves and crosses his muscled forearms. I’m momentarily distracted by a faded brand above his elbow – a slanted cross, but he snaps his fingers to draw my attention back to his face. “Enlighten me,” he says. “What’s a Ripper?”
“You’d use the word ‘executioner’ but that’s not right. They cull old sirens, those that have lived long, healthy lives and return their souls to the Mother. In return, she blesses the rest of us.”
“Primitive but effective,” he muses, tapping his chin. “Giving to receive. Death for life. Maintaining the balance.” He grins. “Jack the Ripper. It has a ring to it.”
When I fail to respond to his enthusiasm, he pouts. When I don’t respond to that either, he clicks his tongue. “A siren. Would never have guessed that. It explains the gills. And teeth: they’re serrated to contend with other predators. And why your pupils expand. You must live deep in the sea, where sunlight doesn’t penetrate too often, so they’re a genetic mutation. What about your voice? Do you sing?”
“Not anymore.”
“Why not?”
“The decibel would devastate my vocal chords.”
A second’s pause. Consideration. Then his line of questioning shifts. “How many of you are there?”
“How many grains of sand are on your beaches?”
My answer throws him off. “Can you give me an estimate?” he finally asks, pinching the dark hairs on his arm. I watch him wince as he plucks one out by the root.
“Fifty to seventy sirens are part of a Pod,” I say, “and hundreds of Pods live in the North Sea alone.”
“Small family groups,” he murmurs to himself. “Do you have parents?”
The word’s unfamiliar. “What are parents?”
Instead of clarifying the question, he scowls. “How do you reproduce?”
I quirk an eyebrow. “Sirens are born of the sea.”
“How?”
“We are made by the Leviathan.”
His mouth opens. Closes. One hand ruffles his tousled hair. The room fills with a tense silence. “It would be interesting to compare your blood and another siren’s. Do you have a friend or a…mate?”
I growl, sensing the motive in his probing question. “Gaea’s home, where he belongs.”
Recognising my animosity, he puts his hands up. “Sore spot. Understood. I won’t poke it again. Is Gaea your mate or your family?”
My eyebrows crease. “Family. I keep hearing that word, and it baffles me. It’s revered by all. It forms unbreakable ties between people who would otherwise be strangers, and demands loyalty simply because you share blood. Why honour such a ludicrous custom?”
“Family isn’t a custom,” he says, refusing to make eye contact. “It’s a tangible thing. A physical representation of your place in the world. Your past, present and future, if they’re influential enough. Whatever form it comes in we all want it, because it means happiness and contentment, security and satisfaction, praise and love. We feel it in our hearts, not our heads.”
I consider that, and nod. Humanity is primitive – little more advanced than animals, and the ignorant seek refuge in imitation and ceremony. Why begin with a daunting fresh slate when you can define yourself by your ancestors? It was our way once, hundreds of years ago, as Elder Raidne was fond of telling me in my youth.
“Do you have family?” I ask Jack. He clenches his fists. The knuckles are already bone-white. My curiosity ignites. “Did they die?”
“No,” emerges from between his gritted teeth.
“Are you angry with them?”
From the teeth again: “I have a right to be.”
“Did they hurt you?”
“In a manner of speaking.” His voice is calm but his eyes are blazing. I should leave well enough alone, but I don’t.
“Where are they?”
“The Americas.”
“Why aren’t you with them?”
“They didn’t want me.” His gaze flits to the vanity, from the wrinkled kidney to the immaculate spine of a book and finally to the pile of brown-papered boxes. “At least they didn’t then.”
“They left you?”
“They sold me, and used the money to buy passage to their new lives.” The mockery in his voice is evident, but I’m not sure if it’s directed at them or himself.
“What use was a human boy to anyone?” I query, but he rubs the stubble on his chin with his thumb and index finger, his eyes focused on the freckled glass above my head and doesn’t answer.
The window’s too high in the paper-stripped wall for me to see properly out of, but a strip of cobalt sky, sprinkled with diamond-bright stars, is visible if I bend my neck backwards and strain against my bindings. Jack catches me contorting myself and smiles. Despite my situation, the lack of menace in it placates me. He’s bright-eyed again. Animated by curiosity, not bitterness. Less a Ripper, and more a man.
“Are you hungry?” he asks, eyeing the jars on his furniture. “Most of my specimens are from corpses, but I’m sure one or two must be edible.”
“I’ve eaten week-old, shipwrecked sailor,” I tell him, licking my lips. “Whatever you have will be fine.”
He angles a jar towards one of the room’s burning candles. The small heart inside bobs. A second is examined in a similar fashion, then a third, a fourth, and finally a fifth. Each is enticing, at least to me, but Jack isn’t convinced.
He goes back to scratching his facial hair. “Do you have a favourite?”
“Muscle,” I reply instantly.
He taps the lid of the first jar with reluctant fingers, glances at the fourth and sighs. “Child’s heart, it is.”
The sky transitions from cobalt blue to jet black, and then to ashen grey in dawn’s pale light. The stars dissipate like reflections on water until only a barren, dull blanket of colour remains. Gulls drift in and out of view. Steel smoke pilfers the sun’s warmth and emits a biting chill that saturates the air. It soaks into the room through gaps in the plaster – damage done by a previous occupant, so Jack informs me.
With the coming day, the room is illuminated clearly for the first time. I pay no attention to what I saw last night, although it’s not as sinister in the morning’s glow. What takes my notice are personal effects: a picture of a moustached man and a slim woman in a dusty frame; a black contraption, much like a sunken telescope I once came across, with rotating, golden lenses; a threadbare dinner jacket with tails; a polished pair of black shoes; a stack of crinkled, brown sketches, too far away for me to identify what they’re of.
Jack watches me from the room’s only chair, a jar on his lap. The ears inside are bloodless, like gutted fish.
“You’re educated,” I state, and he nods. “Do you visit the slaughterhouses?” My eyes scan the jars, and come to rest on the one he’s holding.
“I’m not one of those snivelling medical students, drinking and fucking my way through my sponsor’s money and poking at cast-offs.” Tapping the jar’s lid, he leans forward. “I choose my own specimens and I pay the cost for my knowledge, not some smug gentleman who’ll take all the credit or a privileged brat that thinks the sun shines out of his own arse.”
His outburst halts and his shoulders droop. I wait, breathing noisily in the silence, the bed creaking under my shifting weight. A girl giggles outside the room in the hallway. Something thumps, a box being dropped from the sound of it, but Jack pays it no mind. He slouches with his lips pressed together, a vein pulsing by his eye. The jar slips from between his hands and clatters onto the wooden floorboards.
“I want to leave,” I say and the slump that has overcome him lifts. He nudges the jar out of the way with his foot, sending it rolling under the desk, and walks over to me. I peer up at him and hold my breath as he pets the right side of my face, gradually lowering his touch to my gill. Contact is as unpleasant as the first time, like a nail in the eye, but I bear it. My effort must be appreciated, because he removes a pocket knife from the vanity drawer and cuts the ropes that trap me.
Blood races into my extremities. They tingle and turn from wan pink to inflamed crimson. The sensation isn’t painful – not particularly, but it leaves my hands pounding, as if my veins have shrunk. I force myself into a sitting position and let my feet drop off the bed, conscious of Jack scrutinising my every movement. My ankles knock against one another, but I scoot forward until the half a foot that separates me from the floor disappears.
The boards scratch the underside of my scarred feet, and I hesitate. Experience has taught me that legs don’t repair damage like my tail did. A nail in my heel or a weight landing on my toes could cripple me, which’d mean I wouldn’t be fit enough to hunt and so I’d starve.
The black dress shoes materialise under my nose, offered by an expressionless Jack. When I accept his offering, placing them daintily in my lap, he whips a pair of brown socks from his pocket and wiggles them onto my toes. Every brush of his skin has me tittering like a dolphin, and by the time he’s finished his formality’s melted and his eager smile has returned.
“Where will you go?” he asks, and I gladly pass him the first shoe when he extends a hand for it before answering.
“I stay close to the slaughterhouses. It makes hunting easier.”
He ties the laces in an intricate knot and motions for the other shoe. “That’s your plan? Mythical creature of the deep, once immortal and all-powerful, and you’re going to crawl back into an alley and put yourself at the mercy of drunken whalers and labourers night after night?”
Stubbornness fortifies me. “I want to survive.”
“Why? You have nothing to protect. Nothing to lose. Nothing to live for.”
“I have my pride.”
When he pats my foot, signifying that he’s finished with the shoe, he uses more force than necessary and his voice, when it comes, sounds like a reprimand. “You already sound like one of us.”
I point a finger at him. “I am nothing like you. My Pod might have cast me out, but that doesn’t mean that I would ever seek refuge with humans."
“Yet here you are,” he snaps. “Sitting on my bed, wearing my clothes, with my specimens in your belly. Strange thing, but it looks like you’re taking fucking refuge to me.”
Gills bristling, I clamber unsteadily to my feet and advance on him. He doesn’t move a muscle, and no speck of fear affects his posture, but I don’t stop until we’re chest-to-chest. His breathing is erratic, but faint. I’m heaving. A whiff of tobacco smoke clings to his waistcoat, but even without his knife in a whore’s gut, his natural smell is potent: sweat, arousal, blood and rot. It’s a reminder of home that softens my animosity slightly.
“You brought me here against my will, Jack. I played the obedient prisoner because I didn’t know what you wanted, or what you were capable of. It’s called self-preservation.” It’d rankled, surrendering to his whim, but I’d been alive for centuries and I wasn’t ready to die. I never would be.
His disappointment clogs my lungs like oil.
“I get it,” he says. “I kidnapped you, and you did what you had to do to survive. I’m letting you go and again you’ll do what you need to do to survive. It’s not much of a life, it’s certainly not one I’d want for myself, but it’s better than nothing.”
“Did you expect more?”
Between one breath and the next his palm slaps my cheek. I recoil, the meaty clap ringing in my ears, and my skin throbs and flames from the impact. “I’ve spent my life striving to overcome my humanity. Then I meet you,” he says, glowering at me, “an evolved being, the epitome of everything I want to be and you’re just as weak and selfish as any human. Of course I expected more.”
I find lodgings on the ground floor of Jack’s building -without his knowledge- in a squalid, cheerless room with a shattered window and a rat infestation, the latter of which proves useful.
There’s a decrepit vanity, a three-legged chair and a misshapen bedframe inside, and I scavenge a sodden mattress from an alley nearby. Its owner doesn’t appreciate the theft, but he lets me leave with it when I bite his little finger clean off in warning. It’s stringy and sticks between my teeth.
The following night, I steal a drab blanket and a scratchy, jade shirt from the washing lines strung between the stairs. When a loud-mouthed wraith of a woman issues the only rebuke I add a rusted bucket, a brush and a cracked mirror to my collection.
Eighteen rat carcasses, each in varying states of decay, litter my floor by the time I hear Jack’s voice outside my window. Flies have started gorging on my leftovers, and the smell’s beginning to attract unwelcome attention. Children at the moment, but that’ll soon change. Fully grown adults are as curious as their miniature counterparts.
Careful not to expose myself, I fold back a corner of the blanket that covers my window and peer out. Jack’s on the left. There’s a whore with him – a young girl with salmon cheeks, gaudy, coral beads and a largely toothless smile. As she rubs her breasts against his arm and simpers like a kicked seal, he pats her on the head. Anticipation is a tangible entity around him.
His itch is back I think, and the spoils are all mine.
They stroll down deserted footpaths in discreet quiet, passing under burning gas lamps with her arm tangled in his. The air is liquid on my tongue, and fog drenches the street. Their footsteps are my only bearing and I desperately keep pace with them, darting in and out of doorways in case the tap, tap of my shoes’ soles exposes me. It’s difficult but they only wander a short distance, stopping near the mouth of an alley.
The four-storey building behind them has long, shuttered windows, and light seeps from between the slats, painting a rippling glimmer on the side of Jack’s face. The girl’s eyes widen and her thin fingers hover close to his cheek.
I hold my breath, feeling hot. Flushed. The flesh between my legs pounds.
Her beads jangle. She jerks. Whines. Clutches her throat. As her knees buckle, Jack grabs a fistful of her vulgar dress and eases her trembling body to the floor. Her mouth shapes a final word, a damning one, before death claims her. Her release triggers my own, and pleasure ebbs into every part of me, even the cold and hard parts.
Jack tuts, drawing me back to reality. “A lady shouldn’t use such foul language,” he scolds. “It’s not becoming.”
“I think she had reason,” I say dryly, revealing myself, and he throws his arms dramatically up in welcome. White cuffs poke out from under his onyx sleeves.
“I’d hoped it was you tiptoeing after us,” he says. “Your stomach must be rumbling by now. It’s been…twenty days since that heart I gave you? The rats can’t be sating your hunger.”
His eyes rove over my pallid, clammy body and settle on my swollen gills. Pus trickles from three of the six slits and the skin beneath them is bruised and tender. Infection in the others won’t be far behind. Our gills weren’t designed to tolerate long-term surface exposure, and I’ve been on land almost four months already.
“Are you dying?” he asks with momentary concern. Then he realises my passing will leave him with a body to autopsy, and his worry dwindles.
I take no small amount of joy in dashing his hopes of scientific discovery, the imprint of his hand still sat solid as stone on my cheek. “My body’s adapting to the surface,” I inform him. “If I survive the transition, there’ll be almost nothing left of the siren I was. First my gills’ll heal over. Then my eyes’ll adjust. My teeth won’t change, but my digestive system will acclimatise itself to animal meat eventually and I’ll be able to buy food from the butcher like anyone else. I’m never going to be the strongest human, but I’ll pass for normal and I’ll have a life.”
He removes a pipe from his coat pocket, pats a wad of tobacco into the bowl and slips the bit into the corner of his mouth. “That,” he says as he roots in his pockets for a match, “is very interesting.”
Footsteps. Whistling. I hear both, and a backwards glance locates a figure six lamps away, approaching fast.
“Someone’s coming,” I whisper, eyeing the woman at our feet. Lips blue, neck scarlet and skin powder grey. No one will believe she died of natural causes, and I refuse to swing over the death of a human. “We need to hide. Now.”
Jack takes a deep, relaxed drag from the pipe and offers me the crook of his elbow. “The guilty hide. We’re going to stroll away. And if he calls us over, you’re going to stand pretty and let me do the talking.”
“And when he wants to know how we missed the dead body?”
He winks. “I’ll tell him your feminine wiles distracted me.”
The man does not stop us, and no bark of ‘murder’ pursues us out of Whitechapel. We head west, our charade faultless and our interaction minimal, until we reach the locked gates of a local park. Smoke from Jack’s pipe blows into my face as he tries to wedge them open, and the woodsy aroma lingers on my lips. The fog has lifted. My feet are snug in their woollen socks.
Despite the hour, noise fills the square. Masculine laughter and gruff teasing. The slosh of emptying buckets. Squeaking rats. Crackling fires in metal bins. Snoring. Sneezing. A raised voice. Soot-stained children scuttle between barrels like crabs, lugging spiky brushes on their backs and shouting to one another. Chimney sweeps, I remember the young girl from my building calling them.
There are hundreds of gas lamps dispersed around, but most of them are unlit. I realise why when I catch sight of a spry man shimmying up one of the lit lamps to extinguish the flame. Two people observe from the ground and when their friend lands, they clap him on the back and usher him to the next lamp.
Jack clears the pipe’s bowl by knocking it against the park’s railings and slips it back into his coat. “I’m going to find another whore for you to eat,” he says. “Wait here.”
“Why –”
A gasp cuts off my question. It comes from an unattractive woman stood behind Jack, who has no chin and a tatty, unlaced bodice. There’s an apple in her hand with a bite taken out of it, and a lime ribbon in her brown hair.
“Never mind,” Jack says.
He uses the chemically-doused handkerchief to subdue the whore and while she flails spectacularly, no one notices. Wary of discovery, I help Jack lift her onto his shoulder and follow in his wake as he searches for a private place to do the deed in.
We pass under a heavy, metal bridge suspended between ‘Baxter’s Saw Manufacturers’ and a ‘Corn and Flour Dealer’. There are posters everywhere, smudged by rain and muck and nailed atop their predecessors. One has a picture of a big-eared animal with a long nose, and the writing above it mentions a ‘Freak Show’. The words trigger a phantom pain between my legs, and I hurry on down the passageway Jack has found before the memory can sink its meaty hooks into me.
It’s secluded, with no shuttered windows and no gas lamps. The end is blocked by what appears to be the frame of a roof and loose planks of wood. Past that, there’s a row of closed market stalls and a shop front with a broken window. Glass and hay dot the muddy, churned-up ground.
“We’re alone,” I tell Jack, and he grunts. His knife has already made its incision in her abdomen. It’s jagged, hastily done and her guts bulge from it, but it’s fresh. Succulent. While I dine, Jack puts a palm on the prostitute’s chin and shoves it back. The handle of his knife is slick with blood. Slippery. He severs her throat and the skin parts easier than water. Blood oozes, and I dab my fingers in it to spice up the chunk of kidney flavouring my mouth. For the first time in weeks, hunger loosens its grip on me.
My distraction is so absolute that I don’t register the blow to my head until I’m on the floor, my world spinning and my scalp shrieking. Meat’s in my mouth, clogging the back of my throat, and I gag. Ears ringing, teeth stinging, I try to orient myself. A hand fists the collar at the nape of my neck, aiding in the effort, but I have to stop the moment I straighten up. Buildings reel. The body melts. The moon blinks. And Jack – he looms over me, one hand out of sight, propping me up, and the other armed and dangerously close to my nose.
I wheeze. Speak. “You couldn’t let me finish eating?” Cough. “Where are your manners?”
“I apologise,” he says. “My scientific curiosity won’t wait any longer.”
“And your questions?” I keep the knife in my peripheral vision, but I seek eye contact with Jack. “How can I answer them if I’m dead?” I implore.
“Your body will answer them.”
“It won’t.” Stirrings of panic leak into my voice, and he relishes it. The pleasure of hunting me is a pearl in his eyes. It belittles me. Insults me. Hardens me. “You’ll never know my name. Where I lived. Who I was. You’ll never know why I was exiled.”
The knife nicks me. Discomfort comes as I gulp, along with a heightened sense of vulnerability. Time is short. I’ve seen Jack kill. His hand’s always steady. Resolved. If I don’t act, he’ll slit my throat and not think twice about it. I’ll be another dead specimen. But if I use my last defence, it’ll rupture my vocal chords.
“I can live with not knowing,” Jack says, and the decision is made for me.
I scream.
Anguish crosses his face as his ear drums burst. There’s confusion in his teal eyes...until they pop. His knees wobble and buckle. The veins at his temples protrude as he crashes to the floor and stays there.
A siren’s scream, like their song, resonates on a pitch no human can endure. There’s no hypnotic trance. No dream-like serenade into watery depths. Only shrill, irreversible torment. And my body isn’t a siren’s anymore: it won’t repair the damage done by the high decibel like it used to.
The pressure on my voice box verges on excruciating, and tips into intolerable. Something pops. I swallow blood and mucus. My scream wavers and perishes. Like that, it’s over. Jack is incapacitated, the knife innocently rests by the whore’s upturned hand, and my life is spared. I have a headache, no balance and no voice, but I’ve won.
A surge of pride cushions me from pain, but the repercussions of my sacrifice threaten to pierce it like tiny, vindictive needles. Exile already rendered me weak and mortal. My gills will scab over, my pupils will lose their sensitivity and I’ll learn to eat what every other human eats.
But to have lost my voice – the one thing that would have stayed with me had I preserved it, seems like a blow I can never recover from. I’ll never sing with my Pod again, or lure a sailor to his grave, or whisper Gaea’s name in awe when one of his potions saves a life. The vague promise it offered, that one day I could return home and atone for my wrongs, is gone. Wasted on a human.
A tidal wave of emotion overwhelms me, and I flounder in it like a beached whale. Longing. Loss. Fury. Resentment. Regret. They’re all rocks in my body, weighing me down, threatening to drown me, and I want to let it happen. Apathy awaits below. An end to fear, and shame, and misery.
A muffled sob interrupts my emotional turmoil. It comes from the blood-soaked Ripper, whose hands are fluttering over his ruined eye sockets. Gore has matted his hair and dried on his neck. Viscous liquid, clear as tears, runs down his cheeks, mingling with snot and slobber from his wax-like lips.
“Fucking whore! I’m going to -” he struggles to his knees, yelling at me in the wrong direction. He overcompensates. Face-plants. Whimpers. He curls into a ball, his shoulders hunched and knees bent. Shudders.
Fury breaks free from the tidal wave, demanding revenge while he cowers before me. I eye the discarded knife, thinking about how easy it’d be to jam it deep into his chest, but I don’t move. However much I hate it, I pity him. Helplessness hollows him out. Strips him of his questions and his easy smile. Turns him from a Ripper into prey.
And why should I spare him his suffering? No one spared me mine.
Taking care to move as stealthily as possible, I rescue the discarded kidney that Jack dislodged during his attack and extract the whore’s uterus. Both tuck safely under my dress, bundled in a scrap of the jade shirt. Stashing them for later seems smart since a blind, deaf Ripper isn’t going to leave many leftovers.
