It was a cold
night, December 12th in London. The winter had well
settled in, and it had its icy grip tight on England’s capital.
At midnight people congregated in pubs, their places of worship,
warming their bellies with bottles upon bottles of luke warm beer.
The orange lantern glow shone out from the pubs’ windows and
lit up the quiet streets outside. Not that it mattered; the only
people to be seen on those streets at midnight were either drunk or
stupid – a home-grown Londoner knew well to steer clear of the
streets that had produced Jack the Ripper and inspired Sherlock
Holmes. A home-grown Londoner knew well to stay indoors with his or
her mates. But on December 12th in London one person
roamed those streets oblivious to the dangers and promises of death
it held, a strange woman, a foreigner, an easy target. One thing she
was not was a home-grown Londoner. She shuffled quietly from building
to building, unsure of which to enter. She was there by herself, her
fiancée neglecting to come on yet another business trip with
her. She didn’t mind much; she was a busy woman and had
surprised her old-fashioned parents just by landing a steady
relationship in the first place. And to land such a nice fellow, with
his good humour and his sea-blue eyes… She missed him so, and
as her fingers gave up any resistance to the cold and began to turn
blue as she thought of him.
This woman wore a bright blue
beanie hat with speckles of snow, she wore the heaviest coat money
could buy her and she wore her own ski-pants from back home,
California. Back home had been better, there was no cold there. Sure
the people were nicer in London; they had posh, seductive accents to
win over any tourist and they dressed smartly and tidily with old
suits and little dickey bows. But the woman lost any positive
feelings for England as soon as the cold began to seep into her
bones. She now knew how Adolf Hitler’s soldiers felt when they
delved deep into the heart of Russia, and it was a feeling she’d
never had the intention of experiencing. Then, forced down by the
ever-thickening waves of snow and the bitter cold, she hugged her
knees and leaned back against the brick wall of a popular pub called
‘Wolfhound’s Way’. The snow didn’t soak
through her ski-pants but it did freeze her, and it brought back
memories of her older cousins shoving ice-pops down her back. Martha
and Matilda, the ugly little sisters, the pair of scoundrels who
never seemed to be actually caught in the act of mischief, “Oh,
how they frustrated me…” The woman reminisced, and with
her brain occupied by old memories – childhood memories, the
snow thickened to the point where she could see no more than a foot
ahead of her.
And even with her eyes open she had
no hope of making out the black shape as it emerged from the alley at
the opposite side of the street. She had no hope of hearing its
footsteps as they fell as silently as the snowflakes and sank into
the snow beneath. No, on a cold night, December 12th in
London, just around midnight, the only thing that woman felt was a
sharp pinch and then a rough tearing as the Stanley knife ripped her
throat open. Her eyes bulged from their sockets and her tongue lolled
but there was no doubt in her mind that she would die. She laid back
against the brick wall of ‘Wolfhound’s Way’ and
struggled desperately for breath as it escaped through her open
throat, watched by her proud attacker. Blood leaked out onto the snow
and dwelled there, heavy and morbid. The woman’s last gargles
as she clutched desperately at the opening, the opening that was not
supposed to be there, were not heard. And as the home-grown Londoners
who knew well to steer clear of the shady London streets squatted
safe and sound in their pubs, the last of the woman’s life
faded from her, leaving just an empty shell of a human, a limp and
useless body. Into the night her murderer fled, his steps falling
just as silently as before and his figure clouded by the snow –
and he laughed.
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