JACK THE RIPPER // DISTRICT VII // WIP

One, Hadley Foster, twenty-one years old, three kills. She spat in your face as you brought your blade upon her flesh - "God curses you, Summit." And your laughter rose into the skies, entwined with her screams, for if there is a god, they would have struck you down with their fists of thunder, they would have crushed your skull into ash the moment you surfaced into their oh so blessed kingdom.

"There is no god," you snarled.

If there is a god, it is a forsaken god. If there is a god, you are made from poison, crafted by its covetous hands. And this god, it would have laced its covetous nature and avarice through your skin and bones when it threaded your frame together in its kingdom. It would have blessed you with a mask to cast your rotten insides into the shadows.

It would have encased your wretched bones in pale golden flesh, wrapped them up and called it a gift to the earth - a sick joke. It would have strung dark hairs into your scalp and nestled a pair of emeralds into the holes it had drilled into your skull with its teeth. It would have taken them into its palms and polished them with kindness to feign the innocence of a halo - but only a fool could have believed this to be so.

This god would have modeled your body from the birds. It would have built your willowy, delicate frame out of thin air. It would have sculpted you to appear to have the fragility of a snowflake to mask the earth shattering power that roared within. And would have it sculpted your face separately to retouch and retouch again to balance menacing and beautiful. It would have carved your face from stone with its claws and kissed the sharp edges and hollows with beauty.

This forsaken god would have crafted a tragedy and colored over the black with the title of masterpiece.

There is no god.

But Hadley Foster had spoken with certainty, as if it was a fact engraved into stone. From her lips spilled words you cannot fathom with her blood.
"God wrote your destiny in the crystalline valleys of the stars, that you and you alone are bound to your fate to balance the uneven scales with blood."

You hissed in return between clenched teeth, "And it is your blood I need to balance the uneven scales."

She shook her head. "Not me! I'm good, I'm -"
But Hadley Foster never finished her sentence; it was shattered by the screams tearing through her throat.

A principle is carved into your skull: an eye for an eye. For vengeance is justice and you have taken it upon yourself to carry out the greatness that others cannot.

Two, Caspar Darcy, twenty-seven years old, two kills. He had cut people apart like ragdolls for sport, chopped them up into fragments of what they once were as you do. Only his slices were imprecise and sloppy.

"Do you believe in angels?" he had asked you as he laid beneath your blade in his own blood.
You shook your head.

There are no angels dancing in the septic skies, festering and bleeding black and red with the pollution of human breath. Most certainly not, you have declared with a small motion of your head.

But there are most certainly demons -
it takes one to know one.

Black blood is reality, crimson eyes are the truth.

And you never feared the monsters beneath your bed when you were younger. They were your friends more than any human could ever be. They were your family beyond flesh and blood.

(But these monsters you hunt are not.)

Three, Melanie Drake, nineteen years old, four kills. She liked heads, you remember, she liked to watch the blood pool from the space she had left at the neck. She had told you that humans were her ragdolls, so easy to tear and rip and tear and rip. Growled from your lips curled into a grimace, the words rolled from your tongue -
"You are not human - neither am I.
But that doesn't make you any less than a ragdoll to me."

Crimson had never looked so lovely upon a once white dress.

Your mother took your dolls - or, their remains - when you were a child; you would tear them apart limb by limb. First the arms, then the legs, and at last, the head. The head was your favorite: you loved a challenge.

Round eyes would well up with tantrum tears as your trophies were snatched from your hands, red and raw from hours of dismembering your most prized dolls. You were only turning them into masterpieces. Tiny feet hammering against the wooden floor, tiny fists thrown down in a scream. You felt your first taste of anger as red rushed into your cherub face and your first taste of sadness, bitter on your tongue, as tears bolted from your eyes.

Demented and dark as you were, Mother taught you to hide the ugly behind the dimpled smile of an angel. But your halo's light was devoured by the darkness flourishing within you and your wings were torn by the tip of your god's pen. You were are no angel, tiny and porcelain as you were.

She saw the truth shine its teeth in your eyes and was determined to bury it, but one can only bury so much and nothing can lock the truth away from the light for eternity. You had a dark flame for gore and suffering and she was dead set on snuffing it out.

(But the best she could do was tuck it into the corner.)

Four, When you were twelve, you tore apart a bird with a knife and your bare hands as an experiment.

And you cried. You cried into the mess you had made of innocence, for your destiny had promised justice. Your destiny had sworn you would reap the dark souls that no one else could. Your destiny had told you to kill only those who had killed themselves, to scrub away their sins from the earth with their blood. You had not broken your calling but you had darkened it, and you swore, you scrawled an oath into your bones, that slain innocence would never stain your hands.

Fingers entangled into the remains, your skin was stained scarlet and your face was glistening with tears, but despite the horror snaking through your bones, you could not scratch away the delight in the back of your skull at how pretty red looked against your flesh.

Blood is golden in your eyes - it is a treasure you lust for greater than a man riddled by avarice lusts for more riches to pile onto his risen kingdom. Blood must rain, but it must rain at your hands.

In blood, you become stone.
Your anger, your rage, does not erupt in a red, red blaze. It oozes cold from your stone body as ice creeps over your hollow eyes. Axe gripped steadily in hand, clean and sharpened promptly after the last kill. It begins with severing the fingers, one by one. And then the right arm at the elbow, then the left, then the entire limb - and onto the left. The cycle is repeated with legs - right first, the toes . . . and at long last, the head.
And no mercy is shown, only the bloodied white flag of pathetic surrender.

You like heads - you like all severed body parts, but the head is your favorite. Most of all you love the noise the bone makes against the axe - music to your ears - and the endless sea of crimson, so beloved to you, that bursts from the split veins. When you severed your first head - you remember all of them, all the evil, wicked heads you split from an equally wicked body, but you remember your first most of all - you smiled and you did not feel sorry for what you had done. Your god praised you and turned your name golden with his approval, but you could hear the hunger for another rain of wicked, wicked blood snarling within the depths of its stomach.

And you were sworn to fulfill its will and your destiny.

{ table: zoë }

I FEEL LIKE GETTING
TANGLED UP IN YOUR BONES
SOMEONE GAVE YOU UP
YOU WERE PROSTHETIC IN LOVE
BUT I WILL KEEP YOU CARVED INSIDE MY GUN