Liston's Knife

Let the whole world witness the great art we have wrought.

Tonight—I am more alive, more aware, than ever I have been. Kaminski gripped me in his left hand while in his right he carried the bloody heart of Mary Jane Kelly. In the morning, they would find the rest of her, and it will change London forever. I knew this was only the beginning of what we could accomplish together. Mary Kelly had been our greatest triumph, but with such a perfect brush as Kaminski, and all of London as our canvas—there was no limit to what we could accomplish together.

I urged Kaminski out of Whitechapel after we had left our dear Mary Kelly. I did my best to steer him away from others, as he seemed most reluctant to part with his grizzly, and very conspicuous, prize. We found our way to the banks of the Thames, and through his eyes I watched the reflected gaslights of the city twinkle on the dark expanse, and through his ears I could hear the waves lapping at our feet. I could feel the city all around us and it all belonged to me now. Nothing now could stop what was to come.

Would that I could have found Kaminski sooner, what might I already have accomplished? It was arrogance on my part that had always assumed that it was a certain spark of intellect that made for a more perfect bond with the one who held me. Kaminski could not have proven me more incorrect, his brain eaten up with syphilis, with little left of it but vague memories of his old life and an unremitting rage.

His mind was a blank slate upon which to write all I desired and see it done. His rage so easily provoked into action, slaking my endless thirst for that which had brought me to awareness—blood. Through his hand I could feel the cooling tissue of her heart, and I could feel Kaminski’s strange attachment to it. Something in Mary Kelly stirred up memories from the dark morass of his disease-ridden mind. Something about his sister? There was a heady mix of emotions bubbling in the boiling cauldron of his skull; there was longing, but there was anger there too.

Try as I might to sort the jumbled mass of feelings, Kaminski’s mind was just too disjointed, too fragmented, for me to paint any meaningful picture of his life. One of the few reoccurring features of his mind was a hatred of women, how they had spurned him, mocked him. He blamed them for poisoning his mind and ruining his body. He did not understand such beautiful and hateful creatures, and he blamed their whole sex for the disease that took his nose, his lips, and his manhood, transforming his countenence into that of a monster. The syphilis settled into his brain, and a monster he had truly become.

Kaminski was staring down into the bloody mass of tissue, which he squeezed tightly in his hand until her blood ran down his arm and splattered upon a queerly carved stone at his feet. I could sense it was not the heart he saw—it was his sister’s face. It made him think of the scarf he wore, the one he so often used to hide the ruin of his face—it came from his sister, a gift perhaps? I urged him to cast it into the river; it was far too conspicuous to continue carrying around, even in such a desolate part of the city as this. His arm twitched, and I felt in him a rare resistance to my will. I flooded his thoughts with images of all the women we would render into future masterpieces with our art, like Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Catherine Eddowes, and of course our dear Mary Kelly. I felt an excitement stir in his breast at the thoughts until I mentioned that last name and memories of his sister drove these aside.

Alas, my control of Kaminski, while the surest I had yet known, was still not absolute. I ceased my urgings and allowed his scattered memories to possess him for a time. There was still a while before dawn yet, and we had time. I too, dwelt on memories under the hypnotic sound of the lapping waves of the river. How it was I came to awaken so many years ago. I felt a keen pleasure in looking back upon my long journey to the present. I remembered the swift and sure hand of the surgeon Robert Liston.

I have no memory of what fire might have forged my steel, or in what factory I was manufactured. I only know the first stirrings of my consciousness had began here in London. The first thing I perceived was the blood; the taste and warmth of it—and my growing need for more and more of it as time went on.

My need for blood instilled in me a sense of anticipation, and with its scent came my eagerness for the coming feast.  I could sense it in the surrounding air, and through the nose of the man who wielded me. I breathed of its rich coppery aroma. Over time, I sensed other things through the senses of the one who held me. I heard their screams as he sawed through the flesh of their arms and legs as they were amputated. I heard them whimper and moan, their gurgles when they choked on their blood, or the last death rattle escaping their throats. Finally, I could even see a dim world through my surgeon’s eyes, as through a scarlet sheen.

Robert Liston could amputate a leg in less than two-and-a-half minutes; he’d once removed an arm in twenty-eight seconds. We were perfectly matched. His expert skill feeding my desperate hunger. I relished the feel of his swift hands as I sliced through skin and viscera, and always the warm splash of blood on my steel. He would clasp me in his teeth, blood and all, as he attacked the bone with his saw, before taking me in hand again to finish his labor.

Liston was a skilled surgeon envied by many of his peers, but disliked by many more. He was arrogant, argumentative, and often abrasive with others, and despite their acknowledgement of his skills, they all but ran him out of Edinburgh. This, I only gathered from his memories, for it was not until he came to London in 1840 that I awakened. My ability to influence the hand that wielded me was crude in the beginning, and I did little more than encourage the spilling of more and more blood. The more of it I tasted, the greater my awareness became, and the greater my power grew.

Using my new influence I would sometimes take more blood than what he had intended, sometimes the unlucky fingers of an assistant or maybe a testicle while he was amputating a leg. Once I grew so bold as to stab an observing doctor by accident, but my methods were still crude, and I was only beginning to come into my own.

All of our glorious work together came to an abrupt end in 1847 when Dr. Liston passed. I languished in my mahogany box that held his surgeon’s tools and slowly felt my consciousness dimming. Without the blood, I was falling asleep again, becoming dormant—nothing more than a cold knife in a velvet-lined box.

It was on the battlefields of the war in Crimea that I once again reawakened. This awakening was not at all the slow process as it had been before. No, I awoke in an orgy of blood amongst the screams of the dying. It was after the Battle of Inkerman in the winter of 1854 that I awoke in the hands of an army field surgeon, Sergeant Beckley. How he came to possess Liston’s surgery kit I did not know, nor did I care—for once again everything around me was awash in blood as almost five thousand English and French lay wounded or dying and more than twice that for their Russian adversaries.

Beckley did not wield me with the cool detachment as had Liston. His was a desperate hand that knew he could only save a fraction of the men dying and screaming all around him. He was young, and the explosions of the cannonade made him jump and startle as they shook the interminable night. His hands would often tremble as they worked.

He grew despondent as the war dragged on, and he despaired at all the men’s lives wasted that he’d been so powerless to save. Even those who survived the surgeries and amputations were as likely to perish from the infections that soon followed. He turned to drinking to help steady his hands that shook all the time now. The howls of all those who died under my razor’s edge were slowly muted beneath countless cups of wine and ale.

It was when his hands shook that it was easy for me to reach out and nick an artery here or there, but when he was into his cups—I could do far more. Urging him to saw off more than was necessary, or even taking limbs he might have once tried to save. I needed the blood to grow stronger, to remain awake, and I found no shortage in war.

Winter brought a secession to much of the fighting, but there were still plenty of frostbitten fingers and toes to keep my appetite wet. My hunger knew no bounds as I grew ever greedier for more blood. Beckley introduced me to the flavors of despair, and I could taste it in each incision he made. He was far more malleable to my influence than Liston had ever been, but at last I pushed him too far.

One cold night a man confronted him outside the surgeon’s tent, claiming he had amputated his brother’s good leg and left the gangrenous one intact. Beckley had been drunk, and a healthy leg had always tasted better than an infected one. Beckley was still drunk when the fight broke out between them. He was no match for the larger and more seasoned soldier who pummeled him relentlessly until he fell, only to resume the beating with his booted heels. During the melee, many of the tables were overturned and my smooth mahogany box had spilled out onto the floor. I called to him, and he answered.

Such a feast it was as I plunged in and out of the soldier again and again and again. Light and darkness, cold air and warm blood, over and over… I tasted his heart’s blood, so much sweeter than that which flowed anywhere else. Beckley stabbed and stabbed until his arms no longer had the strength to lift me. My awareness expanded further than it ever had, beyond just Beckley; I could now sense others all around me, catch glimpses of the world through their eyes too. The awareness remained with me for many days, even after they had dragged Beckley away. In my cool box, I could still sense his fear, his confusion, and always his despair. I felt the dying spark of his mind leave him when his neck snapped that moment they dropped him from the gallows. Trapped once more in my velvet confines, the world dimmed. I hungered, and I raged, but at last I could only sleep.

Sweet heart’s blood awakened me once more many years later in the summer of 1886. For thirty years I slept until an argument over stolen goods ended with me plunged into the heart of one very unfortunate fence. It was in Black Tom’s hand I awoke, the ruthless leader of an East End gang called the Hooligan Boys. He’d found me on a shelf nearby and used me to make quick work of the man who had crossed him.

Black Tom was an altogether different breed of man than Liston or Beckley had been. What he lacked in breeding and education he made up for in brutality and a feral cunning. What set him apart from the others though, was a sense he somehow understood what I was. He could feel my hunger and it matched his own. Like a trained fight-dog he would starve me, honing my hunger to a fine edge, until it was time to slake my thirst, and his own with the blood of his enemies.

It wasn’t just the blood he was after. Beckley showed me the heady taste of despair, but from Tom I would learn the savory sweetness of pain. He loved to hurt people, and I loved the flavor that the suffering brought to the banquet. For two years we would serve each other in an almost symbiotic relationship, each of us feeding the other what they needed. His will was strong and difficult to manipulate, but our desires were so akin it was as though we were one.

Black Tom carried me with him always, secreted into a special sheath sewn into the lining of his coat. He kept me as clean and sharp as any surgeon and handled my razor’s edge with religious reverence. There were times I admit I would sometimes chafe under his care, when the hunger grew too strong in me, but always I knew the feast would come. I understood, for the first time, the value of some restraint, and how cultivating my hunger could make the feast all the more satisfying.

Would that I could have had more time with such a man, but he had made many enemies from which even my keen edge could not save him. He had taken his boys to Madam Sybil’s house, as he often did, to slake an altogether different hunger. There was a fire, and an implacable enemy who had no fear of my keen edge that had stalked him through the smoke-filled halls. Black Tom had at last met his match. I lay in a pool of his own boiling blood while the fire raged all around until there was not but ash.

I was still awake days later when Kaminski found me among the ashes. He’d been scrounging through the ruins of the fire hoping to find something to sell that would pay for his next meal. When his hand closed around me it swept me into the maelstrom of his diseased mind. There was little left of him but rage, and he could scarcely function any longer within society. I spent far more of my influence having to reign in his violent nature, than in urging him to bloodshed as I had the others. I did not want him ended so soon as Black Tom had been, for I knew I would be sorely pressed to find such a blank canvas upon which to work my will.

Syphilis made him a horror to look upon, and he alternated between hiding his visage behind a scarf, and relishing the terror he inspired with a perverse joy. Kaminski would teach me another of the blood’s many delicate flavors, and it would prove the sweetest yet—fear.

We found Mary Ann Nichols on a hot August evening in Buck Row. I felt a powerful desire swell in Kaminski that was at first sexual, but as syphilis had taken his manhood, this quickly turned to rage. I had grown hungry and sensing no one nearby I gave him a gentle nudge to indulge himself. It surprised me how rapidly he ended her life with two slashes across the throat, but what came next surprised me more.

Kaminski sat down, and using my keen edge he carved long deep cuts through her abdomen. These he probed with his fingers and I felt a deep sense of fascination in him for the inner workings of her body, of a girl’s body. He parted her flesh and explored her in ways he’d never imagined before. Was he looking for signs of the same corruption that had poisoned his own body? His thoughts were so hard to pull anything meaningful or cogent from, and there was little but vague emotion and blind instinct left to guide him. It took an effort to urge him away from the place, lest some hapless soul stumble upon us.

A week later, we indulged ourselves again. We found Annie Chapman in Spitalfields, and again Kaminski ended her life with two slashes across her throat. We were much more secluded this time, so I let Kaminski linger longer and observed in fascination as he continued his strange explorations. He made many long incisions across her abdomen as he’d done before, this time removing parts of her and holding them up to the dim light to examine. When we left, he took some of these with him.

Once more, we waited a week before satisfying our appetites again. We were perhaps too eager this time; after slashing Elizabeth Stride‘s throat passers-by nearly discovered us. It took all of my power to pull Kaminski away before he had his fun, and I felt him seething inside at the interruption. He’d grown so furious I feared I could not stop him should we come across another woman along our path—heedless of the circumstances. Thankfully, we stumbled upon Catherine Eddowes in Mitre Square, and this time Kaminski had all the time he needed to complete his explorations to his satisfaction, with more keepsakes in his pockets when he’d finished.

After that night I sensed something new; it was as if I could now taste fear in the air. The horror and revulsion our great work produced in the residents of Whitechapel was everywhere, and we both relished the heady mix of emotions. Jack the Ripper, the papers called us, and the name left only fear in its wake, spreading through the city like wildfire. The saturation of fear and terror heightened both of our hungers and drove us to find even greater satisfaction. As another week slipped by, we found ourselves once more on the hunt.

Kaminski was quite taken with Mary Jane Kelly the moment he laid eyes on her. We followed her through the streets, looking for our opportunity, but she reached her flat at the back of Dorset Street before we could get her alone. We stayed in the shadows, watching her through the broken window of her flat, waiting. A woman came to visit her, followed after by a shabbily dressed man. The three soon left together, and I felt Kaminski wanting to follow them, but I urged him to stay. I knew she would return, and I impressed upon him the advantages of having her alone and indoors, away from prying eyes. This seemed to satisfy him, and we retreated into the shadows once more.

When she at last returned, it was in the company of a different gentleman. She reached through a broken pane in the window to ease back the bolt upon the door. She was drunk, and in her haste she cut her arm on a remaining piece of jagged glass. We both smelled the blood in the air and Kaminski slid forward. Once more I urged him to be patient—we both knew it would not be much longer now.

Half an hour later the man reemerged and left; we could hear her singing in a drunken voice inside. Another half hour passed, and she’d grown quiet with only the barest flicker of a candle seen through the window. Now, I urged him on as we emerged from the shadows; now was the time for our fun.

Kaminski slid his arm through the same broken windowpane and unlocked the door. By the pale flicker of the candle, we could see her lying asleep on the bed, a bottle still clutched in her hand. Besides the bed there was only a table and three chairs near a small fireplace, with the dull glow of a few embers smoldering within.

I felt his hand close around me as he drew me from the pocket of his long coat. We could still smell her blood in the air from the cut along her arm. I urged Kaminski forward although there wasn’t a need as I could feel his eagerness. He paused at her bedside and reached out with his other hand to stroke her long red hair. It was the hair that had drawn him to her, I realized, so very much like… his sisters. The thought of her sent a surge of strange emotions bubbling up deep within him. He seemed to hesitate for a long time, and suddenly Mary Kelly’s eyes flicked open.

He brought my edge down so hard and so swiftly my progress was halted only by her vertebrae—nearly severing her head from her body. Hours later, when at last we left that bloody room so dedicated to our great work, I knew it would change this city forever… and it was only the beginning.

Dawn was creeping up on the eastern horizon, and Kaminski continued to clutch Mary Kelly’s heart to his breast. I could make little sense of the strange eddies of emotion that roiled through his feverish mind. I thought he wept, but the sores around his eyes were just as likely the source of the tears on his cheeks.

He sat hunched on the old carved stone, thrown up by the river and worn smooth by time. I began to worry a rag picker, or dockworker might soon stumble upon us. I urged him to move on, to find a place to rest, but he remained reluctant to leave. Pushing harder, he at last staggered to feet. He pulled the scarf from around his neck and wrapped the bloody heart with it. Again, I urged him to cast it into the river and be rid of the evidence, but once again he resisted. I turned all of my will against him so we might finally quit this place and be done with the night’s affair. We were running out of time. Throw it into the river I commanded before it is too late. He drew back his arm, and with a great heave threw it with all his might into the darkly churning river—but it was not Mary Kelly’s heart.

No! I howled impotently as I turned end over end through the gloom. I struck the fetid waters of the Thames screaming in fury. There was so much work yet to be done! So many great wonders of pain and fear yet to be tasted and savored. Such great works to…

No, no, no!

The dark water closed in around me as I sank into the black. I lay at the bottom of the river, raging at the diseased fool who’d cast me away. I cursed and I fumed in the darkness, but knew without the blood I would soon sleep. Would it be forever?