Last night I dreamt of Jack the Ripper.
I was walking into the bedroom,
presumably of a trailer park whore somewhere
in Butte, Montana, having moved there for obscure reasons.
As we lay in bed, she flipped the channel
again and again.
***
On the screen,
a circle of obscure phrases were compared
by an animated pointer
--all having something or other to do
with
Jack the Ripper.
Unpleasant
she must have thought.
So I turned it.
It flickered to fuzzy static
before turning back to the same channel.
It did this again and again,
as if to say
--You can't change this channel!
***
One supposes there are patterns
etched deep into the face of time,
old roles that are resumed,
life-after-life.
Are all of these things
quantified by a logically ordered universe,
overseen by a zealous, inscrutable God?
Because we've been here before.
My mind flashes back to the other night,
coming home to the trailer park with the
Woman of Questionable Virtue.
Maybe this is straight from the last call at a local tavern.
We go inside,
and she begins to peruse, with rapt attention,
a large, yellowed sheaf of newsprint with the name
CATHERINE EDDOWES
printed upon the face of it, in flowing script.
She looks at me curiously...
...as if she is privy to a private joke or gag.
(And my memory flashes back to an ex-love, lying in bed. Raped she is, by seemingly invisible forces, confessing whatever sins seem most readily applicable to her current condition--"And I'm a liar. And I'm a fraud. And I'm a bitch. And I'm a...")
You get the picture.
And there is a direct line of descent, I take it,
from the body on the bed, to the woman in the trailer park;
and, dancing back through the ages,
a body discovered near Flower and Dean Street, in London, long ago.
About the Creator
Tom Baker
Author of Haunted Indianapolis, Indiana Ghost Folklore, Midwest Maniacs, Midwest UFOs and Beyond, Scary Urban Legends, 50 Famous Fables and Folk Tales, and Notorious Crimes of the Upper Midwest.: http://tombakerbooks.weebly.com
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