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AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 813
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, February 06, 2004 - 1:13 pm: | 
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Oh, I liked that, Robert!
Short but very sweet.
Very tart and smart, just how I like me poesies.
Very inspirational, I will see what I can come up with.
Glad you enjoyed the latest barmy happenings with Jack's family. It is like a drug now and I do suppose I could go on forever, but I've decided to have a break and work this weekend on a 'virtual' tour of Jack's room. Should be fun. |
Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 2044
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Friday, February 06, 2004 - 4:55 pm: |
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Thanks very much, AP.
A virtual tour of Jack's room! Sounds interesting. With the aid of virtual reality we should be able to see right up the chimney.
Robert |
Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 2052
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, February 07, 2004 - 11:09 am: |
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ON SHOW
Spray-can serpents coil and curl
In graffito artist's whirl.
Underneath, no bloody rag,
Just an esoteric tag
For friend and peer
Mojo was here.
Butchered whore with zigzag signed,
Jagged mark of jagged mind.
Pickled in rage in glass-eyed case
And fashioned by artist lost in space
Adorns the Square.
Jack was there.
Robert |
AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 819
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, February 07, 2004 - 1:33 pm: |
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Jack’s Room (1)
It is with rare privilege and keen interest that I was today given the opportunity of visiting Jack’s own room whilst the family was out for the day, bombing Catholic churches, setting fire to convents and the like.
I felt this experience was something that I should share with the keen readership of the Cutbush family antics, hence the following.
The door to the room is in itself an object of great interest for it bears many scars and wounds and has obviously seen a lively history. Pitted across its surface and sometimes cracking it are the clear marks of repeated knife throws, and in places the door even appears to have been attacked with a fire axe or similar, and these old and savage splinter wounds remain to this day in a state of abject disrepair, showing that they are quite old and probably made while Jack was still a young child.
One is tempted to believe that many of the vicious marks might have been made by Jack’s own father, attempting to break down the door and enter the room to do the young Jack serious harm, for that man carried a history of appalling violence towards his own family, beating both Jack and his mother on so many occasions that eventually uncle Charles was forced to make Jack’s father leave the house and promise never to return on pain of being shot dead by the redoubtable and formidable uncle Charles.
It is thought that Jack’s lameness in the right leg was caused by his own father actually breaking his leg and then claiming that the poor little chap ‘had fallen down the stairs’. This remained forever in Jack’s young mind and all fateful accidents in the household were ascribed to this particular misfortune, and many folk during Jack’s lifetime had taken that last stumble down the Cutbush stairs, why, even Jack’s own father - on an illicit visit to the house in an attempt to scrounge some drinking money - had sailed merrily down those stairs with just a tad of encouragement from Jack and ended up in Whitechapel mortuary to be sliced about a bit before being thrown into a common pauper’s grave.
‘Good riddance!’ was uncle Charles’ only comment, however his contribution in smoothing the paperwork of sudden death had been immense.
But now we must open that scarred and battered door and give our first impressions of Jack’s inner sanctum.
Well, the room is sparse but messy with clutter, quite like an ancient tomb that was robbed in antiquity but has lain untouched since, however we must not rush or be taken in by first impressions, we must tread carefully and examine every object minutely to see what it can tell us about this strange young man called Jack.
For instance, there on the wall opposite us, is a small and badly cracked mirror, so that when one views themselves one is rewarded by dozens of smaller fractured images and not a whole person. Now why is the mirror so? Jack’s family are not poor, in fact his mother and aunt are very well off, as is his uncle Charles, so one would have thought that Jack would have asked for a new mirror, or bought one himself out of his earnings - he was a clerk till recently and enjoyed a reasonable salary - so we must accept the fact that Jack seems to enjoy the fractured images that come back to him from his cracked mirror, and perhaps because of the very cracks is a more valuable object to him than a whole mirror where everything is reflected in its entirety. Perhaps Jack doesn’t like the whole? Perhaps he likes bits and pieces? Perhaps Jack fears an object or a person that represents an entirety and seeks fractured images of people because they are not real or complete and fit easily into the patterns of his isolation and loneliness?
For the room does also reflect the Spartan hermetic climate of the loner who enjoys the isolation of himself, albeit that a highly fractured himself.
Yes, the mirror is interesting but let us move on.
Hello, the floor here is entirely covered in scraps of paper, some bunched and thrown away, others still flat with their worked surfaces visible, crouching down I can see that they are crude pencil sketches of what I assume are naked women, but they are so crudely worked that it is almost impossible to guess what some of them might be, but here this one is clear, it is a woman but she is so badly drawn that a child of four or five might be responsible for the work. The woman faces the onlooker with her legs wide apart and her head rests on her left shoulder, it appears she has been cut up around the face, chest, stomach and private parts, red colour has been used to illustrate the slicing and stabbing wounds, her guts are slit open and the innards have been draped over her other shoulder, colours have been used again, red and blue, and the woman appears to have red colour all over her thighs. The most curious thing about the drawing is that the women has neither arms below the elbows or legs below the knee, whether this was intentional on the part of the artist or whether he just could not draw hands or feet I don’t know.
As I drop the paper my eyes are drawn to the wall above the dirty little bed because of the remarkable pattern and design thereon, for it reminds me very much of cave paintings I have seen in the south of France, done by prehistoric warriors before the dawn of time. As I get closer the pattern becomes crystal clear, it is primitive art, for using red paint or some other substance or liquid someone has actually covered the wall in thousands of palm prints, and I can see that they have been doing so since a very early age, for the palm prints vary in size from that of a small child to that of a grown man. It is quite an incredible personal work of art and I study it with deep interest and some little trepidation for some five minutes. My conclusion is that it is a very disturbing image, for it seems to cry and shriek at some hideous and unknown brutality indicating great harm and punishment caused to the poor soul who has spent a lifetime daubing his fractured image on that wall in what very much looks like his own blood. It is a confining image that speaks of untold horrors enacted out within a family unit by a vicious male in control of that family unit. This room has been a prison.
I turn away, unable to absorb the pitiful image any longer, and see something in the far corner by the blacked out window that makes me start in fright, for I at first took it for a person stood there, but it is in fact one of those tailor dummies - without head, arms or legs - that one sees occasionally in shop window displays. But I fear this is no ordinary tailor’s dummy.
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Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 2053
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, February 07, 2004 - 5:03 pm: |
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Very disturbing indeed, this tour, AP - particularly the palm prints which vary in size.
The evolution of a murderer from child to man. They also suggest the same fragmented personality that is seen in the cracked mirror.
Robert |
AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 820
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, February 07, 2004 - 5:41 pm: |
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Thank you Robert
and I must say that your short poesie was quite the best thing you have done so far. Almost perfect, when not that thing, in its mind-set and abrupt short life... I just am so glad to see this form of emotive reckoning appearing on this thread. It makes an otherwise fairly useless quest very, very worthwhile.
I take me hat off to you sir, and throw it in the air and quaff endless amounts of strong brandy in envy of your skills. |
Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 2055
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, February 07, 2004 - 5:53 pm: |
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Thanks for those words, AP. I hope you're not just saying that as an excuse to quaff the brandy!
Anyway, to reciprocate the compliment I am now off to swig a big mug of tea in envy of your skills.
Robert |
Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 2060
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, February 08, 2004 - 6:41 am: |
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Hi AP
Hope you don't mind my pinching your room. I only popped in for a minute.
THE ROOM
See him sitting clutching knife
Comfort like hot water bottle
Unmade bed and unmade life
Dreams of filthy whores to throttle
Shrank the world into this room
All misfiled and out of joint
Only sees the knife in gloom
Harlots dance upon its point
Soul is smashed and scattered strewn
And he cannot find his heart
Naughty boy won't tidy room
Doesn't know where to start
Absent-minded pockets blade
Absent-minded pockets room
Shambles to another shade
Steps from tomb to tomb
Robert |
AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 822
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, February 08, 2004 - 7:36 am: |
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Jack’s Room (2)
Oh, now this object is truly remarkable, again almost primitive in its design and who knows what strange purpose, I see it as much like a tribal totem the native Indians might have used, or even one of those bizarre prayer stations in the Tibetan mountains where passing worshippers attach small bits of gaily coloured cloth to the object until it is a mass and riot of colour blowing in the wind. Such is this object, and I study it from every angle to see if I can raise a clue to its purpose.
As I stated the object was originally a tailor’s dummy but it has been adapted for other strange and bizarre purposes that I can only guess at for the moment. For instance, what is one to make of the dozens and dozens of strips of material that have been attached - sometimes pasted but then other times knocked roughly in with hammer and nail - to almost the entire surface, the whole thing is like a patchwork quilt. Lifting a large piece of paisley material from the body of the dummy I receive my first clue, for under this particular piece of material I see by the slight swelling of the chest that this is in fact a female model of a tailor’s dummy, and this would increase its value to the owner I should have thought. Taking another piece of material further down and lifting it I see that although the dummy makes a slight gesture towards femininity in the breast department, here it is totally asexual, there is nothing but marbled perfection down here, unbroken by any rude line or contour.
I feel this to be of vital importance, for although the breasts are there - the comforting understandable organs of motherhood - the reproductive and overtly sexual equipment is totally derelict and wanting. This brings me back to the fractured mirror and the primitive hand prints, both clearly full of intentional disassociation from the ‘whole’, representing as they do the perfected disembodiment that I would associate with extreme anti-social behaviour, directed mostly inwards at the creator of such art but on occasions being directed forcefully out at those objects - and forms of life - that represent the threat of totality to a fractured soul with a fractured mind that demands comfortable bits and pieces, which he can put together or pull apart at his own wish and command.
The person responsible for this bizarre tailor’s dummy has created another person here, one that he is more than comfortable with and they probably spend much time together. It is important to note that this created ’person’ has no head, no arms, no legs and no sexuality whatsoever, apart of course from the small concession made to the iconic image of motherhood.
I would say that the imagery has as its base and fundament, fear of the female sex, and I would guess that the many pieces of cloth that are attached to the dummy have been either stolen from clothes lines and then cut up, or perhaps even more disturbingly have been cut off the clothes of living women that the individual may have harmed whilst collecting these little trophies of his prowess with the fairer sex. Yes, I see it as a redirected sexual urge - probably powered by a great deal of loathsome misunderstanding - in that the individual is replacing true sexual experience with what he sees as less harmful - to himself I mean of course - contact of a perverse sexual nature. I believe the chap would run a mile if a woman attempted to procure him for sexual purposes.
Now I’ve said that, I fear I might be over hasty, for when I think on it a bit more I do feel that perhaps the individual would not run a mile, in fact I am beginning to think that his reaction to such an indecent proposition might be a highly dangerous one. Yes, people could get badly hurt under such circumstance, and one would have to be jolly careful in dealing with this chap.
Now, let’s have a look what he has on his old desk over here.
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Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 2063
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, February 08, 2004 - 9:50 am: |
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Intriguing idea about the fractured personality and the fear of wholeness, AP. Perhaps such a person would see the whole world like this - people are either all masculine, all feminine, not "my sort" etc.
The mention of taking bits and pieces of people, toying with them and re=arranging them reminds me of the perverted creative impulse you see in Jack.
The headless dummy puts me in mind of pre-Renaissance religious imagery - inbuilt vagueness and stylisation lest an individualistic portrait come between the viewer and the object of his imagination. Or, as CS Lewis once said, the face of a child's Teddy Bear.
Of the four murder victims which you accept, the two who had their faces slashed seem to have been the two who had the most personality (Nichols was very drunk and Chapman very ill). Maybe he didn't like his fantasies disturbed?
Robert
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AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 823
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, February 08, 2004 - 11:53 am: |
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Thanks Robert
It is an intriguing concept isn’t it? And I for one think such a fractured personality - created by his tormented and torturous childhood in a situation where obviously his male role model beat him and the iconic mother failed to save him from those beatings because she was partially demented herself - doth play a vital role in the make-up of such serial killers as Jack. In the ‘Myth’ I did dwell on this ‘fractured’ view of other living creatures where the wholeness of an individual might well be seen as a primitive threat to one who works in ‘bits and pieces’ which - as you do point out - he is then able to arrange and rearrange to his own plan.
I’ll quote a short piece of that as it is relevant to what we discuss:
It is well worth looking at another case of Ripper-like crimes as it allows us an even better insight into the behaviour of Thomas Cutbush.
Edward Gein had a similar upbringing in the USA in the 1900’s - his father either dead, or departed for newer pastures, and being dominated by his obsessive mother who religiously rammed down her obviously half-simple son’s throat the notion that sex and women in general were evil and sinful things. But when his mother died, simple Ed Gein decided to investigate the things his mother had tried to teach him to despise. He bought serious medical books and spent years studying the female body as portrayed in these type of books which present the human form dissected into its various individual components. From books he moved onto bodies which he dug up out of the local graveyard and kept at his isolated farm, and then he took his macabre interest over the next hurdle and started to kidnap women from the local area. These were brought back to the farm and simple Ed murdered and mutilated them, cutting out their organs to store in his fridge and making souvenirs from other parts of the body. When he was eventually caught it was obvious that Edward Gein did not really know that he had done a terrible wrong and he spent the rest of his life, until 1984, living a model life as a prisoner in various lunatic asylums.
Gein gives us a remarkable insight into the mind of Thomas Cutbush, for the two men not only shared remarkably similar childhoods, they also shared an obsession with reading medical books. Remember what Macnaghten said in his memorandum: ‘He (Cutbush) is said to have studied medical books by day… scribble drawings of women in indecent postures were found torn up in Cutbush’s room.’
Pornography would not have been as easily available to Cutbush as it was to Edward Gein some fifty years later and Gein certainly supplemented his collection of medical books with pornography. But the jump from medical books to pornography in both their cases is of great importance and shows us what forbidden path Cutbush was following in the months leading up to the Ripper crimes.
An unhealthy progression from ‘allowed’ medical pictures of naked women displaying their ‘forbidden’ internal and external parts to ‘forbidden’ pornography where the women are ‘allowed’ to show their ‘forbidden’ parts. And what comes next?
Obviously in Gein’s case what came next was a dangerous desire to possess those forbidden organs so familiar to him to him from the medical books he had long studied, so it seems highly likely that Thomas Cutbush too would have also been obsessed with the same desire to possess these forbidden parts of a female form that he could only fantasize about with the help of his medical books and self-made pornography.
It seems that Edward Gein was incapable of viewing his victims in their totality, instead he saw them as bits and pieces - organs - and there is absolutely no evidence that he ever sexually abused his victims, dead or alive. Yes he murdered and mutilated them but without any sexual motive whatsoever, and this perhaps brings us yet another step closer to a fair portrait of Jack the Ripper - or Thomas Cutbush.
An important difference must be that Thomas Cutbush was suffering from syphilis. This means he had, at some stage, taken his experiments with medical books and pornography further than Edward Gein, but with catastrophic results.
Edward Gein was a man who was forced to study medical books as his only method to learn about the ‘forbidden and sinful’ reproductive organs of the female species, as he never had the chance to explore the normal and natural avenues that childhood offers to most of us in this universal quest for the unknown.
He was a man who was brought up by a mother who perversely hated her most vital biological function and hence taught her impressionable son that the act of sex, or the essential female partner in sex and procreation is evil and sinful.
This is a vicious dead end of hate that has only one narrow escape channel and that is the murder and mutilation of women. The mother teaches her son that woman are sinful, she teaches him that sex is sinful and when he begins to learn - by studying remote textbooks - that he has been brought up to hate the very thing that created him then he finds himself in a bitter wilderness that offers no apologies for his very existence. He is damned. Along with the rest of the human race he is damned and his answer is to attack that which is responsible: the reproductive organs responsible for bringing sin into the world. And if he goes to church or has his Bible there by his side he can find solace for his convictions and kind words to fuel his mad ambitions.
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Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 2064
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, February 08, 2004 - 4:46 pm: |
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JACK THE RIPPER
Jack the Ripper came today
Ripped a whore with dagger bloody
Took a certain thing away
For private study
Jack the Ripper came again
Likes to clean the Augean stable
And some morsels did obtain
For dinner table
Jack the Ripper came but went
Didn't take his usual booty
He's religious and it's Lent
Knows his duty
Thanks for that refresher, AP. It's a while since I read the Myth (or any book for that matter). But highly interesting stuff.
Robert |
AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 824
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, February 08, 2004 - 4:55 pm: |
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Thanks to you, Robert.
I enjoyed your sally into Jack's room, I hope you have checked your kidneys are still there?
Enjoyed that last one too.
Here's a silly one for you, prompted by other threads.
Jack’s Throne
Blimey! I found Jack the Ripper’s throne
And there he sits all alone
All right Jack me old mate?
You’re looking a bit out of date
But we’ll give you a good scrub down and wash
And see if with you we can’t make a bit of dosh
You’ve been a busy boy and no mistake
You got this here diary which is a fake
And you’ve been painting works of art
In between ripping whores apart
And playing with water babes
In secret codes that you made
When you had some spare time
To throw out a cryptic rhyme
Blimey! To you I do take off me hat
For you have been such a busy chap
Then I heard you was in that New York
And did with a few ‘tectives have a talk
And blimey next thing I hear you is in France
Come on old mate just give us a chance
You part of a magic pentagram
To slaughter sacrificial lamb
And part of some great design
Where the dumb lead the blind
To see what the deaf can find
And now you sit on throne so proud
Up in heaven there on cloud
Hidden in some old chest
Carved in some whore’s breast
Or on the back of some old watch
As you sit and wind your clock
But wind as much as you must
Now’t happens for spring is bust.
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Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 2065
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, February 08, 2004 - 6:04 pm: |
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Riotously funny, AP. Now you've set me off.
Jack the Ripper, where's that book?
I'm not calling you a crook
But 'twas 1888
When I sent me cheque, old mate,
And I fear you're running late.
Held up by the Christmas break?
Which one, Jack, for heaven's sake?
Held up by the Boer War?
Blow me, Jack, whatever for?
Held up in a bit of panic?
Consignment sank aboard Titanic?
Delayed by World Wars One and Two?
Don't you think it's overdue?
Stored in warehouse? Not trying to be sarky
But why was the warehouse in Nagasaki?
On the trail of a dead man's fine
But I might as well trail the Lonesome Pine.
If you don't send me back me cheque
'Tis you who'll get it in the neck. |
AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 831
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - 2:08 pm: |
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Jack’s Room (3)
Ah, the desk!
The seat of all learning and wisdom in our modern Victorian age, for at desks just like this one that I have before me was our modern empire and all its new-fangled inventions conceived. Running my hand over the well worn shoulders of the old fashioned clerk’s stool I do wonder whether such desks have also inspired the new horrors in our society, such as the one I study in this sad case.
I see that the boy has carved his initials into the seat of the chair, this raises a grin from me as I am pleased to see that the lad has some aspect of normalcy about him.
The desk too is a clerical item, too tall - as is the chair - to ever be truly comfortable, but thus was it designed, to stop the lazy beggars from nodding off over their ledgers; to give them a permanent stoop in the back by the time they were forty so that their craft and trade were recognisable to one and all. The lad has carved here as well. I run my fingers over the rough gashes and close my eyes to feel the words rather than see them. I shiver. The violence of the simple two words raises the hairs on the nape of my neck. ‘From Hell’.
I sigh, and then study the material that lays strewn upon the desk, for here the young man obviously composes and creates his little works of art. Various drawing are in various stages of production, all the same theme, women, mutilated and torn apart, and all without feet or hands.
We touch with our hands, and we walk the earth with our feet.
This could be vital, perhaps the most vital clue yet to the behaviour of our young man. I must ponder this while looking further.
He has three inkwells, black, blue and red and an assortment of pens and quills with which to create, and he does seem to splash a lot, there are old ink stains everywhere and not a sign of blotting paper. How curious!
Here is a note he is working on, I shall sit at the chair and study it.
It is addressed to a Lord of our land and threatens all manner of horrible and terrifying happenings if certain requirements are not met, the lad must be cured of his ills as must his uncle, Catholic doctors have been poisoning the family, Catholics have been poisoning the drinking water of the capital, Catholics have raped his mother, aunt and his nieces, the boy has syphilis and must be cured, previous medicines supplied by the Catholic doctors have confused him and given him headaches, rumours that he has hurt people are unfounded, his family is respectable…
Although the letter is lucid, especially in its fantastic nature, the whole thing is a complete and utter mess that again could have been written by someone in the first year of school. At times the venom of the pen has ripped the paper, there are blots and stains of ink all over, and the grammar and spelling is totally immature. Could it be that the mere fact that the man sits at the desk turns him into a boy?
Is he back at primary school when he writes and creates thus?
For I know this young man to be educated and even employed for his clerical skills, but I see no sign of that literary success on this desk or even in this room. What has happened here?
I believe most of all that he is in a great hurry, but with no destination.
Ah, this doth vex me deeply. I believe I need to sit in a comfortable and friendly public house for an hour or two amongst cheery folk and then I might be able to turn my mind to the problems of this young man. I find myself unable to correctly function in this stifling and cloying atmosphere of complete and utter despair and more importantly disrepair.
Here is a pile of illustrated medical books, each volume opens almost automatically on a certain page detailing explicit detail of the female sexual organs…
No, it is no good, I must get out of here for a while and have some fresh air and a strong drink.
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Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 2075
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - 4:20 pm: |
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Superbly written, AP. If I didn't know better, I'd say that you'd actually seen the room you're describing.
I'd imagined him simply writing the note at a table, but the clerkly desk gives it a new dimension.
I think the person you have in mind was reported to have a stoop.
Robert |
AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 834
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - 6:14 pm: |
|
Thanks Robert
I'm in the public house now with Watson and we are taking a few pints and a couple of pipes of opium, for it is a 'three pipe' problem.
Just look what happens when you smoke three pipes:
Séance Jack
Fuddled farts and record players
Harpy hearts and damn soothsayers
What time or century is this bliss?
I fear you all take the damn piss!
It seems that I was hardly awoke
When I found myself alive in a joke
With all this electric pulse and plum
To what damn century am I come?
What damn dinosaur of time
Is responsible for all this rhyme
And reason tucked up nice and neat
What is this music, what is this beat?
Where am I landed? Some place dread
Where on tins damn people are fed
And in strange solutions babies bred
Amid all this clutter and clatter
Where machines endlessly chatter
What fury and in what damn sky
Was I born and then did die?
To awake here as if in strange dream
Part of some devil’s fiendish scheme
Where words are like seed on the ground
Where book after book can be found
And words are spoken without a sound
Jack they say did this and that
Jack they say and that’s a fact
Jack say they did make a pact
And with the devil lay down
Did wear that devil’s crown
Jumping Jack Flash
Gas, gas, gas
Jack be nimble, Jack be quick
And did girlie girlie slit
Jack Sprat he eat no fat
In corner sat Jack
Up the hill
Jack and Jill
Ha Ha bloody Ha
Jolly Jack Tar
Jack of all Trades
Jack of dead Maids
Pretty maids all in a row
Jack watch beanstalk grow
What is this calumny and shock
In key that door unlock
What dread fate does there await
Await the dread does there the fate
In diary lovingly written
By false dog bitten
And there lie the poison arrow
The cancer in the bloody marrow
The deep covered by the shallow
The root shrouded by the callow
The furrow buggered by the fallow
The sea swept out to tide
The narrow escaped to the wide
The net given to the game
The all to be the same.
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Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 2079
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - 6:53 pm: |
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AP, that is a truly amazing poem - amazing even by your standards.
I would take my hat off to you, but I don't wear one, so the next best thing I can do is get a haircut....and then try to get some of your opium into my Solo Superkings!
Robert |
Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 2082
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 5:27 am: |
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PLAGUED
I died and went to better life
Where lion lies down with lamb
But still I carry the same old knife
For I do not give a damn
And though I walk Elysium's halls
Sporting a pious grin
A tiny voice within me calls
To stick the razor in
But just as I'm about to tear :
"Is there anybody there?"
Summoned by some happy medium
Oh the boredom and the tedium!
"Once for yes and twice for no"
Hurry up, I want to go!
"Use the glass to spell your name"
Naught but bloody parlour game!
By the time that I get back
Victim has escaped poor Jack
Such a crime
This waste of time
Why should I cross that mighty chasm
To be a bit of ectoplasm
From mouth of medium who doth rabbit
And smoking's such a filthy habit
I'll tell you something, and this is the truth -
Oh no, they're calling again, oh strewth!
Silly cow, I'll be right with you
Silly cow, may God forgive you....
This is driving me insane
Think I'll have to die again
Robert
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AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 838
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 2:50 pm: |
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Oh excellent stuff, Robert, enjoyed that very much indeed. I do feel the spiritual side of Jack to be very worthy for poetic discourse as the seance and suchlike were so massively popular at that exact time.
From personal experience the most terrifying thing that ever happened to me was at a seance in Singapore, and I wrote a novel around that, the novel is crap but the experience was spooky to say the least.
I do wonder whether there might be a whole wealth of material out there, somewhere, gathered during the LVP concerning spiritual connections to Jack and his crimes. |
Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 2083
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 7:04 pm: |
|
Thanks AP. Well, I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't quite a few seances, first to establish contact with the victims, then maybe after a few years or so to try to establish contact with the murderer. Maybe some mediums have written accounts.
Robert |
Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 2084
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 9:35 pm: |
|
PLAYTIME
So it was time to sneak from school,
And hopping over the dirty wall
Bid goodbye to daytime,
Night was his playtime,
And thinking was playing,
Head and feet straying
Together in tune
Encased in balloon
Wrapped in that bubble
That saved him from trouble.
And Jack had a lot to think through.
The oceans, and why they were blue.
The sky, and why it was black.
Himself, and why he was Jack.
And he felt very daring
To find himself staring
At orchards and fruit
And then was struck mute.
But sudden sharp twig of branch did pop
The bubble, and something inside did drop.
Another murder in Whitechapel -
But Jack was just scrumping apple.
Robert
|
AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 839
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, February 12, 2004 - 12:56 pm: |
|
Jack's Room (4)
I am back in the chair, before the desk, but I fear a tad inebriated from the fine flow of ale and sloe gin at the Ten Bells. It is an odd transition this, from the gay and cheery surroundings of the snug in the Ten Bells surrounded by lively and convivial company to this barren and desperate wasteland of a predator’s lair.
But I dust myself off and begin my task. It is not an easy task, to explain the behaviour of this young man, however it must be done, otherwise we all might as well join him on his crusade to hell. It is my job to explain, if I can, and not to blame: and I suppose I must begin with youth…
Hold on a second… what is that hanging down from the chimney above the unused fire? I walk quickly, if not a little unsteadily, over to the fireplace and study the offending item, it is a shirt sleeve. I pull on it and it tumbles down, more follow until the unused fireplace is full of shirts, jackets and trousers. This is a funny old laundry basket.
Examining the articles of clothing carefully I note that they are heavily stained but somebody has attempted to clean the stains with turpentine - for the obnoxious smell is still heavy on the air - but without much success for the stains are still clearly visible. I must assume the stains are blood, for why else would someone attempt to clean them and then hide them up a chimney? If the stains were red ink or some other harmless fluid then the clothing would have been placed in a more regular sort of laundry basket where they would have been cleaned by a dutiful mother, but here there is an urgent desire to hide and disguise the origins and purpose of what we see. Now, I wonder why the young chap did not burn the blood stained clothing on the fire? It is a working fireplace with a working chimney - once you drag all the blood stained clothing out that is - so it would have been a simple matter to have thrown an item on that raging fire and casually watch as it is consumed by the flames. Why did he not do that? The family are well able to afford good quality coal and logs aplenty, as they are new clothes for their boy.
If there is a lack in this household it will be a lack of emotion rather than a material lack.
My mind is drawn to the last case of horrible murder connected to this young man, and how a raging fire was supposedly set in the fireplace of the victim and - it is thought - clothing was thrown on that fire to fan its flames and perhaps desires.
But it was not his clothing, it was that of his victim.
I would say that what goes on here is that we now look at the boy’s ‘uniform’ - so to speak - which he puts on specially when he go outs hunting; for the cut of the cloth is decidedly rude and not the admirable quality cloth the lad wears during the day. Why! The dear boy wears a top hat and tails these days and looks very much the young gentleman. Yes, this is his working gear, and what I see, are in fact the many stains of many of his victims, so just like the tailor’s dummy, we have a patchwork of different materials here that the lad has dramatically weaved into his cloth, and again just like the patchwork cloth on the tailor’s dummy it has some kind of magical significance for him, a ‘Ju-Ju’ if you like. So we have the symbolism of his victims as pieces of cut cloth on clear display on the dummy, but then the very real symbolic article - to wit the blood of his victims - stashed and hidden up the chimney…
Ah it is a game the lad plays, don’t you see? There is very real pride in the collection of cut cloth, it is much like a stamp collection or similar, the boy takes a great deal of pride and pleasure in his collection of cloth snatched from the very most intimate regions of his victims, but the collection method and process sometimes results in what we might call ’unfortunate little accidents’, and in this the boy appears to have no pride or pleasure. It appears much like a necessary evil, as when one has to kill a beautiful butterfly before it can mounted and displayed.
Yes, he throws these old clothes on and goes out at night with his large net and casts about for new additions to his collection, and the sharp knife he carries slices as easily through cloth as it does flesh, and sometimes the butterfly needs to be killed before the boy can remove the wings.
But this does not explain the motive or reasoning behind his collecting habits, to this end we must turn our attention to the medical books, his letters and drawings, and as I said earlier the ticklish question of youth in our modern Victorian society.
I will take a drink from my hip flask before embarking on that dangerous voyage.
|
Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 2090
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, February 12, 2004 - 4:10 pm: |
|
I enjoyed that AP. We seem to be in the area of collecting things - names in directories, palm prints, strips of cloth and bloodstains on clothes. I'm wondering if the mental deterioration between court appearances was due to the realisation that the police clue gatherers were not going to return his collections to him.
Robert |
AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 841
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, February 12, 2004 - 5:03 pm: |
|
I never thought of that good point Robert, so I must as a matter of urgency.
PLAYTIME was provoking and thoughtful, maybe the lack of orchards in Whitechapel during the LVP was responsible for young men slashing apart whores instead? Only joshing.
I did enjoy the little romp over the walls, and it put me in mind again of a personal experience whilst aged twelve and scrumping apples, the owner of the property came out and chased us off and as I went over the wall, in my fear I squeezed the grass snake I always carried in my hand far too tight and it bit me badly, but I couldn't let go of it, although it was hurting me it was far too precious to fling away just because I was frightened by the big bad policeman of the orchards who was trying to catch me... if you can.
There is something entirely childish about Jack, isn't there? |
Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 2092
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, February 12, 2004 - 5:32 pm: |
|
Yes, AP, I'm coming more and more to that conclusion, largely as a result of reflecting on what you've said on the matter.
Take Kelly's face. I don't think he just hacked and slashed at it. I think it started out more like the Eddowes business - some sort of design which he then altered or cancelled in order to do another - and like a child who only has one piece of paper to work on, the thing ended up an unimaginable mess. As you said when talking of his high desk, he could very well have been doodling.
Robert |
AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 844
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, February 13, 2004 - 2:25 pm: |
|
Jack’s Room (5)
The sigh I let out causes me to shudder, for I know that I now have the very difficult task of attributing motive to the motiveless, I have to give a child reasoning and power of attorney to his aimless and reckless behaviour, I have to say why and what for…
And I don’t want to. It would be far simpler to slip gently of this much too high clerk’s chair and go back to the Ten Bells and get absolutely drunk on a sloe tide of gin, and leave all this for the likes of those who would write the newspaper headlines and would have this young man as a cunning predator who takes advantage of the most vulnerable in our society. If I could I would pick up buckets of blood and sling them around the room, I would take his medical books and rip the pages out and sling them out of the window, I would take his bloody dummy and shove it up the chimney and then dance around the room on the pages of his despair… and then exit stage right with a fine song and take my poison down at the Ten Bells in good company, the company of some fine whores who would sit on my lap and tell me what a good looking chap I was and how four pence could make me smile for the rest of the night, and the tide of sloe gin would become a flood…
But that is the easy way out, and I did not climb these stairs - down which many have fallen - to find an easy way out, I came up here to deal with blood and murder, the cut and thrust of vicious death, I did not come up here to make calming and soothing noises that would keep the herd happily munching on their hay, I came up these bloody stairs to cut society up and bring their Jack to their own reckoning, so that the dear boy can slit the entire throat of that bloody society in one great and foul sweep… you see, I told you, I drink too much and cannot bear the task in front of me. Damn this quest, damn this boy, damn me and damn you!
I throw the desk to the floor and watch as the papers and books cascade across the floor, and take to my hip flask.
I suppose one is driven to the awful conclusion that this young man called Jack is symptomatic of society in general: and that he encapsulates the restricted opportunities that we as a developing society offer him to explore and exploit the natural avenues of his natural sexuality and ’self’.
For our modern Victorian society has become so restrictive in this regard that in such a narrow tube of virtual reality only a very small part of the whole is able to be squeezed through that narrow tube and eventually emerge into society as a few drops of heavy poison that then infects that entire damn society like some uncontrollable bug or virus.
You see we teach our impressionable and vulnerable children that sex and the very sexual parts of out natural biological make-up are dirty, sinful and downright obscene; the little lambs are taught nothing of our true sexual nature and are left to develop their own sexuality in a curious vacuum, like little isolated grubs where strange and totally bizarre ideas are encouraged to breed and develop, eventually hatching as little monsters just like the one we study now.
What then happens to such a young soul, cast out in a bitter wilderness of sin and attrition, when he discovers that women bleed?
I mean as part of their normal and natural menstrual cycle?
Oh, now I think I have it, despite the clouds of alcohol, I have reached the same point as the young man.
It is about blood.
|
Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 2094
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Friday, February 13, 2004 - 7:27 pm: |
|
Tremendous piece, AP.I'm looking forward to the next development.
Didn't Ruskin find out something biological about his wife, and disowned her - even though she was perfectly normal?
Loved the aside about the stairs.
Robert |
AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 846
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, February 14, 2004 - 5:16 am: |
|
Jack’s Room (6)
To tidy my mind I tidy the room, as it wouldn’t do to have Jack come back to his little empire and find things amiss. The blood-stained clothing go back up the chimney, there you go Jack, your secret is safe with me. I stand the desk upright and pick the papers and books off the floor and carefully return them to their rightful place, the illustrations showing the human body in all its separate elements are of abiding interest, one is able to lay the thin tracer sheets one atop the other until one builds up a complete human form, or alternately one is able to remove the various components, bit by bit, here goes the skin and all the external organs like ears and eyes, here goes the blood vessels, veins etc. here goes the heart, liver and kidneys, here goes all the reproductive elements, away with them, keep turning and keep throwing away, pages flicking faster and faster, ah here we go, down to the bone and the end, then rebuild it as quick as we can, pages flicking faster so that the images run into one, just like one of those cheap penny comic books where the character is animated by the speed of the turning pages, and then back again, back to the bone…
Oh, I fear I am carried away and must stop myself.
I sit atop the desk with my legs dangling in space and take a good swig from my hip flask.
Now then, did it happen thus? Did young Jack have his young eye clapped to a keyhole that he shouldn’t have? Did he glimpse something that laid the grub that became the worm in the bud?
Or did he perhaps find some intimate item associated with his mother - or aunt - that he was unable to understand and therefore was unable to place into the general scheme of things. Little crucial happenings in the grey clouds of his young mind. Little nit picking things that grew and grew in his young mind until they blotted out the sun and consumed him with abject horror and revulsion, so that he could no longer look at his mother or any other woman without seeing that rudely used and blood-ridden intimate object of such sinful proportion and magnitude that it could never be mentioned or referred to by even the medical profession.
No, the whole thing is so barbaric and primitive, that we dare not contemplate its discussion, even in our modern Victorian society. We take a perfectly natural cycle of reproductive events and then banish it to the red tent along with the barbaric and primitive creatures that inflict this disgusting animalistic ritual of blood letting upon us.
But we are clever are we not? Man is able to study such a cycle of natural events and then by dragging the stars down from the night sky is able to influence and change such natural cycles, he is able to cauterise that gaping bleeding wound with a hot knife, by slicing out the offending items man is able to stem the flow of blood forever and the primitive creature is then whole again.
Well, why not? It is still the custom in many primitive tribes to actually remove parts of the woman to deny her any pleasure in her indulgence of the unspeakable, she is merely a receptacle for the pleasure of man, more than that in one great culture today women are only allowed to be seen in public before the onset of puberty, once they pass that threshold of blood letting then they are confined for the rest of their lives, either behind walls or behind thick black robes, masks and veils as powerful symbols of their barbarism.
To stop the flow you turn off the tap.
Could it be as simple as that? Could a seed planted in an impressionable child’s head bear such a sinister and deadly crop?
I take more liquid comfort from my small flask. Damn! The bloody thing is empty now.
But is it not so that the timing of the young man’s little adventures out on the dark streets of Whitchapel do carry some resemblance to another great cycle of perfectly natural events, to wit the waxing and waning of the moon? Is it possible that we see a connection between two natural cycles moving in a curious and deadly harmony?
Could it be that when one bled at home then one bled on the street?
Ah, I hear footsteps on the stairs. Jack comes.
This will be a pleasure for me as we have yet to be formally introduced and I do like to personally meet with my clients.
|
Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 2097
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, February 14, 2004 - 7:24 am: |
|
Interesting as always, AP. But with Jack in the offing, take care not to descend the stairs too quickly.
You lost me a bit with the moon cycle.
Robert |
AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 847
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, February 14, 2004 - 10:10 am: |
|
Thanks Robert
rest assured it is my aim to put Jack down those stairs myself, not without a tussle I'm sure.
Sorry about the moon cycle business, I fear I was floundering about a bit at that point and for that reason perhaps wasn't lucid enough.
I was actually pondering whether a woman's cycle was a refelction in itself of the cycle of the celestial bodies - a bold leap I admit but my understanding of such natural events and cycles is that it is entirely possible as the cycles of women are easily influenced by the events surrounding them, such as having another woman in the house etc, then the two cycles do harmonise. This in turn was pulling me towards a situation where when a cycle was in full swing and flow within the household then this could have been a contributory factor in the person leaving the household and shedding blood on the street, perhaps when the phase of the moon was reflecting the cycle of the women in the household.
Uh? I'm no clearer myself. Just my sometimes wild and always fertile imagination I suppose. |
AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 848
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, February 14, 2004 - 1:20 pm: |
|
Jack’s Room (7)
The young man came in the door so quickly that he didn’t have time to look around the room but spun on the spot and with his back to me pushed the door closed quickly with his hands, and then he let out a long and satisfying sigh as if it had vexed him to have been away from his inner sanctum for so long.
He was of average height and build, smartly dressed in a herringbone suit and carried a small cap in one hand, even standing quite still one could see that he favoured the right leg over the left.
‘Hello Jack!’ I called out cheerfully, causing the young man to swerve suddenly about to face me where I sat swinging my legs idly upon his desk.
He was not what I would describe as a handsome man, he could have been I suppose had circumstances treated him better during his youth, for his face could have been comely if it was not so damn grim in its obvious nature. I suppose that although the beatings he had taken as a child had disappeared from his face, the scars on his fragile psyche would be there forever, and such things cannot be hidden by the contours and features of our worldly visage. They shine through I’m afraid. If his face had an obvious fault then I would say that he was bug-eyed, but whether that was his normal appearance or had been brought out by the shock of discovering a complete and utter stranger in his private empire I couldn’t say.
‘What…’ the word was almost a cough and had exhausted itself as it left his mouth.
‘You don’t have a decent whisky on the premises, do you, Jack old boy?’ I asked, waving my empty hip flask at him.
The shock was complete, he stared at me as if he honestly believed that I might be a ghost or some such phantom of the night.
Despite his obvious lameness in the one leg he moved with incredible speed and agility and was by the fire place and had his head stuck up the chimney in the time it took me to lift a hand to defend myself as I had mistaken his sudden movement as an attack upon my good self.
‘They are still there, Jack,’ I assured him, it is always important to use a client’s first name in such circumstances as it does induce a tenuous bond.
He pulled his head out of the chimney, darted across the floor and right in front of me began scrabbling his thrown away papers together, stuffing them into the pockets of his herringbone jacket.
‘I’ve read them all, Jack,’ I told him. ‘You neither write or draw well, young man, when you are with us I shall make it my earnest task to improve your skills in this department.’
He stopped and looked up at me.
‘What…’ he coughed out again.
‘What about my whisky, do you mean, Jack?’ I asked waving the empty flask at him again. ‘Be a good boy now and go downstairs and fetch your new friend a bottle of fine whisky and then we can have a little chat, just me and you, boy.’
He bolted out of the door so quickly that I honestly feared that I had lost him forever, but just as quickly he bolted back in, slamming the door shut with his good leg for he carried a fine bottle of whisky in one hand and a cut glass tumbler in the other. Standing before me he poured a good shot of whisky into the tumbler and handed it to me.
‘Thank you, Jack,’ I told him and then asked. ‘And what about you, are you not going to join me.’
‘I don’t drink,’ he replied sullenly.
‘What you meant to say, Jack, is: ‘I don’t drink, sir.’ ,‘ I admonished him. ‘As you can see, Jack, by the cut of my cloth, I am a gentleman and of older years than yourself so when you address me I expect you to do so with the respect I deserve.’
‘I don’t drink, sir,’ he said sullenly again.
‘Good boy!’ I chortled. ‘So we are able to dilute this whisky driven idea of alcohol influencing your dread deeds with some sensible water taken from the stream of common sense then?’
‘I don’t understand,’ he replied and then added a sullen ‘sir’.
‘Oh you will, Jack, you will,’ I assured him and enjoyed my whisky for a while as he stared at me in a manner which I can only describe as ‘agog‘.
I savoured the moment as I always do when meeting a client for the first time. Yes, I do believe me and Jack are going to get along just fine.
|
Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 2099
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, February 14, 2004 - 5:53 pm: |
|
Brilliant stuff, AP. I liked the way he almost immediately checked the chimney, and then rescued his papers.
It will be interesting to see how this 'client' thing pans out. At least I feel confident that the narrator isn't a religious evangelist - other than this, I have no idea what he is.
Robert |
AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 851
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, February 15, 2004 - 10:18 am: |
|
Thanks Robert
I too am interested to see how this 'client' thing goes along, it never ceases to amaze me how these characters are able to walk right into the middle of a story and hijack the entire proceedings without the knowledge of the writer.
To be honest with you, I don't know who the devil this fellow is myself. |
AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 852
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, February 15, 2004 - 10:23 am: |
|
Jack’s Room (8)
He grows more comfortable with me by the second and I can tell that my presence here intrigues him.
‘Are you a friend of my uncle, sir?’ he asks as he checks the materials and books on his desk, as I have transferred myself to the single easy chair in the room.
‘Hah!’ I laugh out loud. ‘Your dear uncle has few friends, Jack, and I am glad to report that I am not among them. No, Jack, I am but a passing stranger with a great deal of curiosity, and just like you, Jack, I enjoy collecting things, strange things.’
He takes a pen and begins to construct something on paper, his head pressed down so low over the task that I fear he will smudge the ink with his nose. He does so, and when he looks up I see he has a red nose.
It is a welcome touch of comedy in an otherwise bleak landscape.
‘What do you do there, Jack?’ I enquire.
‘Tis a private matter… sir,’ he replies.
‘Ah, quite right, Jack,’ I tell him. ‘You must never share your work with anyone, eh Jack? But, my dear boy, you will post the letter will you not? And then surely someone will read it and then you will have shared your work with a total stranger?’
He slowly puts the pen back into the ink pot, picks up his note and reads to me:
‘Dear Sir, I write you in concern of my uncle who is headachey accounting for the water that is in the supply of Catholic scum who poison parliament with Papist treachery and plot. For that reason I enclose half a kidney which I took from a whore and fried other half with some fine port and it taste jolly well. I might send you the knife which used to do the job. Signed Catch Me If You Can.’
‘Very good, Jack!’ I cry and give him a little applause with my hands. ‘Now who is that little gem of a letter intended for?’
‘The Prime Minister, sir,’ Jack proudly announces.
‘Splendid!’ I cry. ‘And do you have half a kidney about the premises, young Jack?’
He slides slowly of the stool but as soon as his feet touch the floor it is as if the boy has sprouted wheels and flies from one end of the room to the other in a positive blur, and then he is stood in front of me, shyly holding a small pickling jar out to me. His movements around the room had been so speedy that I couldn’t say from where he had obtained the jar.
Taking the jar I examine the contents, yes, it is indeed half a kidney, probably human in origin, neatly sliced through the middle. I hand it back.
‘And you had the other half of the kidney for dinner, did you Jack?’ I ask.
‘No sir, it was for lunch, sir,’ he replies.
I laugh out aloud but Jack does not see the funny side of our conversation, but this is very common to killers of the nature of Jack, for they take their work very seriously indeed and the idea of eating half a human kidney for either lunch or dinner is no laughing matter for that would degrade and dilute the spirit and soul of their work. They like to be taken seriously and this is a great weakness with them, it is their Achilles heel so to speak, and I have often used this weapon against them.
‘Would you like me to buy you a new mirror, Jack?’ I ask. ‘That one is sorely pressed to reflect a true image.’
He sits at his desk, holding his jar and sullenly shakes his head.
‘But with a new mirror you would be able to see yourself,’ I point out and then ask: ‘Do you not like to see yourself, Jack? If you had a decent mirror you would be able to see that you have red ink all over your nose.’
The boy moved quickly to the damaged mirror and prised a small piece of the fractured glass away from its backing and then simply slit one of his wrists with the jagged edge. Moving back to his desk he allowed the free flowing blood to drip into the ink pot.
I took the hanky from my pocket and slowly approached him. Taking his hand I poured the remains of my whisky from the tumbler onto the wound, luckily it was a small cut, and then tied the hanky firmly around his wrist to stem the flow of the blood while he stared at my face from beneath a fop of hair.
‘Red blood on my nose,’ he hissed. ‘Not red ink.’
‘Quite right, Jack, quite right,’ I assured him. ‘We must pay attention to detail here and not allow such discrepancies to occur.’
I noted that there many such similar old wounds all over his hands and forearm and adjudged that most had been caused by the lad himself in some sort of peculiar self-harm ritual. Interesting, that he uses the fractured images contained in the mirror as weapons against himself. One does wonder whether he might use the sharp pieces of glass to actually harm others, one could easily slit a throat and gut someone with such a small and unusual weapon that could be easily concealed in the hand itself. As it is my habit to occasionally take a drink with the medical profession, that being one of my own departments so to speak, I do think it is safe to say that even such highly trained observers of the human condition would be hard pressed to actually testify accurately to the nature of a weapon - especially such a weapon as a small piece of glass which has no preformed duty or shape - when used to slice an innocent up. As I said, interesting, but I must spend some time dwelling on the self harm aspects of the fractured images contained in the mirror.
‘Jack,’ I say. ’Why don’t you go downstairs and have your mother bandage your wound properly, while I smoke a cigar or two and have a glass of this fine whisky you have kindly allowed me?’
‘Yes, sir,’ he replied and was out of the door like a cat after a rat.
|
Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 2103
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, February 15, 2004 - 2:13 pm: |
|
AP, he seems to defer to authority figures except when they touch on his own sphere, as in the red ink/blood business. He'd be lost without his inner sanctum.
I like the way he said "red blood".
I think I can safely say that the narrator is neither a religious evangelist nor a member of the Temperance Movement.
Robert |
Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 2105
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Monday, February 16, 2004 - 10:05 am: |
|
ATOM BOMB
His first coming was also his last
But still that poison leaks from the past
Fouling the food, infecting the wells
Corrupting the growing infant cells
For in that fiery fission
A million saw their mission
The dust cloud raises monstrous head
And stains the night sky bloody red
As if the moon was stabbed and bled
No fatman he, just tiny Jack
Who housed what we can ne'er put back
To close the ever open door
And cleanse those walls and bed and floor
A ripping crime
A rip in time
And a thousand million hills to climb
Robert |
AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 853
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, February 16, 2004 - 1:00 pm: |
|
What a belter, Robert!
Absolutely grand in its scope and design, and fast and furious in its speed and agility, then tinged with the very ethereal quality that the subject of Jack deserves. I am deeply envious, sir, and must apply myself to something of a similar nature. Your solitary reader is in awe!
Regarding Jack’s seeming acquiescence to this strange character, I do find this to be fairly realistic, particularly in regard to men who kill, that when things are suddenly presented to them in a normal context within their otherwise abnormal existence they do react positively to such unusual circumstance. For instance I have always felt that if one of the women murdered by the entirely childishly insane Richard Chase had - instead of reacting with shock, horror and fear - instead calmly asked him if he would rather have tea or coffee, then Chase would have probably put away his guns and knifes, sat down and waited for his cup of tea, and then politely gone on his way, to murder someone else no doubt. I do have some personal experience in this regard and there is no doubt that criminals in general are troubled by such personal overture, as in the case of the serial rapist who burst into the bedroom of a nurse with the full intention of raping that nurse, to end up crying on her shoulder as the nurse was clever enough to turn the talk to motherhood, children and family. As you probably know very well, Robert, a simple cup of tea can change the world.
|
AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 854
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, February 16, 2004 - 1:57 pm: |
|
Jack’s Room (9)
It is basically the same effect as when I peer closely at the cut glass tumbler that I hold in my hand, I see reflected back dozens of minor images, none of which reflect the whole but instead fractured pieces of that whole, there is much distortion too of those fractured images for if one moves backwards and forwards the image rapidly distorts and becomes almost comical… to me. I suppose others might find the effect sinister.
Interesting, but not quite as interesting as the amber liquid in the glass which I drain with a great deal of satisfaction.
If the child is afraid of his entire image then perhaps it is because his personality is in itself fractured by the traumatic events of his childhood, and he is unwilling to test the strength of his entirety by confronting it in the mirror. If you like, within the fractured images he sees in the fractured mirror, he becomes invisible, and hence no-one is able to find or discover him, and then harm him. I see the child as imagining himself to be invisible, and who knows, perhaps he is.
Over the course of years he has accepted the fractured image as the norm, and by dint of studying his illustrated medical books in great detail - and here I do mean for hour after hour on a daily basis until his eyes weep in the gloom of a single candle - he has learnt to look at all living things as the sum of their various organs - just as even very famous surgeons do after many long years spent in surgery when they are quite able to remove and slice organs in a totally cavalier fashion as they have become immune to the taboos of such things - he doesn’t see a whole person, he sees bits and pieces that are able to be assembled and disassembled at will by flicking through the pages…
Ah, I hear his tread on the stairs. But what is this? I must be on my guard for I hear two sets of boots on the stairs.
The door flies open and Jack comes in, quickly followed by a very large and bearded man of quite alarming and dangerous appearance. He is in fact a formidable looking chap with black eyes that are desperately mad as they dart hither and thither until they rest on me and I see the deadly explosion of anger and venom deep within those dark mad eyes.
‘What the devil do you think you’re playing at?!’ demands the apoplectic fellow in a roar whilst wildly scrabbling about beneath his jacket as he reached for something.
‘Good evening, Charlie boy!’ I gaily reply. ‘How nice to meet you again. Surely you have not forgotten our last meeting?’
‘The devil I do, sir!’ he screamed and I found myself staring straight down the business end of an ugly looking service pistol.
This fellow would shoot me down like a dog in a second.
I knew that much.
‘But surely you must remember, sir?’ I pointed out. ‘October of last year? For it was my great pleasure to shake your hand on that night and offer you my earnest and honest congratulations in receiving the absolutely splendid gift of fifty gold sovereigns for your zeal as the Honourable Secretary of the Metropolitan Police Inspector’s Fund.’
‘You were there on that night?’ he asked, lowering the gun to the floor.
‘There, sir!’ I cried. ’Why I served on the damned committee that voted for your award, sir, and damn glad I did so too, for you are a fine officer and a credit to the force, Charlie boy!’
‘My dear sir, allow me to apologise most profusely,’ he said as he put the formidable pistol away. ’I fear I did not recognise you, sir, my brain has become somewhat addled over this last year…’
‘Yes, poor Charlie boy, the blow to the head, it cannot have been easy for you,’ I sympathised. ’The ringing in the ears and the constant headaches, and of course the tedium of desk work, all must take their toll.’
He nodded his head wearily. I had him in my net.
‘Now then Charlie boy, I would be most grateful to you sir if you would allow Jack and myself a few more minutes of idle conversation together. I shan’t delay him long, we will be finished by the time supper is on the table.’
The fellow nodded his head wearily again and shuffled out of the room, closing the door listlessly behind him. A changed man.
Jack stared at me from his desk.
‘Well Jack?’ I asked.
‘You said that you were not a friend of my uncle,’ he hissed.
‘Never seen the chap before in my life!’ I laughed out loud and the strangest thing happened. In a high pitched and almost girlish voice, Jack started laughing also.
I allowed him time to exercise his humour and then asked.
‘What is so funny, Jack, to cause you to laugh so?’
He banged open the top of his desk and withdrew a smart bag and held it up for me to see. I wandered over and held my hand out.
‘May I look, Jack?’ I asked.
He nodded so I took the smart bag and studied it. There was a fine inscription upon it and I read it out aloud:
‘Presented, with 50 sovereigns, by the members of the Metropolitan Police Inspectors Fund, to Mr. C. H. Cutbush, as a mark of respect and in recognition of his zeal as their hon. Secretary, October 1887.’
I turned the bag out on Jack’s desk and counted the sovereigns therein.
‘There are only 45 sovereigns here Jack, what has become of the others?’ I ask.
‘I spent them,’ he hissed.
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Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 2106
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Monday, February 16, 2004 - 5:49 pm: |
|
Thanks for the comments, AP.
This is super stuff. The dangerous uncle Charles was despatched with ease.
I feel you're right about the fractured image - a way of forestalling harm and rejection. One would expect this to possibly be accompanied by a certain theatrical role-playing tendency and a certain amount of game-playing.
Robert |
AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 856
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 17, 2004 - 11:16 am: |
|
The Ripposaur’s Progress
The Ripposaur is a most peculiar beast
Who wants the most but never the least.
He idles all day with vague thoughts in his head
Until with huge fart blows himself out of the bed.
Once upon his feet he covers plenty of ground
Sniffing in bins where theories might be found.
He enjoys talk shows where he likes to play host
But a walk around Whitechapel he enjoys the most.
In front of adoring crowd he both preens and chatters
With pearls of neat wisdom that he kindly scatters.
He likes pies, jellied eels and large slices of cake
And a fine soap box from which he can pontificate.
He’s aged about fifty, married but has left his wife
For the pursuit of obscure knowledge and a nobler life.
He is in great awe of academia and all manner of proof
And when approached can at first be highly aloof
But just pour a bucket of gin into his trough
And then the fine fellow will never stop.
They are generally solitary but can form pairs
And then hold hands as they go up the stairs.
Their hobby over the years becomes an addiction
And at that time they can confuse fact with fiction,
Any old thing really will do, as long as it will sell
‘Pack of lies!’ cries the critics. ‘But didn’t he do well!’
In their twilight years they take their tea in bed
And may dribble soup when they are spoon-fed.
But have a heart for that poor old beast in later year
For the ancient Ripposaur does have an abiding fear
That simple truth will out
Just as that first clout
Drowns out his shout
Forever more.
Poor old Ripposaur.
|
Natalie Severn
Inspector
Username: Severn
Post Number: 284
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 17, 2004 - 1:25 pm: |
|
Hi AP I have been on my own hobby horse these past few day so havent quite caught up with the poetry thread and Jack"s Room-but will later.
Sounds as though becoming a Ripposaur needs to carry a govt. health warning as well as anti acidity and anti flatulance prescriptions.In fact this trapped wind situation seems to become a troublesome accompaniment to any serious ripperising by the sound of it.I wait therefore in great trepidation uncertain now wether I would really want to invite such hassle for myself.
A hilarious piece of writing AP---I had such a laugh over it.
Best Natalie |
Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 2109
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 17, 2004 - 2:19 pm: |
|
Bravo AP. Another great character of your invention.
I can only give the following feeble reply :
Ripposaur viewed his forest with frown
All the trees had been chopped down
For making of paper
And lucrative caper
Of books to be sold in the town
Ripposaur gazed at his swamp with a groan
Every inch drained dry as a bone
For dousing of heat
When the Ripperfolk meet
Requires two million gallons alone
Ripposaur glared at the fire in the sky
Saw the great comet and spat in its eye
Gave mighty fart
And blew it apart
"Not three in a row!" was the cry.
Robert |
AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 857
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 17, 2004 - 3:19 pm: |
|
Oh Robert, I nearly burst a blood vessel when I read that, I was in absolute stitches with laughter, and as ever a little envious of your remarkable talent to respond to a sudden challenge in such spectacular fashion.
That was in no way or form 'feeble'.
It was the best hoot I've had in a long while.
Once more I take me hat off to you, sir. |
Natalie Severn
Inspector
Username: Severn
Post Number: 286
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 17, 2004 - 3:33 pm: |
|
.Hi Robert,This one also had me falling about-I couldnt stop laughing especially because he seems such a serious fellow!I have finished the painting we talked about and if you like it you can have it in due course.
Best Natalie
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