Varney versus Spring-heel Jack 17: June 1888.
Posted by varneyjack on July 4, 2008
Seventeen: June 1888.
With a satisfied and salacious smack of the lips, Sir Francis Varney stepped back from the now drained whore. The force of him pressing against her was all that had been keeping her upright, and not that he stood apart, she slipped down the wall, landing in a crumpled heap. Her skirts and petticoats arrayed around her thighs, her legs bent at the knee at an unnatural angle, and her head slumped down onto her chest.
Sir Francis stepped forward and lifted her head, delicately taking her chin between his thumb and forefinger. Her lifeless eyes were wide and staring, her rouged cheeks like those of a doll now that only pallor lay beneath. Her mouth was formed into a moue of surprise that contrasted sickly with the violent red slash of a smile where her throat had once been. In his desire to feed, this had been no delicate manoeuvre; the precision of a surgeon had been lost to the animal lust for food.
He sighed. She had been pretty. But still a whore. Still common. Part of the herd. For that was surely what the mass of humanity did constitute: a herd that was there purely for fodder.
He sniffed the air. There was a scent that was less than pleasing. Looking down, he could see that the woman had voided both bladder and bowel in the midst of death. The liquid ran around his feet, forming runnels over the cobbles.
He sniffed again: this time in a gesture of disdain. ‘Tis a pity she was a whore. Such beauty, in more noble surroundings, may have been worth saving. Cultivating. Infecting rather than destroying. There had been those who he had chosen to save in such a way. Whether it be for the use they may serve, or purely for his pleasure. But class would always tell. A lady would not soil herself in such a manner.
Darkness clouded his brow. There had been one who had been worth saving, and who had got away. He had wondered what had happened to her. The fool who had been with her – ah, now there was a conundrum. He could prove troublesome if ever their paths should cross once more.
But now was not the time to ponder on such matters. She may have been a gaudily dressed slattern of dubious morality, but her blood had been sufficient to slake the thirst. He felt her life flow through him, and his strength and vigour become renewed. Now he could hunt in earnest.
Sir Francis Varney, the kindly – if ugly – man who had seemed to be such an easy mark, let fall the head of the whore who had hoped for so much. It slumped back onto her chest. He stepped back once more, tutting to himself in a mildly irritated manner as he wiped her waste from his shoes and onto a drier area of cobbled alley.
A quick check in either direction to see if he was unobserved – not that it mattered now he felt strong again – and he strode off, away from the Piccadilly end of the narrow alley, and out into another busy thoroughfare. A spring in his step at the expectation of a night’s activity, moving amongst a populace unaware of the evil in its midst.
