Ripper

One of my favourite exercises when I'm not working on a specific project, is to simply write flat out for half an hour on the first topic that comes into my head. The quality and quantity doesn't matter, so long as I write continuously for 30 minutes, without pausing to make corrections or alterations. Once the time is up I stop writing, even if I'm mid way through a sentence. The exercise is best performed longhand with a pen and paper, unless you are a blisteringly fast typist!! A stopwatch or alarm clock is useful too.

Usually it's complete drivel of course, but it gets the grey cells working and acts as a confidence booster when I'm blocked. I don't even bother to read it back to myself. At the end of the exercise the piece goes into a folder never to be looked at again, unless of it's an idea worth developing of course - which is not very often!

Anyway, here is one such exercise, inspired by the murder in 1888 of Martha Tabram in Whitechapel, London:


He sensed that his opportunity was close at hand. He had followed her from the corner of Goulston Street, keeping a discrete distance, as she weaved her way along the cobbled length of Wentworth Street. Occasionally he caught snatches of a song coming from his prey. "It was only a flower I picked from my Mother's Grave." Quite appropriate.

From her unsteady gait and the way she slurred her words he could tell that she was pretty well pickled. Good. They were always so much more pliable when they were in that state. Less likely to make a fuss or cry out. His heart rate quickened in anticipation and he took a deep breath to calm the jitters.

The woman ahead paused briefly under the glow of a gas lamp and hitched her voluminous skirts. He ducked quickly into a doorway, just in case she turned around. Satisfied that she was presentable, the woman stumbled across to the opposite side of the street and continued on her way. He quickened his pace slightly to narrow the gap between them. There were numerous doorways to yards along this stretch of the street into which she could disappear. He didn't want to lose her at this stage. Not when there was important work to be done. He did so enjoy his work.

The woman stopped again, this time in a doorway and vomited loudly and copiously into a doorway. This time he did not bother to hide. Red Lion Yard was just a few yards further along the street. That would be the ideal spot to do the deed. In a few long strides he crossed the street and stood just a few feet behind her. Her stench was overwhelming, a caustic mix of urine, stale sweat and vomit. He scarcely noticed. They were all like that around here, these "unfortunates". This one was certainly unfortunate. Not for her status as an east end prostitute, but because she was about to make the acquaintance of his special friend.

The woman hoisted her numerous skirts and petticoats and squatted down on the pavement and began to urinate on the pavement, oblivious of the tall, black clad figure standing close behind her. He watched in rapt fascination as the hot jet of liquid squirted from beneath her, glinting silver in the moonlight. How like the blade of a knife it looked. A long thin blade, much like his own.

He cast his gaze over her enormous buttocks, white and wrinkled like fresh dough. He thought to reach out and kneed them, but held back. There would be time enough for that later, once the deed was done. Then he could take the time to explore her mysteries, her crevices.

He waited until she was finished and had straightened her clothing. He noticed that she wore a threadbare green velvet jacket embroidered with pink daisies. He wondered how she had come by it. Items like that usually came from fine couturiers up west, not from the local Yiddish sweatshop tailors. Perhaps this trollop had seen better days herself. Perhaps she had fallen from a better class. He wondered how such an event could have occurred. Perhaps her husband had died, leaving debts. Perhaps he had simply become bored with her. Surely not. No man could possibly become bored with a rump like that as his plaything. He smiled to himself. Her background was of no matter. A whore was a whore. The fact that she might once have had a bit of class just added a delicious piquancy.

He stroked his pencil thin moustache and coughed to get her attention. She turned, staggered, steadying herself on the door jamb.

“Hello dear,” she grinned, revealing three missing teeth in her lower jaw. “What's a fine gentleman like yourself doing creeping up on lady like that?” She cackled like a drain before coughing horsely. Early onset of consumption he thought. At least she would be spared from that ignoble fate.

He grinned coldly, and held out a handful of small coins, wordlessly. Her eyes lit up greedily and she licked her lips, no doubt anticipating a few more hours spent in the gin palaces of Commercial Street.

“Oh I see,” she murmured. She looked about, seeking a place of privacy before lighting on the entrance to Red Lion Yard. “Come on then, we can nip in there.”

He almost laughed aloud as he followed her. Just like a lamb to the slaughter. Quite literally.

It should never have happened.

I recently recovered this snippet of a story from a crashed hard drive. It was originally intended to be the opening chapter of a novel, based on my recollections of the Rock and Heavy Metal scene in the late '80s and early 90's. Most of the novel was plotted out, but this is all I actually wrote. Raking over old memories simply touched one too many raw nerves.

It should never have happened.

She hadn’t even turned sixteen for Christ’s sake. I had just turned twenty. These days you would be locked up as a paedophile. Hell, I could still be locked up as paedophile. I must be mad writing it all down. The judge would view it as a written confession. Open and shut case. Bang! Five years in the clink. Bang! My name on the sexual offenders register for life. Bang! My life ruined, with no chance of restitution.

As if my life wasn’t already ruined. It was destroyed from the moment I met her. Before I touched her. Before I felt her breath on my skin. Before my chapped lips touched her luscious, succulent ones. The moment Ellie Lynch walked into my life I was doomed. Condemned to a life of tortured longing, of forever striving to regain a lost moment of bliss in my life.

We met and fell in love, and for a brief time life was more wonderful than I had ever thought possible. As it happens I fell in love a bit more than she did. But I guess that’s what happens when you fall for a fifteen year old. Oh, she thought she was in love at first. I remember her telling me afterwards that she had thought I was the one. It sounds so ridiculous now. When you’re a teenager every person you get off with seems like they might be the one.

When you are twenty you are supposed to know better. As soon as you pass the magical number of eighteen all immature thoughts and feelings are supposed to end. On your eighteenth birthday you instantly stop being a child and become an adult. There’s no in between stage. Going out with a fifteen year old is not something an adult would do. It’s not being in love. It’s not a serious relationship. These days it’s called being a sexual predator. It’s called grooming a child for sex.

It didn’t seem like that at the time though. When I was twenty I wasn’t an adult. Sure I was at University, living away from home for the first time. Pretending to be all grown up and intellectual. Or more often than not getting pissed, smoking dope and generally dossing about the way proper students did in those days. Yes I was supposed to be an adult, one of the intellectual elite and destined for a life as a high flyer. But I was still a kid. Hanging around with my mates, getting pissed or stoned. Shagging any girl who would have me. This wasn’t as many as I would have liked, despite the fact that I was in a band, and therefore a bona fide rock god and god’s gift to women.

As I said before, it should never have happened. The day we hooked up I was trying to score with her best friend. It was a Saturday, and as usual I was in The Sanguinarium with the guys. The Sanguinarium was a rock bar where all the coolest people on the rock scene would hang out. People like us. We would turn up at 11am, opening time, and nurse the hangovers we’d picked up the night before at the Majestic Rock Club. My head must have been particularly bad, because I couldn’t face beer. Instead I had smuggled a bottle of vodka into the pub, secreted down the side of my cowboy boots. I spent the rest of the day buying orange juice at the bar and mixing sly screwdrivers under the table.

This naturally made me a target for attention from the younger kids. Partly because they thought I was daring, and partly because they could plague me for a shot of vodka. Most of them were underage and didn’t have the bollocks to go to the bar for their own drinks.

This day there were about a dozen of us in the pub. Four or five of us hardened drinkers, who would stay until closing time before heading back to the Majestic, for the Saturday Rock Club. Then there were the younger guys, who were not old enough to drink legally. They would go home for tea about four o’clock. One or two might turn up at the Majestic later, if they had any pocket money left, and they could find a friend whose house they could crash at for the night.

This day we were joined by a few girls who were not part of the usual crowd. That is to say, they were part of the local heavy metal scene, so our circles had crossed a few times, but they weren’t part of my regular clique. Quite honestly, I don’t remember who most of them were apart from Claire Palmer and Ellie of course.

I’d seen Claire at the Majestic a few times. She was sixteen, tall and quite pretty. She had shortish, curly brown hair which wasn’t really my thing, but I was a horny young man, and she was looking well fit in a figure hugging purple velour mini dress. This was the late eighties scene remember, when glam metal was in, and purple velour and gypsy style skirts were standard uniform for rock chicks.

The guys found it funny to refer to Claire as Farmer Palmer, after the character in the Viz. Not very original, but it amused us at the time. I liked Claire. She was bubbly and intelligent and basically a good girl at the time. That all changed a few months later, when she and another girl became groupies, hitched a ride on a tour bus and spent four days on the road with a well known cock rock band. Afterwards she became a bit of a whore and didn’t mix with our crowd much anymore.

Anyway, this day I thought Claire looked hot so I was doing my best to chat her up. Seemed to be working as well I might add, as Claire hung on my every word and laughed at all my sarcastic witticisms. I think she was particularly impressed by the bottle of Smirnoff stuffed down my distressed jeans.

Thinking back, I realise that Ellie was sitting at my right hand side for most of the afternoon. For some reason she just didn’t register on my radar. She was just some girl chatting to one of my mates. I was engrossed in Claire, thinking we would probably end up snuggled up in a quiet corner of the Majestic, snogging and playing fingerpie. Hell, I might even be able to persuade her to come back to my student digs for a night of lurve.

Sensing victory was near, I decided to get us a couple of glasses of Jack Daniels. Nothing impresses a rock chick more than a guy who plays in a band and drinks JD. Except maybe a guy who plays in a band, drinks JD and rides a Harley. I didn’t ride a Harley, but today that didn’t seem to be holding me back. I lurched off towards the bar, and that’s when everything changed.

And that is sadly where it ends for now. It's a story I'd like to tell one day, but for the moment the time is not right.