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Anthony Boydell
United Kingdom
Unspecified
Unspecified
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London, 1888 - just after tea-time. Four stout Peelers, suits smartly-pressed, drag along a stuffed shop dummy disguised as a fifth - their purpose? To catch the Carl the Ripper!
The Smiling Face of Pure Evil!
P.C. Clyne (be-bearded train-game enthusiast, possessor of an analytic mind and an enthusiastic contrarian*) ambles sternly through Whitechapel, ever watchful for rum goings-on...
Officer Fong (seconded from the Orient; fiercely-competitive and prone to self-flagellation), his truncheon gripped firmly in-hand**, patrols the Gin Joints and Opium Dens in search of inappropriate behaviour...
Sergeant Boydell (wise-cracking apprehender of ne'er-do-wells and feeler of collars***) 'polishes his whistle' in the fizzing orange light of a sodium lamp before setting off to prevent malpractice and naughtiness...
And finally, Community Police Constable Blaine, serving Her Majesty on a temporary 'work experience' basis, escapes the respiratorially-fatal world of the chimney sweep to assist the boys in blue by sticking parking tickets on mis-tethered horses...
None of these upholders of the Law had any idea that this seemingly-normal, fog-bound, cheerfully-cockney world would be turned upside down over the next few evenings!
The First Night:
A wretched, fallen woman screams; the night cloaks the horror of her demise and her assailant flees. The policemen wander about in casual disarray, unable to find their custodial backsides with a map and both hands. Through a complex series of forensic examinations, interviews with 'the locals' and logical deduction, we determine that a) she's dead and b) the killer lives somewhere on the Board.
The Second Night
The Ripper taunts us further - another harlot is drawn and quartered in a horrifying diorama of butchered guts - this time at the opposite end of the district! With the urgency of a lobotomized sloth, Her Majesty's Police Force scour the area for clues, tracking the fiend away from the scene of his grisly crime. During this thorough procedure, Officer Fong asks a man covered from head-to-foot in blood (and muttering "I'll eat the bitch's offal") if he has seen anything unsual. Fong then hails a Hansom Cab on this strangers behalf and waves him off into the night!
We still have no idea where he is - though we've narrowed the location of his lair down to 'there, there or (maybe) there'.
The Third Night
May the Lord preserve us and our fragile souls from this hell-spawn! The Ripper strikes again: this time there are two pox-ridden doxies sliced into gore-painted jigsaws! The investigators rush to the scene(s) and spend the next 15 minutes plotting out a variety of escape routes only to find the Ripper has already reached his lair, popped the kettle on and is leafing through "Two Molls, One Tankard" on the steam-powered Internet!
This evening's deductive processes prove particularly barren of information, though we're now fairly sure of the general region of his habitation after a lucky couple of clues. Time to close the net - or time to close the curtains? We're not getting paid overtime for any of this, you know and just LOOK at the time!
Curse you to the Pit, Satan's lapdog!
The Fourth Night
A fifth victim, a new horror - this will be our last chance to apprehend the Devil himself! Throwing the idea of reasoning and logic to the foggy four-winds, the Officers congregate in the area of our suspicion and successfully, and sequentially, track his entry into his home turf! We have him! All exits blocked! All alley's covered! The cowering, pitiful beast is unable to move without being snared - the day (night) is ours!
Unfortunately, Carl the Ripper 'slipped in the showers' back at the Station and will be unable to stand trial on account of having seven bells of sh*t 'slipped' out of him...
...and Officer Fong made pleasing use of his baton before the dastard expired!
Les Pieds
*Oh no he isn't...
**Oh come ON!
***You're just making up your own jokes now, aren't you?
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