Snippets

Jack the Ripper leaned back in his chair and retreated into his mind against the ramblings of Springheel Jack, who was regaling him with the tale of scaring some poor maid or other to death, and his dastardly escape from the police.

'The poor thing made this brilliantly contorted face, and then promptly died of fright - I wish you'd been there. I'm sure it's the kind of thing you appreciate. After all, you kill them hookers for the look-in-the-eye don't you?' Springheel prompted.

'I have other things on my mind' Ripper replied, 'Its been a good few months now and we haven't heard a peep from Jack the Axe.' Sighing heavily, as though the weight of the world was on his shoulders, Ripper puffed on his cigar and took a sip of whiskey. There was trouble afoot; in the many centuries of their little game, not once had there been such a long period without communication. And the nerves were beginning to fray.

The game went something like this. Many centuries ago (even the three aren't sure exactly how many) three immortals had met and fallen in together. It came to pass that every so often they would re-invent themselves, and take on a new 'role' as they liked to think of it, a new guise to keep up with the times. At present, the agreement had them as serial killers or general havoc wreakers. They wanted to spark a chain of urban legend, as a bit of a joke, and to see how long it lasted. To make the whole scenario even funnier, they had agreed to all include "jack" in their press name.

So it was that Jack the Ripper and Springheel Jack had begun with gusto, planning different and interesting ways to immortalise themselves (in popular culture - remember they are already immortal physically), and started killing and scaring and generally invoking terror at the mention of their names. Unfortunately not all had gone according to the plan, and Jack the Axe (who had taken certain pleasure at the idea of being an axe murderer) was nowhere to be found. He had simply disappeared.

And so Ripper, burdened with leadership of the little band, found himself wishing that he had properly died all the way back when he was Julius Caesar and the other two buggers had conspired ("All in good fun, eh?") to kill him. It is worth mentioning that they were not actually a bad group. Certainly, there was a certain amount of blood on their hands, but that didn't mean that they were "evil". In fact, they had come out of a stint of humanitarian work, running soup kitchens for the poor, and competing to see who made the best soup.

All that aside, Ripper was nervous and, although he tried not to show it, actually quite worried about their missing comrade.

Springheel was as mad as usual, 'I really don't see why they think they will ever catch me, I just spring off like a jack-in-the-box and over the rooftops... gone!' He giggled at his little joke, but Ripper didn't seem to notice. Huffily, Springheel mumbled 'I'm going to bed', and he shuffled off without the usual bounce in his step.