Tales of Jack the Ripper by Ramsey Campbell, Joe R. Lansdale, Walter Greatshell, Laird Barron, E. Catherine Tobler, Ed Kurtz, Mercedes M. Yardley, Stanley C. Sargent, Joseph S. Pulver Sr.

Bound to herself. Bound in starlight and shadow.
    She sees you but doesn’t respond. Doesn’t shy, or shrink. Doesn’t blink. You watch the pupils in her eyes diminish in the lamplight.
    “Mary,” you say.
    Her head lifts on its slight, perfect frame. Like a dog’s head will lift when you call its name.
    “Hello, Mary.”
    Cow-round eyes, blank as tinted windows stare up at you.
    You hold the lamp up and smile at her. Your most rakish smile. Women have always loved that smile; it is both sensual and disarming. You know. You have spent years studying it, practicing it, in mirrors.
    You turn away from Mary. Turn a circle on your heel. An almost perfect pirouette. You have reconstructed the original crime scene as closely, as accurately, as necessary. The floor is the same oak it was a hundred or so years ago. Cut-in with shoddy patches, some of them pressboard. The walls are covered in soundproofing. But there are tables. Three of them. Small, wooden tables. A chair that’s never been sat in. The bed in the far back corner. And the fireplace.
    “Are you cold, Mary?” you ask cheerily.
    “Ye… ye… yesss.”
    “Let’s have a fire then, shall we?”
    The fire is for light. Mary will be a cold, bloodless assortment of meat in a few hours. You wouldn’t waste warmth on her even if that wasn’t so.
    In the fireplace there are two cured logs and an old copper kettle. You take a yellow bottle of Ronsonol lighter fluid out of your coat pocket. A box of matches. Shrug out of your coat. Throw it on top of the logs and the kettle. Soak it with the bottle of Ronsonol. Throw the empty bottle in. Strike the match on the brick hearth.
    Flick.
    The room ignites.
    Mary screams.
    For one brief moment, you and Mary are standing on the sun. Consumed. The smell of the coat, the lighter fluid, the burning plastic… it’s sharp, nauseating.
    You laugh.
    Mary screams. And screams and screams.
     
    You have her on the bed, one hand crimped over her face so hard you can feel her teeth through the skin of her lips. The other hand is on your knife.
    The blade.
    The blade has become all.
    The focal point. Not just of your life, her life, but all life.
    You draw the edge of the blade across her throat. It’s not a slow movement. Not quick. There’s pressure. Even. Precision. The smile of death must be perfect.
    The struggle has become sex. Penetration, penetration. The last shudder of life, orgasm.
    The blood comes. Hot. In spurts. In floods that fill all the fleshy hollows. Thick liquid emptying in every possible way. Life. Leaving. Emptying. Emptying. Emptying.
    You lean down on her. Put your face to hers. Shadows and firelight cavort, caper, dance to the irregular music of her suffering. You want to see it. The blankness of abuse in her eyes becomes the dullness, the stillness, the nothingness of a passage that is transpiring. It’s hard to see by the light of the fire, but it doesn’t deter you. You must watch. The emptying, emptying, emptying.
    Right now, two miles away in Pimlico Heights, a gang of teens are chasing a fourteen-year-old Bangladeshi boy down with wide kitchen knives. Legs pumping. Lungs burning. Hate fueling. Fear swelling: a thunderhead of dying hope. The boy trips. The gang falls on him. Blades go in. One. Two. Six. Stab. Stab. Feet kick. A small voice says, “Stop.” Begs, “Don’t do it!” Steel slips between bone. Into organs. It’s all hot breath and animal sounds. An orgy of destruction for the sake of destruction. And then it’s over and the boy is left to bleed, to die, alone on a dirty pavement that smells of oil and rubber. The gang members tuck bloody knives into socks, then into sleeves. They walk away, breath easing, hearts slowing. What’s it about? What was the boy’s life payment for? Does it even matter? Do we really care?
    You cut into the fat of her left breast. Remove it. Place it under Mary’s head—loose on its neck like a broken toy.
    Trapped air escapes her lips. You press the