Teaser: The Avenger

Can you ever imagine a moment so awful you wish you were anywhere but here? That you wish you were having a nightmare and beg yourself to wake up, when deep down you know it’s real. Well, hell, it wouldn’t hurt so much if it wasn’t real, would it?

            I stared down the street at the smoking wreckage before me. I couldn’t speak, could hardly think about anything except what I had just witnessed. The screeching of the tyres, the deafening sound of smashing glass, the splash of red on the dark gravel. And I couldn’t look away. 

I saw the car moments before it hit. I saw her step onto the road, and I ran, I yelled, but it was already too late. And I just couldn’t look away.

You can call me Ave. It’s not my real name, but it’s what they called me now.

I don’t really remember much about the days before I came here; they’ve done their best to make me forget. I’ve done my best to forget. But sometimes when I’m still here between jobs I watch the young Catholic schoolgirls in their ridiculous straw hats with the bows, and wonder what it was like to be one of them. I wasn’t always this way: cold and emotionless. I was a normal girl once, when it mattered. Before they tore me away from it all.

I thought of the day they found me in the rain, huddled in a ball protecting myself from the onslaught of the icy needle-like shards of water that pounded against my bare arms. I’d had my legs brought up against my chest, with my arms on my knees, my head resting atop them. The tears dried up, only to be replaced by the cold London rain that drew my hair out of its delicate coiffure and down my back in sodden clumps.

It was winter, I think. But in London it was always winter, the sky ever grey, just the way I liked it. That day the sky had only reflected the emptiness that I felt, having lost everything that ever mattered to me. My family, my friends, everything: Gone. And it had hurt like a bitch.

“Are ya alone, luv?” The voice broke me from my memory.

“No”, I replied striding past the Bald cockney, who leered at me, his greasy black and yellow teeth glinting in the lamplight.

“Yer look like ya might need some company there, darlin’.” He pressed on, following close behind me.

I stopped and turned to survey him pityingly. He was a dreadful sight with his ragged old trousers and shirt covered in dirt and mud, his scarf fraying at the ends. He was a typical Whitechapel dweller of the 1880’s. I almost would have felt sorry for him if I hadn’t been trained to restrain such emotions years ago. They only got in the way.

I flipped him a gold coin. “Tell me where Mary Kelly is and you’ll get another.”

The cockney caught it, putting it between his teeth untrustingly. He found it genuine and grinned, pocketing his meager wealth. “Follow me, yer highness.”