London’s thick, muggy air trickles through the streets like a soup of human grime, swallowed by the city folk that bleed black and blue on to the cobblestones, shifty-eyed, dry-lipped, gaunt-cheeked and hollow inside, starving for the unacknowledgeable and the unreachable. Light is speculation, hygiene a lost art, colors faded and garish as the women who linger in the alleys past midnight, watching passersby with hungry, black-rimmed eyes.
The sooty black city is a checkerboard of lost souls eager to forget themselves in the opium dens, brothels and pubs that beckon from shady back alleys and street corners, where liars breed and honest men hide their true natures. One can very nearly smell the corruption.
The time is just past three in the morning.
For once the streets are empty.
Heart racing, limbs trembling, choking on the air, a girl is running for her life. Her eyes are huge, dark, of indeterminate color and filled with raw, unfettered fear. High cheekbones frame a dirty face. Chunks of brown hair whip wildly around her head. The torn fabric of her dress catches around her skinny legs, revealing gray striped stockings.
The man following her walks calmly. He knows there’s no need to rush. The girl is headed for the docks, a dead end unless she fancies taking a dip in the frigid black water.
Up ahead, the girl has come to the same conclusion, and she slows, boots skidding on the damp ground. Hopelessly she stares at the boats bobbing near the pier, and the ships anchored farther out.
When she turns, the man is there, wrapping his fingers around her wrist. She struggles, but his grip tightens painfully and she cries out.
Up close he is more unpleasant than she’d imagined, with an oily, badly-shaven face, a ragged bowler hat atop greasy black strings of hair, a ripped coat, poorly fitting trousers, and scuffed black shoes.
His breath in her face smells of meat, of the butcher shops just around the corner of the orphanage, where they would hang the bloody carcasses in the window for children to gawk at.
The man’s fingers fumble in his coat pocket, finally closing on the hilt of a jagged, rusty knife that he brings to her cheek. At the sight of it the girl jerks away from him with a gasp.
“Girlie,” breathes the man, “You got no idea the trouble you’ve caused me. Is’not proper for a girl like you, goin’ round, startin’ fires. Couldn’t trust me own ears when I heard you’d burned the place to the ground. I didn’t care much for the place-ol’ Bedlam had it coming-but imagine me joy when the boss sent me out to find you…”
He cocks his head in a gesture more animal than human.
“Go to hell,” says the girl furiously, praying he doesn’t notice her fingers working furiously to unravel the coarse gray thread loose at her waist. The man giggles, sending shivers through her body.
“Foul mouth you got there. Methinks it’ll be the first to go.” Sticking his tongue between his teeth in a gesture of concentration, he brings the blade’s edge to her lips.
In that instant, the string pulls out from her dress. Without a second’s pause the girl loops it around his neck and yanks. The man chokes. His grip on her wrist slackens, giving her the chance to twist away.
