Mistaken identity.

Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever had someone tap you on the shoulder to chat, then realise you were not who they thought you were? Have you, yourself, run after a figure, convinced it was a friend or family member, only to discover it wasn't? Were you embarrassed? Horrified? Apologetic?

There's no need to be. The human mind likes the familiar. It is as set in its ways as an old dog, the inability to be taught new tricks hampering its enjoyment of what remains of its life. The human mind has its habits. It interprets the things the eyes see and distorts them to fit its own version of the world. It is almost as if your mind creates its own reality and forgets to tell you you're viewing it.

So the brother is a stranger. The friend is a shocked girl who recoils at the impending assault.

Mistaken identity. It's not a mistake. It's your mind telling you something that isn't real. Isn't true. Your brain is lying to you.

London is dirty. As we leave the nineteenth century, Industry marches us to a bright new dawn, one tarnished by smoke and gilded with the grime of squalor. The Cholera epidemic only a few decades previous, wiped out many who stood tall in the knowledge that they strode supreme through the numerous reforms that were making this city and this country so great. Education. Health. Things that were once the gift of the wealthy were becoming the right of those who simply lived. Drew breath. Existed.

And the smog rolls through the streets, ignorant or uncaring of such advances, dragging with it the vigour of those who it enveloped. It seems to drain the colour from their lives, leaving them grey and insipid. And mistaken.

I see it. I see it all.

I watch the foggy beast crawl through the streets, feeding on the souls of the populace. Perhaps my own soul tastes bitter. Perhaps it is tainted by my own purity. I find myself alone in my ability to be untouched by its vaporous maw. I stand solitary in the face of its prowling mass.

I didn't at first. I blame myself. I was so enthralled by the cloying smog and its effects on my city, I forgot to look. I forgot to notice. My mind ruled my eyes and showed me what it felt I wanted to see rather than what I needed. I felt the draining of London's soul but, initially, was oblivious to its cause. When I realised, it was already too late. Not too late to stop it, but much too late to prevent its beginning. Once, however, I learned to separate actual reality from inferred reality, I leapt into action like a spider to the fly caught in its web.

Perhaps 'leapt' is too strong a word. Haste is not something I am familiar with, a more measured approach being my preference. Time and tide wait for no man, we are told, and I am King Canute in both respects. I can hold back neither, so I feel no compulsion to try. If I attempted to force the issue, I would still age. My feet would, proverbially, still become wet and my crown would be hung up. As such, I did not leap. I did not creep. I walked, calmly, into the battle for London's heart.

I can remember, well, the instant my eyes were opened. The fog that shrouded the world - my own perceived world at least - was lifted in one glorious, blood filled, moment.

I knew him. Vaguely, anyway. We drank in the same public house. I believe we lived only a street or two away from each other. My means are somewhat meagre, but I am cautious with my spending so am able to afford a more substantial abode than I might otherwise. I eat little. I do not worry about frivolities or forms of entertainment other than my newspaper and my evening stroll. My own thoughts are ample accompaniment to a life not of solitude but of contentment. My home is on the edge of what could be deemed a nice area. It's by no means opulent but is certainly comfortable. The layer of grime that seems to coat everything, even one's words, is less evident there.

His street is a little over that edge. It can, I feel, be thought of more an abyss than simply a downgrading of style. I hesitate to use the word class. I have some, he has a touch less, but I don't wish to appear snobbish. We are all creatures of circumstance. If but for the flip of a coin, our roles and lives could have been switched. I could be a lord. He could be a prince. I could be a homeless waif avoiding the law whilst living off stolen scraps and shivering in doorways.

I am not, and for that, I am grateful. He was no waif either. He was simply less astute with his financial dealings than I. Where I would read, he would gossip. Where I would walk, he would gamble. While I infrequently visited the public house for a quiet drink in a quieter corner, he was such a loyal customer, he had a chair with his own name carved into the back. The carving he had made himself. The writing was rough and jagged. Appropriate, considering the way his life came to a close. The landlord made no complaint, however. When a steady income of someone willing to drown the sorrows they didn't really have was concerned, I would not have been surprised if the landlord had offered his own knife.

But, still, the man was pleasant. A drunk, but a decent one. He knew manners. He had standards. On occasion, they may well have dwelled in the gutter along with the unwashed and unwanted, but they were still standards. He, when we passed, always had a nod, a greeting and a smile that showed, if nothing else, teeth that were looked after.

A smile, as with the eyes, can tell so much about a person. You, without consciously thinking about it, base your judgements of someone's personality and intelligence on their eyes. Dull, sparkling, happy or sad. Smart or scraping the muck from the sole of wisdom. A smile has a similar effect. To many, oral hygiene is secondary to a meal or shelter. I don't deny the sense in that. Why worry about cleanliness when your stomach is empty? But, I would rather see someone who, like myself, used a rough cloth and salt to help the breath and the smile.

His death was possibly to be expected. When he was slumped in his chair and turfed out at closing time to stagger home in the dark, it was only a matter of time before he was accosted. The night is a thief's best friend. The smog his closest ally. That I would be there to see it was unexpected.

I had dozed in the afternoon. It wasn't something I was prone to do but a combination of humidity and the remnants of a cold had lulled me into a deep slumber. When I awoke, cobwebs had strung their silvery strands across my mind and I needed to breathe what passed as fresh air in London to blow them away. The hour was advancing but I knew that, if I didn't venture out, my night would be restless and I would suffer all the more the following day.

I kept to the more actively frequented avenues but, lost in thoughts absent of direction, I found myself at the door of the public house. My feet seemed to have a thirst the rest of me lacked. I released the handle I was about to push down and turned away. The prospect of chatter, arguments or a hangover wasn't attractive to me so I continued along the street. My head was becoming clearer. Less muffled, as if a blanket had been wrapped about my head and was slowly falling away.

If you were to think about killing someone, I would have imagined you were to do it hidden away. You'd lure them to a shadowed doorway. You would drag them into an alleyway. You wouldn't attack someone, generally, in a place where anyone could happen by. Unless it was an altercation that spiralled beyond the control of either party, Murder was something you would wish to carry out without fear of discovery. Of course, if you were an exhibitionist and wanted to be caught, you may well do exactly that, but I believe that to be a rare occurrence. I, personally, would invite discretion to the party.

So, when I saw them, at first, I thought it was a moment of passion that had taken the pair unawares and they had forgotten their current circumstances. I am in no way a prude. Few things are able to shock my sensibilities or shake my composure and I simply turned my gaze away to give implied instead of actual privacy, and continued my stroll. I saw that she was a lady of the night, one of the many prostitutes who supplemented their lack of income and ability to make a legal one by selling the only thing they had that was worth something. Themselves. Not that, I'm sure, they felt much self worth, which was a shame. Regardless of who they were, where they came from or what they had to do, I still believed they were worthy of respect. If I could have instilled some of that respect into them so they felt it for themselves, I would have. But I couldn't. I was not someone they would have listened to, and even less someone who could have convinced them. Even though they might still have needed to carry on with their chosen or forced profession, I would have liked them to hold their heads high while they did so.

But, on the one occasion I had tried, I was misunderstood and offered a discount 'because I had a nice face and used kind words.' I had declined.

So. Each to their own. She needed a few pennies and he needed, or purely wanted, whatever she was offering for his coin. Desire is a strong impulse and can easily turn into the passion I saw in the pair.

We don't, always, notice things straight away. It is often said, to hide something from a man, you only need to put it right in front of him. I am sure that it's not a man who says such a thing, but I have to concur. It's the mind. The brain. They conspire together and, hence, my eyes look past the pepper or the purse or the blood.

Blood.

It could have been a spilled drink, of course. But spilled drinks are not usually of a thicker consistency, one that spreads because it's expected rather than because it is struggling to keep itself in one place and so can do nothing else. They do not tend to pool around a person's head.

A man in the throes of sexual ecstasy may moan. His body may shudder. He does not, in my experience (though that is not extensive), twitch erratically and groan as if his throat is filled with fluid and he must gargle or drown.

And a woman supplying those feelings of ecstasy does not growl. She does not rip the flesh from the neck of her partner. She does not, either, have eyes that glow even though they appear pitch black in the fickle light of the gas lamps, the more modern electric bulbs that were becoming so prevalent not having reached this quarter quite yet. And, when she raises her head to look at you, she does not snarl or have more crimson fluid dripping from her mouth onto her chest.

The woman, though the mass of too long teeth in her mouth led me to believe she might be otherwise, stood so quickly I barely saw the movement. I found myself unable to move. My limbs were not under my control and my feet had become one with the cobbles. She hissed at me and I saw the corners of her eyes leaked something that steamed in the cold air. She took a step forward, towards me. I could feel my heart thudding against my ribs, as if it were trying to escape its prison and go to her, offering itself in sacrifice so I might escape. The creature looked down at her victim then, with the smog enveloping her form as if they were a part of each other and she was returning to its embrace, she vanished.

The cobbles released my feet. I rushed forward, knowing before I moved that there was no chance of me saving him. Once upon a long time before, I had taken up medical training. College and university had been my home for so long, I felt, upon leaving, that I might struggle with rejoining the world outside of those fine establishments. Doctoring had been a dream since being a child and I was intent on it being realised.

As adept as I was with a scalpel, actually cutting into another person was something I struggled with. The corpses brought to us for practice were sometimes still warm. I questioned their origins and was told to ignore it. Not to worry. I had to turn my back on that most blessed of professions. My life, had I not done so, would have been vastly different to that which I led, but I chose not to concern myself with that. Life is a current we are incapable of resisting and so I allowed myself to be swept along and away.

But, still, my interest and knowledge had remained with me. They hunkered down inside, huddling together for warmth in the neglected recesses of my memories. I could see the savagery of his wounds and did not need to be a pretender to the surgeon's throne to realise the man was dead. His throat had been removed. It was not clean, as I might have done to a patient if I had followed the path I'd intended. Rather, it was the tearing rent of a beast. If I had not seen the perpetrator carry out this heinous act, I would have surmised a wolf or a bear, or perhaps a lion - none of which were known to wander the Whitechapel streets – had been the assailant.

This was no animal, though I would not say it wasn't a beast. Whatever she - or it - was, the man laid before me would not again set eyes on the bottom of a beer glass or the fair face of a prostitute. I recognised him. I wish I had not, but I did. If he was unknown to me, or rather unfamiliar because I couldn't profess to know him, perhaps his death would not have been so moving. I would not count myself as someone whose feelings are wont to display themselves. I usually keep them contained and controlled. Whether at a wedding or funeral, I would remain stoic. Not because I am unfeeling, but because I prefer to keep such things private.

In this case, however, I was powerless to help myself. When I saw the face of the man I knew, I immediately felt my breath catch in my throat and the tears coat my cheeks with a stream that chilled in the cool air.

I thought about running. Of course I did. It would be the sensible thing to do, surely, and I believed - believe - myself to be of sound mind. So, I should have. If I'd thought about it, really thought about it and not just a passing glance at the idea, I would have found myself with my feet beating against the ground faster than my irresolute heart was thumping in my chest. But I couldn't. He wasn't a friend, but he was not a stranger. What sort of man would I be if I abandoned him? I would be little more than the monster that had been devouring him.

I could have called out for help. Shouted at the top of my voice in the hope a police officer would be nearby. Maybe another late night walker, with sleep evading them, was strolling in the vicinity. But, if I had shouted, would I be drawing them to the same doom? Was I in immediate danger myself? If the answer to that was the affirmative, then it mattered not whether I made my escape or stayed where I was. What did matter, was that the discovery of his ravaged remains would spark a panic. It would be like lighting a fuse set to explode all over our tired, beleaguered town. Shrapnel from said blast would potentially leave wounds that would fester and become infected. The infection would spread. Who knew where it would end? I imagined all of England would fall to its advance.

He was lighter than I expected. Certain that the spits I felt on my cheeks, diving in to join the tears, was the first kiss of rain, I didn't think the pool of blood would be an issue. The body would be, however. Even as I walked to Tower Bridge, a distance of perhaps a mile, his weight surprised me. Was it the loss of blood? Did a man's soul have a mass all of its own and the absence of both was making carrying him that much easier? I didn't know. I didn't want to know. My only concern was disposing of the body.

It may have been cruel. A man should have a eulogy. A marker. Something or somewhere to show he had lived. Had been someone. I was removing his opportunity to have either. The thought sickened me. Still, though, I continued. I waited for him to sink beneath the Thames' murky waters, saying a silent prayer. The bricks I had secured around his torso using one of my braces took their time in dragging him under. I did not leave until they had. Once he was gone, with the rain drenching through me, washing me clean of the sin I had just committed, I returned to my home. I felt a purpose had taken a hold of me. I could feel its claws digging into my back, barely missing my spine and rendering me paralysed. The finest of lines between determination and despair was pencilled in the puddles I stepped over. I did what I could to stay on the side of virtue, but could feel the pull of the darkness.

Home was my haven. Home was where I could prepare. Home was where I would, months later, feel the itch that would not go away, no matter how I tried to scratch it. On this occasion, my home felt like a refuge. I was a scared mouse hiding from a lion that prowled my home. Out there, the lion was potentially taking another victim. I had hidden the first body, but I was sure there would be others. I didn't know, for certain, if there had already been. Nothing had been said so far. No rumours of fantastical creatures hunting through the thick, grime soaked air were circulating. If there were, I would know. If there were, everyone would know.

My home, I could tell, wanted me out. It was telling me that I wouldn't stay there. The lion, somehow, needed to be caged. I, perhaps, had an advantage. I knew of its existence before the authorities did. I knew before the public had been given the chance to panic, fuelled by horrid and inflammatory headlines and the deviant ways of gossips. My home, by being cold enough to cause me to shiver, and by leeching out the welcoming atmosphere I had always felt there, was forcing me to take action.

So I did.

I picked up the only weapons I had that would, perhaps, aid me. My old medical implements. I had kept them not to use, but as a souvenir of a life lost. I had told myself they were kept to ensure I had a constant reminder - and prompt - of what I could, one day be, but I knew, really, the truth. Now, they would be put to a use I had not envisaged. In a way, I would still be saving lives. To do that, I would have to take one.

I didn't know if I could do that and, as with the tears, if I didn't know the victim, I was sure my mind and heart would be telling me otherwise. My home would still feel like a home. I took a bottle of chloroform and secreted it in my pocket. I was under no illusion. Whatever the creature was, it was clearly strong, having bested my acquaintance, so I needed to have a method of slowing it down.

I also required a method of administering the chloroform. I hoped chance would favour me some enlightenment.

I am unsure of the benefits of injecting foreign fluids into the human body. Although the syringe, being some three decades old, is an accepted method of administration for incapacitating one for surgery, I still feel the most we should do is inhale the anaesthetic. It is a proven technique and, though I fully embrace the medical and industrial advances constantly being made, to deliberately pierce the skin and fill one's veins with something that should never be there in the first place seems so wrong.

I stopped at my door. I was thinking in human terms. I would not do that to a person. This woman was not a person. She was a monster. I should care little of what was injected into her body. With a sigh heavy with premature regret, I took two syringes. I may not like the reality of them, but I am still a student of their science. One, I filled with morphine, the other with cocaine. My only vice is a little Opium on occasion, but I keep these other substances in preparation for the day I would, once again, pick up my scalpel. If I needed to puncture the skin of the creature a dozen times or more, I would do so.

The day I, once again, would pick up my scalpel had arrived sooner than I had expected. Its silver blade smiled at me, happy to be used once more. I did not return the smile.

Killing her would be another matter, but I would, at least, be able to imprison her. Perhaps learn of her origins and the extent of her kind. For such a thing, killing her would not be a possibility. I ignored the relief the knowledge gave me. I was being pragmatic rather than afraid. I was.

The smog welcomed me more than my home had. It wrapped around me like a favourite coat. The chill it usually held was now coloured with the rosiness of warmth and I allowed it to radiate through me. It boosted my fledgling sense of purpose, giving me the taste of confidence (if not the feeling itself) that my plan was just.

I quickly returned to the scene of the crime. The threatened rain had retreated, perhaps scared off by the bloody attack, and the blood, though it had dissipated somewhat, lingered yet. There was nothing I could do for that. I hoped the rain would steel itself before morning and find the courage to fall with a determination greater than the light spots it had earlier managed implied. I was thankful, in part, for its absence, though.

There was a trail.

The savagery of the attack must have made the creature look as if she had bathed in the ochre fluid. I had been too shocked by her appearance as someone other than a simple harlot to notice but I didn't believe she could have escaped unmarked. And I was correct in my assumption.

The first I saw, with a search of the immediate area, was a smudged footprint. It was human. The correct number of toes, along with a ball and heel. A second one, a little too far from the first to be a normal stride even at running speed, which she could not have reached immediately anyway, led me to a handprint against a wall. Again, it was human in form. Fingers, though only three were in evidence, and a palm. She was fooling me into thinking she was simply a woman. My resolve shook but the image of those teeth and her ripping at the tendons in the man's neck steadied me. A drip here, a toe there, a fingertip to beckon me on. I accepted the invitation.

I passed only three other people on my way. One was a young boy. He was shuffling rather than walking. His eyes were as wide and his hair was wild. I struggled to see his skin through the muck on his face. He was shivering. I spoke to him, asking him if he had a home to go to or a parent looking for him. He ignored me, though I think he actually didn't hear me even though we were only a few feet apart. He shambled on, ignorant of my presence. At one point, he stepped over something without pausing. I watched him disappear into the viscous night. I needed, for some reason, to take a closer look at the object. It was, after picking it up and bringing it close to my face to see properly, a piece of flesh. I was far less shocked than I thought I would be. Even though I knew, immediately, that it had belonged to the man, it was still just a piece of flesh. It could have been a left over scrap of uncooked chicken breast, forgotten about after cooking the Sunday meal. I threw it towards a sleeping dog that was huddling in a doorway. The hound didn't move and I couldn't see the rise and fall of its chest. I didn't need to inspect closer. It wasn't going to be enjoying the snack I'd supplied.

A couple were the next I saw. They were arm in arm, pulled close to each other. Their laughter should have brightened the night but, instead, its clarity sounded like so many particles of ice hanging in the air, preparing to fall upon me like myriad swords of Damocles. They glanced at me as they passed and smiled. Their happiness should have been infectious but wasn't. It was a cloud. A palpable ghost that haunted my mood even after they had gone and the sound had faded.

The bloody prints became fragments. The fragments struggled to make themselves seen but it was becoming more difficult to follow their path. I came to a junction. A lane to the left and one just off straight ahead. There was no sign to indicate which way she would have gone so I had to make a choice. I chose incorrectly. It took me twenty minutes and a complete lack of clues to realise. By the time I had retraced my steps, I feared she would be lost forever.

I had actually turned to leave, defeated, when I heard the guttural rumble. It was not quite a growl, but it held tight on to the menace of the same. My first thought was that I had been wrong in my diagnosis of the dog. Perhaps it had still been living but in so deep a sleep, its lungs had forgotten to inflate. It had decided the non-chicken breast was not a big or tasty enough morsel for its appetite and so had come to see what I tasted like. But no. There was no dog. My medical background was enough to tell a dead body, though that body may be canine, when I saw one.

The smog swirled angrily in the opening to an alleyway. A pair of bright green dots hovered in its midst. I suddenly didn't know what to do and I was more afraid of my indecision than the owner of the dots. I forced my own hand and stepped forward. The eddying increased before stopping abruptly. The fog froze as if a photograph had been taken and the print had been dropped in front of me. The eyes seemed to grow as I stared at the still image. As I watched, they became orbs then saucers. Their colour remained a pure green, clear and unblemished and I could feel the locking of my body just as when I'd first seen her. She was casting a spell on me and I had to resist!

I managed to look away, just a quick break in the gaze but enough to try and shatter the hold. It appeared the creature took offence at my arrogance. She screamed a piercing shriek of fury and lunged forward. I had barely a fraction of a second to react, but luckily I was prepared.

Time is a precious thing. It tends to be wildly ignored and woefully squandered when it is, unfortunately, the only constant we have. At occasions of increased tension or fear, time can appear to slow right down, either giving you the opportunity to cram much more into the same space, or allowing you to take stock of your situation and potentially change the outcome. So it was at that moment. As her feet left the ground my hand, already in my pocket, pulled out the bottle of chloroform and threw it hard at her face. She raised a hand to deflect the missile and it caught her forearm, spinning upwards.

Her momentum and the impact only served to aid my aim and the bottle smashed into the bridge of her nose. The glass fragments sprayed out, the liquid following. Both entered her wide, hypnotic eyes and her mouth. The shriek became a cry of pain and then...

There was almost an audible snap as Time grew bored with dragging her heels and reverted back to her more usual speed. The creature was upon me and I fell backwards under her weight. I had my hand at her throat, trying to keep that ever opening maw away from my neck and face. Pieces of shattered bottle were impaled in her cheeks and one in her iris, blinding that eye. She seemed oblivious to the shards and only intent on reducing me to the bloodied corpse I had previously disposed of.

Her own hand raised and I saw the flash of claws as she slashed at my arm.

My other hand closed around the syringes and pulled them out of their pocket. I slammed them into her shoulder and pressed hard on the plungers. The sound that came from her mouth was unlike any I had ever heard. Human lungs and vocal cords are not designed to make such a noise, not without being torn apart. She twisted, grabbing at the syringes and I managed to push her off me and scramble away.

She continued to scream and tear at the point where the needles had entered her skin and I could see the flesh beginning to bubble as if acid had been poured upon it.

The screaming stopped so suddenly, it created a vacuum of sound that the air took a second to fill, as if it had been taken unawares and had to rush to plug the gap. The creature was unmoving apart from an occasional twitch of the fingers of her left hand. Her shoulder was missing the skin and the muscles and sinews were staring at me, wondering at their unexpected exposure. Carefully, I moved to her side, my scalpel in my hand. I held the blade out before me, its silver my equivalent to a crucifix against the devil.

She didn't move. I poked at her with my finger, yanking back quickly lest she spring up at me. There was no response so I became bolder. I shook her and then, madness briefly overcoming me, slapped her face, the scalpel poised in defence. The only movement from the creature was the faint rise and fall from her chest as she breathed shallowly. I am not a vindictive or spiteful person. I never have been. It is not in my nature to deliberately inflict pain upon another. Thus, it was with a great deal of surprise that I found myself pushing my blade into the beast's neck. When I realised, I froze. I could see that it was my hand. My scalpel. Yet it felt as if another me was essentially cutting her throat.

Much more effort was needed to retrieve my knife rather than continuing to push than I would have preferred. There was also far less blood flow than there should have been. I wondered if I had somehow crossed into another reality, one where monsters roamed and blood was reticent in spurting from an open wound. Was the smog some sort of portal into a hell that mirrored my own world?

No. I was still in Whitechapel. London still surrounded me with its majestic mire.

Urgency broke into my reverie. She could wake at any moment. Apart from my scalpel, I had no other weapons and the gouges in my arm were throbbing viciously. I needed to get home and treat my wounds. And I needed to take her with me.

She was lighter than I expected, as if her distinct absence of a soul had shaved pounds from her weight. I only had to stop once, with her slung over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and that was because my injured arm was beginning to lose its feeling. Pins and needles pricked along its length, testing to see if I would react to their irritating tap dance and I had to flex it to prevent it from becoming a useless appendage. By the time I had arrived home and manacled her in my cellar, my arm was starting to swell and was becoming tight in my sleeve. I took some opium for the pain and bathed and dressed the wound.

I then waited for her to awaken.

When she did, she was not best pleased. She vomited forth a stream of obscenities, many of which I admit I did not recognise. I ignored them. She was secure in her chains and I was safe in my chair at the opposite end of the room. Between the two of us, I had positioned a number of syringes filled with the cocaine and morphine that had so burned off her skin. I had no idea which of them was responsible for inflicting the damage to her body, so I prepared myself with both. Perhaps it had, in fact, been both of them and not one individually. I was not particularly interested in discovering the answer to that question. I just wanted it to work if I needed it to. I let her rant. I allowed her to pull at the bindings. It was all very noisy and totally futile. Eventually, she realised this.

She slumped against the floor, looking defeated but eyeing the needles as if she was waiting for them to make a move on their own. If she behaved herself, perhaps no move would need to be made. I was still unsure of whether or not I could take her life. I needed to know, first, what she was. Why she had savagely attacked that man. If there were more.

So I asked her. If you don't ask, you don't find out. My father would often tell me that. He would follow it up, when I took his advice and enquiring about something I was unsure of, by telling me to stop bothering him. His words, on that subject and many others, remained with me. He was contradictory but he was my father and, as such, almost godlike.

The creature laughed, at first. And spat. And continued with the verbal abuse. The one time she struggled and attempted to reach me, I casually picked up two syringes and turned them over in my hands. She quickly halted her thrashing and fell silent, trying to hide her damaged shoulder. I simply returned the needles and sat back down. Then I asked her again.

"What are you?"

She did not know. I found that odd. She just was, she told me, resigned to having little choice. I asked if she would call herself a vampire and she laughed again. No, she said. Vampires were the stuff of legend. She was no legend though, she believed, she would be legendary.

"Why did you kill that man?"

Apparently, human flesh is delicious, especially when the heart is still pumping and the blood still warm. And the taking of his life, she said, was needed during the breeding.

"Breeding?"

Breeding. It was why she, and potentially they, though I had yet to ascertain that, posed as a prostitute. There was no shortage of men who would pay for what a woman could offer. The money was incidental. She only needed what they could give her. Their seed and their progeny.

"Are you the only one?"

My questions were given in a matter-of-fact way. I felt my sanity slipping away as we spoke and keeping calm and talking as if I was merely asking about the weather or her favourite niece was my only way of ensuring I didn't lose hold of it completely.

No. She was not. She was the original, but there were others. Five of them, so far. A bite to a male is fatal. To a female it changes them. Transforms them. Enhances them.

"Enhanced? In what way?"

I do not think, given her answer, the women she attacked - other prostitutes - would agree that they felt enhanced. They were turned into monsters who craved only two things. The taste of death and the bringing of life. They existed purely to kill and give birth. To propagate whatever species they were.

They would not have given birth to their bastard beasts yet. Though their gestation period was dramatically less than a human female, there was still a little time. And in that time, they would continue to feed, in every way, to ensure that, should one foetus fail, there would be another in its place.

I stood over her and we looked at each other in silence. What could I say? I was horrified yet empowered. I didn't understand the feeling of excitement that was simmering inside of me, but I decided to embrace it. I would need the edge from that thrill to complete the grand work I had ahead of me.

"What are you going to do?" she asked, her eyes narrow.

"Kill them all," I said. I didn't know if I was telling the truth. I would find out, I surmised.

When the abuse began again and she tried to break her chains in her attempts to get to me, I stabbed a pair of syringes into her back. Her thrashing snapped the needles off, leaving them impaled. I do not know if she noticed them but I am certain she felt the way her skin began to liquidise and melt away. She passed out and I left her to her faint. As I was unbolting the door, I heard her whisper.

"Please, Master, help me."

I turned to her. She was trembling. Her eyes were rimmed red and beseeching.

"Dear Master. Dear Boss. Please!"

I rebolted the door behind me as I left.

Finding one of them wasn't difficult. Not really. Most of the ladies who patrol the night, waiting for the next mark, have a desperate air about them. They do not do what they do for pleasure. It's a need. To feed themselves or their families or their children. They face abuse and derision with a smile and a moan and a faked climax. I avoided them. I searched out the women who wanted me. I found the ones whose smile was still fake but hid something other than hopelessness. I knew when it was one of the five. She was confident. Sure. Genuinely alluring.

She told me her name was Polly. We made our way to Bucks Row, a street lit only by a single gas lamp. It suited, no doubt, both our intentions. On the way, we agreed a price. I was, considering I would not be paying, generous and offered four pence, a penny more than the usual rate. I was nervous and it showed. She thought me to be inexperience with women of her kind and she was not mistaken. Her eagerness to accomplish her plan was obvious in the way her dress was lifted and she licked her lips.

Still. Could I do it? Could I take her life? She wasn't to blame for her fate, so surely she deserved some measure of sympathy. I let her lead, and I am ashamed to say it was not unpleasureable. At least, that is, until I heard her hiss and saw her teeth. My indecision fled at that moment As much as she was expecting to bite my throat, her own would feel mine. My scalpel flashed in the meagre gaslight as if the lamp had thrown some extra illumination to light its path. I cut her neck, twice. She struggled, as I would expect, so I had no choice but to stab her again, her stomach welcoming my thrust as she would have liked other parts of her body to do.

I wanted to vomit. I wanted to cry. To shout out and to laugh hysterically. I left her lying there as a warning to the rest of her kind. I was coming for you, it told them. You cannot hide.

I washed my hands and my face before standing before my captive. I did not, though, change my clothes. I wanted her to see what I had done and the amount of blood that had soaked into the material was testament to my actions. I expected her to try and attack me and, perhaps, wondered if she would succeed. A part of me that I would not admit to noticing, wished she would. She did neither. She said nothing and showed minimal reaction. All I saw was tears prick the edges of her eyes.

I could not venture out as the vigilante I had become immediately after. I had to come to terms with what I had done. It's a simple formula that two wrongs make a wrong. There was no virtue in my actions and I wallowed in self-loathing. Polly had been discovered and, rather than being seen as a monster and giving pause to her sisterhood, she was a victim. I, though they did not know my identity, was a murderer. Well, fine. So be it. It mattered naught, either way. I would be completing my work and to Hell with the consequences. From Hell was where they had come. It was my intention to return them there.

A little over a week later, I returned to my task. I was feeling under the weather, fraught with flu-like symptoms that toyed with my strength, leeching it away just when I felt I was recovering. I knew what it was. The wound in my arm. I had cleaned it as best I could but I could feel the infection taking hold. I felt as if the creature in my basement had left something behind in me and, as retribution for her imprisonment, it was attacking me from the inside. I had to face down the internal invasion and its symptoms and take the fight back outside.

"I'm going out again," I told her.

She didn't answer me. Didn't look at me. I had yet to feed her and her strength was ebbing away, taking her resistance with it. When had I become so hateful? I was a decent man! I was meant to be kind and generous. I was becoming like her - a monster - yet I could not stop myself. I had to be a beast to slay the beast.

My search reaped its reward sooner than I expected. She was only the second girl I encountered and the first to approach me. I could see a glow in her eyes that reminded me of the hypnotic orbs of the other when she attacked me. It was over swiftly. And savagely. I was possessed in my revenge for their insinuation into my world.

I took a few moments longer, once she was dead. It occurred to me that, perhaps, she could already be bearing a child. I hesitate to call the offspring of such hellspawn a 'child,' but I lack the experience of seeing one to know what other word would fit. I removed her uterus to examine it. To be sure. She wasn't, but she could have been.

My recovery time was extended. It seemed that eradicating their curse was taking its toll on me and I struggled to move from my bed for a good three weeks after my encounter. My arm was a weeping mess of sores that I wished I had the courage to amputate. It would not serve, however, to extend my rapidly diminishing lifespan. I was done for and I could see Death watching me from afar. I bade him begone until I had done his work for him. He lingered still.

I was set for the night, once I could manage to leave my home. I would stay out until I had done my deed. It had already been too long and I could not guarantee that I still had time to fulfil what I had come to think of as my destiny. We each have a role to play in the turning of this world. Keeping the streets and the people safe was mine.

The cuts to her throat gave me a shiver of delight. Rather than be disgusted in myself for enjoying the murderous impulses, I revelled in it. My scalpel, ever sure in its target, was about to enter her again when I heard voices. They belonged to two men, inebriated by their slurred voices and stumbling gait. The men didn't see us and didn't hear the bubbling attempt to cry out from the woman I was holding tight onto.

I let her slip to the ground and quickly vacated the area. I was loathe not to check for a child, but I couldn't risk the drunks returning.

I felt like a cat prowling the smog filled streets, sniffing out morsels to sate my appetite.

I was able, with the next, to carry out my task properly. Her uterus was empty, thankfully. Her kidney had a mass on one side and, my sympathies briefly surfacing for the sickness she would have come to suffer from had I not taken her life, I removed it. Perhaps her spirit would thank me.

I hunted, for that was what I had been reduced to - or perhaps risen to - nightly after that. With potentially only one of them left, I was almost salivating at the opportunity to finish my work. I roamed the streets, becoming a figure at one with the thick mist, able to dissolve as it did should someone come close enough to discover me. I took opium to combat the pain in my arm and to remove me somewhat from the shaking that would overtake me unexpectedly. My health was declining and I knew I could not yield to the demands the disease was putting on me.

Still, by the sixth week, I was in danger of falling on my blade myself, lacking the strength to even lift it properly. My legs supported me by willpower alone and my vision had taken on a smog of its own. She had gone to ground, the true reason for my cull apparent to her if not the authorities. I worried that I would never find her and would have to succumb to failure. But no. I could not. She would be found.

And then she was.

I saw her coming out of Miller's Court. Her eyes shone and her skin glowed giving her a radiance that warmed me as I watched her. I shook my head to clear it from the upsurge of feelings that had washed over me. I held on to the vigour it instilled, only letting go the enchantment she was weaving simply by walking. She was different to the others. The curse had been upon her for longer. Perhaps something else was upon her too - forthcoming motherhood.

"You need some looking after, mister?"

She walked over to me, an aura of seduction reaching for me, dragging me down into her clutches. I could not refuse. I let her lead me away, thankful that whatever power she had was seeping into me. In her room, she took control, attempting to undress me.

"Just let me do the work," she said, her voice a song in my ears.

I almost allowed it. In a heartbeat, I could sense my foot stepping over the line into total domination, which would have brought everything to an abrupt end. I pulled it back. I shook my head again. I dug my fingers into my arm, feeling the pus burst forth beneath my sleeve. I cried out.

She fell back and I leapt, pain jolting my tired, weakened muscles into action. My blade slid through her neck as if it was carving through air. I lost control of myself at that moment, but it was not to the power she had. It was to my own anger. She was the last. She was the end to my battle and she was the relief of victory. I could not hold myself back and, with a passion that her profession feigned, I made her pay for everything that could have come to pass had I not succeeded.

I took a souvenir. A trophy. Something to show the one who had turned her that they had failed.

When I lay the heart in front of the creature in my basement, she stares at it with a look of abject hate bathing her face in darkness. She slowly turns to me.

"I will kill you," she snarls.

I slump down opposite her, my strength completely gone. I am spent. My arm feels ruined and hangs uselessly. I am freezing yet can feel the heat burning through my skin.

"You already have," I say.

Mistaken identity. It isn't only the brother who is not there or the friend whose face belongs to a stranger. It is yourself. Your self. I believed that I was an ordinary man in an ordinary world. The darkness was a dream. I am wrong on both accounts.

The frailty of the human condition is that, whoever we might be, we are a slave to Time. No matter the power we may wield or the deeds we might do, we are sure to die. My death is coming more swiftly than I would like. I think I still have work to do. In my mind, one that is, perhaps, the clearest in all of London, it is grand work. I fear it will not be finished. I should kill her. End the line. I hope any who remain, for I am not sure I believe her original count, will be lost without her. I hope that another does not rise to lead and to continue the spread of their disease. But I cannot. My will has been eroded by my actions and I have taken enough lives. And, begrudgingly, I think I respect her. She was driven by need, albeit a need that was abhorrent to any sane man.

She will, I would guess, escape. I am unable to prevent that now. The poison has soaked into every part of me. I have sealed the door and broken the lock to prevent egress. What else can I do?

The police and the newspapers say I am a monster. They are not mistaken. I am sure, however, they will forget me soon enough. Perhaps that is for the best.

There will be other monsters.

There always are.

---

Shaun Allan (shaunallan) is a Wattpad Star, featured author and Wattys winner. Having appeared on Sky TV to debate traditional vs electronic publishing against a major literary agent, he writes multiple genres, including young adult and childrens', but mainly delves into his Dark Half to produce psychological horror. He has worked with Universal, Warner Bros, Blumhouse Tilt, Goosebumps and DC Comics and regularly holds writing workshops at local schools. Many of his personal experiences and memories are woven into the point of view and sense of humour (or humor) of Sin, the main character in his best-selling novel of the same name, although he can't, at this point, teleport.

Shaun lives with his daughters and a manic dog called Ripley (believe it or not). He works full time, co-owns a barbers salon and writes in that breath between his heartbeats. Though his life might, at times, seem crazy, he is not.

Honest.