Jaclyn the Ripper Read Free

Teresa twisted, bucked. Surprised her victim still had the will to resist—angry her hands weren’t big and strong enough to end it quickly—the woman picked up a shard from the broken mirror and slashed Teresa’s throat.
    Sighing, the woman straightened up, appreciating the blood pooling around Teresa like spilled paint. She closed her eyes, and in her mind’s eye saw a red rose opening in the sun. Then she frowned. This Teresa was no East End alley slut. Money had not changed hands, there had been no penetration, no thrusting, no sweet slime—where was thepleasure in this? The woman smiled a pretty, disarming little-girl smile as the answer came.
Necessity has always been the mother of invention, so as long as we find ourselves in this dubious year of 2010—as long as we must kill—why not take pleasure in the pure simplicity of the act not fouled by an ejaculatory release?
    Somewhere a thermostat clicked, interrupting her thoughts, and a breeze wafted in through the restroom vents. Chilled, the woman hugged herself, reminded of her rags, her gooseflesh, her nipples embarrassingly hard. She took Teresa’s keys and cautiously ventured out the door.
    She hurried across the alcove, rode the elevator down to the service floor, pleased that pushing buttons had replaced the accordion gates and straps of nineteenth-century lifts.
We must be in a new, modern art museum, not one of those decrepit salons or cathedrals of Europe. True, the place was featuring the dubious accomplishments of H. G. Wells, but surely they must have paintings by Goya, works like David’s
“The Death of Marat.”
    In the employee women’s lounge, the woman located Teresa Cruz’s locker, looked askance at her wardrobe.
Where on God’s earth are we that people wear clothes like this?
Having no choice, she dressed, then regarded herself in the mirror.
    The faded blue jeans were tight, yet strangely comfortable, but what drew the woman’s eyes was her midriff showing, then her ample breasts, provocative in a gray T-shirt two sizes too small. She wondered if other women looked like this or if Teresa Cruz was a prostitute in her leisure hours. Preoccupied with her image, the woman didn’t focus on the yellow happy face on her T-shirt, and the inane “Have a nice day” printed below. Instead, she tucked her glossy black hair up inside Teresa’s cap, blue with a silly red heart on it, figuring that would give her a shred of respectability. She slipped her feet in Teresa’s sandals, then rode the elevator back up to the courtyard level intending to get the special key from the time machine. When she reached the men’s restroom, she hesitated, vaguely dissatisfied.
    Jack would’ve never left a woman murdered so anonymous, so mundane. We would’ve sung to the world that we’d been out and about, we’dhave left something for the boys of Scotland Yard. After all, are we not in a museum? Do not artists sign their work?
    In the restroom, she locked the door, then pulled Teresa’s corpse to the stalls and propped it up on one side. With a shard from the mirror, she meticulously cut away the little guard’s uniform shirt, then began a surgical procedure first learned in anatomy class and later practiced on Penny, her sister. The woman longed for the gold pocket watch with Penny’s likeness inside the lid, lost in 1979. She missed its music box playing an innocent French lullaby. Nevertheless, she hadn’t lost her touch, and with a few quick, practiced incisions, excised Teresa’s kidney. Smiling, she rinsed it off in the sink and put it in the pocket of her jeans, then washed her hands as if finishing up in a surgery. Her smile grew larger when she saw that as before she had avoided getting bloodstains on her clothes. If nothing else, being a comely lass hadn’t affected her expertise. And all with a shard of glass, too.
    She unlocked the door,