Kill #20:
Nick the Ripper
By Julie
“Yo, Nick, make a face for
the camera, man!”
Nick purposely relaxed his
face into a perfectly deadpan expression as AJ appeared in front him, cell
phone raised, and snapped a picture.
“That is one sexy
seventies pornstache, dude.” AJ
snickered as he looked at the picture on his phone. “I gotta tweet this shit!”
“I wanna see!” said Nick,
thrusting his hand toward the phone, but AJ held it out of reach.
“You can see it on Twitter
in a few.”
Nick slid his own phone
out of his pocket, pulled up his Twitter app, and refreshed until tweets from @skulleeroz started appearing on his
timeline. First there was a tweet that
said “ha!” with an Instagram photo of Brian and their bodyguard, Q, each
sporting a fake mustache from a pack of them the Boys had bought for their own
amusement. Brian wore a bushy mustache
that matched his hair; Q’s was a black handlebar mustache. Then came a picture of Howie, also with a
handlebar mustache. Finally Nick, with a
mustache that resembled one of Kevin’s eyebrows pasted crookedly across his
upper lip. AJ had tweeted the caption, Nick I he did porn.
“Your fuckin’ autocorrect
messed up your tweet,” said Nick, reading it back to him.
AJ shrugged. “So?
Hey, gimme that; I got an idea!”
Before Nick could protest, he reached out and ripped the mustache right
off his face.
“Ow!” cried Nick, rubbing
his upper lip, which felt red and raw.
He glared as he watched AJ apply it to his own face, but couldn’t help
but giggle when he saw the result. “Oh my
God, you look like Kevin!” he snorted, as AJ, trying not to laugh, snapped a
picture of himself with the mustache fixed to the center of his forehead. “KEV, you gotta come see this!”
Brian, Howie, and Q were
all cracking up, but Kevin must have been taking a shit or something, because
he never showed up to see what was so funny.
Unibrow, yo, AJ tweeted along
with the picture. Once it appeared on
Nick’s timeline, he figured Kevin would see it soon enough and stole his
mustache back from AJ.
“Dude!” shouted AJ,
massaging his brow. “I think you took
some of my real eyebrows with that!”
Nick shrugged. “Hey, you needed a little manscaping, bro!”
he called over his shoulder, as he walked away.
“Besides, it looks better on me!”
He went into his bedroom,
where he reapplied the mustache in front of the mirror over his dresser. He spotted his favorite gray fedora sitting
on the dresser top and put that on, too.
It didn’t really fit over his large head, so he wore it perched jauntily
on top. He thought it made him look
suave, like a distinguished London gentleman, and he entertained himself for
the next few minutes by making gentlemanly faces at himself in the mirror.
The recently-reunited
Backstreet Boys had been in London for six days, writing and recording their
next album. They were living together in
a house with no family around, just the five of them, their security team, and
a small camera crew that was filming footage for a documentary they planned to
release in tandem with the new album. It
felt like a frat house, and Nick had been having so much fun just goofing off
with the guys, it didn’t even feel like work.
But they had been working
hard, spending every day that week in the studio. Even on a Saturday, they’d put in a few hours
of work. They would take Sunday off.
With his days filled with
music and his nights filled with fun, Nick hadn’t had much time to think about
killing fans, not to mention opportunities to act on his homicidal urges. He’d hardly had any time to himself the whole
week. But it was Saturday night, and he
was going to have a party.
The other guys were doing
their own thing that night, so no one gave him much grief when he slung a dark
jacket over his shoulder, slipped a large kitchen knife into the waistband of
his jeans, and announced, “I’m going out for the night. Be back later.”
“You ain’t bringin’ a
bodyguard?” asked Q, one eyebrow raised.
“Nah. Don’t need one. Got my disguise,” said Nick, pointing above
his chin. He smoothed his mustache,
tilted his hat to the side, and darted out the door. There were still a few fans skulking outside,
the same few who had been stalking them at the studio all week, but Nick gave
them the slip in the underground, riding random trains until he was sure he’d
shaken all of his followers. Then he
hopped on the line that would take him to his planned destination.
It was there in the subway
where he’d gotten the idea, while riding with the Boys the other day. They had seen a flier advertising a Jack the
Ripper Walk, which started at the same time every night outside the Tower Hill
tube station. “That looks cool,” AJ had
said, pointing it out. “We should do
that sometime!”
“Yes…” said Nick, the
wheels in his head already turning as he stared at the silhouette of a
knife-wielding man in a top hat and trench coat on the flier. “We should.”
But that evening, he
exited the Tower Hill station alone.
He looked around and saw a
large group congregating around a nearby lamp post. Most of them were young adults around his
age, but there were a few older couples and some teenagers in the crowd. Nick sidled up to a woman who was standing
alone, a few feet apart from the others.
“You here for the Jack the Ripper walk?” he asked casually.
She jumped, startled, and
spun around.
“Sorry,” said Nick,
chuckling. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’s fine,” said the
woman, releasing a shaky breath. “Yes,
I’m here for-” She stopped mid-sentence,
her eyes suddenly widening, and Nick knew that, despite his disguise, she had
recognized him.
“The walk? Awesome.
Me too.” He smirked and extended
his hand. “I’m Nick, by the way.”
“Steph,” she whispered
breathlessly, slipping her hand into his.
He started to shake it,
then changed his mind and lifted it to his lips, lightly kissing her
knuckles. “Sorry,” he said, still
smirking over the top of her hand.
“Something about this hat and mustache makes me feel like an
old-fashioned English gentleman… I
say! Pip pip,
cheerio!”
She giggled at his
epically bad English accent, a blush rising high in her cheeks. “Your mustache tickles!” she exclaimed, her
own accent authentic.
“Sorry,” he apologized
again and released her hand. “I needed a
disguise. Didn’t fool you, though, did
it?”
“Sorry, but no,” she said,
still giggling as she shook her head. “If
only it matched your hair color, it might look a tad more authentic.”
“Yeah, you’re right. My bad.”
He winked. “So… Steph. You all by yourself tonight?”
“Sadly, yes,” she
sighed. “My friend had a bit too much to
drink at dinner and was feeling ill, so she stayed behind in our hotel
room. She insisted I go ahead and do the
walk alone, since it’s our last night on holiday. We’re taking the train home to Wales
tomorrow.”
“That’s a bummer,” said
Nick. “I’m goin’ solo tonight, too. Maybe we could stick together, so neither of
us have to be alone? I hear this walk’s
pretty scary.” He grinned.
Steph beamed back, her
eyes bright in the dusky twilight. “I’d
love to!”
“Awesome.” Nick offered her his hand again, and she took
it. “I’m sure it’ll be a walk to
remember,” he said, as they moved forward to join the others.
A man in costume led the
tour, taking them through dark alleyways as he talked about the Ripper and the
five infamous murders he’d committed in the fall of 1888, known as “The Autumn of
Terror” in London. Nick felt Steph
squeeze his hand, her fingernails digging into his flesh, as the tour guide
described the gorier details of each murder.
Nick learned that Jack the Ripper killed prostitutes by slashing their
throats with two cuts before ripping open their abdomens, occasionally removing
internal organs. The murders occurred at
night, often over the weekend.
Perfect,
thought Nick, gazing up at the strip of sky visible between the two buildings
that flanked the alley in which they had stopped to listen to another
story. Dark clouds nearly covered the
crescent moon, and as night descended upon them, the temperature dropped as
well. He inhaled deeply, breathing in
lungfuls of the crisp air, and hugged his jacket tighter around himself to ward
off the chill. Next to him, Steph
shivered, and he stepped closer to her, wrapping his arm around her shoulders
to warm her, as the fingers of his free hand brushed the hilt of the knife
hidden beneath his jacket.
“It’s gettin’ cold, huh?”
he murmured. “This sure don’t feel like
July!”
She laughed. “I suppose I should be used to the weather,
but yes, it’s quite chilly! I wish I’d
worn a jumper!”
“Whaddya say we grab a cup
of coffee when the tour’s over?” suggested Nick.
“I say that sounds lovely!”
Steph agreed.
While the others filed
into the underground station where the tour let off, Nick led Steph in a
different direction. The streets were
still crowded, and it wasn’t yet dark enough for him to snuff out her life
under the cover of darkness, so Nick took her to a café down the street, where
they ordered coffee and sat down at a tiny table in the corner to warm up. Steph took out her cell phone and played with
it as they waited for their drink orders.
Nick stroked the smooth handle of the knife, out of sight.
When Steph stood up and
said, “Pardon me; I’m just going to use the loo,” leaving her phone on the
table as she left for the ladies room, Nick picked it up and turned it over to
see what she’d been looking at. When he
saw the page of reviews praising Steph for a story in which she’d mangled
Howie’s leg in plane crash and plagued Nick with dreams of digging bot flies
out of Jordan Knight’s brain, he knew his fan radar had proved him right
again. He was developing quite a knack
for finding fans who wrote the kind of fan fiction stories he hated. He had paid for their coffee, but Steph would
pay for her “creativity,” he thought, wiping his fingerprints off her phone
with the hem of his shirt.
She returned from the
restroom just as their drinks were served, and they made small talk as they
sipped from the steaming cups. Steph
kept stirring her latte, a mountain of whipped cream melting into the milky
brown liquid like a glacier into the slowly simmering sea. Nick guzzled coffee that was as black as his
heart, eager to be done and gone. It was
torturous listening to her chatter on and on about her family and friends and
job as a customer service rep. He didn’t
want to view her as a person. In his
eyes, she was just another one of them,
the twisted writers who tortured him with their words in a more physical
way. Soon, it would be her turn to experience
the kind of pain she and her kind had inflicted upon him.
“Let’s get out of here,”
he suggested, when he could stand it no longer.
Steph looked up, her eyes
shining. “Okay,” she whispered.
They walked out into the
night, fully dark now and not nearly as crowded as before. As he led her away from the well-lit
sidewalks and into one of the shadowy alleys from the tour, Nick distracted
Steph with talk of the new album and the work he’d been doing in the studio all
week with the Boys. She hung on to his
every word with rapt interest, oblivious to where he was taking her. In the middle of the alley, he stopped
mid-sentence and said, “This is gonna gross you out, but I gotta take a
piss. That coffee went right through
me. Mind turning around?”
“Oh! Er, of course not!” Steph obediently spun away, averting her
eyes, as Nick turned toward the brick wall of the building beside them. Without unzipping his fly, he whipped out his
long, mighty dagger. He wielded the
knife over his head as he snuck up behind her.
In his oversized jacket and ill-fitting fedora, he cast a shadow that
bore an eerie similarity to the silhouette of Jack the Ripper on the
flier. This put a sinister smile of
satisfaction on Nick’s face as he stalked his next victim.
She let out one short
scream when his arm shot around her, but he silenced it by stabbing her in the
throat. She stumbled backwards into his
arms, already gasping for air, her fingers scrabbling frantically at the
puncture wound from which blood flowed freely.
“Shh,” he whispered, as he lowered her to the pavement. “Don’t speak.
Your words have done too much harm already.” Then he widened the wound with a second slash
across her neck. As the blood poured
from her severed jugular, he watched her eyes roll back into her head, which
hit the ground with a sickening smack as she lost consciousness.
He had sliced her trachea,
cutting off her air supply, but her heart was still beating when he plunged the
knife into her torso and twisted it like a corkscrew, shredding the tissue as
he bore a hole into her belly. Blood
spurted out of it like a geyser, spattering his face, but as her pulse
weakened, the shower of blood slowed to a trickle. He watched her heart falter and finally stop
through the window he carved into her chest.
Beads of sweat formed around his fake mustache and dripped into the open
cavity as he dug around inside, panting with the effort it took to wedge the
knife underneath her ribcage and hack out her heart. When, at last, he found it in his hand, he
held it up over his head like a trophy, a symbol of his triumph. Blood fell like rain upon him, but Nick
didn’t care. “I bet you never counted on
Nick Carter stealing your heart,” he whispered to his fan’s lifeless
corpse. “Literally.”
He tucked the organ into
his coat pocket and stood, brushing off his knees. It had started to rain for real, and her
diluted blood pooled around his feet.
Jack the Ripper had spent hours mutilating his victims, making them
almost unrecognizable as he ravaged their faces and removed various body
parts. Nick the Ripper knew he didn’t
have that much time before he was discovered.
“Nick be nimble, Nick be quick,” he sing-songed to himself as he jumped
over the murdered chick and stole away into the shadows.
He removed his jacket and
let the rain wash the blood from his face and shoes as he walked the empty
streets. By the time he made it back to
the band house, he was so drenched that no one noticed the dark stains on his
jeans or the blood soaking through the bulge in his coat pocket.
In the morning, he went
for a jog while Brian and Howie attended church, and afterwards, the five of
them took a train across town to the home of a friend, who’d invited them over
for a Sunday afternoon roast. It was in
the subway station that AJ asked them to stop so he could snap a picture. But instead of turning the phone’s camera on
himself, he aimed it at a concrete pillar, where there was a creepy painting of
a familiar figure in a top hat and a long coat.
Jack the Ripper, AJ tweeted, while Nick gazed into the coal black eyes of the
mustachioed murderer. The eyes stared
back unblinkingly. Nick smiled and gave
them a knowing wink.
He’d taken twenty victims
total now, four times as many as there were credited to the notorious Jack. But Nick
the Ripper could not be satisfied, not when there were so many hearts left to
steal. Literally.
Twenty down… so many more to go, he mused, stroking the spot where his mustache had
been.
***