Ethan claimed the day of September 29th to rest and relax, refocusing his mind and memory on files, the facts of the case. He had once again, if only for a moment, obtained the will to do “the job”, what he’d been tasked with, destined for in history. Lying prone on his bed, eyes closed, he visualized every nuance of a planned attack and route to and from each location. Accessing his memory for witness statements and historical accounts of what was to happen, he had masterfully planned how his role would play out later this evening and with a whimsical thought of himself being Dickens’ character the artful dodger, Time being his mentor, the elderly Fagin from “Oliver Twist”, he began to get ready.

There was not much left to chance and Ethan was not one for superstition where the facts were concerned, especially when laid out ahead of time by Time itself. His actions were based solely on historical accounts of the case. Deciding what to wear, he felt far more comfortable in his physician’s proper attire, what he wore for Polly Nichols’ and Annie Chapman. Earlier in the week, after a completion of one of his practice runs, Ethan had bought the pipe which he knew had relevance later on that evening. His moustache had also grown out considerably. Completing his ensemble for his night out, including preparing his medical bag appropriately for what was to come, he was ready, waiting for the play to begin, anticipating the opening act.

Knowing he would need to be more careful during his evening departures now, even though Time would never betray him, he would still have to remain vigilant, be pragmatic about intangibles, what role the unknown plays in history. Ethan had to be a sleuth, stealthy. If he were spotted leaving the lodging someone in the future might mention it to the local authorities in a bout of suspicion and fear for what was happening in Whitechapel. Prior to his departure, Ethan paced the room, returning to the mirror to revisit those eyes, someone he used to know. He gave himself the once over in his lucky suit but luck had nothing to do with it.

Slipping out the back exit near the outhouse, once more he made his way in the direction of the busy Whitechapel Road. It still was raining, wind bustling, causing the pedestrians to grab hold of their head covers so to protect them from lifting off into the air. Turning west on Whitechapel, journeying to Plumbers Row, he turned south then continued until he reached Commercial Road. His destination was just across the road on Berner Street. He opened his pocket watch while under the cover of a market canopy. It was 11:41 p.m. on a Saturday night. He was aware from his case study, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes had already been busy working several men that night. Miss Stride had been seen exiting with a man from a public house just down from him about forty minutes before. She had also been seen with a well-dressed man exiting the Bricklayer’s Arms, embracing and kissing. She was seen soon thereafter on Berner Street with a man wearing a sailor’s hat, kissing and caressing each other. The rain had stopped. Drawing the curtain....

Ethan would be standing under a canopy between these two encounters, seeing the events play out in his mind. Even in his research he had always questioned the testimonies of witnesses to Elizabeth Stride’s whereabouts until just past midnight. On a Saturday night in the Whitechapel district one could throw a stone in virtually any direction and hit a woman working the streets, the majority of them dressed in very similar attire. Also, he had wondered how many of those making reports to the police or the local newspaper were simply seeking some attention in their otherwise monotonous lives or hoping some reward would be in order. If they were all correct in their testimonies, then either Elizabeth Stride had rejected these first two men or she was damn good, proficient in her profession. Either way, her proclivities prior to 12:30 a.m. really had no bearing on the case nor Ethan’s dutiful acts to come. He knew there were conflicting reports of the description of the man Elizabeth was last seen with; different heights, hats and details of attire were divulged by eyewitnesses including the officer Ethan met earlier, Police Constable William Smith. One report had the man holding an elongated package, another stated he was holding nothing. Only one testimony gave Ethan all the facts, information he needed to know.

Based on this eyewitness account, Ethan knew precisely where to stand, lying in wait, since this particular witness would likewise witness him. Casually strolling down Berner Street in an attempt to appear as if he was going on a nonchalant walk late in the evening, he’d found his way to the spot where he’d watch it all transpire, reminiscent of being a Scope instead of a murderer. Ah, the good old days. Standing in a small alcove across the street from where he spotted Elizabeth Stride poised in her proper position, it is where he saw a shorter man approaching her. He need only wait for the director, Time to set the stage for his grand entrance in the opening act. His performance would follow that of the next character in the play who was now walking down the alley towards center stage and into his important supporting role.

Israel Schwartz was a Jewish immigrant who had no idea he was walking into a passion play, that obscure part in strolling down Berner Street, he would become a part of history, a part of the play. Ethan had the perfect stage cue to enter the act from the wings. In Schwartz’s testimony to the police (through a translator because he spoke no English), he stated that he walked up upon Elizabeth Stride and a man who was trying to pull her into the street from the alley. As she struggled and turned away the man grabbed her from behind with his hands on her shoulders and pushed her down forcefully onto the cobblestone street at the entrance to the alley. Hearing the woman make three soft outcries, he crossed the street to avoid the altercation. Not knowing the relationship, not wanting to get involved, Schwartz made his exit. As he did so, he was spotted by the brute who was accosting Stride. Pointing at Mr. Schwartz from across the road, he yelled one word:

“Lipski!”

That was it, Ethan’s stage cue. Having looked at every single perspective of this particular event, he came down on the side of Inspector Abberline who believed the man shouted “Lipski” in epithet towards Schwartz, a man with pronounced Jewish features. A year before, a Polish Jew named Israel Lipski murdered a neighboring woman in a lodging there on Berner Street by pouring nitric acid down her throat. The assailant was captured and hanged for his crime but the act outraged the local residents, inflaming anti-Semitism towards the Jewish immigrants. Londoners were known to create phrases from events, thus Lipski was used to identify an unsavory or unwelcome person of a certain appearance. Ultimately, Abberline’s investigation concluded there was no one by that name living in the area during the Whitechapel murders, leading once again to a logical deduction: the man who threw Miss Stride to the ground was using that name as an indictment, most likely to chase him away. A safe enough assumption to make, Ethan had drawn his own conclusions. The way he saw it, when the man was observed accosting Stride, he yelled out the infamous epithet in an attempt to blame Schwartz for his own sinister assault.

Right on cue, the name Lipski called out, Ethan lit the pipe he’d bought just for this special occasion. He knew that Schwartz, in a panic hearing that name shouted at him, would walk right past Ethan which he promptly did. Perfect stage directions. Schwartz gazed at Ethan who brazenly stared right back at him as he passed. Israel reported the man he had seen as five-foot-eleven in height. Ethan was six feet tall, only a slight miscalculation on the part of the witness present at the scene of a crime. Schwartz broke the gaze first, obviously thinking Ethan and the man who yelled at him were together. He kept on walking, picking up his pace. As Ethan had expected, the attacker disappeared into the alleyway behind where he’d beaten Miss Stride to the ground then blended into the shadows, never to return or be heard from again. Once word got out that she’d been murdered, obviously not wanting to be punished as, at least, an accomplice, the less than gentlemanly sort probably left the country.

On cue, Ethan hit his mark. After Schwartz passed him, he immediately crossed the road, heading over toward Elizabeth Stride, knocked out cold. She looked dead already. Without breaking his stride he arrived beside her. Crouching down, Ethan opened the medical bag, retrieving the familiar blade. Though he had his timepiece in his possession, it was not a stopwatch he could click to gauge his pace from there to Mitre Street for his next appointment with destiny. Instead, his start time would have to be the completion of the killing of this helpless woman. In an instant, Time took the lead.

Grabbing Elizabeth Stride by the hair, he pulled her head back as she lay there, face down, unresponsive to the tug. Ethan began to slice back and forth across her throat, severing the left carotid artery and continuing the sawing motion until he hit bone. As he held her hair firmly in his grasp, her neck bent back more and more as the muscle and tissue were severely separated by the piercing blade, exposing bone. The crunching sound of the knife against her spine told him he’d completed the job in a timely manner, what was required of him by his taskmaster. Though he couldn’t see her enchanting light gray eyes, the color of storm clouds brewing, releasing her beautiful curly brown hair signified the start of the race like a gun going off. Placing the knife in the bag, hastily gathering himself, Ethan began his trip to the outskirts of the city of London, over a mile away. His encounter with Elizabeth Stride took a total of thirty seconds. 12:46 a.m.

One, two, three, four, five, six. Ethan counted his steps as he quickly exited this stage for the next, in route to another victim. Wanting to smile, knowing Schwartz’s statement that the “taller” man had followed him for a bit, then stopped, obviously Israel mistook Ethan’s pace along the same route as somehow connected with him, when in fact, he was not being pursued by a stranger because of what he witnessed. In fact, it was a mere coincidence. Their paths crossed, that was all. Ethan tried to find the humor in it but he could not smile. There was a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, an emptiness. A lack of fulfillment. He had an emotional reaction to the murder of Elizabeth Stride, a woman who he did not get to see before he’d claimed her life. Other than the police postmortem photographs, he never truly saw her face, just a glimpse of her profile as blood spurted from her neck. No! He was angry at his accomplice! Not at the man who took her down but at Time for not arranging the history in such a way he could have completed a full mutilation of this victim. Ethan took pride in his precision technique replicating the autopsy reports, the facts of the case, doing so to exact specifications. He could not linger at the first body. Time did not allow it and history never recorded it. He felt robbed.

Thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five. His pace had quickened, not because he was late or falling behind, but due specifically to his increasing angst. Ethan not only felt Time kept him from proving his devotion to the cause by having him perfect another mutilation down to the last nick of the blade but he also thought of Elizabeth Stride’s plight. Time never gave her the just recognition she deserved because she wasn’t torn apart like the others. She would always be the appetizer as opposed to the main course that night, namely Catherine Eddowes. How fair was it that this woman had her life taken and was a bit player in this theatre, second even to Israel Schwartz because he was the only living person who witnessed the alleged attack on her? There was nothing fair about it. She paid the same price and should have been immortalized just like all the rest. But they weren’t, really, and he knew it. Sure, he knew all their names but how many mortal souls never bothered to know them? They were the victims of Jack the Ripper, tossed in a file, into a pile together; tossed out with the trash of history. Lost to time and a character who upstaged them from the start. Nobody knew who he really was but everyone knew his name! “Pace yourself, mate.” Ethan spoke to himself, alone in the dark.

Eighty-seven, eighty-eight, eighty-nine, ninety, ninety-one, he kept on moving. Pulling his pocket watch out and opening it, he measured the checkpoints along the way from his rehearsals so to time it perfectly for his arrival in Mitre Square. Too soon or too late and he could run into one of the roving policemen such as Constable Edward Watkins who’d been conducting a fifteen minute patrol of the area and who would also be the one to come upon Miss Eddowes’ body quite soon. Ethan knew his judgment on timing was probably predestined and would really have no bearing on any fluctuation in his arrival. Time would not allow him to be apprehended, not before, during or after the killing. Everything happening as it always had was both liberating and confining for Ethan. His practiced pace brought him to the edge of Mitre Street in nineteen minutes, well within the estimated times from rehearsals. In fact, a little early as he walked with a huff for a time along the more than a mile trip. Who would have thought he’d have to come back to the 19th Century to really get in shape?

He would enter Mitre Square through Duke Street via the dark narrow Church Passage. Due to time constraints, Ethan was being pushed harder than ever before. The precision timing over the next thirty minutes would be as crucial, if not more so considering precision cutting he’d have to perform. Assuming that the reports of encounters were accurate from the three men seeing Eddowes with a shorter man around 1:35 a.m., her body being discovered by PC William Smith at 1:45 a.m. meant his work had to be exact and swift. Time was really fucking with him in more ways than one. The really bizarre twist was that Catherine Eddowes was released from the local drunk tank at Bishopsgate Police Station less than twenty minutes before her date with destiny. When she signed out, she used a fake name: Mary Ann Kelly. Jack the Ripper’s last (agreed) victim and Ethan’s last task before returning through the Flicker was Mary Jane Kelly. He didn’t believe in coincidences to begin with but since his jump into the 19th Century and this unexpected role, he was sure that Time had a human quality with a wicked sense of humor.

Ethan moved further into the poorly lit Mitre Square and out of Church Passage where, in the minute or two after his entrance, the first scheduled appearance would be that of Police Constable William Smith who reported entering the Square at half past one. In fact, he arrived at 1:20 a.m. and left in less than a minute. Irrelevant as it seems, Ethan perceived it to be close enough. One milestone met, one historical part of the event now down on the schedule. Ethan then heard a female voice from the end of Church Passage near Duke Street. Staying in the shadows he could see a man and woman stopping at the entrance. She leaned back against a warehouse wall and faced the man leaning in closer to her. Ethan had no doubt, this was Catherine Eddowes and her customer, the man spotted by Joseph Lawende who was with two other men who were exiting the Imperial Club, a local social favorite, around 1:35 a.m. according to reports, but according to Ethan’s pocket watch it was 1:27 a.m.

Ethan need only hope that his friend Time was trying to make up for not letting him eviscerate Elizabeth Stride earlier and force this man to leave at an earlier time in order to give him a wider gap to work with than the reports had given him from the case, which was only about fifteen minutes. Ethan assumed the man or Eddowes didn’t like the arrangement of price and he walked off earlier than 1:30 a.m. causing Ethan to close his pocket watch and kiss the three-legged horse on the case. He then tucked it away in his coat pocket and opened the medical bag, extracting the knife he used earlier on Elizabeth Stride, sticky blood still hugging the blade for dear life.

Ethan saw Catherine Eddowes. After a hard night she appeared dead on her feet. If she only knew. For all intents and purposes, it was an apt description of the poor woman. She began to walk down Church Passage towards him. He moved over to the dark corner where her body would eventually be found and he waited for her to come into the square. Eddowes popped out of the passage onto Mitre Square, head down as she was fiddling with something in her hands. Ethan really wanted to find out just how Time was on his side. Instead of calling out to her or approaching her, he waited in the dark corner to see if she was scripted by fate to turn right and walk right into him. His patience paid with dividends. Catherine Eddowes indeed walked directly towards him, never looking up as she was still tinkering with whatever she had in her hands. Ethan had the blade hidden behind his left forearm, concealing the butt of the knife with his hand, rhythmically tapping on the handle against his pocket watch buried in his coat as if to relay Morse code to his friend to say “thank you”. Intermission had been stressful but now he could settle into the role. Time for the second act.

From the moment Ethan struck there wasn’t a word. The work ahead for him to do “the job” precisely required he begin as soon as possible and swift in completion. Ethan lunged for the considerably shorter Eddowes, grabbing her lush, auburn hair with his right hand, spinning her around backwards then to the ground, landing on top of her in a squatted position, leaning with all his weight forward with his left hand holding the knife and pushed it onto her throat with such weight and pressure it began breaking the skin and cutting into her larynx before he even began slicing back and forth. Although Ethan’s eyes adjusted to the extremely dark corner of the square, he couldn’t make out Catherine’s eyes while he continued to hold her down, sawing through her neck. Cutting from behind her left ear, through the left carotid artery, across to her other ear, not nearly as deep on the right where he started, he forced the knife all the way back to her intervertebral cartilage. Catherine Eddowes never had time to utter a noise before she died. The still canvas now before him was the gift, his chance to make up for his rush job with Elizabeth Stride and fulfill the heinous performance his role demanded to this point. Ethan was convinced that everything he did was under the auspices of Time, pulling his strings as a puppeteer. Ethan knew he was being manipulated and choreographed. He was the marionette, dancing to Time’s tune.

He couldn’t screw this up if he wanted to because he would not be allowed. He need only conduct the intricate cuts and slices to her body and history would record it as such, the same as before. It was dark and he had to dive in, literally with both hands. Feeling the form of her face, he located her eyes which were still open. He’d read they were a deep shade of hazel but he just could not see them. Softly shushing an already silent woman, with two fingers he closed both of her eyes. This allowed him to take the point of the sharp surgical steel knife and cut into her eyelids, slicing top and bottom of both eyes about a quarter to a half an inch out from the nose and all the way through the membrane. The angle forced an unavoidable collateral cut to the bridge of her nose which Ethan enhanced by pushing the blade point deeper into her face on the right side of her nose bridge and ripping downward towards her mouth, severing all the muscle and tissue along her cheekbone. His blade reversed course and dug into her gums then upper lip before he angled the blade in such a way as to slice through her nose from the nostrils to the bridge again, sawing back and forth until only the superficial skin was all that was left to hold the nose on the face. He made another cut near the nose bridge and yet another from the right side of the mouth, all looking like random jabs at her face but were, in fact, all precisely where they needed to be. Like slicing sandwich meats, he turned the blade sideways and carved up the woman’s right cheek, leaving the skin flapped back in a triangular shape. He obliquely cut through the lobe and auricle of the right ear.

He was performing surgery in the dark using a mental stopwatch, as if trying to set a world record. Hurriedly, he moved from atop Eddowes’ chest and kneeled on her right side, yanking apart Catherine’s buttoned coat and man’s shirt she wore so he could more easily pull the multiple layers of skirts she wore to keep warm well above her sternum region, fully exposing her midsection. The first two jabs and the cut in the dark missed their mark, hitting the inner left groin separating the labium and leaving a flap of skin on the groin. He’d attempted to readjust but stabbed and cut into her right inner thigh. Feeling around her pelvic region to get his bearings, Ethan realigned, driving the blade straight in and down above Catherine’s pubic region then began a steady slicing of the abdominal muscles. At the naval, he cut around to the right and under to the left before continuing to the breast bone, leaving her belly button supported only by tendrils of the rectum muscle on the left side of the abdomen. Making oblique cuts at the top and bottom of that long opening, he separated her midsection, exposing her internal organs. He’d already made several stabs and cuts into her liver. Ethan had to remove her intestines, covered mostly in feculent matter, placing them on her right upper chest and shoulder. Not letting go of the knife, a two-foot long section was then cut away from the intestine, which he methodically placed between her left arm and side. He was now unobstructed and able to cut away other appendages and remove both her left kidney and Elizabeth’s womb without disturbing the vagina and cervix. He opened his medical bag which he’d pre-lined earlier in the day to avoid leakage issues he had suffered harvesting Annie Chapman’s organs. Placing both her kidney and her womb inside the medical bag, he then cut away a section of her apron and placed it within, as well.

Before he could clean up, he heard the unmistakable hard soles of a constable on patrol by the name of James Harvey who came to a halt inside Church Passage before entering Mitre Square then turned back down the passage away from Ethan and his victim. Officer Harvey’s appearance was a warning signal to move his arse! In only four or five minutes PC Edward Watkins would discover the remains of Catherine Eddowes. It was time to go on to the third and final act in tonight’s play, taking an alternative route. He’d traveled through Church Passage via Mitre Street to King Street then past Duke Street. Knowing not to take the identical route twice, Ethan traveled Stone Lane, crossing Middlesex Street into a small alley called New Goulston Street. Where this intersected with its original namesake, Ethan stopped. Goulston Street was quiet and empty. Pausing, not to reflect but merely to clean off the remnants of the murder, he wiped his knife of the blood, tissue and fecal matter, using the piece of torn apron. This was where he would replicate history, leaving the cloth on the ground inside of the frame of an archway of this soon to be busy boulevard just below where he would write in the chalk he had borrowed, words Police Constable Edward Long would soon discover scrawled on a wall about 2:55 a.m., which stirred up more confusion in the case. There was controversy as to what exactly was written on a wall, as well as its meaning. PC Long reported one version and Detective Halse, yet another description and no photographs were taken of the location because the order was issued by Sir Charles Warren, head of the London Metropolitan Police to wash the wall down before the nearby marketplace became filled with immigrant vendors. Ethan chose the words Sir Warren put in his report:

“The Jews are the men that will not be blamed for nothing”

Unlike Ethan’s role surrounding Mary Ann Nichols or Annie Chapman’s death, he never really struggled in his mind whether he did everything exactly as history recorded it. He was now in the hands of Time. Working in near pitch black darkness, for him to try to meticulously duplicate the injuries presented by Dr. Gordon Brown in the postmortem report would have taken a miracle (or more time than he had) to perform. He had to trust his colleague and logic that whatever he did to both of the women he’d murdered tonight he had already done historically the exact same way. The curtain was closing on this final act and the man at center stage in the lead role was taking his final bow. Ethan went home.

Arriving back at his lodging at 3:19 a.m., Ethan considered everything that had transpired outside of his room window was exactly as history recorded. Now, with the “Double Event” completed, he need only wait to see if his theory was right and all was as it had always been. Ethan had avoided as many gaslight streetlamps as possible, any exposure or human contact while returning home because he had no idea how much blood and other fluids from the women he’d victimized had gotten on his clothes. Once inside his sanctuary he locked the door and lit the two candles in his room, one on the desk and the other from the dresser. Before disrobing he’d briefly glanced over his outfit for signs of that early morning carnage. His sleeves expectedly received the worst of it, blood staining both coat and shirt. He avoided stepping in any blood but several drops were on the topside of his shoes, most likely from when he was inside Eddowes’ abdominal cavity. Splatter was also present on his trousers, though not apparently so while he was walking through the dark alleys. In fact, it was his wise decision not to wear one of his fancy new suits for the task. Ethan disrobed, once again becoming what was more and more comfortably naked. Distant police whistles had died down from earlier when he heard them as he moved further and further from the murder scenes. Everything playing out as it should. He was down to the last assignment of this mission. The last woman. The last murder. In thirty-nine days, Mary Jane Kelly would die.

There was something wrong. Ethan lay naked, sprawling out on the bed, staring at the ceiling above, hands behind his head. He tried to label his emotions but could not. From the point he surrendered to Time’s construct he’d felt cheated, dissatisfied with his role, as if being guided like a small child needing to have his hand held to cross the street or the stage, insulting his intelligence. He was given a script which he’d memorized, no improvisation necessary, no alteration to the construct already provided for him. Were he offered artistic license he would have written his part in the play with a more generous timeframe in which to work. There was no time to interact and to meet his co-stars, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes, before cutting into their throats to the point of almost decapitating them. Ethan was not a coldblooded killer. He was an artist. His script would’ve included some interaction, maybe a dinner or a romantic run through the rain before he took his blade to their bodies, some kind of meaningful interlude. He would have loved to see their eyes, transforming from an expression of pure adoration to abject terror then ultimately, to a lifeless stare. He’d found himself agitated, indignant as he rested his sore body and sulked, his self-perception under attack from within.

Successive emotions building upon previous feelings as he laid there, he had to wonder why, how could Time betray him after he’d done everything asked of him? There would never be another opportunity to not only observe history but become a major character within its story. Upon the conclusion of his debriefing, he knew The Consortium would never again allow a risk of interaction in any future Flicker / Scope project approvals, no matter how descriptive Ethan would be in explaining how it would not affect the time continuum. Anson would be too paranoid to listen to him. This experience would be studied and analyzed for decades to come.

Wouldn’t it have been something to have a few amazing personal characteristics of himself added to the story by getting to know and perhaps even love these women prior to the moment he killed them? Ethan began pounding his fists into the mattress on each side of him in, exasperated. In such a sweet spot, to be robbed of time, he resented being slighted, not factored into the equation. Stiffening his body in primal rage, he appeared to be having a child-like temper tantrum, acting out for not getting his way, angry at Time playing a parental role, telling him he couldn’t have his toys. In fact, just like a spoiled little brat.

“I hate you. I hate you. I fucking hate you.” Repeating it through gritting teeth, his jaw clenched, tears of frustration formed in Ethan’s eyes. His emotions directed towards his only friend in this strange land, Time had abandoned him, too. The huge “Double Event” was over and there was nothing to do about it but fret, acting out in the privacy of his room until the tantrum passed and he finally fell asleep with a blood-covered thumb tucked in the corner of his mouth.