In the velvet shadows of London’s high society, Jackelin and I existed as polished ghosts, remnants of a life we scarcely remembered, cloaked in silk and sin. We were known as the Blackwood twins, heirs to a small fortune, perfectly refined in our manners, impeccable in our attire. But beneath the veneer of wealth and privilege lay a truth as dark as the fog-choked alleys we prowled at night.
Our story did not begin in luxury. We were born to a woman whose name we never knew, a prostitute who left us in a darkened room one rainy night and never returned. We were abandoned as infants, two tiny bundles swaddled in stained blankets, left to the mercy of fate. By some miracle, or perhaps by the design of some cruel god, we were taken in by the Blackwood’s–a family of means, but one that harboured its own secrets. They clothed us, educated us, polished us like tarnished silver until we shone just enough to hide our origins.
Our adoptive parents rarely spoke of the circumstances surrounding our adoption, nor did they ever reveal the identity of our father. Sometimes, I wondered if they knew. I imagined he was one of those men who slithered into the fog, a nameless shadow in the night, seeking warmth and pleasure from a woman who’d lived on society’s fringes. Perhaps he’d been wealthy, perhaps he’d been wretchedly poor–it didn’t matter. He’d left his mark, and then he was gone, leaving behind only the two of us, twin sins, hidden within the shell of respectability.
Jackelin and I grew up with a shared hunger, a festering wound left by our abandonment. Our adoptive mother, frail and distant, never warmed to us, as if some part of her knew the darkness that lay within us. Our adoptive father, meanwhile, was stern and proper, a man of rigid discipline and few words. He raised us with a steady hand and a cold heart, moulding us into the perfect images of society’s ideal. But behind closed doors, we were something else–two feral children left to raise each other, bonded by blood and a shared hatred for the world that had discarded us.
The fog tonight was thick, pressing down on the streets of London with an almost tangible weight. Jackelin moved beside me, her steps as silent as my own, her black silk gown flowing like ink around her as we slipped through the city’s forgotten alleys. To anyone watching, we would have appeared as ordinary as shadows–a gentleman and a lady, moving with quiet grace and purpose. But we were the Rippers, our past an open wound that never healed, festering beneath the polite masks we wore by day.
A figure loomed in the fog ahead of us, a woman leaning against the doorway of a crumbling tenement. She was barely visible in the fog, her face gaunt, her eyes hollowed by the ravages of a life hard-lived. I felt the familiar thrill coil within me, a dark anticipation that quickened my pulse. She reminded me of our birth mother, though we had no memory of her face. In a way, every woman we chose reminded us of her–a lingering spectre, haunting us through each kill.
Jackelin was the first to approach, her gloved hand reaching out as she stepped into the woman’s line of sight. She had a way of moving that drew people in, her presence magnetic, even mesmerizing. The woman looked up, startled, her wary eyes meeting Jackelin’s calm, unassuming gaze. There was something soft, almost motherly, in Jackelin’s expression, a warmth she summoned with ease, though I knew it was as hollow as the fog around us.
“Are you lost, Miss?” Jackelin asked, her voice a gentle murmur laced with concern.Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
The woman hesitated, her eyes flicking between us. She seemed to weigh her options, her expression shifting between hope and suspicion. “No, ma’am,” she mumbled, her voice rough, broken. “Just… out for the night.”
“Out for the night,” I echoed, stepping closer, my voice soft and warm. “I’m sure that can be lonely work. Perhaps you’d allow us to buy you a drink? The city is no place to be wandering alone at this hour.”
She looked at us, uncertain, but the promise of warmth and company seemed to outweigh her caution. She gave a small nod, her gaze flickering to the gloved hand Jackelin extended, and after a moment’s hesitation, she took it. Her fingers were cold, rough, trembling slightly against Jackelin’s silk gloves.
We led her down a side alley, slipping away from the main streets, our movements as fluid as a practiced waltz. She followed without question, drawn by the same quiet charm that had entranced countless others before her. She had no idea that she was following the path to her own end.
When we reached the darkness of a secluded corner, Jackelin turned, her eyes gleaming with that quiet thrill she always wore before a kill. She kept her voice low, her words soothing, as she spoke to the woman, who looked at her with a blend of trust and fear, as though sensing that something was wrong, yet unable to pull herself away.
“Tell me,” Jackelin murmured, tilting her head, her gaze soft and curious, “do you remember your mother?”
The question hung in the air, strange and out of place, and the woman blinked, confused. I watched her expression shift, a flicker of pain passing over her features. She shook her head, looking down as if the memory were too heavy to bear.
“No… I don’t,” she whispered. “I barely remember her at all.”
Jackelin’s lips curved into a faint smile. “Neither do we.”
And with that, she pressed a gloved hand over the woman’s mouth, muffling her startled gasp as I moved behind her, slipping my knife free with a practiced ease. There was a strange, terrible intimacy in the moment, a familiarity born from the countless times we had reenacted this ritual, each kill a twisted homage to the mother who had abandoned us.
As I drew the blade across her throat, feeling the warm rush of blood spill over my fingers, I felt the thrill of power surge through me, mingled with a strange, quiet satisfaction. Each death was a cleansing, a way of erasing the spectre of the woman who had left us to rot. We killed her over and over, in every woman who fell beneath our hands, each act a prayer to the darkness that bound us.
When it was done, we let the woman’s body sink to the ground, her blood pooling in the cracks between the cobblestones. Jackelin knelt beside her, her gloved fingers brushing a strand of hair from the woman’s face with a gentleness that seemed almost loving.
“They’re all the same,” she murmured, her voice laced with a bitter tenderness. “Just as weak, just as helpless. She was no different.”
I watched her, my gaze unwavering, feeling the weight of our shared past pressing down upon us like the fog that cloaked the streets. We had been abandoned, discarded, left to the mercy of strangers who had tried to mould us into something we could never be. But in the darkness, in the blood and the violence, we had found our true selves–a truth too terrible for society to bear, yet one that we embraced with open arms.
“We are her children,” I whispered, my voice as cold as the night air. “But we are so much more.”
Jackelin looked up at me, her eyes gleaming with a dark satisfaction, a glimmer of pride that only I could understand. Together, we were something powerful, something unstoppable. We were the children of the shadows, bound by a bloodline we would never know, and a mother who had left us with only our hate to guide us.
As we disappeared into the fog, leaving the woman’s body to the silence of the alley, I felt the familiar thrill settle within me, a satisfaction that was both hollow and complete. We were the Rippers, and in the hidden corners of London, we would find our mother’s ghost in every life we took, each kill a testament to the power we had claimed from the darkness of our birth.
And as the fog closed around us, hiding us from view, I glanced at Jackelin, knowing that she felt it too–the quiet, terrible joy of vengeance, of taking back what had been denied us. Together, we walked through London’s night, twin sins bound by blood and darkness, carving our path through the city that had dared to discard us.