Whitechapel, it was like another planet. In some respects things hadn't
changed
very much at all since 1888.
It was unlikely that Joey Lymon had ever heard of Jack the Ripper. It was
unlikely that any thought more complicated than one associated with the seven
deadly sins had ever crossed his mind. Make that six deadly sins. Joey Lymon
had
no pride.
Joey was a very uncomplicated young man. He was not particularly stupid, nor
was
he particularly smart. He had a certain innate shrewdness that had allowed
him
to survive for twenty-two years, an ability to scratch out a subsistence
living
one way or another, something that was no mean feat since the spectacular
failure of Britain's experiment in enlightened socialism. What made life
difficult for Joey was his surpassing ugliness.
At an age when his sexual hormones were in full roar, Joey could make Medusa
turn to stone. He was tall and gangly, thin as a stick, and he moved with
spastic motions, like a spider with Parkinson's disease. He had a nervous tic
at
the corner of his mouth, and his nose was always running. His hair was lank
and
dark and greasy, and his skin had an unhealthy, sluglike pallor. He had warts
and pun-pies that were so pustulant and so profusely scattered all over his
face
and body that he looked as if he were a victim of some grotesque fungus. His
eyes were bloodshot and his teeth were rotten. He had lice, and he smelled
worse
than a week-old road kill. Even the rankest whores in Whitechapel fled at his
approach. It had always filled him with self-loathing when that happened, but
lately he had begun to direct that loathing outward, toward all the women who
looked at him with such disgust, especially the whores of Whitechapel.
Given the circumstances, it was Joey Lymon's tragic fate to have a sex drive
three times as strong as any ordinary man's. He would stand in the shadows,
chewing on his lower lip, desperately trying to work up his courage, feeling
awful, dirty, ugly... and when he could no longer bear it, he would accost
some
prostitute. He often tried to pick the oldest and most unattractive ones on
the
theory that they would be equally as desperate as he, but invariably they
would
recoil from him in disgust or, even worse, they'd laugh, at. him.. It. made
the
hate in him grow and. grow until he thought that it would make him burst. And
the time came when he could not contain it any longer.
Her name was Mary Spring, but Joey didn't know that. He'd been standing in
the
shadows for close to half an hour, watching her, trying to work up his nerve.
Just once, he thought, just once so I could know what it's like. Perhaps then
these awful yearnings that filled him with such shame would go away. Maybe
this
one would be different. In the time that he'd been watching her, no one had
passed by. It was late, and a thick fog had descended. Anyone with any sense
would be inside by now, hiding from the predators who roamed the streets at