⁕JACK⁕

Chapter Second:

THE KETCHUMS (part 1)

The peculiar gnome-like beings had not reappeared, and Jacque started to think he had hallucinated them. He must have walked for over an hour in the dark and the spitting rain and could not have imagined lasting this long as he had previously been. Something must have changed in his body because despite the 46-year-old he was, he felt and moved with all the suppleness of youth. He tried to examine himself, but the cloudy night and rain made it nigh impossible to make any certain assessments. He knew he was still a man though, that much was plain to see in his nakedness. It was his hair that gave his transformation away. In the life he’d known, he had been balding at the temples and had always kept it at a respectable length. His head was full now, and the locks draped miserably across his soaking wet skull all the way past his neck. For the first time in his life, he’d had to do as women do and arrange the hair away from his face. He felt between his legs repeatedly, making sure that his manhood had not disappeared.

To Jacque, being born a woman was among the things he counted unfortunate. They lived with little authority over the important matters, and their main aim in life was how to best tempt a man to part with his earned gains. Without their ability to propagate the race, they would be little more than parasites at worst, and an extra pair of hands at best.

He had known a few exceptions in his life, and though he could admit that some women were virtuous, that was all they were… exceptions. He had one time engaged with such a woman, back when he was still an amateur at his craft. He had conversed with her whilst devising the manner in which he would mutilate her particular figure. As the conversation progressed, Jacque had found himself feeling conflicted on whether he should slay her or not. He ultimately chose to go through with it and with one swift blow to the back of the head, he had rendered her unconscious. As he slashed and tore open her throat, he recognized that his deed had not been enjoyed by God, for He had not rewarded him with a gladness in his heart. So, from that day forth, Jacque promised himself that he would show restraint with women of virtue.

A big reason he had targeted mostly women was not one which he was proud to admit. As many a lawman had publicly assumed, Jacque went after women because they had most of a man’s vile qualities, and almost none of his natural defences.

He had learned early on that he could not afford the slightest mistake in his preparation if his target was a man. Men had shown him several times some frightful displays of resistance while at death’s door, and Jacque had counted himself lucky that he had survived them all. On more than one occasion, he’d had to flee from his target once the difference in strength became apparent.

Women on the other hand, would always succumb to fear, and whenever they struggled for life, it was as the struggle of a child in her father’s arms. Quite harmless. Women were simply easier, but Jacque would make note of whomever accused The Ripper of such a cowardly policy, for it belittled his work.

Jacque was hungry. The pit in his stomach grew and grew, making him feel like a hollow man. The rain had reduced to light drizzle, but the world was still dark, and he had followed the only path he had come across in a straight line, hoping that people and shelter were not far away.

He continued for another while and then stopped, when he feared that the path was without end.

“Perhaps I’m dead. I have walked for miles without a sign.”

If he was indeed truly dead, he saw no reason for his hunger or the ache in his feet.

“Perhaps I am dead, and this is Hell. Not a fiery one, but a dark and wet one in which I must tread through endlessly.”

Jacque looked to his sides, where forest and woods began. He had feared to venture them because of the strange sounds of animals that had occasionally sounded from within. Civilized people did not live in forests, they lived at the ends of roads. But this road had refused to give him any hint of how much further he was to travel.

Perhaps the forest held fruit or grub. Yes, Jacque was sure that it would.

He deliberated.

He retraced his memory back to the last moments in Whitechapel.

He had been gutted and watched his entrails spill out.

He had been kicked down to a vicious mob who had begged for his head.

He had been lynched and mutilated by London.

There was little doubt in Jacque’s mind that he had been killed.

He was a dead man.

“If I am already dead, then I will fear for my life no longer.”

Jacque turned from the path and tread into the woodlands.

The earth was drenched, and it mushed against his feet and between his toes. Wet twigs bent and cracked under his weight as he walked, and the boughs of leaves, rather than provide shelter from the rain, acted as small, constant showers from all the water they accumulated during the downpour.

Soon after entering the woods, Jacque gave up on feeding his grumbling belly and instead decided on finding a good spot to hole himself in and wait.

“If I am still among the living, the sun will shine again tomorrow. Let us wait until then,” he told his belly.

He eventually came across a nice, hollowed tree, big enough to shelter him completely from the wet. The little patch of ground inside was grainy, soft, and dry. Most likely ant litter. Feeling about the hollow like a blind man, Jacque set about to remove any unruly twigs that jutted out when suddenly his hand brushed against something large and smooth. His hands reached out and fondled the object. It was almost the size of his own head.

“What is this?” He frowned in the dark and his stomach rumbled loudly.

It was much too light to be a rock and much too shapely as well. A lamp glass?

No, its surface was more like clay than glass. Jacque sniffed it but caught no distinct scent. He tapped it and he felt the vibrations travel along its surface.

“An egg?”

Taking it out of the hollow’s pitch blackness, he held it out into the slightly better lighting outside and opened his eyes wide mere inches away from it. He could just about make out the darker patches blotching all over the shell, and the shape of it became clearer.

It was an egg! A giant egg!

Jacque groaned with delight. Raw eggs, though not so palatable, were still edible. He sat himself in the small hollow, still dripping wet, and cast about for a strong twig. When he found one, he wasted no time and rammed it at the shell, but the blow bounced off harmlessly.

Not to worry! Breaking an egg was not nearly as hard as slitting a throat. The latter required patience and preparation, and sometimes a good struggle. Jacque’s hands searched through the floor inside the hollow, then at the entrance outside, and after some fiddling, he picked up a small rock.

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He did not want to risk smashing the shell to bits, so he used the rock as a hammer, and the twig as the anvil. The shell was indeed tough, but in this new body, Jacque’s arms had all the strength they needed to puncture through. He held it up and put his lips to the hole. The yolk was thick and gooey, and the taste was unlike that of chicken or fowl eggs. It was rich and creamy, with a salty, brine-like flavour. He took gulps of it and set it down.

As his mouth worked, his mind wandered to what manner of animal could have laid it. An ostrich. They lay their lot on the ground. It must have escaped from a zoo.

Ostriches were not native to England, but Jacque had seen a few in his time. He had seen the size of the eggs they could lay. This must have been a very big ostrich.

With a bellyful of raw egg and shelter from the breeze and rain, Jacque cozied himself up as best he could, and he fell asleep in the hollowed tree.

…

“TASTE YOUR BLADE!” the guard screamed with spittle flying from his mouth.

Rather than stab at his gut, the guard lifted the knife overhead and brought it down towards Jacque’s heart in a painfully slow swing.

“JACK THE RIPPER!”

The blade pierced into his chest and Jacque felt the pain as the metal seeped the cold into his blood.

YOU FUCKING EVIL MAN! I TRIED TO HELP! Jacque screamed with his thoughts. They were loud enough that the guard heard them.

“HELP?!” the guard twisted the blade and Jacque convulsed in deep discomfort. “YOU BUTCHERED US! YOU BROUGHT THE DARK!”

Jacque screamed in agony, and it took every ounce of his being to respond. You are the dark, and I will cut you out!

There was a loud and feverish shriek which shook the world, and Jacque awoke.

…

There was something in the tree hollow with him, shaking and flailing desperately. In the low light, Jacque thought it was a wild boar. It whined and moaned in pain.

I am already dead. Do not fear. Jacque pushed his back against the hollow’s wall and watched with awestruck horror as the creature rose on its hind legs.

“Duroowww…” it growled, followed by an ear-splitting shriek that lit up the hollow in a flash of pink light. It was the strangest sensation Jacque had ever experienced. He felt himself held to the spot like a mannequin, as if his body had at that moment developed a mind of its own.

A blast of wind buffeted the boar-creature, and it slammed against the hollow wall right next to Jacque. His body was again his own and he leapt outside without a moment’s hesitation.

The same cackling he’d heard as he crawled out from the earth sounded again and his eyes darted about in the dark, till he spotted the same pair of glowing red eyes that he’d seen when he took his first few breaths in this increasingly mysterious part of the country.

“Who are you?” Jacque called out to the red eyes. The being was up some tree some distance away. It blinked slowly but gave no reply.

“Do you follow me?”

Another set of eyes appeared down below the first, and Jacque remembered that there had been two of them. They watched him silently from afar.

“Did you do that?” Jacque asked of the two-legged boar. When they still gave no reply, Jacque thought that letting that boar meat go to waste would be a silly mistake to make, so he walked slowly backwards to the mouth of the hollow and poked his head inside. The creature was heaving slow, big, dying breaths.

Jacque flexed his hands and shifted on the spot with uncertainty. He had no weapon with which to deliver a killing blow, and he feared to alarm the creature and rouse it from its dying state. He had seen it enough times with men back in London. You would think them drained and ready for death, and as you went in for the finish, they would come alive with a final hurrah. A final hurrah dangerous enough that Jacque had had to flee on more than one occasion.

A pair of glowing red eyes seeped through the hollow’s wall and Jacque stumbled, falling backwards.

“It is yours? Very well…” He lifted a hand between himself and the red-eyed gnome being. “It is yours.”

He swung his head backwards, where he saw the other red-eyed gnome, smiling from eye to eye in such a manner that Jacque was almost certain he was hallucinating them. No mouth should be that wide.

In a moment, something cold entered him and his body jerked upright. There it was again, the cackling in his head. His legs moved on their own, possessed by this cold force, taking long and lunging steps in a comical imitation of a sprint as his arms dangled limply at his sides.

“Waaahhh!” Jacque’s legs bent at the knees and then sprang forwards powerfully, sending him flying. The cold force left him as he was mid-air and he crashed onto the forest ground, violently rolling and scratching his skin against the wet and prickly underbrush. As soon as he managed to stand, he ran away from the red-eyed gnomes because they seemed fickle, and Jacque felt ill at ease with them around.

He moved without stopping for the whole night, and when at last he saw that beautiful brightening horizon, he fell to his knees in joy.

“I am alive! I am alive!”

He watched the dawn arrive and collapsed from exhaustion.

⨕ ⨕ ⨕

Not too far away, a young boy had risen early and gotten ready to sneak out of the house. His mother was still in her room, humming her morning tunes and fixing herself up to begin the day.

The boy dressed himself quickly and reached out underneath his bed for a Poké Ball. He held it in his hand and felt a bubbling thrill.

“Let’s go and train, Bulbasaur!” he whispered excitedly. “Professor Oak will have no choice but to let me keep you once I make you evolve!”

The boy had left his door slightly open throughout the night because turning the handle was always loud, and his mother would know he was awake. So, he slowly pushed the door open and tip-toed through the corridor, all the way down the stairs to the kitchen, and out through the backyard door. As soon as he was outside, he legged it into the woods and called out to his archnemesis. “Spearyyy! Oh, Spearyyy! …”

The boy held his Poké Ball tightly.

“You’re not scared, are you, Speary?”

“Kyahh!” a wild Spearow cried with a flutter of wings as it descended to the ground. The young boy smiled nervously. “You look bigger than last time! Have you been bullying any others lately?”

“Kyahh!” the Spearow replied, ruffling its feathers and standing as tall as it could.

“Go Bulbasaur!” the boy shouted, flinging his Poké Ball at the Spearow. The ball opened and released the Bulbasaur within in a flash of light.

The Spearow pumped its wings and leapt into the air before diving down at the young boy’s Pokémon.

“Use Flash, Bulbasaur!”

The young boy shut his eyes as a bright light flared behind his eyelids and opened them again in time to see the Spearow crash into the ground.

“Yeah!” he whooped happily. “Finish him off with a Tackle!”

⨕ ⨕ ⨕

Jacque was awoken by the commotion happening nearby. He crawled to a tree and lifted himself up. A splitting headache throbbed in his skull, and he wanted nothing more than to fall on a soft bush and slumber till the next morning. That said, he was sure he’d heard a voice. A human voice. This was his chance to find out all manner of things. He could not let it slip.

There was a shift in the brushes behind him followed by a tiny grunt. Jacque turned, half expecting to see the red-eyed gnomes, but instead, he saw the most peculiar animal he had ever laid eyes on. It was purple and as large as a London rat, with a sharp-looking horn on its forehead. It had large, pointy ears that were trained to his direction.

This cannot be England, Jacque realized. The gnomes, the two-legged boar, and now this. He watched the strange creature intently as it sniffed about the ground like a wary rat. Jacque’s eyes widened when he spotted another creature of a similar size, but instead of being purple, it was a light teal colour. He did not know what to make of them, but their colours and thorny appearance reminded him too much of the poisonous sort of reptiles and amphibians.

“Shoo!” Jacque spoke with a wave of his hand and the lighter one darted back into the brush. The purple one, however, screeched and charged, driving its tiny horn at the exhausted man’s shin.

Jacque screamed as pain shot into him and spread through his body like a tingling shock of electricity. The animal fled as Jacque fell to the ground, clasping at his shin as tightly as he could. He writhed on the floor, naked, and the lights went out.

When Jacque next awoke, he was being stared at by a boy. It was a young lad, likely no older than six or seven, with spiky black hair and large, expressive eyes. His skin was slightly dark and Jacque at once thought him as a native to the Americas or some uncommon mixing of blood.

“Are you okay now, mister?” the lad said with a sweet and youthful voice.

Jacque sat up and his eyes darted amongst the bushes around them.

“Don’t worry!” The lad squatted next to a green, monstrous thing with a giant bud-like hump on its back, patting at it like one would a family dog. “Bulbasaur here is the strongest Pokémon around! He won’t let anything happen to you!”

Jacque was too tired to move, but his heart jumped in his chest. “Wha- …” he muttered. He had too many questions. Looking down at himself, he saw that he had been bound in vines from the waist all the way to his knees. He picked and pulled at them, but they held fast.

A little blush came over the lad’s face. “Y-you were naked… I had Bulbasaur cover you up.”

Jacque looked into the boy’s eyes, full of innocence and a presence that he had only ever seen in people with purpose. A boy with a future.

“Thank you,” Jacque uttered. For some reason, it felt like it had been ages since he’d last seen another human, so he was truly glad to see the boy.

“What is your name, lad?”

The boy stood and rubbed the back of his finger on his nose.

“I’m Ash Ketchum!”

Jacque stood and extended his hand out to this Ashketchum. “Well met.” The two of them shook hands, and Jacque had to fight the urge to squeeze the child’s hand to test whether he was still capable of inflicting pain.

“Would you be able to point me towards the closest place where I might eat or sleep?"

Ashketchum nodded without hesitation. “Yup! We’re basically still in Pallet Town! Follow us!”

image [https://i.imgur.com/QCcqop6.png]

The boy turned and waved for him to keep up, and Jacque stared long and hard as that green and monstrous animal plodded along next to the child. Such a creature would fetch a fat quid at the zoo.

He would soon find just how far from London he was, and he reckoned he would be returning with at least one souvenir.