Old Writing: Jack - Part 4 - Final

            This will be my final letter, though I know now that you will never read it.  I have tried to change the world and failed.  My work, my crimes, have drawn the eye of the public, even that of the crown, to the travesty that is the poverty running rampant like a sickness in the veins of London.  That I should have done so much is beyond anything I or any of my accomplices could have imagined.  But it must stop now.

            I awoke recently to the newsboys outside my home proclaiming another murder in my name.  In my bleariness, I nearly fell back to sleep before the abrupt realization that it was not by my hand that this most recent of crimes was perpetrated.  I threw myself from the bed and dressed quickly, racing to catch the boy before he moved on.  A few pence later and I sat with the paper in my lap and a terrible chill in my heart.

            That same day, I wrote a letter to the newspaper which had run those previous, denouncing this most recent murder, expressing my outrage at both the killer and the news organization that failed to realize the gross inconsistencies in the separate crimes.  I waited a day, then another.  Nothing.  The letter never saw print, just as these will not, I am now certain.  They will be too rational, not sensational enough.  I will not be the monster you need me to be.  It disgusts me.

            That someone, a twisted, deviant mind, would latch on to my, our, legacy in order to commit such a heinous act is a perverse mockery of those who have died willingly at my hands in order to usher in a new era.  More so, that the sadistic lust of the populace which has turned the media into the sensationalistic, bloodthirsty charade that it has become leaves me without hope for any of you.  I suppose, though, that I should not be surprised.  It is nothing if not indicative of the opportunistic depravity of our time.

            So it ends now.  I cannot bear to carry on this work, knowing that it has, however indirectly, led to this.  There was no justification, no deeper purpose, to the slaughter of this young girl.  I am damned.  I knew the moment Polly’s argument began to sound rational on that night so long ago.  I accept that.

            But I am not the only one.  Each of you who revel in the darkness, who feel a visceral thrill in the depths of your heart or gut at the pain of others, physical or emotional, each willing to watch the world burn around you and do nothing, will be there with me.  Indifference is the greatest of sins and you are all damned.

- Jack

1888