This story is by D. H. Keller and was part of our 2025 Fall Writing Contest. You can find all the writing contest stories here.
It was a Monday, a cold and dreary night in the city of London. Big Ben had just sounded a long chorus of twelve, familiar knells. Crouched in an alley nearby, a man removed his great coat and set it on the crates beside him, hiked up his arm bands and the sleeves of his shirt, then peered east and west before receding into the shadows.
He was waiting for an unwary female to pass by, a woman of sullied reputation. The very type of victim he favored. After lingering for a few moments, the hapless woman at last hurried toward him heading west down Hanbury street, quite unaware of his presence. Once she’d passed, he sprang upon her.
He throttled her from behind, and with his right hand he opened the young lady’s throat. As her warm blood spurted and flowed over his left forearm, he marveled at the efficiency of his marble-handled Sheffield straight razor. At first she struggled and tried to scream, but his grip stifled her cries, and after his blade had found its mark, a gurgling, muffled yelp was all she could muster.
From an adjoining street, he heard the clop of hooves followed by the metal bands of a coach’s wheels rattling across the cobblestones. A dog barked off in the distance, so he paused but saw no other person along the dim, gas-lit street.
After her brief struggling had ceased, he let her lifeless body crumple to the cobbled road and stole into the shadows. “Ah, the ecstasy!” he reveled as he turned and peered at the corpse again before vanishing into the adjacent alley, leaving crimson footprints behind him. Grabbing his overcoat, he then hurried east on Hanbury.
Aaron, whom the press had amusingly named Jack, had always felt euphoria after killing prostitutes. Sadly, for him, the thrill of butchery was losing its appeal, so either the intensity must increase, or the job itself must offer some other reward. Being half awash in blood, even though darkness concealed him, the initial excitement of killing was spent.
By day Aaron Kosminski lived the simple life of a barber, but his nocturnal activities hinted at a depraved need. His sparse scattering of friends, noticing an odd transformation, derided him for not being forthright, for at nightfall his alter ego would appear, and he’d vanish into the night. Why had a simple want become an overriding obsession, they wondered?
Being young and foolish in his early years, he’d sought the company of harlots, but Aaron must now confront the plain evidence of having come in contact with one of these despised wretches after clear symptoms emerged. Cues that were impossible to hide. Being slighted by colleagues was one thing, but having been reproved by an indecent wench was something else, especially after one of their kind had insinuated that his immature, outlandish cravings were not only base, but degenerate.
His upbringing had been principled and somewhat rigid, despite his family’s status. His parent’s, poor but decent folk, had only one concern. The family’s survival, of which his father was the sole breadwinner. “Securing our good name comes first, my dear,” they’d tell him, a look of defeat replacing an innocent smile.
They loved their son, of course, but the critical aspects of life were left to reason, for they had decided that such things were beyond a child’s grasp. Aaron was therefore left to untangle these mysteries for himself. He eventually did, but he was ridiculed for being unable to decipher such simple impediments.
Indeed, to a child, an adult’s priorities were hard to understand, unless explained with sensitivity and caring patience. Growing up, little Aaron felt the direct results of love and care: he was being fed and clothed, but a true, heartfelt love was something he imagined, not something he knew. Regretfully, once of age, he looked elsewhere to find love. Immorality, however, hadn’t found him love at all, but reproach and a sure end.
Aaron knew his days were numbered, and that he’d besmirched his name, hence, the anticipation of an untimely death, unquestionably by his own hand, consumed him. This duty irked him to no end, and whatever foul injury he inflicted upon these women, he deemed insufficient. Aaron loathed these types of women with heartfelt animosity, and, if caught, in all likeliness he would not spurn being hanged for as many as he could kill.
He didn’t realize that these women weren’t always at fault. Their survival instinct drove them, so they peddled what was at hand. Actually, he was partially responsible for prostitution thriving: since he sought to engage these women, thereby encouraging their conduct. He was a transgressor himself.
As Aaron hurried down the street, he welcomed the cool, clean air, and looking up he noticed countless points of light twinkling overhead. He took special notice of a gauzy, undulating curtain of green and yellow fluttering across the inky blackness, for it swiftly reminded him of his upbringing, the recall of a cherished memory. It was his dear mother and father, after all, that had explained how this particular phenomenon could only be seen in the northern hemisphere.
As he neared the east end of Hanbury street, he had passed no one, and no warnings had yet been raised as he distanced himself from the grisly scene. “A clean get away. Except for the blood, of course,” he chuckled, whispering to himself, “These bumbling London constables will never catch me.”
He slowed to a walk, still reveling in his vile deed, and quickly cut through Sutton Park, making it to Albert Street and then heading north. He suddenly remembered he’d been called to his nephew’s birthday early the next morning, so he hurried toward his apartment in the silent darkness to clean up for little Timmy’s twelfth anniversary.
Aaron soon made it to his flat at the north end of Albert Street and slipped his key into the door’s keyhole, entered, and not hearing any disturbances, like shouts of alarm or police whistles, he laughed and directed a defiant sneer outside, mocking the constabulary, then closed the door.
The End
Leave a Reply