Stickneedle Jack

A dark and dreary January night, with the drizzle settling over the London rooftops, people scuttling like beetles down on the wet pavements below. The misshapen creature sat on his haunches, the ragged collar of his tattered raincoat drawn up around his face, perched on a gable-end of a listed building deep in the old City’s heart. His eyes flicked from one street-lamp to another, probing, scanning – searching out for anything delicious.

While he maintained his over-watch, his right-hand curled around the back of his head as he smeared away the rainwater from his cracked and split skin. Here and there, a staple or a nail kept an edge of his tortured flesh in place, pinned out like some hideous tailor’s cloth. As he slowly caressed his mutilated balding head, the fingers of his hand kept changing shape, transforming into long silver spikes, wickedly evil and sharp.

Every now and then, a pointed blackened tongue would whisk away a raindrop from his thin grey lips. His feet seemed to curl unnaturally around the roof’s edge, twisting the scuffed black leather of the boots he wore completely out of shape.

This malevolent being hummed to himself as he squatted there, poised like a bird of prey.

“Looking up and down the streets,
 Looking for someone to meet,
 Short or tall, thin or fat,
 Young or old, anything like that,
 Here up high I’ll soon see you,
 And when I do – I’ll…choose…you…”

His eyes locked onto a young secretary, inappropriately dressed for the wintry weather and as rain-soaked as he was, desperately trying to navigate her way in high-heels through the puddles. With an almost careless lurch, he seemed to straighten and then plummet from the rooftop, falling so fast that his movement was a blur. The young girl never stood a chance – at a precise moment, he broke his fall by momentarily clutching hold of some pipe work that ran up the building he’d been using as his look-out, and instantly darted with a phenomenal inhuman leap across the street, over the tops of the passing and crossing vehicles.

No-one else saw him his movement was so fast – one second she had been walking amongst a crowd of anonymous commuters, now she’d been hurled off her feet. Without even stopping, he’d snatched up the girl in his arms, and propelled himself and his trophy down a dark alleyway, lightly rebounding off wet vertical brick walls several feet off the ground.

Landing lightly on his feet, tucked away out of sight behind some small refuse bins, he stifled the terrified girl’s screams by pushing four fingers from his left-hand into her open mouth. She desperately tried to bite down, only to crack several of her teeth, as again, those fingers turned into long steel-like spikes. The girl thrashed uselessly in his grasp, staring up into his face, a face that seemed to be peeling off, it’s skin stretched and fixed in place like some evil parody of the worst kind of cosmetic surgery.

He was tall and lithe, and very strong, and he easily pinned her against the wall. She sobbed, went limp, shivering with fear.

The creature started up its lilting hum again.

 “How do you do, my name’s Jack,
  I’ve taken a shine to you – fancy that?”

With his body pressing her into the brickwork, his right-hand reached up to her neckline, and with a ruthless tearing grab, he ripped away the front of her blouse, carrying part of her bra with it. Again she tried to scream, but the needlepoints of his fingertips pricked the back of her throat, and just made her retch.

He played with her, like a toy, for twenty minutes, until he got bored, whereupon he probed his thumb into her jugular, piercing it and bathing himself in the arterial flow of blood that jetted out of her neck. His skin felt so much better when it had had a proper wash. He folded her body in half and stuffed it unceremoniously into one of the bins.

Stickneedle Jack was back in town.