“Who—who are you? Where am I?”
The usual questions, voiced in the usual way. Ordinarily, Juliette would have amused herself by parrying with answers designed to tantalize and titillate her victim. But tonight she felt an urgency which only increased as she embraced the toy and pressed it back toward the waiting bed.
The toy began to breathe heavily, responding. But it was still bewildered. “Tell me—I don’t understand. Am I alive? Or is this heaven?”
Juliette’s robe fell open as she lay back. “You’re alive, darling,” She murmured. “Wonderfully alive.” She laughed as she began to prove the statement. “But closer to heaven than you think.”
And to prove that statement, her free hand slid under the pillow and groped for the waiting knife.
But the knife wasn’t there any more. Somehow it had already found its way into the toy’s hand. And the toy wasn’t prim and proper any longer, its face was something glimpsed in nightmare. Just a glimpse, before the blinding blur of the knife blade, as it came down, again and again and again.
The room, of course, was soundproof, and there was plenty of time. They didn’t discover what was left of Juliette’s body for several days.
Back in London, after the final mysterious murder in the early morning hours, they never did find Jack the Ripper…