A roar of laughter erupted in the pub hall in a cacophony of dry and hacking voices. Thick swirls of grey-black smoke hung in the air, insulating the consistent rise and fall of drunken cackling, giving the impression that some twenty men were crowded together in the dreary room. In truth, only a handful of staggering, babbling gentlemen were present at Orson’s Corner Tavern.
A tall, bloated, balding man stood behind the bar bent over, wiping his tearing eyes. He sniffled a few times then turned upright and revealed his round face, red and clammy from laughter and sweat. His nasal chuckling wound down like a toy, and finally gathering himself, he filled from the tap the mug that he had been holding onto through his last fit. He slid the draft to a fair-skinned, black-haired young man who was apparently sharing in the barkeep’s amusement.
“I don’t believe your mother would approve of language like that, Johns,” the portly man spattered out through some residual titters.
“Well I know yours would, Orson, you fat old bastard. She seemed to not mind it last night,” Johns retorted with a grin that spread from ear to ear. He pushed his slick black hair behind his ears and sat back a bit on his chair as if to get a better angle for absorbing the praise and cheers that burst out once more. The bartender, whose mouth curled sour, did not join in this round of hoopla.
“Added a bit of her own colorful remarks, if I’m being honest,” the young man continued. “It was enough to make me blush, from head to toe if you catch me.”
With that two shabby fellows fell over the jester and wept their rum-soaked tears of laughter onto either of his shoulders. At the end of the bar a tattered vagabond sat slunk over himself brimming with glee. Through the clamor Johns noticed the bartender’s posture stiffen and knuckles whiten on the handle of the mug he was drying.
“Shut your face, dog!” Orson called out to the drunk at the end. “I let you stay because you’re my father’s uncle. But I’ll rip that last tooth from your mouth and throw you in the gutter if you don’t watch yourself!”
“Come on, love. It’s all in good fun,” said Johns. “I mean no harm to your mother or you. Got to give the boys some entertainment in this hovel you call a tavern.”
“Sure, good fun,” Orson muttered.
“How about another round for my lads here? You thirsty, Vic?”
One of the lanky slobs at the young man’s side slapped him on the back and without a word pulled himself back up to the bar.
“How about you pay off your tab,” Orson said coolly. “You haven’t flashed a penny since you’ve come in here today. Can’t be sure if you’re good for it.”
“Have I ever stiffed you once, Orson? You’re just sore that I gave your mother a good tongue lashing… and because I made fun of her, too! I tell you what, if there’s anybody really getting stiffed around here, it’s her!”
Several chairs flipped over as nearly everybody in the room fell to the floor in hysterics. But the howling was cut short in an instant by the booming crack of the bartender’s weighty fist against the bar top.
“Enough!” he yelled with a swell of rage washing into his cheeks. The murmurs quelled, and after a moment the husky barman’s enraged temperament retreated to checked agitation.
“So, Johns, you have any money or don’t you?”
“As a matter of fact I don’t, old man,” he answered without a hint of shame. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll talk with my boss tonight and have him advance me some payment.”
“Your boss?” Orson said with a snort. “You mean that fay looking chap I saw you tending to the other day.”
A few giggles arose from the gallery. Johns said nothing, but looked back at the bartender with wide blue eyes. He sat up straight on the stool and put his elbows on the bar top and his folded fingers to his mouth.
“You’ve heard the boys talk about it I’m sure,” Orson rambled on with a bit more pluck after seeing some initial support from the audience. “A queer looking lad in more ways than one, if you catch me.”
The laughter rose.
“What services exactly do you perform for your man?”
Still louder, now. Orson reached his sweaty hand into a large glass jar.
“Fancy a pickle? Or are you off the clock?”
Every eye in the pub was clenched in hysteria save two. Behind the young man’s deep blue eyes, a fleck of orange flickered and then grew hot – red and white flames nearly leaping out of the sockets. Black locks fell across the length of his face as he took quickly to his feet and shot a hand across the bar top. What it caught was a swollen, rolling neck attached to a face flush with surprise and fear. Orson beat at the arm with both fists and jerked in every direction to get away, but the only direction he moved was up, as Johns raised his arm and lifted the man off the floor. Three daring patrons, quickly sobered by the terrible scene, began to beat, wrench, and claw at the attacker – all vain attempts to pry him from the bartender’s throat. The young man simply batted them down like a swarm of drunken flies.
“Any more jokes, love?” Johns asked blithely.
No more of the bystanders could bring themselves to intercede. Paralyzed did they all stand and watch the horrifying show, struck mute at the display of brutality, and the ease with which the young attacker dispensed it. Intently they listened for Orson’s reply to his would-be murderer, but few actual words could be recognized. The hand crushing his throat had much to do with that fact. (Later discussion and drunken reenactments of the violence would fill in the blanks with pitiful squeals of “sorry” or “please” or “demon,” the last of which they never quite understood the meaning, but insisted was one of his final garbled utterances.)
It was when it seemed as though the fat man could not gasp another bit of air that Johns drew the entire mass of body over the counter, still by the neck, and carried him to the far wall opposite the entrance. He held the trembling man up for a moment, without sign of fatigue, and then with a single motion drove the bartender’s round face into the wall. The audience collectively gasped in terror at the explosion of blood and bone. All but one of the onlookers scurried away like rodents, and pressed their backs to the farthest wall as Johns sauntered by, cleaning his crimson-stained hands with a handkerchief. At the end of the line of empty stools, one old man still sat quietly at the bar, smirking as he gazed blankly into his mug of beer.
“I guess the pub is yours now,” Johns said to man as he tossed nearly fifty pounds onto the bar in front of him.
Johns stepped out into a day coming to a swift end, and a cool spring breeze made lighting his cigarette difficult. Over a plain white shirt, still damp with the pub’s foul humidity, he pulled tight under his chest a black jacket and buttoned one button. He took a long drag and held it deep within his lungs for half a minute. The tension in his muscles eased. He looked down at his polished black boots as a cockroach hurried across the sidewalk on its way to a crack in the tavern wall. Squinting and sneering at the creature, Johns stamped its hard shell with the toe of his boot and scraped the green residue off on the paving stones.
“Vermin,” he whispered.
With business to attend to, Johns placed his cigarette back in his mouth as he made off to the east down Hound’s Ditch. He walked at a brisk pace, winding his way deftly through the London streets as if on a pressing mission. He was determined, and his deportment, though not without pedestrian manners and contrived courtesies, spoke to his resolve. And as his journey lengthened, so did his shadow, disappearing altogether until it appeared again, only more subtly, by the craft of the lamplighter.
Johns continued northward off Mile End Road in the dark of night, when he finally slowed his stride as the paving stones that formed the road’s surface quickly gave way to sand and dirt. The pleasantries of modern civilization evaporated with every passing step northward. The putrid smell of boiling tripe and roasted cat escaping from several windows was almost welcomed back by the traveler when the occasional rogue waft of sewage accosted him. He coughed once or twice to clear the taste from his mouth. Otherwise the scene apparently had no real effect on him, for he plodded on through the squalor without hesitation.
At last he took a leisurely left onto Devonshire, a relative oasis in the center of utter impoverishment. There at the top of the road he gazed down a long narrow lane, dusky and black save a few fires lit outside slanted homes. He smiled and lit another cigarette. With his first drag of smoke came, surprisingly enough, the smell of roasting corn and bread, making the dismal scene feel less formidable and ever-so-slightly hospitable. If the scent had not convinced Johns of the neighborhood’s domestication, then certainly the sounds that echoed down the road were evidence of more than a few families carrying on their evening customs.
“Industry’s maternity ward!” Johns said with a laugh. The wail of countless babies, the whining of countless children, and the sharp rebukes of countless mothers saturated the air. Johns strolled gayly down the street, catching snippets of conversations, arguments, and abuses that escaped from the homes on either side of the gauntlet. Each morning the street was virtually empty as its inhabitants, from the youngest able-bodied child to the eldest widow whose heart could still squeeze a trickle of blood through cracking, weathered veins, poured forth into the many factories that eagerly and deviously awaited their arrival. And by evening the gluttonous mills begrudgingly spat out their masticated fodder upon the London slums where the very same conversations, arguments, and abuses would reconvene.
When at last his cigarette could not afford another puff, Johns halted, stamped out the flame, and directed his attention to a chattering crowd loitering about the mouth of a dingy alley. Facing him, with their backs to the alleyway which they called home, were nearly a dozen prostitutes. They were garbed in frilly, tawdry gowns which they picked at as they bantered and patronized a diverse cross-section of London gentlemen – some rich fellows, some poor, but all allured to Devonshire by the same carnal strain. The shabbier men smiled, flattered, and coyly tickled a girl – the hollow, deceptive dance a haggard man must perform to falsely assure gentle copulation. The wealthier man needed not lower himself to chicanery, as he saw it, nor forfeit his dignity and integrity. Sex is what he desired and he could afford it at whatever level of brutality and vulgarity he wished.
Johns moved closer as he listened to the many consultations that carried on within the cluster. No couple maintained a private parley, for though the group appeared amiable and jocund enough on the outside, (a condition in which liquor played no small part), each member of the party was jockeying himself, and herself, for a prime position that didn’t necessarily include his or her current consort. Men competed for the beauty of the group while women enticed the deepest pockets.
After eavesdropping for some time, Johns finally shouldered and elbowed his way to the center of the company. Every mouth snapped shut as some drew back at the abrupt entrance of the stranger. He pulled his black hair behind his ears, and then raised a hand to the darkened sky.
“Ladies of the night!” he called out with the volume and charisma of a seasoned salesman. “I have a proposition for you: the largest purse you have ever laid your weary eyes on for the best one of the lot!”
Wild glances shot across the circle as effeminate hands quickly released from masculine arms. Then, all at once, six women rushed at Johns, flinging themselves upon him with every flirtatious device in their arsenals – combing his greasy hair with their fingers and caressing his chest.
“Hey, boy!” spoke up an empty-handed gentleman. The other men echoed in low grumbling and snarling.
“Yes sir,” answered the young man, now barely visible under a thick coat of feminine arousal.
“What do you think you’re doing?” asked the man crossly.
“Business,” Johns said without paying much attention to the gentleman, who was approaching with a number of men at his back. The flock of women soon became aware of the mounting tension and backed away meekly from their prize.
Presently, Johns stood in the center of a much smaller and far more agitated crowd than he had originally barged into. He gathered himself, flattening his shirt to his torso with his hands and adjusting his hair once more.
“What’s your name, boy?” the unofficial leader of the pack demanded.
“I don’t believe it’s any business of yours, nor do I wish to make your acquaintance. But since I’m a gentleman and a man worthy of renown amongst the likes of you: Johns is the name.”
“What a coincidence,” the man hissed with a mocking grin, “we all happen to be johns, too!”
The others chuckled as they boxed him in further, but Johns made no attempt at escape. Indeed, he didn’t seem the least bit concerned with the predicament in which he now found himself.
The leader – rather well-to-do by the look of his tan, wool jacket and matching top hat – presently stood inches from Johns looking down at the shorter, younger man. “People don’t so much care for strangers in this neighborhood. And you’re perhaps the strangest little man I’ve ever seen here. We’ve all got a purpose and we’d like to stick to it, you see? Now I promised my wife I’d be home in a half hour, and I’m a man of my word. Your little show has robbed me of a few minutes with one of these fine ladies. So what do you say you leave the girls alone and be on your way, before these lads here get too impatient?”
Johns’ cool expression hardly changed after the threat. It remained insidiously serene – a disposition that would have become a mischievous younger boy, but appeared rather menacing on a man his age. His grin widened further as he noticed the white knuckles on a man beside him clenching an iron poker. “You have it all wrong, love,” he said. “I don’t want one of these fine ladies for myself. I’m…shopping, as it were. My boss has sent me on an errand on this lovely evening, and I’ll be sure to catch hell if I don’t deliver.”
“Well maybe your boss should drag his own worthless ass down here to do his own shopping,” the leader growled as he poked a finger into Johns’ chest. “Then we can offer him the same beating you’re about to receive.”
The gentleman had just taken off his hat when he took a faltering step backwards from his would-be victim. “What’s wrong with your eyes?” he said with a look of astonishment, and a tone that betrayed his quickly rising fear. The cheers that had arisen from the bloodthirsty crown were instantly silenced by the cruel crack of the gentleman’s jaw under the weight of Johns’ fist. All eyes followed the man’s limp body as it flew head-over-heels to the street some feet away.
A few wobbling boots shuffled warily across the dirt and away from the attacker. Johns chuckled with satisfaction and contempt. He turned away from the heap of a man he had left on the ground, when he was met unexpectedly with a belt across the cheek with a rusty iron poker. The blow snapped his face to the side with enough force to shatter every bone in his skull. Johns rubbed his face where the blow was struck and then marveled at the blood on his fingers.
“My good man!” he proclaimed with astonishment. “Well done!”
Johns’ assailant, a leathery old relic with a few pennies for a whore, gawked with a quivering lip, in a stance that suggested he might fly at any moment. Johns approached him slowly, smiling and gesturing to the man to relent his weapon.
“That’s right, love,” he said calmly as a shaking, wrinkled hand held the poker out. “That was quite a wallop for a senior.” Johns continued closing the distance between himself and the frightened old man. “You must’ve been a sailor, or a military man to have that kind of strength so late in your years.”
The old man’s shoulders drooped and he straightened from his ready position. “I spent thirty years in Her Majesty’s army. You an army man, too?”
“No.” With a motion swifter than any eye could register, Johns snatched the poker and thrust it deep into the old man’s chest. There was no stammering, no death throes. The old man dropped instantly to the ground, lifeless with the iron yet sticking out of his chest. Johns drew the weapon from his torso and twirled it playfully like a baton as he walked back to where the gentleman leader lay splayed on the street, hopelessly inching away.
Johns sidled up along the man and flipped him over onto his back. His face was ruined. “All this was your fault, love. I think an apology is in order, for the mocking, the boorishness, and for that fellow over there, too, I suppose.” Johns put a boot under the man’s chin and twirled the bar ever closer to his face.
“I… I’m… s… sss…”
“I’m having a hard time hearing you,” Johns said as he bent at the waist to hear the garbled phrases. He raised the poker up high over his head, his face wide-eyed and terrible. Then he pressed down heavily with his boot until the gurgling emitted from the gentleman’s foaming mouth had ceased.
“Ha ha!” he laughed, entirely amused with himself. Then Johns tossed aside the bloody bar, wiped his hands together, adjusted his hair behind his ears, and turned to address the crowd once more. Indeed, there was still a crowd despite the grotesque display that had unfolded before them. The inhabitants and patrons of Devonshire Street were hardly strangers to scenes of violence. In fact, brawls, police raids, and other exhibitions of civil unrest were the only consistent forms of entertainment they could afford. Still, the gaping mouths and cowering heads spoke to an unusual level of ruthlessness to which the viewers were not altogether accustomed.
“Now, where was I?” he said half to himself and half to the mixed crowd of remaining prostitutes and awestruck witnesses.
“You said something about the most money we’d ever seen,” one of the ladies plucked up from the back of the gathering.
“Of course!” he responded gayly. “About that. I’m looking for somebody special – not any old tit with an ass, you see.” This remark garnered a good deal of folded arms and indignant glares, while several women shuffled back to their shelter down the alley. A handful remained, including a pocket of hens whose bantering whispers had risen to a clamor. “Ladies! What seems to be the problem?” he called from afar.
Johns cut through the dwindling company to the source of the unrest. There before him were three women clad in matching dresses in a bitter dispute. The two eldest, as Johns correctly supposed, were restraining the youngest by either arm as the latter wrenched and flailed against her captors’ hold.
“He’s a monster! You saw it! You saw what he did!” the prisoner yelled.
“You promised!” the eldest screamed furiously as she struggled to hold on. “You said tonight was the night!”
“You did promise,” the fatter sister chimed in, but without disdain – almost begrudgingly by Johns’ account.
“Anybody but him! I swear!” cried the youngest.
“Didn’t you hear, you idiot?” the oldest growled through set teeth. “The most money you’ve ever seen. It’s time that you made up for all your floundering!”
Presently, Johns made his presence known to the quarreling women. They were startled, and all three stopped scuffling and faced Johns, the two elder still clasping the youngest. “Is there something the matter?” he asked.
“Nothing’s the matter, sir,” began the eldest. “It’s just that our sister here was a bit frightened by the fight. Never had a stomach for blood, poor little thing. But she’s more than willing to do business, sir. Right, Dwynn?” she asked with a threatening glare and a tightened grip upon her sister’s arm.
Dwynn swallowed hard and looked at each of her sisters. She straightened her posture and shook her hands free.
“Yes, sir.” she said boldly and directly, but with a slight quiver in her voice. “It would be my pleasure.”
“Well let me have a look at you, girl,” Johns said. Here Johns began to inspect her from head to toe, not sensually, but rather in the fashion of a physician, or a veterinarian examining a horse. At last he faced her and smiled. “Come with me,” he said.
Johns lit a cigarette then turned and walked out of the last remnant of the crowd. Dwynn followed a few paces behind. The air was now quite cold as the wind had picked up and stolen all that was left of the day’s warmth. She shivered in the breeze and cradled her bear arms in one another. Johns stopped at a quiet place on the street. He looked hard at the girl, squinting as he took another drag.
“My room is back there, sir.” said Dwynn. Johns didn’t respond. She wasn’t quite sure exactly why she had spoken up. She was in no hurry whatsoever to commence the activities she had promised to perform. Nevertheless, the anxiety that was rising in her throat was maddening as the stranger across from her spoke inaudible criticism with his eyes – those feral, piercing orbs that shone in the shadows as brightly as the end of his cigarette, but undoubtedly by no trick of reflection. “Sir?” she tried again timidly, as if trying to wake someone from slumber without rousing the sleeper’s agitation.
“You are not for me,” he said at last.
“Excuse me?”
From his pocket Johns produced a folded slip of paper and handed it to the girl. “Take this and follow the instructions exactly as they have been written,” he said sternly and aloof. “Here is a half of the money you’ve been promised. You will receive the rest upon arrival.” And with that Johns flicked his cigarette into the street and hurried off down Devonshire, fading out of Dwynn’s sight until the evening had completely enveloped him.
B David Larson 
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