The Man That Wasn't There

The Man Who Wasn’t There

I am lying naked in a crowded room. I seem to be of no interest to anyone, save for whichever white figure had haphazardly dropped a towel over my crotch. “Thanks for small favors, right?” seems appropriate…but I said nothing. The table is cold metal. The room is unbearably bright... but it does not bother me. There are people encircling me like pigeons stalking the last French fry in the parking lot. Faceless white blurs point around the room adjusting things and giving orders. The closest to me seems to be an initiate. Their voice is unsteady and they do not seem to know what to do or where to stand. They take a deep breath from within their mask. The room reeks from blood and chemicals, but the people around me don’t seem to notice…neither do I.

Some of these figures wear strange crowns that seem to glow in the light. As they move the refracted light dances over me and around the room. For all of their fervor, some seem to be in charge. These intelegencia seem to be training the apprentice.

They have now begun to quiet and take their positions around me. They hold up their hands as if praying to some long forgotten god…The leader nods to the apprentice and hands them a silver wand. The initiate brings it closer to me as the ritual starts. I see that the wand has a blade; it is a thin understated knife. It is familiar…but I am indifferent.

Their intricate script has begun to unfold. It seems like some have done it before and others are merely understudies not yet off book…I am at the center of a dress rehearsal…I don’t mind.

They have opened my chest and begun freeing the organs inside. They pass them from the center to others waiting in the wings, also cloaked in white, and carting containers in which to receive the offerings. Parts of me are passed around…I don’t feel a thing.

My abdomen is fully opened, and bloody hands dig around inside. They seem to be searching for something…and I can’t look.

The figure next to my legs is working on a different task and has his own supplicants waiting backstage. He draws careful lines down my leg with his wand. My blood flows from the cut and down toward the table. It pools on the silver slab. The blade runs along the inside of my skin delicately cutting it from my body in the way you might skin a fish. It pulls free from the connective tissue easily in collectors hands. This would be torture and mutilation if done by a lesser sect. This brethren seems to be of a high order, indoctrinated into the society in white. Pieces of my skin come off into his waiting tray…I can’t see where it goes from there.

The white clothes swish by unrelentingly. Further partitioning me from the darkness of the rest of the room. At the highest point I can see the outlines of other members of this guild. They look down into the room with curiosity not horror. Their attention is fixed as they have no intention of intervening. The bright lights shine down on me; the flurry of hands continue as blood and steel pass between me and the light…I can’t even blink.

The people above me gesture to each other and seem to be constantly talking, saying their lines, and keeping everyone at the right pace and in the right place…and I can’t hear a word they say.

They have now moved higher on my chest. They draw fresh lines and clear more of my skin away. They look down and back to the one who has cut nodding approvingly as they move on. They break my ribs, with no flesh to cover them, the sound is unmuffled and indescribable. Somewhere between snapping old plastic that has been left out for a few winters and the sound of a toothless animal eating, mouth agape, is the farewell cry of my ribcage. The heads of the brotherhood in white dissect them from my cartilage and diaphragm. They have revealed my heart…and it doesn’t even skip a beat.

A bloody mass is removed from my chest and is passed to one of the awaiting apprentices. Their eyes glaze over as though they were being handed a miracle. They take my heart in the offering dish and nearly run out of the room with it…I just lay there, waiting. I see no reason to run.

Other masses are pulled from me and these offerings disappear just as quickly…there’s not much left of me. Solemnly they sew me back together just enough. They know what I have done. I just saved 6 lives. They live with a part of me they could never live without. I have joined the ranks of the immortals. I will always be with them now.

Forever,

John Doe 372

For those of you who know that a happy ending only comes if you end the story too soon, I will continue. John Doe, like many before him, needs an end. If we step back from fiction here, I will introduce you to Pete.

Here ends the unwritten fiction to be found in the last pages in the journal of Peter Sutcliffe. Gone from this world too soon…or too late.

Pete was a serial killer in life who killed 13 women between 1975-1980. He takes with him a collection of lives of his own. There were 13 women who died at his hand, but now others will live because he was never caught through multiple detainments. He was overlooked. He kept going. He kept killing. The lives he saves will pay the ferryman for those he took, one might assume this was his reasoning the last time he renewed his driver’s license. Of course there is no ferry-man, there is no toll to pay.

Were he to be eulogized he would have been described as an “extremely callous, sexually sadistic serial killer”, provided that criminal psychologist David Holmes was the one speaking. Our altruistic protagonist borrows some attributes from the real man. John Doe’s backstory is real, it just isn’t his. It belongs to Pete. He takes with him 13 confirmed murders, 7 injured victims that likely got lucky, 2 probably assaulted in addition, and a final woman whose murder was likely committed by Pete.

There is no telling how many of the injured could have had a far worse experience. Pete worked his way from the suburbs to the red-light districts, likely for a lower risk target. He eventually confessed to the murders while being detained by police after a traffic infraction. He told them he was acting out god’s will by killing prostitutes, leaving out, by default, his initial victim pool. Prior to this arrest he had been questioned 9 times by the West Yorkshire police and released. He was convicted here of 20 concurrent life sentences, which was later changed to a whole life order by the courts.

He eventually moved from prison to Broadmoor hospital with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, having previously tried to plead ‘diminished capacity’ at trial unsuccessfully. From Broadmoor he was again deemed fit to be incarcerated.

In 2020, Peter was finally put to death by COVID-19 and complications related to his previously diagnosed diabetes.

If we return to fiction, the discovery of the journal would read something like this:

They found his journal in his flat. It tells the story, written, decorated, illustrated, and hidden by Peter Sutcliffe. Inside the cover they will find a multimedia masterpiece. This book will become a shining fixture in urban legends all around the town.

It has news clippings, pictures, tufts of hair, fingernails, and eyelids glued to the pages. Pete has added his own illustrations as well. Occasionally a picture of the victims are stuck between the pages like a particularly poignant bookmark. If there was one thing Pete could have taken with him it would have been this journal…But he can’t take it where he is going.

When this is finished, he will go where all men of his nature eventually reside. A room of smoke and fire. Bits of charred bone on the floor. You twist as your bones deform in the heat. You blacken. Your hair stinks from burning…and you don’t mind at all. His final destination, where all of his people go, is the trashcan…and he would have it no other way.

He knows that he will live on in those he saved and those he killed. The transplant recipients will carry him with them. One even has his cold black heart and it still beats.

But Peter never knows what happened in that room. He did not recoil against the cold metal table. He did not feel the blood drip down as he was peeled free of his skin. The smell did not overpower him with memories of other days spent in the basement that smelled much the same. Because he cannot feel it, he cannot smell it, he cannot remember it…Because he is not there.

Like all donors he experiences none of this. His heartbeat was driven by machine until it was removed to give life to a person who was nearly as heartless as the Tin Man from Oz. His brain was processing nothing, unlike the women who sustained permanent brain damage at his hands. Pete is long gone before this day happened and his physical remains stink up the town for the last time as he is incinerated. Whatever was left of Pete disappears in a cloud of smoke adding another light layer of dust to the small town below.

Information about Peter Sutcliffe can be found in ‘The Byford Report’, which was made public in 2006.