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The Very Devil, Herself!
~ Chapter 1 ~
Darkness was always welcomed in Whitechapel. Nighttime was the busiest time of the day there. The general consensus was that the less you could see of the East End, the better a place it was. There is something about the night. It has a strange breed of activity and energies so unlike anything seen or felt during the day. There is an element to the nighttime energies that seems to simply not be able to survive daylight. Nighttime in Whitechapel was its own special brand of depravity, debauchery, and degradation. This sensation could be felt by every person and living thing in the area. The night, like a ravenous predator, had arrived and devoured all signs of daylight, leaving only the moon in its stead.
This was fine with her. The night belonged to her. She knew the darkness like it was her own beloved tamed pet. She was the true master of this beast and she loved it dearly. Darkness had once again come to London.
It was the same as every night. The pale ethereal moon and the oil lamps were competing to see who could outshine whom. Tonight neither the moon nor the lamplights were winning over their enemy, the darkness. Her long flowing ebony locks billowed in the gentle autumn breeze. The air enveloped her. The smells created a kaleidoscope of complex images.
With each new breeze came another flood of sensations. Images, scents, colors, sounds, and even emotions crashed over her like a wave against the shore. The smells of feces, both human and animal were ever present. As was the smell of death and decay. Every dark and cramped cobblestone alleyway and street in the East End was filled with the same thick smells of open sewage, coal, and the wretched stink blowing constantly off of the Thames.
Dead bodies were a common sight and often seen piled up on the side of the road. Neither the living nor the dead were cared about there. These smells never bothered her. She quickly learned how to separate the common smells of London from everything else.
As she walked along the cobblestone streets, she could make out where the horses had dropped their feces. No one wants shit on their shoes, she thought as she stepped over another steaming pile still warm on the ground and stepped right into a puddle.
“This just isn’t going to be my night!” she exclaimed.
Looking down into the now calm puddle she was captivated by her reflection. She realized after all these decades there was not one change to that flawless smooth skin.
Still the same seductive almond- shaped, captivating jade green and gold sunburst eyes, high cheekbones, small slightly upturned pert nose and beautiful pink full lips. Smiling at her reflection, she saw her teeth were rather unremarkable. Basically straight and relatively clean.
“Ahh Alexandra, always young, always beautiful, and always deadly,” she said to her reflection, repeating the words she used to hear so often. She sighed as she stood up and stretched.
It was time to find food and it needed to be soon. The wind blew once again bringing with it smells of delicious food and porter beer.
“Dinner waits for no one,” she said and started to walk the dimly lit streets of Whitechapel once more.















~ Chapter 2~
The old man’s words continue to echo in her head long into the night, long after she fed. She loathed those words, the silent hatred that filled her every time she thought of them. Always young…always beautiful…always deadly! Why did that old man have to be right?
She used to hope he was wrong. Alexandra dreamed of wrinkles and grey hairs. Humans never truly understood. They complained about crow’s feet and wrinkles. They hated getting old and losing loved ones. Humans always make death sound like a nightmare. To her it would be a dream come true to get a wrinkle or two.


Mortals did not understand how much work it takes to survive this way. As everyone ages around you, you remain the same. You have to move often to not draw suspicion, soon everyone you knew and loved is gone, and only you remain.
To never find everlasting peace in the ground is its own hell. You never get to join your loved ones on the other side. Alexandra knew her fate and she knew with a deep inner sadness that she would never find serenity inside a coffin. It had been over a hundred years of hoping and waiting for her end to finally come. Every time she fell asleep, her constant prayer was that she would roam this earth no more. After all this time, it seemed Alexandra remained cursed to roam this earth forever.


The Great plague came and went and she did not get as much as a sniffle. She tried feeding on mainly plague victims during that time. She hoped if she consumed their infected blood and flesh, she might succumb to the sweet death she longed for. Alas, the worst problem she faced was their flesh tasted badly. Gin could wash away even the worst tastes. Most of the Great Plague was a gin sotted blur.
Reminiscing always made her cranky and exhausted. Alexandra sauntered up to where she slept. The smooth gait of her steps made her hips sway gently from side to side, showing with no uncertainty her gender. As she climbed up her Star Street apartment staircase to her room, the old wood creaked under her weight causing the poorly constructed exterior staircase to rock and groan under her. It was a horrible old building where mostly the undesirables lived. Beggars, prostitutes, and vagrants were all crammed under one roof. She waited a moment for the staircase to settle down before continuing into her cramped quarters.
The rooms were like individual tiny tombs. Most were no bigger than ten feet squared if that, but for Alexandra it was more than she needed and continued the illusion for the outside world that she was human. As she walked into her own private mausoleum of solitude, she could see all the cobwebs that seemed to cling to every possible surface. With her soot-covered front door shut, her sanctuary became as dark as the bottom of the sea and probably twice as cold.
No light could shine through her windows. She made sure of that by nailing heavy fabric over each of them. Alexandra liked the security of no one being able to see in and, blocking the sunlight, afforded her the ability to sleep through until nightfall.
Darkness was never a problem for her. To Alexandra, darkness was like the sun to others. She could function perfectly well in both atmospheres but the sunlight hurt her eyes. Gazing at her appearance one last time, she saw the eighteen year old looking back at her in her crud covered mirror. She was slim, petite and exhausted. She flopped down on the cold, moldy bed like a fish on dry land and passed out.
When Alexandra awoke, all she could think about was blood and all she craved was human flesh. She slept longer than she had expected. It was way after twilight and it had been over ten hours since she fed last. She was out of control with hunger. She bolted from her quarters and sped down the rickety rotting staircase in search of her next meal.
Visions of blood enraptured her senses. Her mouth was salivating for the taste of human flesh. She was drooling just thinking about some delicious thigh meat. It was the tastiest morsels to her. The thought of gnawing on a nice thigh bone, sucking every drop of marrow from it, made her walk even faster towards her destination.
Getting food was always easily done in the East End after dark. Men came to this part of the city to satisfy their own brand of hunger. Booze and Broads was what most of them craved. Most were longshoremen and sailors who had docked near by after being cooped up with only other men for months and months at a time.
If you were a woman out at night in the East end there really was only one reason. Alexandra used this to her advantage. She was young, beautiful, and healthy looking. All she had to do was smile coyly and make eye contact and they were hooked. They always assumed she was a prostitute. It never took much effort to lure men to their deaths. It was always just too easy. She used the same basic line all the women down there used.
All she would have to do was ask the gentlemen who walked by if they were lonely and wanted some company. She would then just give them a wink and a smile. It was really too easy! The foolish men would follow her anywhere, with never a moment's worry about where they were going. Most of them reeked of gin, filth, and body odor. As Alexandra would walk them to their own death, she always asked the same questions.
“Do you think I’m beautiful?” in a coy sultry voice. The usual slur of, “yes so beautiful,” would dribble out of the inebriated mouth.
“Do you think I’m deadly?” Most of her victims could hardly see straight from the amount of alcohol they already had in their system but the same answer belched out, “You? Never!”
By this point Alexandra had led them to a dark desolate alleyway near the Thames. She had the same ritual for every one of her victims and she loved every sensation of it. Tonight was no different.
“Do you think I’m deadly?” she asked in her smoothest silkiest innocent voice. Her back was to her latest victim while sauntering in front of him leading the way, by holding one of his hands. She found this to be the best way.
The drunken sot got to watch her sweet backside sway in front of him keeping him just distracted enough before she got them right where she wanted. Tonight’s was a particularly dark and dirty alleyway so close to the Thames the stench was almost too much to bear which is why it was so often empty.
The longshoreman stuttered and slurred, “You? No! Never! You’re too beautiful!”
Alexandra stopped staring off toward the Thames and smiled a terrifying wide grin. Slowly she turned around still smiling and looked at her victim. He still had no idea he was about to die.
With one petite and delicate hand, she pushed him with such ease into the wall behind him that it looked like she could have been lazily shooing a bug away from her. The man on the other hand, slammed into the concrete wall with such force, the wall behind him had debris crumbling all around him from the impact. The man smashed his head and let out a loud pained gasp. He was terrified and begging. Just the way she liked her food!
Alexandra was in full predator mode now. She could smell his fear. She smelled his coppery blood that was dripping down the back of his head from hitting the wall behind him.
She licked her lips and shuttered. Her desire for blood had now kicked in full force. There was no denying it any longer. She took the last few steps until she was face to face with him. Her eyes gleaming with twisted joy and dark pleasure. Alexandra leaned in next to his ear licking a drop of blood that had dripped there.
“Mmmmmmhhh!” she moaned with sickening pleasure at the taste of his blood.
“So, I’ll ask you one last time. Do I look dangerous to you?”
She whispered in his ear, in a voice so cold, so animalistic, that it felt like ice water had been poured into his veins. He swallowed back the terror as hard as he could. He could just make out her face in the moonlight.
Looking into his killer's eyes, he managed to squeak out,
“Yes! Oh, dear God, what are you?”
Alexandra’s beautiful gold and jade green sunburst eyes became overpowered by her dark beast. Who, in doing so, swallowed her beautiful sunbursts, leaving only cold darkness in its place. It was like staring into two cold dead dark obletets. Alexandra laughed wrapping one of her delicate little hands around his throat and looked him straight in the eyes.
“The very devil, herself!”

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