Chapter 13 The Body and the Blood
Chapter Thirteen
The Body and the Blood
Jack woke to the smell of soup and the distant clatter of pipes.
Unfamiliar. Where was he?
Grey light filtered through a soaped window covered in swirls of grime and frost. Water-stained ceiling. Peeling wallpaper the color of old teeth. A radiator hissing in the corner like a dying animal.
Not the estate. Not home.
He tried to sit up, but his skull throbbed as if split open from the inside. The room tilted violently, and he collapsed, the stale scent of cigarette smoke masked in lavender wafting around his face as he moaned.
“Easy now, love.” A floorboard creaked as a woman with hair the color of fire swam into focus. Deep lines framed her eyes and mouth. “You’ve been out for two days. Gave me quite a scare.”
Jack scrambled back, but flinched when his body protested.
She stilled and held out a calming hand. “Easy now. You’re safe.” She set a stack of linens on the dresser and slowly approached, cradling a steaming bowl in a tea cloth. “Name’s Myrtle. You’re in Whitechapel. In my flat. Remember?”
He didn’t. The last thing he remembered was the alley. The shadows closing in. Swinging for his life.
Braced on his elbows, his body trembled as he tried to stay partially up. “My things.” His voice scraped like rust on metal. “Where are my things?”
“Your things are safe.” She nodded toward the corner where two pillowcases sat, lumpy and familiar, propped against the wall.
Beside them, on an overturned milk crate, the money that had been stuffed in his pockets sat stacked in neat piles and sorted by currency.
Pounds in one column. Euros in another. American dollars in a third.
All of it.
“That’s quite a bit of money for a boy your age in your condition,” Myrtle said, taking another slow step closer to the bed. “Didn’t take nothing. You can count it yourself when you’re feeling better.”
Jack stared at the money, then at her, waiting for the other part where she told him what she wanted in return for helping him.
“You need your strength.” She took another cautious step toward the bed, staring down at the foot but not daring to sit in the open space. “It’s nothing special. Just some beans and broth. But it will help.”
He didn’t move when she held the bowl out to him.
“Suit yourself.” She set the soup on a stack of old magazines serving as a nightstand. “It’ll be there when you’re ready.”
She moved to the door, pulling on a coat with a matted fur collar, worn thin at the elbows.
She toed on a pair of scuffed red heels.
“I have to work.” She glanced back and smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
“I’ll be back before dawn. Try to sleep, love.
You look like you haven’t properly rested in years. ”
She was right. He hadn’t.
The door closed with a soft snick as she locked him inside. Money in the corner. Warm food steaming to his right. But his body was still in control, and he could only manage to collapse in exhaustion. When he woke up, the soup was cold, but he ate it anyway.
The week passed in fragments. Soup going cold.
Light shifting from grey to black to grey again.
The radiator hissed its endless complaint.
Myrtle came and went like a tide, each return marked by the click of her heels on the stairs and the soft sigh she released when she finally slipped out of that matted fur coat.
Jack slept more than he’d ever slept in his life. Deep, dreamless hours that pulled him under like a riptide. His body demanded rest, and for the first time, no one woke him with heavy footsteps or hands reaching through the dark.
When he finally managed to sit up without the room spinning, Myrtle brought a basin of warm water and a soft cloth.
“Let me see how you’re healing,” she said gently.
He flinched when she reached for his shirt.
“I won’t hurt you.” She waited, patient as stone, for him to signal her that touching was allowed. “I’ve already seen you, love. You needed attention when you first got here. I just want to make sure the bruises haven’t gotten worse, and nothin’s infected. I promise.”
She reached again, and this time Jack only stiffened.
Myrtle gave up and sighed. “Then you show me.”
Jack met her weathered stare and nodded. Slowly, with trembling fingers, he lifted his shirt.
“What do you say I soak that in the sink. I can give you something clean to wear.” She held out her hand, chipped red polish tipping each finger, and he placed the soiled shirt in her palm.
Her face didn’t change. Not when she saw the bruises mottling his belly and ribs like rotting fruit.
Not when her sharp gaze traced the raised ridges across his shoulders, where fading pink scabs layered silver scars.
And when her eyes found the brand above his hip, those two letters seared into his flesh like a rancher marking cattle, her expression still remained stoically blank, only her chin rising in comprehension as if she could somehow see the moment the letters RA were permanently branded into his skin.
“You’re mending nicely. But you still have a ways to go.” She wet a cloth in a basin of warm, soapy water. “Do you like jasmine? It’s all I had on hand.”
As she soaked the rag, the cool air warmed like honey on a breeze at dusk. The scent reminded him of pears and moonlight. He liked it.
“May I?” She wrung out the cloth, and Jack gave a stiff nod, not quite sure what she planned to do.
The first contact was hesitant, but the water was warm. He shivered, and she gently stroked the damp cloth around his wounds, careful not to apply pressure where the skin had split. Her hands were warm and sure.
“Is this alright for you?”
Jack nodded, lying stiff as she lifted his arm and gently washed away the grime. A single tear rolled from his eye when she carefully placed his hand back on the bed. She handled him like breakable glass, the kind that had already shattered and been glued back together too many times.
Myrtle was so gentle, the bath didn’t hurt. But her softness and patience made it one of the most painful experiences of his life.
The following week, Jack found the strength to stand without falling.
He limped to the toilet and often stopped at the window, staring over the soap smudges to watch the street below.
The faceless parade of bodies moved through their lives with unfamiliar purpose and a business he had never seen before.
Much like the way Myrtle moved about her days, always preparing, always recovering, always coming and going.
Jack didn’t know where she went when she left, but she always came back. Dependable, like the moon that consistently follows the sun.
The flat was a single room with a toilet down the hall and a copper tub wedged into the corner behind a makeshift curtain.
The walls were thin enough to hear the neighbors arguing and babies crying.
Jack recognized the constant percussion of poverty and preferred it over the untrustworthy boom of power.
Myrtle’s home was old and worn, but warm. Like her.
He watched her routine, finding comfort in its patterns.
She left after dark, dressed in clothes that revealed more than they concealed, and returned just before sunrise, slower than the night before.
Sometimes her makeup smeared and her red lipstick wore off, but she always smiled when she saw him, even when he pretended to be asleep.
One night, when Myrtle came home moving as if her back were sore, and her joints ached, Jack watched her through his barely parted eyelashes. She hung her threadbare coat by the matted fur collar on the peg by the door and set the kettle on the burner to warm.
She peeled off her dress and her stockings, standing in the dim light by the stove in nothing but her undergarments. Ribbons and straps framed her skin, but that wasn’t what made Jack stare.
Those garments were meant to distract the eye and lure the gaze to lush curves. But Jack saw the truth. He recognized the markings underneath the tattered lace for what they were.
Fingerprints.
As she turned to the stove, lifting the kettle off the burner, he opened his eyes. Bruises on her thighs. Red marks circling her wrists. A bite wound on her shoulder, dark as a plum.
After adding the hot water to the room-temperature water in the tub, she added a splash of jasmine and unhooked her bra. Her breasts drooped against her ribs, soft and tired. The curve of her hips sagged where flesh was usually plump.
But her age detracted nothing from her beauty. Not for Jack.
Her stomach was marked by a long scar, raised and pale, stretching from her navel to her pelvis like a crude signature.
Realizing what might have left such a mark, Jack turned his gaze away, but his concern was inescapable by that point.
Someone had cut her open and sewn her back together without much care for what remained inside.
What had they taken? What had it cost her?
He forced himself to look as she lowered herself into the tub with a soft hiss. Once submerged in the tub, she rested her head on the ledge and shut her eyes, reminding Jack of the churches he and his mother used to visit.
Like statues of the Virgin Mary, there was pained sorrow etched in Myrtle’s tired beauty.
But also pure tenderness. A quiet resilience, so perfect and feminine, that neither time nor struggle could ever wash it away.
Holy and wounded, somehow, Myrtle was more beautiful because of her past suffering. Sacred.
“I know you’re awake,” she said without opening her eyes.
Jack’s breath caught.
“It’s alright, love. Nothing you haven’t seen before, I expect.”
He didn’t know how to respond, and he didn’t want to lie, so he asked, “Do they hurt you?”
“Who?”
“The person who makes you take it. Whoever…bruised you.”