Prologue
So many long days in Bedlam. So many long nights spent alone, cold, shivering in the dark with nothing more than three wet cement walls and one made out of iron bars with spaces only big enough to allow food in and nothing but the mice out.
It wasn't normal for someone to be locked in a cage like an animal, no matter how badly they treated you in the asylum. But for those of us who they thought of as dangerous... we were the ones locked up. Never to see the light of day again.
At least, that's what they thought.
But I proved them wrong. I always get what I want. Sometimes I just have to be a little patient before the door of opportunity creeps open. When that occurs, I just stick my foot in the doorway so it can't shut on me again and wait. Just wait.
I was good at waiting. Always had been. It was probably the only thing I was good at besides being a barber. Yes, a barber. But would they let me even touch my tools in that God-forsaken Hell hole? Of course not. That would be dangerous.
Of course... I always got what I wanted. So I had my tools eventually. And I got out of that place eventually.
Had they discovered the body of the security guard yet? I wondered. It wasn't easy to stuff him into the wall. After all, those cinderblocks were not that big and most were too heavy to lift easily. I'd had to really squeeze him to fit him in there.
They were always worried about me. I was too dangerous. Maybe they were right. Maybe I was dangerous. Maybe I was psychotic. They called it schizophrenia, didn't they? I had never really paid attention, but it was difficult not to overhear them when they talked about me. I was nothing more than an animal to them. If an animal heard someone talking about them, they wouldn't be concerned, would they? Especially not an animal who "wasn't in his right mind". That's what they said to me. Not my right mind? Did I have the wrong mind then? If so, how did I obtain it?
I thought back to the mass of security guard stuffed in the cement wall, dripping blood down the concrete instead of water from the rain outside.
Did I obtain that mind? I wondered. Was it even possible for a human being not to have his own right mind? Who was to say what was right and what wasn't? Good and evil were only a matter of perspective, after all....
The wet streets of London hadn't changed much in the time I had been gone, although, I had. Being only seventeen and locked up in an eternal abyss for eight years had changed me. I couldn't see so well in the light anymore. My irises had darkened a shade because of it. No more were they the color of almonds, but rather, of night. Night was when I saw best. My skin, not having seen the light of day for years, was pale and clammy. Although I had recently shaved, the stubble was back upon my angular jaw and neck and my chocolate-colored hair now hung down, around my face, and dripping wet.
Did I forget to mention that it was raining? It always rained in London. I didn't mind. When the sun came out my eyes hurt. I remembered the sun, though. I knew what it looked like and remembered the warmth it brought to my skin. Ah, such sweet warmth.
It was not warm anymore. London had grown cold and dark. It was nothing like I had remembered as a child. It was dismal... dark... eerie. Too many shadows running about all over. Too many ghosts.
"There's no place like London," I hummed to myself as I began the walk down the cold, wet cobblestone streets of this city of monstrosities. I hated it. Good ol' London. It was where I had grown up, where I had gotten beaten, and where I first killed a man.
He went by the name of Sweeney Todd. But almost no one knows that his real name was Benjamin Barker. And, like me, he too was a barber. A wicked, crazy man. A man Hell-bent on destroying his sexual rival and taking along half the world with him.
"There's a hole in the world like a great, black pit." I hissed. My walking became brisker. "The vermin of the world inhabit it and its morals aren't worth what a pig could spit." I was sprinting now. "And it goes by the name of London."
I stopped. In front of my heaving, shivering, soaked body was a tall building. The windows were boarded-up, the doors were locked, and at the top of the building was a well-worn sign that read, "Mrs. Lovett's".
I was home.
Share This
Email
Facebook
Twitter
Read Request
My Library
Subscribe
Flag Writing
