I had this nightmare one afternoon after falling asleep reading. My humble library is stocked with the dreariest of texts. On more than one occasion I have sunk cosily into the velveteen plush and fallen asleep with a book in my hands. I wish I could blame my premonition on the books that I had been reading, but my continuing struggle to find durable household staff was a more likely cause.

In the last couple of years alone, I have hired no more than nine different women and fired no less than four of them. Six were maids, but until Mrs Cuthbert came along, I had only had two housekeepers.

I got on very well with the last one. On her first day, she impressed me very much by chasing the maid from the property with a broom. The incompetent girl had just put some fine linen through a mangle. I don't even own a mangle, so God knows where she got it. The new housekeeper proved much better at choosing suitable maids than me. It was she who hired the latest girl, Miss Ross.

So I was perturbed to say the least when she mysteriously vanished overnight four days ago. A letter arrived two days later, supposedly from her sister, with whom Mrs Cuthbert was now staying, and dying of consumption.

The excitable Miss Ross threatened to throw a fainting fit when she heard. I knew I would need to find a new housekeeper elsewhere. However, the last had not been heard from the old one. As a final gesture, she had found an ideal replacement. Mrs Cuthbert turned up at the house yesterday morning and introduced herself as the last housekeeper's widowed older sister.

The first time I saw Mrs Cuthbert, I took pity on her. She had the kind of face one feels obliged to be that way about. Though the rest of her body was shapely in places, her face was drawn and sunken and she had the complexion of a soldier. Her oily hair was preternaturally grey, as if the colour had been squeezed out, and would have been more complimentary to her face were it not restrained so forcefully at the back of her head. The only feature that struck me was her shiny blue eyes.

Last night, Mrs Cuthbert announced her intention to cook me a three-course meal. She sent Miss Ross to buy the finest leg of pork she could find. I accused her of trying too hard to impress, something she denied, but if it was her intention not to impress me, then she certainly succeeded. The pork was bland, the taste overwhelmed by her apple sauce. The apple pudding was similarly too sharp for my palate. When one is presented with good food, one's appetite can often expand to accommodate more, but by the time Mrs Cuthbert brought out the biscuits and Stilton, I was already too bloated to be polite. Still, I ate them all. Then she brought out port.

Layman's wisdom dictates that a fuller belly resists liquor more readily, but a large meal has much the same effect on me as a dull book. It puts me to sleep. And liquor merely exasperates that. I don't know how many glasses of port I drank in the end, but Mrs Cuthbert kept on pouring them. At some point during the night I must have made my way up to bed. I still don't know where Miss Ross was all evening. I didn't see her again until she came in this morning.

I usually wake up when I hear her on the stairs. Today I didn't stir until she opened the door. My throat was dry, my head a little thick, and I was also impossibly entangled in the bed sheets. As I struggled to emerge, Miss Ross brought a cup of warmed milk to my bedside table. Then she turned round to open my curtains.

I knew there was something wrong even before she screamed.

"What the blazes!" I cried.

Then she bolted from the room wailing; her hands flapping in front of her chest like she was a puppy drowning in the pond.

I sat upright in bed, awake and sober. Already I realised some change had come over me. I pulled my legs free of the sheets and then braced the morning chill to hurry into the dressing room. And there, I stopped before the mirror.

My eyes sticky with sleep, the person who looked back at me in the darkened room appeared almost spectral. I had to feel his face to see if he was real. I felt his neck, more muscular than I remember, and his chin, which was in need of a good shave. But it was with his hands that I felt my features. And whilst it was indeed myself reflected in the mirror it was, at the same time, a stranger, too.

Meanwhile, Miss Ross was running around downstairs.

"Help! Help! The Ripper's upstairs!" she cried.

Staring into the eyes of the stranger in my reflection, I realised what had happened, I just didn't understand how. I went back into the bedroom, returned to the bed and threw off both my pillows. There was, of course, nothing there.

"Mrs Cuthbert!" Miss Ross wailed downstairs.

In that instant, everything became clear. So I didn't expect Mrs Cuthbert to reply. Fortunately, I never got rid of my old clothes. Though I had hoped never to wear them again, I kept most of them in one corner of my dressing room.

Downstairs, Miss Ross was trying to open the front door. Soon she would be out on the street and hammering on the neighbours' doors. I knew how it would look, the mistress gone and a strange man in her room. I had to escape.

I quickly attired myself and packed a small bag. Then I fled down the stairs, left the house via the rear door and followed the back passage round to the other side of the square, where I caught a cab. This is the first chance I've had to stop and think about what's happened since. Let me gather my thoughts, my friend.

This is going to take some explaining.

The Ripper certainly didn't help Whitechapel's reputation. But the truth of the matter is that prostitution exists in every neighbourhood in the city. Some are better at hiding it, and some are better at ignoring it but in Whitechapel, they do neither. That is the only difference. It's obvious which women are whores.

Similarly, it's also obvious which men in Whitechapel are rich. For just three pennies, one can buy a whore's time, provided one is quick, and doesn't expect any more privacy than a back alley. To a gentleman with as much self-respect as money, three pennies is nothing. It is almost as if one is not paying for it at all.

By the summer of 1888, before the first murder, many a young gent could be spotted in the Spitalfields area. Whilst they always dressed down to fit in, they always made little gestures to show they didn't belong, such as having a tongue of silk handkerchief poking out of their pocket. The thieves did well.

I had no such pretensions. When I went to Whitechapel, I didn't want anyone to know I had enough money to buy a girl out of finishing school who would be my whore for life. That I didn't want someone to grow old with is precisely why I ended up visiting Whitechapel as much as twice a week in the late 1880s.

Most of the time I ended up in the back alleys with cheap girls. None were particularly memorable encounters. I could have had the same girl twice and not recognised her. I walked away from several feeling distinctly overcharged. However, one gets what one is willing to pay for, so it should come as no surprise that the encounter I am about to relate cost me an entire shilling.

There is an alehouse in Whitechapel known as The Brittle Pony. If one stands on the steps of Christchurch, one can see the sign above the door. The house has changed hands since and the sign has been repainted, but now, as then, it shows an old workhorse supping ale from a trough. The Brittle Pony is considered about as upmarket as Whitechapel gets. It costs more to drink there, but the peelers hold it in enough regard to shoo away the beggar boys.

I drank there for the first and last time in November 1888. Two days before, Marie Kelly was murdered nearby, and whilst there was no shortage of three-penny girls on offer, none of them wished to go off alone. After the first two girls I approached insisted their friends watch, I temporarily gave up my search for gratification and headed to The Brittle Pony for a drink.

Inside, The Brittle Pony was just like any other pub in Whitechapel. It was dirty, dimly lit, stuffy and had a smell that lived up to its name. In fact, the only distinction I could find was the cost of drinks. Despite out-pricing themselves for local patronage, The Brittle Pony was full that afternoon.

There was a moustachioed man in his early fifties serving the only other person waiting at the bar. This man was already quite drunk. He bought two drinks, but seemed to be alone. As he sat down at the only empty table left, I got a glimpse of a golden pocket-watch chain swinging inside his overcoat.

As the bartender filled a mug with ale for me, a door opened behind him. First of all, a young man stepped through, looking dazed but not drunk. He patted the barman lightly on the shoulder and the bartender nodded in acknowledgement, but no words passed between them. Then the young man joined his companion at the previously empty table. The barman took my money.

Before I was able to turn around, the door behind the bar opened again. And with all honesty I can say that, had it been in my hand and not still on the counter, the mug of ale I'd just bought would have ended up all over the floor.

It was with a proper gentlemanly conviction that I believed Hazel to be the most beautiful girl in all of London. I was at once captivated, as she swept through the doorway, placed a silver shilling on the counter between myself and the barman, then headed across the crowded room to the exit. I was frightfully torn. Her looks were so fine as to intimidate me, but at the same time I could not turn away. Her smooth, perfect features demanded further study. She was of a beauty one immediately feels inclined to possess; forever, and let no other man even see it.

I was not the only one to watch her go. The young man stopped with his mouth full and didn't dare swallow until she was gone again. His drunken companion, having finished his drink, immediately began to count out pennies from his purse. I doubted he was planning to buy another drink with them.

"Here, have this," I said, going over.

I hadn't touched my drink, so I placed it in front of him. He looked up at me, a bit confused at my selfless generosity, and a bit annoyed that I had interrupted his counting. Still, we were both gentlemen, and he was polite.

"Why, thank you, friend," he said.

I said no more, and left the shop. It had already been getting dark when I arrived in Whitechapel, but now the shops were closing and people were hurrying home. Night had come to mean something terrible of late. Groups of young woman travelled together for safety, wrapped up against the cold.

Hazel was standing on the curb outside the pub, bobbing up and down to keep warm. Every now and then she leant forward, as if waiting for the road to clear. But even when she had safe passage, she didn't cross. She just leant back and started bobbing again. So I went and bobbed beside her.

She gave me a withering look. Not practising the same obnoxious gestures as my peers, I must have seemed like just another Whitechapel indigent.

"I have a shilling," I told her.

"Well, it'll cost y'all o' it."

"That's fine."

"Wait out 'ere five minutes."

Then she went back into the pub. I followed shortly.

Both my new friend and his young companion were slumped over the table they had been sitting at when I left. The young one was boasting loudly about his time with Hazel. The bartender looked fit to throw them both out, but when I came back in, his attention passed to me. Evidently Hazel had told him I was coming back. I don't know if he recognised me. He jerked his head toward the door.

The staircase leading to the rooms above the pub was narrow. At the top of the stairs there were two doors. Only one was open.

I was expecting a bare room. However, when I went in, I realised Hazel actually lived here. Far from being bare, the room was decorated with expensive silk drapes. It didn't have a carpet, but the floor showed signs of frequent brushing with a stiff broom. The bed had been freshly made since the man downstairs had been in. There was a pot of water in the corner.

At the far side of the room, beside the shuttered window, there was a shiny varnished wardrobe. It reflected the light from the lamps, giving the whole room an ambient yellow glow. The door was open. Hazel was behind it.

When she closed the door, she was standing in only her petticoat. It came as a surprise to find she hadn't been wearing a corset. She was one of those few ladies who can claim that figure to be theirs naturally.

Hers was, I thought, an honest beauty. Now mine.

"Well, shut'a door, then," she said.

The carnal aspect of our brief encounter was everything I'd hoped. Though I reckoned she was only twenty-three, she brought to bear a wisdom of experience of one far older. Her blank expression never failed to betray an empty mind, but when she climbed into bed with me, she knew everything. She had seemingly tapped into the eternal knowledge of the ether, something beyond us all. It was as close to a spiritual encounter as one is ever likely to have.

Afterwards, she left me beneath the covers whilst she went over to the pot of water in the corner. I watched her attempt to douche herself with her hand. She was polite about it; she kept her back to me the entire time.

And what a fine, straight back that girl had!

"Oh, marry me," I sighed.

She laughed gently.

"I'm serious," I told her.

She chuckled. She finished at the pot and started to dry herself on the towel beside it. Then she came and sat on the end of the bed, near enough to see my sincerity, surely, but far enough away to be keeping a distance.

"I've never felt like this before," I said. "I think I love you. I want to take you away from here. I don't like to see you do these things you do. I want to keep all other men from you. I want you to be mine."

"Now, look," she cut in. "D'you 'ave any idea how many men I gets up 'ere askin' me that same question each an' ev'ry day?"

"Not many, I hope!"

"It's ev'ry bleedin' one!"

"Ah, but I'm rich," I said.

"Yeah, so says 'em all."

"But I really am," I cried. "I don't usually dress like that. I only wore those clothes to fit in round here. I have a big house in the West End. My family has a country estate. We're aristocracy. I can afford anything I want."

She smiled pleasantly. "Okay, I believes ya."

"And I can certainly afford more than a shilling!"

"I already make more than a shillin', though, don't I? Even if it's a bad day an' I only gets twenty men up 'ere, why, that's still a pahnd. A pahnd ev'ry day!"

"I can still offer you more..."

"Oh, y'are a dear. Y'all are. But I always says no."

"But why? I want to take you away from all this."

She smirked. "An' what if I don't wanna go?"

I scowled. I was no longer aroused by this point and rather than feeling warm and cosy in her bed I now felt sweaty and uncomfortable. The memory of what had happened between us was growing uglier by the minute. It was quickly beginning to feel as empty an encounter as any of those with the back-alley girls.

"It's not safe being a... being in your profession."

She shrugged and got up off the bed. She went back over to the wardrobe. Her petticoat was still lying on the floor beside it. She picked it up and slid it on. Then she opened the wardrobe door and disappeared from view once again.

"It's not jus' a job," came the voice from the wardrobe. "It's me life. It's what I do. It makes me feel good, havin' people want me all the time. You can't understand. I love bein' who and what I am. There's nowt else I wanna do."

"Aren't you afraid of the Ripper?" I asked.

"Nope," she replied, just as bluntly.

"Well, you should be..."

"E's only ever killed girls who've been on their own an' who've gone off with 'im down dark alleys," she explained. "An' I won't do that, will I? I'm safe up 'ere. 'E wouldn't dare kill someone in such a public place as this!"

"I don't know. If the three-penny girls keep refusing to go off alone, he's not going to kill them with witnesses all around. No, he'll start looking elsewhere, for girls he can kill in private. You can't be blasé about this."

She stopped rummaging in the wardrobe. "I 'eard he drinks the blood o' young girls so he can live f'rever," she said. "D'you think that works?"

I didn't respond. When she finished getting dressed again, I was sitting upright in her bed with my arms folded across my chest, feeling coy. I suppose I looked sulky. She put her hands on her hips and tipped her head to one side.

"Now, let's not 'ave any o' this," she said.

"Why won't you love me?"

"I gotta change the sheets," she said, ignoring me. "An' I can't do that whiles you're still lyin' in 'em. Go on, downstairs with you."

I didn't move. I felt at once naked and exposed, like the sheets weren't even there. I'd never before felt so cheapened and demeaned as I did beneath her glare. It was almost as if she'd taken advantage of me for money, rather than I'd taken advantage of her for gratification. I glowered up at her.

"The least ya could do is move," she snapped.

Begrudgingly, I climbed out of the bed and began to get dressed. Hazel didn't even watch me. The sheets held her interest. She stripped the bed down, but as she was tugging the cover off one of the pillows, a little something flew out. It fluttered in front of me then settled at my feet. I bent down to pick it up. Suddenly, Hazel threw herself at me, grabbing for it.

"Give it'a me! It's mine!"

"Why? What is it?"

I held it up, out of her reach. It was a stretch of cloth, about the size of a small dinner plate. There was embroidery on it. It took a moment for me to realise I was holding it upside down. When I turned it the right way up, I found the needlework depicted a young woman with fair skin and golden hair.

"This is you," I said quietly.

"Oi! Give it back!"

The image was so perfect it seemed unreal. Looking closer, and touching the grain of the embroidered part itself, I realised that the silky thread that had been used was actually feather. There were Chinese symbols around it. I offered it back to Hazel. She grabbed a corner. I wouldn't let the other go.

"Where'd you get this made?"

"It was a gift. Give it back!"

"A gift? From whom?"

"None o' ya business!"

I started pulling it away.

"'Is name was L'Hi Sen," she said quickly.

"What?! Not a Chinaman!"

"Yeah," she snarled. "Some'dy else who asked me ta marry 'im, too. An' he was a pow'ful wizard, so ya better be careful. That thing's magic!"

I still didn't let go. "What does it do?"

"Nothin'. Give it back!"

I started pulling it away again. She looked so afraid it might tear she didn't dare pull it back. She just came with it, like a dog on a leash. Soon she was close enough that I could smell her. She looked up pleadingly.

"Hazel, what does it do?" I asked.

"It won't work f'you!" she cried.

"Why not? What does it do for you?"

"I gotta keep it wi' me at all times," she whined. "Or it don't work. Please, mister, jus' give it back! I'll do anythin' for ya, anythin'!"

"What... does... it... do?"

She screwed up her face. Tears were beginning to swell on her eyelids. She looked between it and me. She didn't want to tell me.

"I need it!" she wailed. "If I lose it then I'll grow old 'n' ugly. That thing keeps me as young an' as beau'iful as the lady in the picture!"

I laughed. But she was serious.

"Please give it back..."

I looked at the little tapestry again. This time I looked past the captivating beauty that had been captured in woven feather and looked at the cloth around the embroidery. It was dirty, faded and worn. I frowned.

"Hazel, how long have you had this?" I asked quietly.

She glanced away. She almost let go.

"Hazel!" I threatened to tear it again.

"Thir'y-eight years! Ya happy now?"

I was incredulous. I let go of my corner. She quickly clasped it to her chest lovingly and backed off to the far wall lest I wanted it back. I stared at her. One so simple could not have convinced me had this only been a concoction.

"So now y'know." She sniffled.

I went downstairs with the intention of getting extremely drunk. The bartender was happy to be of service. I sat at a table by the window and drank only spirits. After a while Hazel came down and gave the barman my shilling. Then she went out. I watched her go but she didn't even notice me. I downed the scotch in one. Given what she had told me, I had been expecting to hate her.

Hazel's previous visitor and his older friend continued to get increasingly drunk. The younger one spoke graphically of what he'd done to her. Alas, one could easily mistake a gentleman that had had too much ale for one of the locals.

I ordered another drink, which I decided would be my last.

I was looking out of the window when the fight started, but when I heard the cursing I turned round. I found the young gent with his hands around the neck of another drinker. His older companion was punching a bull-faced man. In the middle of the fracas was a spilt mug of ale. I suspected this had set it all off.

As soon as the fight began, it got out of control. Most of these men had been drinking in The Brittle Pony since before I arrived. All it took was for the four combatants to accidentally spill drinks on other tables for those men sitting there to join the fight. There was no concept of alliance here. One fought whoever had spilt one's drink. I finished my scotch before I was obliged to join in.

I slowly got up and decided to leave.

The hapless bartender came out hollering at them all to get out of his shop. He looked much shorter when he wasn't behind the bar. Somebody promptly punched him. Then he joined in too. The bar was left unattended.

Perhaps it was alcoholic confidence. It was certainly an idea born of too much scotch too early in the evening. It was something I would never have done earlier. It was something I would never have thought of doing earlier.

I sidled around the edge of the room, keeping an eye on the bartender's fortunes. He was doing badly. I think he had just lost a tooth at that point. Nobody saw me sneak behind the bar, not even those that weren't fighting. My legs felt weak with drink and excitement as I hurried up the stairs.

I went into Hazel's room. The bed had been restored. The shutters had even been opened an inch to let in air. I didn't turn on the lamps. I just felt my way to the bed, up to the headboard, and under the pillows.

I felt the silky soft embroidery on my fingertips.

Without further submission to moral procrastination, I grabbed the small tapestry and stuffed it down amongst my minor dignities. Then just as quickly I exited the room and went back down into the middle of the melee.

There were only a few who continued to abstain and they were enjoying the fight from the sidelines. I stopped beside the bar and found a stump of lead pencil beneath it. Then I found an old receipt in my trouser pocket and wrote on the back of it the following: "Meet me at dawn tomorrow on the corner of Wentworth Street. Be prepared to leave this place forever. You'll know why." I signed it and wrote her name on the back, then left it where somebody would find it.

Just after I left The Brittle Pony, the peelers arrived.

When I got home that evening, I dismissed the servants and retired straight to bed. The spirits had left me weary, and I was also in good cheer regarding the next day's more profitable return to Whitechapel. I fell asleep quickly.

When I woke up the next morning it was still dark outside and London was silent. I still had a good couple of hours to get all the way to Wentworth Street.

I first realised something was wrong when I swung my legs over the side of the bed and my feet didn't touch the floor. It is a high bed with a thick mattress, but I could usually walk from a seating position. I hadn't needed to drop down a few inches before. Swiftly deciding it was the last of the drink playing tricks on my imagination, I fumbled across the bedroom in the dark and into my dressing room.

When I saw Hazel standing naked but for my own undergarments on the other side of the room, I almost picked up the lamp and threw it at her.

Fortunately, I did not, because it was only a reflection. But it was a reflection in my own mirror. And when I advanced on it angrily, she advanced on me too. When I gasped in realisation, she gasped too. When I squeezed my new breasts, she squeezed hers too. And when I reached down into my undergarments and found no minor dignity, but a small tapestry instead, so did Hazel.

"What's happened to you?" I asked.

But it was her voice that said it.

I returned to the bedroom and had to sit down for a few minutes. A couple of times I couldn't resist, and went and peered round the door to see if she was still there. And indeed she was, peering back at me also. After a few more minutes, my initial shock had been replaced by an altogether cheerier revelation.

I didn't go back to Whitechapel that day.

I didn't need to.

As my cab pulled away from the house this morning, I saw Miss Ross have one of her fainting fits in front of the neighbour's house. The servants took the change a lot better two years ago. I just told them I was my own sister: that I had arrived late the previous night after they had gone to bed, with urgent news for my brother. He had had to leave for the family estate and didn't know when he would return, if ever. I was to look after the house in the meantime.

After that, I kept the tapestry on my person at all times. I wore it in my breast pocket during the day, and kept it under my pillow at night.

Those two years were like a perfect marriage. I went to sleep with the love of my life at night and woke up with them again in the morning. Yet I wasn't faced with the incumbency of a dependent partner, nor the fear that one day they would lose everything I treasured about them. With the tapestry, I was now Hazel.

I didn't think what would happen to the real one without it.

As I was leaving through the rear I found Mrs Cuthbert's woollen shawl lying conspicuously beside the door. It was torn and bloody. If I had been the Ripper, I would never have been so careless. It was far too incriminating.

I faltered in the back passage, feeling sick to my stomach. Somebody had left that shawl there deliberately, to be found as evidence.

Yesterday I had felt desperately sorry for my old housekeeper on learning she was dying from consumption. But how much worse it must have been had my old housekeeper actually been killed by Mrs Cuthbert!

I never did learn her first name.

Now, my friend, I must ask of you a favour. I don't know when I will be able to return home. With Miss Ross testifying that he killed her mistress, the old Ripper case will inevitably be reopened and I will be a suspect.

They'll be coming for me. However, provided he doesn't kill anybody else, the case will one day fall forgotten again, just like it did two years ago.

Until then, continue to call me Dorian.

NOTES:
This was my application piece for the Creative Writing MA at UEA. Inspired in no small part by the Paul Magrs English Surrealism course (and "The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen" graphic novel we had to read for it), this mishmash wallow in Victoriana finally came together at the same time and place many of my better pieces do - whilst brushing my teeth. I later revised it again to make the ending less oblique and submitted it as my coursework for David Flusfeder's advanced Creative Writing unit.

I was in two minds which version of this story to submit for the MA application. In the end, I submitted the full version. However, if you wish to read the Writer's Cut (heh), which is more of a warped love story than a warped murder mystery, then I have prepared it here. See which you prefer. In that version, it needn't actually be Dorian Gray in the story, and Dorian Gray needn't be Jack the Ripper, who needn't be Dracula. (There's also the first 500-odd words of the original story I was writing for the MA here).

Oh, and if that's not enough for in-jokes, then L'Hi Sen Chang was a Chinese magician in the Doctor Who tale, "Talons of Weng Chiang". Mrs Cuthbert was named after Elisha Cuthbert, who plays Kim Bauer in "24". Hazel was named after the character in "The Rabbits Of Roadkill Turnpike", who was in turn named after a rabbit in "Watership Down". Which I haven't actually read. But I saw the movie.