[ WP ] Jack the Ripper in custody speaking with a constable about the motivation for his crimes .

What little do we share but ourselves, my lord? When all is lost upon the ruin of the battlefield, and men, horses, women, and villages are burned, what then do we care but for the waking of the next day to live for another; to share with ourselves the comfort of the future, that we may change by burying our past? To leap with frail feet between the hills of passion with eyes of a child that should never age, but decay? Answer me, my lord, this; what can I tell of you but that you are my king, of the rightful spoken I can not say, but of my mind I offer slight hand to pray on knee and sing, that you may cherish these harks that lose themselves in hills too large to echo, too small to care: who am I? This is the answer and the question we share. The most intimate, the closest, and yet distant aspect of me I can but depart to your headless ears. 
 
 “ Who am I? What on Earth has bewitched you? Answer me not with sour tongue with knives hidden in guise, but with truth, if there were some to the words of you ” 
 
 Sire, all but I am is bewitched. That is why it is you who stands behind Iron and I in the cell. The truth can be seen but from one side none the other; should you bind yourself to my fate without willing then you may have your answer to the question you seek. The truth which you crack with your hand to my tomb is to expect hope in bleak sheets of pitch black; should you stand in me with weight and heavy heart, I tell you, would be to moor the ferry passing in the stream onto the crag fangs of what fate is to be. 
 
 “ Again, you answer in riddles, and speechless sound. Shade meaning and tone to the outcrop of your design. Burn light into yourself for the sake of others so that we know you lume red not blue; that we may trace the faint pulse through for the good in you. Else what is there but the carcass of the damned at my feet? ” 
 
 And here one should kneel. One should stand. To issue a demand one another can not command. I should bark and make of myself more sense were there rhythm and order to my gruff, but to echo question into answer and verse I can not translate of what you want, and yet, I can. For I see what you desire, but not what it is that I am. Hold me true, here, to my words. Will you do so, for the answer you so seek? 
 
 “ Very well, I shall accord sense I have lost in rage ” 
 
 Then take flight. Go, back to your kingdom's halls. Beyond the gates and walls, and bear your throne for all to know you as the one almighty above the under-clouds, the conqueror of man, and so revel in your proud service to the gods, for what you have done. Take age in one step, and take fate in the other. Stand tall above yourself and what you have been, to become what you are. The growth to the body of history, not burn or scar. For all this you may do, and hold your head high, but the answer that I should give you will not satisfy your ears, for it is the question you demand and the question I answer extended to cup the service of my life in hand and beggar be for beggar want: who I am. I can not answer. That is my repose. Fume. Desist with formality and resort to brute force to punish what body lay before the bone of my hand and the instrument of my breath; for what awaits me is the answer to my question, of what I am. Who I am to be. All, by the veiled misery some cherish, some deprave, as death.
