Things in Jars

by Jess Kidd

The coppers are up to the hub in it: London is awash with the freshly murdered. Bodies appear hourly, blooming in doorways with their throats cut, prone in alleyways with their heads knocked in. Half-burnt in hearths and garroted in garrets. Folded into trunks or bobbing about in the Thames, great bloated shoals of them.