He grew up watching the woman, whom he called Anne, that none may know his true relationship with her, give herself up for pennies. For a dollar, she would do more. He watched her get beaten and her few meager coins taken from her again. Instead of trying to show her son that this was a part of the barbarity of humanity, she shrugged it off. With cool cloths resting upon swollen face and bruised limbs, she would stare above his head to some far off place. Often at these times he would ask why this happened to her and the other whores of the house. She replied in vague sentences, frustrating her son but none the less providing adequate substance to form his mental building blocks.

" It's just the way it is. " She would mumble.

" A whore is just a whore. She's only good for what your wife won't do and he can beat her for his wife after. We's dirt, no more. What do you do with dirt? Kick it off your shoes and wipe your feet when you get home. "

So, to the boy, it was. A whore was someone for an hour of abuse. He saw the place get raided, although the police rarely found him hiding there.

When he went to the police station house after he would see the wives. He saw marriages crumble in a matter of seconds because the men had hunted in other grounds. Even the marriages that were not dissolved were destroyed for both people. The wives were martyrs, forever in agony, the husband's spent years trying to recover what they had carelessly lost.

" A whore then, is the destruction of herself and all she touches. "

The boy concluded this by his tenth year. A vague idea that this was so was formed. He continued to live in the bordello and to watch the women get screwed and slapped. The men were not above slapping him for his presence served to enrage some of them. Why this was, he was never told.

The whore house was near the docks for the city. Appropriate enough for the women who could bathe whenever they wished but would never be clean.

When he was old enough, he got a job on the docks. Dawn to dusk saw him loading and unloading the shipments of the St. Lawerence. Here he heard of the legend from England who took his abuse of whore to its highest level: Jack the Ripper.

The boy was not the ripping type. He felt if you needed a weapon, you were weak somehow. If you could not dispatch with your own hands, you were not fit to do so.

He was sixteen when he laid with his first woman. She was a whore that was old, ugly and had known him since infancy. He might as well lain with his own mother, she seemed that close to kin. He was sickened even as her experienced hands drew the blood from his brain and gave him an erection.

A week later, he went to a different house and laid with a younger girl there. As she dressed after he asked her if she liked her life. She shrugged. " Ah, how all strumpets seem to have that shrug!" He marvelled at this fact.

A strange plan erupted in his brain. Firing into each other like bullets in a closed room, he thought his idea through. The next week he came back and insisted on the same girl.

The following week he showed up three times. He spent a great deal of money for these visits. On two of them he refused sex and insisted that they talk instead. She began to see him as a person and fell in love.

He showed up early one evening and asked her to join him for a stroll. She ran to change into her "good" dress. He took her along the canal, opposite where the boats were moored. He showed her the loading bays where he worked.

He talked of a future. Of a life where she need never be taken by a man she did not want. She replied that this would be wonderful. They spoke of two different things, but only he knew that.

As the moon rose he laid her back onto the grass, beneath that frame of a young elm tree. She looked up and the stars were bright in her eyes. He played with her hair, face and shawl. When he straddled her she still talked of love, security and freedom.

She did not realize he had tied a knot in her shawl until he pulled it tight. Shock showed in her face.

"Whore!" He shrieked in a high, breathy voice.

" Filthy whore! All you's good for is abuse, my momma tol' me so. Trollop! Harlot! Bitch! Lives ruined because you can't keep your knickers up!"

On and on ran his words as her air ran out. She beat fruitlessly at his face and chest. She turned red, purple and then a blueish tinge lit upon her face.

" You can't do no more harm, wretched thing. I'm stronger. No filth's gonna touch me. "

She was still. Her eyes protruded from her face and her tongue out slightly from parted, splittle covered lips. He rolled her over and took her money. After all, he'd given it to her. He looked across at the loading bays. Nothing was up but the rats. He kicked the body until it fell into the water.

He went home.

The man would do this five more times. A different house each time. The whores all young in their profession. He made no real effort to conceal himself.

When the sixth woman lay dead, he left her where he lay: beneath the young elm where all the others had died. He went home and found his mother between customers. He said he needed her help with a co-worker. She was confused but willingly garbed herself. She told the madam she was going to the docks and left.

Mildly disturbed by their trek up the wrong side of the canal, she still followed her son.

Under the shade of the elm, he pointed to his feet. Anne looked down with no real surprise.

"Yeah," she said, " knew it'd be some kinda shit like this."

The man looked up. A glint was in his eye as he considered his mother.

"Not good for nothin' but abuse, right, Anne? Right, Momma?"

Anne backed away from her son. She knew the look he had on his face. She had seen it dozens, if not hundreds, of times before. The idea of being beaten by her son did not appeal to her. If she had thought he would stop at bruises, she may still have let him do it. he either could not, or would not, stop there. This was also something she recognised. When he looked at his feet, she ran. Not along the land, as he had half expected her to do, but to the water. She shucked off her clothes as she bolted and when she dove into the canal she was only in undergarments. She stayed under long enough to get rid of her shoes, pitiful things that they were, and swam for the loading bays. Dawn was upon the canal and man were already gathering for the days' labours.

She made it. When the dock workers pulled her up, half laughing, she turned to see her son back in the shadow of the frail elm. He stared at the ground. She couldn't see his expression. Perhaps that was just as well.

Anne had the police called and told them what her son had done and seemed about to do. They rowed across the canal to where her son still stood. He came along with no resistance. Indeed, he was eager to explain the great good he had done for humanity. The service he had not only rendered but had paid from his wages to accomplish.

In the jail, waiting for the trial that would barely be a formality, he began to have dreams.

Dreams of water and trees. Of limbs that stretched out to embrace him. He felt hated and this was new to him. Although he had been beaten by many different men, it had been business. This was something directed at him, not some faceless boy who had spilled the wine or knocked on the door five minutes too soon.

On the morning of his trial, the police went to lead their prisoner to court. He ran and was shot in the back.

When the police reached his side, it was obvious that he was dying. For some strange reason, the faint smell of lilacs hung in the air. As they watched a great gout of water shot from Thomas' mouth. It covered that closest policeman who reeled back gagging at the mere idea of being vomitted upon. The water seemed fairly clear but there was no end to it. It trickled from his mouth in a steady stream.

The man half gagged and shouted in a wet voice.

" Strumpet! Your filth will not touch me! I will not die with your stench upon me! "

The smell of lilacs faded and was replaced with the faint, yet unmistakable, odour of dead fish and creosote soaked logs. It was as repulsive as the lilacs had been sweet.

Thomas rolled his eyes to the heavens.

" One day, at least, we must rest. "

He died. His mother could afford no funeral so he was laid to rest in a mass potter's grave.

The elm tree sickened and died. No grass would grow in a patch near the husk of the young tree. Rocks seemed to appear from nowhere and formed a cairn.

The police visited the other houses and made a tally of his victims but had no great urge to dredge the canal for the other bodies. They had been there for weeks, the damage was done. Besides, there was no one to pay for the funerals of five other whores.

Over the years, the far side of the canal was used for ships that were unloaded but not reloaded, or that had arrived too late in the day to be logged off. One or two poor saps would be stuck guarding the ships' chattel. The one near the broken stump of a young elm often had at least one man proclaim how creepy the place was. On more than one occasion, the body of an experienced seaman was found floating in the still water.

Before too many years had passed, boats were still docked there, but they were left unguarded. People shunned the location but few would say why they disliked it so much.

Progress tried to burn it's way in but hydro did not seem to work along the last quarter mile of road. Bulbs could be replaced daily and still be gone out in the morning. One night, a whole lamp shuddered, groaned and fell over. The connecting wires kept it from the ground but all the lights were useless for the last stretch of track. The officials gave up trying. They simply gated off where the trucks drove in.

Still young men were found there. Sometimes the gate was open, its padlock hanging there in perfect order. Simply open.

One day a boy came into this area. He was a strong minded child, not exactly evil but his ethics were elastic. He showed up there for months but always in the day time. Perhaps this is why the spectres did not touch him. Maybe they saw that he was still too young to commit the kind of crime they raged against. Maybe, as a child of a strained and abusive home, they pitied him.

The other possibility is that the dead may be able to see the future quite clearly and decided they had a use for him. Only the women and the boy knew for sure.

And neither of them were telling.