Chapter 1
"On Monday I reap souls."

Will had to hurry up and get to the Frying Pan Inn so he could collect the last soul on his list for the night. Honestly. What were those people in HR thinking? He had been assigned to collect several souls from all over the city all night. The souls seemed to be spaced just exactly for him to be able to collect them only if he ran at breakneck speed to get to their deathbeds in time, and that was because one soul would be in the East End, then the next would be in the West, then East again, and so on. By the time Will reached the Frying Pan Inn, he was very much looking forward to clocking out at the end if his day. Honestly. Will took out his List of Death to double-check the name if the soul he was to collect. It was one Elizabeth Stride, and she was to die at 12:30 AM. Will entered the inn and waited for Elizabeth to come, as he knew she would. He wasn't waiting long before she showed up, arm in arm with a meek-looking man with long brown hair tied back in a ponytail with a red ribbon and large, round, thick spectacles that he kept pushing up. Somehow, this man looked familiar, but Will couldn't remember from where. Maybe he lived in a tenement where Will had been reaping recently. Will shrugged to himself and watched the couple drink through sixpence worth of gin before staggering off with Elizabeth leaning heavily on her escort. Will followed them back to a doss house. Elizabeth tried to get inside when she obviously had no money, and was turned out onto the streets again. Elizabeth's escort suggested that she stay the night at his house, and she could commute to work the next morning from there. She agreed, and the two went off again, this time going deeper into the East End. A while later, the couple were approaching a stable yard with a line of houses on the other side of the street with Will following above: unseen and unnoticed as he was jogging along on the roofs of tenement buildings. Pretty soon, there was a scream and a flash of red as the once meek-looking young man slashed "Long Liz" once in the throat, letting her bleed out in the stable yard. Soon, a man with a cart came near the stable yard, probably returning from a last delivery. As it came close to the murder site, the horse shied away, and the man driving the cart became more alert. He reached back, took a hold of the cart's whip, dismounted, and started to walk slowly towards the murderer, who quickly moved into the deep shadows of the nearly-deserted yard. Will watched as the man almost tripped over the body of Elizabeth Stride. The man backed up slightly and lit a match so as to see better. In that instant of light, the body of Elizabeth Stride was finally spotted, and soon the alarm was raised. If only the poor soul had looked ahead instead of down, he could have identified Jack the Ripper. Alas, the fiend got away and headed in the direction of Mitre Square. Now, William could do his job in peace. He jumped down from the roof and stabbed the poor woman in the chest, releasing her cinematic record. The daughter of a Swedish farmer, Elizabeth Stride had led a rather boring life. Will watched snatches of her life as he collected her soul. He saw the young girl grow up into a beautiful young woman, who then fell upon prostitution as a source of income, who got married, then divorced and returned to the streets. She carried on like that for a few years before she came into the Frying Pan Inn the night of her death. Will watched the last few moments of Elizabeth Stride's life before her soul was collected and he could return to the Dispatch to finish his paperwork and leave for the night.