A phone ringing in my dream
wakes me. I recite like a prayer the plain honest names of the streetwalkers
whose throats were cut and bodies mutilated in the night fog by Jack the
Ripper: Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, Mary
Jane Kelly. I was only seven years old when I saw the movie, but I remember it
was in black and white and that no one felt safe. Do not look behind you! The
two atom bombs were dropped that summer. There was a glittering in the sky, and
it went all over the world.