Clockwork Chaos by C.J. Henderson, Bernie Mozjes, James Daniel Ross, James Chambers, N.R. Brown, Angel Leigh McCoy, Patrick Thomas, Jeff Young Page A

doesn’t slow, and it isn’t until they’re half down the hall that she gets her feet back under her. He stops at a closet, shoves her in among the mops and buckets, the filthy rags that stink of brine and puke.
    “Keep your trap shut ‘til we come for you,” he says, ugly, pocked face half in shadow, demonic, scared-angry lips tight and work-hardened fingers gripping her face hard enough to bruise like it’s Whitechapel again with a gent too good to hit his own wife but not that good. She reaches for her knife. Instinct, though she knows there’s no need. His fist doesn’t rise. Instead, the hand drops to her shoulder, a half-comforting pat, just before he swings the door shut. “Try not to break anything this time, aye? And maybe we’ll all get out of this alive.”
    In the dark, she hears the bolt slide into place, hears his footsteps, running now. And then there’s just the creak of the wood, the calls of the men as sails are raised, and the endless slapping of the sea.
    Not that she’s scared of the dark. She’s a creature of the dark, and she knows its ways, the ins and outs of the soot-stained alleys and shit-smeared cobblestones, the taverns and brothels and opium dens. She knows the robbers and cutthroats, the soiled women and men who trade in stolen gold and flesh. The dark is the realm of the lost and desperate, and while it’s brutal and dangerous, she knows how to survive, when to spread her legs and when to run, and when to strike back.
    The Devil is not one of their company, even should he deign to walk among them.
    The Devil wears a silk top hat and velvet gloves and an overcoat of the finest wool. He watches the girls from within his carriage as his driver goads the horses through the cold mist. And when he spots the one he wants, he is ever so polite and charming.
    “Ah, Miss Kelly,” he’d said, leaning from his carriage to extend his hand, and Mary didn’t ask how he knew her name, her real name, and not one of the names she wore to work as the one garment that never came off. She had no recollection of him, and yet he seemed familiar, and she knew at once that she would go with him, even before he adds, “You will be so good to grace us with your presence this evening.” Even now she has no idea how many times she went with him, or where they went, or what she did there. Those memories are lost, as good as dead, and there’s no point dwelling on it. There’s no man she’d trust enough to bring them back, and only one woman, and that woman lies rotting in St Patrick’s under a gravestone marked with Mary’s name.
    All she knows is that there were lost days, lost nights, and if there was a bit more coin in her purse the following morning, she’d been sore enough to have earned it. She’d chalked it up to the gin.
    The Devil even smells good, of soap and roses. Mary felt filthy sitting next to him on his velvet-cushioned bench, his gloved hand idly stroking her thigh under her dress as they rolled through the Whitechapel streets. The velvet was nice though.
    After a time, two other girls had been brought into the fold. Familiar, both of them, though she’d be hard pressed to say why, and she never could remember their names, no matter how many times the Devil addressed them.
    The carriage took them far from her familiar haunts, far from the safety of dark alleys to a place of wide, gas-lit streets and gated mansions. A guard held the gate for them and locked it behind them, and the doorman brought them inside.
    Others were waiting, two other men in similar finery. Mary curtsied. It seemed only proper.
    One of the men laughed.
    The other rose to his feet. “Shall we get started?”
    The Devil led them through a maze of corridors, left, left, right, and left, Mary memorized. Always know your way out. She wonders how many times she memorized these same passages, this same door, and the rooms beyond. The two men led the two girls through the door into a darkened room.
    “You will be