FH: Sweetness, Wormwood, and Rue
There is an anachronism- the book wasn't published until 1900.


The absinthe is a familiar friend, a green glass lens that brings the visions into sharp focus, though Whitechapel is certainly no Oz.

The flash of memory cuts like a surgeon's scalpel: Margaret in the parlor, laughing at him as he lays beside her on the settee to read passages of childrens' stories to her swelling belly. The books were a gift from her cousin in Surrey. He wonders vaguely if etiquette requires the presents be returned in the absence of the blessed event they were intended to celebrate.

He knows the absinthe like a friend, like a lover, like a wife. Or better than a wife, because even after seven years of cleaning up the cast-offs of Whitechapel he can't picture his laughing Margaret as a stiffening corpse. The absinthe is simple: alcohol, sugar, and wormwood. Temporary oblivion sweetened by just enough poison to dangle the promise of permanence, even if it never delivers.

Margaret hated it when he drank, made him rinse the bitter out of his mouth before letting him kiss her. He's never had reason to try opium before now, but he wonders with the first draw what she would have thought about the the scent of his breath.

Then the dragon is pouring into his lungs, coiling into his blood, and he knows. Knows how she will look tomorrow, pale and cold and still, copper pennies covering her eyes as they lower her into the ground. Knows that she would have laughed, would have stolen the sweet smoke with a kiss until all of his breath was hers. Knows that she loves him, even in his self-destructive grief, and she promises never to leave him alone again.