The Autobiography of Jack the Ripper by James Carnac

for some time he suddenly decided, after scrutinizing me one morning, that it was about time I began to shave. And I was forced to agree with him. My hair was dark, and a noticeable fluffy down was appearing on my jaws.
    My uncle said he would buy me a razor. “Do you think you can use it without cutting your throat?” he asked, jocularly; and then pulled his face straight with a jerk. The old chap evidently remembered the tactlessness of referring to throat-cutting. I thought I could manage the operation of shaving without accident, but in order to “see how it was done” it was decided that my first shave should be conducted by a professional, and I paid a visit to a neighbouring barber.
    I think it was on first handling the razor presented to me by my uncle that I realized the existence of a curious feeling which had been growing upon me for some time in connection with knives. How can I possibly explain that feeling? It was not a fear of knives; it was more nearly an attraction. I had a special sensitiveness to knives which I had not for any other inanimate objects. Let me put it in the form of an analogy. I believe that a man in the early stages of locomotor ataxia is conscious to an exaggerated extent of the effort necessary in walking. I do not mean simply that he finds it difficult to use his legs, but simply that he is conscious of using them. The normal person walks with sub-conscious action; the man suffering from a disease such as I have mentioned exercises, and knows that he is exercising, definite mental effort in using his legs. He is conscious of them.
    So, although I laced my boots, used a pen, combed my hair without any but a sub-conscious regard for the laces, the pen or the comb, as soon as I took a knife into my hand I became definitely aware of the properties and uses of a knife. It was something special, something with the attributes of novelty without being novel, something distinct from anything else which I handled. I fear I cannot hope to make this feeling clear; the person oppressed by some special fear—such as a fear of cats or thunder-storms—may possibly comprehend me, the person with normal reactions probably will not.
    When I handled my new razor and commenced, with some hesitation, to shave myself, I realized that the feeling, which I have tried to indicate, had been steadily growing in me, and the discovery set me thinking. I tried to analyse it. I decided, at once, that I was not afraid of knives in the sense that I feared I might cut myself; I applied my razor to my cheek without any sense of apprehension whatever. Nevertheless it was the cutting properties of the razor which gave it distinction, and it was the fact that the razor possessed greater efficiency in its cutting properties than a table-knife or a pen-knife which had suddenly brought home to me the appreciation of my special “sense” for cutting edges generally.
    Once I had perceived this curious “sense” for knives—or, perhaps, “fascination” will more clearly express my sensations—I began to watch it. I became increasingly aware of my feeling whenever I picked up my knife at the table; I handled it as I might have handled some rare and precious object; I fondled the handle and looked (I may say almost lovingly) at the sleek shininess of the blade and the thread of special brightness running along the edge. (Though our table-knives were usually deficient in sharpness owing to my uncle’s plate-sawing habit.) And then came my second realization. For in watching with disgust my uncle’s feeding I became aware that what appealed to me about knives was not only that they would cut, but what they would cut. And the association of that cutting—the flowing of blood. Whenever my uncle introduced a portion of food into his mouth on the tip of his knife, I paused in my own eating, furtively watching for the slitting of his mouth. When, using his knife as a