Sherlocked

John

Sherlock paced back and forth, occasionally raking a hand through his hair. “Damn it!” he roared, and I nearly jumped when his arm swung out, sending the items sitting on the mantle crashing to the floor.

Just then, Lestrade came bursting through the door of our flat, not bothering to knock. Sherlock turned and shot him a glance so frightening I thought he was going to assault the detective inspector. Sherlock seemed like he was about to shout abuse at the salt-and-pepper haired man when he spotted a package in his hand.

It was wrapped in a very distinct and deliberately floral paper. The flowers illustrated on the paper were roses. Without bothering to offer a hello to Lestrade or to ask what the package was for, he ripped it from the detective inspector’s hands and tore the paper from the package.

Sherlock lifted the lid of the box to reveal a tablet, with a blinking message on the email box. Hurriedly, he opened the message to reveal a live streaming video. I looked over Sherlock’s shoulder at the image. Rose sat in the center of a white room, bound to a chair in her pale pink gown.

“I had a bug put in the flat when you moved in. Sherlock notices just about everything, but he wouldn’t notice one thing being out of place when he let you move in and move furniture about. And then I got to listen to the pathetic attempts of Miss Sparks trying to make the virgin detective care for her. Did you not know about him?” the familiar voice stepped into the shot, and I clapped eyes on Moriarty for the first time in a long time. We all thought he had died when Sherlock faked his own death. Apparently somewhere inside Sherlock knew that the mastermind who was eerily like his own mental double had found a way to survive as well.

“Oh, yes. You wouldn’t know from the hair and the cheekbones, but that man could never give you the rush of an ordinary man.” Moriarty stroked Rose’s pale cheek, and she recoiled from him, shooting him a venomous look. “How embarrassing that must be for the pair of you. He loves you, but he wouldn’t know what to do with you if he got you. You love him because you just can’t help it. You need a mess to clean up after. It gives you enough purpose to distract you from your tragically bleak future as a spinster who paints the objects of her damning affection.”

Sherlock had started to shake, his free hand balled into a fist while the hand holding the tablet turned white as his grip tightened.

Rose looked up at Moriarty with a defiance that made me proud of her. “When did you become so unpleasant, Jim? Were you beat too often as a child, or did mummy just not hug you enough?” She didn’t struggle against her restraints, although the blood around her ankles suggested she had tried before to break free of the zip ties. She realized now that the only way she was going to have a chance at survival was if she stayed smart.

Moriarty laughed. “You touchy feely types and your psychoanalyses. You are more pathetic than most of them. No one has ever tried to appeal to my humanity before. Did it ever occur to you that Sherlock and I are the same? He just has less fun because he’s on the wrong side. He’s on the side of the angels, and honey, I’m much more fun.”

Another man walked into the shot, a man whose face never turned toward the camera. As he closed in on Rose, her eyes narrowed.

The resounding smack reverberated throughout the room as his hand came into contact with her face. Rose let out a small whimper.

The responding look on Sherlock’s face made my stomach clench. “Oh, I may be on the side of the angels... but don't think for one second that I am one of them.”

Sherlock put down the tablet, looking up at me as something that sounded like a whip played through the speakers, followed by Rose’s screams. “Get out,” he said. “I need to go to my mind palace.”