Human Error ~ A BBC Sherlock Fanfiction {Book IV}

Chapter X - The Devil and His Sinner

-Emily-

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It is the lack of discomfort that jolts me from my heady sleep.

In the throes of unconsciousness I am made aware of my external environment – or, more accurately, what is missing from my environment. The grainy chafe of my filthy mattress is gone, replaced by what feels suspiciously and impossibly like silk; I am neither numb with cold nor slick with sweat, there are sheets, silk sheets, brushing the rough surface of my skin like softened air and the unpleasant chemical combination of cocaine and vodka no longer exists.

I do not trust myself to open my eyes, for fear of shattering this curious, sense-altering illusion.

However my memory decides that I do not deserve to enjoy this sweet idyll for a moment longer and it splits the seams of my solace, allowing the turbid contents of my grim reality to sully my dream state. Sound and colour and movement flash behind my eyelids and I see flat images, muted by alcohol and blurred by nervous desperation; the tree-shaped air freshener hanging from the taxi mirror, the angular jut of Lucy's dislodged spine, the endless streets, the dusty keyboard beneath my unsteady fingers.

My memory cuts off rather abruptly, then.

I reach out tentatively, eyes still shut and body unmoving, feeling the space around me. This is certainly a bed. More specifically, this is an unfamiliar, excessively luxurious bed that is so large in width and length I cannot reach the edge of the mattress.

I do not need the last few broken fragments of yesterday's recollections to tell me that I have, against all the odds, been successful in my quest for self-destruction. It is with a rapid fluttering of my pulse do I brace myself and, clutching the layers of slippery silk either side of me for support, open my eyes.

The room I find myself in is, for want of a better word, magnificent. It is vast, sleek, and black and white in its entirety. The floor is polished marble, flecked with veins of dark silver, the furnishings are minimal, all sharp, all simple; an alabaster chest of drawers, an imposing desk, a high-backed chair of white leather, a black television spanning the length of the opposite wall. The bed takes up the majority of this space, the sheets around me creased in charcoal folds of crumpled silk and the headboard built back into the wall, an architecturally awe-inspiring, floor-to-ceiling rectangle of smooth leather.

And what a ceiling it is.

It is, technically speaking, a mirror; there is no plaster, only glass – a continuous, hingeless sheet of glass, reflecting a crystal-sharp bird's-eye view of this unbelievably opulent abode. At the centre of it all is a slip of torn scarlet and a grizzled mess of broken ringlets, looking up at her mirror image as the hangover of all vicious hangovers pounds at her temples and jaw.

I sit up with equal trepidation, wary as I continue observing this minimalistic masterpiece. It is too quiet, here. There are no shouts or thumps or taps of stiletto heels on exposed floorboards. All is silent, save for the distant hum of hundreds of thousands of car tyres turning on tarmac.

One of the four walls has been replaced by a frameless window and I spend a long moment taking in the aerial vista; the tops of dark, glass buildings piercing holes in the layer of settling smog and cloud, the peaks of Westminster Abbey, the curve of the London Eye. It is my home city from an entirely new perspective, and one that does nothing to calm the growing knot of nerves in my stomach.

I turn back to the reflection above my head, attempting to piece together the grey gap in my memory; I have no recollection of the events that elapsed between climbing out of the taxi and waking up in this location.