Death of a Consulting Detective

Death Awaits with Open Arms

December 4, 2013

"Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain." It's a quote from Joseph Campbell - some random author of a few books I own. I used to believe in these words, especially as a child when all I felt was pain from being different. Now it does very little to help me overcome my emotions. Every time I try and find the joy in my Mind Palace, I keep seeing John, and the joy fuels the fiery pain that plagues my days.

I actually think this other quote describes my situation more accurately. "I've seen so many young men over the years who think they are running at other men. They are not. They are running at me." Markus Zusak, the author of the novel The Book Thief, meant for this quote to describe how men are ultimately running to their own deaths as soon as they joined the army. I interpret it as humanity chasing goals their whole lives without realizing death is at the end. I thought I was pursuing a good life with my best friend. I was merely chasing death.

He is always the ending to every story no matter how many pages the words fill.

Death does not seem very far now.
Two days have passed since I found out about John's murder. Two days since I've taken proper care of myself. Two days since I have eaten a good meal. Two days without any hope of seeing his face again.

To be more specific, I put on clothes to sleep on December 2 and I haven't changed them since. I sleep for an hour or so in John's bed, wake up, sit in his chair all day, and then sleep for another hour until the whole routine starts over again. Any food I've eaten has just been small bits to keep myself from starving, but not enough to really satisfy my hunger. Sometimes I'll steal a glance at John's laptop which he would never type on again and attempt to gather the effort it would take to write more blog posts. It was one of his favorite things to do yet the thousands of people following him - waiting for him to post again - do not know he won't be coming back. I want to tell them that he's gone to share my grief and suffering.

But what's the point in grieving with a bunch of other human beings when they are nowhere near you to provide any sort of comfort.

Mostly I just hold the machine in my arms while I sit in his chair; thinking of something to do for him. I want to compose a song for my dear John, but I can't seem to find my violin. I'll have Mycroft bring me one later. He always manages to get whatever he wants and I'm sure a violin won't be too big a problem.

~

December 14, 2013

Lying around all day with nothing to do but grieve and compose often results in immense boredom for high functioning sociopaths. I start to notice odd, unimportant things that my mind usually skips over because it isn't relevant to what I would currently be doing. Like yesterday I noticed a happy family walking on the opposite side of the street from my second story window. And today I saw on the news that it was the one year anniversary of a school shooting over in America where some mad gunman shot 26 innocent civilians. I was "dead" then so this shooting was definitely new to me. If only those poor Americans had me there to solve their crimes. I would have identified the man as a possible killer within seconds of randomly bumping into him somewhere.

Did John mourn over those 26 lost souls that day? Was he watching from the tellie and that event, plus my recent death, overwhelm him? Or did he mourn because he was a human who didn't quite understand that death is the end to the story and those people just had fewer pages than him. That's a quote I've been repeating for awhile now.

After a few hours of thinking about the 20 children and the 6 adults with short stories, I got up to compose. I had received a violin a few days ago and, as predicted, Mycroft had very little trouble finding it. The song itself is coming along quite brilliantly too. It is slow and feels comforting like John. He always took the time to save another life or make one better.

I grabbed the instrument off of the desk - my fingers resting on the delicate strings and the wood resting under my chin. As I ran the bow across, and applied pressure to a few of the strings, a beautiful tune filled the entirety of the flat. Every note written down had its own elegance to it that for some reason fit my blogger so very well. I continued to play the small part scribbled down on half a sheet of paper over and over again; moving my whole body to flow with the rhythm. God it was amazing. Eventually I let the music consume me. I closed my eyes and the soft sounds made my legs move around the living room.

I was no longer playing the instrument - the instrument was playing me.
When my hands grew weary I set everything down where it was. It started raining at some point while I was under a trance. Thick drops flew onto the windows and slowly rolled down the glass where they were joined by more thick drops. I also failed to notice the wet streaks going down the sides of my face like the rain on the window. Had I shed a few tears during the song?

At that moment Ms. Hudson slowly opened the door as if she's been secretly listening to my violin but doesn't want to tell me outright. I focused my attention on this one raindrop that was much bigger than the rest and kept absorbing other raindrops, increasing its size. My chair was no longer in the way to block my view of the window; it had taken up residence in my old room. There was no effort to make eye contact with Ms. Hudson in fear I'd see her crying like she always seemed to do when I played the violin. Also she must not see that I've expressed any sort of emotion or else she might think it's okay to sit on the couch and talk about my bloody feelings.

Her footsteps were quiet - like she didn't want to disturb me. She carried a cup of tea as well as a small plate of food that would probably remain uneaten.

"You're composing again Sherlock?" she asked. The way her voice broke off proved my suspicions that she was crying. She sounded sad though rather than moved by the music I've written.
The small droplets of water were attracted to the large one and it fell faster with every drop that merged into it. I didn't answer Ms. Hudson for two reasons: the rain and fear. The rain was so interesting to watch roll down the window that I couldn't tear my eyes away. I also feared that she may hear the sadness in my voice like I had heard hers. Nonetheless she carried on the conversation while she put the plate on the desk and the tea on the small, wooden table next to me.

"I think that's your best piece yet."

"Do you think it was painful?" I asked. I'm not sure where the question came from but the falling rain and the way it sped up towards its imminent doom had me thinking odd things.

"What was that Sherlock?"

"I asked if you think it was painful." I repeated. I was trying so hard to keep my voice from cracking, but it did anyway. Just like the built up emotion I've bottled up far away in my Mind Palace.

"Sherlock...asking that won't help you."

"I don't care...Ms. Hudson." I paused for breath in the middle of my sentence to prevent myself from breaking down. "I need you to tell me. Do you think it was a slow and painful death?"

She hesitated to answer my random question. "I think it was quick dear. They say he died after a minute or so."

He must have felt some sort of pain during his final moments then. It hurts to think about my poor John in pain.

Finally the raindrop impacted with the windowsill and burst into tiny little droplets hard to see with the naked eye.

The image gave me another deep thought like the few pages in a story one. I am the huge drop of water absorbing all of my emotions represented by the normal drops. I grow bigger and bigger to keep all of my feelings inside - to remain professional - but when I reach the end of my journey the emotions are too much and I eventually lose it. I have a mental breakdown and fall to little pieces no one seems to notice.

"Ms. Hudson please leave now." I demanded in a shaky tone. She left without another word and shut the door behind her to give me privacy.

I grasped onto John's laptop for dear life. The rain slammed mercilessly into the transparent material and covered the sound of my quiet screams. I held my fist near my mouth and bit my index finger to prevent any sound from escaping my lips. Holding in all of this sadness and pain made me feel like my body was exploding. Usually one would associate massive pain with being blown up but my body just felt heavy. No, it was my head that hurt the worst.