Human Error ~ A BBC Sherlock Fanfiction {Book IV}

Chapter LXV - White Love

The following content isn't pleasant, and won't be suitable for all readers. If you would like to skip it, the gist of this chapter will be made clear in the following update.

Consider before you read, please.

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-Emily-

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The floorboards are rough against my cheek. I lie with my head on the ground, my back to the gory display, restricting my vision to the small space beneath the door. I can see the paper on the opposite wall; pale, pastel, pearlised. My watch ticks faintly on my wrist. The irises breathe out oxygen.

I listen to the distant crunch of tyres on gravel.

Jim knew, he must have known. I remember the conversation in the casino. Oh, Mr Yakovich, he'd said. You bad, bad man. I remember Ivan's initial response to the photograph of Trisha, the photographs of the dead women. They are beautiful. I remember his self-decided flaw. I am a hopeless romantic. I remember being choked from behind, having a knife nick the skin at my throat, hearing Millie's dark lover hush me as I slipped out of consciousness. I keep remembering, keep dissecting my recollections, keep finding new cancers, new tumours, new abscesses. I slice it open. Love's autopsy.

Somewhere, a door slams shut. I feel the vibrations in the woodwork. Perhaps he's leaving. Perhaps he's re-arming himself. Perhaps it's Millie–

Millie.

She's here, in the building. With him. I invited her. It is undisputedly my fault. I am about to have her blood on my hands. It won't wash off.

I haul myself to my feet. I can't bear to look up at the wall, so instead I look down, down at the ground with its dried white petals, shrivelled and yellowed and skittering across the floorboards with each brush of air. They snag on the splinters. Some collect on one side of the knife.

I pick it up.

It's still warm, the hilt worn smooth in places. It's damp, too; red liquid slicks the blade, fresh blood, my blood, not much, just enough to discolour the ivory. The urge to take this piece of imported craftsmanship and press it into my stomach, through the soft layers of skin and tissue and fat in order to achieve the state of black unfeeling I so desperately crave, is a powerful one. I consider forcing it straight through my temple, past the delicate bone and into the packed mass of nerve endings and signals. Cut off sight. Silence sound. That would give me closure. It wouldn't take long.

Downstairs, I hear voices.

I turn to the door. I don't deserve the alleviation.

The knife tip slots into the lock. I lift it, testing, and feel the pins shift. I begin applying force. The lock strains. The pins quiver in their designated hold. I put my whole body into it, leaning against the knife, increasing pressure, twisting it, waiting for the tell-tale snap of either ivory or metal–

Something clicks. The door groans. I release the pressure and remove the knife; four, broken pins land at my feet, bouncing on impact and settling by my shoes. I test the handle. The door swings open.

I stagger out into the corridor, my head ringing, my cruel heart pumping. Blood has stained the collar of my shirt. I feel it pasted to my neck. When I take the phone from my pocket, it is impossibly heavy: I hold it in both hands, and try to remember the number. My fingers do a better job than my brain. It takes seven tries, because my thumb keeps slipping, my eyes keep smarting – but eventually, I've entered the eleven digits, and I press call.