Don't Be...Dead

16- Mind Palace

I found myself in a town much like London. Houses upon houses lined streets, each containing a name above the door. The streets, as usual, were quite empty. Most people didn’t know how to reach this place. I had been here many times before and had seldom seen anyone.

On the first of those rare occasions I found a person wandering the streets I had stopped to ask her how she had stumbled upon this place. Upon hearing these words she frowned and mumbled some incomprehensible gibberish. I reached out to her but found that my hand went right through her. Often I had found Moriarty strolling the streets. Upon seeing me Moriarty smiled wickedly, knowing I could do nothing to hurt him nor even speak to him. I followed Moriarty to the house with his name on it and stopped. He had gone inside ahead of me and shut the door. I jumbled with the knob but nothing. Removing a paperclip from my pocket I attempted to pick the lock. Try as I might to open the door without the skeleton key, a feat that would usually be a simple task for me, I could not open the door. I tried later, with John’s house, figuring he would not mind if I were to enter his head, but nothing. It seemed other people’s minds were forbidden to me.

I stopped in front of one building. It was plainly decorated, like the rest, neither shabby nor fancy. Above the door a small plaque that would usually contain the number read S. Holmes. I pulled an old rusted skeleton key from the pocket of my trench coat and slid it into the lock. The door opened easily and I slipped inside, closing the door behind me. One could not penetrate another’s mind, but leaving the door open was another matter. I walked inside and hung my scarf and jacket near the wall. The inside of my house was much bigger than the outside, a TARDIS house if you will (yes, I had to).

Despite my calling it a palace, it was not decorated as such. The first floor was set up much like the sitting room of my flat at Baker Street, with a couple chairs, a coffee table, and a long sofa. My violin sat by the window and my skull on the mantle. Things were thrown around as usual, but the overall place was much cleaner than in real life as anything containing information was organized in the floors above.

Each floor had a general topic, such as people, cases, history, chemistry, ect. When one would step onto this floor they would find themselves in a large hallway with many doors branching off of it. Each door contains a narrower branch of topic. For example, on the people floor I have doors for Mycroft, Moriarty, Molly, Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade, and of course John, as well as any other person I have met. It is known as my mind palace, not because it is decorated as such but because of the vastness of the place. I picked up Johns laptop and sat down. Once it had finally turned on I pressed control F. A small box appeared in the upper right corner in the screen. Going into documents I opened the folder which read people. Now, what to search, what to search... I typed in all the details I had acquired from the crime scene as well as the little that Angela had told me. It wasn’t likely that this would be the same woman, but it wasn’t unlikely either. I hit enter and these things highlighted themselves, pulling out people at random. I flipped between them. No. No. No. No.

Distantly I heard the door open and footsteps come in. John. He must have stopped somewhere before coming home, didn’t usually take this long to get back.... My mind palace started to dissolve around me at my distraction. Focus. Focus. I turned my attention back to John’s laptop and scanned through the names. One caught my attention. Oh! Of course! I set the laptop down. The wall had a directory hanging on it. People, floor 7... Room 24. I walked quickly up the stairs until I got to floor 7. I passed door upon door, each containing all the memories and information of a person. I paused at one. John. Though this wasn’t the door I had been looking for, I reached for the knob. I hadn’t entered this room since I returned, but while gone I spent a lot of time here. The room resembled John’s actual room back at the flat. It was much messier though. Books were stacked in precarious piles around the room, and I knew each held information I had gathered or learned or the story of a memory, all somehow relating to John. There was a small telly in the room, though there was none in his actual room. I grabbed remote and clicked it on.