My Conductor of Light

"My life was awful. There's no other way to put it. I went off to be an army doctor in Afghanistan, got shot and sick and sent home early. That was also the best thing that ever happened to me because it helped me to meet Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

When I first met him he was doing an autopsy in the morgue. He barely looked up at me when I entered. Never in a million years would I have guessed he would become my best friend, and if you had suggested it to me I would have said you were mental!

"Afghanistan or Iraq?" he asked me. A simple, harmless phrase. Except, it wasn't. How on earth could this complete and total stranger tell something about me that most people didn't know?

The next day, when I asked him about how he could tell, he seemed simply astonished that it wasn't obvious! He told me how he could tell, and it did indeed sound very obvious. When I complimented him, quite profoundly, actually, he again seemed astonished. Apparently he is considered a freak by most.

That was the precise moment I made my first mistake. I chose to be his friend, no matter what."

"Why are you referring to it as a mistake?" My therapist asks me.

"Because it's ruining my life," I reply. I glance out of the window by my warm chair. Rain is beginning to fall in turrets, cutting through the thick London fog like knives.

"What do you mean, they're ruining your life?" she persists.

"I'm his only friend and-"

"You were his only friend. "

"No, I am his only friend. He's still alive and out there somewhere," I shoot back, half rising out of my chair.

"John, accepting that Sherlock is dead is the first step to recovery!" She reaches out a comforting hand. I swat it away.

"Shut up! I can't, I won't admit that! No!" Suddenly I stand, and almost subconsciously I reach into my coat pocket. For my pistol.

"Take. That. Back." I hiss between my teeth. My therapist seems to have lost the ability to speak and huddles in her chair, shaking.

"No? Okay. Suit yourself."

The sound of a gun shot rings out and she falls to the floor, dead.