The Death Game

Chapter 32

-A few days later, one morning-

11 in the morning, she had stayed in bed for at least the whole morning. Jim was already gone, she lay alone in the bed. She did the usual, grab her dirty clothes, put them back on because that's how lazy she was, fix her smudged makeup as much as she could and walked out the door. She left the flat empty, too empty for her taste, things were strangely missing, books, clothes, things that would never had been moved otherwise. With a confused look, she closed the door behind her and she made her way down the stairs, the lift was still broken.

Outside, the air was a mixture of cold and warmth; it fit perfectly with the end of winter and beginning of spring. As she stepped outside of the building, there was no car waiting for her in front. Had he forgotten? Jim always told his driver to pick her up and drive her anywhere she wanted. She shrugged it off as a simple mistake and walked down the street. 

A few moments later, she reached the tube. As she made her way down the small flights of stairs, something caught her attention. A newspaper stand. Some words caught her eyes, the words ''Moriarty'' and ''disappear''. As she walked closer to the stand, dodging people as she passed them, her eyes grew larger at the sight of what was written on the newspapers.

The Daily Express newspaper's front page headline screamed 'MORIARTY WALKS FREE' with the strapline 'Shock verdict at Old Bailey trial'. She started reading in confusion about how it talked about his disappearance. With a puzzled looked, she couldn't understand how he could have disappeared one morning when she had seen him the day before... he was Moriarty after all.

Putting down the newspaper, she picked up another one, The Guardian, which declared 'Moriarty vanishes'. She turned the pages quickly for an explanation but only found a cartoon caricature of Sherlock holding a crystal ball with the caption underneath that read 'What Next for the Reichenback Hero?'. As her face turned from confusion to fear, she quickly shoved her hands inside her black purse and took out her mobile phone.

In a frantic hurry, she searched his name through her contacts. As she heard what was on the other side of the phone, she froze on the spot, draining all hope, dreams and feelings from within her, replacing them with a feeling of despair, hopelessness and most of it all, fear. The sound clawed at her body and wrapped around her brain. It chocked the breath from her lungs and left her body dry heaving, desperately trying to rid herself of all this.

Black mist swirled at the edges of her mind; drawing her into its open arms and salty tears spilled over onto her cheeks leaving a tight, dry feeling. His voice wrapped around her body and she screamed. Only she didn't. She strained her vocal chords but not a sound came out. Still she screamed, hoping someone would hear. She screamed and screamed and screamed. She couldn't believe the sound on the other end of the line, she wouldn't.  Had she just lost the one person she had cared for in her meaningless life, after all this?

On the other end of the line, the only thing she could hear was static.

The fear crept over her like an icy chill, numbing her brain. In this frozen state her mind offered her only one though. 'Why?' As she was ready to lower her phone in complete and utter defeat, something in the line changed. A sound. A new sound was heard on the other end of the phone. A chuckle? The low chuckle of a man. She hastily put her phone to her ear once more.

''Jim?'' she whispered, ''Where are you... what's going on?''

Suddenly there was a silence, a long silence. It gnawed at her insides and hung in the air like the suspended moment before a falling glass shatters on the ground. The silence was like a gaping void as she failed for it to be filled with sounds, words... his voice.  It was poisonous in its nothingness, cruelly underscoring how vapid the conversation had become. It was eerily and unnatural and it clung to her like a poisonous cloud. Silence seeped into her every pore, like a poison slowly paralyzing her. And then, he spoke for the last time.