The Adventures of James Moriarty

The Adventure of Disguise

It was 3:30 in the fucking morning.

Perhaps I should be accustomed to his strange behaviors, his random displays of psychosis, but there is no pattern to his disorder. Sometimes he'd talk endlessly about very small details in his plans that the police have missed, the smallest loopholes he creates at times, 'unforgivable mistakes', as he'd call them. Sometimes he'd only talk about fairy tales as if they were the most important thing in his life. He'd gather different versions of the same tale, scrutinize each of them, come up with the most unimaginable double meanings behind them, and I am usually the person who sits through his speeches.

Throughout my career, I have been nearly shot, stitched, throttled, threatened, kissed, fucked, adored, and strangely, even a combination of the above at the same time. Yet I am still as clueless about his next moves as I was six years ago. There is a certain freshness about him, about his twisted state of mind. I constantly felt like burning coal was placed on my open wounds, and then poured over with freezing ice when I was around him. So I stayed around, as his most trusted sniper.

So it shouldn't have seemed unusual to me when I got woken up at 3:30 am, hours prior to my reporting time, by a phone call that demanded my immediate assistance.

When I woke up at the ungodly hour and arrived at his room, I saw him just in his brown boss coat, and black pants, reading the newspaper. He seemed to have been sitting there for a very long time, with his eyes were trained on just one article.

"Good morning, boss," I said.

He acknowledged me.

"Sherlock Holmes," he announced, looking up from the article. He closed the newspaper, tightly folding it along the crease with his fingers, and set it on the glass table in front of him. He looked at the crease adoringly, and I watched his fingers press the fold neatly to make it tight. It was so enchanting, but so threatening, even if it was just a piece of paper. He abandoned it, and rose from the chair, "you've heard of him."

"Read about him," I glanced away from his figure.

He approached me, smiling slightly. "I've found him, Sebastian," he said, nodding at perhaps his own voices in his head. The smile was so unsettling, that I had to resist myself from moving back an inch. "Oh, I've found him."

"Sherlock Holmes?"

"The man I've been searching for for a very long time. You think he'd actually come close to stopping me?" He asked excitedly, facing his back to me to go over to the window. People passing by, luxury cars driving in and out by valets, this was a scene we'd usually see from our hotel rooms.

"I don't know, sir," I said. If I said yes, he might suddenly turn angry at the thought of anybody being so capable, and if I said no, he'd get angry at me not agreeing with him. 4 am wasn't the best time to die, in my opinion.

"Come on, be honest," he drawled, lilting his tone in a playful manner. Still, every moment around him, regardless of his mood, felt as if the floor beneath me could vanish any time without warning, and drop me into a fire pit.

"Perhaps he might," I said.

A small smile. It grew larger on his face, and I could see it perfectly well from my angle. "That's good, it's wonderful."

He threw his coat off his bare shoulders, and flexed his arms up, grasping them behind his head.

"Get your things," he said, referring to guns and blades. "Meet me in the cab downstairs," he said, rushing to his wardrobe.

"Cab?"

"Yes, is there a problem?" He asked, snapping his head to meet my eyes directly. Angrily at first, and then they slowly softened, to give me a very innocent, almost adorable look.