The Madness Was A Man

You Don't Think I'm Going Mad?

"Can't you tell me your name? Can't you say anything at all?" Sherlock begged, very timidly raising his arms to the stranger's shoulders, holding him mere inches away and staring deep into his almost unblinking eyes. His mouth didn't move, he didn't look as if he acknowledged Sherlock's words at all. Sherlock sighed, realizing of course that he might as well be talking to a pile of bricks. Yet still, he persisted.
"I've fallen in love with someone." He admitted. "I don't think they love me back." The stranger only lifted his own hand up to Sherlock's forehead, brushing a stray curl from his forehead before locking his hand around his neck (ah, the method!) and going in for the first kiss. It was a beautiful one once again, beginning as a gentle touch of the lips before growing to be a bit more aggressive. Sherlock really hadn't expected aggression; he didn't know what to do or how to process it at all. He hadn't expected that boy's mouth to move at all, yet here he went, feeling almost as if he was trying to bite Sherlock's lips off! Sherlock didn't know what to do; he had no idea that kissing could even be so...so action packed! He just tried to play along, he tried to grab onto the boy's head and steady him for just a moment, he even dared to open his own mouth just a little bit, as if trying to pretend he knew what he was doing. It wasn't a bad kiss; or rather Sherlock presumed it wasn't too bad. He had nothing to go on other than the racing of his own heart, and by that chorus of urgency he felt as though the kiss was ultimately a success. Yet it was more confusing than exhilarating, and he wasn't entirely sure what to do now. He wasn't elated, he wasn't breathless. He was merely just trying to survive what ultimately felt like a threatening situation. Suddenly the boy began to move, he began to step forward all the while pushing Sherlock backwards, moving them together closer to the bed. Perhaps he wanted to cuddle, then? Sherlock had no idea what was going on, all he could really do was play along. He felt with something of a gag that the boy's tongue had slid into his mouth, just as John had promised with the more intimate of affairs. So this was normal, all of this was actually accepted? Sherlock had never known people could be so intimate, he just thought that kissing was a simple peck, like what you saw on the covers of advertisements! Just a man and a woman with their lips pressed against each other, nothing moving, nothing licking, nothing biting. Sherlock was almost convincing himself to like it, he almost let his eyes droop shut so as to enjoy it...yet that ended abruptly when suddenly he felt himself falling. It was so quick that he hardly had time to process it, yet before he knew it he was falling through the air, only to land hard on his back on top of his disturbed blankets. And the stranger fell too, on top of him, now trying to wrap his legs around Sherlock's, now trying to move his lips down to his neck and tear his teeth through the skin...
"Stop, stop!" Sherlock exclaimed, now feeling beyond helpless, feeling trapped in this stranger's limbs and in his embrace. Yet he wasn't stopping, now almost as if he couldn't hear a word Sherlock was saying. "Stop, didn't you hear me? Get off!" he now resorted to struggling, wiggling under the crushing weight of the stranger, trying to push him by the shoulders. Yet still he wasn't responding, almost as if he couldn't stop himself now that he had gotten Sherlock underneath. This was a method of torture, wasn't it? He had Sherlock pinned with the intention now of tearing out his throat with his teeth, there was no need to get so close, so asphyxiating!
"STOP!" Sherlock screamed, now so loud that his voice was sure to be heard by other sources. Maybe that was meant to be; maybe his savior had to come in the form of an older brother. For just as soon as Sherlock's lips had grown silent, just as soon as the stranger's mouth had traveled below the collar of his shirt, the door flung open and another oil lamp was thrust into the room, illuminating it with the brightest of lights...
"Sherlock, Sherlock are you alright?" Mycroft exclaimed, rushing up to where his brother sat, now completely unburdened. The weight had been lifted, the lips vanished...the boy gone. He was free to sit up, free to move and to breathe. He looked like quite the fool now, screaming as he laid on top of his blankets and across his bed in the strangest of contortions. Screaming as if his life depended on it, screaming to someone who was never here... Sherlock sat up just as soon as Mycroft sat down beside him, trying to pull Sherlock into consciousness all the while the boy stared rather helplessly at the room around him. Where did the stranger go, where did he vanish to? Was he so quick that he could avoid Mycroft all together, was he even here at all?
"Sherlock, what's wrong? Why did you yell?" Mycroft asked anxiously, wrapping his protective arm around his younger brother. Sherlock still hadn't caught his breath, he was sitting anxiously on the bed and looking in each of the darkened corners, fully expecting to see the shape of a boy cowering there in the shadows and waiting to be noticed.
"There was...there was someone here." Sherlock whispered in terror. "You didn't see a boy?"
"A boy? What are you talking about?" Mycroft asked with a nervous little chuckle, as if he was forcing himself to apply humor to this situation even though there was nothing funny about it at all.
"He was right here..." Sherlock insisted, flopping off of the bed so as to look under it and make sure the stranger wasn't hiding underneath. "Where could he have gone, he couldn't have vanished!" he brandished his oil lamp like a weapon, illuminating each and every shadow which might have been refuge for the guilty party. And yet he was nowhere to be seen, not in the wardrobe, not under the bed...the windows were fastened and the door had been blocked! Yet he was here, he was here on Sherlock all the way up until Mycroft's intrusion!
"Sherlock you must have been dreaming." Mycroft warned. Sherlock began to feel his breath coming very quickly, he set down the oil lamp in his anxiousness yet found his hands instead running through his hair.
"Mycroft I swear, he was here...someone was in here with me!" Sherlock exclaimed. "He was here just until you came in, a young man, a butler!"
"There was no one in here." Mycroft assured, though his voice had now dropped into quite the nervous tone. Sherlock sank back down beside his brother, now shaking with the effort of realizing what had happened to him.
"Perhaps a ghost, then?" Sherlock suggested.
"A simple nightmare." Mycroft corrected. "They happen to even the best of us." He assured, now patting Sherlock's trembling back in a rather poor attempt to calm him. Sherlock couldn't believe that was a nightmare, he couldn't believe it was a spirit. That man had been real; he had been kissing him with force like no other, crushing him with his weight in an attempt to get him helplessly trapped! What did he intend to do, what was his vicious agenda? And why would he vanish just as soon as he was caught? Was he so afraid of being caught that he couldn't allow his face to be seen?
"You don't think I'm going mad?" Sherlock whispered, looking up at his brother's soft face for the verification he needed. He was beginning to grow terrified, scared not only of what that boy had done tonight, but what he had done the first night as well. Was this all a hallucination, created entirely in Sherlock's poisoned head and aching heart?
"No of course not." Mycroft assured, hugging Sherlock into his shoulder as if that would help ease his troubled mind. Yet it didn't, somehow Mycroft's words only sunk deeper into Sherlock's head...he knew that tone. The tone of worry and of doubt. Perhaps Mycroft was already preparing himself for watching his brother descend down the same path his father had taken. A path that started with mere visions, and ended with a catastrophic conclusion.