Sigma Eta

What Do You Know About Time?

John felt motionless, perfectly helpless to do anything but stare at the body which now lay before him. Each of the boys found in them the same sort of despair, sitting in their chairs and watching, waiting for some motion, waiting for this all to be declared some sort of joke. James was the most struck of them all, looking as if he had suffered similar injuries, for his face had paled and he was falling limp in his chair, perhaps beginning to fall unconscious due to the shock. No one spoke, no one moved. The room fell silent, perfectly silent, and John's heart began to tear itself to shreds. There was their President, their leader, their God...with his beautiful face smashed into a plate of sticky syrup.
"He's just playing around, isn't he?" asked a voice from at the other end of the table, probably too far away to have seen the more noticeable signs of death. John was still motionless, the voices of his other brothers becoming steadily farther away, as if fading into the background and falling prey to the ringing that was building in his ears. Dead, dead...dead. By his hand.
"John, poke him." suggested Tobias in a small squeak, cowering down upon the table as if he felt the need to cover his head. John didn't hear, he didn't move.
"Should I call an ambulance?" suggested another.
"What for?" whispered a grave response.
"He's dead." Greg announced quietly, trembling in his chair before rising slowly to his feet. He would take it upon himself to move the horrible body, to hide it from the sight of those who had adored him. As Greg rose, John sunk farther and farther into his chair. He pulled his legs around him, trembling now as he stared at the mess of deep black curls. He had once run his fingers through those curls, gotten tangled within them, gotten them saturated between his lips. Were they really going to lie there, motionless, until they were plucked off by bugs and worms? Would those beautiful curls rot against his skull, until they clung only to bone and were lost? Was Sherlock Holmes going to decay? John felt as if he was going to lose his dinner, all of the sudden his stomach was beginning to twitch and his head was spinning. Greg approached the body, reaching out a hand to prod it...when a scream erupted. At first it was a silent scream, seemingly from nowhere. John was almost convinced it had been released from his own mouth, so as to explain the proximity. If the room hadn't been silent before, it certainly was now. John dared not breathe, lest he miss a single moment. He was watching, staring intensely...then again. Another yell. Louder this time, more confident, and much more impossible. For the noise seemed to be spawning from a particular place, a particular head, sunken into a particular plate... The fingers which had fallen limp against the table began to twitch, the long nails scratching into the hardwood with the effort of dragging their consciousness back to life. Slowly he was regaining motion, he was building up a momentum...his hand twitched, his arm bent, his mouth widened...his head rose. Sherlock's face reappeared, moving so erratically that it might have been commanded by puppet strings. His mouth was still open, spitting out mouthfuls of white foam as if retching it from his stomach. His eyes were stretched open, his pupils shining with black rage, and as if he was regaining the strength from the neck down he began to rise, holding his body weight upon the table for a moment before pushing himself onto his feet. He rose as if from the grave, standing heavily upon his feet as if he had forgotten how to use them, his dark eyes scanning the table and his lips dripping with thick saliva. John might've lost consciousness during the scene, for he could hardly remember what came next. He felt the eyes focusing on him, he felt Sherlock's gaze intensifying as he realized the truth of his assassination attempt. But had it worked, or hadn't it? Was he really dead, even as he walked? John found courage enough to look the boy in the eyes, though what he saw within those pupils was far more disturbing than the usual playful seduction. Inside of Sherlock's eyes was nothing. No emotions, none comprehensible by the human mind at least. He looked as if to mimic an empty void, fueled by rage, fueled by despair. And as if with an intentional motion, perhaps more successful than an actual strike, Sherlock's gaze knocked John over to the floor. His vision began to swim, first with dots, then with blackness, and as he toppled from his chair he fell much, much farther than just to the floor.