Sherlock and Watson

Definitely NOT elementary... Slight warning on content.

Metal cuts skin. That’s a no-brainer, really. Shears are my favorite. They’re strong enough to replace a good knife, but still have that scissors action. Two blades, slicing against each other, creating a huge amount of pressure on such a tiny point separated dermal tissue, muscles, tendons, even smaller bones.

His skin fell away quick enough. It was cold, but not frozen solid. A few sounds escaped. They were reactionary and hurried. When I’d first started, all those years ago, they’d freaked me out a bit. I got used to them over time.

I really didn’t like doing this part. It made me feel strange. It gave me the creeps. I liked everything else, though. My friend got me into it.

At orientation, he introduced himself as Dr. Watson. It was kind of funny, kind of corny, but none-the-less endearing. He’d been a little pudgy back then. The mustache showed him to be a bit older than I was at the time. Within a few minutes I was able to deduce his age, weight, name and his hopeful future medical field. He dubbed me Sherlock. We kept those names, continuing them ourselves and then letting others further the legacy.

I looked up to him. There was a certain charm behind the thin-rimmed glasses and the ridiculous tweed suits. He was a complete antecedent to his image. Yes, he was training to be a doctor but he was a bit wilder. Where I was focused and targeted and organized, he gave me a view of the underbelly.

He wasn’t a criminal, not by far. It was the drinking and the smoking and the partying and everything else he did that was more morally reprehensible to me than legally questionable. I made an odd choice, seeing as how I’d always been very cautious, when we moved into a small townhouse near the school.

The place was quaint, three bedrooms and two baths. We weren’t forced to live in close quarters but I still heard those sounds at night when he brought those s***s into his bed. It went on for a few months. Each day I would express myself more and more clearly about my distaste for his type of woman. He’d lose interest in the conversation and his mind would wander to the next target of affection. I stopped the cycle by showing him the life of his most recent rendezvous. She was a w***e, literally. He hadn’t known. At least, he showed a marked disinterest in her when he learned of her occupation.

Though he buckled down, he still couldn’t keep his mind from wandering. His restlessness turned out to be contagious. Either that, or his psyche abducted mine and held it for ransom.

I wanted to be a pediatrician but we got sucked into the crime scene shows early in med-school. He and I would DVR everything and watch them between classes. It was a stress release. We first started to rag on the inconsistencies and the stupid science they were spewing. After a while, we bought into the hype and the romance and all of it. We’d say to each other that we could bridge the gap between entertainment and real life. We could be like the guys on the shows.

We could be better.

So, we changed our focus. We started training for the messier type of medicine that could help us achieve our goals. I took to it quicker than he had. His stomach wasn’t in it in spite of the will that was. I was in direct opposition.

Even when handling the bodies, taking them out of the cooler, which is what the team came to lovingly call the storage area, I never had the urge to throw up. My vice was in apathy. I cared about what we did. We helped so many, did so much for those without a way to speak for themselves, but the zeal wasn’t there. I was jealous of Watson’s gung-ho attitude. I was, before he made his mistakes.

He got cocky. We had a system. He broke it. The problem was mine. I should have taken care of his addictions, the booze and the women. I should have kept them in check. I forgot that the dependency never goes away, no matter what the trigger. There was a lull in the activities and for a long time, he was interested solely in the work. Of course, we had to find other means of paying the bills. Second jobs were necessary when saving the world. The money we received from our true passions was little, much less than what was needed to survive. We found menial tasks.

We stayed under the radar. We did our taxes, payed our bills, stayed out of the law’s way. So much can be misconstrued as illegal in today’s world, I was worried that something would compromise the calling. It was harder for Watson to keep his nose clean.

In the end, he just couldn’t handle it.

We’d been following a target for weeks. He was a drug addict, sitting in the streets, leaching from the world. Sometimes that meant begging, other times the blood was a little less symbolic. When we took him he’d pulled a blade and was dancing it around. My talents don’t lie in the physical, so I stayed back. Our partners tackled him but Watson was sloppy; he moved too fast in one direction while the vagrant thrust the blade in the other.

We lost a man. Watson and I dragged the transient while our remaining two cohorts pulled the body of their friend behind. There had been talk of a hospital while he was still breathing but our employees were not so well versed in the workings of the body. A large artery had been struck. I explained this to the dying man between his sobs. He didn’t even have the decency to go with dignity. He hung on as long as he could. I was forced to inject him with a poison cocktail in lieu of the sedative I claimed it was. We needed to get out of there. The need to move was so demanding that I couldn’t follow the instinct to clean the area and take care of any evidence. So many things are seen as illegal now. It was self preservation but the others wouldn’t hear of it.

The van was crowded. There’s an interesting difference between a person and the body they leave behind. A body is far more cumbersome and takes up more open space.

On our way to the base, we dropped off the dead. There was a pier in an old industrial area, it provided a wonderful disposal area. I should have pushed Watson out as well. He wouldn’t shut up. He was laughing and moving the body as if it was still alive. I realized he was drunk rather quickly when he suggested we buy a hooker for the corpse and make her let us watch.

Once the extra weight was gone we found our way home. The target had been fidgeting, fighting against the bonds we placed him in. Watson was in rare form, grinding on the man’s face, using his fists to send the homeless back to the ground then screaming that he was the one being sexually assaulted. I had to laugh. It was pretty amusing.

Home was where I had experienced my youth. I had grown in an affluent environment. I preferred to describe my childhood as secure and provided for. Those who like me would agree. Those envious cretins I’ve left in my wake have called me many things. One such was rich kid. I despised this term. Not because of the upper-class discrimination present in all of the simpler, poorer societies, no. I refused to be called a ‘kid’. Even as a child I would become violent when that word was uttered.

Watson never liked my parents. He said they stood in the way of our plan. He even went so far as to proclaim they were our first great enemies. Whereas he struck my mother down with her favorite Tiffany lamp shade, sending shards of blue and pink glimmers into her skull with the full perception that the act was for the cause, I strangled my father for other, more personal reasons. I could say it was because of the many nights in my formative years when I became aware of his particular sickness. Of course, those doctors told me there was no evidence of abuse. There was no sign of my reality, so they accepted his version. They diagnosed me with a fanciful term for an imaginative liar. I never did fall for their ruse. He was my first in so many ways. His neck met the rope I carried in my van for emergencies. The death of a miserable b*****d, I think, was a fitting use.

It took us weeks to clean their bodies and place them in an accident situation believable enough to fool the most professional investigator. It worked. It was serendipitous that everything was left to me. That was never our reason for taking them out. They were always just meant to be practice.

We renovated the basement, installing a large restaurant freezer. Trial and error gave us a few premature deaths in the first few missions. We couldn’t find a happy medium with the temperature. Too low and the targets froze, the solidified water crystals expanded and punctured the soft tissue cells and they expired. Too high, the cold didn’t have a chance to take effect, they weren’t subdued by the body’s natural reaction to lack of warmth and they had enough strength to show as a threat. We couldn’t have either. They needed to stay alive. Beyond the storage area, we set up the interrogation room. Bags of necessary fluids and vials of life sustaining chemicals were held in large metal cabinets lining the walls. With those healing measures we also kept the more proactive devices, the needles and blades and contraptions used when Watson’s fists weren’t enough. The two types of equipment worked in tandem. We brought them to within an inch of their lives and then pulled death back away. If there ever truly was a reaper, we were not his favorite individuals. Our game was as much with him as it was with our targets.

Our missions were perfect once we hit our stride but we peeked a few months before accosting that vagabond. I hated downhill patterns. The hobo was the beginning of a huge, depressing spiral. We had been teetering at the top, brought there by slow and steady calculation and control. When success is so precarious, only a single push is needed to reverse it. Watson was the push towards that remarkably terrifying roller-coaster drop.

Our partners excused themselves. They were shocked and saddened by the loss but I knew we could trust them. They’d return the next night to help with the interrogation.

I went to eat. Watson went to drink. He needed to be stoned out of his mind for the task ahead. Though the questioning was going to last for days, he and I had our own immediate ritual. We would save the last target’s last day and make it coincide with the introduction of a new prisoner. We had a loose end to tie up. A young w***e had been watching us on our rounds. She obviously knew something. She was working for them. We took her in and had gotten as much out of her as we could. Her time was done. She needed to be set free of all chains. That was the part I enjoyed the most. The look in their eyes, that fear which masked the relief, it gave me chills.

My meal was simple. It always was. There was one ineffable positive brought about by our projects. We always had an easy access to meat. I was partial to the liver and heart. Old cultures viewed my ritual as taking power. I understood that my favorite foods were simply nutrient-packed. Spirituality never made sense to me. The ideas around the supernatural I had long deemed stupid.

I finished, cleaned and put everything away by the time I had heard the noises in the freezer. They were rough and animalistic and horrible to the ear. They frightened me. They reminded me of my room and my father and the nightmares he would bring about in the early hours of the morning when my mother was still asleep.

I took the revolver from the shelf by the stairs and went to the basement. Darkness greeted me. I gave it no notice. If I had turned on the light, I might have alerted the mystery into stopping. I found my way to the large brushed chrome door. It wasn’t completely closed. A pool of blood flowed from the space between the jam and the rubber insulation ring.

It was a man, grunting and groaning, his sounds were pleasurable, the woman’s were not. She, the w***e I could instantly identify, was crying. She was too cold to move or scream. The hunger helped with her inability to escape and call for help, we hadn’t fed her for days. I walked in with the gun pointed forward.

Watson was pinning her down, thrusting away as if someone was cheering him on. The transient was dead. He had a tire iron stuck in his skull. Some brain matter was hanging on the prostitute’s hair and face, unwashed even by her tears.

She looked pitiful. Of course, she asked for it. There was no doubt in my mind that it was what she deserved. But, I had more humanity than Watson. Besides, he destroyed our method, he fucked up the order. HE needed to be punished, NOT her.

The trigger pulled easier than I remembered capable while at the firing range. The left side of her face exploded and mixed with the ice on the floor. Watson screamed, first in surprise and then in rage. Then in surprise once more. I began screaming in return. I kicked him in the face and aimed the gun again. His genitalia was still engorged. He was always a strange one, never wanting to cut but getting off on the blood anyway. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d kept going with her. I fired again, alleviating his problem. His manhood severed, leaving less than half.

He began to cry. I wasn’t swayed. I couldn’t tell how long he’d been in there with her but the temperature was taking its toll. I pulled the hammer back and stuck the barrel against his cheek. He followed my orders and walked to the interrogation room. He didn’t plead. He knew how little it would accomplish.

Hard leather straps held him firm to the table. I pointed out the irony that he’d bought them himself. He designed the room. I’m sure our laughter filled the entire house. Through his tears and the drug induced giggling, he began to beg. He always knew how to make me laugh.

I opened a large metal door and pulled the kitchen shears from their hook.