Chapter 1
A case. Something as simple, something as ordinary as a case had been my undoing.
Normally solving cases earned me praise.
This case earned me a curse.
Maybe I should have tried to be more understanding, to leave my sociopathic tendencies at the door, but that's who I am. It wasn't my fault that I was the way I was.
It wasn't my fault that I got on my client's bad side.
I suppose I should start from the beginning, to the part where this all began.
"For the last time, I told you, you're an imbecile," I said, slowly and surely in Anderson's face.
Anderson huffed and crossed his arms across his chest.
"I don't need to be treated that way by the likes of you."
"I think Lestrade gives you too much credit..."
Just as I said that, Lestrade started to walk past.
"Lestrade, why do you always assign Anderson to these cases?"
Lestrade paused in his walk and came over to the two of us.
"Because he's the best man that I have on the team..."
"Why do you need the supposed 'best man' on your team when you have me? He's just dead weight."
"Dead weight?" Anderson dropped his jaw in shock and crossed his arms.
"Enough you two," sighed Lestrade as he slapped a case file into my hands. "Here Sherlock. There is all the information on your new client."
I flipped open the file and started to leaf through the pages that lay inside.
"Hm...nothing new."
I threw the file back at Lestrade. He had a hard time catching the file, not expecting me to throw it back at him, almost making all of its contents fly all over the place.
"What was that for?" asked Lestrade, looking flustered.
"That file told me everything, everything , that I already knew within five minutes. London's finest..." He muttered under his breath. "You guys are all a joke. I bet I could solve all your cases in the blink of an eye."
"Look here Sherlock, you need to get off your high horse. We may be your friends and all, but you have become way too cocky for your britches as of late."
I smirked at that comment. He was just jealous. Just like Anderson.
"I haven't gotten cocky, you two have gotten jealous."
"Jealous? We may admire your deduction skills, Sherlock, but we'd never be jealous..." said Lestrade.
"Say what you want, but I know the truth because I am the only one smart enough to see it. Now I have a client to attend to. You two oafs stay out of my way."
I turned my back on them and walked down the hallway to Lestrade's office, where the client stood outside the door, waiting for me. As soon as I came within sight of her, I plastered a fake smile on my face. I could obviously deduce from one glance that she was a woman who mainly cared about her appearance. She was clothed scantily, as if flashing me her skin would get me to side on her side. Maybe she was innocent, maybe she wasn't. I was leaning toward wasn't by my initial deduction.
"Will you step into the office so I can ask you a few questions?" I asked as I held open the door for her.
"Of course," she said as she rose from the chair and entered the office, taking a seat.
I closed the door and then sat down in front of her.
"So Miss Adler, what case do you have for me today?"
She gave me a smile and leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees.
"I have a case about a man that wouldn't play nice."
"Excuse me?"
"You heard me," she said with a smirk. "I'm here I have a case about a man who always thinks he's right, and that everyone else around him is wrong."
I rose from my chair, becoming uncomfortable.
"If you don't have a real case for me and are just insistent on spewing nonsense, you are wasting my time and I'll have to ask you to leave."
Irene tsked as she rose from her seat, walking over to me.
"This is a real case, and it does concern you. You can't turn your back on it."
"Leave," I repeated, my voice growing cold.
She reached out to touch my arm. I immediately flinched backward away from it. Her smile turned into a frown.
"How sad. You are truly empty, truly blind, my dear Sherlock..."
She started to circle me, as if she were a fox circling her prey.
"You have such great supportive friends, friends who appreciate you, who love you, but you do not show any of this in return. Your heart is as cold as ice."
"What business is of it of yours to tell me how I should act?"
"It's none of my business. I'm merely here to help you, to make your life better."
"My life is fine exactly the way it is," I snapped. "Now leave me alone."
"I shall make you see differently."
"How on earth would you be able to do something like that?" I said, chuckling slightly at the very idea.
"Until you can learn that you aren't the center of the universe, until you can learn to love someone other than yourself and that big brain of yours and have that person truly love you back, I curse you and those who do care about you. Make you feel guilty if you even have the ability to."
"Curse me?" This time I really did chuckle, and quite loudly. "That's a load of rubbish."
"No," she said, shaking her head and making her hair swish effortlessly back and forth. "It's not rubbish. Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson, even poor Anderson will be cursed with you. Feel guilty?"
I glare at her, clenching my teeth.
"I feel no guilt because I have done nothing wrong. Now leave."
"Poor, poor Sherlock."
She walked over to Lestrade's desk and picked up a pen, pressing it into his hands.
"When that pen runs out of ink, you are out of time. If you haven't found someone to love you, that loves you back, you'll be stuck the way you are, forever."
"The way I am?"
"You'll see what I mean soon enough," she said with a smile.
She walked toward the exit, pausing momentarily to kiss my cheek. "Good luck Sherlock."
I watched her leave. Curse me? Yeah right. She didn't curse me. That was a load of garbage.
That evening, as I sat in my chair, Lestrade and Anderson sat on my couch, Mrs. Hudson in the kitchen. Lestrade and Anderson were going over different case files together, asking my opinion every other minute. Mrs. Hudson was busy fussing around in the kitchen, brewing up another pot of tea.
"What about if a woman claims she has-"
"She is lying. She is obviously the one that had an affair and is trying to appease herself of her guilt by blaming it on her husband."
"But I didn't even finish my sentence!" stated Anderson.
"You didn't need to. I can see all the files on the coffee table."
"Show off."
"Incompetent idiot."
"Boys, play nice," said Mrs. Hudson as she entered the room with her pot of tea, pouring them all a cup.
I took my tea and sipped it, looking around the room. It was late, and for once in my life, I was actually starting to feel tired. Maybe that's why I was getting more irritable the later it became.
Suddenly, my head started to pound with a really bad headache. But why? I hadn't done anything too stressful today.
"Mrs. Hudson, this tea is delicious..."
Lestrade's voice sounded muted to my ears. The room seemed as if I were viewing it out of a weird scope. Closing my eyes, I opened them again quickly, seeing if I was still plagued by the inability to see normally. I was not.
I stood up from my seat and started to walk toward the kitchen, collapsing against the mantle of the fireplace on the way by, leaning most of my weight against it.
"I curse you..."
No. Curses aren't real. They are the stuff of fairy tales.
I brought my head up and looked at Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade, and Anderson as my headache reached a new intensity of pain.
Lestrade and Anderson were both curled up on opposite ends of the couch. Mrs. Hudson was seated on the floor. All three looked sick, but not nearly in as much pain as I was.
The pain hit me harder and I let go of the mantle, falling onto my knees onto the carpet. A feral growl formed in my throat as I closed my eyes tight, clenching my hands into fists.
I pressed my forehead to the carpet as the pain hit me in waves. There were no such things as curses...you were just having a reaction to something you consumed. Maybe that batty client had broken into your flat and poisoned the ingredients Mrs. Hudson had used to make their tea?
As the pain started to subside and my vision started to go back to normal, I looked at Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade, and Anderson once more. What I saw made my jaw drop in shock.
In place of Lestrade was a candlestick. In place of Anderson was a clock. In place of Mrs. Hudson was a tea pot. And it wasn't just that they were replaced by ordinary household items, these household items had faces, faces that expressed confusion.
"Sherlock?" he heard Lestrade the candlestick now ask, looking right at him, eyes wide.
What. What did I look like? As I stood to my feet, the pain subsiding even more, I ran into the bathroom and looked at my reflection in the mirror. What I saw in the mirror shocked me. Staring back at me was a complete stranger. Staring back at me was a beast, dressed in my clothing. After a couple minutes of staring at my reflection in horror, I realized that that beast was me. Me.
I had been cursed after all.
The four of us have stayed walled in in my flat at 221B Baker Street ever since. Lestrade and Anderson have resigned from their positions at the Yard for "personal reasons". I have dropped solving cases altogether. I can't let anyone see me like this. Sure, I was a famous consulting detective, good at my job, but I couldn't do it in my current condition.
My website was still up of course, not that anyone read it anymore. In order to ensure that I wouldn't get any new clients and risk them seeing me this way, I wrote a nasty, abrasive article, detailing how idiotic everyone was and that no one should bother wasting my time on their cases because they were all worthless and pathetic. Of course I lost a lot of clients and fans, but I didn't care. It had to be done.
The pen that Irene gave me still has ink. I write a sentence with it everyday to see if it does. I still have a slight ounce of hope of breaking this curse. There has to be a way even if it doesn't feel like it. There just has to be.
I picked up the pen and wrote my daily sentence with it. Today's sentence was:
"I'm ready to redeem myself."