Most nights, he awoke very suddenly from a haphazard dream, his abdomen clenching its taught muscles in paralyzing fear. John Watson was torn from the tattered shreds of sleep he received, and jolted roughly into the dim upstairs bedroom, which was now devoid of any sentimental items to hint at whatever sort of life the good doctor may have once had. The chill night air rushed over the insomniac city, shushing the Londoners back into their beds before they were forced to rise with the sun, and face their dismal lives with internal distain. He would sit up slowly, and squint into the gloom, searching the bare walls or nondescript hardwood floors for a sign, an answer to his reoccurring and always unanswered question: Had he imagined it all?
John Watson was no longer sure that he had not simply conjured more memories to mind as needed to fill the void on these empty nights, when he lay forlorn in sheets that seemed to entangle him in a cloying, murderously tight grip. He would start into full consciousness, terror seizing the heart that flew into his throat with its blithe and numb fingers. It was not terror that he was gone, or had never been, but that he had left John alone yet again, the very fibers of John's soul entwined so deeply with his that they uprooted the doctor's whole spirit, ripping it violently from John's chest. His first breath was choked out softly, each subsequent exhale ragged. Most people experiencing a nightmare have to question whether or not they are dreaming. As a result of his hellish existence, Dr. Watson had to ask himself instead if he was awake. "Yes, he was awake and-yes, he was alone."
Resigned to his endless fate of oblivion and isolation, the ex-army doctor would let out a scream that could wake the dead. He certainly hoped it could, or had he not succeeded last time? The name passed through his lips maliciously, he could practically taste blood oozing from the wounds cut by the word's jagged edges. His muffled sobs were released into a pillow that still smelled faintly of his cologne and musk, the tears stifled by the lump in his throat preventing him from breathing. His pain was a vise on his chest that bore down like an angry deity, but the only man Watson had ever worshipped was dead. It was not this pain, but this everlasting devotion to a man who would never give it in return, that was the vice of John. How cruel to have fooled him twice, only to reveal that the second time he had not been pretending. How cruel to have allowed him quick joy, only to return him to his previous state of mourning permanently.
Soon the lilting tune drifted up from the stairwell. "Suite Bergamsque 3-Clair de lune", a shared favorite of theirs, and one now frequently played in John's last moments of limited sanity. Hearing now it brought tears to John's eyes, and they glittered beneath his piercing irises despite the dark, threatening to spill over if this madness continued. It really was a beautiful song, a mastery of the musical language, and John felt as if he lived and died within the melody, the tune his entity, the notes the embodiment of his emotions. This song spoke the truth, his life was being lived through this song, it was his legacy. The piece ended abruptly and John Watson suppressed the unbearable urge to beg for more as he heard soft footsteps hesitantly make their way to the foot of his bed. He wanted to whisper that it was alright, he would not be upset or angry if the damned music would only play again, if he would play for him, and only him, for as long as they had left together, but John had no words remaining...only tears. A tittered breath graced the back of the doctor's neck, warm and pleasant. As a pale and withered finger stretched out to brush the side of his face, so lightly his nerves were straining to feel it, the former blogger could not help but smile fondly, around his leaking eyes, into the din of crushing silence that was somehow so loud. He longed for the hands to stroke him, for the arms to hold him. His body ached for the touch of this elusive phantom, for the shiver induced by the coarse fabric of one very moth-eaten and decaying, but beloved, black trench coat against his flesh. John Watson was aware that these fantasies were short-lived and impossible, yet he yearned for them all the same. Why did he do that, why did he knowingly subject himself to the pain of wanting things he knew he could never have?
The song began again, this time hushed and soft, but flooding his ears and mind as before. The apparition before him had not picked up his ghostly instrument, and John was briefly aware that the performance was taking place entirely in his own mind this time. The decrepit man hummed along half-heartedly in a voice sour from long periods of disuse. Why did this specter annually appear on the anniversary of its death, if only to tease and torment him? He often wondered whether he was the one haunting the ghost, or the ghost the one haunting him.
Why did he do these things to himself?
Perhaps, during tomorrow's morning, the answers would reveal themselves to him...
A jarring cough, reminding John of the thieving disease that had stolen him away, a parting kiss that flitted against his throat and a mumbled apology were the only sounds present in the last seconds of John Watson. They were the last things he heard, accompanied by the fading classical music, and if they were his obituary...then the song was his eulogy.