I was so far out of my comfort zone that I hardly knew what to do with myself. I was standing awkwardly as I waited for someone to fetch me. I would describe how everything looked, if it weren't for the fact I was blind. However, I could feel everything else.
Standing on a manicured lawn, probably littered with tripping hazards called head stones and chairs, I was standing alone in the sunlight of the June weather. This was England, or so I had been told. As I inhaled the smell of the cemetery, which was like a field of different flowers and cut grass, I stood erect in the same exact place that my mum had left me.
My feet could feel the difference between concrete, grass and gravel with the very little the flats left between the soles of them and the soles of my bare feet. My waist-length hair was carefully braided that morning, so it kept most of the wind chill on my neck.
I ran my hands over the soft, but barely worn cotton of the dress. It was presumably black, from the heat it absorbed from the sun and multiped on my skin below. It was a shallow scoop neck with three-fourth sleeves. I could feel the hem brushing against my shins, below the shorts I wore underneath it.
However, the weather was remarkably cooler than I had expected. It was slightly chill with gusts of wind and a scent that I associated with rain. Standing there, I noted that the sun was the only source of heat, so I tried to angle my body in such a way to get the most of it.
The most annoying source of the heat on my body was over my upper face. I wore a special mask of sorts. Not the kind superheros could wear, which was meant to conceal their identity from the world. No, my mask was a mark of shame of my condition. It looked rather interesting, being specially made for me. Running my fingers over the rigid leather, I could feel the wrinkles of how it formed to make a second skin of black of my eyes, with smoothness that didn't exist underneath.
I could hear the lull of conversation and crying. It was a funeral after all. The service had ended with some making speeches about my cousin. He sounded like a prick, but a lovable prick according to some. Others claimed that even if he was a fraud, he had made other contributions to their lives.
One person stood out to me in those speeches; John Watson. He sounded like he believed that a dead man would return, because Sherlock Holmes would never be dead. I felt moved, but now that it was over, I just wanted to leave the chill and go home.
My mum was gone from my side, for the first time since this trip had been planned. "I'm only going to see why my sister did not come to her own son's funeral." mum had assured me.
I believed that task would take a while, so I knelt, trying to find my satchel. It was leather and well worn. Suddenly, what I was feeling for was thrust into my searching hands. "Looking for this?" a male voice asked. I nodded as I took it. He was standing on my left, his hand coming to my elbow to help me up.
"I'm John Watson." he introduced himself. I noted that his voice sounded less choked up than before.
"I'm Jasmine." I told him, shyly. I put my satchel on and adjusted it, before reaching inside for my retractable cane.
"Oh, might I ask what relation you have to Sherlock?" he asked, trying to start a conversation.
I paused and considered the most polite way to say it. "I'm his cousin. We've never met, but my mum is sister to his mum." I told him, the most I'd spoken in two days. Mum did most of the talking.
"Oh, do you know why his parents didn't come?" he asked, as if I were the fountain of knowledge for what my relatives did. I shook my head as I wondered if she was too distraught to fly from the United States to come here. We'd made the flight even though mum had not seen Sherlock in over ten years.
I heard his clothes rustle, putting his hands in his pockets. "Would you like an escort to your parents?" he asked after a pregnant pause.
I considered. Walking to god knows where with a stranger sounded like a terrible idea, so I compromised. "I would rather wait here, so they know where I am."
"Oh, alright. I figured you might be getting anxious being separated from them, being blind and all." John told me and I felt the sudden urge that I had been insulted. "Young girls shouldn't be left to their own devices in a foreign country."
I knew with the logical part of my mind that he hadn't meant any offence, but I drew the line at my age. I knew that I suffered from some sort of stunt in my growth, but I hated being thought to be a young child. Being blind was enough excuse to be coddled, let alone being a child.
According to my last doctor's visit, which was two months ago, I was a mere 4' 10" and maybe 95Ibs, soaking wet. From the explanations of my mum, a 17 year old should not be so short and zero-endowed. My mask also created an illusion of mystery, since my eyes could not be used to measure my maturity.
Softly, I murmured to myself. "J'ai 17 ans." My French seemed to peak in times of high emotion or when I didn't want to be understood, which was annoying that I was yet to control it.
"Hm?" John questioned beside me.
Following the sound of his voice, I raised my head and smiled, very fakey. "Oh, nothing, John. I will just stay here and wait." He seemed disappointed at my words, but gave me a goodbye and finally left. True to my word, I stood there and waited, until I felt the first drop of rain on the top of my head.
Knowing that I did not carry an umbrella in June in the United States, I had not packed one for England. I sighed as I carefully unfolded my cane. Swishing over the grass, I made my way of the maze of chairs and carefully toward the sounds of people.
However, I quickly realized my mistake. It was another funeral, not the leftovers from the one that I had just been at. Standing awkwardly at the back, I tried to figure out where else I could go.
A hand pressed against my left hand, which held the cane. I startled slightly as a voice, baritone and with a distinct accent of all the residents of England. "Shall I escort you toward the reception of the appropriate funeral?" he asked. "Before the rain?"
I was suspicious, but my need to be near my mum and out of the rain won out. "If you try anything, I'll scream and fight." I told him.
I heard him chuckle as he gently led away from the still going on funeral. The hand guiding me brushed the sleeve of a wool coat against the underside of my forearm. He also smelt of tobacco and mint, but not peppermint or spearmint.
After walking for a few moments, with me using my cane to figure out any tripping hazards, he spoke again. "Aren't you going to ask who I am?" he asked, after a minute or so.
"Why?" I reply, softly. "It's not like I'll ever meet you again, le étranger."
He seemed to be satisfied with that answer. Once I was near enough to hear my mum talking, he released my arm, pushing it in the direction of them. "Merci beaucoup." I breathed as I noticed that his presence had completely disappeared.
I walked toward my mum, hitting the steps of a gazebo, where there seemed to be refreshments. Someone must have seen me and wrapped an arm around me as he guided me toward mum.
I lay with my mask off in the hotel bed. I was alone in this somewhat small bedroom of our suite. My twin sized bed was by itself with a nightstand, on which my mask was perched.
My face toward the ceiling, I closed my eyes.
In my mind's eyes, they opened to a bedroom full of color and nature. It was nothing like the one waiting for me in the U.S. Here, the walls were painted a golden brown with vines painted handsomely. There was a bookcase taking up an entire wall of non-fiction and a few fantasy and science fiction novels.
Sitting up, I smiled as I got out of the bed to look out the sunlit window. It was a beautiful sunset with orange, pink and purple lighting up the sky in the sun's last farewell. Pausing to enjoy the sight, I went and sat on my vanity, opening a never locked drawer.
Inside, was the thing I cherished most in my mind. It was a huge photo album, which doubled as a journal for my experiences. Putting a "photo" of what I imagined myself looking in that dress, which was terrible, I wrote out my experiences for the day.
Closing it, I left it on the vanity as I looked up to gaze at my reflection. In reality, my hair was in a braid, but here, it left loose in wild waves around me. It was just as thick and unruly, in all its dark brown with natural light brown highlights.
I had a very angular face, an inverted triangle I was told. My lips were a little plump as compared to the size of my face, while my nose was a little small. But my eyes were the most captivating, they were wide and large, making me look younger or more elf-like than I already do. The right was a misty gray, while the left was a pale blue.
"The Jasmine Fairy." I stated to the mirror. I looked like one, all I was missing was the plant clothes and pointed ears it seemed. My wrists and ankles were as dainty as a child's or fairy.
I sighed, refusing to punch the mirror and break the glass for the umpteenth time. My eyes were what gave me such misery, but I refrained from simply plucking them out and being done with them all together.
Standing, making the chair scoot back across the hardwood with my knees, I went to the door of my bedroom. I didn't pause as I opened it and left. Mum and pa were in the kitchen, doing their own thing.
Normally, I would have stopped and talked to pa, but it was an open wound still. Pangs of guilt filled me as I didn't even glance at them because I was in a hurry.
In my walk down the street, I saw various No Faces or Gray Ones. I have no idea why they were here to be honest, but they filled in the gaps so to speak. They were entirely grayscale, like a colored image printed on a black and white printer.
Each were special in their own way. They all wore clothes and shoes, with some features such as hair and tattoos. However, their facial features were softened. It reminded me of how a wax face must look when partially melted off.
One waved at me, a teenage girl walking her perfectly normal dog. It sniffed me before taking off for a cat, dragging the poor girl with it.
Not everyone here were Gray Ones though. The one I was checking up on, was not gray at all. Going to the institution, which acted as the courthouse as well, I was walked up by an orderly. With the white walls and floor, the Gray One almost matched the surroundings unlike the ones in the park I passed.
This Soulful had been acting up in the back of my mind. I knew that the person he once was, was found dead with my cousin. They called him Richard Brook, which made me angry.
In the padded room, with a matching straitjacket, the disheveled male looked up at me when I entered the door. "So the Mayor returns!" he spat at me. Refusing to be afraid, I looked around. Nothing had change, I must have just heard his revengeful screams.
"You've taken two family members from me." I informed him. This Soulful had probably just learned of that fact from the echoes in the halls.
Jim Moriarty laughed at me. "No, I was just the tool you used to kill one of them."
It stung hard, but I refused to cry or yell. Instead, I smiled. "But you can't take any more away." He paused at that and lunged. I sidestepped, letting his face slam against the wall.
He started yelling and trying to do it again, when I shut the door on his cell quietly. His words followed me down the hall like flies as I left. I went back home.
Going into the kitchen, where my pa was sitting there, smoking a cigar and reading a file, he smiled as he looked up at me. He opened his arms in an inviting hug, which I greedily took. This was the only place, besides mum's heart, where he still lived on.
"I love you daddy." I cried into his shoulder. Like countless times in the past three years, he rubbed my back and let me let all of it out on his dress shirt.
"I love you too, Jazzy." he told me, after my sobs turned to hiccups. "I love you too."
Sunlight filtering onto my face from a real window woke me up. The clock told me that it was about 7AM. Wiping the remaining tears from my cheeks, I changed the bandages from the inside of my mask and put it on.
"Un clou chasse l'autre." I whispered to the empty room. Life goes on. "One nail chases the other."