Withdrawal
I've always been a silly man; it's just taken me much longer to realize how silly I've become. I guess you should know this story has nothing to do with my want or need of your pathetic human sympathy. It's just a story a short story that centers on my withdrawal from all things. This memoir is why I am a high functioning sociopath that has no want or need for the basic human things.
My name is Sherlock Holmes; I'm a recovering addict and the narrator of this short little tale. So I guess if I'm truly to encompass myself we shall start from the beginning.
I was a troublesome child, my parents they adored me though and I knew I could get away with most anything. My mother is a genius, though she's much more like an ordinary genius; she can function normally in society. Margaret Jane Holmes is a brilliant artist, although that is not how she made a fortune. She is also a designer; she designs clothing, houses, and most anything she can get her hands on. She is warm smiling but she values intelligence above all else. When Mycroft was born she would read him stories like Moby Dick by the time he was five he had over 20,000 words in his vocabulary. When he was eight he could map out the entire world.
My father, Nigel Lewis Holmes is a colder more calculating man who made his vast fortune in business. He knew every little thing about all of his competitors and he knew how to get the information he needed to back up his knowledge. Although when he was with my family he became another man altogether. He was your stereotypical genius he didn't quite know how to function out in the world with civilization. He was nonetheless a good man who loved his family. He taught Mycroft the entire art of Cartography by the time he was eight and French by the time he was ten. I was born when Mycroft was only four years old.
My parents were excited they were going to have another baby, but Mycroft who was already considered a freak by most had never wanted a brother. The moment I was born our glorious rivalry commenced. First it was his bid to get our Parents' attention then he tried to outsmart me.
By the time I was born my parents continued many of the same practices they had done with Mycroft. The only difference was I was treated like the baby. I was often coddled, and often spoiled. If I went into Mycroft's room and spilled red juice on his white carpet I could easily get away with it. I had worked a way to manipulate my parents' affections for me and that is what started my life.
My mother, like she did Mycroft, read me great classics; my favorite was always Treasure Island. I used to entertain fantasies of running away and becoming a pirate because in all those stories pirates always seemed like the 'good guys' the guys everyone wanted to be; in short they had the most fun. I used to run to Mycroft and say thing like "You mangy land lover." Or "I spot a whale on the horizon." I was a lovely child.
I was every bit as brilliant as Mycroft, although in different ways than my brother. My tactile genius was there but I preferred languages as compared to his maps. I loved music I learned how to play violin at the age of ten and piano at eight. I composed music as my escape and he would brood alone and silent in his room. That's when we started the Deduction game.
Up until I was 11 years old my parents homeschooled Mycroft and I. We were so bored growing up, and that was a dangerous thing for us to be. Mycroft had picked up fencing and I made science experiments. I almost blew up the kitchen a few times, and I had a fascination with animals that were decomposing. My best friend was my dog Red beard I had never had any other social contact outside of my family.
So Mycroft and I designed the deduction game so we could alleviate our growing boredom, and our parents who were desperate to keep their house in one piece let us go to the park often. We lived in a small country town in my earlier years, so the park was right next to the market. There we would watch Mycroft started picking up on the signs before I could. For instance if a women who had a pink sweater on, with brown pants, a black scarf, and her hair up in a bun Mycroft would say "She's going through a separation she has on no makeup and her hair isn't done so she's obviously not looking for any more companionship. She has an indent and her skin is lighter on her left ring finger meaning she recently took off a ring my guess wedding ring, and her black scarf shows how recent it really was, she's so distraught she picked out the clothes quickly probably just getting necessities."
Finally I started becoming good at deducing people, and we practiced so often I could just glance at someone and see everything they thought they were hiding and see it within ten seconds. It became a point where Mycroft and I bonded and soon we shared our own private jokes at the things we deduced about people.
When my parents forced me into secondary school I couldn't shut off my deductions I was only eleven at the time, but I got sent to the headmaster's office because I had told my teacher that she shouldn't bother trying to impress the gym teacher he was married, and no amount of weight she lost would change that. Needless to say my very first day of school I was labeled as a freak. This is what started my withdrawal, School became my most hated enemy in my young life.
I finally learned not to talk to anyone unless I was looking for a fight. I also learned how to fight for myself, and the fact that I could deduce my opponents every move helped me win most every time. My parents were worried about me though; there was hardly a holiday I didn't come home with a black eye and bruised fist or bruised ribs. I was in short a freak, and no one inside that school would talk to me.
I was left alone and terribly bored in all of my classes. Mycroft had much the same treatment I had, though he was fifteen and couldn't fight for himself like I could. The boys of his class often gave him swirlies and wedgies, he often times came home in worse shape than I ever was.
We were of course in a private school so we lived in dorms according to our grades, and I hated it I had the bed closest to the wall so no one could sneak up on me everything I owned was locked in the chest at the foot of my bed whenever I left, and often it'd be days without someone even saying a word to me. I was in short growing bored.
The year I turned 15 the school was having a dance Mycroft had left me and gone to Oxford. I decided why not indulge in a bit of dancing; I have loved ballroom dancing since I was twelve when my parents talked me into taking the class. It was one of the great pleasures in my life, and I knew most of the girls in the school thought I was attractive. I was of course with my high cheekbones, ever changing eye color; I was tall and lanky but still muscular. I thought it'd be easy getting a girl to say yes.
I asked any girl I could think of I was nice and even kept my deductions to myself but all of them ignored me. I hadn't quite given up the hope that I'd find a friend maybe I'd become normal and have a girlfriend like all the other lads. I didn't find out until later all the boys in my dorm had decided to tell the girls not to say yes to me that it would be a big joke, and that I'd ask them again and then they could say yes, but until my second time asking they had to act like I didn't exist. I didn't ask again I felt something weird in my chest something I'd only felt a few times and it was extremely painful; I didn't get to go to the dance that night. I sent my tuxedo back to my parents.
I curled up on my bed and I didn't move until everyone else had left for the dance. No one talked looked or even acknowledged that I was there. When I was sure everyone was gone I snuck out of my dorm room and I walked the streets of London until I stumbled into a drug den. That was my all time low as the men and women in there stared me down. I didn't know what else to do I sat down in the circle and asked them to help me stop feeling. That was the first time I had ever experienced heroin.
The feeling of the high brought me higher than I had ever been before. It was better than deducing others it was freeing. I felt acknowledged I felt happy which wasn't a foreign feeling but in the past few years of my education had become a rare one. This was my new escape, my withdrawal from the world and I was more than happy to let it take over.
Author's Note
Hi I'm considering letting it end here but I may go me what you want in the reviews, and if you want me to make it longer then I will need 5 reviews at least. Have an awesome day!