Doctor John Watson
It's just past five o'clock. Sherlock, once again, has sent the poor doctor all the way down the street to get a pint or two of milk.
They should really get Tesco to deliver weekly.
Usually, during the times when Sherlock half-heartedly waves John Watson away from the flat to retrieve his milk for his tea, I'll sneak in and just watch. I'm sure he notices me, but if I'm quiet and don't touch a thing, Sherlock doesn't care. He just continues on with whatever he's doing, whether it's an experiment involving the rate of contraction in a cooked eyeball or he's just lying on his too-short sofa, thinking.
Sometimes he'll even share his nicotine patches with me.
Today, however, something in my gut told me to follow John Watson. I don't like him. I pity him, sure, but that's because he has a cane. Because he's a hero sent home to deal with the stress of being a civilian again, except now he's not. Now he has Sherlock Holmes, my Sherlock, to distract his mind by giving it the adrenaline rush it seeks.
I'm not in the best of moods. Sherlock recently had another restraining order taken out against me, and I'm rather afraid he hates me now. I heard he and John talking in Angelo's restaurant (Sherlock isn't the only one to have called in a favour with that man) about how irritating it was that I was always following them around, always turning up at the worst of times…
I hate John Watson. He's poisoning Sherlock's mind against me; he knows how I adore the pale-faced man and yet he still pushes me away and demeans me to the sociopathic genius that is Sherlock Holmes. I think he's jealous. Jealous because Sherlock never offers him a nicotine patch, or offers John the opportunity to record the results of his experiments with a pen that Sherlock has touched.
He only does that with me, and occasionally his skull. It's very comical to see a nicotine patch over the eye of a human skull like some long-dead pirate's last claim to the sea. I can't compete with the skull. I can compete with John Watson.
I can get rid of John Watson. How easy would it be..?
I've followed him to the entrance of the corner shop, but I'm not going to go in. I'll just sit here, on the bench that could use another paint job.
I have my police issue handgun with me. It's fully loaded. There is, I recall an instructor saying years ago, no point in carrying a gun with no ammo. John Watson wouldn't know what was coming – one minute he would be walking through the side alley that leads him to Baker Street and the next he would be sprawled out on the dirty, filter-end littered concrete that stinks of urine and smoke.
The urge is very primal. It's like Doctor Watson has taken something of mine in an almost territorial way. I knew him first. I knew Sherlock before Lestrade did, too, but he still gets to talk to Sherlock more than I do. With Lestrade, however, I know I have his attention.
John Watson won't even look twice at me. I can't distract him from Sherlock. Even if I could, I doubt it would last long. I would be a passing fancy, something to distract him from how 'irritating' Sherlock Holmes is, from how brilliant the man's mind is.
I don't understand why anyone would want to…
We're in the alley now. He has his plastic bag, two two-pint bottles of milk swinging to and fro, along with what appears to be a pack of fruity Polos – Sherlock likes them after he's had his fifth cup of tea, but only if it is after midnight. Does John Watson know that, or has he bought the sweet for himself? I want to think the latter, but I've never seen the doctor eat anything other than take-out and soft mints.
My fingers don't tremble around the grip of my gun. They don't tremble when I remove it from between my belt and my trousers, either, or when I level the gun at John's back, just off centre, to the left.
If I'm lucky, I'll pierce his heart and he'll die, bleeding out, cold and alone. If he's lucky, I'll gather a conscience at the very last second and I'll lower my aim. He'll be in hospital for a month or two at the most and then he'll be back, the bane of my existence with a stethoscope in one hand and a British Army Browning L9A1 in the other.
I can't pull the trigger.
I haven't miraculously spawned a conscience. I physically cannot pull the trigger. The gun is no longer in my hands. Sherlock, however the hell he managed to do so without my noticing, is standing next to me with a look of utter disdain on his face, and I can feel myself cringing just from the intensity of his stare.
Shit.
Now he's going to think I don't like him.