The Private Blog of Dr John Watson – I Will Never Believe That Anything He Told Me Way A Lie
My friend Sherlock Holmes was one of the bravest men I ever knew. I will never believe that everything he told me was a lie. He made my life a truly happy one – and I cannot believe that a man who could bring so much to what is so often such a dark and wicked world, permeated with monotony and vicious acts perpetrated by one man against another, could have been a fraud. He brought evil to justice, and never once did he ask for acknowledgment. He enriched the lives of everyone he touched.
People often didn't understand Sherlock – to them he was a cold man, heartless, a man made out of stone. But I know different. Sherlock Holmes was my best friend, and I have been truly blessed that he chose to let me in on his life.
My friend might not have understood people – he struggled to connect with them on an emotional level. He couldn't understand public displays of compassion – tears both appalled and embarrassed him – but just because the man couldn't understand emotion, that didn't mean that he was himself devoid of it. There was many a time I saw him cry, observed the tell-tale tremor of anxiety within his hands, watched him withdraw and descend into many a black depression, and heard the soulful sound of his laughter.
My friend was a hero. He sent me away, even knowing that he was about to face almost certain death. He saved my life that evening – he knew that I would never allow him to face that threat alone. I would have died for him, rather than face life without him.
I called him a machine – something I will never forgive myself for. Obviously now I know different, but I will never get my chance to apologise. Moriaty saw to that.
Yes Moriaty – for he was a man as real as myself and Sherlock. I looked into that man's eyes – those cruel lizard like eyes – the eyes of a man who enjoyed inflicting pain and suffering upon the world. Sherlock tried to bring an end to that cruelty, and lost his life in the process. They were indeed the eyes of evil – not those of an actor playing his part.
Sherlock Holmes was a man whose life was blighted by contradictions. He could be impossible to live with, but he made life exciting all the same. He didn't sleep, and when he did he rose late, often having lost half a day, he hardly ever ate, and very little water ever passed his lips, but none of this ever seemed to impede his almost boundless energy and his most singular gift of deduction.
In his last dying words he told me that he'd researched me, that's why he knew so much about my life – but how could he have known that I was going to bump into Mike that afternoon as I took my daily walk? I didn't take the same route I normally took that day – he would have had to have got inside my head to know my intentions, and not even Sherlock Holmes could have done that!
It pains me to think that people have lost faith in him. How fickle we all really are, to elevate a man to the heights of fame, and then strip him down again upon the words of a devil. Sherlock never wanted his name to be known, he didn't ask for fame – it was an encumbrance to a private detective – he never even asked for payment for his services, except just enough to keep a roof over his head and to enable him to live modestly. He lived purely for the thrill of the chase.
My best friend was a good man, he had a brilliant mind, and was a gifted detective who was absolutely exceptional at his work. He was an honest man, who never pretended to be something he was not – but above all he was a human being who deserved to be treated as such, in life as well as in death. Unfortunately we all seem to have forgotten that. Sherlock Holmes became an enigma – a character in a fairy tale perpetuated by the media – but he was at the end of the day a real man, of flesh and blood and bone.
I miss him, and if I live to be an old, old man I will never stop missing him. He made the months he was a part of my life some of the happiest ones – and my life is now a very empty existence without him.