Jimmy was fishing with his Granny. She had on her nice soft floral dress, the one that meant they would go to town later and go to the shops and he would get to look over the counter at the big book with all the numbers curling and ordered across the white crisp pages. The numbers made him feel good and happy inside, like when he'd spent an afternoon almost, but not quite killing the neighbors' cat over and over. He couldn't wait until he could use a real live person.
"Let's focus on the fishes," Granny said, her voice was funny, it was too big.
Jimmy turned his face up toward the sun, smelling cut grass and sweet summer air, he kicked his worn out trainers over the water. It'd been a good morning, he was meant to do something earlier, but surely it could wait for fishing with Granny. His small fishing pole bobbed and he could feel her approval, her small mouth pulled into a big smile, and what a big smile it was too. He pulled the fish up, a small red brown creature hanging off his hook.
"Let me have it then," Granny said, and the fish was trying to tell him something but it was such a little voice and Granny had such a big voice, she had a belt on with little hooks from which the his little fishes hung, their little eyes looking at him.
"What?"
"Don't you want me to keep your fish for you Jimmy?"
"Of course, Granny," he shook himself, her small soft small hands were too big, and calloused and his Granny's hands, they were his Granny's hands, he loved his Granny. She was so nice to him; she gave him biscuits and hugs and told him he was a good boy. The love he felt for her swelled up in his heart and…
Jimmy was fishing with his Granny. She had on her nice soft floral dress, the one that meant they'll go to town later and go to the shops and he'll get to look over the counter at the big book with all the numbers curling and ordered across the white crisp pages. The numbers make him feel-
Wait.
Wait.
"Jimmy," Granny said.
Jimmy was fishing with his Granny. She had on her nice soft floral dress, the one that meant they'll go to town later and go to the shops and he'll get to look over the-
Wait.
He was supposed to-
"Jimmy."
- his Granny. She had on her nice soft floral dress, the-
"No!"
"What's wrong Jimmy?" Granny said in her sweet kind voice.
"Stop it! You're not her! Take her off right now!"
"Jimmy," the voice was low and dangerous and warning him to be a good boy or no shops and no biscuits and he'll be in his room, which was worse because it was boring.
"WHAT BIG TEETH YOU HAVE!" he screamed at it, he didn't know why, he was running on instinct. Instinct would work.
His Granny's soft floral dress and her soft skin peeled open like the rotten skin of a banana and out burst a- a- Jim's mind met an impossible thing, recoiled in horror turned a mental corner and came back again. A wolf, a big bad wolf. Screaming, Jim spun on the ball of one foot and ran.
The behind him was big and horrible, but he knew the terrain, he could stay just ahead, just out of reach. He knew where the big trees were and the little streams and the hidey holes, there was one not that far, maybe if he could get to it… It snapped at his heel, he could feel it's hot breath, curiously, dry and gritty, like a desert wind. If it had gotten its teeth in him it would have taken off his heel, never mind his Achilles tendon, and even if he could shake it off he would be done. Collapsed to the ground in a useless heap. Hobbling a broken step before it crushed him down to the ground. It leapt forward again, but he was there, at his hidey hole and he scrambled, rolled into the bramble patch that ran like fractals in a swath of the woods. Sometimes he'd go and hide here when the boys from town were chasing him, the pricks and pokes were curling black, like obsidian saw blades, but he knew his way through. He'd be safe here for a while.
But he wasn't, just as he was getting his breath back, crying tears of relief, there was a crash like shattered glass and the thing behind him was breaking the brambles with something, shattering them, chasing him forward on his hand and knees. It pressing him forward driving him with fear and as he tumbled out of the patch and down the low slope on the other side he thought:
Why was running? Why was he running?
The bramble patch disappeared, the woods disappeared, the whole bloody childhood sham disappeared. He was not a child, he was not afraid of the dark.
He was James Moriarty.
With the narrow sound of whistling, the sky went black.
*****
Arrows had turned the valley into a field of black stalks of wheat, the black feathers of the fletching rustling lighting in an internal wind. They had fallen like rain. Like the wrath of god.
The wrath of Jim.
That would show the little mangy pup to nip at Jim's heels. He smiled to himself, playing with the dyed black feathers of an arrow. As far as the eye can see the world had gone black.
The body should be around here somewhere.
Should he burn it?
Perhaps he should eat it.
There were cracking sounds and trees were forcing themselves up out of the dirt again, big curling trees with great juicy eights and huge round zeroes. Jim plucked one off a branch and pressed it to his lips, the heady taste of mathematics singing against his taste buds. Too delicious.
He strolled, smiling, the clouds above him like golden asteroids murmuring calculations to him. Because he was watching them he didn't become aware of the blood until it splashed against his shoe with a little plat. "Oh," he grinned. "Johnny? Where are you dear?"
The blood rested in two little hollows in the ground, wee dimples, glistening darkly. He splashed it onto the grass with his toe, laughing before it realized it was eating through the fine Italian leather of his shoe, "Oh, sh-" Jim threw the shoe away from himself, made note to avoid John's blood in the future and took two slow calming breaths in the meantime.
Everything was still fine. John Watson was dead.
He just had to find him.
Just find the body.
Follow the blood.
The arrows weren't disturbed here; they had fallen straight into the ground. So John hadn't been struck here, but he…
The body had to be nearby, just ahead surely.
He breached a hill, arrows parting before him like the red sea (why were there so many hills in his mind?) and there, up ahead were shattered arrows and the unmarred door of 221B Baker Street propped against something.
Oh, very clever puppy.
That was how this worked then, things of import and sentimentality. Although, really, 221B as an impenetrable fortress? Jim pulled up an arrow and tested the tip against one finger. Well, that's a problem that can be solved.
There was a low growl behind him.
Oh.
Jim turned.
John Watson was still alive. John Watson was very large dog. John Watson had very big teeth. There were four black arrows in constellation in John Watson's shoulder. John Watson grabbed them with his teeth and pulled them out one at a time.
"Please," Jim said. Smiling at how John was sagging to one side, the thick blood in his tan fur. Smiling at the half mad pain in John's eye and the way he gritted his teeth in determination. "I made the Russian mob squeal like a girl and I'm going to make you squeal too."
It twists its head, spitting its blood at Jim, he clamored out of the way of the dark spray, catching a little on his face, before he scrubbed it off quickly with a shirt sleeve. Jim did remember his shoe.
"Are you five?" he spat out, all sharp clipped consonants. "That's disgusting." But while Jim was distracted it had slipped off into the trees.
"I've seen you," John called back over the wind.
"At the risk of being clichéd, I'm the last thing you'll see too. Didn't you hear Johnny Boy? No one ever gets to me."
After checking that his feet were artfully shod, Jim looked at the grass. It was soft and green, cluttered by arrows for a moment before the blades crack up, sharp and pert as razors.
There was a sudden yelp from somewhere to Jim's right and he giggled.
The thing, the John Watson thing was limping, leaving a trail of blood, like a snail, but it was still dangerous. It was dangerous until he killed it. What he needed was a big game hunter.
Colonel Sebastian Moran stepped up next to him, sniper rifle leaning jauntily over his huge shoulder. He was impossibly large, impossibly broad, he nearly blocked out the sun. Is Moran actually that big in real life or was Jim imagining him so tall? Jim did a little correction and Sebastian was closer to the normal size of a man. Perfect.
"I have a job for you," Jim grinned at him.
"What's that boss?" he smiled back. How he always smiled, loose and jaunty in his beautiful suits and his old money ease, stiff and starched and good for the gun, that polished rifle up against his shoulder.
There's a crack and Jim turned toward it, grinning, hand still clutching a black arrow before turning back in disappointment, he really wanted to jam it into John's brain. Seb looked a little funny for a moment before Jim rubbed at his eye and everything goes into focus.
"I'm going to have you go on a little hunt for me; I do know how you love those."
"No," said Sebastian.
He stared at Sebastian in open mouthed shock before his eyes narrow, "I have a job for you Sebastian."
"No," Sebastian grinned at him.
He was off the script, why was he off the script?
"You will take me seriously."
Sebastian begun to laugh, his deep annoying laugh, like the one he gets for Mock of the Week. (Frankie Boyle could not seriously be so funny that Sebastian had to disturb him with his obnoxious laughter.) It sounded too ostentatiously hearty. He was laughing and he was looking at Jim.
"Stop it! I'll fire you, I'll kill you, I'll burn you."
He raised his arrow to stab Sebastian in his awful heart but it was like a word on the tip of his tongue. The crumbling edge of epiphany, like an invisible wall. He couldn't.
He couldn't.
Jim stumbled back furious, throwing the arrow away in fury. He might should keep it, but he didn't want it anymore and it was too late now.
He was supposed to be watching for the John Watson thing, so he turned his head away again. But he couldn't, he couldn't turn his back on this, it wasn't right. He actually stamped one foot, the blades of grass breaking like glass under his fine shoes. Sebastian, Seb just snorted, Jim was not a child! Sebastian should know better than that. Better than to laugh.
"Stop it Sebastian! You're not meant to laugh at me!"
He only laughed louder and there was a tiger in the grass to his right (his right hand) ruddy dark ginger and sleek, but rumpled in the morning without its coffee and something dark behind him wearing combat boots now and dark, dark (no one wants a little cry baby).
"You're not meant to laugh at me Sebastian!" Jim hated how he sounded. Hated it, hated it.
Boss, said the tiger and Sebastian was laughing through the smoke, shaking his head at Jim and there was something behind him but it was not as important as, "You're not meant to do that!"
The tiger jumped, its paws were huge, the size of dinner plates, each padded toe short and thick separating to make them impossibly larger. It picked Jim up with the force of its breastbone against his tensed shoulder and Jim's body was curled like a black comma against the thick pale pelt of the tiger's belly. Jim couldn't see past the tiger's huge shoulder and thick fur and the smell of gun oil so he shifted to peer over the thick bones of the joint of the tiger's elbow and saw something large and dark, leap through the spot Jim had been and tumble through the illusion of Sebastian who dissolved from a laughing Judas to flakes of dust and dried blood not architectural enough to be scabs.
Obviously Jim had underestimated his opponent, he was afraid again, not like a little boy, like a man. Informed caution. The tiger was cradling him, its huge dark mouth, crowned in ivory. Imperial teeth. The wolf thing, dog thing, John thing could kill his tiger if Jim let it. He tightened his fingers in its ruddy, nearly ginger fur as if that would protect it. He'd never wanted to protect anything before and so wasn't quite sure if he was feeling protective or something else. The huge bones of the tiger and the heavy weight of its muscles held him tightly – gently –tightly.
"Boss," the tiger said.
The low growl of John Watson, the massive dog thing edged in black and red turned brown with age was fading away. There was an edge of victory in Jim, shivering and weak, as thin and fine as a strand of hair.
The tiger bit Jim on the shoulder and words pour into the wound like venom until the teeth, their sharp tips touching the inner cavity of his lung and the marrow of his collar bone, caging his shoulder joint and become a large hand on his chin and he woke to the wide eyed face of his chief of staff. There were two new freckles (there were only two others), forming on the bridge of Sebastian's nose like extremely small bruises.
But it didn't look quite right.
He winked his left eye and everything went black.
Oh.
He was half blind.
He opened his left eye again.
"I know you said four hours Boss," Sebastian was holding him, holding him in his arms like he was Jim's mother. He was nothing of the kind. He was nothing. "I know you said not to wake you for four hours but you were thrashing and I couldn't risk it."
Sebastian was shaking, looking slightly pale. Jim reached up like he was about to caress his cheek, but raked his short nails into Sebastian's skin from the edge of his eyebrow to halfway down his cheek so blood welled up before Seb hissed and jerked his head away.
Good.
Good. But he had to be sure.
He drew his hand back and slapped hard, right over where he had drawn Sebastian's skin up under his fingernails. For that, Sebastian grabbed his wrist and held it away but Jim was too relieved to make a murmur about manhandling.
"Stop that! What is wrong with you?" he was snarling, his cheek marked by stubble, the pink print from Jim's hand and thin blurred lines of blood.
"This is real. I had to be sure. I could only hurt you in real life."
"You're going into shock," Seb was tucking him close, bones fitting together. Braced him while he vomited on the tasteful Persian rug and pulling his blanket around Jim's shoulders afterward.
"Do you feel better at least Boss, did the sleep help?"
Jim laughed, it sounded like the sound of someone who was dying.
"Sebastian, tell me you-"
"What?"
"Nothing. Nothing."