CHAPTER 8: THE DECEASING (Part 4)
The open door was like a gaping wound waiting to be bound, stitched closed. For the capability to leave was somehow more scary than imagining a lifetime imprisoned in that hell. He desperately needed the opportunity gone, he did not want it anymore.
Sherlock had no plan, nor the desire to devise one. He had resigned himself to the provisional existence he was bound to endure until all his organs collapsed and he could fade unto that blissful nothingness. His necrotic soul would finally match his transport once he was rid of the superfluous action of living. He had allowed the perverse sick joke that he had mastered over the fact of being alive to go on for too long, he felt ready to drop the facade now; to admit that he was going to die, and that he could see the appeal in that since a great while back.
Most men would be terrified when faced with their inevitable doom, would run and hide and lie to scape from the idea of their own demise; put it in the back of their minds and do anything else to distract themselves from the fact that they are actually dying. That used to be Sherlock too, but not anymore. Now, he was eager to depart this world which held nothing for him, to have the pleasure of becoming a memory collecting dust inside those four walls that had been the chamber in the presence of his penitence.
For the detective dying was mercy, an underserved one, but mercy nonetheless. A sympathy that life was generous enough to grant him, the certainty of knowing it was going to happen, that it had finally responded to the calls he had made to its sweet name left him breathless but peaceful; the resolution of his objective allowing him to gain back a sliver of control at least in that respect. Death had found its path to him even before these last few days he has spent alone, burying its slithering presence unto his damaged heart until you could not sever one without the other, and stayed there for what seemed an eternity.
It waited for the perfect time to strike, and Sherlock thought he already felt its subtle effects. The constant cold that was now intrinsically attached to his body was very close to those degrees of warmth a person looses when they die. The heaviness and stiffness of his limbs was the recognisable Rigor Mortis. And his blood pumping organ seemed to have stopped working at last. He figured he was practically deceased already, he just had to take his last breath and he'd get there.
He wondered briefly if there would be enough room inside John's casket for him to fit. And if there was, if the universe would allow him yet another mercy and let him share dying quarters with his faithful blogger as they did when they were alive.
He took a moment to look on what his life had been, memories falling like rain on him. Sparkling in the vacuum of his loneliness. He watched them with rapt attention one last time. Perusing through them at quick speed since he didn't know exactly how much time he had left. Skipping the most painful parts, the guilt he felt was already too deep, adding more grief and shame did not sound like something he should do. He watched his glorious days pass him by and the people he cared about forget him. His history was blemished with all sorts of transgressions. Addiction, apathy, betrayal, things he couldn't change, all haunting the once pure timeline, but he glossed through them too.
Once he got to the end he remembered the real cause why his soul was feeling so numb; the last pages of his history were obsessively dripping red with despair and terrible horror for which he was to blame, and the world would have to forgive him if he did not desire to continue with them one more second.
He was responsible for everything that had happened to him, for poking the beast, for tempting faith, for betraying the most important person in his life to the point of fatal casualty. It was only logical that after that much ache in his life something eventually had to give, and that something was quickly unraveled by someone who really knew him better than he knew himself. Now the only thing he wanted was a the long rest, to have a knife pushed through his abdomen as perfect symmetry of what he had accomplished and lie gone to the world exactly where he was.
Breathing was becoming difficult, and his head felt heavy enough to drop at any moment. He eyed the tricky entrance wearily and found that he had discovered his own exit, a real way out of the misery. Shutting his leaden eyelids and dissolving in the drowsy darkness, he took deep breaths while he admitted for the fist time that he had lost the fear of falling. After three days of utter abandonment and with his eyes already closed, he surrendered.