Before you start reading this story keep in mind that it is translated with an artificial intelligence and that I wrote it more than a decade ago.

The narrator is not external, he is Sherlock. I hope I am not making it too OOC. If that happens forgive me! Actually, after reading Nicholas Meyer's The Seven Percent Solution, I wanted to delve a little deeper into the character of Sherlock Holmes. Meyer has Watson write that in fact, under the shell of coldness there is actually great sensitivity.

1. The dream

I wake up.

The sound of rain on the window pane has miraculously brought me back to reality.

I cannot believe it. It has happened again.

I fell asleep last night during one of those movies John likes so much. He woke me up and helped me to the bed, where I again sank into the arms of Morpheus. Damn the god of sleep! Why not find another hobby? What do I know, cards? Chess? Backgammon? Anything would be fine. I'd just need him to stop nagging me. I don't need to sleep. I don't want to sleep.

Why? Sleep for one thing is a useless waste of time. Some may say that it is for the body to recharge itself. It will be like that for normal people! Someone must have reversed a few wires when generating me because the opposite happens for me.

While others recharge by eating, resting or even (horror!) sleeping, I drain. Really! There is nothing more deleterious to me than idleness. My brain, the most important part of me, the only part I can rely on, needs activity. Work. Work. I haven't had a decent job on my hands for months.

Runaway kids, wives betrayed by husbands who found out too late that they loved their best friend, insurance fraud. Dull, boring.

There is nothing out there to distract me from my nightmares. No, I stand corrected. From my nightmare. Just one. It is enough to destabilize me.

I can't remember how long I've had it. Maybe since forever. Cyclically it has come back to haunt me. So, cyclically, I fell back into my old habit. It was not always like that. I remember when I was a child there was my mother. She would come to my room and comfort me.

Then, when I grew up, I could no longer call on her to calm my nights. I had to make do, and she came. My damnation.

Cocaine.

I went hard on it right from the start. As soon as the nightmare came back, I would go to that old acquaintance of mine who owed me more than one favor and get the drugs. No one in the house could suspect anything.

Then Mycroft noticed. He was watching me. My dear brother! Always so worried about me! He was keeping an eye on me! He had taken me to that clinic to help me quit. For a time it had worked. Then I relapsed.

Finally, after my second visit to that damned psychologist, I had found something better than cocaine: murders.

Let's not misunderstand. I wasn't distracting myself by killing people, let's be clear! Discovering killers was better than the purest drug. Reasoning, finding clues, framing people just by looking at them. That's what made me feel good. I need to keep my brain engaged in something other than that damn dream. It haunts me. That ... and more.

I just want to forget. There are so many things I don't want in my mind now. Why if I succeeded with the solar system can't I succeed with this? I mean, it's information. Trivial memories in the brain. Can't I just wipe them out?

Instead, here it is! My lifelong enemy! That damn nightmare won't leave me alone! And with that nightmare, memories resurface that I thought I had buried by now. Painful memories.

In the dream I find myself a newborn baby. I am sleeping in a cradle. Soft walls, stuffed with cotton, surround me. To cover me, a delicate cotton sheet and a woolen blanket, made by grandma. Above me spins a carousel with little birds and classical piano music. I laugh, I like that music. Soon the music is about to put me to sleep, when suddenly I hear screams.

They are screams from a man and a woman. The man is furious, cursing, railing, accusing. The woman is crying, asking for forgiveness. Blows are heard and the woman cries louder. Then a door slams. There I wake up, covered in sweat.

I don't know why but this dream puts me in tremendous anguish. I don't know where it came from. I don't even know if it is my memory or if it has symbolic value. I tried to talk to the psychologist about it but she was not very helpful.

'You have to deal with it,' she told me, 'Try to handle it. Try getting up from that cradle to go and see who is fighting. It's your dream, you can do it. It's easy!'

Easy, my ass! Maybe it could have been easy for you! For me, the only desire was not to get out of the cradle but out of that dream! I tried to get rid of it in every way. I thought I had succeeded. How wrong I was!

It has returned. I have been waking up like this for three nights now. John seems to have noticed something. He too, like Mycroft, is watching me. Unlike my petulant brother, however, he knows his place. He doesn't nag me. He knows how to wait. He knows that, if I want to, I will tell him about it.

In the meantime, however, like a true ingrate, I am treating him like a piece of chattel. Why am I doing this? He puts up with it, but I don't think he can stand it for long. Two nights ago he went to sleep at Sarah's. Again. He now spends more time at that woman's house than at Baker Street. I understand him, deep down. I too would run away in his place.

I have become unbearable. My mood swings are more and more noticeable. It's the effect of cocaine. my hangdog face the next morning must have softened him because he suggested we watch a movie together. I agreed. I didn't want to antagonize him again. I didn't want him to go away, leaving me alone with my monsters. Yet ... even with his presence here they showed up. Maybe because of that. With John by my side I felt safer, more relaxed ... and those cursed memories took the opportunity to hit me more violently than usual.

I get up, take a shower. Maybe the flowing water can take away the shadows of the night, like a river cleaning itself of dead leaves. Useless.

My shoulder itches. I lay a hand on my skin to take away the itch and feel it. A small imperfection. I look at myself and see it. A scar. How long have I had it? I don't remember. Will it be wise to search my memory for its origin? Too late. Before I can finish formulating this thought, the memory makes its way forcefully into my mind.

I feel that pain again. The pain of the ceramic shattering against my skin. But the greatest pain I feel is in my heart. That heart that I thought I had sealed forever in an airlock. I slide to the bottom of the shower as the water continues to fall on me.

What is happening to me? What are these terrible emotions that are slowly taking over my being? I don't want them! I don't want them! I don't want them but I can't chase them away. The more I try the more these come back to me, hurting me. Like sharp blades. They chase me to every hiding place, hounding me.

"Sherlock?"

I hear John's voice from the kitchen. He's calling me. He is leaving to go to work.

"I'm on my way out. On my way home I stopped at the supermarket. Do you need anything?"

I don't answer. He, resigned, leaves the room, slamming the door a little. He is angry again. Tonight he will sleep at Sarah's again, I can feel it. I'll make an effort to make it up to her, maybe. Maybe I can get those rotting toes out of the fridge. They should be ready for the tests I have scheduled and if in a couple of hours I can get them done John will end up with something fetid less between his milk and jam.

I get out of the shower. I dry off and get dressed. I button my shirt and slip into my beautiful blue robe. How comfortable it is! Finally some peace. I go into the living room and enjoy the silence. No. Too much silence. My mind tries, bastard, to bring me back to those memories.

I pick up the violin and try to chase them away. I play lively music. I don't feel like moping. I move around the room, dancing. Every now and then I open my eyes so I don't trip over something, and that's when I realize my cell phone is ringing.

Still holding the violin in my hand, I rest the bow on the chair and grab the phone. It's Lestrade.

"Hello Sherlock" he says to me "Am I disturbing you?"

"No, not at all," I say in reply. Another case! Please! A murder case maybe! Please! Something worthy of my attention!

"There was a bad murder tonight. A stabbed man was found in an old abandoned factory. Can I send a car to pick you up?"

"Sure, sure," I reply, trying to suppress happiness.

A murder! Good! Some food for my mind! I slip out of my robe with a single gesture and in a few minutes I am ready to get into the car that will take me to the scene of the crime. I'm sorry John isn't with me, though. Patience. I will tell him the facts tonight.