Moirewrites-blog - Moire Writes Fiction

The second most dangerous man in London.

The Sacramento Public Library started a “Library of Things” last year, allowing patrons to check out, among other things, sewing machines and other items that patrons may find useful, but don’t need to own long-term.

Devil John

Chapter 5 - Tea

Fandom:Sherlock

Rating: Explicit

Excerpt:

The Black Dragon's Blood is long gone. It had given him confidence last time, burning through his veins. Without it, his anger is buried deep, even so, he can feel it simmering like a coal covered in a bed of ash waiting to catch fire again.

“So,”John says, looking back at the newspaper again. “Has it really been over a year?”

“Almost two.”

“I see.”

“But time passes differently in Hell, you said.”

“Yes.”

“Was it much shorter?”

“Hard to say. It's hard to tell the hours apart when things are always the same.”

“It would be interesting to make a calculation of the differences. That is, people have speculated about the afterlife for quite a long time, and this is a unique opportunity to write something definitive on the subject. If you could simply describe what it is like there. I mean, I've read books. There are tales of a tunnel, some sort of light, but no one ever sees what's on the other side of the ...”

“I don't want to talk about it.”

“Is it that you are forbidden from speaking of it? You might let me guess. Then you only need nod. Is it anything like Dante's inferno? Or is it possibly that you...”

“I said that I don't want to talk about it!”

Sherlock stops talking. That more than anything drives John to turn and face him. Sherlock seems much healthier than before. He's underweight, as always, but despite his leg, he seems in good vigor. His blue eyes sparkle in the light from the window, and there is nothing about them that suggests that he isn't sleeping.

“You came back to me,” Sherlock says with eyes soft with feeling.

“Did you doubt I would?”

“No.”

“Liar. If you didn't doubt it, you wouldn't have mentioned in the first place.”

John walks over to his chair. It has been recently dusted and the union jack pillow neatly placed in the center. He thinks of sitting in it, but that would be too normal, so he walks around the chair instead placing his hands on the back to steady himself as he looks down at Sherlock.

Sherlock stares at him in wonder. John looks at his amazed face and then down at his own hands. He is uncertain what to do next. This isn't a completely uncommon state of affairs. Sherlock often unsettles him. When he had been alive, he had felt so confused at times, knowing that he wanted to say something, but not quite knowing what it was. But this is embarrassing. Demons aren't supposed to feel awkward, not in any vision of the afterlife that he's heard of. He rocks back and forth on his heels glancing up at Sherlock who is staring at him as if he believes that tearing his eyes away would make John disappear.

John starts to talk, then stops. Last visit he said some things that he was ashamed of. He wants to apologize to Sherlock for calling him names and for hurting him, but he's fairly certain that apologizing is also something that demons don't do. He had thought that death would change things, but he was pants at this sort of thing when he was alive, and it seems that he's going to be a pants demon as well?

Continued on AO3

Introverts!

Our time has come.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8WQMBv2deYQ

Unmute

my friend tweeted this at me because i won’t stop talking about good omens so of course i had to get out my Fancy Voiceover Microphone and make this fake drug commercial……. saturday morning funtimes indeed 

Shamelessly yoinked from facebook, but it’s hard not to see our current pandemic panic in these words from C.S. Lewis:

“How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.” … “the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. 

They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”

From “Present Concerns” New York: Harcourt, 1986

Chapters: 1/1 Rating: Teen and Up Audiences Fandom: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Good Omens (TV) Characters: Crowley, Aziraphale, Crowley’s Rat Army Words: 2158 Summary: Crowley wants to surprise Aziraphale during the Chinese New Year. His trusted band of rats are in for more than they can chew.

I got snowed in on the 12th and couldn’t get to work, leaving me awake early with nothing to do. Obviously that means I was messing around on Discord when I thought: What if we all wrote one fanfic. together. at the same time.

Lets thank all these beautiful people who decided to take a chance on a stupid idea with me, and helped create something hilarious and fantastic!

@heavens-bookshop​ @normified​ @maddyteddysstuff @crowleystolemyshoes​ as well as our partners on AO3 Latter_alice, The_jackalope & soleo_lion!

We had so much fun working together, we ended up making our own discord server, the Ineffable Writers Guild! Please join us for writing, collaborating and chitchat!

This will also be my “something” for Lunar New Year on my @goodomonths Holiday Challenge.8′3

HAPPY LUNAR NEW YEAR! YEAR OF THE RAT!

The Final Problem - 1

Summary:

Moriarty, damaged but not dead due to a self-inflicted bullet wound, kidnaps Sherlock and his three friends and threatens to kill them unless they can help him find the meaning of life.

Chapter 1 - Not Awake                           

Sherlock Holmes awoke one morning to find that he was not yet awake.

He was sitting in his flat at 221B Baker Street. The fireplace was lit. The noises of cars drifted in through the window. A gentle light was shining in through though the curtains. And something was horribly wrong.

Being disoriented was not a new occurrence for Sherlock Holmes, not with his reawakened interest in drugs, but Sherlock felt none of the hallmarks of waking after a high. Nothing except the hopefully temporary loss of memory of how he had got here.

He rose to his feet and placed a hand on the mantle as he tried to zero in on what exactly it was that was wrong. Everything appeared to be in its proper place: His framed bat. His skull. His letters. The knife was gone from the mantle, but he could see it in the wall, pierced through the Cleudo board. He remembered doing that in a fit of pique after John had refused to play with him simply because he insisted that the victim must have killed himself. All in all it looked like a perfectly normal day, except....

John had removed the board from the wall at Mrs Hudson's request, years ago, and at another time, through no fault of his own, it had been thrown into the fire. John had fished it out, but the board had been damaged beyond repair, and Mrs Hudson had thrown it away. But if that was so, how was it on the wall now?

Sherlock had heard of drug reactions where a person was thrown violently into a memory of the past. He discounted this quickly enough. John's mug was not in the kitchen rack, and his coat was not on the hook. His absence, along with the presence of the purple scarf that Molly had knit him after his return, were enough to show Sherlock that this was not a memory. This was home, but not home. Real, but not real. Perfectly familiar, but alien as another planet.

It wasn't until Sherlock knelt down and stared into the fire, that he understood that he was in a fantasy not of his own devising, for although the fire was burning brightly, the wood was not being consumed. Perhaps the laws of time could be bent so that one wall of the flat existed at a different time from the other wall, but Sherlock was not so foolish as to believe that the laws of entropy could be changed. Wood that burned must be consumed. If it was not consumed then the laws of physics did not apply.

Despite the fact that everything felt real to him, he realized that he was in a dream or a fantasy. It was obvious that the fantasy world was not of his own devising, because there was no John.

Sherlock walked into the hall and looked down over the railing. Despite the fact that his flat was on the first floor, the stairwell seemed to go on forever. He returned to the fireplace and frowned down at the fire before saying to the air. "Alright, I know that you are here. Come out, come out whoever you are."

He looked toward the sound of footsteps.

His eyes widened, but he shouldn't have been surprised, not really. Who else would think to trap him in an artificial world? Who else but James Moriarty?

He was dressed in a black floor length robe and a priest's collar. A picture of austerity somewhat undone by the sight of his Gucci shoes.

"Jim Moriarty. Hi!" he said as he strolled slowly into the room, hands clasped behind his back. He cast a lazy glance around before boring into Sherlock with the black malevolence of his eyes.

Sherlock gestured toward a seat. "Please."

"I'd rather stand," Moriarty said.

"No matter." Sherlock glanced at his own chair before deciding to sit in John's. He crossed his legs and interlaced his fingers setting them atop his knee. "I'm sorry that I have no tea to offer you this time, but it wouldn't be real tea anyway, would it? Where are we by the way?"

"As you can see, we are in your flat."

"No we're not."

"You looked down the stairwell. You tell me where we are."

"We appear to be in my mind palace, or a part of it at least. But I'm not doing this, so I must be dreaming."

"You are, and you aren't."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that this is real, in as much as you and I are really talking."

"But not real in any physical sense. How exactly is that possible? I saw you die."

"John Watson saw you die, and yet, here you are. Do you think that you could accomplish something that I could not? Oh Sherlock, don't be so naive. Death isn't enough to stop men like us from doing what we really want."

"And what do you want to do?"

"I'm doing it."

"Doing what? Talking to me in a dream?"

"Not so much a dream as a simulation."

"A simulation... Oh, of course. This world is artificial. A construct of my mind and yours combined. The traumatic limb therapy experiment!"

"Good, Good."

"A military funded experiment designed to reduce the shock of catastrophic limb loss injuries by allowing the patient to view themselves as still having their limbs, but it didn't work."

"They liked the world too much. Hated that when they left it, they still had no working limbs. The project was a failure. But the technology was a success, so I appropriated it."

"You tapped into their system. Made a simulated image of yourself in the computer which you flashed all over the country. A simulated image of a simulated body. That's why it looked so strange, but how is it that you look so much more real now?"

"That's because you are in the machine with me. The device allows us to create worlds from our memories and to interact with others in our created world. Most people can't tell this from the real world. Only people like you and I, who have trained our minds to a razor point, only we can consciously shape the world to our will."

"But if, as you say, this is just a simulated image, how do I know if you are the real Moriarty or not?"

"Oh, Sherlock," he said in a sing-song voice, "You know that, like Johann Sebastian Bach, I could never leave a song unfinished. Our melody is incomplete. The song ended, but you kept on playing past the end of the piece. That was VERY NAUGHTY of you."

"It's been nearly three years. Why haven't you shown yourself before now?"

"Well, a shot to the head is not without some side effects. I may not be quite as ... attractive as I once was, but I assure you, the brain is as agile as ever, and that's what matters in the end. Isn't that what you used to say, Sherlock? 'All the rest is transport.' "

"Alright. I'll assume that you're Moriarty. What do you want?"

"I already told you! I want the answer to the final question. You found the answer without telling me."

"What didn't I tell you?"

"You survived, Sherlock. You survived! How can you stand it? Living day in and day out. Dealing with ordinary people and their stupidity. We both cheated death, but somehow you've found the answer that has alluded me. How can you go on living in a world full of such pointless ignorance?"

"But... you obviously found a way not to die."

"There's a difference between existence and survival. I'm not dead, but I haven't found a way to survive. "

"Are you asking me? 'What is the meaning of life?' "

"In so many words, Yes!"

"That's not a scientific question. You should ask a priest."

"Oh, I did, I did! I talked to Father George at great length. It's in his honor that I am wearing these robes today. He tried to sell me some fairy story about God and Devils. He made a good case, but in the end, I rejected his answer as too simplistic. I know that you will come up with something better."

"Philosophy is not my area. If you were to talk to him again, perhaps...."

Moriarty stretched his neck one way and then the other, and his face went completely, horrifyingly blank. "Unfortunately, he's unavailable. You see, I sent him ahead to talk to his God. I asked him to put in a good word, but I'm not sure that he did."

"You're mad!"

"You already knew that."

"I can't help you find the answer to your question."

"It that your final answer? Because if so, your friends will die, but I'll make sure that they suffer first."

"My friends? Where are you keeping them?"

"They're here, with us in the simulation, all of them... except Molly Hooper. She was able to help you escape last time, so she wasn't invited to this little dream of ours."

"I don't understand why you're asking me this? There are billions of people in the world. There must be someone more suited to give you spiritual guidance than me."

"No. I tried that route. Who cares what stupid thoughts console an amoeba, because that's what ordinary people are compared to you and me, amoebas. It's like sitting alone in your room and playing with dolls. But I need to know, Is there anything at all worth living for?"

"Men have been asking that question for millennia."

"You, however, have considerably less time to figure it out."

"How long?"

"Eight hours."

"Eight hours?"

"Yes, or you all will die."

"But... I still don't understand. Why ask me?"

"Because, you're alive! And you told me yourself that you ARE me. I know that you've got the answer inside you somewhere, so off you pop!" Moriarty walked toward the open door. He turned back as he reached the hallway and said, "Find our answer, and don't fail me! Your friends escaped harm before, but there will be no mistakes this time. Ciao, Sherlock Holmes."

Moriarty smiled then, a smile that could freeze a man solid, then he left down the hall. Sherlock rose to his feet, and rushed after him, but he had vanished.

TBC