Human Error ~ A BBC Sherlock Fanfiction {Book IV}

Chapter IX - Mirror Image

A/N: Hello, everybody. I must apologise for the lack of regular updates – I am absolutely inundated with work at the moment and am juggling a couple of new projects for you all. I hope you have enjoyed Human Error thus far and have not found it too morbid as reading material (although trust me, it is not easy to make prostitution humorous). I'm afraid it's only going to get worse. I am not a kind author to my characters. 

On a separate note, I have been asked by many to create a 'book' consisting entirely of submitted oneshots (featuring my little Sherlock microcosm). -GrandLarceny-, WorldsWithWords and KThierry have already been kind enough to send me some. Is this something you would be interested in?

In other news, as I am sure you are well aware, the dates for the Sherlocked Convention were released recently, as were the first batch of tickets. I've been lucky enough to have been given a ticket courtesy of my friend, and will be there on Saturday. I'm genuinely curious: are any of you going?

That is all. Au revoir, my delightful sadists.

~Shem

(For those of you who pick up on the following references to Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock, know that you have my approval.)

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-Millie-

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It's been three weeks since the discovery of the graffiti scrawl and I have, through a combination of fear, unease and growing realisation, become a different woman entirely; I cannot walk down a street without looking over my shoulder, I am constantly on edge, curt with Sherlock and unable to sit still for any given amount of time. Leaving the apartment alone is a struggle, answering the phone has become a sickening, adrenaline-laced affair and my compulsive organising has shifted into obsession. Sherlock is out, currently working on a case, and I have ordered the meagre contents of the fridge into height order, dusted every surface more times than I care to count and separated each item of my – and then Sherlock's – clothing on separate coat hangers in a colour-based system of fabric and size.

There was no way I could have concealed the ominous artistic statement from Sherlock. He heard my startled intake of breath and, with John following suit, entered my room, finding me white-faced and motionless, incapable of explanation. He suggested that, due to the strategic positioning of the message outside my window and the fact that we were both called to investigate the murder of Paul Hemmings, this individual – this murderer – has been trying to capture my attention.

I refused to believe it, at first.

I am not Sherlock, with his over-zealous passion for brutal homicide. I am not John, who has built up a reputation as the fiercely loyal, military-trained, crime-solving doctor. I'm not even Mary, with her colourful background of nursing and travel. I'm simply Millie Shon, psychology graduate and low-budget detective, as uninteresting and uninspiring as they get.

But then I remembered the photographs with that same, recurring word printed across the backs of them; the same message that was found on the iris in our anaesthetist's flat and sprayed onto the brickwork of the wall opposite my bedroom. I recalled John's warning – his observations regarding the strange man who waited, face concealed and stature unfamiliar, outside our apartment on two separate occasions.

Sherlock's conclusion went from impossible to frighteningly plausible.

The door slams and I jump so violently I drop the stack of books I had been sorting through; they fall to the ground in a weighted tumble of hardback corners and fluttering pages, denting the floorboards. I whip around, expecting to see the faceless man who haunts my waking moments and whispers virtue in slips of consciousness–