I joined John in an outing to the supermarket later that morning on a quest for bread, milk, beans and mushy peas- there was something else too, but I wasn’t keeping track of what we needed, that was trivial, and I was far too busy trying to find a match online to the replacement carpet and the retailers of said carpet in the general area of Waterloo Road. Also on my to-do-list for that morning (and something to take my mind of the taxi ride) was finding a butcher in the same radius as the carpet retailer, declining work in Northern Ireland and detailing Mycroft on what Sherlock had eaten for breakfast. The last two being the least concerning and what I was going to leave as late as possible, especially considering that Sherlock actually hadn’t eaten breakfast.
We exited the taxi at Tesco’s and I paid the driver, whose smile I didn’t return with much vigour.
“Are you okay Evan?” John asked and I nodded absently, across the road there was a sign, and realisation hit me like a brick in the head.
“Wait John, I need you to call Sherlock!” I shouted already turning back to the road and trying to find a cab.
“Why?” He called as I set off down the street.
“Just tell him to meet me at the house on Waterloo! There’s something I want to see and he should see it too.” I yelled over my shoulder.
“Alright.”
“Taxi!” I yelled at the incoming cab and leapt in, “Waterloo Road please,”
“Sure thing.”
I sat back and looked straight out the window, I was too excited to let the closed space worry me, and I was itching to get to Waterloo and find what I was looking for.
We crossed London in what seemed like forever, with traffic jam after traffic jam, impeding my progress, it began to annoy me but every time I considered just jumping out we began moving again. Half an hour later we hit better traffic and moved steadily closer to the bombed house, it was only at the bridge that I began to get ridiculously impatient.
We suddenly braked and I was thrown forward into the back of the driver’s seat, still dazed with my brow bleeding and my vision swimming.
I faintly heard a door slam open and then closed before some great kinetic force shoved the taxi against something very hard before I felt the inexorable feeling that one has when falling a very long way before splashing….
Splashing?
That got my immediate attention and I began trying to open the door beside me, but to no avail, the waterline was already too high and the taxi was completely shut, I would have to wait for it to reach the bottom and for the pressure to equalize now before I would have a chance of getting out.
At that moment I cursed my practical mind, because it made it far harder for me to control my breathing. The tiny taxi seemed to grow smaller and smaller as panic set in, a sweaty film mingled with the blood leaving the gash on my temple and dribbled lethargically down my cheek, the water began to seep in. I began shivering despite the fact my body was overheating and my heart thrummed an explosive tattoo against my chest, my throat seeming to constrict and each breath becoming harder and harder to drag down my larynx and into my lungs, the grey-green water became darker and murkier the deeper I went, and it seemed that the bottom of the taxi would never rest against the bottom of the Thames.
The tepid water reached my navel in a matter of seconds and was at my chest a few seconds later. Survival kicked in and I focused singularly on breathing deeply so that when the water reached the top of the taxi I would last more than three seconds. The water licked around my throat and I stretched my neck upwards and took as deep a breath as possible as the car fell further down.
The lurch forward of the car knocked me forward slightly and some of the air was blown out of my lungs. I went for the window. I searched around the cab for anything I could but it was beginning to get harder and harder to move. I felt my lungs burning and tried to force myself not to breath, I could feel it though, building up in the muscles in my throat and even though I tried not too I took a breath in.
Water filled my mouth and nose and I felt it fill my lungs, I panicked and more water flooded my lungs, my eyelids began to droop and everything became black.
YOU ARE READING
Sherlock Holmes- Meet me on Waterloo (A Sherlock Holmes Fan Fiction)
Fanfiction.... in a world where light is so often ignored it often means everything, after all what would life be without light. We would after all be blind.
