What The House Forgot

Do As I Say, Darling

The old man was going through a visible transformation, in which his initial docile character was being replaced and overrun by a strange animalistic lust. It would seem as if he could not even handle speaking of Sherlock Holmes, lest he begin raving madly about the love he had for the man. The obsession he harbored, which was almost as unhealthy as the long slashes he had pushed through his wrists.
"You need to do it, John. The house isn't happy with you. The house is impatient," the older man reminded him. John shook his head quickly, closing his eyes and trying to pretend that this mirage would fade as soon as his vision turned instead to blackness.
"It'll have to wait," he said defiantly.
"Not an option. The wheels are in motion. If you do not act fast, you will not be able to prevent what is happening next."
"And what would that be, hm? How do we know what would happen if Sherlock and Victor got to live a happy, uninterrupted life?" John spat the question like flames, and the reaction on the other side seemed to interpret the words with just as much intensity. The old man recoiled, falling away from the mirror as if he was disgusted with what he saw. Perhaps he was reconsidering his claims of relation to the younger version, as if he considered the current John to be as crazy as the old man was being perceived.
"It would be a fate worse than death," the man insisted. "For us, for you, for everything. It is unacceptable."
"Well perhaps we need something worse than death, since death hasn't been able to stop this yet!"
"Only with a proper relationship do we have a chance of stopping this. Only then will we be able to rest."
"I'm sick of this cryptic talk, as if you're so certain, so sure of something that's just speculative! What, because you read the journal, because you lived through one single lifetime, you think you can predict what our fate will be? Perhaps what the house had in store for you isn't the same fate it has for me. Maybe it made me with more morality. Maybe it made me with the intention of putting an end to this ridiculous love triangle once and for all!"
"If it wanted you to be successful, I would not be here today."
"Well, I'm sorry to have wasted your time," John snapped. "But perhaps you'll have to come back some other day, some day when I'm feeling particularly mean spirited!"
"We have the ability to make you cooperate," the old man pointed out.
"Who's we?"
"The house and I. I, as the mouthpiece. The house as the organizer. It would seem as if you've left us no choice." The old man sighed, pushing his fingers through his wiry hair and grimacing. "You seem to have used our shared stubbornness in the worse possible way."
"You dare to call me immoral?" John debated.
"Yes, I do."
"I've not done anything to deserve that!"
"You will," the old man promised. John was preparing his argument, his final statement before he determined this conversation was not worth his while. Though as he opened his mouth to speak his throat suddenly froze. His voice was caught where it was beginning, somewhere at the bottom of his windpipe, preparing to spiral up through his lips and vocalize his final dissatisfaction. Though his words were paused. In fact, his entire body seemed to freeze in an instant. His hands, which had been digging so deeply into the vanity that the corners were piecing his thumbs, were unable to twitch. His feet tried to scuff along the carpet, but were halted immediately when he found his muscles would not contract. Even his stomach seemed to pause, even his heart ceased to beat.
John would realize later that his body had not been frozen, in fact the entire world had been. While his mind was still conscious his body was still, waiting for the next second to pass as it always did. There was only one object with the ability to move, presumably the very same entity that was causing the stagnancy in the first place. John watched with frozen pupils as his counterpart began to stretch himself across the mirror, first grasping hold of the edges of the glass with fingers that had the ability to curl across the wooden frame, beginning to yank himself to freedom. What had begun as a mere hallucination was suddenly crawling into the real world, though it seemed the entity had no intentions of settling down within reality.
As the ghostly hands emerged from the mirror, passing through the glass as if it was nothing but empty space, they did not touch down upon the desk. Instead of completing a proper decent, in which he climbed gently down to the floor with the furniture as a step stool, the ghostly form instead reached across the table and towards his younger self. The form twisted and spun, the entire body curling and shuttering with the phases of excitement. John was helpless but to stare, not even the very deepest vocal chords could make a noise of protest. Any onlooker would think he would want this. Anyone who didn't understand the situation might very well believe that he was sitting still voluntarily. First, the rotting fingernails, twisted and sickly, reached within John's mouth, frozen in his beginning statements, and began to pull at his cheeks. With some version of inhuman manipulation the old man began to shrink, pulling his limbs into John's mouth and forcing them down his throat. The ghostly image submerged his head into John's jaw, pulled his torso through effortlessly, and slid his legs down his esophagus. The old man descended into John's stomach, moving like a cold breath of air that had passed by the lungs and instead settled itself into his blood stream. He couldn't feel resistance, not even pressure. But there was a presence, and it was sickeningly noticeable.
It was an obvious invasion, though John was helpless against it. He felt the chilled presence begin to spread, from his stomach into his limbs, into his organs, into his head. While he wished to gag his body was not yet mobile enough, even the most basic of human instincts was put on pause while the ghost made itself comfortable. All John's mind could process was the feeling of a disease, a spreading virus that was beginning to infect all of his muscles, all of his bones. He could feel panic, panic rising as steadily as disgust, though he was helpless but to comprehend. All he could do was think, which in many ways was worse than the alternative.
When the clock finally resumed, when his heart took another beat, John was just as helpless as he had been before. The world began to stir around him, the wind blowing the curtain lace, the moonlight dancing softly against the wall. And yet John was still frozen, out of control of the very body he had lived in for seventeen years. The body that used to obey him, though in some, rather strange way, it perhaps still was. It was obeying an older version, but a man who was familiar with pulling the same strings. Even though John could feel his blood pumping he had no control over his body, and when he tried to stand, when he tried to vomit, he found that his limbs were unresponsive. It was as if a wire had disconnected from his brain, though this was much more frustrating than the simple mechanics of technology failures. It was worse because he was moving, or rather he would be soon. John understood just as soon as his parasite moved in from the mirror that he was under attack. Not just his body, not just his heart, but his morality. It became increasingly obvious that the old man had nefarious intentions, and he would use that typical John Watson stubbornness to get what he wanted for them all. John Watson would be a puppet, and this old man would be his puppeteer. They would be putting on a performance for the house alone, and in doing so perhaps compromise all that John had been trying to save.