Human Error ~ A BBC Sherlock Fanfiction {Book IV}

Chapter LXXVI - The Price

I remember the paper in my pocket and take it out, looking down at the address. The handwriting quivers on the page, italic insects, humming with untapped energy. When I see a taxi, I almost fall into the road in my eagerness, catching myself before I tip off the kerb. A pale hand opens the door. A strange body climbs inside. The driver asks me where I want to go, so I hand him the paper scrap. He looks over his shoulder. Is everything alright, he says. I nod and feel the stale air on my teeth as I smile: the car lurches, I fall back against the seat, back into my head.

After Emily had shouted and struck me with a hatred that stung, I felt something snap. Something changed, the moral shackles broke. I went to the nearest known cartel. It was much the same as before: the sweet smell of skin breaking down, of sweat, of urine, of burning chemicals, of permeating desperation, the noise. There were dealers outside, but they weren't the ones I wanted.

The familiarity was jarring. I began piecing fragments of memories together while I waited, patching up holes, trying to place him in a cartel like this. I read a psychological note on it: the more remembered, the more understood, the less threatening the situation. Take away the mystery. Shine a light on his face. That's how it works, in theory. I ordered the memories in my head like photographs on a line.

He was a heroin user – I'm sure he was, because he sat with them, and they sat opposite us with their superior needles and their vivid hallucinations. The first time I saw him, he had a fever. He was curled up, sweating in his thin clothes, trying to reach for the filthy bottle of water by his head. He doesn't have a face in this memory; he was just a boy, another boy, another thin boy amongst endless thin boys. A man – skeletal, tattooed – kicked the bottle out of his grip. The boy said something in Russian. That was his mistake.

He could only have been eight years old, maybe nine. When the man crouched down, he was too weak to move away – he watched in fevered silence as his crumpled pack of cards was picked up, looked at, laughed at, thrown down.

"English. Speak English."

He could only look on and shake his head, his breathing shallow. The man kicked him in the stomach.

"English."

He'd yelped like an injured animal and was kicked again, and again. And again. The men and women and children watching said nothing, did nothing. There was nothing we could have done. We were wide-eyed observers. Nothing more. It was entertainment for some. Daily life for others. I watched, and I didn't care. I cared about my food, where I was going to get money for the next fix. I cared about the little needle in my lap. I didn't care about the boy.

Someone else joined in, then. They went for his chest, his head, his mouth, and only stopped when they heard distant sirens. They left him choking on his own blood. He spat out teeth like compact pearls, his lips lacerated and smile lying on the floor at his feet. No one helped him. No one would be that foolish. The week before, a woman was raped there. She screamed, she begged us – the silent spectators – to help. No one did. It was the accepted consequence of being a woman thoughtless enough to preserve her femininity. I was eighteen at the time, and I kept my hair short, wore men's clothes. Masculinity was a virtue. Androgyny was second best.

It wasn't shocking. No one ever understood that. It didn't make you fearful. The concept of losing the purchased powder, the clear solution – that made you fearful. The crime did not.

The boy was shuddering. He vomited – more blood than stomach contents – and the fever took over. He didn't move for several days, after that. Someone placed a cup of water by his head. I thought he was dead, but then one morning he stirred, his face more blue than white, and administered his heroin. He reached for his cards, only to find them missing. I saw them stolen the day before.