Games of Grief

by C. J. Strange

  “Meine Geliebte, I heard you were shot.”

  “Heard?” I swing both legs around, dangling them over the narrow balcony. Something about watching him flaunt his Magick incites a tiny inferno within me. “Or saw?”

  My fiery stalker frowns up at me.

  “Out back?”

  I chuckle, and tuck both legs neatly back inside the window, re-latching it behind me. I’ll make a cuppa, continue inspecting the ballistic markings on the butt of my recovered bullet, and let the flamethrower sweat it out awhile longer.

  Perhaps I’ll play along, entertain his presence some more. And perhaps I won’t.

  It’s almost ten minutes later by the time I cannot stand the anticipation any longer. My only yearning is that I’ve managed to at least outlast him.

  “Don’t judge,” I tell Mrs. Hudson flatly, as she sits at the bottom of the staircase and watches me unlock the rear door to the house.

  Our vast, untamed back garden is a proverbial jungle of under- and overgrowth. Two sides are bordered by a wooden lattice-detail fence, the third closed in by a crosswire barricade and gate with an equally wild row of shrubs added for privacy.

  My volatile firecracker loiters in the alley on the other side of the crosswire, hands stuffed in the pockets of his slim-fit jeans.

  “Where have you been, mein Albtraum?” he purrs, spinning a web of words that threaten to entangle me as they always do.

  I’m the moth to his flame, that’s for sure. If only I weren’t so ashamed to admit it.

  Or perhaps that’s the only thing keeping me alive.

  “I have a name, Isaac, my darling.”

  “You do.” He steps forward, the fingers of one hand curling in the woven wire mesh between us. I visualize them instead curling through my hair. “Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Esquire,” I tack on the end. He chuckles.

  “Your father, he was expecting a son?”

  “A second son,” I say off-handedly, with a brutal honestly I only allow myself with Isaac Adler, and which genuinely terrifies me every time. “Always good to keep a spare.”

  “I imagine it would be.”

  Isaac studies me through the chain-link fence and his gaze sours, becoming suddenly sinister and serious.

  “You need this.”

  “I say, I do?”

  “You do.” When Isaac goes off a hunch, he never does so in blind faith. He always does his homework. And every statement he makes, every accusation he pitches, is executed exactly as he wants it to be. “In fact, you’ve been waiting for it.”

  “I have?”

  I allow myself to close the distance separating us with slow, teasing steps. I can feel his glutinous stare upon me, desperate to have me close enough that he can set upon me with not only his eyes, but his hands as well.

  “I’ve watched you.”

  I pause, at the brink of my property line. Our faces are inches apart. I can feel the heat of his breath across my face, wafting with it the musky pine-scent of that peculiar Anomaly dope he tends to smoke before showing up on my doorstep.

  “That,” I state, barely above the coyest of whispers, “is nefarious.”

  Isaac smirks behind that thick, reddish beard, which I know to be both harsh and fleecy against bare skin.

  “I have tried many times to quit you, meine Geliebte,” he murmurs, like steel grazing silk. Or leather.

  “But this is one area of misdemeanor I have yet to find success in.”

  His hands both drop to pluck at the wire mesh against my waist. They’re hot enough to start tugging the metal out of alignment, bending it like stiff spaghetti, and I shudder at the thought of how they must feel to the touch.

  Bugger, I gripe inwardly. He bloody has me.

  One of Isaac’s big, calloused hands is able to squeeze through the chain-link. My entire frame teeters on the edge of a fatal tremble as just the tips of his fingers crawl their way slowly up the inside of my thigh, leaving a trail of white-hot pinpricks in their wake.

  “You always bring trouble when you breeze through town,” I say, as casually as I think I’m able to. Something about this criminal mastermind drives me wild in a way I never thought possible.

  Something… nefarious.

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Isaac purrs, contently, widening the gap to slip another intrusive hand through to my side. It mimics the tactics of its mate, tracing the curve of one breast above my corset.

  “You know, that’s the joy of the rush.” I breathe carefully as those inhumanly warm fingers start to inch their way inside the hem of my blouse, my chest riding and falling steadily beneath his hand. “It has a nasty habit of intoxicating you enough to convince you otherwise.”

  “Ah. So ist das Leben.”

  Isaac seizes my hips in two scorching hands without any further warning. He balls one fist in the crotch of my trousers, wrenching me firmly against the front of him. In that single heart-stopping beat, I feel for the first time how hard he is.

  Bugger and balls.

  “You feel that, Holmes?” the European asks crudely, grinding hard against me through the hole he part-melted, part-tore in the crosswire fence. “That’s for you. No other woman can do that to me. No other woman can get my fire blazing hotter than you can. Hotter than hell itself.”

  “Oh? What about other men?” I ask, brightly.

  For my comedic efforts, he yanks me into the fence hard enough to stun me. “Ugh!” My body sways with it as the old terminal posts rock in their footings. His fingers are grabbing and groping for mine. It’s only when the heat of his hands is replaced with the shockingly stark contrast of cold steel that I realize how deep the trouble he’s going to drag me into may go.

  “I’ll have you know,” I scowl as I adjust to my new, more exposed position, “a very dear friend of mine has taken interest in curing me of my disparaging addiction.”

  Isaac simply chuckles his smooth, stoic chuckle as he admires the prone sight of me handcuffed to the fence, my arms spreadeagled wide enough at either side so as not to be a bother. His coarse fingertips spider inch by inch across my modestly-covered skin, flicking open a button lazily. Every time he touches me, it’s as if it’s the very first time all over again. I close my eyes and shudder against the immensity of his powerful, possessive hands. It’s everything I can do not to quiver in his grasp.

  “Natürlich.” Another button pops, my blouse falling slack across my breasts. “And yet, here you are. Under the rapture.”

  I roll my eyes toward the thick, rumbling sky, which has been threatening to unzip and dump a downpour on us for two days now. It allows me the second or two I require to reset my bearings enough to feel indignantly ascendant regardless of my otherwise sexually humiliating predicament.

  “Indeed,” I retort, only once I believe I have enough strength to properly do so. “And yet, here I am. Still unsated.”

  My delightful little firebug is as predictable as he is feisty. At the gravitas of my idle comment, in spite of my immobile state, twin flames roar to life at the backs of Isaac’s eyes, wrenching him temporarily from his grip on his own sanity.

  In a single tear, he snatches my corset from me, violently enough to make me cry out in surprise. Lace pops and snaps in the eyelets, freeing my body from its armor-like protection. I try not to twist beneath the lustrous heat of his stare, which rakes its way down me as his hand tucks itself into the waistband of my trousers again.

  “Why do you force me to do this?” he asks, darkly, jerking my breeches in a way that both tugs me toward him and pulls them over my hip bones. “Why do you make me want it so rough?”

  I chuckle, even as the intense heat of two of his fingers floods the inside of my panties. They twist and writhe, exploring the slick cleft of my pussy, and I bite the inside of my cheek with the effort not to whine.

  “Meine Geliebte,” he croons, his lips right against the chain-link of the fence, right against my own. “Please. Don’t make me make you beg.”


  Another forceful yank, and my breeches are about my thighs. My damp pussy is naked in the November air, knees pressing together as I try to resist the fingers that are prying my legs apart.

  I like to make him labor for his pleasure.

  “You know how rare it is that I beg, Adler,” I mutter, every bit as cocksure of myself as I was before I was tied to a fence and his hand was between my thighs. “Do you really think you’ve earned it?”

  The criminal mastermind snarls and sneers, running his fingers through my folds again, and I can’t restrain my gasp of pleasure.

  Oh—bollocks.

  I need it now, and I refuse to debase myself to begging for it.

  The only other method I know of with this particular firecracker is to prod and poke at every one of his buttons until he explodes.

  “Whilst the notion of sex out in the open is certainly a fun and freaky one—” I say smoothly, as his free hand works one of my breasts from its bra. He pinches my nipple, and I try not to react vocally as he rolls it between the digits. “I’m not entirely sure the handcuff cliche warrants something as top-shelf as a plea deal.”

  “You’re playing with fire again, Holmes,” growls Isaac, baring his teeth against the zigzag mesh of the fence as if it’s the only thing keeping those sharp fangs from replacing his fingers around the hard, sensitive bud of my nipple. Again, I find myself grateful for its presence, and wonder what havoc he may have already wrought upon my body had it not been there.

  “Absolutely,” I agree, without a moment’s hesitation. My body rocks rhythmically against his, grinding the slick furrow of my pussy over his rough knuckles one at a time.

  “But,” I dare to push him further, “did you know that handcuffs are one of the laziest forms of BDSM?”

  He grunts, and I whimper as he decides to punish me by withdrawing the hand that’s offering me warm, rigid pressure. I need him against me, around me, inside me, and I refuse to ask him nicely for what I want.

  “Incapacitating your partner’s arms smacks of indecisiveness,” I pant breathlessly, even as he drags both hands up the length of my body, pausing in the sensitive grooves of my topmost ribs. He admires me as if trying to decide when and how to take me. I wonder impishly how much control I have over him in this grossly one-sided situation.

  “As if one needs his own hands free to fuss about indicisively for whatever he’s going to—”

  I’ve said enough, and the criminal mastermind has officially lost his temper.

  In one swift, fluid motion, he’s pulled the frontmost mechanics of his trousers apart and whipped his erection out. I stiffen, determined not to gasp, but anticipation is mounting. I’ve missed all seven inches of its generous girth in the six months it’s been since I last saw him.

  “That’s it, mein Albtraum!”

  I fight for the fun of it as he gently guides his uncut shaft through one single gap in the mesh, as if selecting exactly where he wants me. His fingers wrap around the waistband of my breeches which, still nestled snugly around my thighs, provide the perfect leverage for him to align me just so.

  Oh. Oh, bugger—

  I’m powerless to do little more than scream, burying my face in my shoulder to muffle it, as the full length and breadth of his cock splits me wide open, spearing me up to the hilt.

  Nefarious, indeed. My mind is close to blacking out from the sheer iniquity of it all.

  No matter how hard I writhe, how hard I squirm, I can’t escape the sweaty, smothering heat of him. The handcuffs cruelly bounce my body back against the chain-link fence whenever I do—back against the full force of his sex—and I whimper and whine as he shags me relentlessly, pounding in and out of me with a speed and a friction I’m close to not being able to take.

  Isaac! I wail inwardly, a shrill admission of weakness I’m not quite ready to show him. He stretches one tattooed arm through the gap in the fence to slip his hand beneath my blouse again, exploring the bared skin there for his own pleasure and amusement as he continues to savage me at his own leisure.

  I-I’m close—!

  My body shudders as I tumble full-tilt over the gushing waterfall of my orgasm, lifting up onto my tiptoes as he seizes a fistful of my hair and jerks his body up into me one last time before pulling out and erupting—hot and sticky—across the naked curve of my belly.

  He tugs my breeches back up to my hips, patting my pussy tenderly through the front of them. I jerk and jitter at the touch, far too sensitive in the aftermath of my orgasm. I slump forward against the chain-link fence, my fingers clawing at the mesh in a vain effort to remain upright.

  “I hate to fuck and run, meine Geliebte,” I hear Isaac purr hoarsely from somewhere above me, “but it is for once my turn to leave you with the nightmare.”

  And with that, as quickly as he breezed onto Baker Street, he’s gone again. Leaving me alone with my thoughts, which are little more than static at current.

  It’s a rushing whoosh of cool air, like a heavy exhale from an overly tired soul, that causes me to gracelessly yank my chin back up again.

  I know that noise.

  In the dim light of the alleyway, I can see several shadows melting their way up through the uneven cobblestones, pouring out from between them. Forming shapes that are barely worthy of being called shapes, silhouettes that are barely human at all.

  One stretches open what I’m inclined to consider a mouth—a gaping maw of a thing—and another yawning sigh of chilled air rushes by me. A sense of nauseating dread rises from the very pit of my gut, a sickness I last felt stumbling about in the den of depravity otherwise known as the office of Professor James Moriarty.

  I grow increasingly aware of the fact Isaac Adler didn’t have the decency to uncuff me before abandoning me to the mercy of these otherworldly creatures. And the growing sense of panic in my gut, the fluttering of a hundred butterflies the size of bats, triples in intensity.

  “Ah,” I say, bracing my spread hands against the flimsy crosswire fence—the only thing now standing between myself, and whatever the dark shadow-beings want to do to me. “Jolly dee. And isn’t this just splendid.”

  15 Watson's Heroism

  A&E Department, University College Hospital

  November 8, 03:15am

  While I may be lukewarmly alert to the fact that several hospitals across the London county have reported one or two unusual thefts, I damn well never expected I would play witness to an actual blood bank robbery-in-progress.

  A pun that would elate my good friend, were she here to see it, I amuse myself silently. All I can do is stand and wait for the next gunshot to sound off, and to take with it the life of a coworker I’ve spent months, even years taking for granted.

  It seems fitting, all things considered, that what could possibly be my final thoughts are of the only woman I’ve ever really loved. And the only woman who never loved me back.

  The woman who, no doubt, is currently not resting and recuperating in her chair as I expressly requested she spent the night doing.

  “Come on,” our sanguinarian hijacker urges the trio of younger students I affectionately refer to as my all-star lineup. “Chop chop.”

  I appreciate the spectacular job the man I can only presume is a plainclothes detective has done so far at handling the situation. But this time, it’s my turn to object to negotiating with a terrorist.

  “All-stars, stay where you are.”

  The searing glare our incarcerator throws my way is wicked and white-hot.

  “Already picked the class favorites, have you, Doc?”

  You’re holding one of them, is the smart remark I daren’t speak aloud. In lieu, I return his stare with one of my own. Calm and impassive.

  “Look, my students have no way of transporting that volume of bio matter through the hospital without being questioned,” I try to reason with the madman. “Nor do we have any way to get it back here before NSY reacts to our silent alarm system.”

  The terrorist snickers at me over the shi
vering mass of one of my prize pupils. “You wanna play the role of the diplomatic mediator, guv?”

  “We’re not playing roles here, and this isn’t a bloody game,” I exclaim before my brain can proofread the words I’m saying.

  A few beats of pregnant, unpleasant peace blanket us with their heavy, hazy fog.

  “You want to think that,” he mutters, and although his voice is close to inaudible, it carries just as much weight. “Your old buddy Emm’s already six steps ahead of you. I’m waiting for you all to clue in that we’re already in check.”

  Once again, my active thoughts revisit my beloved friend and flatmate. If she were here, she’d be writhing in all kinds of agony. Chess puns are the ones she finds absolutely least tolerable.

  My American sitcom fantasy, as Sinead would have me say, is shattered by the squeal and crackle of a megaphone from outside the hospital itself.

  “This is the New Sovereign Yard police force, we have the entire building surrounded under threat of sniper fire! We will be sending in an officer to negotiate your demands!”

  Our abductor, the man known as ‘Emm’ for lack of a better alias, drags his gaze from the undercover copper to me. The sheer egoism of his smirk is rancid.

  “What do you reckon, Gav?” he asks the blond man with the gun. “Is this a situation we can attempt to figure a way out of together? Or is this it… mate?”

  At that moment, I understand his underlying escape plan in the full scope of its entirety.

  Suicide by copper.

  Good. Grief.

  In the heat of the occasion, my conscious train of thought strays off the rails, reaching back into memories of my dearest friend. Memories, moments, and other niceties I’ve been humbled to share with her over the course of many years. After all, it does seem fitting.

  For I would much rather act on a whim, Sherlock Holmes’ wise words reverberate, suddenly so much more profoundly complex in meaning, and die a hero than live a life enslaved.