In fact, I may finally fully understand what she meant by them.
To be fair, I initially took the cynical metaphor of slavery as a catty, dissenting remark regarding the Sovereignty’s iron-grip on the nation’s emergency services. Ergo, my job, and everything attached to it.
Now, I understand. I’m not enslaved to a tyrannical government—or at least, if I am, that wasn’t the point she was attempting to convey. I’m enslaved to my own apathy. My complacement commitment to a mundane and merciless status quo which serves no one—least of all those of us at the bottom end of the systemic, social food chain.
I’m enslaved to a detachment that denies me my most basic human principles—such as my firm, life-long belief that one man can make a difference.
It’s the reason I entered medical school, while my brother chose to bet his chances of escaping poverty on the more lucritive field of law. It’s the reason I save 93% of the lives I touch.
And it’s the reason I’m determined to save even more tonight.
On occasion, the answer we seek is staring us right in the face and screaming our name, if we can only shift our egos aside long enough to see it.
“Speaking of chess, we’re coming close to endgame. And this desperado is ready to go all-in.”
The voice appears to be my own, though I don’t remember giving those words permission to be said.
Another wonderful innuendo my learned flatmate would be horrified to hear me utter.
We all move at the same time. And in what seems to be slo-motion.
The copper, Gav, darts forth as our abductor backs up sharply with his hostage in tow. I spring past him and seize the collar of Sinead’s scrubs in both hands, wedging myself between her and our assailant, Emm.
“Let her GO!”
I shove her hard—hard enough to send her sprawling. Hard enough to break bones. Hard enough to hurl her out of harm’s way.
And then—the twin tell-tale cracks of both firearms going off simultaneously.
As my predicted ‘next gunshot’ finally sounds, it indeed takes with it a life I’ve spent thirty-four years taking for granted.
Something feels—off.
My eyes swell up wide in my face, and the sight of Sinead stumbling toward me faded in and out od focus.
Because you finally did something, Jonathan.
It seems fitting, all things considered, that my final thoughts are of Sherlock Holmes.
I’m dead before I can feel my body hit the hospital floor. My home away from home dissipates into an all-encompassing but all too inviting swathe of warm, winding blackness, and a soft voice asks me if I’ve any unfinished business that may still require my attention in the mortal world.
16 An Epilogue
???, Old London Town
November 8, 03:33am
What can I say?
To say everything were going according to plan would be an acute oversight. For I am far beyond the plan, by this point.
The young constable, I muse, wrapped in shadows of my own making. He presents an interesting twist on the story, a valuable ace to have in one’s deck. Perhaps the best way to control the metropolitan police force is to control the son of one of the men at the top—the simplest, most basic scheme of all.
Swirling the thick, dark liquid in my stemless wine glass, I sigh as I regard my former failures.
Nothing ever goes according to plan, I affirm, more for myself than anybody else. One’s chances of success lie purely in one’s ability to adapt.
“Be still, my dolls,” I whisper, the words dancing from my lips like the promise of a stolen kiss. “She is the true paladin. I know it, I sense it. I taste in in her.”
I glance down, enraptured by my own dreams. My dreams of the perfect nightmare.
“She will come to me,” I assure them. And myself. “And if she refuses, we have our ways of coercing her.”
But first, before I can even entertain the notion of another rite of passage, I need the book—the Opus Veritas.
I need it returned to me, from where it was stolen not one year ago.
“This year I’ll be forty,” I chuckle coldly, tilting my glass. “The big four-oh. It’s high time I set my legacy in stone and steel for the generations to come, and left my mark on this world for all to see the fearsome endowment of its glory.”
But first, I need the book.
And also, I need her.
Before my greatest dreams and greatest nightmares can be blended, like a volcano and tornado intertwining—I need the Sherlock Holmes.
And I’ve sent just the thing to bring her to me.
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About the Author
CIARÁN (n) [KEER-ehn] a funny little British bloke; you probably met him at a con one time
MUCH TO HIS AMUSEMENT, he’s been compared in the past to David Bowie, Tony Stark, Joan Jett, Ramona Flowers, Gerard Way, and Tank Girl – but I.R.L., we all know him as Ciarán James Strange, an eccentric and powerful LGBTQ+ artist who blends pop sensibilities, dynamic rock guitars, and high-energy live shows into his own brand of geeky pop-punk. At seventeen, he left his family, friends, and little English fishing village behind in order to chase his dreams to Vancouver, BC, where he now resides indulging in his passion for many different facets of performance including music, writing, voice-acting, acting, vlogging, and pro-wrestling.
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Games of Grief Page 9