Untitled - ficlet
Untitled
Character: Sherlock
Warning: disassociation and drug use
Word count: c. 170 words
Lots of things fed into this including the idea that Sherlock's drug-taking and his own idea of himself as sociopath are both ways to avoid feeling.
Untitled
Some days, the sky is too low. The edges of vision close in and the colours bleach. Sound is distorted and muffled, like a cracked record - repetitious, crackled and mocking. The pressure builds and vision blurs to a single fixed point.
On those days, the drugs help - cocaine, morphine, nicotine: it does matter. They do not comfort but they do not ask questions. They provide a focus, a purpose and an explanation. The equipment, the rituals of preparation. An outward sign which keeps the secret of what it signifies.
Pain is another such possibility - a sharp brittle moment that connects body and mind but interrupts thought. Yes, pain is seductive but pain is too obvious, too easy and too short-lived to provide an adequate substitute.
(Their explanations are idiotic: past traumas, past deaths, a misunderstood and isolated childhood. Pathetic.)
All that matters is the action. A means to connect without connection, a way of sidestepping reason and feeling without feeling.