Young Writers Society

Eli rushed inside the bank. Holding one of the guns Sheri kept in her car in front of her. It was dark and she could only see what was lit by the emergency lights in the front. "Hello?" she yelled out, "Moriarty, you big jerk, where are you?" she walked forward into the darkness, cursing the squeak of her shoes. "I'm here, I'm alone, and I'm armed." Eli head the sound of muffled screaming, then a clang, then silence.

Eli rang to where she heard the noise. As her eyes adjusted she could see a body lying against a pillar. She ran to the body and felt her pulse. She could vaguely feel a heartbeat beneath the long mess of damp hair. Eli didn't want to think about why her hair was damp...and sticky.

Suddenly there was a loud "squeak" and Eli turned just in time to be hit in the head by something think and metal. She dropped like a rock.

***

Sheri shivered in the snow, now wishing she hadn't worn a dress and heels. But it didn't matter, all that mattered was finding her friend before it was too late. Maybe it already was too late. Maybe Moriarty wouldn't even bother to keep her alive until after he had Sheri. That's one less variable, it would only be logical to cut all possible chances of escape to a minimum.

Sheri shook the thought out of her head and trudged deeper into the snowy sidewalk. Eli better be alive, so she could treat her Hypothermia and frost bite. Finally after an hour of walking, Sheri made it to the gold domed bank. She pushed the door open, ignoring the closed sign. She followed the trail of melted snow down through the atrium to an office. It was not as clean as bankers usually like to have their offices be. The desk was moved to the side and the knick-knacks were all askew. Where the desk used to be, were two chairs. One of them had Eli an the other was empty.

In a large designer arm chair pointed toward the chairs was a small, thin man in a suit with no tie and an iPhone. His hair was an unremarkable shade of brown and his eyes were a dark shade of brown. His features were smooth, but not chubby. He had the sort of face that could go in and out of a building without anyone ever noticing him. The bodyguards at either side of him were a different case.

Muscle covered every limb and their faces showed a certain intelligence and discipline not known to mere goons.

"Shirley..." Moriarty said staring at his iPhone screen, "How...are...you?" he clicked his iPhone off and looked at her.

"Trevor?" Sheri said confused.

"I prefer Moriarty, but you can call me Hanson if you like." Sheri closed the office door behind her.

"I only call people I like by their last name." Sheri looked down at Eli, she was staring at her. Her mouth covered by a gag and blood soaking her hair. The ponytail had fallen out so you could see the red bald spot on her upper neck.

"Please sit." he said, motioning toward the free chair. Sheri hesitated, but one look at the two men at his sides told her that she did not have a choice. Once she sat down in the chair, they handcuffed her to the fold-up metal chair and stood right behind her.

"Where'd you find these two? I've been looking for some muscle with discipline." Sheri's voice was calm and steady as she scanned the room for information.

"I have friends in the military."

"And the Buffalo police force."

"Naturally." his voice was distinctly british, "You've become very beautiful in the resent years, taken care of yourself I see."

"Are you saying I wasn't pretty?"

"No, you were always very pretty, but murder suits you." Eli turned to Sheri surprised. "Oh look!" he squealed, "How cute, you didn't tell the doctor!"

"I know why I did what I did, Trevor. How can you justify everything you did today?"

"I didn't kill a genius." he said calmly, "And don't interrupt me!"

"That is no excuse." she growled at him.

"Oh and what's your's? Helping those 'irregulars'?" Sheri almost jumped out of her chair, but one of the guys behind her tazed her. She yelped in pain. "The little foster care kids you take care of by hiding them from child-protective services. Cute kids, really. Be a shame if someone were to find them."

"DON'T TOUCH THEM! I'LL KILL YOU, YOU SON OF A-" Sheri's screaming was interrupted by a sharp flurry of sparks running through her body.

"Everyone has a weak spot, Holmes. Don't worry about the irregulars though, I don't need to kill them, you have more weak spots than one." He stood from his chair and smiled just an inch from Sheri's face. "Would you like you like to know what they are?" Sheri panted, for, the pain. "You can answer, they won't shock you for answering my questions."

"I know what my weak spot is."

"No, no, no. You think you know, but you don't." Moriarty pressed his lips to her ear. "May 16, 2000." he whispered, and it tingled the soft skin around her ear.

Sheri's eyes did not widen, she remained perfectly still. Annoyed by his face, but still. "You were on the one on the phone with her." she said, closing her eyes. She wondered how she didn't see it before. After covering her tracks for so long she forgot about the phone call.

"Would you like me to tell her or is your ego strong enough to say?" Sheri felt her blood boil, but she did not feel up to defiance.

"I will." Sheri sighed, just to get Moriarty to back away from her personal space. Sheri rubbed her hands together behind her back before starting. "Watson, you trust me, right?" Sheri could not look up to see if Eli was nodding or not. "You know I would never kill anyone unless I needed to. Unless their existence was so unpredictable that I could not be sure that they could keep their word. That I'd rather die than prove everyone right about my psychopathy? Well, Moriarty here is a family friend of mine. His name is Trevor Hanson, and he...IS A BIG FAT TOAD FACE! WITH WARTS ON HIS BUTT AND COOTIES! AAHHHHHHH!" the tazer hit her right on the arm, but she broke out of her cuffs and pulled the device out of the man's hand.

Moriarty stepped backwards in, only slight, rehearsed surprise. Eli's chair tipped over to the side as Sheri lunged for and shocked the other muscular man. He fell to the floor with a thump, and Sheri rolled out of the way before the other guy came for her. She had him in a headlock before long and tazed him right on the neck.

Eli smelled burning hair, and heard a door slam shut. When she opened her eyes again, she saw that Moriarty had escaped and left Sheri with three unconscious bodies.

Sheri picked the lock on Eli's handcuffs and took the spit filled gag out of her mouth. Eli was filled with questions she wanted to ask. Like who were the 'irregulars', and who was Trevor Hanson, and most importantly what happened on May 16, 2000? But she swallowed her questions for now. Sheri looked cold, and angry.

"Come on, Watson. We better get your head looked at. Concussions and crap."

***

Sheri lay across the couch, her feet and head hanging off the sides. Her eyes were closed and her hands were folded like she was praying. Next to her, on the coffee table, was a photo album opened up to a point in the middle with an empty square sitting in the center of the page.

Eli knocked on the door, politely before entering. Sheri's eyes didn't open, but she mumbled "Come in." Eli sat down in the raggedy pink armchair. Sheri turned her head and opened her arms for a second before turning back to staring at the inside of her eye-lids. "Any questions you want me to answer truthfully?"

"A few." Sheri sighed and sat up on the couch with her feet cross-legged on the plush couch.

"Ask away, but I will feel obliged to not leave out any details that might make you uncomfortable." Eli let that sit in her brain with her questions.

"Who was Trevor? To you I mean, not just in general."

"A friend of my mother's son. We used to play together. He'd go to my pageants. Hated him of course, too quiet for me. It's always the quiet one's who are planning something." Sheri picked something out of her teeth, "Next question."

"If that was Trevor Hanson, who's Moriarty?"

"Him of course, he adopted the nickname from an old London crime ring. M-O-R-I-A-R-T-Y, and acronym of the first initial of all of their first names. The original eight were Mariana, Oliver, Richard, Ian, Alexander, Ricardo, Timothy, and Yuki."

"How do you know this?" Sheri paused for a second, composing an answer to give her.

"I had them put in jail." Sheri stood up and grabbed two glasses out of the cabinet. Eli understood this as an excuse not to look at Eli when she answered. "When I was six I had concluded with the most certainty, that Mr. Holmes was not in fact my father. I didn't think much of it until a few years after my mother finally took interest in me. It was something she said, 'Prove to me you are not like your father. Prove to me you are smarter than he is. Show me that you can lead the leaders.'" Sheri poured milk into the glasses and pulled a box of girl scout cookies out from under a jar of pickled frogs.

"By the time I was fourteen I discovered that my biological father was a man named Richard Brooke. A notorious gang leader that the police had not been able to catch quite yet." Sheri sat back down and set the glasses and cookies down next to the photo album. She began flipping the pages until she found a yellowed newspaper clipping with the headline "Gang Leader Brought to Justice. Richard Brooke Ratted out by Mysterious Source." Beneath the headline was a picture of a man with jet black, messy hair being shoved into a police car. He had the same face as Sheri and similar thin, delicate hands.

"I met up with him and discovered what he was, but in finding the evidence that brought him to jail I stumbled upon a group of his associates. In the coming years I tracked down and got all of them arrested with anonymous tips. Until..."

"May 16, 2000." Eli decided.

"I had been denying it for months, but I finally had no choice but to accept the facts. Mariana Holmes." Sheri shoved a cookie in her mouth.

"Your mom?" Eli asked grabbing a cookie for herself.

"That is my mother's name." Sheri clarified bitterly, "I had tried every piece of evidence I had, but every time she managed to slither her way out of it. So I decided to kill her."

Eli coughed, the dry cookie caught in her throat. She gulped down milk until it was empty, but her throat still felt dry and unusable. "What?!"

"I am a psychopath, Watson, isn't it safe to assume that I wasn't always so able to control myself? Haven't you ever wondered why looking at blood and gore is enough for me? It's because of my mother." she signed. "My mother spared no expense getting me able to control that side of me. I spent years of training without knowing it. Until the day I finally fired the gun and I realized how awful that feels.

"I was sixteen and it was after my last beauty pageant. I delayed her long enough to get her absolutely alone. I ran back inside to get my gun and when I returned she was on the phone in the parking garage. I managed to get her into the blind-spot of the cameras and I shot her. I covered all my tracks, hid the murder weapon in a girls' room toilet. Or at least I thought I covered my butt enough. Then at the funeral Myka gave me this photo album. Then it turns out that Mariana was on the phone with Trevor..."

Sheri jumped off of the couch and paced. "You mean you killed your own mother?" Eli coughed. Sheri stopped pacing and looked Eli straight in the eye.

"I killed Mariana Holmes. My mother was the woman who took me bra shopping, and taught me how to sew. She was the woman who made sure I could survive on my own that took care of me when I was sick and made sure I was getting enough challenge. Mariana Holmes was not my mother." Eli had seen this sort of justification from criminals and smokers throughout her life, but never with such sincerity as Sheri said it now.

She had separated the two sides of her mother completely and refused to say that she killed the woman that gave birth to her. Instead she had decided that Mariana Holmes had killed off her mother the moment she became part of Moriarty.

"I know what you're doing." Sheri snapped.

"What?" Eli said, not even trying to sound like she didn't know what Sheri was talking about.

"You think I'm in denial. Separating my mother and her criminal self. I'm not crazy and I never will be!" Sheri rushed to a cabinet of the kitchen and torn the drawer open. She pulled a small bag and her ebony pipe. The deep brown curves looked shiny as if Sheri spent some time cleaning it since she stopped smoking.

Sheri stuffed the contents of her bag into the pipe and pulled a match out of her pocket.

"What are you doing!" Eli yelled, leaping out of her chair and ripping the pipe out of her hands.

"It's not like it's Marijauna." Sheri defended, "You only use that once." she shook her head and tried to get her pipe back, but Eli held it out as far as possible.

"No! Smoking is bad for you, you admitted that and we're sticking to your word!"

"That was only until I found Xavier, and he will not be coming in to poison us anymore. Oh, and don't light your fireplace." Sheri tired again to grab the pipe without harming Eli, but again she pushed her away.

"Sheri..."

"I need it!" Sheri said kicking Eli in the shin and grabbing the pipe while she screamed in pain.

"OW! No you-ow-" she paused to rub her shin, "Don't." Sheri lit the match and took a deep breath of smoke.

"Mmmmmmm...." Sheri smiled, her mind relaxing again.

"Give me the pipe, Sheri!" Eli swatted the pipe out of her hand and it sailed across the room and sizzled as it cooled on the floor. Sheri sighed and tried to pick the pipe up again, but Eli beat her too it and ran on top of the couch to keep it out of Sheri's reach.

"Now you're just being childish."

"You're the one with the obsession with drugs." Sheri shrugged, and climbed a top the couch cushions to wrestle the pipe away. This continued for about ten minutes before Sheri finally pinned Eli on the floor. Only Eli kept the warm wood under her belly and refused to give it up, even when Sheri gave her a wet-willy.

"Now who's being childish!" Eli yelled, cringing from the wet finger in her ear.

"Give me the pipe, Watson!"

The click of the door latch stopped them from screaming at each other. They both looked up and saw Linda at the door, with a load of laundry in her hands. "It's Tuesday, isn't it?" Eli asked.

"I leave for an hour!" Linda Hudson said putting the laundry down on the couch.

"Sheri started it." Eli defended.

"It was Watson." Sheri corrected.

"It was n-"

"Get off of her, Sheri!" Linda interrupted, suddenly wanting an aspirin and a pay-raise. Sheri obeyed and Eli, ungracefully, got up of the floor and wiped the drool out of her ear. "Why on earth...?" Linda sighed before she finished the question.

"She stole my pipe." Sheri said without even a hint of humiliation.

"May I have it?" Linda asked Eli, and Eli handed it over to the old woman. "No more smoking." Linda said, waving the pipe at her, "It's smoky in here already with out the atmosphere being noxious."

Sheri smiled evilly, knowing that one, no one could stop her smoking if she wanted too, and two that they were going to give up on this very quick.