Sheridan Holmes: Home Sweet Holmes PART 1

"No, that's fine." Eli told the cabbie, "I can take my bags." he nodded and the cab lurched foreword, leaving Eli alone with her suitcases on Maple street. It wasn't the first time she'd been left with her bags on an empty street. She'd spent her childhood years bouncing from family member to family member.

As soon as she'd graduated from UB, she searched for an apartment near where she used to live in Buffalo, New York. Of course she'd be living in a apartment building far away from her original home, but it was worth it to keep the sentimental value of the city.

And that's only the beginning of how she ended up at the Maple street apartment building. Standing in front of that door, she was a little let down. The building was rundown, it needed a new roof, new paint, and perhaps a few new windows. Still, it was a roof over her head, at least until she was on her feet. She grabbed her bags with careful balance and walked up the steps to the yellowing white door. She carefully wedged a garment bag under her arm and attempted to turn the doorknob.

Unfortunately she was not the most coordinated of people. So as soon as she reached for the doorknob, all of her bags fell out of her grip and down off the steps into an over-grown garden.

"Geez!" she hissed to herself, and she quickly found herself down the front steps and in a dying lavender bush. Clunk, clunk, clunk. One by one all five of her cases hit the stairs again. Time for round two, Eli thought. Turning to leave the bush she found that a tall, but plump man in a mid-range suit was watching her progress with the bags.

"May I help?" he asked finally, as she pulled her dark brown hair from the twigs.

"Yes, thank you," she grabbed three cases as he reached for the remaining two. Pushing the door open and entering the even dingier hallway, they set down the bags at the door labeled 4A.

"I'm Curtis, by the way." he said as she shuffled through her pockets for the keys to 4A.

"Eli Watson." she pulled the keys put and unlocked her surprisingly white door. In fact it was one of the cleaner doors in this hall. Especially compared to 6A, with it's blackened edges and stab wounds. Eli couldn't even imagine what kind of wacko lived behind that door.

"Well, welcome Eli. What brings you to-" suddenly a loud blast cut him off. Smoke billowed from a now open 6A, and a fire alarm beeped loudly.

Coughing, a young lady in a blackened dress yelled out a warning. "Go inside and turn the vents off. Wrap a wet towel around your mouth, and don't come out until I say to." she coughed again as she stumbled for her safety goggles.

"What?" Eli asked.

Curtis sighed and began to walk to is door, "Better do what she says."

"But what's going on?"

"I don't know, just do come with me." he motioned for her to enter his apartment.

"But my stuff..."

"Trust me, it'll still be there."

***

"Who was she?" Eli asked, sitting on one of Curtis's couches sipping tea.

"Good question. She calls herself Sheri and her apartment is under the name Linda Hudson, so we weren't able to track down the complete story, but we do know from the mail that she's on a break from a psychiatric hospital and that she has a caretaker that visits her every Tuesday."

"What's her case?"

"Psychopath." Eli almost choked on her tea.

"Don't worry, that's just a diagnosis. She's harmless. But I wouldn't give her a reason to..." he moved his finger on his neck.

"And they let her out on the street?!" Curtis smiled and sipped his tea.

"She's just gone through some rehabilitation and she's a mild case right now. With Linda around she's able to keep calm. I wouldn't worry too much about what the other tenants will say."

"And what will they say?"

Curtis sighed.

"That she collects noses, she experiments on the homeless, Oh and let's not forget that she gases puppies. Trust me, she's a good person. She's not what people think." Eli wasn't completely convinced. "What brings you to Maple street, Eli?" he said, clearly anxious to change the topic.

Eli remembered the conversation with her cousin that brought her back to New York. The nice firemen who broke the news to her. The burns on the back of her neck that she covered with her hair.

She touched the scars on her neck absently.

"Nothing really." she lied. "Cheap room."

"Well, it's always good to see someone new." he said standing up and putting his cup on the coffee table. "You could probably get to moving in." Eli nodded and set her cup on the table.

***

The apartment was small and dingy. It had a mold stain on the furthest corner of the ceiling in the bedroom, scorch marks above the oven, and a green-white wall-to-wall carpeting. But it was a room none the less.

She got started straight away on putting her clothes in the closet and inspecting various stains. Before long it began to look like an ordinary room.

And not too long after that it was morning again. With a short sleep, and an even quicker shower Eli was out the door with the other tenants, looking for a job.

She didn't find any, but she did find ninety seven cents in a fountain. Very late in the morning she went back to Maple street for some rest. The coins jingled in her coat pocket as she reached for the key to her room. She was just about to pour the contents of her pocket into her hand when-

BAM!

A gunshot was fired in the room where Sheri had come out last night. Suddenly running, Eli burst through the door of 6A.

"Are you alright?" Eli said, immediately feeling stupid.

The room was similar to Eli's, but was a little cleaner, if cluttered and scorched a bit more. There was one wall in the back with several bullet holes in the horrid flower paper.

"Yes fine." said a woman sitting lazily on a couch facing the wall. She was roughly six feet tall, if not taller, with wavy jet black hair that contrasted greatly with her pale skin. Her hands were thin and delicate, but scarred with long, neatly trimmed nails. She had freckles on only one side of her face, as if she only ever faced the sun on her left side. She was by far the most odd, yet somehow good-looking person she'd ever met.

"I heard a gunshot." Sheri pointed to the gun on the short coffee table in front of her. But she was observing Eli as if she were a small child wearing something that clashed. Her pale, sea-glass green eyes looked eerily distant and focused at the same time.

"Why?"

"Stress." she said looking at a small pink blotch on Eli's neck.

Eli touched her neck again, as if Sheri's eyes had lasers shooting out of them.

"They have treatments for that you know. Of course you know that, just graduated?"

"What?"

"The burns on your neck and right leg. I'm not surprised you haven't gotten scar removal, it's a pretty costly sort of thing." Eli bit her tongue, "I'm fine by the way, just a little bored. Don't worry, I was aiming away from the civilians."

"What?" Sheri smiled obnoxiously.

"Would you care to say 'hello' Eli?"

"What?" Eli repeated flustered by the rapid conversation.

"Good Afternoon, Eli, my name is Sheri." She stood up, grabbing the gun as she went and putting it in a kitchen drawer.

"How'd you know what my name is?" Eli said watching Sheri as she walked around the room.

"I read the buildings eMails." Sheri said opening a mac laptop that was lying on the couch next to her.

"Everyone's?" Sheri clicked a few buttons before she answered.

"Ah...yes, now I do."

"Sheri, I-" another person said behind Eli. Eli turned to see an elderly woman in a flowery yellow dress, and she was holding a basket of laundry. "Oh, hello dear."

"Eli."Sheri interjected.

"Linda." the woman said holding her free hand out to Eli. Eli shook it tentatively, and Linda went to set the basket down on the couch next to Sheri.

"Linda's my caretaker." Sheri told her.

"Court ordered nurse!" Linda clarified, folding the clothes.

"Whatever." Sheri looked Eli over, "Well sit down." she pointed to the chair opposite her.

Eli didn't see a way out of it. She carefully sat on the dingy pink arm chair, looking for something to talk about with the psycho.

"I ran over a nun." Sheri said, fiddling with a silver and gold bracelet.

"Hmm?"

"That's how they got to evaluating me." Eli nodded silently, "I didn't try to hit her, she ran in front of me. Saving a squirrel. Crazy woman she was, talking about how I gunned it to hit her. I was in complete control of my car until she ran out."

"So you got in trouble for hitting her?" Sheri looked up, staring at her like she said something wrong.

"No, I got in trouble because I drove away." she paused, looking at the horrified face on Eli, "To go find a pay-phone, to call an ambulance. It's not my fault it looked like a hit-and-run." Linda rolled her eyes behind Sheri.

"You also had a human hand in your glove compartment."

"I bought that hand fair and square."

"Why?" Eli asked.

"Why do you have a boy's name?!" Sheri scoffed, "Besides it wasn't like I tried to hurt anyone."

"Right." Linda said sarcastically, "Now go get the plaster for the wall." Sheri rolled her eyes as she got up, and went to the bedroom, where they must of kept the plaster. She slammed the door behind her.

Linda watched the woman leave and as soon as she was gone she folded up the black blouse she had in her hands and in a hushed tone she asked, "Why are you here?"

"What do you mean? I heard a gunshot."

"And you came knowing this was Sheri's apartment?"

Eli nodded.

"You are a good person aren't you?" Eli was about to respond when Sheri came out of the bedroom with a plastic jug full of plaster.

"I'm not fixing the hole." Sheri told her.

"Yes you are." Linda said calmly. Sheri made a face and began unscrewing the top of the bottle.

"You going to help?" Sheri said to Eli.

"Mm-?" she started to almost say.

"It's not like you're doing anything today. The shoes you're wearing show that you don't work standing up and your clothes are not appropriate for someone who works sitting down. You're unemployed aren't you?" Eli look to Linda for an answer, but she was watching Sheri pour the plaster into a nice china teacup. Eli, confused, walked over to the wall and did her best to try to remember how to fix a hole in the wall. "Where's the..." Sheri muttered, searching her leather jacket pocket. She smiled as she pulled a two-inch square of mesh out of her pocket and a wad of gum out of her mouth.

She stuck the wad over the hole and the mesh over that to create a perfectly straight square for the plaster coating.

"Plaster." Sheri demanded holding one hand out for the teacup and the other searched her pockets for something to apply the plaster with. Eli handed her the teacup and watched as she delicately brushed the white mixture to the wall with the craftsmanship of a world-class painter.

"I learned in Italy," she told Eli before she could even ask, "From a young graffiti artist named Mīlo."

"Which is why she's not allowed into the sistine chapel." Linda said folding a pair of black skinny jeans.

"It was the Vatican!" Sheri corrected.

"Who cares, your still not allowed in it." Sheri snarled a little bit as she worked.

"Was this before or after the nun?" Eli asked.

"Before." Sheri smiled, "I was on a family vacation." Sheri's smart-alecky smile quivered. Her eyes pinkened like she was going to cry. "You should go." she didn't suggest it.