Author's Note: I am SO sorry this took so long to write, and really I have no excuses apart from the usual which are pretty pathetic for this amount of time, however now that I am back I bring with me the present of this chapter which I hope you will very much enjoy!

Cold, cold, cold. Everything was cold.

Shock, (n.): 1. An acute medical condition associated with a fall in blood pressure, caused by such events as loss of blood, severe burns, allergic reaction, or sudden emotional stress.

He felt the warmth depart from his fingers, waving farewell. The type of goodbye that means this was is the last goodbye, no more hellos or greetings would ensue, this was goodbye.

Was, (n.): 1. The past tense.

A simple word, with a simple definition. The implication of a word can't be encompassed by the definition. Was carries a simple definition but conveys a much more complex meaning. Was is the word you use when talking about the past. Done, finished, not anymore. Was is the word which is used when describing the deceased. Done, finished, not anymore.

Was is a word which would be used to describe her. Done, finished, not anymore.

The lights blinked again, plummeting the room into a temporary blackness.( then the lights returned to the room, almost focusing on the wall directly opposite the Mirror. They blinked again. A woman is standing right in the middle of the room, her midnight black hair tangled and knotted, her white dress billowing behind her, stained with splatters of blood and dirt. Her pupils are replaced by mirrors. She is smirking.

The two men locked eyes with hers, a silent gasp passes the lips.

The lights blink rapidly, and each time the lights turn on again the woman steps closer to John, increasing in her pace until she is running towards him, a silent battle cry on her lips, her mouth gaping open. John scrambled to his feet, doesn't even flinch at the sound of a gunshot and runs outside, Sherlock was right at his heel, gun waving uselessly in his hand, the tingling sensation of the gunpowder burn spreads across his hands, paralysing it.

They sat panting on the curb of the opposite pavement, watching the door of their flat, watching for any signs of danger, no matter how insignificant or slight. Nothing. Not even the cars dared venture into the nightmare they were ensnared in.

Sherlock fidgeted next to John, 'what was he supposed to say?' He didn't know whether he should be offering comfort or let John grieve on his own. Sherlock pondered over the realisation that perhaps this must be what it's like for people when Sherlock refuses to talk to anyone.

"Joh-"

"Sherlock, look." John's voice was perfectly calm, not wavering, Sherlock didn't know whether that was good or bad. John nodded in the direction of the window, where a faint light was glistening.

Sherlock would have dismissed it of no consequence if he hadn't seen the look on John's face; he was shocked, and there was something else… Turning back to the window, he scoured the part of the room that was visible, searching for what shocked John so. When his eyes did land upon it, Sherlock blinked.
It was him. And John. Standing in front what was certainly the Lasser Glass. An eerie smile plastered onto their otherwise expressionless faces.

"Don't… Please…Don't leave me."

"I need to go, you know that," he sighed unsure of how to go about doing this, this touchy-feely lark. It was something that he, as much as he loathed to admit it, was one of the few (very few, mind you) things he couldn't do. "Once I get a job, we can leave here, and never come back. But I need to go to University first, you'll be fine."

So he left.

And Sherlock was not fine.

Sherlock waited. He ripped open the letters his brother sent like a normal child would rip open their presents on their birthday, (or Christmas, or other such pointless occasions), and hopes that today would be the day he would be able to join his brother and get away from this place. But like any child must, he grew up, and he grew up much too quickly. He learned to take the beatings his father gave, to not question anything, to mind his own business. Slowly, this once curious and naïve person receded into nothing, and another, unrecognisable person took his place. This person went straight to his bedroom as soon as he came home from an equally lonely day as the one at home at school, who skipped meals so he wouldn't need to leave his sanctuary, who lost feeling anything for anything, effectively destroying the bridge to his heart. Sherlock led a dreary existence, and every day he immersed himself into his studies, almost savagely.

The world is a place of colour, painted with different shades of every colour imaginable. The green of the grass tickling your feet tessellated with lighter greens, darker greens, yellows and browns, moulding together, linking together to make a bigger, beautiful picture. The rich sunset, beautiful shades of pink and purple and blue, moulding together wondrously. But all Sherlock could see was grey, solid and unwavering, an unwanted constant in his life. Soon he lost all memory of the colour of emotions and feeling, soon he saw the world for what it was; a massive rock that orbited the Sun, rotating as it does so, not a world full of happiness and betterment of race. Soon he forgot even that. A human body was not a wonder filled with the capacity to love and be loved but a set of organs working in conjunction with each other.

The drugs helped.

A needle. A pinprick. A drop of blood. A syringe injecting the drugs into his veins.

And then let there be light.

Light breaking through the layer of thick grey clouds, cascading into the world, flowing in and out of small crevices and cracks, punctuating each and every colour with glorious detail, until there was nothing left. It was beautiful. Magnificent. Magical. It was not real.
So he used again. Again and again, he clung to a world full of colour and again and again it slipped from his grasp. And little by little, his older brother's heart broke into pieces seeing his once full of life, exuberant, vivacious, spirited, vibrant little brother turn to be like him, and then worse, and all he could do was watch It was at that point that he came to be introduced to his true fear; the fear of every older sibling. Fear of seeing their sibling die.

Harry immediately stood up and started towards the door, knocking on it, screaming as loud as she could, meanwhile all John could think about was getting some light in the room. He was on the side of the room, fumbling for a desk light he knew his father kept on his desk amongst all the clutter. John moved his hands to left of the desk, his actions becoming more frantic as his fear threatened to overwhelm him. Just as his left hand met the base of his father's desk light, his right instead touched the cutting edge of a knife blade. He felt a small stinging sensation before his left hand flicked the switch, letting the light flood into the room again. That was when he fully registered the pain in his thumb; he looked down to his thumb, and watched the red dribbling down the side of his hand.

"What happened?"

"Nothing, just got cut." John wiped his hand on his trousers. He regretted it as soon as his hands touched the fabric, leaving the blood on his trousers and carrying another sting of pain back."I think it was from Dad's penknife."

"That looks bad." Harry examined John's thumb, which spurted another spot of red as Harry's hand gripped unto his.

"I think Dad's got some plasters in his drawers, and I'll look for them."

"Okay." John said, nursing his throbbing thumb.

Harry retrieved the plaster from his desk, the desk light her guide and gently applied the plaster, cringing at her brother's pained expression, feeling so helpless because she just didn't know what to do anymore. She was supposed to be protecting her little brother for fuck's sake!

Another hour passed, and nothing happened.

John picked at his thumb, the restricting plaster making him feel uneasy, and his thumb felt like it was suffocating, if that were even possible. John kept itching, ignoring Harry's glare that told him to 'stop making that noise, idiot!' The edge of John's plaster was now peeling off which furthered John's annoyance. Huffing, John got up to put his plaster in the bin at the corner of the room. At the foot of the bin, John started to remove his plaster, flinching as some of his skin went with it, intensifying the pain already present from his gash. Relieving more of his thumbnail of the plaster, more blood seeped out, worryingly so. Frowning, John proceeded with caution, lifting the papery material off his thumb as more blood spurted forth with a rude vengeance.

Oh.

Tilting his thumb to the pathetic light to his left, John saw the answer to his newly acquired pain. His thumbnail had been pulled from his thumb, stuck to the inside of his blood soaked plaster.

He didn't even know why a plant parallel to him drew his attention, but once it had his eye was besotted with it. He watched with in confused awe as the plant slowly wilted, discoloured. Drooping leaves fell to the ground. Then a black, lumpy, gooey liquid dripped out of the stalk with an eerie grace, almost uniform-like, and crawled towards him. Soon every plant, of which there were a frightening number, had wilted, conceiving the same liquid as they did. The separate puddles of sentient slime assembled, like rain drops on a car window, getting bigger and bigger, getting faster and faster but John's feet were rooted to the ground, unable to do anything but watch. Harry, however just saw her little brother dropping the plaster in the bin, completely unaware of the event unfolding in front of her.

Then the walls rusted and cracked, and each time a crack appeared another drop of the indefinable liquid spewed from it. Very soon a wall of just seamless darkness had appeared, pushing forward but also pulling back as it consumed whatever stood in its path. John watched in horror as he lifted his shaking hands to his eyes, and saw the flesh on his hands peel away, the black liquid spurting forth as more of his flesh fell away, running down his arms as it did so. A scream formed in the bottom of his stomach as his horror accumulated…

A shrill high-pitched scream cut him off that John instantly recognized as Harry's. Protective instinct weaved its way past the bundle of nerves his mind now was making. John turned his head to Harry, who had her mouth open in a silent scream, tears dripping down onto her cheeks earnestly. As soon as he had saw her, his eyes flicked back to his own hands that were still trembling in such a way to rival the shaking of the earth in an earthquake, but now empty there was no sign of the black liquid that had just moments ago been eating up his hands. Surveying the room, he saw also that the room was also barren of any liquid and the plants were refreshingly healthy. Now focusing his attention back on his sister, John made his way to her, embracing her frail body, trying to figure out what she had seen to put her state of mind into such disarray. Her eyes were fixed onto the opposite wall, to the right of the mirror. Following her line of sight, his eyes landed on yet another disturbing sight.

A woman that would later host so many of his nightmares was sitting beside a corpse of a dog. Her clothes that would have been pure white were blooded and ripped, the woman herself in no better state. She ripped off a chunk off the decaying corpse and, bit into it hungrily and, this was what really set John on edge, licked her lips. John gasped, disgusted and terrified of the sight in equal measure.

He should have kept the gasp in.

The woman whipped her head round impossibly fast, locking onto the two petrified children, who were now her targets. With an animalistic growl, her pupils constricted as she slowly got up. It wasn't until she fully drew herself to her full height that the two siblings reacted. They fell down to the ground as they stumbled to the door, seeing her thin frame walking towards them. Harry and John began backing up towards the door, picking up the pace as the woman began to full-on sprint towards them, mouth open as if in preparation to rip their flesh off their bones. Their backs met the smooth surface of the door, and it dawned on them that they were locked in and they were going to meet their end by being eaten alive. As the ghastly woman, lined with wrinkles which made her scar laced face sag even more, came within an inch of their shaking bodies, the door behind gave way, prompting the two to fall to the ground with a definite jarring thud. Their eyes flew open, greeted by the sight of their mother's head above them, worried, but there was a glint of happiness at being reunited with her children.

John looked to the room in front of him, empty of any woman intent of ripping their guts out and sucking the blood out of their veins. He allowed himself a small sigh of relief.

Author's Note: Again, I'm so sorry this took so long to upload but I do hope you liked this chapter and if it did seem 10 times more brilliant than it normally is (normal being abysmal) then that is because it is and it's because of the brilliant work of Nimthiriel Eruhin who is no doubt one of the most talented writers here! So thank you for being such an amazing beta reader!

Also thank you to, MS Carrigaleand possiblylostinthepast for reviewing!

Until the next time

~ElevenWholockian~