Carl Powers was a regular boy, the papers wistfully proclaimed in bold black print. They described him as large, kind spirited and a great loss to the community with the kind of flourish even ihe/i couldn´t help but appreciate. A cruel curl wedged itself into the side of his mouth as he read these words. Drowned, tragically and accidently were his silent signature; Jim Moriarty. The malicious truth was that the 14 year old browsing the obituaries simply had to kill him.

Carl would breathe on his neck when he sat behind him in class. Wheezing and huffing as if his lungs had a hard time getting passed his size. That whistling sound burrowed into Jim like a carnivorous insect. He let lose a baying obnoxious laugh along with a tirade of insults every time Jim stripped for swimming. Carl had bad acne, ugly clothing and thought he knew everything whilst knowing nothing at all. The worm´s worst attribute by far however was not his dullness but his compulsion to loudly share this tedium with everyone around him. Carl was so desperately normal and utterly pointless that his banality grated into Jim's very mind. Jim´s mind was special. Jim´s mind would not be tainted and Jim saw to that.

He leaned back in the library chair and brought the memory of that moment back; applying the paralytic to the inside of those flakey trainers, listening to the choked splashes and that wheezing throat taking its last breath then finally retrieving the shoes again. Carl had loved those shoes and now they suffocated under Moriarty´s bed. For a moment the chair balanced perfectly on its hind legs while his lashes balanced on his cheekbones. It was all so hideously easy. With a snap he was up on his feet and halfway across the room newspaper in hand. On the way through the exit he gave the paper a clench, scrunching the fibers lovingly before letting them fall into a rubbish bin. He wanted the real thing.

It had been exactly a month since Jim last stood in this locker room. The tiles were the colour of bone, the walls were white and the majority of the lights were off. After a moment of contemplation he walked to the lockers, pressed his fingers to the cold metal doors and dragged them along the surface. He walked from one side of the locker room to the other ending at the door leading into the pool. He could only just see the water through the circular glass. Jim´s school had stopped holding swimming events there since Carl´s death. In spite of stringent cleaning and sterilization the public feared to go there. This disappointed Jim. He wanted to see people swimming in that water, playing there, diving there, unwilling participants in a soundless murder scene. He could almost feel Carl´s husky soul in the room, strangled, desperate and cold. He felt a laugh not far below the surface when all of a sudden he heard the muffled sound of a door swinging shut nearby. Immediately he strode to the back of the room and slid behind a locker with all the cool resolve of a predator. He could hear the click clack of shoes.

The volume of the steps 40 decibels, the length of time between footfalls 42000 milliseconds, the scrape of the shoes a weight of 130 lbs

A teenage boy, 14, light, tall, walking with purpose approaching the locker room Jim surmised and leaned back against the wall, completely out of sight. Jim theorized as to why the boy was there. He speculated something mundane like having forgotten swimming trunks. He anticipated being alone again soon. The door to the locker room opened. There was a moment of hesitation before the steps entered the room. Jim watched the shadow of the boy on the wall before the tell tale click of a light switched on. A breath out.

10 seconds and 52 milliseconds since entrance

Not here for something forgotten, otherwise he would have made for the area in which the item was left within the first 2.7 seconds of entering. Slowly Jim craned his neck forward, mutely watching the boy. He stood in the centre of the room facing the lockers. He was quite skinny with a mop of dark curly hair and very pale skin. On the shoulder of his jacket was the emblem of a prestigious private school. An expensive leather satchel bag hung near his hip, his hands were covered with gloves and around his neck dangled a Polaroid camera. He moved to the nearest locker door pulling some tiny twisted rods of metal from his pocket. After a moment of fiddling he´d picked the lock and swung the door open. He took 6 photos of the interior and with a deeply serious expression began inspecting the empty shoe rack inside. It wasn´t just any random locker he was examining with the utmost care. It was Carl´s. Jim was transfixed.

"...Stupid police" the boy muttered voice slightly vexed as he examined the dust inside "...where are your shoes?"

It had to be coincidence. The colourful circus of media and investigating police forces had no inkling it was murder. He had remembered disappointment in their lack of perception and yet here, this boy was inspecting Carl´s Locker. He had somehow managed to deduce that there was something strange about the missing shoes by what little the papers had given him. Jim noticed an abnormal detached and intense quality as he watched this boy work and he knew it wasn't a fluke or some weekend hobby to this kid. This boy knew, knew that Carl had not simply misplaced his shoes.

"...scattered skin fragments...eczema...musty smell...large boy...scrapes on the interior of door...careless...most likely unintelligent" the boy muttered pulling a small notebook out of his coat pocket and scribbling a few sentences down "...dust reveals nothing. The investigation destroyed most of the evidence..."

He felt a thrill run down his spine and his shoulders shuddered. This boy was pulling facts from observations. There was only one other person he knew whose mind worked like that. Jim began to step forward when the locker room door opened again.

"Sherlock" a stiff voice. Jim´s mind whizzed through facts. 24, put upon, a brother.

"Yes Mycroft?" the boy called Sherlock groaned with ill-concealed contempt.

"Stop wasting time. We´ll be late for dinner" Mycroft said in a clipped tone that contained enough authority and menace that the boy stood up, however slowly, and abandoned his work. He slammed the locker and followed the receding shadow out the door. In turn Jim went after Sherlock drawn forward to the door. He watched them through the crack in the locker room door till the mysterious pair vanished through the exit.

Jim sat cross legged in the center of his bed and stared at the sneakers a few feet in front of him on his blue duvet. His first kill. In truth he had been waiting for the right opportunity to dispose of them. Already he knew he was not a sentimental killer and would need no trophies for his conquests. He knew there would be many more. But now Jim liked the idea of this Sherlock being a part of his game. The police as opponents where unstimulating at best but knowing somewhere out there this other boy existed, this boy who could see the world through the tiniest details of arrangement and movement just like him filled him with anticipation. He grinned just thinking about the kind of challenge he could be. It was then that he made up his mind; he would keep the runners and let Sherlock fall into the background. Jim would know that at any time and undoubtedly one day he would pull out his bait made of sneakers and wait for Sherlock to bite.