JWP #4: Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Jul. 4th, 2016 03:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
violsvaI feel like this should have all the warnings, but nothing graphic actually happens. I just went there mentally, a lot.
Fever is well known to cause hallucinations, sometimes ones with an amazing power to stick in the mind. However, it had been nearly twenty years since I was in Afghanistan, and there was no reason for the Colonial Secretary’s typist to draw my mind back there.
Still, I could not help but feel that I had seen her before. She drew the eye, certainly, with that hair, but was far too young to have been one of my nurses. At least, she seemed young.
The Colonial Secretary was preoccupied and very short with Holmes, possibly explaining why, as soon as we had left, Holmes turned to me and said, “Really, Watson, the typist? She’s very young for you.”
“What?” I said, for it had never even crossed my mind. “No, my God no.” I was not sure why the idea struck me as so repellent - certainly I had been staring. But the memories of Afghanistan, though nothing to do with her, had effectively removed the possibility from my mind. “I was simply wondering if I had seen her somewhere before.”
We emerged into the September rain and put up umbrellas. I could not stop thinking about the woman’s face, which seemed in my imagination, rather than the dark wood and green of Chamberlain’s office, to be surrounded by sand and blood.
*
The white-haired doctor made the rounds of the ward, along with the matron. Except that she wasn’t the matron. She was young, red-haired, and kept laughing. Was she laughing? She had been there when I was wounded - perhaps she had shot me herself. They approached my bed, growing to monstrous size. I closed my eyes, but could still see them. Their words twisted together horribly.
“Good work with this.”
“Himself won’t say -”
“Easy way in.”
I looked for a nurse to chase them off, but saw only endless beds, with endless red and white figures standing by them.
Fever is well known to cause hallucinations, sometimes ones with an amazing power to stick in the mind. However, it had been nearly twenty years since I was in Afghanistan, and there was no reason for the Colonial Secretary’s typist to draw my mind back there.
Still, I could not help but feel that I had seen her before. She drew the eye, certainly, with that hair, but was far too young to have been one of my nurses. At least, she seemed young.
The Colonial Secretary was preoccupied and very short with Holmes, possibly explaining why, as soon as we had left, Holmes turned to me and said, “Really, Watson, the typist? She’s very young for you.”
“What?” I said, for it had never even crossed my mind. “No, my God no.” I was not sure why the idea struck me as so repellent - certainly I had been staring. But the memories of Afghanistan, though nothing to do with her, had effectively removed the possibility from my mind. “I was simply wondering if I had seen her somewhere before.”
We emerged into the September rain and put up umbrellas. I could not stop thinking about the woman’s face, which seemed in my imagination, rather than the dark wood and green of Chamberlain’s office, to be surrounded by sand and blood.
*
The white-haired doctor made the rounds of the ward, along with the matron. Except that she wasn’t the matron. She was young, red-haired, and kept laughing. Was she laughing? She had been there when I was wounded - perhaps she had shot me herself. They approached my bed, growing to monstrous size. I closed my eyes, but could still see them. Their words twisted together horribly.
“Good work with this.”
“Himself won’t say -”
“Easy way in.”
I looked for a nurse to chase them off, but saw only endless beds, with endless red and white figures standing by them.