Dark Waters

The good days were good. By God were they good.

He would awake to a weight and a warmth on his chest, to soft squeaky breathing and arms wrapped around him, or fingers laced together. The day would be golden and bright, filled with laughter and plans that, while devious, brought joy. The eyes that sought his would be smiling, crinkles appearing near their outer most edges. The kisses that followed were almost sweet and the touches almost tender. And on these days the concerns of the world and its ruin seemed far behind. On the bad days, he would fill his mind with these rare moments, willing their return with haste.

Yet nothing good can last forever, this is so with days to.

For the bad days were difficult. They were long and painful, strung out like a limb on a cross. A dark cloud of unease and tension loomed over everything. Some days it was fury, trickling forth from the once fond lips and spilling over in a rivulet of acid words. Others, it was sadness. When all the attempts to drag him from the recesses of his mind failed and he sunk into murky depths of depression. Worse yet was the apathy. Even movement, even speech, or eating proved to be too strenuous. He would watch as the figure remained motionless for hours on end. The most terrible was the mania. When all traces of the man he knew had fled into a remote corner of the mind, inaccessible and absent. In its groove, a savage and frightening specter that wore the face of someone he cared for. Unstable, dangerous, violent and unpredictable, he was a hazard to himself and others. It was an animal, caged to the point of breaking where all pretense of natural manners and sanity were left to rot. These were the dark days and they were difficult for them both...

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...one day, the swirling maelstrom of time would consume the sights and memories and feelings of a sound that made his insides wrench. And then he think that he would have finally beaten him at something.

But he is wrong, yet he hopes. He hopes that one day, when he stands before a slab of steely granite with gold engravings etched into its glossy surface that there will be no meaning behind the word left there. No connection to a name scrawled across the silent vigil.

The humble rectangle is surrounded by woodland shapes, sitting separated from the flora. Only this shape in the grove has power. It can make a genius tense in fear, it can spark anger in a soldier, it can arouse disbelief in many men, but it makes him want to fall to pieces. For the name haunting the stone reads:

James Moriarty: May he be free from the burdens of life and its dark waters.