A tall tale from 2008. It's not real.
It had
been some weeks since his last case had concluded, and Holmes was oddly quiet. When
not fixated on an unsolved riddle, he was prone to long
periods of quiet contemplation. It was not for me to try to shake him out of this
reflective state. I’ll admit I rather enjoyed those quiet times when I
could lose myself in books while he journeyed to the depths of his magnificent
mind.
So it was
that we spent one peaceful evening in front of the fire, me
with a glass of port at my elbow and a book in hand, and the great detective sitting
across from me, lost in thought. An hour passed in silence, and I felt my mind
beginning to drift. It was then, quite unprompted, that he spoke.
“Yes, my
old friend,” he said softly, a calm knowing smile on his face. “It was a truly
awful piece of fish.”
I shook
my head, dumbfounded. “But...”
Holmes held up his hand to silence me, smiling and nodding. “I know, I know. Let me explain how I just read your thoughts.”
Holmes held up his hand to silence me, smiling and nodding. “I know, I know. Let me explain how I just read your thoughts.”
I sat
open mouthed as he began to speak.
“First, I
saw you flicking through the Shakespeare tragedies, and a look of awe and
reverence crossed your face. It was clear that you had been reading Hamlet, and
you were confused by the sheer brilliance of the words. Then I saw you turn to
look at the fire, your mind still lingering on literature, you no doubt thought:
‘what if I burned all of the books I didn’t understand?’
"Then, from your glance
at the chimney, I deduced you were pondering just how much smoke it would take
to make the chimney explode. You then looked down at your shoes, clearly
thinking how the word ‘explode’ sounds a bit like ‘toes’ and that if you only
had one toe, which one would you want to keep. That was when you glanced at me,
knowing how I once lost a bit of my toe when I was nine and my father came at
me with a carving knife in a drunken rage, and that I told you that story while
standing on London Bridge watching a boat with exactly 25 tourists sailing
underneath us.
"If you take four away from 25 and then divide it by 7 you get
three, and it was three years ago I suggested we visit that restaurant in
Oxford Street that reportedly serves the best roast beef in England. Your look
at the grandfather clock only confirmed this point, and that was when I
remembered that we didn’t actually go there in the end because it was shut and
you were so hungry that I made you eat that bit of discarded cod I found in a
dustbin.”
Holmes
reclined slowly in his chair, and nodded softly once again. “Yes, my friend, it
really was a truly awful piece of fish.”
I gulped.
“Umm, actually....I was just thinking that I need a new watch.”
“OH WELL
FUCK OFF THEN!!!!!!!!!!”
He
didn’t say much after that. Though he did leap up at random points of the
evening and slap me around the face and neck.
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