A Study in Satin

by Tigger
© 2000, all rights reserved

 

Part I: Semper Cogitus

Chapter 2: Life after Death?

 

"Mr. Holmes?" The piercing sound of a feminine voice calling out his name roused him, but he didn't want to wake up. "Mr. Holmes, are you all right?" the voice called out again, louder this time and with some discernable emotion backing it.

"Who. . ?" Holmes growled, burrowing down into his bed linens.

"'tis me, Mr. Holmes, Miss Hudson. I was just finishing up my cleanin' of your rooms, but you weren't up for me to change your beddin'." her voice made the last an accusation. "I have to be getting on to my own home, sir."

An incredible stench assailed Holmes' nose, forcing him awake, and with wakefulness, came recognition. The *last* thing he wanted was for Miss Hudson to realize what had happened. "No, that's quite all right, Miss Hudson. You just leave out the clean linens and I will see to the bedding myself when I get up."

"Are you all right, then sir? I've never known you to be a lay-a-bed, sir," Miss Hudson's voice was less strident now, more uncertain. "Not in all the years I've known you."

"Just a bit of the ague, Miss Hudson. My doctor prescribed a concoction that made me sleep. I am better now, but you should keep your distance. I would not want you to become ill yourself and possibly pass the illness to your mother or sister."

"No indeed, Mr. Holmes," Miss Hudson quickly agreed. "I've left some soup simmerin' on your stove, sir. It should do you up right and tight if you've got the strength to go get it."

Holmes got another whiff of his soiled bed linens and nearly gagged. The thought of food only made the growing nausea worse. "That will be quite all right, Miss Hudson. I am feeling much more the thing. A hot bowl of soup will be exactly what I need once I have had a chance to bathe." *The bath, at least, is the truth of the matter,* he thought.

A thought occurred to Holmes and he called out, "Did you come a day early for some reason, Miss Hudson?"

"Early? Why, today's my regular day, Mr. Holmes," Miss Hudson replied before pausing, "Oh, I see. That potion your doctor gave you made you sleep longer than you thought, Mr. Holmes."

*I've been unconscious for more than thirty six hours?* Holmes asked himself. *That explains the condition of my bed, but I expected my rest to be far longer than that. What happened?*

Holmes reveries were interrupted by his housekeeper. "Well, since you're feelin' able, Mr. Holmes, I'll be on my way. Hope you feel better. Just leave the dirty linens in the hamper in the kitchen and I will see to them next time. Good day, Mr. Holmes. Don't worry about the stains. My mum has the same problem, her bein' of an age, y'know, and I know just how to get them white and sweet again."

Holmes growled a 'thank you' and a farewell and then listened carefully for her departure. Quickly, he got out of his bed, as much to escape the foul odors as to ensure the door was securely bolted. Whatever was happening, it was definitely NOT what Holmes expected, and until he understood what was happening, he wanted no more guests.

Unfortunately, no sooner was he out of bed, then the world began to spin giddily. Urgently, Holmes reached out toward his bedside table to steady himself, but it was too far away and too late.

Sherlock Holmes fell to the floor in a swoon.

~--------------~

When next Holmes awoke, this time from his impromptu bed on the floor, he stood more carefully. Whatever residual effect of the drug had overcome him on his first arousal would not surprise him again. What did surprise him, as he carefully stood, was the absence of pain. Arthritis had begun to attack the old man's joints in the last year. Mornings had always been the worse. Knees, hips and elbows that had been permitted to remain relatively stationary over the course of a long, damp London night tended to argue vigorously against being forced to move again.

*Perhaps there is a heaven, after all,* Holmes thought in wonder before two other circumstances seemed to refute that. The sewer-like stench of his own bodily wastes again assailed him bringing back the memories of his conversation with Miss Hudson.

Quickly, he turned to leave the room and its foul odors only to trip and fall two steps later.

On the hem of his nightshirt.

Slowly, but still without any pain, Holmes eased himself once again to his feet. He looked down at the hem of his robe and momentarily gawked. The nightshirt's hem, which had just that night before been well above Holmes' ankles, now pooled on the floor about his feet. "Definitely a mystery is afoot here," he said aloud before turning towards his laboratory. He nearly tripped again, but caught himself. Deftly, he gathered up a handful of the nightshirt up in one hand and pulled the garment off, tossing it to the floor by his bed. Grimly, Holmes took in the multiple stains marking the nightshirt that had not been there when he'd first donned it - how long ago had that been? By the look of the dawn and taking into consideration Miss Hudson's earlier revelations, Holmes concluded that he'd worn that garment for at least two days and three nights. *One mystery at a time,* he told himself as he donned his dressing robe before striding off again.

Holmes snatched up a pencil and a book as he moved past his desk towards a large empty wall on the far end of the lab. Holmes stood, back to the all and rested the book on his head. Holding the book in place, Holmes stepped out from under the book and used the pencil to mark the book's position on the wall. A ruler confirmed what the detective's trained senses had already discerned.

Sherlock Holmes had somehow shrunk almost three and a half inches since he'd gone to his bed three nights past. "Amazing," he half whispered to himself before rushing off to his dressing room again, this time nearly tripping over his own feet in his haste.

One look in his reflecting glass showed that he was much more than not dead. In addition to his decreased stature, Holmes saw that he looked visibly younger. His skin had not been so . . so smooth and supple in decades.

"Or is this how the afterlife occurs?" he asked himself. "If this is heaven, however, I would have preferred to keep my normal height. And I most *definitely* would have preferred not to have lost control of my bodily functions in so humiliating a manner."

Only a sudden, undeniably urgent call from Nature pulled him away from his glass, but once in the water closet, another shock greeted him. It was not just his body's height that had changed. He was. . . smaller - all over. In fact, he was a great deal smaller. Although not a vain man, at least where physical prowess and size were concerned, Holmes was still greatly taken aback when he opened his dressing gown to relieve his bladder.

His manhood had shrunk, too. Actually, it had *more* than merely shrunk in proportion this new stature, it had all but disappeared. Heavens above, but Holmes had seen infants with greater . . .masculine endowments than he now possessed.

After that momentary shock, Holmes forced his intellect to reassert itself. He needed to determine whether his mind might be similarly afflicted. Holmes tested himself by first by recalling the design and results of a recent chemical experiment he'd conducted and then by mentally constructing the classic proof of the Theorem of Pythagoras. Neither problem proved to be at all difficult, thus confirming that Holmes' mind, at least, remained . . . adult. That concern dealt with, Holmes was all the more determined to deal with this situation with his famous rationality and powers of deduction powers.

Returning to his looking glass, Holmes inventoried and catalogued his person, comparing it to the old body he remembered so well. Like his manly parts, the rest of his body had also become smaller, although by no means as much as had his genitals. His hands, which had always been long and fine fingered for a male, were now thinner, almost dainty, and tipped with surprisingly long nails. Slippers that had once fit him as perfectly as. . .well, as a well worn slipper, now foundered about a much smaller, more slender foot.

About the only thing besides his fingernails that was longer about him was his hair. He'd gone to bed a balding old man, but now two to three inches of thick, luxuriant almost-black hair covered his head, and framed a face that while it was still slender was also somehow less. . .saturnine. . somehow more. . .

"Juvenile is the word you are attempting to deny, Holmes," he said aloud, not at all surprised to hear a voice markedly different from his own issue forth from his mouth.

"No, that's not right either," Holmes realized, still speaking aloud, trying to understand the changes in his voice. "My face, even when I was much younger, never looked like *that*! In fact, this face looks like none of the men of my lineage, as recorded in the paintings in Mycroft's old house. Which means that whatever has occurred, it not merely a simple age reversal. My understanding of that monk Mendel's work on heredity is that such features are statistically very unlikely unless I am somehow no longer of the Holmes family line. Which I would have thought impossible were it not for the evidence of my own eyes."

The curiosity that was part and parcel of Sherlock Holmes came to the fore and focused his full attention on this new and fascinating problem. The detective studied his reflection as though it was the face of a stranger's face, using his powers of observation to assess age, ethnic background, fitness and physical attributes.

"Age, hmmm," he said as he began to assess the changes he saw in his mirror, " a bit of a conundrum, that. The size of the head relative to stature of the total body would seem to be consistent with adult proportions, yet there is no evidence of beard growth. Quite peculiar, that." Holmes ran those incredibly soft fingers over his cheeks. "Not even the slightest indication of stubble although it has been more than two days since I last shaved. That factor combined with the significant diminution of my masculine development would also indicate a pre-pubescent condition. Rather contradictory indications, all around."

Holmes turned his attention to his torso and bodily extremities, turning and twisting this way and that so he could examine himself from every possible angle. "Remarkably supple," he murmured to himself with a touch of pleasure, "Certainly more so than I can remember in many a year. On the other hand, muscular development is also slight. While such an apparent lack of muscle tissue is often a sign of a rapid growth spurt in the underlying skeletal structure, there is no evidence of the corresponding gauntness." Holmes gently pinched the flesh of his smooth thigh and watched the skin spring back when he released it. "In point of fact, it seems to be just the opposite as this body has a smoothing layer of fat - much more than I have ever possessed before, and certainly more than that aging relic that went to bed three nights past."

"The face retains a distinctly English appearance. Though the nose is much shorter than before, it is still quite narrow. The eyes are slanted upward slightly, not through the presence of an oriental epicanthic fold, but as though it were a more natural shape. This is accented by higher than normal cheekbones. It is almost as if . . . "

"Oh, dear God. I refuse to believe it!"

Shocked at the direction his inquiries seemed to point, Holmes pulled on a clean dressing gown over the offending body. Thus attired, Holmes made his way back to his laboratory where the apparatus he'd used to concentrate the fatal dose of cocaine still stood. Dazed, Holmes sank slowly onto his favorite chair.

"Is this what happens when you die?" he asked aloud. "You stay behind as something or someone other than who or what you were in your previous life? Are the Buddhists of India correct and this is some type of reincarnation? Is *this* what heaven entails?? Or perhaps more correctly, this is my first taste of hell?"

"Oh," a harsh voice said from the parlor, "I rather suspect that you will find hell quite pleasant by comparison - when you finally arrive there. But for the time being, you are, unfortunately for you, my dear Mr. Sherlock Holmes, quite alive upon this earthly pale."

Holmes spun out of his chair and saw a large figure coming through the door; the intruder's features lost in shadow due to the backlighting of the parlor windows.

"Who *are* you?!?"

 

 

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© 2000 by Tigger. All Rights Reserved. These documents (including, without limitation, all articles, text, images, logos, compilation design) may printed for personal use only. No portion of these documents may be stored electronically, distributed electronically, or otherwise made available without express written consent of the copyright holder.