#thought forms

I will not pretend as though these notes will find their way into The Strand or any other literary magazine. I have made peace with this fact. In a way, it’s rather liberating to be able to write without having to fret over things like censorship or being brought beneath the punishing hand of the law. Holmes and I had made a home for ourselves on the Sussex Downs, with him retired to working as a beekeeper and I maintaining a life of luxury few writers can ever hope for off of the stories of our youthful adventures.  Our narrative begins in the same way many have, with me breaking my fast and Holmes being presented with a problem. I am an old man and I discovered in 1924, I had developed a strong love of black coffee, sweetened by my lover’s honey. I was three cups of coffee deep and my body was vibrating in my easy chair as I read through a newspaper. It was then that Holmes blew into our home, all bluster and impotent rage.  “Blast it! It’s happened again!” shouted Holmes.  I looked over my newspaper at him and tried not to give away that I was over-caffeinated and internally spiraling. “What’s happened, Holmes?”  “This is the third hive this week that has been plundered, Watson!” Holmes gesticulated wildly with his hands in the air. “Three hives and every one of them have had the honey siphoned from them!”  I smiled to myself and said in my coffee induced…well you might call it a light mania, “Three? That’s almost four.” Holmes didn’t seem to register what I had said and he started to pace around our living room, dressed in the main jumpsuit of his beekeeping attire, minus the netted hat he wore to protect his lovely face from being stung.  “I’ve had it Watson, this time it has become a personal affront to me,” said Holmes. “I’m going to set a trap for our honey thief. Otherwise, how else will your morning coffees…and yes I mean plural coffee, be sweetened, dear Watson?”  I wrinkled my nose. Of course he noticed that I had more than one coffee on this occasion. The man was a noticing machine, naturally it fell under his gaze and he interpreted the facts accordingly.  I wasn’t ready for the cage. Holmes spent the afternoon after ranting at me about the honey by constructing a very literal honey trap. He rearranged the beehives so that they all rested in a neat row beneath a tree and adjacent to the wildflower field that fueled the bees. In the branches of the tree, my friend (if that’s not too small a word) had placed a cage which was attached to a rope, which was in turn attached to a series of pulleys and wheels near the base, in front of the hives, forming a circle.  “Isn’t it a little on the obvious side, Holmes?” I asked. “I am at my wit’s end, Watson!” shouted Holmes. “I cannot sit out here with a shotgun and wait for whatever insidious creature who wishes to plunder my hives!”  “Not for nothing, but it’s never stopped you before,” I said.  He didn’t respond to me, he simply rechecked the ropes on the ground to make sure they were tight. Dinner was spent in silence. I cooked for us a bit of lamb that I had procured in town. I would have appreciated a bit more conversation, but I could see that Holmes’s mind was still focused on his trap. His trap that I was certain was too obvious to be noticed and would likely result in whatever animal he was hoping to capture breaking it and his remaining beehives. I’m not too proud to admit that I was wrong. By the next morning, Holmes and I went out to look over his cage contraption and we found the most curious thing within. Inside the cage was a bear. Not a typical bear like the sorts seen in zoos. It stood about four feet tall, its fur was a dull yellow, and the most shocking part was that it spoke.  “Oh bother,” said the bear. “You’ve caught me.”