Cranial Dilemma
A/N: So! This thought came to me and I couldn't not at least write a sort of prologue. My first posted fanfic was going to be a respectable length. I have files and chapters and a proofreader and everything! It seems, however, that this ficlet is terribly persuasive, since it begged, begged me to write it.
It will be continued, but I make no promises as to when.
Oh. Right. Apparently this is the part where I'm supposed to implore the gentle reader to read and review my work. So, yes, do that. Please.
"What the eyes see and the ears hear, the mind believes." - Harry Houdini
When I noticed the problem, my first inclination was to berate John, soundly, for being so damned idiotic as to lose Yorick. The doctor had borrowed the skull for something inane and unimportant and had managed to lose him. Not only that, but then he'd returned home with some other strange skull. How could he possibly do that? Surely, as a doctor, it would be painfully obvious that the temporal bone was more rounded. And the mandible! How could anyone mistake that mandible as belonging to Yorick.
I had, in fact, already yelled upstairs at John, but judging by his lack of reply I was beginning to suspect that he had left for the day. I could, if I cared to, be sure of this, but it didn't exactly matter and honestly I couldn't be bothered to tear my eyes away from this intruder.
"Who are you?" I wondered aloud at the offending guest.
I turned it over in my hands and slouched back into my chair with a sigh. The skull wasn't particularly well cared for, even more dinged up here and there than Yorick was. Scents of smoke mingled with various hints of herbs and incense. Drops of wax had fallen on or past it from multiple angles and hadn't been cleaned for months, though the grooves in the wax made it clear the this skull was quite commonly packed haphazardly in various bags and such. Traveled a lot.
"You've been places, at least. America, from the imprint in the blue wax stuck on your external occipital protuberance."
I drew my magnifier from a pocket and brought the intruding skull closer to my face, trying to make sense of another imprint in the same glob of wax. It had rested against a pen at some point, the type with information stamped into the clip. The writing was mirrored, obviously, but clear. This one simply said 'CPD.'
"Police involvement? Well, at least if John's going to bring me home the wrong skull, it's a skull with connections. So. Illinois or Ohio?"
When addressing an inanimate object, it ought to go without saying, one does not expect a response.
Thus, when a response was supplied, I was quite naturally taken aback.
"Good, god, not Ohio."
I dropped the skull.
The skull said "oof,' and clattered onto the coffee table.
I tried desperately to remember if I'd dosed myself with anything for an experiment.
"John!" I called out, giving yelling one more try before giving up and glancing at the coat rack to verify that I was, in fact, alone in the flat.
"Bob," came a muffled voice.
"What," I half-laughed and wondered if John has sunk so low as to conspire with Mycroft for the sake of a childish prank.
"My name," the voice was decidedly issuing from the skull. It was also decidedly irritated. "It's Bob. Not John."