BOREDOM EMERGENCY
The sun revolves around the earth as usual (or is it the opposite? But then, is it really that important?). John buys milk, complaining only a little. Mrs. Hudson is not my house-keeper. Mycroft avoids a nuclear war between the appointment of the five and one-quarter, and the one of six o'clock.
It's okay, because the game is on. I'm a few moves away from winning it and capturing yet another serial killer (Caucasian, dyed hair, blond, woman), and the bothers of the world yet to be endured, are little.
But sometimes after the game is over, I have nothing to do and I find myself sprawled on the couch, trying to guess what chemical molecule resemble the spots of mold on the ceiling (it would seem the cocaine molecule). But John chooses that moment to distract me with his tinkering in the kitchen, and I lose sight of the greenish and unhealthy spot that could indicate nitrogen, and there is no way to try and locate it again
I'm bored.
And my mind takes over.
Thoughts become too many, chasing too quickly inside my head and I find it too hard to keep up with my own brain.
I'm well acquainted with the mental agony (and even the physical one) that this condition will cause me, so I have to try to find something to focus on completely, before slipping into a terrifying mental Sheol.
The ideal thing would be a good case begging for my expertise. An intricate and complicated puzzle(one room, a limbed corpse with every bone, every organ, every tissue coming from a different donor. It would be Christmas, Easter and my birthday altogether. How can it be possible that no one has thought of it yet?). But at times like these a deduction - even the most stupid and insignificant one - could be my salvation. That's why my eyes are now frantically scanning everything I can see from my position on the couch.
The only thing I find out of the norm (discarded against the half-closed glass door of the kitchen) is an umbrella: black polyester, thirty-five inches long from handle to ferrule, Malacca handle. An expensive luxury. A gift for John, from Mycroft.
It's easy to immediately analyze the two elements: Mycroft, and the umbrella. Coy, ubiquitous and dreaded the first. Long, black and potentially lethal the second (Malacca handle; Malacca wood was the most commonly used material for swordsticks and, knowing Mycroft, the umbrella could actually hide a blade).
My mind's eye proceeds to mix and fuse the two images into a new picture. One that is greater, and while seemingly very different from the original two, at the same time, so very similar.
If you mix the umbrella and Mycroft, you'll have a snake.
A feared animal: long, black, coy, potentially lethal and ubiquitous.
A Forest Cobra, the more educated ones known it as Naja melanoleuca.
I can see its blurred outline moving against the door of the kitchen, while the umbrella disappears completely. Left behind is a slimy and blackish snake that climbs on the shelves until it finds a niche to its liking. It then curls up in a totally unusual way: instead of coiling up in a single circle, the cobra chooses to contort until its body forms two circles: an eight, the natural number? Or the lemniscate, the infinity symbol?
I can not decide and uncertainty is the most powerful poison for my attention.
My curiosity is falling faster and faster, and finally all interest disappears altogether.
Hades of my brain, Sheol of my thoughts, here I am! Take me in your malevolent arms, hold me tight until I choke. Now. Right now! As quick as you can.
My thoughts are once again too much and too fast. My mind is like the engine of a sports car, and my meninges are its pistons subjected to an excessive force. The speed is too high and disaster is imminent. I can hear the sound of my desperate and crackling synapses begging for mercy, but merciful is something I've never been and, in any case, in this very moment the only masters of my brain are its own synapses and its own neurons.
I'm surrounded by deafening sounds: the screeching brakes of a car that has just turned the corner. The monotonous hum of the microwave in Mrs. Hudson's kitchen. The desperate coupling of 's married ones across the street.
And yet, there is no noise strong enough to cover the sound of my infinite synaptic chemical reactions; too many pop-pop-pop, too fast (in the average minds there's one every millisecond, I wonder what supersonic peaks are touched in my higher brain).
The only solution now would be to push my brain beyond the point of no return, forcing my mind to work at an even faster pace. Inducing a restless and sick rhythm where speed and sound merge and change, becoming colour.
Intense colour, glowing colour, deadly and overwhelming colour, so powerful as to dominate even a mind so brilliant and rebellious as mine.
To obtain this I would need my 7% solution.
In order to condense sound, speed, and chemical reactions into a single thing and turn it into color - a blinding promise of almost instant oblivion - I need cocaine. Pure and in vials.
But Mycroft has seen fit to personally deal with any dealer who has ever dared to sell me this exquisite and illegal relief, and John...John would never forgive me for falling back into what he considers a vice, an unhealthy and dangerous addiction.
Inclement boredom has now sunk its claws into my mind; every sound, every movement, every blast is fast becoming more than I can take, like physical pain, as everything that happens around me seems to turn into many stilettos that, infamously and mercilessly, lash out against me, sticking deep into my flesh.
Pain is getting stronger and stronger and stronger, and I know that I'll be soon shouting to a God in whom I am not sure I believe, begging him for mercy.
But suddenly something warm and solid rests upon my head. Five fingers (short, stubby fingers hardened by age and use) are sliding through my hair, and just like that I am once again able to hear and see clearly.
And everything I see and hear is John, who is deliberately stroking my hair and smiling down at me. He hesitantly lets slip onto my stomach a corky box.
Due to the fingers that shamelessly continue to rub my scalp, I have enough clarity to be able to recognize the rudimentary hive (Langstroth hive) lying placidly in my lap, and the incessant buzzing of thousands of bees trapped in it.
Before I can say anything, John smiles again.
"No queen bee, sorry," he says, removing his finger from my curls, "Shall we go out and look for one?"
And just like that, the boredom is again a distant and faded memory. I am finally able to shake off that annoying fog that prevented my brain from working at full speed.
I don't thank John. I do not gratify him, not even with a smile. But I know him well enough to know that, the few seconds that pass from when I'm lying on the couch to when I have my coat on and my BlackBerry in my hand, are all the gratitude that he needs.
And he knows the truth: I'd be lost without my blogger.