Baldwin the Skull
Once upon a time there was a skull named Baldwin.
Baldwin once had cradled a brain whose electrical impulses bounced around inside him at a delightful rate of speed. This went on for about 40 years, until one day, the electrical impulses stopped because Baldwin's owner died in a traffic mishap.
Baldwin expected either to be incinerated or buried in a coffin along with his dead owner's other body parts. Instead, apparently Baldwin's owner had given him up as a sacrifice to the pursuit of higher anatomical knowledge.
First, they took Baldwin's eyes, which he overheard them say were going to be given to someone alive who needed them. After that, he found himself being subjected to a number of strange experiments in a hospital laboratory.
The conductor of these experiments was a tall young man who was still very much alive. He had piercing gray eyes and a tousled mop of dark hair.
The first thing the young man (his name was Sherlock) did was immerse Baldwin in a vat of boiling water until all of his outer covering was gone. After that, Sherlock began hitting the skull with all manner of things, such as canes, umbrella handles and tire irons.
The skull eventually learned that Sherlock was studying the impressions the different objects left behind on him. But the young man wasn't done yet with Baldwin.
After the bizarre experiments were concluded, Sherlock took Baldwin home, set him on his fireplace mantle and occasionally held conversations with him.
Usually these conversations took place when the young man was on a "case," and Baldwin had to admit that they were very interesting conversations. Sherlock would pace up and down, up and down, working out each point of the "case" with Baldwin.
Baldwin would like to have helped, but having lost his power of speech, all he could do was empathize in silence. He no longer even had a lower jawbone. He nevertheless felt proud to be a valued listener.
Being so harmless, Baldwin never understood why the old woman Sherlock called his "landlady" took such exception to him. She thought he was "grisly" and "macabre," and was always hinting that she wished Sherlock "would get rid of that horrid thing."
It hurt Baldwin's feelings.
One day, Sherlock met another young man named John. John seemed rather unhappy when Baldwin first met him. He walked with a limp and frowned a lot. He even yelled, "Damn my leg!" at Sherlock's landlady.
This didn't bother Baldwin at all. If he could have, he'd have laughed- but all he could manage was a half grin.
At first, Baldwin was a bit concerned that "John" might hit him with his cane, as Sherlock had, but instead John and Sherlock ended up going off together on a "case."
That's when the landlady saw her chance.
After a flurry of dusting and straightening of Sherlock's flat, she donned a pair of rubber gloves and swept Baldwin off the mantle, holding him at arm's length, looking as if she was afraid he might bite her. Of course, he was long past capable of that.
Sherlock seemed to like this woman, but Baldwin didn't care for her at all.
The woman thrust Baldwin into a black plastic bag and after that, the skull had no idea where he was. He was placed somewhere and heard the sound of a huge metal container slamming down above him.
Because it was the dead of winter, it was cold inside the dark bag, inside the metal container. A period of time passed and Baldwin resigned himself to the idea that he might remain here forever.
Then one day, Baldwin heard the metal container open and someone grabbed the bag he was in. He was carried a ways until someone reached into the bag and pulled him out.
It was Sherlock. John was there, too.
"I knew Mrs. Hudson would not be keeping it in her flat, as she'd expressed such distaste for it," Sherlock told John dryly. "The garbage skip was the most likely alternative."
At which point, Sherlock set Baldwin back in his spot on the mantle, where he remains to this day.
Things had changed, however. Apparently, John and Sherlock now were living together and instead of arguing the points of his case with Baldwin, Sherlock argued them out with John.
Baldwin couldn't help feeling a bit jealous, but all he could do was gaze on mutely, conceding that perhaps it was better for Sherlock to have a companion who had legs and could go places with him.
Sometimes Sherlock had taken Baldwin with him and people had given them very strange looks.
Besides, Baldwin was often amused at the antics of the two men. Like the time Sherlock was so jealous of John's new girlfriend and how upset John got one day when Sherlock was shooting his gun at the wall.
There were many other tales that Baldwin could have told about the goings-on at 221B Baker Street…if he'd had a tongue and a lower jawbone. At least he'd been restored to his corner of the mantle, where he could watch silently…with a knowing half-grin.