A Certain Marysue

Author's note: I can't submit this one to 'The Magic Door' because my muse and marysue is not a canonical character - and how she resents that! I mean she resents it that she is 1) not in the Sherlock Holmes canon and 2) that I call her a marysue. She claims that if she is a marysue, then so is Dr. Watson. She also insists that I no longer imprison her inside my head. She wants OUT and she will not let any other character speak to me until she is OUT. So ... here she is.

One problem with one's own creations is that they will confront one at the most inconvenient moments.

"Please, Fraulein Doktor. Don't bother me now," I begged. I have to restore this mess to order before we open."

"Then why are you typing instead of cleaning?"

Marlena Falke did not wait for my reply, but swished back her auburn hair and strolled around the Room, examining the strewn books, the collapsed shelves, the broken ceramics. She knew I was flummoxed, just like she knew she was right. She always is right, even when she's wrong. I love the lady, but she is maddening.

"Because you are inspiring me again!" I told her. "Every time I'm supposed to be working, you enter my head with a new idea or an old complaint."

She shrugged. She has a graceful shrug.

"Don't do that! You are a marysue because I feel like a cathumping moose next to you."

"That is no fault of mine." She tested the strength of the chairs, then sat on the long, heavy oaken table.

"Mar-len-aaaa ... ! You were a clerk here once. You know that is against the Rules."

"It is the only stable piece of furniture in the Room."

"If you intend to stay, you could help me sort out the debris."

"I will, after a carpenter repairs those bookcases. But that is not why I am here. I have come to scold you."

That did not surprize me. Like most physicians, den mothers, and marysues, she cannot resist saying 'I told you so' at every occasion.

So I sighed. "Well, what did I do wrong this time?"

She glanced through one of the books - probably Round the Red Lamp. She's a sucker for medical stories. I can't say a word when House is on TV.

I hoped she would concentrate on the story and leave me get on with my job. No such luck.

"In your vignette about the policeman, you did not describe the Room adequately. How can your readers imagine the extent of this damage around us if you do not 'set the stage'?"

"All the writer's guides say it's boring to begin with a description."

"In that case, it was necessary." Marlena slid off the table. "So now we will correct your mistake."

She scanned the Room and briskly commanded me to take dictation. I asked her if she thought I was Superwoman - or if she thought she was. I had not given her x-ray vision when I created her.

"Would you rather clean this mess alone or with my help?" she challenged.

I rolled my eyes "Taking dictation as ordered, ma'am."

"At last! Begin. The room is L shaped -- "

"No it isn't. It's shaped like a swan's head and neck."

"Like the goose with the carbuncle in its crop," Marlena amended. "You are sitting in the crop."

"Geese don't have crops."

"Do you want to argue with Sherlock Holmes, John H. Watson and Arthur Conan Doyle, Madam Carbuncle? Their goose had a crop, so this one does. All walls, except for the tempered and thick glass door, are lined with bookshelves seven feet high."

"Were lined," I said, looking ruefully at the books scattered over the floor.

Doktor Falke pretended not to hear me. "There is a long, narrow window at the end of the neck, or at the tip of the 'L'. --."

"'Ell' on earth, taking your dictation," I grumbled.

"I am speaking slowly. Why do you refuse to lean shorthand? I keep inspiring you but you can't follow me because you write like a tortoise. So you lose all my good work and nothing gets typed and posted.

"Resume, bitte. The bookshelves are - or were - made of pinewood. The long refectory-style table in the center is made of oak -- ."

" -- And weighs several tons. The carpet beneath is worn, possibly Persian in style and always trips me up when I'm shelving."

Marlena stood gazing around, as if lost in thought. "I shelved in a room like this, in the old Central Library. In the 1930's. Three quarters of a century ago." She looked at me, at the broken computer monitor, then turned at looked through the glass door to the modern library outside. "I did then what you do now. Some things change but shelving stays the same."

She shook her shoulders and continued, briskly. "In the cabinet are letters from Conan Doyle to his publisher Herbert Greenhough-Smith, miniature books, first editions and several books bought at auction from Doyle's personal library."

"We have some notebooks that he and Lady Conan Doyle used on their tour of Canada in 1914," I added. "A good thing they were not in the Room when this happened."

"So is it good that this stayed intact." She gently touched the Bigelow-Redmond card index cabinet - a handsome item, also oak by it's veneer. "I filed catalogue cards into such a cabinet. I was young then, so naive. So much has changed in so long."

"There's the tantalus and the gasogene." I scribbled them onto my list. "The pipes. The two old fashioned chairs... No. Four. Two stuffed and two banker's chairs. Six wooden chairs, two benches and a kick-stool to reach the top shelves. The librarian's desk. The old microscope. The old medical bottles. Empty of course. The Napoleon busts. How are we going to replace those? And all those plaster statuettes of Holmes? The tin street sign: "Borough of St. Marylebone. Baker Street N.W. 1" That's okay. The drawing of 'The Great Mouse Detective' and the one of Rathbone and Bruce. Mr. Hollyer's Baker Street Irregulars shilling. The pipe, the rock from the Reichenbach, etc. on the fireplace mantel. The new books and the old books, with no room for more. I wish people would cease writing Holmes stories until the Library builds a bigger Room. There are the bound issues of the Strand. The Rathbone/Bruce audio cassettes. The Brett series videocassettes. The Baker Street Journal, Canadian Holmes and all the other periodicals. In short, everything that I have to reshelve or sweep away. ... I wish there was whiskey in that tantalus."

"You have never drunk spirits."

"Looking at this mess, I could learn to. Do you think the readers will 'sense' the Room from this list?"

Marlena heaved a sigh. "Perhaps not from a list. But there is an ambiance here. A sense of the past. Staring down through the window, I could almost believe the street was gas-lit, and hear the clopping of hooves."

"Or the clanging of the old streetcar of your day."

"This place is timeless. It is something for me to take to the men in the tunnel -- in that distressingly distant day when you will write about them again." She smiled. "Andrew is a great fan of Sherlock Holmes. So is Herr Schultz - a very great fan. I can't disappoint them, so write me back into their world."

"But you will help me clean up first?"

"When those bookcases are repaired, creator mine, and you write about me again. Not until then."