December 8: Meerschaum Pipe
Prompt: From goodpenmanship - hansom cab
(Set one week after my response in Chapter One.)
5:47 PM. Watson is having a moment.
"If it's December, it must be sleet…"
"Why did I decide to go shopping today?"
"They said they would hold the pipe for me. I am a well-known, reliable customer. There was no urgency!"
"You flaming fool, you could have done this yesterday. It was quite a fine day, even though it was chilly. Did you really think it was going to be better tomorrow? What possessed you?"
Dr. John H. Watson, former Army Surgeon, wounded not so very long ago in Afghanistan, is standing outside Smithfield's Tobacco, one of his favorite tobacco shops, a fine meerschaum pipe and a premium blend of tobacco in hand - Holmes' Christmas present.
The amiable, rather lonely doctor unfortunately spent far too long chatting up the proprietor of the shop, talking pipes, blends, and the preferred tobaccos of his former colleagues in Her Majesty's Army. While thus engaged and distracted, the skies opened, and began gifting London with a cruel freezing rain, driven by a strong breeze.
The result was absolutely predictable, even inevitable. There wasn't a cab to be found anywhere - not an unoccupied one anyway…
"This is a bloody tragedy! It's almost Shakespearean. Julius Cesar had it better than me. So did Romeo and Juliet! Come to think of it, so did Richard III - and he died!"
As Watson stood outside, desperately attempting to flag down a cab, the driving sleet was finding every gap in his coat, every square inch of exposed flesh, every possible means of getting down the back of his neck, and every possible way to make his recent wounds ache. The writer in him began to find creative, crass, rude, downright vulgar descriptions for the weather. Casting his mind back over his just past fleeting thoughts, he said aloud, "You ninny! They all died!"
Eight cabs of all sorts and descriptions drove by.
"Almost 90% of the street traffic is cabs this time of day. So many. Can't I have just one?"
Twenty-three more cabs later, John Watson reached his breaking point. He stepped out in the street further, thinking, "Richard the Third be damned!"
Bellowing in his parade ground best, he screamed:
"A CAB! A CAB! MY KINGDOM FOR A HANSOM CAB!"
(The end.)
Author's note: This one practically wrote itself. Thanks for all the reviews from so many of you!