Sherlock Holmes' Great Escape

Page 427 concluded Sherlock Holmes' obligatory service for what he hoped would be some considerable length of time. Once again, he had served Doyle’s words with dignity and honour. "The End" fell on page 427. Two few letter words read silently as the book was closed and shelved. Like the very first ending read, Holmes was transferred from page 427 to the place all characters of fiction retreat between readings.

Each character born on a piece of wood-pulp, carefully crafted in ink and captivating life in the conscience generates a residue of existence. Once any form of existence occurs, the universe grants a home, it has no choice. The characters of fiction, like any would, crafted both home and community. While unread, they lived in apartments and houses. They had lawns, pets, and played softball on sunny days. Today, Holmes, while unread, decided to go for a run. Running offered Holmes a clarity he relished.

He ran until exhausted.As he entered the lobby of his apartment building, Holmes passed through the mirrored entry. Noting his image, he was content. Holmes was an honest six feet tall with wavy brown hair and blue eyes. The owner of a solid build, Holmes was certainly capable physically in addition to his well-documented penchant for problem solving. Had you a different vision of Holmes, well, you have been wrong all this time. You may also be surprised to learn that James Bond has unibrow despite numerous occasions friends have given the gift of tweezers. Coincidentally, Holmes was walking past Bond while making his way to his suite. Bond was dressed in his black tie best as he was about to make his grand entrance into the second chapter of Goldfinger currently being read somewhere in Istanbul. Holmes wondered to himself, how could Bond not notice? Holmes was not about to be the first to mention it either. Holmes saw Gregor Samsa and Hamlet playing chess. Hamlet was having difficulty dealing with Samsa’s latest defensive gambit. Holmes hoped swordplay could be avoided. Hamlet brought his Oedipal issues with him. 500 years of therapy and no improvement. Oedipus thought it was funny. Hamlet didn’t like him very much either.Many of the most senior citizens of this community were spending more and more time at home as Shakespeare and Kafka had surrendered centre stage to Dan Brown. Robert Lang was rarely home. In all, many of the deep and refined characters of fiction were left in backrooms and old buildings in this land of fiction. Perhaps their time had passed as the newer characters were all far more flashy. It seemed that in order for attention to be drawn and credence won, characters need the gist of volume and self-congratulatory pursuits. Characters who followed accustomed formats with assured outcomes had won favour. The deeper characters are too complex and difficult to label for a world determined to avoid uncontrolled discovery. Prozac was prescribed for modern literature. Times are a changing. Time had not been kind to Hesther Prynne. Hesther’s idle time had been spent gambling on Mark Twain’s riverboat. She now owed money to some of fictions most notorious shylocks. The A weighed heavy on her. She could never see that all those unconventional wear the A. Well, maybe not a scarlet A but still, a stigma. Never mind, actually, wearing the scarlet A would suck.

Unlike many of his neighbours, Holmes enjoyed his time at home. Holmes fate as a master crime solver was not his dream. It was his living but never his passion. Holmes dreamed of wide-open spaces. He longed for unconfined landscapes where he could breathe deeper. He dreamed of being a cowboy. The hat, vest, boots and jeans secreted away in the recesses of his closet somehow connected Holmes to the faint hope of his unspoken dreams. How could Holmes speak of his dreams? He belonged at cocktail parties not on the range. He had been categorized. Holmes had been deemed. Once one is deemed, what in deemnation can anyone do?Holmes sat quietly and read the sports page. Shelley’s Shocks had defeated Chaucer’s Knights in a hard fought football game. Frankenstein had rushed for 300 yards. He was sipping his brandy when it ended. Normalcy ended. The devout normalcy that was his life simply ended. It came without long consideration or careful conception. It came like thunder from a clear sky. It came like some lone onion ring that had somehow made its way into your order of fries. Holmes donned his western wear, put on his topcoat. It was time to leave.

The place fictional characters had a lore of its own. Not of characters but of the design of their slice of the universe. The professional demands of the citizenry and hectic nature of everyday life had relegated all lore to hokum. Holmes put his hope in hokum.

Keeping to the outskirts of the community, Holmes avoided attention. The southern boundary of the community lay along a foreboding mountain landscape. A mountain ofyee old words. The words comprising the mountains are obsolete pieces of the lexicon.Forgotten words held in storage. Words that had once built nations. Words are powerful.Words change the world. Words affect every life every day. It should follow as no surprise that words are gargantuan. Obsolete words are monstrous monoliths. For instance, "exegesis" has a height and depth of 37 meters and a length of 254 meters. Even if unfamiliar with metric, you can sense the magnitude. There are so many words. To the citizenry of this community, the mountain range was a graveyard. For the older characters, some of these words were the progenitors of their very being! The mountainscape was seldom spoken of. None ventured into the mountainscape. None save Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock had heard the hokum. It was rumoured that beyond the dark landscape of forgotten words stands a door. Not a mystical portal but a simple door with a knob. Or, maybe a lever handle, I don't know for sure. The point being there may be a door to the corporeal dimension. Spurred on, Holmes eased into the land of obsolete words. Holmes was quickly overwhelmed. So much effort expended for so little progress. Obsolete words were near unscalable. There was no path. Holmes felt pangs of hopelessness discharge themselves into his stout heart. Complicating matters, Holmes had taken a wrong turn at "rogation" and seemed to be going in circles. He sat spent resting his cowboy hat on his knee as though resting his very hopes and dreams. He was lost.

Through the constant lore of overcome challenges a singular abetting act emerges again and again. Behind every success, somewhere the recipe has the ingredient of a helping hand. But what hand could move so ominous an obstacle? The only facilitation for the removal of forgotten words from this dark landscape would be there current use on the printed page. As an obsolete word is read, it will briefly disappear from this imposing landscape. The universe will quickly realize the anomalous use of the word and it will promptly be returned to its place in the mountain of forgotten words. With a strategically designed paragraph, it would be possible for a short-lived pathway to emerge. Holmes needed the help of the omniscient voice. But what author would dare change literary history for the freedom of a single dream. Could there be an author willing, willing to write a wrong? Without a helping hand, Holmes would continue to nourish hearts and minds while being denied access to his own. Are not hopes and dreams the stuff of souls? Holmes surveiled the impossibility around him as he grasped his fading hope with every part of himself.

Intermission(it's ok to refresh your coffee now, not to much sugar please)

The landscape of forgotten words is a sight to rival the most formidabble any minds eye had adduced. Yes, adduced. You'll see. Anyway, if written and read, their brief displacement from this land would allow Holmes to navigate an escape. Somewhere, out there, could there be an author to help? Might the universeprovide a fribble fabulist of facetiae able to lucubrate and deal quietus to the tenebrous locus of barriers at hand? Perhaps a quixotic soul such as someone you just may know. Repugning doubt, Holmes sorel shoes stepped non-sequaciously into the spirit vitiating landscape. Holmes trenchent bearing was buoyed by an emerging path! Holmes moved with circumspection through doleful corridors. Anon, a luculent path evolved! Within sight a relucent opening presented itself as a welkin. It was a door. With a lever handle! Aahhh! Ok. Anyway, Holmes was free.

He walked through the door and found himself in Peru. The door opened into a small coffee house in a small town. Holmes was immediately confronted with a problem. He did not speak Spanish. he waited a moment expecting a Spanish language background to be written in and fluency to follow. Nothing happened. He was on his own. He would need to learn Spanish. He did manage to order a cup of coffee. It was not what he expected. Sugar helped. He had no money to pay for the coffee.Fortunately his top coat was accepted in trade.

Holmes walked out of the shop and onto a quiet street. He squinted into a sky far more bright and blue than he had been led to believe possible. he had no inkling of where he might find himself in a day or two. How would he survive? It wasterrifying. It was overhwelmingly uncertain. It was perfect. The uncertainty was his own. When you own your own uncertainty, it becomes possibility. He creid. he walked toward some something, somewhere.
This paragraph represents the passing of some time. Let's say, 1 year. The place elapsed time fades into is uncertain at this time. It must go somewhere. Time does pass. You are now older than when you read you at the beginning of this sentence. Time is like that. At any rate, we now rejoin Holmes a year into his new life.

"Binga la cosina." a weathered man on horseback called. It was time for dinner. Commida tiempe. The old rancher was happy with all his hands. Even the British man, Holmes, was working out well. Holmes had even solved the rancher's long standing mystery of the prankster who was sneaking into the livery and greasing his saddle. Holmes would be along for dinner soon enough. Holmes always rode the long trail back. Who knows why.

Holmes absorbed the scenic vista of mesas around him. He breathed deeply. He found differences in each and every sunset. A beauty immune to description. The world found a means of amazement with every passing second. He smiled and marvelled at the popularity of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's series of novels about wildly successful criminals. It would be years before he owned his own small ranch, but he was on his way. He tilted his cowboy hat upward and wondered if there might be rain in those distant clouds. he could see so very far.