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sweetandshortTitle: Waiting for
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (ACD)
Rating: Gen
Length: 300
Prompt: Waiting for
Summary: Holmes wants to pay his rent early. Mrs. Hudson worries.
Mrs. Hudson tried to look unflummoxed, but she stared at the proffered piece of paper as if it were a coiled cobra.
“But why, Mister Holmes, your rent is due on the last day of the month? It is only the fifteenth.”
“Yes, the Ides.”
Mrs. Hudson shivered. She had read her Shakespeare.
She studied her tenant, and if he felt any discomfiture in her scrutiny, he didn’t show it. He stood so still he might’ve been a figure in a painting entitled, The Last Day of the Month.
But it wasn’t the last day of the month.
“Why?” she asked again.
“I want to settle my accounts early.”
“Why?”
“I want my affairs in order.”
“Why?”
She was a woodpecker tapping at a soft spot in a tree trunk.
Why, why, why?
“I just do.”
She snatched the cheque from his hand.
“I shall keep it here. Until the end of the month.”
“Very well.”
He was gone for most of a fortnight, and the sight of the cheque, when Mrs. Hudson deigned, or dared, to look at it, gave her no peace. Like a spectre at a homely feast. She had never before considered ink and paper heartless, but she did now.
She waited. The days passed. She was, she realised, waiting for something to terrible happen. Disaster loomed in her thoughts. Sometimes she imagined wild fancies, horrible catastrophes, monstrous villains. Disgrace. Or simple death. Then, at last, the thirty first arrived.
Her tenant was broken, and bruised, but judging by the glint in his eye, victorious.
She marched upstairs with a hard step and met him with a stony countenance and a stern voice. She returned the cheque to him.
He took it, his brow furrowed in confusion.
“You owe ten percent more for worry,” she explained.
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (ACD)
Rating: Gen
Length: 300
Prompt: Waiting for
Summary: Holmes wants to pay his rent early. Mrs. Hudson worries.
Mrs. Hudson tried to look unflummoxed, but she stared at the proffered piece of paper as if it were a coiled cobra.
“But why, Mister Holmes, your rent is due on the last day of the month? It is only the fifteenth.”
“Yes, the Ides.”
Mrs. Hudson shivered. She had read her Shakespeare.
She studied her tenant, and if he felt any discomfiture in her scrutiny, he didn’t show it. He stood so still he might’ve been a figure in a painting entitled, The Last Day of the Month.
But it wasn’t the last day of the month.
“Why?” she asked again.
“I want to settle my accounts early.”
“Why?”
“I want my affairs in order.”
“Why?”
She was a woodpecker tapping at a soft spot in a tree trunk.
Why, why, why?
“I just do.”
She snatched the cheque from his hand.
“I shall keep it here. Until the end of the month.”
“Very well.”
He was gone for most of a fortnight, and the sight of the cheque, when Mrs. Hudson deigned, or dared, to look at it, gave her no peace. Like a spectre at a homely feast. She had never before considered ink and paper heartless, but she did now.
She waited. The days passed. She was, she realised, waiting for something to terrible happen. Disaster loomed in her thoughts. Sometimes she imagined wild fancies, horrible catastrophes, monstrous villains. Disgrace. Or simple death. Then, at last, the thirty first arrived.
Her tenant was broken, and bruised, but judging by the glint in his eye, victorious.
She marched upstairs with a hard step and met him with a stony countenance and a stern voice. She returned the cheque to him.
He took it, his brow furrowed in confusion.
“You owe ten percent more for worry,” she explained.
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