2016 BIRTHDAY CHALLENGE
Each year we provide an essay topic in a special birthday edition of the Muse.
The Assignment
Provide a story for an illustration by Laurie Fraser Manifold. The illustration featured numerous cleverly costumed felines in and around 221B (below).
Birthday Challenge Winners
Our winner was Sandy Kozinn, and the runner-up was Brad Keefauver. Honorable mentions went to Elaine Coppola, Terry Hunt, and Warren Randall.
“A Tail of Baker Street”
by Sandy Kozinn
It’s four o’clock on Baker Street and, though we cannot see
Into the kitchen, Mrs. Hudson’s there, she’s brewing CATnip tea.
At the window, Holmes regards the street while reading all the news.
(He’s already checked the back bedroom to see what’s in the MEWS.)
While Sherlock sits, he smokes his pipe. It helps him while he thinks.
He’s trying to fit the things he sees into a chain of LYNX.
A sailor, eyepatch on his PUSS, is muttering at his peg.
“Shiver me timbers, shiver ME – OW! I hate this missing leg!”
Watson comes home and enters the door, hungry as a TIGER.
He’s imagining what there’ll be for tea. A PAN THAt’s paté pie? Grrrrrr.
From the house next door a client comes. It’s Holmes she wants to see.
She has KITTENish ways, but her veil tells Holmes there’s also a mystery.
It turns out she’s a bit of a COUGAR, fooling around with the tar.
She’s lying about the pair of them, but it doesn’t get her far.
Yes, the lady is a CHEETAH, there is no doubt of that,
But the sailor’s far worse at LION. He wants money; he OCELOT.
Holmes calls in the policeman. He’s not CERVAL in the least,
He agrees the sailor has certainly acted like a beast,
Since blackmail is a vicious CATegory of crime.
Now on Baker Street they’re all FELINE fine. After all, it is tea time.
“The Wrong Turn”
by Brad Keefauver
The prisoner of 223B Baker Street attempted to toss one more letter onto the doorstep of neighboring 221.
And one more time he failed. The previous four were all in the bushes, but this one, this oh-so-risky fifth attempt had been blown onto the public sidewalk, that most dangerous spot of all.
His captor, who had left moments before in his constable’s uniform, would not be back for hours. The prisoner’s hopes lay with someone on this street finding the letter and kindly carrying it the few short paces it needed to get to the address on the envelope.
But the other clients seeking 221 were too furtive, too immersed in their own issues, to notice a stray envelope on the sidewalk. And the rest of the traffic on the street, the seamen looking for employ, the society matrons paying morning social calls, did not look promising to the prisoner’s plan.
If only he had faith in his own ability to land a leap from a second floor window. But he had been very ill after his experiences in the Afghan war. A Tazhi Spay bullet had set him on this path. His choice of using the personal ads instead of old Stamford’s help in finding a roommate had proven too unwise as well. So many ill-fated moments had brought him to this place. Now all he needed was one kindness of fate to get him out.
John H. Catson, M.D., looked down at the letter and waited.