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The Adventure of the Wandering Womb
‘Ridiculous,’ my friend pronounced as he looked down his overly long hooked nose at the device in my hands. ‘Positively ridiculous, Watson. I’ve never seen the likes of this device before.’
I had modified the device myself using a system of flowing water pipes and the clockwork devices already in use. I wasn’t really anything approaching a tinker, but surely Holmes would see my work as a medical marvel, a merger of two schools of thought. ‘Holmes, I’ve worked on this, really I have.’
Holmes smiled around his afternoon cigarette, lit with the remains of his noontime pipe, a whisper of smoke escaping his thin lips. ‘I have no doubt of your work, my dear doctor,’ he said with a fond chuckle, ‘Although I doubt that a woman’s fickle nature can be found betwixt her thighs.’
He leaned back in his chair and took another puff, still gazing at the sleek precise design of the machine. ‘Didn’t you complain about a woman’s nature? Didn’t you? Correct me if I’m wrong, Holmes. Please do.’
‘Watson,’ Holmes said, leaning forward, ‘I want you to take this in and heed this well. A woman should be judged by her brain, not by where her womb wanders off to.’ He shook his head. ‘Didn’t Irene Adler teach us this lesson already?’ Holmes sighed and ran his hand over the shaft of the device. ‘Besides, I doubt any woman would dare trust herself near this vibrating beast. Have you ever tested it?’
‘I have!’ I snapped, prying his hand off the device, ‘Really Holmes, do you think I’ve learned nothing from you?’
Holmes grinned toothily. ‘If you had learned nothing from me, do you think we would have still been partners after the Hope case?’ He paused, as wont his case to do. ‘Still my Boswell, have you done the empirical testing?’
‘I have,’ said I, ‘Holmes, you act you were the first person to teach me the scientific method.’
Holmes still liked (and still does) to think of himself as the wisest person in the room even as he laments there is no one as intelligent as he in the world. The duller he believes one to be, the politer he appears to be. It generally takes a week before the person realises that have been insulted in the most polite way. In my years of friendship with Sherlock Holmes, I have come to treasure his cold scientific side. ‘I do believe I would like to see this vibrating machine as work.’
‘Of course.’
‘Double-blind study. One patient.’
‘If one is what it takes to convince you then one is what it takes.’ I conceded.
It was decided that would meet back in Holmes’ rooms in that night. I penned a quick note to Mary explaining that I would be out, but leaving out the true reason for my absence. While my duty to women is a doctor’s task, when I look upon the beauty of my Mary, it almost makes me feel guilty. A woman’s vulva and the swell on her clitoris under my fingers now feels adulterous where as before I was married it was a duty. A wandering womb causes ill thoughts despite Holmes’ thoughts on the subject.
Three continents of women have I known, both as a lover and as a doctor. And I have used my knowledge in both worlds to create the device. The device calms and soothes. It cures what ails them. And after tonight, Holmes would finally start talking to me as a scientific colleague again.
The night air was frigid and I could feel the twin aches of the splintered bullet that had lodged itself in both my shoulder and thigh. It was not a good night to be out and about. It was a cold bitter evening with a coal-slurry-slush in the street, ice patches in betwixt and all I wanted was to be someplace warm. I cursed Holmes’ name, I cursed my own fool heartedness for letting my ego get the best of me.
Despite the fact I was in no danger, I made my usual practice of dismissing the first two hansoms before taking the third. It is always best to keep to one’s practices even in times of danger even if one is not in combat. As I started my journey back to what had once been Holmes and my old shared flat, I began to wonder whom had Holmes chosen to be my test subject.
No doubt he had chosen a prostitute from Whitechapel, to see how far my machine could be pushed to the limits. After all considering all that those poor girls have been put through, they must have severe cases of uterine malposition.
Did Holmes think I would back away in disgust? It is not up to a doctor to back away from his patients. I took an oath after all, to help those in need. And a girl from Whitechapel, clearly in the most need of the device.
I vowed silently to work doubly so to help this poor lass in whatever way I could even if the machine broke down and I had to bring her uterus into alignment with my own prick. This wasn’t just for science. This was obviously for someone in need of my... my device’s need.
I knocked on the door and waited patiently in the blistering cold. It was Holmes and not Mrs Hudson who opened it. ‘Excellent,’ he said, ‘I’m glad you still know the way. The device and the patient are already upstairs. I’ve sent Mrs Hudson to her sister’s for some much needed vacation time. We don’t want to be disturbed, now do we?’
He had a toothy grin on his bony face that stretched his already thin lips thinner. There was a glimmer in his pale eyes. ‘I suppose not,’ I said, hanging up my coat, scarf, and hat before pulling off my gloves. ‘Really Holmes, what is up your sleeve? You look like the detective who devoured the cat who ate the canary.’
Holmes’ smile only broadened, every tobacco-stained tooth on display.
‘I suppose I will have to find out.’
‘The purpose of a double-blind,’ he mock-lamented, not at all sounding in the least bit convincing as we climbed the seventeen steps to 221B.
The gaslights had been dimmed to their lowest setting. My device was positioned neck to a table, which had been draped fully with a sheet. The figure underneath was very feminine and very clean smelling, scrubbed clean so that I could not tell whom she was. The sheet pooled slightly into the delta at the apex of her thighs, damp where her cleft had started oozing. She was clearly in need of my help.
‘So,’ Holmes asked, ‘Can you?’
‘I won’t say I’ll try,’ I answered, wiping my already sweaty brow. I could feel my penis swelling slightly, but I told it to suffer this for we were married to a wonderful woman at home. ‘I’ll say that I will.’
‘That’s all I needed to hear,’ Holmes said and pulled off the sheet.
She was blonde with a sweet face with soft blue eyes and spiralling curls that were now matted to her drenched with face. I knew that face for I had kissed it that morning before I went to show my device to Holmes. Damn that man, he knew very well what he was doing. Holmes had picked my wife on purpose. ‘You said this was a double-blind study, Holmes!’ I raged.
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Indeed it is. You had no idea she was the candidate and she had no idea it was you until the veil was lifted. I simply told her she was testing a new device. You may tell your husband what you told me, Mrs Watson.’
Mary flushed. ‘I believe myself to be suffering from hysteria,’ she said, ‘It is nothing.’ She looked away. ‘I have had the symptoms treated several times and yet they returned. Mr Holmes has told me of a devices, James dear that is like no other.’
‘Yes, I err, invented it, but I don’t think it’s proper to use on one’s wife,’ I said.
‘And why not?’ Holmes interjected, ‘Is it not a husband’s duty to watch after his wife, just as it is a doctor’s duty to watch after his patients?’
‘Well, yes, Holmes,’ I said, flummoxed and at a bit of a loss for words, ‘But you have to admit this is most unorthodox.’
‘Pish-posh,’ Holmes said, ‘If I believed in orthodoxy, I wouldn’t be a consulting detective. We have a patient here who suffering from a wandering womb and a device, which you insist, is like no other. One which I have yet to see any physician’s office.’
‘Yes. I suppose so, Holmes, but it really isn’t proper.’
‘And it is in our best interest to test it,’ he concluded sitting down on the sofa, bony knees drawn up his equally bony chin.
Holmes lapsed into silence, his pale eyes watching us either waiting for a mistake or showing interest. In his tattered mouse coloured dressing gown with his hooked nose, he looked like an odd combination between an owl and a hawk.
This was between Mary and I now. She was suffering and I was her doctor. I probed between her thighs, fingers sampling her dampness. She wasn’t just moist or damp; she squelched liberally beneath my fingers. ‘I’m sorry, Mary.’ My prick pressed insistently against my trousers begging to be set free and be buried deep in folds. I ignored it for her sake. ‘I’m so sorry.’
She brought up her finger to my lips, ‘Hush, James,’ she said, using my nickname. My middle name is Hamish. When she had figured out it had meant James, she had decided John was too plain a name and James was much noble a name for someone like me. She’s been corrected by my friends whenever she uses it (‘”James?” His name is John, silly girl.) ‘If anyone is at fault it is me, I should have told you, but you were having so many grand adventures.’
‘And clearly it is my fault for leaving on your own,’ I said, touching my lips to her forehead brushing aside what had once been carefully done pin curls.
‘Again hush you,’ Mary ordered, ‘A woman will always have her husband, but a man always needs to have his best friend.’ She craned her neck to look up at Holmes. She whispered, ‘I look at him and I see a man who needs a friend more than he would admit. You bring out the best in him.’ She looked at the device next to the table. ‘Even if it’s in the form of madcap schemes.’
‘I love you,’ I said and picked up the vibrator.
It was elegant. There was no other word for it. It was leather over brass ribs and nubs, designed to move in all ways that my own shaft could. I had spent many an afternoon observing my own movement so that I could duplicate the motions in the device. It was warm just like my own penis due to the water that rushed through it and designed to splash inner walls of the womb with the same warm water to trick the body into thinking it had been seeded.
It makes sense, does it not? If the woman has her hysterical paroxysm, but does not receive the seed, as she should have, then her body is not fulfilled. The hysteria continues. My device tricks her body fully.
Mary opened her thighs and I slid the wand between them, easing it into her body. ‘And I you.’
The artificial phallus split her and I almost felt jealous. I felt like ripping it from lower lips and filling her fully or taking her from behind, but I drove that from my mind. I turned my attention to machine and turned it on.
Her breath hitched in her throat. It was a short breath more like a little gulp. There was a shuffling on the sofa as Holmes leaned in to get a better view. If I didn’t know better I would think he was interested. In my Mary? Well, she is a Goddess among women even compared to his vaunted Irene Adler.
Mary’s back arched as the vibrator twisted in her. Her labia was already swelling with blood. She was deep in her hysteria. Quickly I dialled back the strength of the device and she cursed my name even as she ground her crotch against the leather shaft. If she came too quickly, the treatment would be a failure. ‘Damn you,’ she said.
‘It has to build,’ I said.
Her hips bucked again and her hands twisted in her hands. ‘I don’t want it to build. I want… want…’ She mewled piteously at the back of her throat and I wanted to give in, honestly I did, but for Mary’s sake, I would cure her.
Gently I pushed her outer labia apart. Her inner lips puffed most becomingly, but her clitoris was still hooded. I looked at Holmes. Not only had did he not believe in a condition, which struck women everywhere, he knew my device was far from complete. And he hadn’t told me, the nerve of that man.
Well of course not. Of course he wouldn’t. He wanted me to figure it out for myself. Holmes always had. He valued my ability to think for myself or at least my ability to improve myself in my day-to-day life. I thought quickly as I could as Mary decided scratching my back through my shirt was a good idea. ‘Damn you, harder faster, James. I want it.’
I removed the device for a quick modification. The instant I turned it off, I heard her little cry of rage. First I punctured one of the lesser pipes on the surface before adding a brass tube from Holmes’ own drawer of odds and ends. I could hear him grumbling, but this was for science of course.
‘Where were you?’ Mary demanded sarcastically once I arrived. She was leaning on her elbows now and oddly looked a bit less hysterical, but every doctor knows a wandering womb lurks beneath the surface. ‘I missed you.’ I wasn’t sure if that was sarcasm or if she was talking to my device, the leather and brass phallus.
I turned the device back on and shoved it in. Once more into the breech or once more into Mary’s vulva as the case may be. Now water pulsed against her clitoris. Mary came alive. There was no other term for it. Her nipples swelled and became rosy. My penis wept in pleasure at the thought and the image of surging between her pale breasts filled my mind. ‘Ahhh, James, like that, yes, there, in my sweet little hole, push it in. All the way in.’ Holmes didn’t correct her on my name, but then again he never did.
She twisted and keened beneath by hands. Holmes was at my side in an instant. ‘Well done,’ he noted, ‘I knew you had it in you.’
‘Don’t congratulate me on my work just yet,’ I said. Holmes, so like the younger of us to leap to conclusions when he sees what he wants to see. He’d never admit to it. He’s proud of being a thinking machine. ‘Mary has a very needy womb.’
‘The neediest,’ Mary noted. ‘Oh get on with it.’ And with a push of her hand over mine she buried the vibrator as far as it would go inside her folds and came. The look on her face was one of the pure joy. ‘Oh that hit spot that. Lovely. Oh… oh… my.’ Her leg kicked reflectively and her hips bucked.
Holmes switched the vibrator off and eased it out of her. He leaned in and studied her folds careful. He probed his long bony fingers in and apologised when she winced. He finally bent down and sniffed before licking. There was nothing sexual about it. It was purely scientific. ‘There’s blood, Watson,’ he said. ‘Honestly, you should be more careful with your wife.’
‘It’s nothing he did,’ Mary said finally. ‘I have had this problem. I’ve been told it’s related to the hysteria.’
He was quiet for a while. He steepled his hands together as if praying. ‘Does it mean anything, Holmes?’ I asked for I’ve never seen anything like that in Hysteria myself, but doctors are forever coming up with new ways to diagnosis conditions, so perhaps…
I’m getting ahead of myself. ‘I’m sure if Mrs Watson was told that, there is no need to worry.’ He chuckled, but it sounded strained rather than pleasant.
As for the device, there’s an interesting story to that device. The next week the device vanished from my office before I had the chance to show to members of my medical community. It was there one moment, gone the next. Well, not really gone that fast. I went out for lunch with Stamford and when I returned, there were glass shards from my shattered window on the floor and my rug had been scraped to hell where the device had been dragged out.
When I told Holmes, he showed no real interest, it was a missing bit of hogwash and if anything it was broken into pieces by the jealous medical committee. ‘Well think about this,’ he said, lighting his pipe, ‘Doctors want their patients to come back. Constantly. The worst thing you could do is create a small home edition so those women would never have to visit a doctor again.’
‘Such a pity.’
‘Yes,’ Holmes agreed, ‘It really is… was a impressive device.’
Time marched on. It turned out that Holmes had been hiding something. Something he had discovered on that night. Mary hadn’t had hysteria. There was something else in her womb, a tumour that prevented her from bearing children and slowly sapped her life. It had caused the blood, which Holmes had noted, from her vaginal region, the cause of which Holmes kept to himself.
When I arrived, Mary had been freshly bathed. This was because when she arrived, Holmes found that Mary smelt of a sort sickly sweet, like old newspaper, and death. He figured she had picked up something in the streets and had her bathe, but when he smelt it again and noted the bleeding, the cancer in her womb was obvious. He knew before I did that Mary was dying. Long before he met Professor Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls.
I’ve forgiven him. It’s not in my nature to hate. Besides, we’re both old now. I’ve remarried and Holmes keeps bees in Sussex Downs. It’s beyond time for feuds.
More recently I’ve found the device. He hmmmed and hawed when I found it in his bedroom when we were doing some repairs. He’s not as fast with his rheumatism, so he wasn’t able to hide the device as cleverly as should have. Perhaps he thought he could pass it off as some sort of art. But after all those years, I could still recognise my device. My oddly well maintained device. ‘Is this what I think it is?’
‘The device?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps.’
‘You took it? You told me it was stolen.’
Holmes cleared his throat. ‘It was. In a manner of speaking.’
‘There is a reason behind this is here?’
He placed his hand on the device almost reverently. ‘My dear Watson. I’ve discovered all people have needs. And this device…’ He flushed slightly beneath his thinning scalp, ‘Well as I’ve said to you before I’ve never seen the likes of this device before.’