Bacon's Dozen by Anna Castle

Author:Anna Castle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: elizabethan mystery, tudor mystery, victorian mystery, paranormal mystery, set in London, maya history, new mexico history, amateur sleuth, female protagonist
Publisher: Indie Author Project
Published: 2020-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Sneeze

[AN ALLERGIC REACTION has unusual side effects for a graduate student studying Elizabethan literature. This story first appeared in the anthology Crime Travel, insightfully edited by Barb Goffman and published by Wildside Press in December 2019.]

AUSTIN, TEXAS, APRIL 2019

I leaned against my kitchen counter, too weak to make it all the way to the sink. My head felt like it had been stuffed with damp, shredded paper from a hamster cage. I needed a pot of hot tea in the worst way.

I opened the cupboard, and a puff of spice-laden air assaulted my aching nose. My nostrils started twitching — the first sign. My eyes filled with water as my mouth contorted into a grimace. Then a shuddering breath seized my whole body, releasing in an explosive sneeze so powerful it almost knocked me sideways. Before my wits fully cleared, another one blasted through me.

Eyes watering and hands braced against the cold countertop, I waited for another attack, but the third one failed to launch. I could feel it coiling back into my chest, waiting for a chance to catch me by surprise. I’d never had allergies this bad before. These sneezes were mind-blowing body-quakes. One of these times, they’d shake the brains right out of my head.

I snuffled and wiped my nose on the sleeve of the saggy nightshirt I’d been wearing all week. Enough of the herbal crap — I needed Earl Grey, hot, and plenty of it. Caffeine was my only hope. I was scheduled to discuss the most important section of my dissertation with my advisor in two days, and I still had no pithy insight with which to wow her.

The whole damn diss was largely speculation — no surprise for yet another rehashing of the literary scene in late Elizabethan London. The evidence about people’s lives was scanty, no matter how popular a writer was in his own time. My main subject was the lesser-known pamphleteer Henry Claybrook, who may or may not have coauthored one of the Bard’s rumored lost plays. I said he did, but all I had was a note here and a handful of textual similarities there.

My advisor knew the period inside out and was famously intolerant of hand-waving, smoke-blowing, and other forms of academic bluster. She was also one of those tough old birds who thought allergies were the sad excuse of lazy feather-wits. So tree pollen or no tree pollen, I had to present a brilliant argument or suffer a curling of the lip and a withering dismissal.

It would help if I had more faith in my argument. But as the pollen invaded my head, my confidence faded. At this point, it all looked like bullshit. Two years of work tossed out like a wad of used tissues.

I hung two bags of Earl Grey in my tea thermos and lifted the kettle from the stove, giving it a shake. Empty. I turned to the sink to fill it, moving into a patch of bright sunlight. Stupidly, I looked at the sky, getting a full blast of sunshine square in the face.

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