Hamlet Ex Machina

My name is Hamlet, son of the esteemed King Hamlet and Queen Gertrude (who, as you know, remarried to Claudius after he ragefully caused the death of King Hamlet.)

You may be asking yourself questions such as, "O Hamlet, how did you write this story if you were killed by Laertes in a duel?" and "O Hamlet, you are so handsome! You are so rich and amazing and you are everything! How did you get that amazing chin of yours?"

Well, there is one simple answer to that question, but let's not linger on the present state of my ethereal remnants (again, we'll get to that later.) Let's start by discussing the event that led to the events that became immortalized in the play you know and love, the play of which I am the titular character, that amazing piece of immortal literature written by the poetic Bard of Stratford-upon-Avon himself, the play that we all know and love: Hamlet. Yes, I am very much aware of the play that was written of me. I actually met The Bard himself whilst wandering into the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, and he's quite a rude human being. He cursed me out for impersonating his character, but what he doesn't know is that I have lawyers.

Anyway, the events that led to what you saw in Hamlet are very complicated, and we first have to go all the way back to when Queen Gertrude met King Hamlet.

You see, my mother and father attended the same boarding school. She was "the popular girl." He was the band player. They fell in love.

My father stopped by her locker one day (his oil black hair braided into luscious locks, his gray eyes twinkling to the rhythm of a star shining at nighttime) because it was right next to his. It's difficult to describe it, but he sort of placed his elbow against the locker and darted a warm smile her way. And when they met, it was like the entire world stopped to watch that very moment.

But unfortunately, you see, my mother already had a boyfriend at the time. She had someone else, another amour, another affair. What was this tomfoolery? She couldn't date my father!

Well, not yet at this point. I'll go into more detail later, add more dialogue later. Right now, I'm just skimming through the details, aight homie?

Yeah, my mother was dating another dude, and as it turns out, that dude was stopping by the to-be-king Hamlet's and her locker at that very moment. Want to guess who it was? No? I'll tell you.

It was Claudius.

You weren't expecting that plot twist, were you? But retrospecting on that in this hellish afterlife I am trapped in, it sort of makes sense. After King Hamlet died (spoiler alert: he didn't) my mother returned to her former boyfriend.

Claudius walked up to Queen Gertrude's–I mean, my mother's–metallic blue locker with a smirk, and they committed a heinous, drawn-out PDA (they kissed for thirty good seconds) in front of my father. Come to think of it, though, lots of high schoolers kiss and hug each other for unnecessary amounts of time in front of passersby. I can see why my then-teenage mom and her ex would get swept up into a trance when they saw each other though; because sometimes, when you find someone you really love, you'll give your life for them, or they'll give themselves to you.

Anyway, after Queen Gertrude and Claudius kissed, Claudius turned to King Hamlet and began mocking him; and if you know my father, you'll know that he doesn't take mocking well. Maybe that's why Claudius committed attempted murder (I'll explain this later, but take my word for it.) Maybe Claudius was enraged at my father's creepy habits of intentionally watching people make out when they should be in class.

Or maybe it's a combination of multiple reasons. You'll find out soon enough.

Claudius (with his short, golden and buzz-cut hair and his gray string-hoodie and pants and white Nike shoes that were so neatly laced, you'd think he just ripped them out of the package and was only tiptoeing from class to class, which is partially true) looked at the teenage King Hamlet with disgust. Of course, not being the type to withhold rude comments, my uncle had to drop a roast (and it was one of the most savage roasts of all time, but my father had an even better comeback.)

Claudius squinted, locking eyes with his brother, bursting with the laughter of an ill-intentioned malefactor and remarking, "Ha, you kind of remind me of a fly that landed on my shoulder. You know–with the way you're seeking attention and you're still getting none? Ha!"

Claudius, who turned his head away from his romancer merely just to laugh at his own brother, held Queen Gertrude's hand and kissed her forehead.

Now, Claudius wasn't the most humble guy you'd meet on the streets, but neither was the young, yet-to-be-king Hamlet. My father tapped Claudius on the shoulder–wow, and with such arrogance as to scare away the gaze of an eagle–looked him straight in the eyes, opened his mouth, bit his tongue and spat on Claudius' fresh Nike shoes. (Oh, did I not mention? We have these in medieval times, because we're not as primitive as you Gen Alpha homies think we are, k zoomers?"

Sans-title Hamlet (My father, dressed in poorer clothing–a damp white tee shirt with dirt stains from working in the schools' auto shop, black cargo pants and black heavy duty boots–since he lived with his aunt and could only afford to attend to his hair quality unless it was his birthday, when his aunt had saved enough money for him to buy a new tee shirt) after spitting on my uncle's shoe, stepped into his own world and lapsed into a quiet aside, too busy submerged in his own thoughts to give any attention to reality (a reality wherein Claudius was screaming my father for even daring to try and rizz up his girlfriend, his feet stomping and his crusty, caramel and camel-dry lips clamming up and down as he berated soon-king Hamlet.)

My father, in a quiet aside: There comes a time (and ev'ry man knows this)

When the pleasant moments of conversing,

The moments of pickin' up the ladies,

The moments of boasting your ideal self,

The youthful flirtations and other stuff,

Cringy pick-up lines you know that won't work

(But you still try them anyway–why not?)

Fade to terrible truth coming out:

"This was all a sham. Be a grown up now."

And we are faced with cruel reality:

The world is not as it seemed long ago,

And we must learn to move on from the past,

And we must learn to relearn our very selves,

And we must accept the cruel, cruel, cruel truth:

that we are adults now, we are adults.

(Yes, adults we are, fine adults at that.)

Adulthood, yes… to be or to be young.

To refine oneself through growing older.

or to engage with one's child self oncemore.

'Tis not a pleasure to observe wrinkles.

'Tis a fright to see age manifesting.

'Tis a fright, losing epic gamer rizz!

O the agony, my gothic soul mourns!

Rizz flushes from my body, my spirit,

And as the Sun sets on my dying youth

I am left to wonder just two questions:

"Why can't I be this rizzin' forever?

Why did I leave my math textbook at home?"

Of course: while the songbirds have met, they have not shared a tune. My father Hamlet walked up to my mother Gertrude unaware that his brother was her HoCo date. He wasn't expecting his brother to be the rizzin', flashy and awkwardly burly competition, and he certainly wasn't expecting to snap out of his aside and find Claudius screaming in his face, the principal Cante Carnow (the grandfather of Rosencrantz and the grand-uncle to Guildenstern, two familiar folks you may know from a few spinoffs made in their name) having to pull the hunky brute away from my father's face as our school security cleared out the hallway (there were students pulling their phones out, watching me as my father Hamlet staggered down the hallway, exasperated and defeated, for the one he called an amour did not consider him an amour) and Gertrude just watched.

Indeed, while the two star-crossed lovers' paths had converged at this point, their romance was not there. There were still pieces of the puzzles that needed to fall into place for these two lovebirds' deep affection for each other to flourish, and even more things that needed to happen between Gertrude and Claudius for my mother to want to return to her after Hamlet's "death" (again, he didn't die, and I'll explain everything when it's appropriate to do so.) King Hamlet still had to offer to take Gertrude to prom, he would still have to serenade her, he would still have to send her a bouquet of flowers in the mail, and he would still have to tell her how much he loved her (using a poem written in iambic pentameter, much like many of the speeches you may have read in the play named after me.) We still have a lot of context to explain, and don't worry, because we have a lot of time to explain everything before we cross into familiar territory.

Aye, Claudius was being dragged away from my father by the principal, and afterwards my father would have to meet with the vice principal.

The vice principal was shrewd, shriveled, wrinkled. He had an eye for scouting out troublemakers, and his other eye was obscured behind a black eyepatch. Honestly, he kind of resembled a hooligan more than a pirate–at least to me, anyway. He had a buzz cut (and hey, why do all the bad guys in this story have to have a buzz cut? Even King Hamlet himself wore a buzz cut when he had to don the crown, because his long and brilliant hair wouldn't allow for the crown to fit.) The man's name was Beret Banner, and he lacked the gamer drip and stunning gen Alpha jargon to fit in with any of the teenagers at this school.

To put it in words he would use: he was a person comported with anachronistic dressing habits, and his personality was antagonistic to the pupils under his watch. Yeah, he's quite the writer. In fact, you might know him from a few of the other things he's written with his friends. Although besides his versatility in the writing space, he doesn't have many other admirable traits, apart from the fact that he can barely act like a modern gen Alpha top G at times.

His name is Joseph Muyuela, and as well as reminding me of a hooligan, he also reminds me of the type to invent these crazy tall tales. When you first behold him, you can't discern whether he's a walking corpse or a living human being. But as you develop some rapport with the VP of Elsinore High, you start to realize that he isn't a zombie nor a relatable human; he's actually a thing of iceberg lettuce that vaguely has a human shape. It only becomes more apparent as you take in Mr. Muyuela's face that he shouldn't be called a human at all, because he's actually a vegetable.

Anyway, King Hamlet sat in his office waiting for him to enter (he was probably off reprobating another student for something that can barely be considered offensive) and fidgeting anxiously. My future mother Gertrude is peeking in through the shuttered blinds, and my creep unc has his hands on my shoulder, probably a stupid attempt at rizzing up my mother. Although in retrospect, his attempts certainly paid off.

I couldn't describe the office even if you asked me to, not by sight anyway. It was an ordinary looking office, and the office looked ordinary. But I can describe the aroma, the fragrances that pierced my nostrils. It smelled like decay, depression, dissatisfaction, a hunger for the betterment of oneself that seems unachievable. The best way to describe the putrid stench was… uhh… it smelled like vegetables, lol.

Aye, Joseph Muyuela was a writer that hadn't found much success–that's why he accepted his job as vice principal of my father's high school. He had the prose of the masters, but all he did was sit in his swirly chair and read words off a pre-planned script written by the last vice principal to administer discipline to the students at this dump. He wore a gray suit, gray tie, gray slacks, gray shoes. He barely brought his voice above a whisper level–if he even spoke at all, that is.

Monotone, he grumbled to my father, "Good morning [READ STUDENT NAME HERE], and thank you for attending this meeting today. I have called this meeting with you today to discuss [DISCUSS INFRACTION HERE] and to inform you that due to your (action/actions), I will have to administer the disciplinary (action/actions) of [INCLUDE DISCIPLINARY ACTION OR ACTIONS HERE] and call your parents. Please remember that [RESTATE INFRACTION/INFRACTIONS HERE] is not allowed on the premises." And yes, he did forget to actually replace the placeholder text in the script with my name, infractions, et cetera–he did this throughout the entire script (because again, his brain is an onion: pink and smoother than Claudius' gamer rizz one-liners.)

He took five minutes to read through the entire script, got distracted and read one of his stories (titled Hamlet Ex Machina) and–wait, what?!

Yes, he was indeed a stern man, but he wasn't too tough on my father (I'll discuss this in, like, the next paragraph.) He just gave my father the bare-minimum amount of discipline, and didn't even bother to call home (again, I'll discuss this in the next paragraph.) The depressed vice principal sort of shooed my father out of his office that smelled like death and despair, the rotten stenches of vegetables that one had left in the freezer far beyond their expiration date. My father Hamlet kind of wanted to give the vice principal a hug, looking back on it as he left the office and marched down the dim school hallways, making his way to his car and driving home.

But my father wasn't a huggy type of man, and neither was the principal.

So to skim through the events in a timely manner, my father got slapped by his father, who himself got slapped by his father and he got slapped by his. Indeed, the lack of male role models was quite prominent in my family's paternal archetypes. My father even slapped me at one point if I remember things correctly, because when it comes to nature and nurture, my father has equal chances of leaving me to the bears as he does biting me himself. He had equal chances of leaving me to the bees as he did stinging me with a taser.

He has equal chances of leaving me to a cruel world as he does being cruel to me himself.

Anyway, my father's father screamed at him for a good minute or so, bringing him to the verge of sobbing before sending the non-king Hamlet to his room. By the time my father reached his bedroom, he had flooded the stairs and the chambers behind him; and by the time he got through the door, Elsinore had become an aquarium. My father was a crybaby, an unapologetic man with unexaggerated tears that seemed exaggerated to those that didn't know him too well. That was a well known fact to everyone that shared the castle walls with the Hamlet family: my father Hamlet was one of the most sensitive Hamlets (topping my uncle Claudius Hamlet, my grandfather Astris Hamlet and my grandfather's brother Nurman Hamlet) I'd ever come to know.

He rarely only had a small, withering tear rolling down his face; he occasionally had a glistening stream if he was grieving over a spelling error in a treaty; he had two waterfalls running from his eyes when he was mourning something that had massive implications for the perceived future, like an ice cream cone spilling onto the sidewalk.

My father–though generous and mostly fair–was prodded by the slightest inconveniences–as you can probably tell–but I'd be lying if I told you he didn't have a good reason for his excessive panicking. As a child, my father nearly drowned in a river rushing with tidal waves, only managing to not get dragged along to wherever the river went because he managed to grab onto a nimble, fragile branch of a tree hanging over the bursting river. Now, I won't sugarcoat this: my father Hamlet was a very skinny man; and with that being said, he didn't have the core strength to anchor his body to the branch, and his arms were like those inflatable things you see everywhere that flap in the air. With that being said, he was not strong enough to hold onto me, and he let me and himself tumble down the rocky riverbed, scraping our kneecaps and elbows against whatever jagged stones we were unlucky enough to come by.

I could taste the saltiness of the river on my tongue, and I breathed all of the water into my nose. The waterbed softened my mucus and filled my nose with wet boogers, sending me into a panic attack worthy of my father's praise. Realizing that my father no longer held my hand, I cried out, "Help! Help top G!"

But my vision was too obscured by the foamy waves splashing over my head to clearly make out where he was, and my breath quickly fell short. That's when I noticed him flailing in the murky green water ahead of me, and we entered a much more narrow part of the river, where the spiky rocks below my feet and the sharp boulders that clawed at my arms faded into the deeper parts of the river, and surrounding the river–parted by it–was an area with low-hanging serpents that had oil trickling from the pouches between their scales, where crocodiles snaked up to the surface to hunt and snapping turtles chomped back at them. It was a swampy marsh, a grimy pavilion with all sorts of biting things and frogs with long tongues that catch flies midair, and venus flytraps with luscious pink mouths (that smell like strawberries and catch the fruit flies, ants and other insects in its maw) and lime stem bodies that whip forward and the jaws snap down and snatch up their prey, and a general dirty-green air that filled the entire place and made it all very, very gloomy.

I found my father curled up into a ball, bracing himself as a mommy alligator and its babies–boasting their grimy, off-gold fangs with a terrible smirk–charged at my father. This stressful series of occurrences–as well as the events that caused them (which I will talk about later, trust me)–are why he is so emotional and traumatized. He risked his life to save mine, and he was severely punished by Mother Nature for it. I presume that's also why he's so wary of gambling and putting his trust in blind luck.

Or maybe the former patriarch Hamlet (because remember, this river incident happened around the time when I was 10 years old, and my father finished high school a decade after I was born) just really hated me, because according to an outside observer, here's what really happened: I was playing in the Elsinore's greenery sector, chasing my father down a road between the crop farms and the tulip gardens (this part I remember) and suddenly I tripped on a crack in the sidewalk (I also remembered this) and barreled down a hill of stones. (I remember this too, but from here my memory becomes blurry! Thanks father!) According to the observer, I crashed into a tree, rolled sideways and–unconscious–plummeted face-first into a rock, whereafter I lost my status as a true alpha male, as the public witnessed their future king toss and turn, surely drown and nearly die as my father didn't do the sigma move and rescue me; instead, he ran to the other side of the riverbed and cried, the spot where he got attacked by the mother gator and her beloved kin.

Oh, and I'm getting distracted, aren't I? Well, back to King Hamlet curling up into a ball, but this time he's an angsty high schooler with anger issues. Remember that when we last saw my father–the great and glorious king, albeit still a day-dreaming teenager with ambitions much higher than his own capabilities–he was yelled at by Grandpa Astris for getting sent to the vice principal.

Why was he sent to the vice principal, you might ask? Because he picked a fight at school. Who did he pick a fight with? I'll tell ya right now.

My father never made many enemies, so it astounded me when he pulled me away on my 11th birthday to tell me a story of how he picked a fight with a bully, won and got sent to the principal's office. He didn't conceit the entire background story behind why he decided to throw hands with this specific bully–he only told me that the bully "crossed a boundary" he laid out, which could mean something as simple as accidentally saying hello too loudly–and he spoke about the incident in a way that victimized him and hailed the bully as an evil warlord that surged on other people's territory. He named the bully Fortinbras Sambow, father of the man with the same name, Fortinbras, who surged on my kingdom and buried my body underneath an unmarked headstone, leaving me to rot along dozens of other unsung heroes while I was tethered to roam these earths for all of eternity!

And here's the thing: our family was not all royal when my father decided to trade blows with Danish royalty. My father was under pressure to apologize to the Danish prince Fortinbras Sambow, otherwise he and his family would be deported to and executed in Denmark. And sans-title King Hamlet, although whiny, was not humble at all. He swore to himself–while his eyes bubbled with tears and his hands trembled with nervousness–that he was not going to apologize to the Danish prince, even if it meant that his family had to suffer the consequences.

Anyway, Grandpa Astris did not take kindly to the idea of being thrown under the guillotine, nor did he take kindly to the idea of his favorite nephew Geriwald Hamlet going under the guillotine either.

About this terrible news, an exciting plot twist to our story, the revelation that because of his own son's arrogance, Astris would find himself facing a gruesome fate, Astris scolded his son: "I can't believe you would let this happen, sonny." He lifted his cane and whacked his son atop the head, sending my father crashing backwards into a pile of boxes (you see, my father moved into this townhouse with my Grandpa Astris following the divorce between grandpa and grandma, and remember again that this is before they became royalty) and kept yammering as my father got to his feet, "Sonny boy, I oughta slap you so hard that you faint, eh?"

Grandpa Astris raised his walking stick and prepared to strike again, only stopping when the titleless king held up a flat palm and screamed, "Wait!"

"What do you want, sonny boy?"

"A chance to explain things, for I haven't been given the proper time to explain how these events unfolded!" As my grandpa Astris swung his cane backwards–preparing for a devastating blow that would probably rocket my father into the stars and snuff out any possibility of me existing–propping one leg forward and stepping one foot back, my father raised another hand. "If I may, I really must explain myself!"

"Then talk, sonny boy," shouted my grandpa, waving his stick in the air and preparing to smack it down like a belt. "Talk and talk quickly!"

My father entered a winded, roundabout aside, speaking to the audience that couldn't speak back to him, that only communicated amongst itself in incoherent murmurs: O to look fate in the eyes and not wince

Fate, 'tis a raven that crows ceaselessly.

To see fate and not blink, and I'll add:

To not falter in strength, resilience,

To bathe in the chaos that entails fate,

Is to feed the chaos which fate entails,

And to partake in the anarchy,

Is to surrender one's liberties.

To conclude my thoughts, which only sigmas hear:

What is singular without supplement?

What is peace without frenzy to counter?

And grandpa, why can't I be the true me?

Why can't I be my own version of me?

For to be true to oneself, one must be.

One must be all one is; for all is.

One must be what one sees in himself.

One must outwardly display inner thought.

For what is one who hides himself but these:

A lie, fie, a lie! A lie, a lie, fie!

And before my grandpa could land another strike on my father, a knight from the city that dubbed himself Kingbaldier stepped in and grabbed his cane, dressed in a punk rock attire that left him completely stunned. You know the black mohawk with the violet streak, the black eyeliner and black blush, black streams of artificial paint tears painted onto his face, a sleeveless black button-up vest atop a sleeveless black tee shirt, black slacks and black shoes. All of the knights dressed like this. "Stop this madness, I command you!" Grandpa Astris kept trying to hit me; and he threw his cane, but he only threw it so far as to drop it to the floorboards with a thumpity as Kingbaldier demanded, "Tell me what goes on in these walls, I beg of you!"

"He's trying to hit me!" my patriarchal father cried, pointing his finger with heavy accusation against my grandpa.

"Well you were being a naughty little brat," my grandpa bellowed, trying to reach for his cane despite Kingbaldier doing a quite effortless yet effective job at bodying my grandpa away from his only weapon. "You hear me? You were being a naughty, naughty lil' G, and not a top-tier lifter alpha! I would out-lift you, you rascal!"

Kingbaldier assured my grandpa that my father would be properly punished (again, this is only how my father recollects the story), yet instead crept up to my father and whispered curiously, leaning into his ear, "Hey bud, is everything okay?"

"No," whimpered my father, "Why are people meanies and not alpha gamers?"

"Well, sometimes people don't have that gamer rizz required to make one's way through life," surmised Kingbaldier. "Sometimes people didn't get hugged as children, and this led them to act cruel towards the world, and–"

"Yes, I get that," the patriarchal soon-my-father Hamlet interrupted, waggling his finger at Kingbaldier. "But you…"

"Yes?"

"You're a meanie, kind of like Vivvie…"

"I am not a meanie, and neither is my sweetheart Vivvie!" Kingbaldier shouted, slapping my father across the face, akin to a certain fiasco that I vaguely recall despite having no exact memories of; a moment of recollection that I can't trace back to any specific scene in my life's past; it was a moment of deja vu that had struck me as I observed the scene from a screen in the afterlife, a memory that struck me as very familiar. The slap was unforeseen by the receiving party, and it almost phased through my father's cheek as if my paternal figure was just an illusion, an absent figure who constructed a hologram to stand in his place and clean up his mess. "So keep mine darling beloved's name–bestowed upon them upon their acceptance of the right to be born and live a fruitful existence on this earth and in this castle which I proudly serve–from any utterance you might speak utilizing your rudely plucked vocal strings that vent wind of utmost vile quality, and out of thine lips which propagate such terrible and misguided words; for I wish to use a rash expletive out of anger against you, but the Christ forbids me!"

So my father was cane-whipped by my grandfather and slapped by a random templar knight. "So what?" you may be asking yourself. "How does this tie into what happens in Hamlet?"

Well, my play–if you'd please recall–is about how I plotted to exact revenge over my father–King Hamlet's–demise at the hands of my uncle King Claudius, the man who poisoned my father in a treacherous act that shattered the rites of brotherhood. Well, if you remember what I said earlier, you'll know that Claudius did not actually kill King Hamlet. In fact, something quite different happened. Anyway, I'm regaling this interaction between Kingbaldier and King Hamlet because as I mentioned earlier, King Hamlet was still alive during the events of Hamlet. Also, I'm regaling these tales because Kingbaldier was actually a part of the play. You might not have known about it at first, but he was secretly somewhere in every act and scene, pulling the strings and manipulating the factors to ensure that everything would go his way, and only his way.

So recall back to Hamlet–when I told the nymph Ophelia to go to a nunnery–and remember who was there. Do you remember the scene clearly? It wasn't just the two of us, was it? Kingbaldier was also there, hiding behind one of the secret panels and listening into our conversation.

Also, remember the duel with Laertes? Really focus on the scene, and picture it in your head: me and Laertes swiping our swords at each other, moving back and forth in ambiguous motions! Remember who was there? Really think about it.

That's right–Kingbaldier was there, watching the entire time, even as a plucky fallen hero exacted revenge against Claudius. He had more black spikes plucking out of his mohawk, deeper black eyeliner that shimmered like a pearl rather than withering like a fallen angel, a crimson-black rock 'n roll guitar slung around his shoulder and a dim stare right into my eyes as I dueled Laertes. But there was a reason why he was there, and I'll get to that later (I promise!)

And remember when Ophelia was trying to convince Polonius that my mind had melted and that I–Hamlet, the beloved prince of Denmark–had fallen into the depths and despair of lunacy? Well, guess who was there to witness the conversation and report to me what they said to each other? That's right: it was Kingbaldier, acting as my agent and spying on Ophelia and Polonius from outside of Polonius' bedroom–which was a gothic bedroom, much akin to the tone of the rest of the castle, as there weren't any lights or chandeliers, and everyone walked around with torches to see where they were going, and there were torches on the walls and there were torches everywhere, and there were torches in places where there shouldn't be torches (putting one in my holster was a bad idea) and there was a torch hanging in place of where a chandelier should be in the ballroom.

Anyway, where were we? Of course, we were at the scene of Kingbaldier and King Hamlet, and picking up from that scene, Kingbaldier dragged King Hamlet into a shady gray van and took off, the engine's chatter being heard even outside of the castle's brick walls as Kingbaldier perused down the city for a few minutes before it stopped in front of an orphanage, which was enough of a sight to stir panic within my then-young father (who for convenience's sake, I shall now refer to by his first name Garfield from here on out.)

Garfield Hamlet–and I'll remind you oncemore that I am referring to as "Garfield" or "Garfield Hamlet" for the purposes of telling my account of his accounts of these stories in a more convenient fashion–began to spaz out in front of Kingbaldier, as the droopy man explained, "You need a place to learn to behave, kid."

The driver pulled up to the gate–for there was one in front of this orphanage–rolled down the window and cried, "Hey, my passenger is the emergency intake, and he's got one of the king's guards with 'im!"

As two orphanage staff members–men with scruffy brown-blond beards dressed in white suit-shirts, white slacks and white derbies immediately ran up to the van; the doors whooshed open and they dragged my father out, and the last thing he remembered hearing as he was yanked out of vehicle against his own will was the echoes of the disturbed driver's quiet aside, almost telepathically revealing itself to him and lingering in his head as he was locked away in a padded white room, stuffed into a tanned-white straitjacket and his faculties shaken up by a fellow inmate named Dallas Bencher, who was another teenager seemingly locked away for unjust reasons.

Indeed, like the other characters of my story, Garfield would go on to befriend Dallas, and they would spend many a year together in that same padded cell sharing rumors back and forth about the guard's new boyfriend, joking about the slop being served for dinner that was a poor excuse for a meal, laughing at the pajamas they were provided for nap time and comparing the orphanage to a prison. The place was so bad, my father and his pea-brained acquaintance dared not give it a name, because giving it a name would mean giving the facility power over them, and they wouldn't dare allow for the shell of a hardworking businesman's labor to hold power over their minds and dangle and jingle the keys of freedom over their heads.

Nay, as soon as my father rizzed up one of his former female classmates at Elsinore High (there for an exhibition on the justice system and preparing to enter an apprenticeship with one of the senior guards) into handing him the keys, he made his great escape, dashing out of the facility with Dallas Bencher in his arms, sprinting out of that joint like it was the last day of his life.

He was now a free man, but he was also an ambitionless freelancer. He contemplated all of this in his nifty lil' aside: O, to be free from the shackles that bind,

To witness the effervescence of life,

Freedom from judges with no right to judge,

Freedom to live my life how I want to,

Freedom to soothe others, for I am soothed!

But what is freedom if not lies, lies, lies!

For freedom's false, but perchance freedom's true,

why haven't I bathed in freedom's prospects?

For freedom musteth entail happiness,

But where is the promised joy freedom entails?

O, to suffer oncemore! 'Tis abysmal!

O, how many years, wasted–fie, 'tis lots!

Wasted in pursuit of freedom, o fie!

To return to the palace that is jail,

To wrangle back my happiness like sheep,

To be a tragic god amongst mortals!

O, the hobos! They attack at this hour!

Scavengers, fiends, make yourselves unarmed, and I shall fight you!

You doth wish to fight me for my food, no?

Fight me, o fie, o, my Lord shall keep near me!

For if you are so brave, fight me unarm'd!

If you are so daring, charge at me, fools!

I am arm'd only because I punch slow,

But make no mistake, for I'm no coward,

'Cause only a stumbling coward runs off!

But perchance, may I revisit this?

Indeed, joy may grow from the well-watered tree,

Gain sustenance from a life of freedom,

But perchance it's best I regard prison!

And to escape the bandit hobos, my father indeed ran back into the orphanage, darting through the courtyard–climbing the front gate, running through the basketball court and the playground for the young'uns–and returning to his cell before any of the guards could notice, and leaving Dallas Bencher to fend off the hooligans with nothing but his bare fists (restrained by the straitjackets, you see now?) and his wit. Indeed though, wit wins even the most tormented of souls.

And as you might have expected, the hobos joined my father's friend (who eventually attended my baptism and became my godfather) Dallas Bencher on his adventures as he journeyed through the castle streets, adopting other homeless dorks and preparing to rebel against the current regime in Elsinore over their authoritarian practices, because the oligarchs enslaved our people. We had been stuck under their reign of terror for far too long, and Dallas Bencher decided that it was time for all of that to change.

On a hazy and warm afternoon, therein a plan was willed into creation by the disillusioned: Dallas and his guards would ambush the oligarchs when the guards left their towers, a transitional period between the day guards' shifts and the night guards' shifts giving them 15 minutes to enter the castle and defenestrate the oligarchs, establishing a new regime purely ran by the commonwealth. So, with Dallas and his hobos ready–men, women and everyone in between, the betrayed and castaways–they marched through the beautiful streets within Elsinore and right up to the palace, which sat in the center of it all.

Of course, the palace itself had to be the most pristine thing architecturally. The pillars were made of real marble, and Greek statues lined the entire thing. There were guards dressed in the same attire as Kingbaldier roaming the building at night, waiting for any intruders to strike so that they may too. You know, black-purple mohawk, stern face, black vest, black sleeveless shirt pants and shoes–you understand. And there were also many, many, many owls crowing and departing as guards swiped at them with their swords.

And Dallas crept through these walls, searching for the oligarchs with his ragtag militia tailing him closely. He wasn't the best at stealth, and neither were the hooligans that followed him–they kept making noise and uttering drunken phrases to each other, giggling as they bespoke jokes and wandered throughout the castle. And they knew that in truth, they couldn't be heard, for there were parties and galas upstairs that masked their secretive efforts, noisy things and pretty things and people in ball gowns and other things that happened in the foreground whilst they lurked in the background.

And in the castle, as they expected, in a glamorous and pretty room therein, the oligarchs sat atop thrones no less dominating in stature than the giant was to Jack in that fairy tale my mother loved to tell me before tucking me into bed. Of course, I was a crybaby when I was in high school, so I always ended up sleeping in mamma and pappa's room after she read me the fairytale. Maybe that's why she stopped reading it to me… or maybe I was just too immature. Maybe I was asking for too much love from my mamma and pappa, and maybe I shouldn't've asked all of that of 'em, considering what would happen in the play.

Anyhow, Dallas Bencher and his hooligans just so happened to stumble upon the chambers wherein the hooligans confided with each other their greatest secrets, plans and spoils, wherein one of the oligarchs named Portia delivered a harrowing speech in a commanding voice. This–Dallas supposed–was the prominent figure of the figureheads, the one that held the most power amongst the congression of powerful figures, the one that was micromanaging every detail within Elsinore from the shadows. For he was the only one that carried a staff, and that staff was topped by a miniature Greek statue of himself, posing like David; and also, he was meticulously dressed, as if he was trying to impress the facets and faculties of God himself into letting Portia into Heaven, although his genocidal acts out-Herod Herod in many, many, many instances (and of course, Portia could not impress the faculties of God no matter how much he tried, for he–bathing in his rage and aware of his own nature–was a malicious man whose only intent was to consciously relish in the fact that he was in the wrong, and to impart upon his people his raging fury, a temper that was outwardly resilient to all of the tests and tempers of the world but was inwardly ticking down like a cartoon bomb, waiting for the right moment to blow up and be released upon the rest of the world.

He delivered a monologue, which caused me (because Dallas imparted this story upon my father and my father imparted this story upon me) to wonder on the facets of life, and why–in an age of quick and efficient communication–did we still deliver drawn-out, pointless speeches wherein we repeated the same assurances, spat the same words from our tongue without any action to back them, and brew the intrigue in the minds of millions without any fulfillment of promise. Stay still and perchance feed on my words before your mind wanders, and I shall soon impart you with the oligarch Thane Portia's wisdom, but first allow me to reiterate: in a world with the technological advancements and money that can end world hunger, poverty and violence, we still resort to preaching words on which we have no intention of acting upon. Why the endless, unfulfilled promises?

Anyway, Thane Portia spoke in iambic pentameter and in a monologue heard by Dallas, the hobos and the king's fellow oligarchs, an unusually usual method of formulating one's thoughts when delivering insights: The plans made o'er a night dark and stormy;

Let me tell you that upon sun's setting,

We shall strike fear into the many hearts,

Into the many hearts that call here home;

Without prejudice or care or mercy,

And with a heart blind to humanity,

We shall deliver upon our intents,

And we will destroy the denizens' homes,

And we will rock the streets with reckoning!

The other oligarchs applauded him, almost entrapped in a permanent state of awe in Thane Portia's presence. It was as if the other Thanes were unthanely–not as empowered as Portia, nor as unruly with an army or bloating with dominance and superiority–as Thane Portia. If you were there, you could feel the ground trembling as the oligarchs trembled in their boots before the thane as he rose off his throne and drew the other thrones inwards towards him, telekinetically moving them closer in like a possessed man, his eyes glowing red and bony horns almost protruding from the back of his skull as the entire room glowed yellow-orange and his staff became a serpent that lunged out of the pages of this book I'm writing and at me.

So I'm fighting this serpent with my sword, the silver hilt grasped firmly within my hands right now as I try to scribble my thoughts onto the page. Whoosh, and it lunges again, but I cut it down swiftly and we promptly return to the story at hand, wherein Thane Portia is charged at by Dallas and the hobos!

Dallas draws a dagger and Thane Portia a sword much like mine, with a nimble and thin blade that cuts through the air like a thumbtack piercing through a sheet of paper, or a serrated knife slicing through the tape that runs across the center of a cardboard box, protecting its contents from falling out the flaps where once out, they are faced by the troubles of the world! Dallas meets the Thane with a strike to the arm, but Portia dodges and counters Dallas with a blistering flame attack; orangey, yellowish shades fill their oracles as the chamber of daunting and evil seats is set ablaze! Dallas cuts at Thane Portia, but one of the oligarchs–a man dressed in thick and wooly robes–strikes first with another longsword, and Dallas must dodge the barbaric attack so as not to be defeated quickly in an already humiliating battle! Dallas whips his hand and the blade twirls, and while he's busy my father interjects with his longsword–and yes, these are longswords of a guard, stolen by humans from the barracks!

My father Garfield Hamlet–wielding the longsword bestowed upon him by his grandfather–joins Dallas in attacking the devilish Thane Portia! My father strikes fast, but Thane Portia–now with four hairy and beastly legs, a dastardly quadruped ravaging what is already an ominous and evil room of evil dominions–dodges out of the way, and retorts with his own attack (because in the world of Hamlet, nothing is ever not melodramatic)! Dallas jumps in, is quickly brushed aside and my father gets up, slices ta one of Thane Portia's scraping claws of malice and vengeance and is nearly ferried to the afterlife until he dodges and lands a blow bravely, sending Thane Portia's upper half backwards and reeling in dramatic pain, screeching and exposing his fangs to an attack by my father! The two friends of a long while draw towards the Thane, Portia lashes out, Dallas cuts at one of Portia's clawed legs that deal wanton destruction, my father aims for Portia's head but both of them are quickly brushed aside as Portia unleashes upon the throne room a thrilling shriek and knocking Dallas and my father aside.

Dallas got back to his feet and stood unwavering against the fearsome beast Portia, his blade pointed against that thing of malice that barely resembled a human anymore, flames swirling around the two men and the monster as Dallas intensely welled up with tears, the scorching flames extracting sweat from his hair and dragging it down his cheek! He whips back, turns left and strikes at the overwhelming and towering Portia's stature, landing a devastating blow at Portia's frontmost, angled and left leg, bringing the beast crashing down upon them!

Dallas and his hobos cheered, but then my father turned against the hooligans and their leader! My father, a traitorous intent bubbling his soul's cauldron, announced his treachery before striking at Dallas at such tremendous speeds he launched his ex-friend, the hooligans and the stunned oligarchs–shining in their thick and boastful drapes that decorated them below the neck–backwards with a reverberating wave of transparent energy, sending them so far as to injure them gravely but not sending them to their demise! Whapoom!

And the floor above–wherein galas and parties and other fancy and pretty things were held–my father Garfield (the first name of my father is Garfield, remember?) marry Gertrude Elsinore (my mother's last name), with flower-hurling children skipping gleefully down the aisle and my mother–donning a stunning white silk wedding dress and a bouquet of tulips and spring flowers–marched down an air of decadence and delights as my godfather Dallas Bencher announced that they would be wedded; and the ring bearing Kingbaldier–promoted to being Garfield's personal guard–handed the Garfield the ring which he would bestow upon Gertrude, and Garfield spoke his words with great and sincerest intentions towards the lady who would be his wife within minutes: My beautiful lady whom I'll soon wed,

I am truly thankful that you are here,

And that you have chosen me as your love,

And that I have chosen you as my bride,

And we are to be joined in marriage,

And that we are to live our lives as one,

And that we are to be hallowed rulers,

And we are here to serve our great people,

Here to serve for as long as we're deemed fit;

And that we'll soon rebuild our own great home,

And we'll shelter our people with much love,

And bring forth an era of peace, greatness,

Both authority and humility,

Both unfaltering kindness and strict laws,

Ev'rything we bring in wedlock, bestowed;

Bestowed upon our friends gathered today,

And upon those seeking shelter with us.

So, concluding my speech to my belov'd,

I am proud to have you with me, Gertrude,

as we herald forth an awesome era.

And as the audience (the friends, family and intrigued commonwealth and the rich crammed into the two aisles of seats that flanked the red carpet wherein the bride strut and met the groom) applauded, Gertrude was speechless at Garfield's romancing of her heart, not an utterance on her tongue nor breath in her mouth, her jaw agape as Garfield planted a kiss not on her lips but on the back of her palm, planting his bristly mustache against her smooth skin. She had driven Garfield crazy simping for her, buying her diamond rings and different jewelry and all sorts of bouquets and gardens and even farmland, and now she–dressed in a wonderful and sparkly gown that (although normal wear for her, and she had one gown for each day of the week) was to be the most regarded and valued gown in her collection–was about to receive the true ring of rings, which (although rings were normal for her like gowns, since Garfield always threw away money to buy her both) was to be the most valued and well-refurbished ring in her collection of rings (three had one for each finger and two for the thumb.) Fallen to Garfield Hamlet's charm, she too was now simping for him, and she expressed this clearly in her monologue (which I shall soon regale to you), and she would continue to express her undying affection for my father throughout her entire life, despite my father not reciprocating her love sometimes. Especially on the worst nights.

Like this one night within the castle walls, when I–once sound asleep, woke up in the middle of a windy night and wandered through the sheeny white-marble walls lined with statues of Greek figures (that had cobwebs running up and down their arms, intricate designs running under their exposed armpits), my short cape drifting behind me as a soft breeze entered a partially-open stained glass window, hitting my dressings and my face, blowing my hair about. I wandered into my parents' bedroom, seeking asylum from my troubling insomnia and searching for better rest, shaken up by this disturbance to this circadian rhythm, only to find my mother clamoring after my father with words whilst he sat by the dresser, arms crossed and a frown on his face. Clearly, something had came upon them both, a rift in their relationship at that time (this was ten years after they had first gotten married, both 28 at this point and I was 5) that shattered them both, causing my father to be angry and leaving my mother pining for the man who had always loved him to return.

I only peeked through the crack in the door, so I can't tell you everything that happened, but I can tell you that my father–when approached by my mother yet again, tears streaming down her face–threw himself away from Gertrude and stormed off in a puddle of tears, a frustrated look on his face as he barged towards the door (I ducked away, of course) and rushed past a maid carrying an assortment of refreshments (a maid I would soon come to know as Tilda) and shoving away one of his personal butlers, an old man named Beau whose arm was pruned with wrinkles and whose pearly eyes were shielded by pitch-black shades due to developing blurry vision and light sensitivity at an early age.

Indeed, as my father and mother stayed together, their relationship got worse and worse, the gut-twisting tension between them ramping up until on one silent night, my uncle Claudius attempted to kill my father in a last-ditch attempt to defend Gertrude from Garfield's antics. Of course, you know how that went. My uncle poured a glass of poisonous fluids into my father's ear; but since he recently got ear piercings, a small, untraceable but important amount of venom slipped out the bottom of his left ear, landing on mine uncle's rizzed up Nike sneakers as he walked away, giving my father a less potent dose of poison than Garfield initially anticipated.

And anyhow, you might be wondering how Garfield Hamlet got a burial if he never really died to begin with. You might've seen it in some places, and it explains the answer quite well: the coffin fake-out. My father only passed out long enough for my mother to see him while walking with her servants to the dining hall, but he woke up shortly after they left. Of course, my mother and I knew perfectly well that he was alive when we caught him sneaking through the palace halls trying to get brunch and drown out his sleepiness–and indeed we were quite sure that mine uncle Claudius attempted the crime–so we preserved the secret by sneaking Garfield Hamlet out of the palace whilst the guards on shift were being rotated out, creating a coffin and "burying" him before Claudius returned back form his exploits (negotiating a ceasefire between Elsinore and the invading army led by Fortinbras.)

And speaking of my dearest uncle Claudius Hamlet, "Where was he at the wedding?" you might be asking yourself. "Didn't he attempt to poison Garfield Hamlet in order to have Gertrude all for himself?" you might be asking yourself. "Why didn't he just object to the wedding?" This question and others I'll surely answer, but we must first return to the wedding ceremony and listen to mine own mother's wedding speech to my father and bathe in the irony of the situation, how my father–Garfield, a blunt man–was able to romance such a sweet and nurturing figure like my mother, and how my mother was so blind to the wretched abuses of a man who left bloodshed behind him in his fight for power, who betrayed his friend and my godfather Dallas Bencher, who was one of those that sat quietly amongst the wedding audience and observed as the ring-bearing child handed my mother the ring that would bind her to a wretch, someone who managed to rizz his way into mine mother's life and impress the faculties with an untruthful masquerade!

My mother stood in her beautiful white wedding dress before a terrible man who was nowhere near as based, chad or sigma as she was. She was almost perfect in every conceivable way, yet in her speech she denied herself of any perfection, submitting herself fully to the controlling ways of her soon-to-be husband: O my husband-to-be whom I'll soon keep,

You are purely sparkling perfection,

A most worthy hero this castle needs,

A man with most complex machinations.

Adored, a fascinating specimen.

A man amongst men, you are so special,

Special to me, special to Mum and Pop,

Special to all who love you so, so much.

Marry me, Alfonso! Marry me, please!

Somewhere in the crowd, there arose a youthful and blossoming Filipino gentleman–because FIlipinos like him will steal yo girl–named Alfonso Copperman. Alfonso was a handsome gentleman with a bushy mustache and slanted eyebrows, a rizzed up gentleman with smooth, dark skin and soot black hair, a man with a sharp voice and clasped fingers, dressed in the same ink black suit as everyone else, rising from his seat to announce his presence in a voice that was both loud and steady, gentle and assertive, speaking in a calm but firm demeanor as Garfield marched up and yelled in Alfonso's face, Garfield's eyes tortured and bloodshot as he chewed Alfonso out for even daring to approach his almost-wife Getrude, let alone start a relationship with her.

Because my father was a vengeant man–and he shoved Gertrude out of the way to get to Alfonso–he did not have the patience or temper to ignore distractions to his life. As much as he hated to admit it when recounting the story of his wedding with Gertrude to me, Alfonso had Garfield so stirred up, my father was wrapped around Alfonso's fingers, clamoring to attack the young Filipino man, obsessed with the man that stole his girl on the day of his wedding. Garfield Hamlet struck Alfonso with the back of his right palm–a move even more petty than slapping with the front palm, as that would be too kind for a man Garfield Hamlet perceived as earning more of Gertrude's love and affection than he. Garfield wasn't so much as mad at his wife for cheating on him with someone as he was at Alfonso for permitting such devious affairs. After noticing that Alfonso kept a straight face during the entire attack, Garfield struck again, but Alfonso grabbed his arm, twisted it and pushed him backwards.

"Why, you?!" cried Garfield, running towards Alfonso with his fists closed and his feet kicking up the red carpet that lined the center aisle. "Why I oughta…"

Alfonso grabbed Garfield's non-twisted arm before he could land an attack and bent it sideways, sending Garfield backwards and relishing in pain. Alfonso held one flat palm against his face, the other at a perpendicular angle, drew his leg back, spun around and kicked Garfield as he charged forward with another attack, knocking mine father against the floor. My father recuperated himself, got back up, got a karate chop to the neck and fell back down, crumpling like a sheet of paper being crushed under a stack of books. My father reeled as Alfonso began to mock him, wrapping his arm around Gertrude's waist and laughing, just as everyone in the glittering wedding room stood up and began laughing with him and at Garfield.

My father got to his feet and bellowed like a wild and barbaric man, charging at Alfonso with his quivering fists, but Alfonso blocked his attack and delivered a knock-out punch with his other hand! Time crawled to a halt, commencing a viewing alongside me (watching form the eternal flames) and you (the wonderful audience that has joined me on this story) whilst my father fell in such slow motion, his left cheek hitting the ground before his left arm, which collapsed in front of his chest and allowed his left side, hip and leg to fall, and he rolled onto his stomach, again to the roaring laughter of the audience.

And following this incident, my mother Gertrude called for an ambulance, yelling into her cell phone while Alfonso kissed her cheek ceaselessly. She had tears running down her eyes, insatiable like the tears of someone who had just heard devastating news. She was relentlessly sobbing over her husband's condition and what she had done to her husband–and also secretly how far she had allowed her relationship with Alfonso to go–and she couldn't forgive herself for staying with Alfonso (because in her mind staying with Garfield was the right thing to do. She was still in tears when all of the wedding guests slowly filed out of the chapel within the palace, still weeping over her husband and all of the possible memories, the wonderful kids, the amazing family and the sprawling empire they could've had in their future.

My mother was truly miserable looking at my father's condition, but perhaps those miserable feelings were unwarranted. She sobbed as Garfield was loaded onto a stretcher and into an ambulance, and sobbed in the hospital. She even sobbed as Garfield made his way through the palace halls with a walking cane in his hands, reflecting on the hurt she had caused by cheating with Alfonso. But perhaps Alfonso was a good thing for mine own dearest mother.

Perchance hear me out: my mother and father's relationship–as I have previously mentioned, was strenuous at best. There were ups and downs, times when they weren't at their best and times when one was anxious to return home and confront the other, times when they bickered and fought and times when they slept in separate rooms in the palace to avoid seeing each other, times when one would have their dinner in the glistening dining hall enveloped in silk and fabrics and the other would go for a stroll and eat their meal in the commons (where the common guards ate their fill) just to avoid having to accidentally look each other in the eye at dinner.

Perchance I sound sussy, and maybe you're right. Perhaps my father was indeed the perfect man for my mother, and their love for each other just didn't blossom at the right time. Perchance on another day, at another hour, things could've worked out between Gertrude and Garfield, and they could be living in the palace together in peace and harmony, working together for the betterment of Elsinore and the servants that live within the palace. Perchance, just perchance, things could've been better if everything went differently.

And that's what I contemplated when I made my all-too-famous speech, you see? I stood there in that palace, contemplating my own thoughts, considering my actions and–according to the most well-known version of Hamlet–expressed my thoughts to the audience with a stage light glaring in mine eyes before I argued with my dearest love Ophelia. "To be," I wailed with an intense stare, "or not to be, 'tis a question that plagues my every waking moment!"

I marched across the palace halls suddenly, the thought of searching for mine dearest father (knowing he was still alive, thus I made my way towards the palace gates, which are a marvelous sight to behold if ever you stop by.) I only stopped marching when a continuation to my sorrowful monologue formed in my head, words stringing together like a medley of musical notes, a concoction to share with my audience! "Whether 'tis indeed a noble battle to fight the cannonballs that misfortune doth launch, or rally 'gainst a sea of bewildering peril…" Thereafter I rambled for a while about whatever came to my mind, the gloomy thoughts that entered my head and caused me so much despair, speaking to myself, alone to my own ruminations in those palace halls as I stumbled upon the maids' quarters, the butlers' quarters, the servants' quarters, the knights' quarters, and finally came upon mine dearest Ophelia's room. "Ophelia, my darling and sweetest Venus," I concluded, "let my transgressions be etched into my gravestone."

(Ah, and I see that I have forgotten to discuss Ophelia!)

Ophelia grew up in Quantico, USA with her father Polonius before moving here to Denmark. She was quite young when she first immigrated to Denmark, and at first Customs wouldn't let her into this great, divided nation because her father was formerly going in and out of prisons in the US, and the US president Richard Nixon and head of the CIA, FBI and NIA forwarded some of the documents to the president of Denmark (and also it is worth noting that one Customs official believed Polonius was carrying a bomb into the country.) Growing up in Quantico, Ophelia was a trainee in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but she dropped her training when she moved in with Polonius inside the palace, which itself was (again) the literal center of Elsinore and the center of its political affairs. She wasn't too approving of the idea of living in an actual palace, but what could she do? Polonius was not willing to let his daughter work anywhere else in Denmark, because the other places were too good for her (in reality, Denmark's tax on its residents is far less, and Denmark does much better in world sports.)

Polonius may come off as overprotective, but he couldn't care less. He himself grew up in Quantico and trained to join the FBI (much like he continually pushed his daughter to train), but he didn't meet up with his instructors' standards and he was swiftly dismissed one week before training began. That is to say he doesn't get along well with his daughter, and they often get into fights over Ophelia's direction in life and her brilliant career options (her number one choice is completing her novel entitled "The Murder of Gonzago" and her number two choice for a job was to become a data analyst for a brokerage firm in Denmark.) Ophelia suggested they go to family therapy and resolve their conflicts, but at this point nothing had been arranged between them.

Anyway, onwards to the day I first locked eyes with mine dearest Ophelia: I was setting the table in preparation for a major feast my father and mother were going to have upon the clock's announcement of afternoon's temporary stay, laying out the rags and utensils and plates in the fashion I had been taught for years, the meticulous method that amazed the faculties and awoke the senses, wherein you could catch someone's conscience by observing how they ate their food and misplaced their spoons, forks and sporks and napkins, how they wiped their chins after smearing their faces with gravy and other condiments, a method of arrangement which drew my Ophelia closer and closer until she had entered the dining room across for me and cried out, "The plate's the thing!"

"Wherein we'll catch the conscience of our guests!" I hollered back, gesturing her into my arms despite still not knowing her name at that moment. "What is your name, my fair princess?" Thereafter she told me everything I told you now: her name is Ophelia, she hails from the great and sprawling plains of Quantico, she was a former trainee for the Federal Bureau of Investigation until her father forced her to come here in Denmark for his own personal gain.

Unbeknownst to my pretty Ophelia, I could read her thoughts in retrospect, piercing her mind and absorbing its knowledge from my fiery inferno, and she was in the midst of a romantic monologue in her own headspace: O, how we just met, yet I am still rizzed!

O you, you're a Vitruvian male nymph!

Stranger, you still managed to pierce me heart!

O Hamlet, whose name was unveiled just now,

Unveiled by you yourself to me only…

Marry me! Marry me! Marry me! Marry me! O, woes.

Take me into your arms and hide me from:

Evil! Chaos! Grief! Envy! Frustration!

Unfortunately for you readers, I interrupted her internal monologue, and her train of thought was quickly lost as I began to woo her over: "O Ophelia, holla, and welcome to Elsinore!"

"O my dearest Hamlet, it is wonderful to meet such a rizzler such as yourself!" She winked at me, and recalling this memory from my throne in the afterlife of the damned, I can safely conclude that Ophelia has always had feelings for me, and she simply masqueraded them behind a friendly facade so as not to disturb the faculties of my imagination. She simply hid her true thoughts until it was time to finally reveal them when she asked me out to our first date (a date wherein we stayed out on a picnic mat on a grassy field in the afternoon, watching the Sun setting and Moon rising and the stars splattering the deep blue night sky.

As I had initially convinced myself when she first entered the dining room, she was struck by love-on-first-sight-syndrome, and it was mutually contagious, for it affected both of us and I too was struck by her. She placed her hand on my shoulder–masquerading her affection as a friendly gesture by transforming her romantic gesture into a pat on the back–and she let me run off into the kitchen and grab more plates, whilst she sat there and meditated by herself on the many transformations her life had undergone in that week alone. Not only had she immigrated to Denmark, but she also had to convince her father that her noveling career was the best course for her in the coming years, and that her novel–The Murder of Gonzago–would be a box-office hit were it ever to get adapted as a standard-length feature film (for right now it was only a short story she had been working on, a singular copy that nobody wanted to order ahead of its completion and release.)

Of course, as always in these stories, the male protagonist rushes out before her female counterpart can finish meditating on her life thus far. I interrupted her at precisely the most inconvenient moment, crying out, "Ophelia, it has been wonderful meeting you thus far! And holla, I must away, for the king hath summoned for my presence immediately, and I cannot ignore a command from the king!"

"O Hamlet, you have disturbed me with this unnecessary goodbye!" cried Ophelia, dramatically reaching her arm out towards me. "Dismayed am I, and hie thee hither soon, Hamlet! For you–my sweet prince–you alone are the only man whom I'd ever allow to rizz me up because of the buji alpha rizz lord you truly are! You know not what I've suffered, but you know that mine love is yours, and you know what we'll become and what will become of us!"

"Indeed!" I hollered back, darting down the palace chambers until I stumbled upon my father's bedroom. "Until we meet again, dear Ophelia, my beloved, and I will never forget thy name!"

As my voice trailed off, Ophelia returned to her unconsolable solace and gloom, speaking again inside the corridors and mysterious depths of her inner mind, completing an unfinished monologue in that saccharine voice she's always had: O Hamlet, how you remembered my name!

Indeed, I remembered Ophelia's name; it rang through my head like a telephone from an adjacent room, like a cell phone buzzing in my pocket, like music ringing through my ear and rattling my brain in its skull ever since I met her and she first introduced herself to me as the lovely Ophelia. She went into my mind, walked all over it, found a place to rest in the light pink sludge whose indents were constantly buzzing with electrical signals, stretched her arms out and kicked her legs back, throwing on shades and leaving an image of her youthful face in my mind. She tip-toed all over my mind, and I would let her crush anything–even my fragile little heart, tremendous ego and my opposable thumbs.

Indeed was it memorable; I remember the exact perfume I wore during that moment (Helena Francois Cologne No. 2: Strawberry Daydreams) and I remember the exact facial cream I used (Helena Francois Facial Resmoothener: Wildberries At Mid-Moon No. 2). I remembered the golden dashes of starlight fluttering down and about us like butterflies, swirling around us like a maelstrom of stars charging down from the skies, an array–nay, a choir–of winged Cupids and Psyches and seraphims and cherubims descending from the skies and harmonizing to the tune of star-crossed lovers gazing into each others' eyes for the first time, sparking a romance that would last a lifetime.

It was like we were caught in the middle of Romeo and Juliet, a story unraveling about a prince and a princess long-divided but now united. We were together at last, and as we had our adventures together–voyaging to new lands and discovering our places and purposes in the world, we–kissing atop the buttresses and balconies and falling in love in each other's arms. It was like a dream, and as the weeks turned into months and the months into years, I started to discover who I really was. I finally found the true me that I've been searching for this entire time, a me waiting in the shadows to be discovered, a me I thought would never surface to the most shallow and outward parts of my personality; finally, I was content with the version of me that I had become. I was a worthy human being and an heir to the throne on the side, and I was finally at a stage where I could say I fulfilled my goals in life, with a lover and a loyal following.

Indeed, I had amassed a following as I grew up in the palace. As the saying goes, "Women want me and men vow to out-rizz me." I was garnering a fanbase, as they say. I was picking people up and I had an entire community wrapped around my fingers, awaiting my every command, stalking me like a social media influencer, wearing the same baby blue scarf and baby blue boots and baby blue sweater and baby blue jeans and baby blue shirt I wore every day.

I playfully dubbed my followers my "Hamlet Petites", and whilst walking down the palisade with my wonderful Ophelia, I would often get mobbed by paparazzi and reporters and people with notebooks they wanted me to autograph and people with other random things they wanted me to autograph such as toilet paper, napkins with ketchup stains and baby bibs and their babies' foreheads. They extended their arms to me as if I was all of their lovers, brushed their fingers against the stitches of my sweater and lovingly called out my name as if I was something great, as if I was a celebrity, as if I was more than a figurehead to my people; it was like I was getting the recognition I had been searching for this whole time.

This was interfering with my relationship with Ophelia, my obsession with fame slowly dragging me away from what mattered most. At the time, it seemed like a perfectly normal obsession to want to pursue the relentless fame that came with such a prestigious societal status. But in retrospect, knowing that Ophelia continues to live on and has completely forgotten about me, going as far as to find a new lover in Danzino Copperman (son of the legendary wife-stealing Alfonso Copperman), this was a horrible idea on my part. But then again, maybe it was Ophelia's fault; maybe I was longing for something great and she just wasn't vibing with the idea.

Come to think of it, the name Danzino had come up at one point before I had perished. Following me yelling at the butler Beau, Ophelia and I got into an argument. She thought I was in the wrong for admonishing Beau because he didn't wash, polish and dust the dishes in fifteen minutes, and I thought I was in the right because that should be an expected and standard routine for all butlers in a palace, and I thought he should be charged for treason and thrown under the guillotine if he can't deal with the constant workflow and responsibilities.

Ophelia accused, "You're just whiny, and you're spoiled, and you never learned how to do anything by yourself! That's why you're angry!"

"Well," I retorted, "well you're just making up excuses so my servants don't have to work!" I grabbed the thing nearest to me–a lamp post, softly glowing yellow and still charged into the wall–and I hurled it at Ophelia, hoping to disarm her, as she had a cell phone in her hand and was preparing to call the cops. She grabbed the handle of the lamp as it flew towards her, lifted her knee up and shattered it into a million pieces, breaking the light and dissipating the heat, sending crackles of flame everywhere as the fragments fell to the floor. I was agape, yet her face was perfectly straight.

Ophelia grabbed something from the table on the other side of the bed–a bottle of Helena Francois Facial Resmoothener: Wildberries At Mid-Moon No. 2–and she cried, "Your servants work hard enough for a tyrant like you!" She hurled the bottle at me, I caught it in my right hand and I boomeranged it back at her; she dodged it thereafter and it hit the wall, falling quickly to the carpeted floor. She continued, "Because who'd want to work for a tyrant like you?"

"I would!" I cried, climbing over the bed and rushing at Ophelia. Springing off my king's mattress' sheets, I tried to tackle Ophelia, but she dodged my attack and clobbered me over the head with a loose wooden frame. I rubbed the back of my head while I was still belly-down and got to my feet, throwing my hands up and guarding my face, shouting, "You wanna do this? Come on–en garde!"

I threw the punch, but it was sloppy and I fell to the side, and before I could fully hit the floor Ophelia grabbed my shirt and slugged me in the chest, then kicked me in the stomach and slammed me to the floor, bellowing, "You think you're clever with your humor and your quips, you degrading slice of ham? You're the most rotten human I've ever come to know, and I've met some real nutjobs!" Ophelia placed her right heel over my spine–that needle-like anchor on the back of her heel running up and towards the back of my head–and shouted down on me, "You really think you're good, huh? Seeking all this fame you don't deserve, believing you have some special rizz abilities that you really don't have?"

I pounded my fist against the floor and wallowed in my shame, and I pounded my other fist against my chest (while still laying on my stomach, mind you) and screamed, "O my dear Ophelia, you don't realize how cruel and bitter you are to me."

"What means you?" cried Ophelia, slowly lifting her heel off my back. "What do you think you're doing now–accusing me of a crime?" Indeed, I was accusing Ophelia of one of the most heinous, criminal and savage crimes in history; an act so monstrous that even Hell would turn its eyes away in disgust at the sub-primitive nature, at its promotion of division and separation of humanity, at the unfairness of it and how it makes some better than others, at how it defies any senses–love and reason, science and biblical pathos.

I was accusing Ophelia of a wrongdoing that was unthinkable and preyed on the weak and the powerless, those who were mugged of their money, suffrage and trust in society. I was posting myself against Ophelia with an utmost hanes, terrible and surely true accusation, and unbeknownst to her, I had long been leveraging my knowledge of her wrongdoing against her psyche–secretly guilt tripping her and reminding her of all the bad things she's done in the past and this crime especially–all in order to get the power and respect I feel like I truly deserved from her.

I had been using one of Ophelia's most offensive and reprehensible secrets against her for years up until this very moment, and now I spilled out all of the juicy details, freeing the metaphorical cat from the proverbial bag and forever humbling my lover, as well as (the way I see it) setting her down a better and more loving path. "You were an actor in a hate crime!" I cried. "I know you were in the driver's seat when you plunged forward into that homeless man because you thought it was funny–because you saw he was a minority and you wanted to act! I know your past, Ophelia, and believe me: it hasn't escaped you!"

Indeed, while I am diseased by lies, everything I said to Ophelia at that moment was true: in the summer of 2015, my darling Ophelia and her friends were driving home from a party (102 days sober and clean) in a sleek convertible car (red, with bright front lights and a big bumper on the front, and a license plate on the front and back that read "GTGFAM" when a homeless man wandered into the road, carrying a sign that said "HOMELESS IMMIGRANT. ANYTHING HELPS." Of course, tented to the idea of playing a silly joke on a foreigner, Ophelia hit the gas and the car zoomed forward, and Ophelia and her gals and burly college dudes were already a mile past the scene of the crime when Ophelia and her brunettes and broads had realized the full extent of the crime she had committed, zipping away from the horrible tragedy and its memories, and burrowing into the dead of night, leaving whichever poor soul that happened to pass by (in this case, a police cruiser that happened to be patrolling the area that night) to discover the body and do whatever with it (an investigation went through, but nothing came out of it.)

Ophelia and her friends rode straight to her home, all of them panicking over the incident despite being too late to phone the police or provide medical assistance (one of Ophelia's friends/potential future dates was a college hunk named Bruno and had taken a Red Cross Instructional Class two years ago, and although he remembered most of the class and had a copy of the overview pocketbook they handed out during the orientation session, he was too shocked like the rest of them.) Ophelia suggested going back, but Ophelia's best friend Tayler suggested leaving the body out there in the woods and just not thinking about it. Ophelia's second best friend Jayna suggested that only Ophelia went back and that the others stayed behind, so that if they got caught only Ophelia would go into questioning (the others would smuggle themselves out of Elsinore inside a river vessel departing the next morning, a ship that secretly seconded as a pirate's den and was headed down a swampy river, planning a rough course down a gorge that would take them to their hideout, wherein they could count their golden doubloons and play fight with their hooks, gamble with their holdouts and play card games with their captives, and generally enjoy themselves (and their captive and crocodilian company, the gharials and caimans stowing away with them) away from the prying eyes of Elsinore law enforcement, which regularly patrolled most of Elsinore except for that area, believing the area where the pirates' hideout lay–crowded and surrounded by a moat, buried in the forested regions of the castle–to be guarded carefully by the spirit of a man wrongly incarcerated for his crimes.

Ophelia–the princess whom my family had most politely housed in Elsinore without any expectation of repayment for our favors, an advocate for the disillusioned and the outcast within a cadre of societal elitists, the princess who would also assume Polonius' role as advisor to King Hamlet should the need ever arise, and a novelist in the making–electing to masquerade her guilt behind a sweet facade and bury her murderous action under layers of justification and disbelief! She ripped a tissue from a tissue box and dabbed her eyes with it, quickly patting away the stream of tears that flowed down her face, the remorse from the horrible prank that turned into a monstrous disaster, a cataclysmic domino chain collapsing and leading to worse consequences! She knew her father could catch her crying at this point, so she made with even quicker haste than normal and threw the napkins away before she heard the knock on the bathroom door, and a concerned voice ringing from the other side: her father Polonius, a curious man with a brown stubble and a balding head, pounding his fist on the door and asking Ophelia if everything was okay in intermittent cycles.

"Ophelia, my daughter," Polonius called out loudly. "What's the matter?"

"The matter presently in my mind does not concern you, father," Ophelia replied, calmly disposing of the last tissue before letting her father in. "I was simply preparing for the gala we're hosting tonight." She quickly reached under the counter and opened up a drawer, rifling through her father's cologne bottles and razors and other skincare items he had cluttered around in that junk drawer of his, the fountain pens and feather pens and other writing utensils that his father barely used (the modern day graphite pencils and the standard ballpoint pen were considered much more "gamer" nowadays) and memorabilia of his family–his wife, his father and mother commemorated on a locket, a bracelet his daughter crafted for him at school (the memorabilia was there for good reason, not merely because he didn't care for his own daughter's presents, but because he ran out of space on his shelf and his tax collectors did not have sufficient funds to buy new shelves for the projects.) Ophelia pulled a pair of earrings from the drawer and pretended to try and attach them, mumbling, "But, if you really must know: I'm having trouble finding the right earrings to wear for the dance."

Ophelia was not, in fact, going to a dance; she was merely telling a falsehood to ward off her father's outrage (if he found out where she was really going) and gain more favors over her brother Laertes, and although she only needed to tell her father she was going to an unnamed dance to quiet his worries, she had worked out the entire narrative behind the dance just in case he started asking questions: the dance was at the Elsinore Royal Arts Terminal located on Elsinore street, and she would be going with her current boyfriend Danzino Copperman (who, if you'd recall, is the son of the girl-stealer Alfonso Copperman, and at this point in the story is running to become the mayor of one of Elsinore's districts.) She was leaving for the dance once the Sun's warm gaze gave way to the Moon's blossoming shine, and she would return to the palace once the Moon ceded its control to the Sun once more.

She had the entire story planned out even to the most minute detail, leaving no inconsistency or questionable detail, no flaw in her story or anachronism in her timeline, no logical slip-up or conflict in her schedule, ran every errand to craft a believable narrative so far as to request her name be added to the list of MVPs a week in advance. In order to establish her alibi of being present at the dance, she paid a thespian to cosplay as her and show up in a black lamborghini driven by her real chauffeur, paid a makeup artist and a well-known fashion designer that lived within the palace to dress the doppelganger up (who was also trained to mimic Ophelia's voice) and she even publicly announced that she would be attending, even though she secretly planned to climb down a makeshift rope chute out her quarters and rappelling down into the subway station that ran adjacent to her apartment, and from there she would depart on the last stop: the wooded roads wherein she hid the body.

You might be wondering why a lady as fair as Ophelia–who only intended to drive the convertible forward slightly and scare the beggar in what would amount to an unfunny gag, yet ended up committing unintentional manslaughter when something slammed her shoe against the gas pedal and sent the car ramming into the homeless man–would go this far to cover up a crime she accidentally committed. After all, even if she was guilty, (and she knew she wasn't, since something had squished her sneaker against the gas pedal and caused the car to hurtle forward) at least her friends would rot away with her in prison; them urging her to play the deadly joke made them accomplices in a crime (and–although she swore to her friends that she would not tell on them if the police ever started questioning her–she was starting to have doubts about her morality and the morality of her friends.)

So the formerly-mine Ophelia–when night came–rose from her bed and climbed down the rope ladder she had been weaving together over the past four days. Her entire plan went as she had hoped; the subway chugged by the palace wall where her bedroom window laid, allowing in a beacon of moonlight and a cupcake top's worth of sprinkled stars that radiated like diamonds and had that epic solar rizz with how the glimmer of the night sky woke up even the soundest sleepers and drew them to their windows. She jumped into the subway's roof hatch as it passed by and left at her stop–just as she planned–made her way to where she buried the body (a grassy location marked off by a twig erected from the ground) and she clawed up the area with her bare hands, ripping away shrub roots and throwing away mounds of pebbles and stones until she spotted what appeared to be a hand sticking out of the ground, the cockled ring finger twitching slightly as if it were still alive, as if there was still some semblance of spirit inhabiting the body and making it move. Ophelia knew this was a tapeworm trying to escape to the outer world, trapped inside the homeless man's hand, but she was still very disturbed at the sight of the protruding bone.

My once-beloved Ophelia was cautious in excavating the body, searching for the golden ring that she had seen earlier on the homeless man's finger.

Indeed, Ophelia was also a petty thief. She originally intended to stop the car and pay the homeless man full price for it, but when she pondered on how determined the homeless man might be to get a good appraisal for the ring, Ophelia originally passed up the offer, believing that the homeless man wouldn't settle on anything but the retail value for the ring, especially a piece of jewelry in that caliber, with that high of a quality, and with that much fine detailing and engraving etched into the piece (swirls and crescent shapes and crests and fluorescing gems that pierced the circumference) and with the amount of time spent on perfecting the lettering that embellished the front. But now that the hobo had kicked the bucket, Ophelia–whose evil deeds had summoned her back to the burial site–was free to snatch up the golden ring for herself.

And so my once-beloved did, dragging the man's lifeless and withering corpse out of its sans-casket resting soil to grab the ring from the other hand, before lowering the man back down into the soil, shoveling the dirt back over his face and running off into the middle of a midnight ablaze in spangling stars and shooting meteors, wherein the trees ran wildly and quicker than the coyotes, and where the owls watched but didn't tell as she copped a precious trophy off her freak accident roadkill.

Indeed, Ophelia no longer regretted running over the man at that point, whether she had done it out of her own volition or because her foot was slammed. She slipped her newly finagled jewelry onto her ring finger, laughing quietly amongst the voices in her head, tripping over a snapping twig and crinkly leaves and chuckling softly on her two knees.

"So how did you find out about the convertible situation?" you might be asking yourself. The answer is simple: Polonius found out.

When my former fiance Ophelia returned to her quarters that same night, Polonius was sitting on the sofa facing the door, an aging Kingbaldier was waiting by the coat hanger–with slicked back oil black hair and the slips of hair that covered his eyes dyed a damp indigo. Polonius had a disappointed frown on his face and Kingbaldier–still rocking his red-black rock guitar on his shoulder–had his arms crossed and stood tall above my ex-darling with a terrible frown, his dominating stature amplified by the shadowy environment and with Kingbaldier's face half–obscured in darkness.

Polonius approached mine former love (and his own daughter too); but mine once-beloved was quick to repel them back, unsheathing a silver dagger, warding them off!

Kingbaldier drew his spear and charged at Ophelia, but Ophelia blocked the spear tip and slashed open Kingbaldier's shoulder pad, temporarily distracting him!

Polonius drew a sword and sworded at his own kin, ducking as Ophelia's dagger swiped through the air and meeting her dagger with a vertical strike and advancing forward!

Ophelia put up a fist and held her blade sideways, cleanly splitting the air in the room and shattering a moment of tense silence–a break amidst a heated spar–slicing apart the saber of his father's glistening, silvery longsword and kicking Kingbaldier in the chest with her left sneaker and (after sheathing her dagger) pummeling him in the face with two hands until he was against the hardwood, begging for his life and blocking every punch of hers with his wrist cuffs until even those had become a dented up, battle-worn congregation of chainmail and thin metal plating. Ophelia socked Kingbaldier up the chin–a weirdly angled uppercut, if you will, with Kingbaldier positioned against the floor and Ophelia standing over him–and sent him out cold!

Polonius revealed a second longsword (concealed in his right sheath) and charged towards his own daughter (and my ex) yet again!

They met in a furious explosion of light; I flew backwards and against the back wall where Ophelia's bed lay, the back of my head hitting the frame of the mattress. Polonius slashed the blade off his daughter's saber, breaking it into twenty fragments that resembled broken cutlery as they clanked against the floor and rolled in different directions!

Polonius stepped towards Ophelia as the guards entered the room, spears pointed at the king's most trustworthy advisor, and the captain of the battalion (named Captain Kesver) leading the troop in the arrest of the king's loyal servant.

Indeed, Polonius was arresting his own daughter for a righteous cause, but what did these soldiers know? All these grunts knew was that Polonius was attacking Ophelia–princess of the castle and the upcoming advisor to the king should Polonius need to step down or be deemed unfit to do the job. In the eyes of these military troopers (since they didn't witness what Polonius had) Polonius was merely committing treason against his own family and against all of the people of Elsinore, and Kesver saw subduing Polonius in combat as doing his people a great service, delivering vengeant justice upon wrongdoing and scoring one for the good guys in his wonderful nation.

Kesver stepped towards Polonius with an angry glare in his eyes, a stare that burned even the devil and was so cold that the icy Antarctica itself shivered if it were to return his gaze. He stepped forth with his sword, hoisting it into the air and slashing the blade against Polonius' shoulder, a sliver of sunlight beaming onto his shoulder pad as he returned back to a fighting stance.

Polonius and Kesver circled each other, each trapped in their own mind wondering when each blow of the longsword would land or when their opponent would twirl, parry or spin!

Kesver sliced through a sudden, cold breeze–a wind that had entered the quarters from the back window, rattling the shutters and twisting the blinds–and missed wholly.

Polonius and Kesver continued to prance about, waiting for the right moment to jump into the invisible ring wherein nobody could leave; their swords swiped and entered the ring, but they themselves refused to.

Kesver rammed forward with his blade, Polonius blocked, Kesver swiped back, angled forward and jumped into the air, his motions a blurred mess, and his form quick and nifty; he swiped at Polonius from above and kicked him in the stomach, knocking Polonius down to the floor. Kesver hammered at Polonius–who attempted to block him wearily–until his sword fell to his side and Kesver drew his own sword to Polonius' side, crying, "Surrender, traitorous Polonius!"

Polonius and Kesver's swords slid back and forth as Polonius screamed in reply, "Never! I will never surrender to cowardice!" Polonius got to his feet and parried Kesver's attacks with unusual speed–whereas his earlier efforts had been exhausted and lacking in energy. He blocked Kesver's attack and pounced forward, swinging at him like a pendulum on a grandfather clock, Ophelia slipping away and Kesver barraged Polonius with his longsword, their swords nimbly slipping against each others', slamming against the floor and leaving indents and fading crackles of flame.

Polonius, continuing to speak, waggled his finger against the escaping Ophelia, quickly explaining everything in short blurts of sound in between blocking the belligerent sword strikes. "Look!" he cried, pointing accusatively at his own daughter. "I told you that my treacherous daughter started this when she tried to cover up her own crime!"

Kesver, ignorant to Polonius' begging, jumped into the air and angled his sword downwards, reminding me vaguely of that duel with Laertes in the sparring room wherein I died.

The ceiling lamps shut off as strobe lights flickered to life, burning down onto the necks of the partygoers (most of whom stopped their rampant raving upon the clock striking a certain hour, indicating that the main event was about to begin, and a duel between myself and the expert fencer Laertes began.)

The young man expertly parried my every attack, his eyes steadily meeting mine as our lances spun and twirled.

The fair Laertes–dressed in quite a flamboyant rainbow suit-shirt and slacks and shoes that shined in mine own eyes, almost blinding me if it weren't for the contacts I myself wore–slashed his sword against mine, his rapier and mine moving back and forth as we sparred, myself landing the first strike when I startled him and posted forward towards his knee, slicing apart his chest armor and cutting into his knee pads. "Aye!" he cried. "You've landed the first blow, but you'll blunder the rest!"

I replied, "Stall no more, and attack me now!" The king and queen muttered amongst themselves (as did one of the king's men: Osric.) The queen offered me a drink and a rag–an opportune moment for a swift breath and a swig, and a chance to dry my damp forehead–but I, in my arrogance, turned down her request.

Laertes and I traded blows, moving like two spears of lightning across the rainy skies. He charged forward and I blocked his attack with my armored elbow, a beam of sunlight bouncing off his rainbow suit and burning into his eyes and allowing me to post forth and score a second point. "Oh," he cried, "how I have blundered!"

"There," Claudius whispered, tears filling his eyes whilst he darted a quick stare at the queen, who was reaching for a Solo cup set on a fold-up table. The strobe lights froze midair, shining on me and my bloodthirsty opponent Laertes as we swooped towards each other amidst a crowd of lights, cheers, weeping noises as my mother dropped and mine uncle Claudius rushed to his gaze, and roars as we swapped swords and ripped open each others' armor with our swords, chains jangling and macaroni-shaped steel bits falling to the floor as both of us ripped and tore with our chainmail, and from there things become blurry, and our battle becomes almost a torrent of wind. "Gertrude, queen of Elsinore…"