"O, the queen has fallen!" I cried, crumpled and now crawling like a defeated worm towards mine own mother, realizing the gravity of my errors, the horrible tragedy that befell because I elected vengeance over healing, unnecessary hatred and succumbing to the hurt over choosing love and seeking peace. I cried over my mother, cradling her in my arms at her last moments as she cradled me at my birth. At that moment, the gravity of my life settled in on me, and every single moment from this play–from the encounters with the ghost and the scuffles with Polonius and to Laertes–plunged back into my mind like a hurricane ravaging a city, like a tornado scuffing the sides of houses, like a flood ravaging through the streets or a flame–a flame ignited by the lighter that is guilt (tremendous guilt that seemed to rock me in my final moments until it was guilt I could no longer ignore), like a flame that couldn't be extinguished.
Indeed, looking back on this from the inferno I am currently trapped in, I was overwhelmed with a surplus of unbreakable guilt, struck by the devastation that followed my own actions. There were no promises kept within this unfolding tragedy of tragedies, no smiles to be drawn from the lips of the people that were entangled within the vines of fate, no moments of fulfilling happiness. I can tell you that it doesn't get better afterwards, although there is one minor victory, one small thing that brought some sense of closure to the entire series of events that you could barely call a story, moreso a strung together collage of tragic happenstances and people at the wrong place, people at the wrong time, glimmers of the past bleeding in and haunting people, revenge driving the sane people into madness and awry, a standoffish divide between the interests of two lovers ripping them apart and driving one of them down a dark path and the other to a life of damnation, broken promises between parents and children and a final duel between two brothers.
And returning to Ophelia and my blackmail scheme, Ophelia agreed to keep silent about my celebrity fame once and for all, submitting herself back to my powerful and prickly fingers as I reigned her back into my horse pen. It was no easy feat, of course; her psychology was clawed and scratched, and her worldview was tinted like a car window to subdue any thoughts of disillusionment and have her hooked to me. As King Hamlet's former wife Gertrude was once wrapped around her fingers, King Hamlet was now wrapped around mine, and she was clinging on for dear life even as I myself squeezed my fingers and smushed her, and as bears gnashed at her below.
You might believe that this is abusive and intolerable behavior, and you would be correct; unfortunately, it is only upon my subjection to this inferno that my blindness was wiped from my eyes and I truly saw the egregious mistakes of my past, trapped in a hellhole even I–the great Hamlet–am too wretched and wild to escape.
This torturous land of flames in which I am entrapped has enslaved me as I have once enslaved others for my own needs. I writhe daily before the tyranny of an evil ruler that carries a devilish pitchfork, a horned figure that refuses to stop my torture until I apologize, yet also a figure that won't release my tongue and allow me to speak the words that free me from these chains, the words that finally release me and let me roam amongst the angels above. Unbeknownst to the said leader in question–the devil in my shadows–I have other plans.
I have been assembling a group of rebels in the shadows which even the devil whose name I'd daren't speak has caught a whiff of, shadows even the devil can't slither after and bite like the serpent it is. I have been assembling a group of rebellious slaves within this afterlife, and tonight we plan to overthrow the mad autocrat once and for all, defenestrate him from his throne and take over ourselves, taking control of our damnation like horses who dropped their reigns and pick it back up, and maybe even engage in a bit of the torture ourselves, and maybe even escape this hellish afterlife and meet our friends at the pearly gates and the clouds that rumble far above the earth (for they do rumble at this time of year, a potential foreshadowing of the reckoning we may face if we try and rebel, both from the presences living with us that can cast us to even deeper pits, and the mighty presences living far above us that can push us back down.)
It was an agreeable plan: me and my ragtag team of villains would strike at night and overrun the fiery plains with as much force as possible, raiding an armory of ammunition-powered weapons that bathed in the horrible luminescence of neon blood lights, painting the corridors in horrific shades of crimson that resembled a hallway of dead bodies, but whereas a hallway of dead bodies had souls that passed, this was the chamber whose subdivisions contained the worst of those souls, whose walls were painted with their insides and glowed to the shrieks of souls.
And indeed, we did execute this plan: when the place grew especially dark, me and my group of disillusioned faces–whose names I did not know, nor were important to me in any way, shape or form, and whose halls of eternal scorn and anger were indeed bellowing with agony and fright–we bucketed down the halls and to the armory, ransacking the darned thing of its armaments and bolting out of there before any of those things with the blood red eyes and the snouts and the flapping bat wings caught us and stopped us in our tracks. But we only made it halfway across a rope bridge overlooking a steep drop into an eternally fueling and burning pit of bubbling lava when we were stopped by the triptych guard dog of Hades: Cerberus.
It was a surprisingly cute sight, seeing the fanged, triple-headed pitbull ripped straight from the pages of mythological Hell initially gnashing at us with its fangs, lashing out with its ravaging claws and ramming its crinite snout (as heavy as a monster truck) into the ash and coal and hellish stones that paved the ground below us suddenly act like a cutesy-wootsy little pet, begging for our forgiveness with its puppy-wuppy eyes and wiggly-waggly tail, and I couldn't resist petting that pettable snoot when its entire body dropped to be at my level (as best as it could) that cute little fluffy bundle of indoctrinated and tainted love that immediately bound itself to whatever eensy-weensy, teeny-tiny and burning, charring little remains of my heart that were left in my body after I had been sentenced to burn in this sans-paradise resting place alongside souls who (just in my honest, humble opinion) had committed much worse crimes against humanity than I.
The ternion-headed dog looked at me with a soft gaze, eyes that almost transformed the scent of burning spirits into a more pleasant scent, transforming the scent of purging sins into roasting s'mores on a campfire whilst laughing and telling stories. Obviously, (because I am an extremely intelligent human unfit for the Underworld) I understood that this dog was nothing more than a servant to the tyrannical dominion that ruled this place (for now), so I imparted upon it a leniency, forgiveness and freedom I almost never bestow upon anyone else and when I waltzed out of the burning depths of Hades, I took my new best friend and my favorite dawg Cerberus with me, tugging him by his giant leash and walking through the dark woods that surrounded the gates of Hell with him (that tail-wagging, trident dog) following me with a salivating tongue and wide puppy eyes.
Cerberus and I then spent that night out in the woods, mostly keeping to ourselves–although occasionally I'd reach into his wooly coat and tap on that behemoth of a dog, then looked up at the sky and point at a constellation I once observed under a telescope as a living man (my skin was withered and gray now, and I emanated as much fluorescence as a ceiling lamp would in a classroom) or something else interesting in the star-blasted night sky, like an asteroid or wherever the Moon just happened to be, or I'd recall a childhood memory like playing with my father and mother in the gardens, and other things back when things used to be innocent and saccharine memories that didn't at all seem like they'd lead me down the depraved path I've straggled down now. I didn't think he understood me, but I understood him, and despite everything I had done–despite all my flaws, my crimes, my imperfections, the insanity and the havoc I had wreaked upon the world, the hatred I spread and my abusive personality–that dog… my dog… was still there for me, looking at me with the same unhindered affection that if I had my entire life, wouldn't end up where I am now.
I looked at Cerberus and he looked at me, and I gazed into those prying eyes whilst a broken refugee from Hell, trying to remember how to live. Perchance with a dog–I ponder aloud as I'm writing this, Cerberus slowly rolling over and trying to perch himself on my lap as he sleeps–I can learn how to live again. Perhaps I'm an estranged and decaying man from the depths of Hell without much time before my temporary physical form collapses and I have to return to the Underworld, but maybe whilst I'm here this dog can teach me something about living. To be happy, perchance to love–even for a split second, even if at the end of the day I end up trapped back in Tartarus from where I escaped–that is the true purpose of life, isn't it?
Perhaps my purpose–in these temporary moments of freedom from the hellish chains that bind me (and the unending lashes I receive in the pits and chambers of the scapes of the doomed) that leave scars on my hands and arms–is to heal the scars on others and unbind them from their chains in this life. Perhaps if I can help one person find true happiness in their life–unapologetic happiness that, while subsiding in (sometimes random, sometimes invasive, sometimes sorrowful moments), takes a different form to help that person move on–and perhaps while I can't free myself in this life, I can free at least one person in theirs, breaking their shackles and imparting upon them my unbreakable belief in their strength and courage before I am bound to return to the spiritual realm of suffering.
Indeed, the gnashing maw of Hades was not a gnarly monster and all, and it indeed inspired me to introspect and find out how to best spend my remaining time as a resurrected creature from Hell; I wandered these lands, these parched roads as dusty suburban trucks passed me by and their drivers gave me disgusted looks, scoffing amongst themselves at my pruned skin and only halting their rude remarks when they saw the hellhound Cerberus that followed me wherever I went (this time–a week from the hell incident–following me without a leash because of how much time I spent training it, snarling at the drivers.)
And finally, I stumbled before the house of my best friend William Shakespeare, trudging through the miles of road in Stratford-Upon-Avon and arriving on his front porch with my hellish slice of rottweiler galloping towards my doorstep like a stampede of bulls, although this stampede was a one-dog army with a wildly happy face and curious look that contrasted my devastated face.
The walls were a dusty sky blue, and the glass quadrants that filled the window sills gathered dust and found ant colonies, convincing the armies of insects to inhabit the seeps in the door with its sans-usage and its expansive corridors, splinters that protruded from the door acting like plateaus from which the ants could look out to their short-sighted world, their antennae flicking left and right, back and forth as they sensed the world around them. The door also housed tiny spiders–eight-eyed creatures that occasionally spun webs of string and silk and crawled inside. And between a kettle and a teapot, there laid two spider webs (one on each appliance) and the housing spiders would occasionally climb atop their webs and stare at each other with orange eyes (as if to burn with hatred) and pointed their front arms against each other with such terrible accusation as to never mend their differences and recognize their similarities: in a world of grandeur, they were just spiders. And on the stovetop, there were occasionally shelled beetles scuttling about and hissing at the owner of the entire house.
It was a two story house, of course, and by the steps to the second floor there was another colony of ants; whereas the first colony hiding within the doorstep were about as tall as a thumbtack, these ants had the bodies of muscle with each portion shaped like an individual marble, with antennae like prongs that sniffed the homeowner's dusty shoes as he passed by, poking the air for his scent; indeed, this colony had inherited blindness from its queen, and as with all things it warred with those who shared many similarities with it. These ants on the stairs knew the homeowner's schedule: he walked up the stairs to his bedroom every night at 9:00 P.M. to take a nap, walked back downstairs at 10:00 P.M. to have his nighttime sip of tea and walked back upstairs at 10:15 P.M. precisely to get to sleep on time. He woke up at 11:00 A.M. to get breakfast–a glass of milk and a bowl of crunchy flakes–and he went back upstairs at 11:15 A.M. to write poetry or to lie in bed, for he had lost the energy to write plays and generally accomplish nothing, as this certain homeowner had lost everything since his best friend moved out to pursue a better future.
Sitting next to him on the porch and watching Cerberus try to eat the fluffy white clouds that roamed the sky blue pastures of the blue skies, I couldn't really tell you he felt bitter. Moreso, he felt a sense of loneliness following his best friend's departure. He had scraggly, dark brown ruffs for hair and an exhausted, soft drift in his blue eyes, a gaze that exhibited merely a sprinkle of life. He was a playwright with not many plays on his resume, a man with formerly grand ambitions with grandly mediocre plans for the rest of his life.
He was a man whose name had been largely forgotten, overshadowed by his friend's accomplishments and was now left to trudge the expansive plains that were his bedroom (a few paces away from a wall from the center of the room, marked by a central wooden support pillar with branching frames that connected to the walls and the half-completed ceiling. This man was clawing away at history's pages, grappling with his stress to try and be remembered, snatching up every last creative thought that entered his head to try and write the next epic play, the next epic piece of prose, even the one line of iambic pentameter he needs to reenter the writing space.
His name was Francisco, and he was a long time acquaintance of William Shakespeare, and a man whose life was torn apart when William Shakespeare had announced his acceptance into Denmark's University of Thespian Study And Performance (also known as DUTSAP), and while the last theatrical writing he published was a massive success, his writing afterwards was filled with hopeless plots and tragic romances, lost loves and sometimes crazed, aimless rambling. And then he stopped writing entirely, and the world almost forgot about him completely, only knowing him by his previous works and by a name without a face.
If it means something, however, I never forgot about him. We were childhood friends; it was Francisco, Guildenstern, Rosencrantz and I pulling pranks on our elementary school teacher, doodling over the white board with a permanent marker and drawing all over our classmates' arms, forging fake doctor's notes and being generally outrageous in our actions and our comments (and we made rude comments also, although I initially hesitated sharing this because it would ruin an already tainted image.) So if it indeed makes my sales pitch of my own character seem more promising, I never forgot about Francisco's name, and I always believed he could do it (and by the looks of what I'm saying, I'm pretty sure you can tell whether or not my prediction was correct.)
Francisco Vanesca sat on a rocking chair and rolled back and forth, looking not at me but in the general direction of the sunlight beaming directly through the window. Meanwhile, my dog Cerberus was busy chasing a giant moth–holy lepidoptera, rizzlers–outside of his house and trampling over the dandelions, kicking up pollen and launching flower petals into the house, settling into the windowsills and on the porch steps while Francisco tried to mask a tear in his eye.
And if I'm being brutally honest with you, reader, I almost felt horrible about my horrible judgements and my treatment towards Francisco B. Vanesca. He deserved better than his friends deserting him to pursue better hopes and dreams, and he'd desperately do anything to get them back. He looked like he was thrown back and forth, whirled around like a dizzy and sleep deprived sheep in a crowd of wolves, one always on the verge of tears even if the least sensitive topic was brought to his face. Ideas pitched towards him by the only acquaintances that he had left–from a dark and stormy night to a dry desert, from sunshine and flowers to a creepy and desolate cabin–it all just reminded him of The Bard and the plays that he wrote with the man, the wild adventures they had together within the pages and pages of stage directions and quirky, elaborate and purple prose, all of the times they spent together that he cherished but whose cherishing The Bard didn't seem to reciprocate.
Francisco wiped some sweat from his bushy brows, snatched my eyes into the net of his visage and made a remark about my sweaty rock band tee shirt, my belt (stitched with silk that had was shaded with the hues of dark chocolate and had his name engraved in golden lettering onto the leather crest on his belt. Beneath wherein his name was carved, there was a golden bust of a bull's skull. His belt was beneath his sky blue striped polo shirt, and he wore sand jeans and brown boots, and above his scraggly ruffs (that themselves sat above a scraggly beard) he wore a stetson hat. Although he claimed to have nothing, I could spot a hint of the direction he sought out in his life just before he gave up entirely, a twinkle in his eyes when I noticed his apparel and a spark of hope.
"I know what you've been trying to tell me now," I muttered, my jaw agape. "You want to be… a cowboy!"
He blurted, "Thank the Lord somebody noticed!" He rose from his rocking chair–the "wheels" or whatever you call 'em still cradling some apparent spirit as it tumbled back and forth–his joy revealing itself like a barrage of fireworks as he grabbed me by my swanky collar and screamed in my pale gray face (whose features were slowly being absorbed back into the underground inferno that slowly awaited my return. "I've always wanted to be a cowboy! Ever since my pal Shakespeare left, that's been my greatest ambition!"
Francisco rocked me and spat in my face as he bellowed, "Heya pal, do you suppose you could help me become a cowboy?" He paused, contemplating on whether or not he should embrace this epiphany. To live or to exist, that is the question. "And perhaps if my ol' buddy William Shakespeare accepts me, maybe he'll come back and tell me how proud he is of me, you know?"
"You're happy…" I replied, a bit of life twinkling in my own eyes, "...because you finally discovered yourself again."
"And it's all thanks to you, me ol' Hamlet pal!" Francisco cried, giving me a hearty slap on the shoulder before rushing down the staircase (his left arm dragging against the left railings and past the colony of ants (hiking up and down the carved sycamore prisms that the homeowner–a giant in their visages–usually droned up and down with a senseless malaise, whiffing the air in confusion) and darting through his smoky kitchen (the kettle and the rice cooker were left plugged in for too long, and now crackles of flame burst and popped from seams in the rice cooker and the kettle, obscured by the drifting sea of smoke) and charged down his front steps, his cowboy boots squeaking against the floorboards momentarily as he burst down a fence of tall weeds and hugged the blasting beacon of sunlight slicing apart the fields of silk white cotton candy and tumbling into the leg of my hirsute, three-headed playful rottweiler, the first friend I ever truly made, the guard dog of the pits and the most friendly thing in Hades–Cerberus; Cerberus (who since liberated from his enslavement within the stalagmites and stalactites that occasionally roared with orange-yellow flames and struck terror into the prisoners who were bound by holy will to obsequiously purge their own sins) had the hysterical grin of a wild hyena chasing a lion, an indescribable feeling of perfect happiness that I had long-heard rumors of but never witnessed myself–and yet, I was caught in the pricelessness of true and perfect contentment anon, filling the air with his squeaky yelps as he chased Francisco around the courtyard and Francisco tried to wrangle him with a lasso at the same time, barking like a golden retriever while Francisco grinned his teeth until the Sun bleached them an ugly white.
And with Francisco finding hope within a newfound sense of purpose, I took off into the sunset alone, now cured of my ailments and searching for King Claudius. If you aren't aware of the events that happened in the play, that's okay, because those events were highly fictionalized renditions of the real life story I am recounting to you in these writings (in this book entitled Hamlet Ex Machina, which I intend to publish under my pen name Gaga McGee-Weyer, and I also intend to find a good editor who can help me publish my works.) The reason for the omission of events into and out of the story was because Shakespeare was not there for all of them; and living in his human flesh and lugging his human bones, he did not have the perfect memory to recount all of the dialogue and physical interactions and altercations between the characters in the story.
That is why I have taken it upon myself to regale to you the true series of events that happened and inspired the Shakespearean tragedy you may have read yourself; and that–-like how Francisco's purpose is to be a mustang-riding, bull-wrangling, rodeo-winning cowboy–is my purpose. I hope that I can serve you–the reader–honestly and faithfully as you seek out the truth in tales such as these.
Of course, King Claudius did not die by my hands at the end of the play. It was the disillusioned Captain Kesver who–believing that royalty were corrupt (as he witnessed Kingbaldier arresting my father, and he himself arrested mine bride Ophelia)–marched up to mine own uncle's mouth, forced it open and poured the poison inwards, the syrupy green slicking down his tongue and audibly causing him to choke as I myself struggled along with him in what were my "dying moments" described to you in the play. He wriggled around a little bit–barely even putting up a fight initially, until he saw a man with brown ruffs for hair and a white puffy collar around his neck, and brown robes and a beard and a stache who was racing to jot all of this down so that he may regale this to his generation, and his generation the next and the next generations (bound by historical obligation to do some obsequious observance of the play) passing it to generations and for generations to come.
Of course, this was The Bard himself, William Shakespeare in the flesh.
The captain paused his murder attempt and charged at Shakespeare, drawing a lance from one of his many scabbards!
The Bard drew a lance as well, pointed it at Captain Kesver and simply walked forward, carrying himself with an unmatched poise and faintly smiling with a perverted sense of wit that was mocking enough to anger Captain Kesver and force him to engage Shakespeare in a mighty battle!
Captain Kesver struck at Shakespeare from above, his lance's sharp edge swiping down and rattling against the blunt face of Shakespeare's blade!
Shakespeare promptly exited the sword lock and jousted forward, pushing Captain Kesver back and forcing him to retaliate with a joust of his own, drawing them both into the center of the palace's courtroom wherein the queen's and king's empty thrones lay, as Gertrude and Garfield were collapsed into each other's arms, as if to mourn for each other for an indefinite amount of time, an unending grieving that would signify their love for eternities to come!
Captain Kesver struck at Shakespeare's left arm and Shakespeare parried, aiming for the captain's right, and an orb of fluctuating, flickering light boomed out from the center of their battle and filled the entire palace–its corridors and chambers and all–with its luxurious, overwhelming splendor and sending the captain and The Bard away from each other and sending me crashing into one of the many Vitruvian Greek statues and Renaissance impersonations and interpretations of Greek culture, fragmenting my spinal bones like glass on the precipice of shattering, but not breaking my spinal bones entirely to the point of lasting disfunction.
Shakespeare oncemore plunged forward at the captain and warded him backwards, flicking his sword up, jumping into the air and plummeting downwards in a skewering attack!
The captain and Shakespeare continued to duel for a bit, pulling their lances away and bashing their lances against each other, sparring amidst a courtroom of befallen royalty and in front of my dying corpse, and my spirit (fading into the abysmal Underworld that awaited me at the time) was rooting for The Bard to win against his own fictional characters, rooting for the playwright of playwrights to gain an astonishing victory against the characters he birthed, and hopefully (just a dying hope of mine) he would send me to Heaven for praying for his victory in this harrowing skirmish! They swung forth and back, striking at each other's padded kneecaps and blunting each other's attacks with great precision, neither opponent allowing each other to make an unforeseen move or an unexpected escape in the midst of this heated, flame-backed battle!
Then Fortinbras–an old man with a silk white stubble and balding hair, wrinkles that pruned his face and weary, war-torn eyes that had faced down the unbiased slayer and non-prejudiced persecutor that is the crawling arms of death itself–charged into the battle with his army, his soldiers filling the palace like a riot mob, a sea of men screaming and searching for nothing, trampling my bones and disgracing my fallen ma and uncle as they broke down the marble palace gates, searching the rooms for any treasures (but the treasures were no longer there) and finding none, then reconvening at the center of the palace as Fortinbras announced his victory in an epic monologue, beginning his hallowed speech with a voice rustier than metal but speaking of things as new as the mobile phone (but not including the mobile phone) and announcing justice and peace on behalf of his followers: "I have been granted by fate, by course and by God Himself this glorious estate, an empire which I shall rule with an iron fist and a domain upon which I shall rise, and I shall cleanse this palace of its blood and establish a new home. And Horatio, my good man, where be the crown that I shall wear? Found it, have you?
Horatio–a man with a young blond beard and slicked back, shaved down hair, with the pleasant voice akin to a meadow filled with cherry blossoms and chirping hummingbirds—spoke back, "No, my good lord, I have not found your crowns yet. Perchance one of your soldiers stepped on it, or perchance it is not here."
"Aye," Fortinbras cried, playfully pushing through his own chainmail-clad army to reach Horatio, who was standing at the entrance to the left wing and carrying a platter of desserts instead of a platter of royal crowns and gemstones. "There's the rub, my steadfast Horatio!" Fortinbras asserted his demands by standing tall over Horatio, pushing the young guard of Elsinore into submitting to his claim as ruler; such a man as Fortinbras–with such a massive, projecting and echoey voice and an even more massive ego–was not willing to view a man such as Horatio as his equal, and he was not willing to politely accept Horatio's factual statement about not being able to find the crown as truth. He marched towards Horatio (a bit more rudely this time) and grabbed Horatio by his black collar, as he was dressed in a casual suit, white tie and black slacks with black bowler shoes, and he whispered into Horatio's ear, "You will find this crown–for it is righteously mine and I am righteously its–or there will be consequences for your treason."
Horatio gulped and nervously stammered back, asserting himself oncemore, "But sir, as I have previously regaled to you, the crown has seemingly gone missing, and I have been unable to find the king and queen anywhere in these castle wars since the commotion with Hamlet and Laertes happened."
Then Fortinbras gathered the attention of the crowd–his army of loyal soldiers who would jump off a bridge and plummet into a cavern of stalactites if he commanded them to do so–dispersing his arms so that they spread and reached for the left and right walls of the palace courtroom, projecting his voice and drawing their wandering thoughts and conversations to his own ideas and wants, crying with such pity and remorse that one might think he was a homeless beggar wandering the streets and asking people for change, "Please, my good fellows, have any of you seen the crown which I shall bear? I hope to have my coronation in four days, and I hope that my crown is ready for me to wear by then!' As nobody replied to his cries, he scoffed to himself and yelled with greater anxiety and frustration, "If anyone here sees my crown, please let me know, as I do not want to have my loyal tailor Begenius to rush his fitting and make any hasty adjustments right before my coronation begins!"
Then one of the soldiers–a man in the crowd that was standing directly over my tarnished, Hell-swallowed corpse–raised his gloved hand and cried with a childish excitement that could spring a depressed dog from its somber malaise, with a ravishing glee that could uplift the saddened and springboard the lost and weeping from their troubles and distract them with the promises of a better life ahead, and with an innocent smile that confused the angry and the dejected, and with a narrow squint this man named Fingle pointed down at my body, calling it out, then pointing at the bodies of my fallen ma and uncle and calling those out, and–noticing how deep and dark this situation was, the man named Fingle cried with a broken heart, as if he were my brother and he were my ma's boy, as if he were the man my uncle taught how to fish and how to rock climb and how to date a girl and how to have such an allure that Ophelia–the woman who suffered under my travesties for so many years, who had to put up with me for so long that it damaged her in ways I've witnessed and in ways even my screen in the house of the damned could not bear to show me without being overwhelmed and shutting off–would swoon and be attracted like a magnet to my allure: "I believe I have found the crown, dear Fortinbras, Your Highness; but, it also comes with the most unfortunate sight of a family slain; and, as it appears to me, here lies your archnemesis Claudius, his newly wedded wife Gertrude and their son Hamlet, who (in taking after his father) has seemingly died like a true warrior, and yet here he lays below my feet that trample him."
"Indeed, what a tragic sight is this," said Fortinbras, parting the crowd and stepping past my fallen body, his chain armor crafted with steel links shaped like diamonds jingling as he observed me, spat on my neck and kicked me in the elbow, walking through a couple hundred men and approaching my uncle, kneeling down and softly lifting the crown from my uncle's long gray head of hair and observing it. Before he placed the crown on his own head, he held it up high for all the soldiers to see, and allowed his words to wander through the plain of pained and devastated thought for a while: Fie, what a tragic sight is this to see
Such a destroyed, tainted, smeared;
And withered, fading royal legacy.
To honor and obey such destruction,
To hallow such things as this is evil.
To do that is terrible sacrilege.
But to preserve history is a must.
We shall create a mural, a great sight,
And its foundation, 'tis these grand floors;
And its story: royal disillusion;
A son, Hamlet, resenting his uncle;
Queen Gertrude, married to Hamlet's uncle;
And Hamlet's uncle, Claudius Hamlet;
A triumvirate of might, hate and loss.
Fortinbras gently set the crown of jewels on his head, stretched out his arms (as the chains drifted down from his armpits and jangled to the tune of erupting cheers) and announced with such challenge to the Heavens that God Himself was compelled to descend from the skies, envelope the skies in storm clouds and personally smite Fortinbras, "So let me be dubbed King Fortinbras of Elsinore, and let me be remembered as the savior of these lands!" He held his hands out to his audience of riled up men and raised his arms, eliciting even noisier and more proud cheers and filling his rambunctious army with such gravity that it resonated on my tongue as I slowly faded away, and the amazing roars were so charged with energy and pulse that it almost brought me back to life.