Horatio left Polonius to ponder by the riverside; and with that, we promptly return to the divorce storyline I abandoned quite a while ago, picking up with Ophelia dashing out of Officer Barnardo's office, stricken with tears!
I conversed with the claims manager for a while, but soon even I exited the office, as I had grown weary from the talks of restraining orders and legal paraphernalia, and I was genuinely interested in attending that day's senate meeting, wherein we would elect two advisors to the king and I was fated to receive hallowing and praise for my philanthropic contributions to the Elsinore economy. It was boring legal stuff for others; but to me, it was my chance to shine in the spotlight. Finally, I was getting the respect I deserved around these parts!
I entered the throne room–a place of refurbished marble, more closely noticing the speck-free golden chalices and the glistening chandeliers that adorned the gilded ceilings upon closer inspection, and better admiring the grand thrones that demanded attention from my close position in this ever-expanding hall of regal ornaments–and sat down by a wobbling crowd of random senators, ones who squabbled over my forehead and whose spit spat in my hair and ruined my careful combing. I bent down to give them more room to chastise and debate each other without their saliva splattering onto my hair, but now it was getting onto my back. As Queen Gertrude entered alone (without the imposing, almost abusive statuesque figure of King Hamlet at her side) all of the bitter remarks and the arguments and the conversations by the water cooler came to a halt, and Queen Gertrude took her seat, her brows sweating despite the rest of her graceful and composed, her finger nervously scratching against the coronet-molded topper of her staff.
"Hello, all," the queen cried out to her intently listening audience. "I give you my dearest apologies. King Garfield Hamlet had other business to attend to, and he sends his deepest apologies for not being able to attend today's senate meeting." The queen brushed a string of long, luscious hair away from her face and departed from her throne (much to the surprise of the crowd) wandering down the hall and looking deeply (as if to flirt with them) into the eyes of each senator, twirling the same strand of hair over and over until her eyes pierced my fragile soul, and she finally granted me the attention I so long craved for. But she only looked at me–no more–and she moved down the line of seats, gracing the senator's eyes with her insightful stare (burrowing her stare into one particular young woman's eyes with deep, heartfelt love and curiosity, as if her eyes were a pair of birds whose shelter was ravaged by a family of cannibalistic vultures, and the two eyes of this female senator's fixed gaze were a pair of interlaced nests wherein the two love birds could swoon and romance and restlessly peck each other on the beaks) before sauntering back to her throne and perching upon it, looking back over the entire audience with a soft smile on her face.
She moved her hands with soft, gentle sways and poised motions, her fingers waggling as if to sprinkle magic dust across the senators in the room. My mother's face was as fluffy and gentle as a pancake at 6:00 A.M. in the morning, and her perfume smelled of honey and maple syrup brewing in a cauldron. Her motherly love emanated from her glowing skin, and her long hair–whitening like the soft petals of snow that covered the lands during the winter–flowed gently down her face in long braids. Her eyes were filled with wise experiences, and trapped within the center of her irises were all of her sadnesses, fears, joys, pains and everything else that she had held on to: memories, inspirations, laughs, unwept tears, undrawn blood, and the chambers of sweat that did not paint her face. Her lips moved and smacked with the quietness of a butterfly leaving its chrysalis, and the words left her mouth like the wise notes from a flute.
Her hands rested gently against the seat of her throne whilst listening to the rageful, burning complaints of the senators, and her eyes gently fixated on each speaker as they voiced their anger at the king's absence and lack of critical support for the economy–they should've been thanking me for stepping in when my father wasn't there, but whatever–and spouted a medley of other rude things at my father and my mother that I elected to tune out. Although her reaction was far more stoic than any normal person was willing to be, my mother was anything but a stoic; within her eyes I could see a flame stirring, a twitch that, at a momentary glance, one would not be able to catch. The tyrannical, bitter scorns from the senators chipped away at her temper, biting away at her kindness towards the senators and driving her to a near-boiling point as she muttered a curse word under her breath.
Then her soft smile returned; and she motioned for me to approach the thrones, so I did.
The recrudescence of my mother's blithesome simpering, followed by her jocose opine brought a delectation scantly seen within the dismal, drab bowers that interjected the insubstantial lacunae of my rosé encephalon. And to a greater extent, the scintillating in her oculi illumined and waned in more fraught intervals. And, the spasming in her tissue apertures transformed into an interminable maternal contemplation. The frenetic clamor of her heart was lulled into a reposeful periodicity, and her words billowed from her tongue like the fringes of a silky, hoary wedding frock; her oration metamorphosed my ear into a sibylline, cartilaginous subterrane with commodious detours and temporary hospices for her sweet musings whilst the furrowed salmon organ within my skull–bemused by her endearment towards me–processed her treacly cogitations.
Her digits inched towards the shoulder of my purple trench coat, her mouth still teeming with ardent, lustily reveries as her fingers gamboled down my shoulder's plaza and down to my palm's boardwalk, her pointer and middle finger straddling across the foreshore of my outer palm and resting as her rapt stare hooked my injudicious regard and reeled my inane gaze back towards her face of quietude. She wrested a snigger from my exsiccated lips and reciprocated a peart expression, whimsically dallying around me more-so like a coltish groom cavorts about his stoic bride than a mother jigging about her son. Birling about, she exulted my altruism with magnanimous jouissance, slamming me with her ebullience like a car swerving off the correct lane and crashing into the bumper of another car, causing a pile-up on the freeway. Whilst earlier burying her apoplectic exacerbation towards the haughty superintendence, her pleated lips assailed me with gratis encomium.
"You are so beautiful, my son," she complimented, ripping my brittle ego from my heart as she fed my own need for validation with her own love. "You do so much for Elsinore, despite merely being the prince. You deserve better than what Ophelia has to offer to you."
Feeling indebted towards her gratuity, I bowed with plentiful humility, "Thank you, dear mother." Then I reeled the rest of the senators into our exchange, yelling to every corner of the castle and the extended vicinity, "As you all know, I am a rash, brutal and tyrannical man with the spattering mouth of a pit bull, and the only thing that comes out of my mouth are the surplus food after I binge-eat and arrogant ramblings against our wonderful servants. But I promise henceforth to do better and be the prince of Elsinore (and future king) that you all deserve." The audience roared with applause, and I found within that applause a tier of ecstasy I had (until now) not reached, a pleasure rushing through my body that reawakened my faculties and rocketed my alertness to a new level; and I could feel my mind transcending to a higher level of being, a greater sense of peace and enlightenment coursing through my bones as I soaked in the blooming and flickering roars, the applause that lingered for a long moment after I finished my quick speech, the melody of voices that swam together and hurled compliments, the soft hands from the ladies in the crowd that chucked roses and tulips at my feet, begging for my attention and beckoning for my wink, the swarms of men raising their hands and calling out my swanky name, the cheerful bouncing of my thick bosoms as I jumped up and down, the trumpeting from the king's royal band as I was being praised and worshiped in every direction, the chorus of clarinets and flutes and other woodwinds as I bowed, and bowed, and bowed; the resonating eulogizing from my mother that was outspoken by the blazing drummers and other percussionists in the background, and the ear-hollowing crunch of a guitar pick against a red-black guitar by the king's guards.
And with the meeting heralded to a pompous close by the strumming, drumming and foul screeching of instruments, I sequestered to my quarters and pondered on the whereabouts of my father. As I've mentioned earlier, King Garfield Hamlet wasn't exactly a figure in my life that I admired. He was a cowardly man with many sins to hide, and he was often gone tending to the needs of others instead of attending to the wishes of his family. He was a less-than-perfect man with a more critical lens towards his own family than his political rivals, and his eyes were often lingering on other women more than they did on his sweetest wife.
He spoke in stifled gargles and stammers, and he often tripped over his own words more than he tripped on his wife's dress. My father was a man with many-a-dollar, but he only spent pennies on what really mattered: us. Most of his days were spent moseying around the castle and hoping to be struck by some inspiration for the novel he was writing, digging through the drawers and the cabinets in the abandoned quarters and hiding in the closet with Polonius, hoping to find some answers to his queries and calm his nerves about not being able to finish his book in time, pleading with himself whilst he thought nobody could hear him (they could) in corners where he thought nobody hung out (people definitely were wandering and chilling at the dapper places he wrote his snappy stories in) about how he hoped to reach the deadline for his novel so that he could rush it off to the publishing mill and get it turned into a real thing, something he could hold in his hands (this was a dream he knew he would never accomplish, but was there anything wrong with trying?)
My father often sat in the corner of the dining room–not in any of the grand, fancy seats but a crooked, rickety chair that was halfway to the recycling plant, churning out words until the striking of the clock (at this particular moment, 'twould indicate the passing of midnight and the centralization of the Moon in the night sky) so that he may finally sleepily wander to his resting place. He'd sit with a laptop and without inspiration, just stare at the page. But suddenly, inspiration would strike him like lightning and he'd have a 50,000 word manuscript whistling with ornate words by the end of three weeks; and despite this, amidst his writing time he'd always complain about how he never wrote enough every day, and he needed more time to complete his art, and art takes time, and that I shouldn't talk to him because I'm busy and I'll interrupt his flow, and I'm not in on it and I should stay outta the way, and I'm not his primary audience, and I shouldn't read his novel, and he would go on and on with grumpy words and pervert the hobby, driving me off my ambition to become a playwright (much like Shakespeare and–once–Francisco) and instead become a deranged lunatic.
He would often sneak out of fancy parties and galas or be on his mobile phone, and he'd be writing, and Queen Gertrude would shoot him a gentle look that masked contempt and a dirty stare, and he'd put his phone away, and he'd pull his phone out again later, and my mother would slap my father, and my father would berate my mother, and my mother and my father would get into a fight, and the fight would end with my father tackling my mother to the floor and the guards trying to pull him away, and my father would pull the guards aside that separated him from my mother and tell the guards that they're fired, and they oft walked away with tears in their eyes and their hearts ripped to shreds as the man they looked up to practically disowned them and kicked them back out into the streets, and my mother would watch this secretly with her hand placed over my mouth, and then my father would notice us. And he would attack us. And we would try to fight back.
My mother whipped him with her purse and knocked a tooth out of his dainty, arrogant grin. And my father would yelp in pain and call for the guards he'd just fired, but by then those guards would be long gone, probably wandering through the streets and putting their skills to better use than to serve a tyrant. My mother would rashly belt my father, and my father would rattle in pain as slick lacerations marked his spine, and rosy red marks where the bulkier parts of my mother's purse had impacted burned under the torches and ceiling lamps sprinkled throughout this castle (a collage of different architectural styles from plenty of regions) and my father would wriggle as my mother continuously slammed her purse into my father's back, pushing the blunted back-end of her right heel into my father's neck and reciprocating his abusive tactics whilst I watched and watched, her voice not slipping with even a crow's whisper as she became my father's Hell and punished my father for what were injustices done to her. She lifted her purse up–only for a sliver of time, sparing an agonized and scourged King Garfield from the burning coldness and the healing scars of vengeance–and slammed her glossy, rose pink bag against her husband's spine, the pain worse than before as the two punishments were interjected by a period of relieving peace for him (which was worse than any beating my mother received at his hands) and the pain settled deep within my mother's heart resolving into nothingness on a cursory level, whilst upon deeper introspection it only sunk further into her spirit (wherein it would forever linger there, haunting her sleep and giving her no rest.)
Anyway, as I entered my room, I saw Ophelia sitting in my bed, awaiting my return with an iPhone in her hand and an annoying smirk on her face, one that made me want to wash my eyes and irritate my nose with perfumes until the stench and dainty stare of arrogance had left my nostrils and my oculi!
She was clearly doing this to blackmail me in revenge for my blackmail! What does she make of me, an arrant knave!?
I charged towards Ophelia with a resolved stare, ready to draw the dagger in my sheath and fight her!
She snapped a picture, and I heard a digitally mutilated click-sound as the screen lit up her face, a glimmer of the photo appearing in her own pupils. She watched my eyes burn with anger. Rising from the bed, she walked over to me and frowned, her eyes squinting as she looked into mine and her brows asymmetrically slanted, her lips pursed inwards and her waltzing (she proceeded to leave the room and wave her iPhone around as if it was a new toy, or as if she were flirting with me and tempting me to return to her) slow and boastful.
What does she think she can do?! File a restraining order and file for a divorce, blackmail me, do all of this and think she can get away with this?!
No, I bolted after Ophelia, my legs quickly tiring out as I chased her down a long corridor, pouncing after her and screaming, "What do you think you're doing?!"
She spun her head towards me and cackled (the guts!) Ophelia continued to wave her phone around and she heartily laughed, darting around a corner and slipping through a troop of guards!
I chased Ophelia over the long table in the dining hall, crinkling up the tablecloth and kicking napkins and utensils out of the way, smashing plates under my boots and knocking vases down, spilling out the flowers and splashing water onto my clothes. My breath grew tired–and stale, too: I burped earlier, and the swig of margarita I had earlier before I conferenced with Officer Barnardo had returned in a much more foul scent, alongside the smell of expired potato chips–but I couldn't stop!
Ophelia burst into the next room–a room filled with a sea of cubicles–blurry spheres with flesh tones and hair propped over them peeking up to see the commotion, but otherwise each humanoid remaining in their own headspace–and tipped over a pencil cup, the contents emptying onto the floor beneath me as she burst into a limestone tiled bathroom, crying, "I'm going to tell the officer that you violated my restraining order!" As Ophelia ripped away the opposite door and entered a cooking room, she spun around again and yelled, "And I'm going to tell the kind officer what you did, and you're going to go to prison forever!"
I got to my feet, gave a single exacerbated pant and chased her down the kitchen (where I used to work.) Chefs–stumbling around with dishes in both hands, aprons splattered with marinara stains and spaghetti noodles littering the floor, poofy chef hats with crumbs caught in between the strings and facial hair with crumbs caught between the ragged lines–jumped out of my way as I endlessly pursued Ophelia out of the kitchen and into a laundromat (another place where I used to work!)
She grabbed a pencil off the laundromat boss' desk and threw it at me, but the blunted eraser end hit my chest and it dropped to the floor. She paused and grabbed a pen off the same desk, whirled around and flung it at me; the tip hit me this time, and I temporarily froze, stunned. She was about to grab another pen from the manager's desk when I threw a pan at her, which she dodged as she bellowed, "What's wrong with you, huh?!" We both took a moment to catch our breaths before she kept running, and she ran into a courtroom filled with men in expensive-looking suits.
The judge slammed his gavel as he entered and Ophelia snagged it from him, throwing it at me. "Ha!" she cried, as the cylindrical head of the gavel hit me in the skull and knocked me down for a moment. "You got served!" She looked for other things to grab and piled them up in her arms–the defendant's papers, the defense attorney's laptop, the district attorney's suit (which she ripped off easily, leaving the muscular man shirtless in a courtroom full of women and one bi man) and some files resting in the juror's lap. She hurled the files at me, then ran back at me as I got up and clobbered the laptop over my face, knocking me back down before she ran into a door perpendicular to where we entered, into a library!
I followed her into the library, almost losing her as she climbed over a bookshelf and knocked it backwards, causing the rest to slowly topple over like dominoes. The bookshelves were set up in a circular arrangement, and it was only a matter of time before the bookshelf I was standing underneath slammed over me and turned me into a floor-Hamlet-bookshelf sandwich! I darted after Ophelia as she grabbed books strewn across the floorboards and threw them my way, at one point even grabbing a dictionary and doing the same thing she did with the gavel in a less effective manner!
She darted around the circumference of the library and burst into a janitorial closet, practically sprinting to escape me! She armed herself with a furry broom and a plunger she came across and turned around, seemingly in a dead-end, and cornered as I jolted in… but she discovered another door–this one to the classroom within the castle walls–whacked me on the head with the base of the broom and left me concussed, before quickly making her way through a crowd of confused students! She darted through the classroom, made a right-angle turn and slammed into a glass window divided into quadrants, expecting the toughness of her cranium and the momentum of her movement to be enough to break the glass, but getting nothing; so, instead, she ran up to the teacher's desk and swiped the binder (which contained the curriculum for that day) and she raised it, ready to strike as I burst in!
I darted towards her with a plunger in my hand, and she spun a full 360 degrees and flung the binder! I batted it away with the rubbery hemisphere end of the plunger, sending it open-mouthed into the poor face of a child as the contents scattered across the classroom floor a child began to cry, but I was too laser-focused on Ophelia to notice that the kiddo scissors had lodged themselves into his head, above his eye! I bolted at Ophelia with a smirk and a niftily closing fist, ready to deliver the uppercut of the century; but alas, she sent me backwards with a spin and a karate kick!
Perceiving me to be temporarily unconscious, Ophelia burst through the classroom door by the whiteboard and into the principal's office (the principal being Cante Carnow, who you should remember from the beginning of the story!) She made a left turn and tried the same head-bash technique (again unsuccessful) before climbing onto the desk of the principal and squalling at the top of her lungs, disorienting me with a shrill, thrilling shriek! She stomped her feet on the table and jumped up and down, leaving me without action or words as she made it out of there, into the art museum!
She ripped a painting off the wall and hurled it at me, but it fell flat on the floor! I burst into the museum and she bolted towards one of the artists–a young Filipino man with a beret on his head who was (in careful strokes) applying white to his hues of green, bleeding the colors out as he painted a strikingly realistic portrait of a leaf–and stole his painting, flinging it at me without a care for the masters of the art world! She sped around a corner, stole a smaller frame off a wall (whereas the other ones occupied the height and length of the wall, this one was the size of a treasure chest) and she threw it at me with one hand (I dodged) and she took off into the quarters of Guildenstern and Rosencrantz, who were having a double date with their girlfriends Fiona and Lewmonae in their shared quarter's dining room!
Ophelia grabbed Rosencrantz and smooched him on the cheek, turning to Guildenstern and kissing him as well. He grabbed a glass swirling with champagne and threw it at me–it shattered against my purple trench coat–one shard stuck to me, albeit I brushed the rest off! She raised her fists and started swinging; I swung back, and she circled the kitchen island, copping a knife off the counter and hurling it at me! I ducked, and the knife landed in Guildenstern's shoulder, causing him to rise and yelp in pain, stagger backwards and press a red button that called the guards to the quarters! She looked at me for answers, but I had none; she slipped out of the room and into a steamy spa before I could get to my feet and catch her in her state of disbelief!
She stumbled through a room full of men dressed in thick, white bath robes–slumping around with cucumber slices on their eyes and a relaxed look on their faces, each man accompanied across the vast landscape of flamingo pink tiles by a masseuse that had his hands around his back, slowly rubbing his fingers around the man's shoulder and relieving some of the pain of war. She burst through a wall of smoke, but I was on her trail; she walked up to one of the masseuses and stole their loofa, squeezing the water out of it and tossing it into my face! I was temporarily disoriented, but that didn't stop my approach; but she socked me in the nose and sending me into a massage chair, landing me on the chest of a surprisingly bulky man with muscles running down his ribs, and that knocked me out long enough for her to make another getaway, this time into a quieter, more sordid room with dimmer lights and less shuffling; she darted through that and into an autoshop!
Ophelia snuck up on one of the mechanics and stole their wrench, throwing it at me and eventually resorting to snatch-up the toolbox and take it with her! Headlights and taillights flashed in my face, red and white beams of light blinding me between distorted frames of a panicked Ophelia desperately searching for other weapons to ward me off with! She grabbed something off a workbench and, while I was still blinded, plunged a chainsaw into my chest, blood spilling everywhere (and probably my guts and intestines too, yuck) while she stood there and watched me helplessly bleed (the car mechanics long gone by this point, as they didn't want to be involved in the royal family's drama.)
Ophelia left me to bleed and staggered into a woodshop, where more chainsaws and other things that could rend off fingers rested, readily awaiting her usage; by the time she entered the woodshop–blades drilling into 2x4s and handsaws ripping apart bark to get to the meaty stumps, men with scraggly brown beards attending to their work and ignoring Ophelia and me–I had already removed the chainsaw from my chest, and I was now standing before her: bloody, half-blind and mad as funk.
Ophelia jumped out of my embrace as I charged at her; I ran into a down-facing saw blade and I nearly lost my left thumb if the man operating it hadn't noticed me and pulled the plug on the machine! Ophelia angrily approached me with a wrench, ready to clobber my face in at the first chance she got, but I tackled her out of the way and we both crashed head-first into Officer Barnardo's office.
Just in time too, because I was getting tired of fighting, and Ophelia might've killed me if I hadn't stopped her.
Officer Barnardo, exhausted, looked at us once before holding out both hands and inviting us to sit down. "Let me guess: you two lovebirds chased each other around the castle and now you want to take back your divorce," he asked, "correct?"
"Yes," Ophelia and I blurted out at the same time, turning to each other with rough expressions and taking our seats opposite the young claims manager, who (fidgety) clammed his hands together and nervously cleared his throat, filed quickly through the papers in his desk and drew ours. He turned to me and stated with a matter-of-factly manner, "If you really want to go back on this divorce and legally be allowed to remarry Ophelia, it is for her protection that I call in people who've witnessed your relationship. Luckily, I anticipated that you'd both return here, so I scheduled those people to be ready in advance." He called out into the hallway where we entered, "Rosencrantz, Guildenstern!"
The two perky men filed in, Guildenstern dressed in a flashy grurple checkered jester's outfit dashing with bells and black boots that shimmied against the floor; Rosencrantz was dressed in a similar outfit, except black and blue with a beret atop his blond head of hair. They saluted the officer, and they were invited to stand on either side of Ophelia and myself. Rosencrantz picked Ophelia, Guildenstern picked me, and Officer Barnardo motioned for Rosencrantz to testify first.
"Hamlet is a dear friend of mine," Rosencrantz honorably stated, looking at me with a forced smile, "but as of late he's become abusive towards Ophelia." He looked at me again, this time his pearly brown eyes twinkling with a sense of pleading innocence; he continued to ramble on about how my abusive personality stemmed from a lifetime of abuse, how I hadn't been treated right and things could've been different, how Ophelia was manipulative and controlling in reaction to my abuse and in the end, he said it was still my fault; no matter how harshly my parents treated me and each other, I was still to blame.
And despite Ophelia's interjections, the owly young officer refused to hear her out.
Officer Barnardo motioned for Rosencrantz to speak next, and he lambasted, "Ophelia is a quiet murderer! A sneaky, cunning murder!"
Officer Barnardo gasped and Ophelia jumped up from her seat, running towards Rosencrantz. She tackled Rosencrantz, Guildenstern trying to pull her away from his best friend and me closing in!
In the end, it was Officer Barnardo who stepped in between Rosencrantz from Ophelia and Guildenstern and me, sending my two friends back to their initial spots to the room and me to my chair, then sitting back in his chair and sighing, "Are you all a bunch of children?" He swung around, his black suit gleaming slightly as a white ceiling lamp burned down on him; his eyes were burning with exhaustion, and his voice grew wearier by the minute as he darted dirty looks towards every one of us, before pulling out a cigarette and smoking. He commented on the cigarette–how smoking turned half of Elsinore's soldiers to drugs since they had no access to mental health resources, how the economy of Denmark was getting too expensive and how soldiers often had more deaths against the walls of their bunks than the soils of the battlefield–and he sternly demanded, "Now Rosencrantz, you continue on with your allegation."
"Ophelia murdered a homeless immigrant all for a sick joke!" screamed Rosencrantz, suddenly losing his cool. "You wouldn't believe it unless you heard it from Hamlet's lips, but it's true! She drove her car forward thinking it would merely stop right before the homeless man's feet, but no! It ran straight into him and killed him! And the worst part about it is this: Ophelia and her friends tried to cover it up!"
Gasps arose from the five of us in the room; Officer Barnardo muttered to Guildenstern, Guildenstern murmured something to Ophelia whilst dawning a bewildered look on his face, Ophelia darted me a crazy stare and I noted it to Rosencrantz, who shook his head with disappointment in my former love (and honestly, I didn't want it to end this way, promise!)
Then Officer Barnardo rose from his desk and offered a solution: I would duel Ophelia, and the outcome of the match would determine the outcome of our affairs. Standard tournament fare and rules, much like my spar with Laertes: first to three strikes wins. If I win, the wedding is not renewed and the restraining order is declared legally void, giving me the chance to restart my relationship with Ophelia. If I lose, the restraining order is reinstated and any further violations will result in a death penalty. It sounded like an agreeable proposal, so I shook hands with Ophelia and the claims manager on it, and the duel would start at 3:00 A.M., supervised by Osric, Officer Barnardo personally and a visitor from Denmark entitled Prince Elista of Raynor–the second prince of Norway's capital; it would be held in the throne room, and there was to be no usage of any other weapon besides the provided fencing swords.
So I met Ophelia in the throne room and pointed at her with the tip of my blade. "You miss me?!" I bellowed, swinging my sword into a random marble bust in a randomly bubbling fit of rage, slashing a gash into the neck of a king's past, a random ancestor whose heritage and his descendants' legacies were inscribed onto the placard below: "DAMIAN HAMLET, KING OF ELSINORE" it read.
Ophelia, waving her arms, bellowed back, "I didn't miss you, sweetheart!" She charged at me despite neither Officer Barnardo, Osric and the spectating Prince Elista voting for the match to begin, swinging her sword at me with inch-perfect precision and slicing open a wound in my kneecap. I shut my eyes (careful to not describe the gore to myself in too much detail) and parried, sending the murky figure of my own former bride back against the left wall, repelling her back into two rows of seats fit for the royal court and swiping randomly into the darkness until I thought I hit her. She struck me in the other kneecap and I closed my eyes tightly yet again, relieving myself of viewing whatever terrible injury she caused me!
I stumbled backwards, now waving my fencing sword against nothing with more panic than ever, barking, "Well, how did you feel then?!" I hollered a series of expletives into the void, secretly clamoring to hear the voice of the person I still loved; for I knew this was an act, and Ophelia was coerced into this battle. Stabbing randomly into the empty space–vaguely lit by the luminance of the Moon that quiet night–I suspected that Polonius had likely coerced Ophelia into entering this battle, lest she face Polonius' "mighty sigma wrath."
I pulled up the sleeve of my purple trench coat and checked my watch–3:05 A.M.–then jumped into the cover of the night as the bride-no-more's sword suddenly flicked down upon my neck!
Ophelia ran forward with the tip of her blade angled at an impaling degree, her legs snappily clanking off the floor and her arms sharply pointed; she ripped through the air, forwards with her fencing weapon, I sidestepped her and she missed!
Our sabers met in the air, clashing against each other with the delectable chorus of sounds that rings when the needles of two delicate thumbtacks are screeched against each other!
I plunged forward and my blade fell out of my hand, Ophelia striking me in the back and running her umbrella-hilted rapier up my back and neck, through my hair and down my mouth, winning a second point for her! Blood stained the back of my shirt (of course I couldn't see most of it except for the blood trickling down my nose and running down my mouth like saliva down a baby's innocent face and landing on its tot, but I could just feel it…) and I staggered towards Ophelia, moving like a drunkard while she jumped around me like an acrobat, making a fool out of me in front of the judges and greatly diminishing my sense of identity!
She swiped her sword at my neck and I dodged it narrowly, running against her side and trying to attack her there!
Ophelia flipped into the air, dancing like a flaking, infinitesimally shrinking wink of snow being tossed around by a snowstorm! She whipped back into a standing position, outstretching her arms and screaming, "You don't understand what you've gotten yourself into, the amount of suffering you've wrought upon me!" Her arms audibly crackled–like shards of lightning protruding from parent bolts–and her body contorted into all sorts of weird, inhuman shapes as her eyes glowed an unusual shade of red and her voice grew deep and raspy at the same time, her body quivering as she muttered, "You don't understand what you've unleashed upon this planet… upon Denmark… upon Elsinore… upon yourself, Hamlet!"
As crimson laser beams shot from her stomach, her face and her eyes, I jumped away, just in the nick of time!
Osric and Officer Barnardo covered their eyes, but the brave Prince Elista–dressed from head to toe in cyan garments–rushed in with a longsword and blocked some of Ophelia's hits, deflecting her laser bolts and sending her whooshing across the white-gold room–the centerpiece of the palace, the crown jewel of the coronet–in a frenzied, slashing and twisted rage!
Prince Elista stood in front of Ophelia–his thick cyan coat flapping, Ophelia's evil energy producing a gust of wind so electrifying he could feel the wind blow back his thick layers of saffron, his billowing teal cape blasted backwards by a sudden burst of animated heat and a nauseatingly-spinning current!
The brave prince leapt high into the air and drew his sword backwards, then shot forward and blasted through a sphere of pulsing, lightning blue energy the possessed Ophelia had summoned, a wave of constant white light filling the throne room and–from an external perspective–shattered the glass mosaic of Christ the Redeemer that adorned the back walls, sending beacons of light out into the sky and filling the horizon with a glow that resembled a firefly-freckled day in the Sun! The energy was so powerful that it knocked Prince Elista right into my arms!
As the light dissipated, Ophelia dropped to the floor–whatever was possessing her at the time seemingly exiting her body–and I was the first at her aid, crying out, "Ophelia, Ophelia! Wake up, Ophelia!"
Ophelia slowly blinked to her senses, and–with me hunched over her with great concern being the first thing she saw–she ungratefully hissed, "Get away from me!" She slapped me on the wrist and got to her heels, pained and overly theatrical tears filling her eyes as she huffed and panted, her words barely coming out of her mouth as words–moreso, as short syllables distracted by the element of genuine concern in my eyes, whistles and clicks drawn to silence as I showed her that I still had something in me that cared for her, panicked mumbles that were quickly shut up as I delivered a passionate stare into her eyes, a pair of fists softened and unclenched by my pair of raised hands and a romantic tear finally being drooled by the lips of her eyes. She clearly pined for my love once more, and no harumph-harumph or growl could ever masquerade her attraction to my emasculating charm; no sigh or accusation could ever mask her true feelings for the only one who could love her for who she was; no frustrated gaze could ever convince me that she didn't love me anymore, or that she'd lost interest in me and found someone else.
Anyway, back to the present day; Polonius, followed by his rebellion, escaped the castle and marched through the snow, dragging themselves across the parched deserts and the compiling snow, the burning Sun and the wintry tundras, the conifers that stood tall above the pitiable shrubs that battled against the battering winds and lashed back and forth against the gravel stones that paved the woods, the snowy sinews that intertwined with the pebbles, trekking without end across the snowy grasslands that were blanketed over in a layer of trees. Polonius, followed closely by Barnardo, Horatio, Captain Kesver, Francisco and Kingbaldier, their edgy clothes layered over with a thick black leather coat, one smeared with purple streaks and violet polka dots that freckled the hoodie, sweaty jackets that they removed marched across the desert and kicked sand up and over their feet. He was leading the soldiers and the refugees to the gates of Raynor, wherein he intended to negotiate with the current king of Raynor and brother of Elista Fortinbras, Zanaster Fortinbras.
Zanaster, unlike the quiet Elista, was a loud-speaking, assertive man that carried his slim, sturdy self forward with the brimming confidence of a god and the unintimidated bravery of a god. He stood atop the bridges built atop the perimeter of his castle, and backflipped off the castle walls to meet the rebels. He spoke with a firm but charming voice, a voice that didn't back down to authority but was itself authoritative. He beat his hand over his chest and cried, drawing his dagger, "What brings you here? Speak, for my cousin Fortinbras has control over your castle, and my brother Elista and I are soon to follow."
Polonius approached Zanaster and fretted his arms all over, declaring a candid surrender with flippantly raised hands and his parched, snow-dipped lips mouthing "surrender" before he could bring himself to start. Polonius at this moment had long, storm-gray hair that faded and disappeared as one traced the hairs to his scalp, a sock gray stubble forming under his lips and an opal green trench coat with a Metallica shirt underneath. He wore Nike sneakers and he had blue denim jeans, and his skin was so wrinkled at this point that bits of it began to flake off in front of everyone. Yet, he still spoke and acted with a tiny percent of his youthfulness in his soul, an amount of fear that you would only expect from a brittle young child.
Zanaster ignored Polonius' surrender and pointed his dagger at Polonius, repeating, "What business do you have here?"
The other rebels looked at Polonius, awaiting his reply. Simply, he drew his dagger from its sheath and retorted, "We are here to negotiate, unless you have any other ideas." Zanaster tested Polonius' reaction time–striking at him with a sudden brush of his dagger, whipping through the air so quickly he dissolved into a blur, slashing into Polonius' jacket and ripping off the leather and part of Polonius' shirt to a manly bosom's worth of white-gray hairs underneath, compounding under his shirt Zanaster flourished the blade in his hand for a split second, twirling it as Polonius grumbled in a meek, grumpy, old-man voice, "Egh, you win."
Zanaster, guessing that Polonius may genuinely be interested in setting aside their differences, stowed his dagger away and cried with joy, "Hey now, man–there's no need to pout! Why do you want to negotiate with me, and what are the terms of the negotiations?"
"Your cousin Fortinbras has invaded Elsinore and all of Denmark," stated Polonius, watching a rickety drawbridge clack and shiver as it descended down and allowed the deserters to cross the moat separating the castle walls from the rest of the world. Behind the drawbridge was a series of defective, broken down buildings–more so like slabs of concrete slapped together with mortar than anything that fit the definition of a building–and walls filled with nonsensical graffiti, and homeless people wandering the streets and harassing Polonius for change. Zanaster ignored them and guided Polonius and the rest of the rebels to a distinct tavern with wish lanterns of different colors strung up across the walls, the entire dining area flooded in neon lights, people sitting on bar stools quietly and discussing crimes without a single authority there to stop them.
"I thought you were King Zanaster, leader of Norway," Polonius argued, turning towards the bearded, tattooed bikers sitting behind them that shot dirty looks his way, reciprocating their glares with repulsed eye contact. He was a bigoted man; Polonius admitted this to himself, but he still felt obliged to judge people based on their appearances, simply for his own protection. He felt obliged to judge me too, because I was a Filipino and he was used to people with white skin. He spun back around to Zanaster and complained, "You're just messing with me now, aren't you?"
"No, no," assured Zanaster, placing his hand on Polonius' back and giving him a very pleased smile. "But if you want a good chuckle, I'll have my jesters perform for you!"
"There's no need," Polonius mumbled, a hint of snark in his voice. "If I wanted jesters to perform for me, I would have had a conversation with your cousin Fortinbras, or your brother Elias."
Reaching for his dagger, Zanaster pulled Polonius closer with his left hand and whispered into his ear, "Or is it you that wishes to play with me, dear Polonius?"
Polonius leaned back and swiftly produced his dagger from its sheath, mumbling, "Negotiate with me, Zanaster." Zanaster was about to draw his blade, but Polonius beat him to it. "Trust me, it's your best option."
"But why should he negotiate with you?" a strange, new voice cried out from a nearby brush. The carrier of the voice stepped out of his hiding place in the bushes and shrubs, dewy green leaves rustling as a clean, well-kept man with skin as moist as a sun-kissed dew stepped out to greet Polonius. This was Adam Fortinbras, brother of Fortinbras and cousin to King Zanaster and Prince Elista. He introduced himself as such, muttered something to his cousin and looked to Polonius, admiring him before complimenting, "You have good taste in music."
"I have the best taste in music," Polonius agreed sarcastically, walking up slowly and giving his wrinkly hand to his new friend, Adam. When he went to accept it, Polonius stabbed Adam with the dagger he still had in the other hand, his blade cleanly moving through Adam's left hand. Adam looked at Polonius without flinching, causing Polonius to regret his decision. Blood trickled down from where Polonius had blasted down with his blade, but Adam didn't fret in horror at the sight. Polonius admitted, "Perchance I made a mistake."
Adam Fortinbras–whose patience ran low like a car's engine spitting away its gas reserves–took a deep breath and gave Polonius a warm smile; and he gave the rest of the rebels an obligatory look of acknowledgement before grabbing Polonius by the arm and abandoning his cousin and the troop of deserters, leaving them and the rest of the bystanders in that tavern and stumbling out of the bar like a pair of drunken pigeons unable to fly and back out into the barren, abandoned streets of Raynor, dragging Polonius up the steps, ripping the dagger out of his arm and sticking it to Polonius' neck and muttering, "That ol' brother of mine–Fortinbras, you call him–he was the king. When he left, this turned into a world of criminals. That makes Zanaster the crime boss and Elista the successor to the throne… for now."
Polonius struggled to breath as Adam Fortinbras wrapped his bloody left hand around his neck. Polonius barely choked out, "And 'for now' means what? You're going to murder everyone and become the successor to the criminal empire?"
"What did you think I meant?" Adam chuckled, grinning his teeth. "The Fortinbras Crime Family needs someone like me, an iron fist that will be malevolent, not benevolent. A ruling force with the power to wipe out all of our oppressors."
Polonius grabbed Adam's left hand and jammed his thumb into the dried wound, twisting Adam's joint and falling to the concrete roof. For once, someone bested Polonius in battle, standing over him and posing victoriously, kicking Polonius in the side and basking in the radiance of the one shot of sunlight that pierced the gray clouds drifting over Castle Raynor. Polonius drew his lance and Adam drew his, they fenced each other for a good minute and Adam pounced forward, his lance jumping near Polonius' chest. He drew away from the blade and scuttled on his back, whipping his lance forward and pushing his lance through the air, the edges of the swords scaling against each other as Polonius bore a wise look on his face and sweat dribbled down Adam's brow; their blades crossed again and Polonius struck Adam in the arm.
Polonius advanced with his lance and forced Adam to retreat, just as I jumped into the scene. Polonius looked at me with a bewildered expression, and I plowed towards Adam with a lance, blade sweeping and brows slanted down with focus. Polonius and Adam exchanged swords and flourished, circling each other until Polonius indulged and landed a second blow!
Adam warded off Polonius and me, but eventually he went on the offensive, cudgeling my blade and fiercely rebuking Polonius for attacking him with a series of furious blows. He pivoted and lashed out at me, his lance swinging right and left until I backed away. He whipped his lance back, his face filled with sweat and toil as his eyes scanned me and Polonius, attempting to break our minds and calculate the next moves. He charged at Polonius first, the old man punished his attack, he charged at me and I parried his attack with intense fervor.
Adam cried, "Nobody will stop me! My empire will grow, and after I have usurped Norway, I will usurp Denmark!" He swung his lance through the air, fiercely clubbing my saber with his!
"You will not have Norway," I whispered, his eyes filling with terror as I hastily (yet surely) exited the saber lock and returned his storm of attacks, his blade patterned with indents where my lance had bashed against it, "and you will not have Denmark." Then I let him have it, dropping my lance and producing a curved scimitar from my scabbard, running my blade under his left armpit, his right armpit and swiping it just above him as he leapt away. "And neither will your cousin Fortinbras. We will reclaim Norway and Denmark."
Adam's straight lance slashed against the curve of my scimitar, our blades meeting as springs of fire erupted around us. He twirled his blade in his left hand and plunged it forth; and throwing my hip sideways, I cried, "En garde!" Adam twirled around and swiped at Polonius, who calmly shuffled backwards, his focus blurring temporarily and slowly honing back in on Adam. Adam flinched as Polonius' sword moved through the air, missing and striking the pavement below.
I slithered up behind Adam and struck him in the shoulder, sending him writhing as the sword traced against the curl of his arm. Our swords met as fire filled the streets in pulses, and suspicions as to what started the fires–red-orange burps of warm light spewing from cracks in the ground as horrible, screeching faces reached their malnourished, fuzzy arms out from the flames, their eyes filled with fear and their teeths gnawing with rage as flames of the light burning blue consumed them whole, leaving behind the scent of ash as the blazes appeared somewhere else. I stepped backwards, my foot hitting a crack and my body sent away before the heat of a rising flame could even touch me, and a fire hissed to life.
Homeless people charged down the alley where we fought, running away as the flames grew more constant, looking back with haunted expressions as crooked, crackling hands reached out from the orange-red fire, crimson eyes redder than the flames bursting to life and haunting screams and maniacal cackles–laughter that could only be created by endless torture and a life in the pits of Hades–echoed through these once empty streets, hobo pavilions now exploding with life and warmth that were once desolate and cold.
I pedaled backwards as Adam whipped around, flesh monsters with gnarled skin reaching out from the earth, rashly grabbing out for my violet boots and gnashing at me viciously, sinking their teeth into the pavement below and using their crooked, fleshy arms to lift themselves out of the fiery abysses below. A burst of flame shot up from a crack in the ground just a few feet away from me, burning the flame-broiled entities within it to a crisp and turning their pulpy skin a sooty gray and leaving a spark of flame in their eyes, a lust for something beyond their reach–perchance a heavenly afterlife, or at least one that would treat them less harshly than the one they were from: the one I was bound to return to after escaping the depths of Hell, no matter what I tried to do to avoid it. I waved my sword at the things with red eyes and sooty skin, stumbling around the landscapes of inevitable death and abandoning the troop, darting off to find my own home in this inferno-consumed world. One of them continued to chase me, I cut it in half and both halves continued to chase me.
The streets had a war-torn appearance despite no war, a withered appearance despite this castle being surprisingly new for how rickety it looked. Once it looked mid; now it looked horrible.
The abomination from the depths kept chasing me, pursuing me into a stone maze and swiping its claws at my feet. Both halves kept clawing at me with their respective extremities, splitting up as I had reached the center of the labyrinth. Then I looked at my two options:
Go through the left path, one that was spewing with demonic spiders;
Go through the right path, one teeming with angry, flesh-gnawing ravens.
Realizing that time was running out, I ran through the path of flesh-gnawing ravens. Those beasts swooping down to attack me, I chopped them up with my sword, leaving bony wings and speckles of blood dashed around the halls as I instinctively maneuvered this labyrinth of horrific sights and sounds. Glowing crimson eyes flashed in my face, and the horrors that I created looked at me with angry and lustful faces. I slashed through each demonic bird, their lives fading from their eyes as I turned a corner; I cut through the rageful fiends until I turned a corner and saw a big, gargantuan beast with a slobbering tongue and a body crafted of steel, a horrible abomination of the natural and the man-made whose tongue slicked down towards me and left me covered in a layer of saliva as it bent down to almost admire me, but also desire my flesh.
Lo, I beheld the eyes of my father.
His eyes turned a demonic red and his heart pounded–I could hear it beating through his bosom, begging to escape this terrible thing he had become–and he chased me through his lair in these wicked chambers. He slashed at me ferociously with his claws, his buck-toothed fangs gnawing at me as he stretched down. He aimed for my heart as he bucketed after me through these gargantuan hallways, kicking forward with his feet claws in an arrogant attempt to impale me. His eyes were more rageful than the hell-ravens he took care of, and his arms themselves–not robotic in nature–were composed of hellish creatures that attempted to escape the insides of his flesh, thirsty creatures that drank the blood of those he ate and hungry creatures that swallowed his leftovers. He swung blindly at me, and he clearly missed.
Then, seeing the exit, I dove forward, narrowly avoiding a frustrated swipe from my father's blood-smeared paws. I felt my heart rate increase, the veins ripping out of my arms and legs, and I felt my brain pounding against its skull as I saw the light…
To be or not to be, that is the question.
And by the way, you know how the absolutely rizzin', alpha title of this story is Hamlet Ex Machina? Well, you're about to see why.
Because just then, the spirit of my uncle manifested as a rageful beast: one that if tsunamis were ever to fall on his head, they were to be mere raindrops on his gigantic hairs. He had robotic arms that extended out and were steel-forged, and the blood pulsing through his veins came in the form of plasma pulsing through gigantic medical tubing! He roared with might!
My father and my uncle clashed, my father sending his ravens at my uncle's gigantic evil spiders!
My father–Garfield Hamlet–hammered his gigantic robot fist into my uncle's robot bust (which did bear his appearance) and kicked my father in the chest!
My uncle cried, "Do you remember how you rizzed up my girlfriend and snatched her away from me?!" He jammed his fist into my father's stomach, slingshotted back and shanked my father with his fist again!
My father gave no reply–nothing coherent enough except for a demonic roar, at least–and struck at my uncle again! He clenched his fists until his steel thumb cracked, plunged at my uncle, sent him and my uncle tumbling to the floor (shaking the ground) and began pummeling my uncle back into his home, sending me through several concrete walls as his punches sent out titanic blasts of wind!
And then Ophelia entered the city streets (where I just got knocked into) with her pixies, announcing, "Demonic things, stop where you are! You are invading an area protected by the pixies!" The tiny men–dressed in blue skirts and carrying their puffy blue fluffs of hair around, wearing blue makeup and carrying ant-sized machine guns–calmly fluttered over to my beastly uncle and fired off on his leg, causing him to stumble as Ophelia cried more loudly, her form like the pixies but more to human scale, "We will not say this again–cease your fighting or we will open fire!"
Then my father and uncle looked at each other for a moment–as if they never fought, and as if this was merely a brotherly hug they were in, for their arms were wrapped around each other–and they looked at Ophelia and the dust-sized (to them, but to a human they were the size of a fly) pixies and sent their spiders and ravens after Ophelia, before roaring and continuing their brawl.
Then I spotted Polonius and the rebels and Zanaster and Adam sprinting through the city streets, guiding a gaggle of homeless folk out of there! I called out to them, "Hey guys, I'm right here!"
Polonius whipped around and charged towards me, giving me the impression that he was coming to help me up (I was down and my legs were aching.) But instead of helping me, he drew his scimitar and challenged me to a duel, muttering, "You abandoned me! You abandoned our group, and we lost one of our rebels! You'll pay for this!"
"That's nice," I muttered, getting to my feet and brushing off the rubble that once trapped me (there was rubble, but it was now turned to dust as Claudius punched Garfield.) "But I'm afraid I have to tell you that I won't be paying anyone."
As our swords clashed, the ravens and spiders ganged up against the pixies and Garfield and Claudius charged at each other, and the armies of Denmark (dressed in their new, all-black chainmail suits) and Norway met, the streets rumbling as if there was an earthquake and as this gang war started!
I slashed against Polonius with mine own scimitar, further ripping apart his Metallica shirt! He jumped back and bullied me back for my futile attempts at attacking him, leaving a gash on my skin as his scimitar caused my purple trench coat and shirt to drop completely, revealing my brawny form! "I am an ultra-chad-sigma-rizzler–how can you possibly compete with me?!" Then muscles popped out from my skin, proteins and nutrients suddenly somehow manifesting in my body, building out my thighs and causing my feet to rip apart my socks and boots as Polonius looked on in horror, and I then emitted a blooming violet light, completing my transformation!
I dropped my scimitar and broke his as it swung at me, shattering it in one punch! He ran off, and I jumped into the air, landing on the rooftops, displaying my new form to God as Polonius scampered away!
Ophelia allocated a battalion of her pixies to the attack on my flesh, but I simply cupped them into my hands and crushed them, pixie blood staining my left fist as I ran off!
My father swiped at my uncle with his steel claws, ripping apart one of Claudius' tubes and plasma spilling onto the streets like a flood! "You'll pay for what you did to me," cried Garfield, "for damning me to Hell!" My father struck my uncle and battered him towards the floor, the streets crumbling into sinkholes caused by their fighting! My father dodged my uncle's punch and punished my uncle with his own furious fist! Their eyes were filled with hatred–hellish hatred!
Then I spotted two figures making the way through the battlefield: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the lives of whom were spared after my father–who (spoiler alert) actually turned out to be the ruler of Hell (Thane Portia) possessing my father–sent the king a note clearing up the situation! I greeted them with a hug and quickly, anticlimactically sent them on their way!
Then lightning fell from the skies, dissipating into the pavement and leaving ash on the ground as a burly, fair man with long, flowy, beaming hair of whitest pearl, lathered in the finest and most gilded garments, landed on the ground in a boxing pose, jumping his body back and forth and focusing his glowing white eyes on me… it was God, coming down from His throne in skies to battle me?! The mortal man?! 'Swounds, I should accept his proposition to battle!