Three assassins approached me and my son on the path one cloudy night. My son fled.
Ten straight gashes to the head.
It was all so painfully obvious.
"Hath the gatekeepers of hell arrived to welcome me?"
My spirit, floating and wispy blue, emerged from a bludgeoned corpse and came face to face with three wretched creatures. Looking at them head on made me want to throw up or gouge my eyes out.
One of the witches grinned, revealing a row of impossibly sharp teeth that shone beneath the maggots swarming over her fleshy gums.
"HAIL THE BRAVE WARRIOR SLAIN, WHO SHALT BE REWARDED FOR HIS PAINS."
"The devils speak kindly," I replied lamely, "May the tyrant Macbeth simmer in the depths of horrid hell with the likes of thee."
"HARK THEE WELL."
"MARK THY WORDS."
"THY FATE SHALL BE REVEALED."
The witches' voices were deafening. It was the hellish symphony of a thousand shrieks of dying men, the howl of beasts, the shrill cry of an off-tune violin, claws on a chalkboard, the murderous boom of Zeus' very thunderbolt.
"Why dost thou always prattle thrice?"
The sight of blood pooling, poisonously crimson, under the carnage made my head spin and tongue bold. When did my cheeks become wet with tears?
I had once slung his arm around Macbeth's shoulder and once called him companion, after all.
"Macbeth," I hissed, "shall pay for his crimes."
More sickening grins all around.
"SHOW HIM TO THE BANQUET."