Our Dark Prince (The Scottish Play)

XL. Once Upon a Time

14

     "Macbeth! Welcome to my humble abode, old sport!"

     As Chicago burned, Shakespeare ate a croissant.

     The city was fuming – bending, crying out in desperation as the smoke consumed it in a blaze of blackened glory and gore. But Shakespeare was unfazed, he chewed on the croissant with profoundness; savoring the flavor, fiddling with an orange peel as the slices smoothly slicking up his palm.

     There was an old red alone in the darkness, and as he pathetically attempted to cure his writerʼs block by manipulating real people like they were his muses, his pawn pieces feeding his pleasure, Macbeth watched his son, Hamnett Shakespeare, clean after him. Blood kissed every nook-and-cranny of the Twelfth Night pub, hot with an omnipotent, s*xual magic, and as he watched women and men Shakespeare butchered swing aimlessly from the ceiling: flesh buttered by Shakespeare delirium, skin painted in profligacy, profanity, and necrophiliac desire, Macbeth took a seat.

      Hamnett poured him a glass of cheap Irish ale, flinching. Still that bitter-sweet taste he remembered, but corroded by the tea-like consistency and the toasted malt character it possessed. Rap music played in the background.

    As Chicago burned, Macbeth drank quietly.

    Shakespeareʼs little edge of the world had always been the epitome of a writerʼs debauchery.

    "Sorry for the mess, and the music," Shakespeare mused. "Surprisingly, it helps in writing scantily composed, and scandalously orchestrated scenes. So simple. So...erotic."

    Hamnett gulped nervously, motioning for Shakespeare to offer Macbeth a drink.

    "Ah yes," Shakespeare muttered. "Iʼm losing my grip. Do you see what this damned Ingibiorg plot-line is doing to me, Hamnett? The messiness of Marcellaʼs reveal, documenting Macʼs invasion of Chicago? This act, Ozymandias, is such sloppy writing in this retelling of The Scottish Play. Fantasy novels are like hotspots for writerʼs block. Their proclivity for breathless confusion and unoriginality...restless. It is breaking my concentration, Hamnett–"

     Time stopped around Macbeth. Froze up, clench up. Shakespeare wore the carbon copy of his visage from centuries passed. The English f*ck was...unchanged, everything exactly as heʼd last seen them: the receding hairline, the billowing white hair, the trimmed mustache, the cold, covetous dilation of his pupils, the pastiness of his skin. Haggard, slightly old as when heʼd last seen him, but still breathing the air that should have been meant for Isobel, for Lulach. Shakespeare survived, bringing his son – a trite, clichéd muscly maiden fantasy – to the New World after stepping over his grave to get there.

     Macbeth interrupted Shakespeareʼs banter with a cough.

    "Do you remember when we met, William?" Macbeth asked with a dangerous edge in his voice, lost in the blood red cradles of his boiling rage. But he kept it quiet, quiet as a mouse, waiting to see what the mighty English rat would spew next.

    "I beg your pardon?"

    "Iʼm getting the...strangest sense of déjà vu, old friend. Enlighten me."

     A beat.

     "Kvinnesfast. We met in Kvinnesfast, that small Norwegian hamlet, just by Aberdeen – one of your fatherʼs territories. With its white harbors and its plentiful taverns, brothels, abbeys. I was Berchánʼs apprentice during the war. When you came...Gods, that night was cruel, Macbeth. So cold it froze even the meatiest of men from Kvinnesfast to Essye. All the inns were over capacity; at least forty men died."