The sounds of footsteps reverberated throughout the empty streets. The all-embracing blanket of water from the afternoon's rain was the only visible surface, forming its shape from the ground below, and its image from the stars above. Filled with regret for leaving Romeo's side, Mercutio walks alone this night. He skipped as he fled from the scene, anxious to find a worthy conclusion to what otherwise was a glorious evening. Voices echo behind him. They were the voices of the damned. Voices of men and women Mercutio could never jest or kid with. He could hear them laughing.
"Mercutio is dead? The great Kinsman himself? A man squeals like a pig and expects to attract no predators! If not for his blood relations he would have lay dead in the streets long ago!"
Mercutio did not scorn nor cringe. Their insults were what kept him going in life. They were the fire in him! And now, with a new identity. He would start anew, free of responsibility or obligation. He laughed to himself as he walked.
Then...silence. Mercutio stopped walking. Sadness and remorse were unfamiliar feelings to Mercutio, and they would not find him here, not now, not ever. Still, A feeling lingered that he could not identify. He stopped for a moment to reflect upon this. Taking in the cold atmosphere of his surroundings, he observed all that was known to him. This town in which he was raised looked no different to him now than it did when he was a child. Its walls stared down upon him intently, as they always had. Its roads forever bound the civilized world to order, they too, remained with lasting permanence. It was the sounds of this place that had just begun to bother Mercutio...there weren't any. Gradually, he recognized the feeling that enveloped him: the everlasting trill of anxiety. He stood silently in the middle of the street, uneasy, for in that moment, all was not right with the world. Reliant upon the notion that time would continue to occur without him, he kept himself rooted firmly to the ground, refusing to move until this feeling subsided. Just then, his thoughts converged with a new string of information: laughter emitting from a tavern in the distance. This is was familiar. Mercutio understood this new element. With this, he began to move towards the edge of town where the noise had settled. Although set on fleeing society under the cover of night, the day's events had left him exhausted. The tavern was grand, larger now than Mercutio would have gathered if he were not still recovering from his delirium. Its entrance carried with it an unusual aura of attraction. Standing outside the entrance, the thought of the buildings odd appearance slowly began to dawn on the lowly Mercutio. A faint inner voice pleaded with him, urging him to return to his mission. After a moment of pondering, he decided what's done is done, that it was time to move on. But as he passed the building the smell of food and the allure of the ever present merrymaking grew increasingly strong. Willpower not withstanding, Mercutio rushes to a window outside of the tavern only to find that it was blocked. His curiosity peaked and a grin fell across his face. Mercutio opened the door, looked in, and saw nothing. Taken aback, Mercutio's excitement dwindled.
Walking away from the Tavern, Mercutio noticed that the strange feeling had grown softer. The building still beckoned to him with great anticipation, but as he distanced himself from it, the feeling became fainter until it vanished entirely. At that moment, something greater than himself willed him to decide that he should never return to the tavern, not now, not ever. Even in this moment of clarity, Mercutio could just make out the eerie sound of merrymaking as he continued down the empty street. A few moments passed, and it was forgotten.
DING...DONG...DING…DONG…
And with that, the unnerving silence of the night erupted into a chaotic mob of confused citizens as the waking world rushed to listen to the sudden ringing of the church's bells, which continued to sing out ominously. Mercutio knew that this was his last chance to avoid detection, so he began to flee. Outside the walls of town, he heard the voices of citizens...
"Romeo and Juliet have been slain!"
"The friar must have done it!"
"No! It was her! She would wanted this to happen!" Mercutio staggered as he ran.
"Could they really be dead?" he thought to himself. He sprinted into the night.
With all that he had known now far behind him, Mercutio neared the edge of civilization where a new boundless future lay ahead. As he pushed forward, Mercutio's pronounced canter soon diminished into a meretricious silly walk. During his childhood, Mercutio had always prefered the freedoms of the countryside over the conformity of the city. His adulthood had done little to change his disposition, yet he felt something was wrong. Though he was surrounded by the openness of the countryside he did not hear the corresponding sounds that come with it. As a matter a fact the road was silent, save for Mercutio's breathing. Assuring himself that it was nothing Mercutio pushes onwards towards towards his new life. As Mercutio walks down the dirt country road with paved city streets a distant memory, he hears rustling coming from the roadside foliage. Mercutio tences up, preparing for Romeo to jump out of a bush to tell him that he too had faked his death, but the bush only yielded a couple of guilt faced stray dogs. Without hesitation, Mercutio pushed himself through the vegetation. At that moment, the scene that Mercutio beheld truly frightened him. In front of him was a sizeable clearing, where the grass appeared discolored and lifeless. A large stone pylon the likes of which seemed unnatural was positioned in the center of the clearing. Inscribed upon it in blood were ancient glyphs and crudely drawn imagery, the meaning of which could not be obtained by the thunderstruck Mercutio. The scene was brightly lit by a fresh campfire, whose flame pulsed unnaturally. Worst of all, tied to the base of the pylon lay the decorated corpse of a man. With this, Mercutio knew that he had found a voodoo ritual ground. His urge to leave was strong, but the possibility that the man might be Romeo compelled Mercutio to inspect the body. The man was clothed in a ritualistic robe, with a large 'F' printed upon the hood. Slowly, Mercutio unhooded the man. He stared down in horror, Friar Laurence's bloodied face stared back. As Mercutio looked into the eyes of his old master, his consciousness faded, and his memories fell back to his days at the academy.
Sitting at a desk, a young Mercutio listens intently to a long winded lecture by Professor Laurence on the fundamentals of alchemy. The topic of this day's lesson was not unusual: a continuation on the study of elixirs. Getting the students' attention, Dr. Laurence asks for a volunteer.
"Vincent, in the back, how about you?" He grins maniacally as the unsuspecting Vincent makes his way to the front of the classroom.
"Today, students, I will be attempting a short demonstration from my own personal research. This will be very valuable to your studies, so pay attention!"
The starry-eyed Mercutio leans forward with interest. Dr. Laurence had never performed a demo on a student before. Dr. Laurence gives the innocent Vincent a vial of a black liquid, still bubbling from its time over a fire. Vincent swiftly consumes the liquid, and looks to the professor for further instruction. Dr. Laurence simply smiles back at him. Without warning, Vincent begins to spasm uncontrollably, he falls to his knees. Murmured gasps swept across the room. The professor only stood and observed.
"Now look carefully children, what our Vincent here is experiencing is beyond our understanding...OBSERVE!"
Vincent, eyes wide with a smile across his face, begins to levitate slightly above ground, all the while babbling in a strange tongue. There's a loud hammering at the door! Dr. Laurence starts shaking Vincent and shouting
"Do you see him?! Do you see Fezziwig?!"
Vincent only smiles back at the professor. It was at this moment that the spanish inquisition bursts into the room and charges at the psychotic professor, pinning him to the ground and taking his wallet. As the inquisitors drag him outside Professor Laurence begins shouting
"Heretics, you're all heretics, heretics I say, heretics all of y-" before he is hit on the head with a baton and is removed from the premises without further disruption.
When the class redirects their attention towards Vincent, he is nowhere to be found. A few minutes later the grand-inquisitor walks back into the room and dismisses the class. On his way out Mercutio sees a repurposed carnival wagon with a wooden sign saying "The Core" hanging on its side. Being the inquisitive person he is, Mercutio approaches the wagon only to find that it is the cage containing none other than the professor himself. When he noticed Mercutio, he extended his hands out of the bars of his cage, beckoning Mercutio forwards. A shouting is heard in the distance, but Mercutio steps forwards anyway. Afterall, he desired an explanation, so he stays to hear what the professor has to say. And one last time he does: just as the inquisition pulls Mercutio from behind, his master's voice echos in his head.
"Do you believe in miracles brother?"
Mercutio awakes from his memory in front of the fire, Friar Laurence's body remained untouched. As he gets up to leave Mercutio turns around to inspect the old professor's face one last time, but notices something odd. Dr. Laurence always kept a toblerone on his person in case he got hungry, but now there was not one to be found. There was no toblerone. It seemed without a doubt that whoever murdered the Friar had also taken his sugary delight. Mercutio walks back to the road after another moment of silence for the friar, and resumes his journey. It was now well past midnight and morning twilight had begun to glow on the horizon. As he walked, Mercutio seemed to fade in and out of consciousness, at one moment he sees himself walking onto the path and the next he is a mile down the road. As he walks Mercutio goes into an even greater state of delirium, sometimes feeling like he never left the Friar's body at all. Mercutio stumbles and falls.
After a moment he picks himself up only to find himself beset with joy. He had stumbled upon his primary destination: an enormous statue of a man. Mercutio had heard stories of the statue ever since he was a child, and had always longed to see it with his own eyes. For this reason, he had made it his goal that if he ever should feel the need to fake his death, the statue would be his first destination. There was something odd however: before the man stretched an immense ravine, wider than trenches of the great cities and deeper than the mind can comprehend. The statue was of a tall man in a cloak. He wore a five-o'clock shadow that made him sort of intimidating, and it showed that whoever carved the statue was quite the handyman of his craft. The posture of the man was open toward the trench with a book in one hand and a staff in the other, as though he was preaching something to the chasm. Situated atop a hill that towered over a bottomless abyss, the statue stood nearly 900 feet tall. With newfound enthusiasm, he set about climbing the statue.
Eight and a half hours later, Mercutio sat upon the shoulder of the giant and looked up at the stars.
He shouted to the night, "Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time!"
A voice softly speaks out in reply, "THE CORE THE CORE!"
Startled, Mercutio stumbles forward and falls to his death. In the last moments before his final breath, he saw Rosline perched above him, eating a Toblerone.
Epilogue:
In the minutes that followed, Mercutio shuffled off this mortal coil, and woke up in a dream. It was the very same dream that awaited poor Vincent all those years ago. The Grand Hall of Fezziwig, an unearthly realm, the Displaced Tavern, unrelenting, where all roads must lead. Truly, all roads lead to Fezziwig's. The length of time that young Mercutio spent in this place is uncertain. All that can be said is this: For a time, Mercutio met with Fezziwig himself, The Great Englishman, The Unforgiving One. Of what they spoke is uncertain. At last, Mercutio drifted from the Hall in a most untimely way, and when he opened his eyes, Friar Laurence stood before him, a solemn look on his face. He had Dreadlocks.
"My Boy" said he, "I've struck a deal with my friend the Englishman, to pay your tax why yes indeed, My Boy it's true the time has come I've been invited time of need the one to which all roads must lead-" it was at this point that Mercutio stopped listening, he didn't really care anymore. Before he left, the Friar gave Mercutio his trusty toblerone. It was covered in blood.
"Keep it safe, brother"
And then he was gone. Godspeed.