The newly appointed sexy "King" Claudius sat before his subjects at the dinner table in his summer home in the Bahamas, with sexy wife Gertrude at his side. The two were as happily in love as any recently widowed middle-aged woman and her power-hungry former brother-in-law would be. His black beard and the scar over his right eye, as well as the pet hyenas that ate babies and the Nazi iconography his decorators were using for purely aesthetic reasons on his furniture and walls, contrasted sharply with the warm blue eyes and beautiful flaxen hair of his new wife, in that distinctly wrong kind of way.

"Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death the memory be green," Claudius wept as he cut up an onion, while an autographed poster of Adolf Hitler was being raised on the wall behind him, "and that is us befitted to bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom to be contracted in one brow of woe, yet so far hath discretion fought with nature that we with wisest sorrow think on him together with remembrance of ourselves." He bit into the steak he was now able to afford thanks to his being ridiculously rich courtesy of what his brother had left in his will to Gertrude, and smiled as his body swallowed and prepared to digest the power. Also, as royalty, he was using the royal "we" (meaning "I") here. That's the important thing.

"Therefore," he said as he took Gertrude's hand in his own, "our sometime sister," meaning sister-in-law, not that it made him any less of a dick, "now our queen," even though she already was, "th' imperial jointress to this warlike state, have we (as 'twere a defeated joy, with an auspicious and a dropping eye, with mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage, in equal scale weighing delight and dole) taken to wife." And it really was a beautiful wedding, although it was somewhat marred by the fact that a dozen children were being raped and brutally murdered and their remains fed to pigs across the street, with their murderer never to see justice because he committed suicide right after, the gunshot blow to his head totally ruining the first dance for the bridge and groom. But that cake, my god, it was delicious!

"Nor have we herein barred your better wisdoms, which have freely gone with this affair along," Claudius continued. He and Gertrude gave each other a peck on the check, then he resumed speaking to his guests: "For all, our thanks." Their wedding gifts, ranging from silverware to jewelry to the blueprints for the largest concentration camp to ever be built by the people to be killed inside it, were all piled under last year's Christmas tree, which was dying slowly because Claudius liked to watch them suffer. "Young Fortinbras, holding a weak supposal of our worth or thinking by our late dear brother's death our state to be disjoint and out of frame, colleagued with this dream of his advantage, he hath not failed to pester us with a message importing the surrender of those lands lost by his father, with all bonds of law, to our most valiant brother—so much for him."

Almost everyone laughed at this mockery of the Communist enemy, and those that didn't suddenly found a rifle pointed at their heads and a threatening reminder of who was the boss now. Even though the only reason they didn't laugh was because this was the twenty-first century, dude, I mean, I had no idea what the hell he was saying, because, really, who talks like that anymore? Despite laughing after being given a modern English translation, they were still slapped in the face with the butt of the rifles as a warning, and as the blood dripped from their bruised noses onto their plates, they were at least able to take comfort in knowing that the worst was yet to come.

Continuing his boastful speech, Claudius said: "Now for ourself and for this time of meeting. This much the business is: we have here writ to Cuba, uncle of young Fortinbras, who, impotent and bedrid, scarcely hears of his nephew's purpose, to suppress his further gait herein, in that the levies, the lists, and full proportions are all made out of his subject; and we here dispatch you, good Cornelius, and you, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, for bearers of this greeting to old Cuba, giving you no further personal power to business with the King more than the scope of these dilated articles allow." He handed this letter to the aforementioned pair of subjects: Cornelius, a talking chimpanzee from the future, and Voltemand, who was always being mistaken for Voldemort and as a result found himself being unfairly blamed for wizard genocides, which means he frustratingly could never get season tickets for the Heat. "Farewell, and let your haste commend your duty."

Speaking in unison, Cornelius and Voltemand answered, "In that and all things we will show our duty."

"We doubt it nothing," Claudius said. "Heartily farewell," he said, waving goodbye to the two of them as they high-tailed out of the place on Voltemand's flying broom. With that done, Claudius turned to the sexy young man sitting at his left. "And now, Laertes, what's the news with you?"

"I went shopping at Men's Wearhouse the other day," the well-dressed twenty-something remarked with a nod. Chewing on some peas, he added, "Mmm. Good peas."

"You told us of some suit. What is 't, Laertes?"

"It's a Jones New York."

Everyone at the table did a golf clap.

"Very good," Claudius said, patting Laertes on the back. "Very good."

"Thank you, thank you," Laertes smiled, acknowledging the King's subjects with a wave of his hand. "I do like the way I look."

"You cannot speak of reason to the Dade and lose your voice," Claudius said. "What wouldst thou beg, Laertes, that shall not be my offer, not thy asking? The head is not more native to the heart, the hand more instrumental to the mouth, than is the throne of Dade County to thy father. What wouldst thou have, Laertes?"

"My dread lord," Laertes said, "your leave and favor to return to France, from whence though willingly I came to Dade County to show my duty in your coronation, yet now I must confess, that duty done, my thoughts and wishes bend again toward France and bow them to your gracious leave and pardon."

"Have you your father's leave? What says Polonius?"

Everyone at the table turned to the graying Polonius, who was Laertes' sexy father. In addition to being a father in the literal sense (as in, he got busy with a woman who then shot out some offspring), he was also a father in the figurative sense (as in, while he was getting busy he asked said woman who her daddy was, and she said that he was), to many an officer on the Miami-Dade Police Department, of which Polonius was the captain. We all called him Captain Obvious, because that was his last name and it's only polite to address him in such a manner.

"Hath, my lord," Polonius explained, "wrung from me my slow leave by laborsome petition, and at last upon his will I sealed my hard consent. I do beseech you give him leave to go."

"Sweet!" Laertes said. He jumped onto the table, kicked his plate in the direction of a Nazi goon's face, and did a gyrating striptease in celebration of his return to the University of Paris. As you might have guessed, he was studying abroad, which is to say that he was blowing thousands of dollars just to ogle his sexy French classmates. I, for one, can think of no better way to spend one's time as a student. Also, you'll notice he was majoring in ass kissing.

"Take thy fair hour, Laertes," Claudius said. "Time be thine, and thy best graces spend it at thy will." He, and thus the rest of the table, then turned to Hamlet, whom you had no idea was here until just now. "But now, my cousin Hamlet and my son, how is it that the clouds still hang on you?"

"A little more than kin and less than kind," Hamlet said quietly to himself. Leaning against the wall like the impolite sexy rebel that he was, the young Prince was dressed in a bright tie-dye T-shirt splashed with neon purple and lime, with a pair of ZZ Top-certified cheap sunglasses over his eyes, a backwards Dolphins baseball cap over his frazzled blond hair, and a pair of sandals on his feet below the swim trunks covering the top half of his legs. "Not so, my lord," he replied to his uncle's question. "I am too much in the sun." And in a happier story, skin cancer would have been his undoing.

Gertrude turned to her son and suggested the following suggestively: "Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted color off, and let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark." As ordered, Hamlet removed his sunglasses (with none of the flair I would have had), and looked back at his mother as if waiting for her to order the removal of more articles of attire. "Do not forever with thy vailed lids seek for thy noble father in the dust. Thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity."

"Ay, madam, it is common."

"If it be, why seems it so particular with thee?"

"'Seems,' madam?" Hamlet said. "Nay, it is. I know not 'seems.' 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, nor customary suits of solemn black, nor windy suspiration of forced breath, no, nor the fruitful river in the eye, nor the dejected havior of the visage, together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief, that can denote me truly. These indeed 'seem,' for they are actions that a man might play; but I that have within which passes show, these but the trappings and the suits of woe."

It was beautiful language, indeed, but it didn't make an ounce of sense—screw your metric system, this is America, damn it—in this adaptation of the story, where our hero's choice of clothing does not even remotely recall that of a brooding vampire cursed with a soul who's fallen in love with the Slayer.

"'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet," Claudius said, "to give these mourning duties to your father, but you must know your father lost a father, that father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound in filial obligation for some term to do obsequious sorrow." Except death is cheap here in Miami, as evidenced by the big fat paycheck I get every week for saving your sorry asses through the power of bad science. "But to persever in obstinate condolement is a course of impious stubbornness. 'Tis unmanly grief." Claudius emphasized just how unmanly this grief was by handing his nephew the card of Gertrude's gynecologist. This infuriated Hamlet, who had always wondered why she let some nobody doctor touch her down there but not her own son. As Hamlet crumbled the card in his hand, he looked past a naked Laertes still dancing on the table at Claudius, who continued: "It shows a will most incorrect to heaven, a heart unfortified, a mind impatient, an understanding simple and unschooled." Hamlet flipped Claudius the bird and stuck his tongue out. In response, Claudius grabbed his crotch and had his goons aim their rifles at Hamlet, who surrendered promptly. "For what we know must be and is as common as any the most vulgar thing to sense," Claudius resumed without acknowledging this brief scuffle, "why should we in our peevish opposition take it to heart?"

One thug raised his hand, and Claudius pointed to him as a signal to speak. "Because you killed him, dude." A second later, the man was dead from an accidental rifle discharge that traveled straight through his head and that was in no way precipitated by any subtle hand movements from the new king trying to keep his nonexistent conspiracy under wraps.

"Fie," Claudius said as the body was carried away, "'tis a fault to heaven, a fault against the dead, a fault to nature, to reason most absurd, whose common theme is death of fathers, and who still hath cried, from the first corse till he that died today, 'This must be so.' We pray you, throw to earth this unprevailing woe and think of us as of a father; for let the world take note, you are the most immediate to our throne, and with no less nobility of love than that which dearest father bears his son do I impart towards you."

Hamlet thought about this for a second while Laertes did a decreasingly revealing dress-tease, having by now run out of clothes to strip. He wouldn't live to see it catch on at non-alcoholic bars outside churches and schools worldwide. Finally, after watching Laertes zip up his pants, Hamlet asked, "Was he telling the truth, Uncle Claudius?"

A tense silence, punctuated only by the sound of chirping crickets that one suspects are practically hired specifically for such occasions, reverberated through the room. The goons dressed in stormtrooper outfits readied their weapons for fire, Claudius tightened his grip on Gertrude's hand, and we're only halfway through the second scene, so everyone seriously needs to chill ax.

Looking at the now fully dressed Laertes who was climbing off the table, Hamlet chilled the axes at last when he said, "Is his suit really a Jones New York?"

Someone fired their gun anyway, at that prick from accounting, and soon everyone except our contractually immune main characters was dead from the ensuing violence.

"Well," Laertes replied as he wiped some blood, or maybe it was ketchup, you can never be sure about these things, from his shirt, "since you asked, Hamlet…it is."

"You son of a bitch!" Hamlet said, grabbing the rifle from the bloody hands of the nearest corpse and screaming in madness as he cocked and aimed the gun at Laertes' chest. "I want one!"

"Hamlet!" Claudius said, arising from the protection the underside of the table afforded him and his new wife. Holding his hands in the air, he assured the short-tempered fellow that, "You're a prince! You can have whatever you like!"

"What?"

"I said, you can have whatever you like!"

"Stacks on deck?" Hamlet asked.

Claudius nodded.

"Patron on ice?"

Claudius gave him a thumbs-up.

"Can we pop bottles all night?"

"We can," Claudius smiled.

Hamlet made a slight glance towards his mother, who was following her spouse in creeping out from under the table, and remarked to her, "Late night sex, it's so wet, it's so tight."

"Say hi to Ophelia for me," Gertrude said.

"That's my sister!" Laertes said.

"And she's sexy," Hamlet added, which just saved me like, an entire word for when I give her forthcoming description. "Like my mom."

"That's your mom!" Laertes said.

"So," Hamlet said, throwing the gun to the floor as he continued conversation with Claudius, "I can really have whatever I like?"

"Sure thing, son."

"Anything?"

"Anything."

"Can I go back to school in Wittenberg, Germany?"

"No."

Hamlet picked the rifle he'd threatened Laertes with back up and tried to shoot his uncle with it, only to discover that all the rounds had been emptied in the previously mentioned carnage. "Damn."

"Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet," Gertrude said. "I pray thee, stay with us." She lifted her dress a little to show some leg. "Go not to Wittenberg, Germany."

Hamlet saw this leg and said, "I shall in my best obey you, madam."

"Why, 'tis a loving and fair reply," Claudius said, patting Gertrude on the back and pulling Hamlet, Polonius, and Laertes along as the five of them made their way out of the room that the janitor was going to have to require one hell of a raise before being convinced to clean it up. "Be as ourself in Dade County." After stepping into the next room, where I was waiting with Barnardo and Marcellus, Hamlet remained while the other four left. "Madam, come," Claudius continued. "This gentle and unforced accord of Hamlet sits smiling to my heart, in grace whereof no jocund health that Hamlet drinks today but the great cannon to the clouds shall tell, and the King's rouse the heaven shall bruit again, respeaking earthly thunder. Come away."

As soon as Hamlet (thought) he was alone, he broke into tears that would make even the most stoic of men laugh, and laugh we did in plain but nevertheless unnoticed sight of our comrade. "O, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve into a dew, or that the Everlasting had not fixed his canon 'gainst self-slaughter!" Upon hearing this remark, Barnardo broke the nearest window with his elbow and tossed Hamlet a piece of broken glass to cut himself with if he so desired. Studying his right arm to determine where best to cut (fool, the leftie was using a right-handed shard!), he added, "O God, God, how weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!" He made an incision into his flesh, and Marcellus cheered him on. "Fie on 't, ah fie! 'Tis an unweeded garden that grows to seed. Things rank and gross possess it merely."

Hamlet looked to the wall behind him and saw a poster advertising the so-called election of Claudius to the throne; after blowing his nose on it, and then crying in more agony at the bloody paper cut that resulted, he continued, "That it should come to this: but two months dead—nay, not so much, not two." He read the ad out loud ("Free cookies for anyone who reads this ad out loud!"), and after eating the delicious cookies, he wept some more. "So excellent a king, that was this Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother that he might not beteem the winds of heaven visit her face so roughly. Heaven and earth, must I remember?" ("Damn straight," Barnardo said.) "Why, she would hang on him as if increase if appetite had grown by what it fed on. And yet, within a month (let me not think on 't; frailty, thy name is woman!), a little month, or ere those shoes were old with which she followed my poor father's body."

"What is it with women and shoes, anyway?" I asked Barnardo and Marcellus, who both shrugged, after taking my glasses off. As I put them right back on again, I remarked, "Maybe they wouldn't be so frail if they weren't walking in heels all the time."

"Like Niobe, all tears," Hamlet continued loudly, perhaps actually aware of our snarky presence, "why she, even she (o God, a beast that wants discourse of reason would have mourned longer!), married with my uncle, my father's brother, but no more like my father than I to Hercules." Hamlet took a small breath, which anyone in a dictatorial regime—not that this was one, I'm just saying, you know, for example—knows to do frequently, since the next one could just as easily be your last. And speaking of which: "Within a month, ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears had left the flushing in her galled eyes, she married. O, most wicked speed, to post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets! It is not, nor it cannot come to good. But break, my heart," he said as he placed his fists on his chest far too dramatically for the first act, "for I must hold my tongue."

"Like, you couldn't have realized that before you made a long-ass speech?" Marcellus said.

"Marcellus?" Hamlet said. "Barnardo? Horatio? How long have you been here?"

"How do you think that piece of broken glass got into your hand, man?" Marcellus said, pointing at the shard and the self-mutilation it had caused.

"My what?"

Hamlet looked down, saw the red liquid dripping down his arm and onto his clothes, and hurried into another room to find a towel, while the rest of us laughed at his emotional turmoil and the dinosaur-shaped puddle the blood had left on the floor on his way out.

Upon Hamlet's return a minute later, with a white cloth towel wrapped around his arm, I opened my arms to hug him. "Hail to your lordship," I smiled while removing the sunglasses with one hand.

"I am glad to see you well," Hamlet said as we shared a hug. "Horatio—or I do forget myself?"

"The same, my lord," I said as I wiped my glasses on the one white spot left on his improvised cast before returning them to their proper location over my eyes, "and your poor servant ever."

"Sir, my good friend," Hamlet insisted. "I'll change that name with you. And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio? Marcellus?" He wondered what I was doing away from the university in Wittenberg where I had been studying, which could only mean Oedipus had made things so complicated within this boy's head that he'd forgotten I'd already graduated with a BS in criminal justice and a minor in the court system because I'd arrested her daddy. Then again, Gertrude can be quite alluring on a good day.

"My good lord," Marcellus said, nodding.

"I am very glad to see you." He looked to Barnardo, who wouldn't have any more lines for the remainder of the scene, and said, "Good even, sir." Realizing he was wasting everyone's time with these pleasantries, he returned his attention towards me and asked, "But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?"

"A truant disposition," I answered, removing the glasses again, "good my lord."

"I would not hear your enemy say so," Hamlet said, "nor shall you do my ear that violence to make it truster of your own report against yourself." Put in simpler terms, "I know you are no truant." Suddenly questioning his sexuality upon taking in the awesome scope of my masculinity, he remembered one of the many issues this had caused in the past. "But what of your affair in Elsinore?" I shook my head. "We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart." Hey, I'm always ready to booze up when my so-called friends remind me of awful memories I thought I'd managed to rid myself of.

"My lord," I said, putting my sunglasses back on, "I came to see your father's funeral."

"I prithee," Hamlet said, "do not mock me, fellow student." So I laughed in my head.

"Graduate," I corrected him, and not just in the Mrs. Robinson sense, either.

"I think it was to see my mother's wedding."

"Indeed, my lord, it followed soon upon."

"Thrift, thrift, Horatio." I looked around for signs indicating a sale, but found none. "The funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables." Barnardo and Marcellus joined me in searching for the food of which Hamlet spoke, while the speaker continued speaking. "Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven or ever I had seen that day, Horatio! My father—methinks I see my father."

"Where, my lord?" I inquired, currently lifting the nearest woman's skirt. I found a muffin, but now was not the time to be eating it. "Where's the food?"

"In my mind's eye, Horatio."

"You bastard!" Barnardo said.

"Like, you deserve whatever tragedy befalls you, man!" Marcellus said, his Great Dane helping get the message across by growling.

"I was talking about my dad, you guys."

"Zoiks!" Marcellus gasped. "Like, Hamlet's a cannibal!" And with that, he and his dog ran in the air for a few seconds before disappearing in a cloud a dust.

"I saw him once," I shrugged, having seen worse things than cannibalism during my watch. "He was a goodly king." I took my glasses off.

"He was a man," Hamlet said, and the fact that he had to remind us of this fact is just depressing, though one could just as easily argue that the legacy of the Hamlet family manhood had recently been cast into doubt, what with guys like me walking around making the young prince with an Oedipus complex look bad by comparison. "Take him for all in all, I shall not upon his like again."

"My lord," I said, putting my sunglasses back on, "I think I saw him yesternight."

"Saw who?"

"My lord, the King your father."

"The King my father?"

"What are you, a parrot?" I snapped, taking my sunglasses off once again and adjusting my arm angle carefully for maximum firepower. "We don't got enough of those little green shits flying around, you got to go repeating everything I say?"

"You bastard!" Barnardo said as he and I both glared at Hamlet, and then I threw my glasses at him at such an angle that they flew from my hand to his cornea ("Ow! Oh god, why?") before boomeranging back towards me, whereupon they landed perfectly over my eyes. Yeah, bitch, you read that right.

"Season your admiration for a while," I warned my friend as blood spurted from his eye socket onto the floor, "with an attent ear, till I may deliver upon the witness of these gentlemen this marvel to you."

Barnardo and Hamlet looked around with their three working eyes for the other gentleman witness I was speaking of. Marcellus and his Great Dane were gone, no doubt hiding in a closet with some Scooby Snacks.

"For God's love," Hamlet cried, his tears of wanting to know more about his father only exacerbating the tears of losing an eye and thus making him cry and bleed even more, "let me hear!"

"Two nights together had these gentlemen," I began, whilst cueing Barnardo to dim the lights and putting my flashlight under my face for scare value, "Marcellus and Barnardo, on their watch, in the dead waste and middle of the night, been thus encountered: a figure like your father, armed at point exactly, cap-a-pie, appears before them and with solemn march goes slow and stately by them."

Hamlet was shivering and sucking his thumb. Barnardo wrapped a blanket—a red one, for reasons I'm sure you can understand—around him for comfort, but did so with so little warning that the young prince jumped and nearly screamed. "You bastard!" my equally shocked colleague said to the boy, shaking his head as he walked back towards me.

"Thrice he walked by their oppressed and fear-surprised eyes within his truncheon's length," I continued, without bothering to lessen the scare value for him or the pompous literary value for you by defining a "truncheon," "whilst they, distilled almost to jelly with the act of fear, stand dumb and did not speak to him." I bitch-slapped Barnardo for his dumbness because I can and because it would've made Hamlet happy, at least for a moment, to see such punishment doled out. "This to me in dreadful secrecy impart they did, and I with them the third night kept the watch, where, as they had delivered, both in time, form of the thing (each word made true and good), the apparition comes." Finally, to cast out any doubt the traumatized young man might have had, I bitch-slapped Barnardo once more for good measure and added, "I knew your father; these hands," I said as I showed him my hand, red from its bitch-slapping action you know from my action figure, "are not more like."

Marcellus and his dog returned just as I had finished telling the story, with full stomachs and smelling suspiciously of marijuana. "Like, what'd we miss?" Marcellus asked.

"The fact that I'm not a cannibal, for one," Hamlet replied. "Or a parrot," he added while glaring at me as best he could with his one working eye. "But where was this?" he said to me, wanting to get back on track with the plot.

"My lord, upon the platform where we watch," I said.

"Hey," Marcellus said excitedly to Hamlet, "that's where we saw the ghost of your dad, man!"

"Did you not speak to it?" Hamlet asked me, continuing to ignore Marcellus.

"My lord, I did, but answer made it none." I looked to my colleagues and explained, "Yet once methought it lifted up its head and did address itself to motion, like as it would speak; but even then the morning cock crew loud, and at the sound it shrunk in haste away and vanished from our sight."

"Yeah," Barnardo said. "You know, Hamlet, for an undead spirit capable of innumerable things beyond our mere mortal understanding, your dad sure is a pussy."

"'Tis very strange," Hamlet said to me.

"Actually, considering your taste in women," Barnardo said, "it's not really."

"I'm boning Ophelia, asshole!"

"But, like, you're thinking about your mom when you do!" Marcellus gasped. "Isn't he?" he asked his pooch, who snickered quite humanly for his species. "See, he thinks so, too, man!"

"And even disregarding that," Barnardo said, "Ophelia may be cute, but she's crazy, dude!"

"She is not!" Hamlet whined. "You're all just jealous!"

I shook my head and sighed. After I removed my glasses solemnly, I said, "As I do live, my honored lord, it is true." Hamlet burst into suicidal tears again, and so I placed my hand on his shoulder. "And we did think it writ down in our duty to let you know of it."

"Indeed, sirs," Hamlet said as he wiped his tears on the bloody towel covering his arm, "this troubles me."

"Really?" I said. "I hadn't noticed." Okay, so all this bad news about an undead father, a mentally ill girlfriend, and icky love triangle between himself, his mother, and his uncle had just been laid on Hamlet's plate. I decided it was only fair to give him some positive reinforcement. "Hamlet?" I said, causing the prince to look back up at me with a face covered in blood such that it could be mistaken as a racist caricature of Native Americans, but with all the grief of tribal slaughter, foreign disease transfer, and land takeover by European settlers replaced with stuff better suited for a Simple Plan song. "Remember that girlfriend of yours from high school? The one that cheated on you with Barry?" He nodded. "She was our murder victim last week."

Hamlet smiled. "Hold you the watch tonight?" he asked as we all got up off the floor.

"We do, my lord," Barnardo, Marcellus, and I said all together.

"Armed, say you?" he further questioned us.

"Armed, my lord," we replied, pulling our guns out in a flourish I encourage you to try at home if a Darwin Award tickles your fancy.

"From top to toe?"

"My lord, from head to foot," we said to finish up our Three Musketeers-style unity.

"Then saw you not his face?"

"O, yes," I nodded while I holstered my weapon, "he wore his beaver up."

"Stop talking about my dad like that!"

"Hamlet, a beaver in this sense isn't—" Barnardo began to explain, before deciding it would be funnier to just let it be. Nevertheless, he simplified it to ruin the joke on your part. "We could see his face."

"What, he looked he frowningly?" Hamlet said.

"Like, he was dead," Marcellus said. "What do you think?"

"A countenance more in sorrow than in anger," I clarified.

"Pale or red?"

"Nay, very pale."

"Because he was dead," Marcellus added.

"And fixed his eyes upon you?"

"Most constantly," I said, being reminded that I had to cover up my own eyes after leaving them exposed and vulnerable to revealing my inability to act to the world for so long, thus putting the glasses back on when I did.

"I would I had been there," Hamlet moped.

"It would have much amazed you."

"Very like," Hamlet said, and by now you all know that he's going to go see the ghost anyway, so all this knowing tease of dialogue isn't very entertaining. "Stayed it long?"

"While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred."

"Longer, longer," Marcellus and Barnardo argued.

"Not when I saw 't," I said, shocked by their lengthy, privileged views of the thing. I could totally fire them for that.

"His beard was grizzled, too?" Hamlet continued prying for description.

"It was as I have seen it in his life," I said, "a sable silvered."

Hamlet nodded. "I will watch tonight. Perchance 'twill walk again."

"I warrant it will."

"If it assume my noble father's person, I'll speak to it, though hell itself should gape and bid me hold my peace." First the man defies God by attempting suicide, now he's going to defy Satan by talking to the ghost of his father. Clearly, Hamlet has a death wish. "I pray you all, if you have hitherto concealed this sight, let it be tenable in your silence still; and whatsoever else shall hap tonight, give it an understanding but no tongue." Well, there goes any chance of me getting some action tonight. "I will requite your loves." Barnardo gasped. "No, not in that way," he assured us of his straightness. "So fare you well," he said while bidding us ado. "Upon the platform, 'twixt eleven and twelve, I'll visit you."

"Our duty to your Honor," our trio waved goodbye, leaving Hamlet alone in the room to bitch.

"Your loves, as mine to you. Farewell." Certain that he was alone once more, he then said, in tears, of course, "My father's spirit—in arms! All is not well. I doubt some foul play," he said ironically, since that's totally what was up in this crime-ridden hellhole of a Caribbean paradise. Oh, that's right, we're not in Miami right now, we're still in the Bahamas. I apologize, Bahamians. Your many bikinied women do please the eye so. "Would the night were come!" It was already here, but I digress. "Till then, sit still, my soul. Foul deeds will rise, though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes."

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