Chapter Text
On the Sixteenth Day of the Second Month of the Two-Thousand and Twenty-Third Year Of Our Lord, Gideon Nav had nothing much to do. It was near closing time at her barista job on campus and there were no students to be seen. Given, this was two weeks before the start of the first semester and there was no point in being there, but she had annoyed her employer into giving her shifts despite the lack of clientele because money was a good thing to have, and her employer didn’t care too much anyway. She finished up wiping off the steam wand and double checking the expiration dates on the milk bottles. As she wiped down the bench in preparation for tomorrow, a young woman in a wheelchair came speeding around the corner into the student quad.
“Gideon! Lovely to see you!” She gave Gideon a languid wave once she’d parked herself in front of the counter. She was clutching a small stack of papers on her lap. It was a wonder they hadn’t flown away in her haste.
“Dulcie! Hey!” said Gideon, feeling heat rise to her cheeks. Dulcinea looked particularly fairy-like today, wearing a flowy sea-foam dress with puffy sleeves. She held up one of the papers so Gideon could see it.
“Gids, I’m going to be directing a play! Would you mind if I tacked up one of these posters so I can advertise it?” she asked sweetly, toying with her floppy hat. Gideon took one of the posters. It was mostly black with a large skull in the middle. Striking white letters in various fonts — Comic Sans, Fontdiner Swanky and the like — called to the attention of anyone interested in auditioning for Shakespeare’s Hamlet . Gideon whistled in approval.
“Wow. Graphic design is your passion, yeah?”
Dulcinea laughed, a tinkling and saccharine sound. “Oh yes. I’m changing the subject of my dissertation post-haste. Horticultural plant species are out, serious posters with silly designs are in.”
“Seriously, though, this is a really cool idea. I’ll put up a poster on the wall and if my manager doesn’t like it she can eat my shorts.” Gideon knew her manager, an older woman with a rigid demeanor who turned a blind eye to the frustrating habits of university students, wouldn't care if Gideon put up a few posters to help out a pal. She’d probably criticise the design or subject matter or whatever, though Hamlet was appropriately goth enough for her not to care.
“Wonderful!” Dulcinea clapped her hands together. “Email me for the audition form.” Gideon recoiled.
“Wait a minute, Dulcie. I never said I was gonna —” Dulcinea brushed her off.
“I think you should audition. Even if you don’t get a part, a friendly face in the masses of serious young people vying for the main role will be refreshing. Please? For me?” Dulcinea then did the fluttery thing with her eyelashes that made Gideon feel weak at the knees. Whether she did it to make Gideon feel at risk of heart arrhythmia on purpose or not didn’t matter. Gideon nodded, immediately convinced.
“Yeah, okay. I’ll let you know,” she said.
“Brill!” said Dulcinea brightly. “Bye now, I have a few more to put up. See you at the auditions!” She waved, then spun around and wheeled off to wherever else needed to be plastered with posters. She stopped suddenly and spun back around. “Oh, Gideon, one more thing!”
If Gideon had been a dog, her ears would have perked up and her tail would have started wagging. “Yeah, what is it?”
“I’m working as a teaching assistant for one of the first-year biology courses this semester.You remember, the one with the trip out to Ōrakei?”
“Oh, yeah! I’m going to be a TA for that course too, actually. It’s the one where the university gets teenagers to do their dirty nature survey work for them,” said Gideon. She remembered it, alright. It had been a few years since Gideon’s freshman year, but Dulcinea had been in charge of her survey group for that particular trip. She’d asked Dulcinea a lot of obvious questions about the damage caused by introduced species and brought her lots of interesting specimens for identification. Gideon didn’t really give a shit about plants, but she gave a shit about what Dulcinea had to say about them.
Dulcinea laughed. “Yes, that’s exactly the one. Oh, I’m so very glad that you’ll be teaching in that course, you have no idea.”
“Yeah, me too,” said Gideon, hoping her voice wasn’t betraying any excitement. Slow down, Nav, slow down , she thought. Dulcinea smiled, her sickly but pleasant features softening into relief.
“Wonderful,” she said, and departed at last. Gideon watched her go and sent her off with a wave. She grinned to herself and finished the clean-up and closing process with more enthusiasm than she’d ever done it with before. Gideon Nav, barista, actor, and field scientist extraordinaire. Nevermind that she was only good at one of those things. None of that mattered if Dulcinea thought she was good enough. She found her umbrella and opened it as she left the courtyard to head home. A light rain had begun to fall around her, drizzling the cars and trees and buildings with wet. The air was thick with the warm smell of summer showers. The world was a wonderful, wonderful place, she thought.
—
Gideon’s other job was a lot grosser and way more important to her career than her barista job. While she worked on her thesis, her job as a lab helper meant she got into the good books of everyone who worked in the bioanthropology department and made up for the lack of hours at the coffee shop. She felt like a bit of a cuckoo most of the time, seeing as her thesis was about biology and not anything anthropological, but her experience with animal specimens meant she had the right skills for the job. Unfortunately, the research position was awful because it centred around preparing model specimen skeletons for archaeologists. Her current task was to create a set of model specimen skeletons that depicted the differences between five very similar species of native fish. The process was simple enough — take the dead animal, boil it down to bones, rearticulate the skeleton, mount it and present it to her bone-obsessed overlords. Said overlords would ooh and aah and compare the skeleton to all the little bone bits they’d dug out of Gideon’s ancestor’s rubbish heaps, and Gideon would walk away with a fat wad of cash. In actuality, the wad wasn’t that fat because the anthropology department had no funding, and the job made her smell so bad that most days Gideon promised herself she’d quit and focus on her thesis full time. But as it was, she was on track with her thesis so far, and she secretly enjoyed the work. Rearticulating fish bones was frustrating at best, but damn if it didn’t feel good to end up with a clean, complete giant kōkopu skeleton to show her supervisor.
She lifted the lid to the giant freezer where the specimens were kept. A foul wave of cold air and dead-animal-stench wafted out. She’d gotten good at holding her breath during these necessary freezer runs, but she had to make a quick grab for her next specimen. She rifled through the bags containing dead fish on the small rack in the freezer. They hadn’t been labelled well, which meant — God, why — opening up the ziploc bags and inspecting whatever was inside. As she opened one of the bags (inside was a frozen-solid banded kōkopu, a type of largish freshwater fish) she heard the door to her right open and close softly. A soft clinking of various human skeleton-themed jewellery items accompanied the sound. Oh, for fuck’s sake. Gideon could practically hear the sneering.
“Did you forget your lunch, Griddle?” came a familiar voice, dripping with necrotic nastiness. “I do hope your supervisors aren’t too upset by your snacking straight out of the specimen freezer.”
Gideon whipped her head around to face the source of this unpleasant exchange. The unwelcome visitor to Gideon’s lab was five-foot-nothing and dressed entirely in black, except for that fucked-up little ribcage corset that was probably attached to her chest. Her pointy little face was twisted into a nasty, angular smile that made Gideon think of something rabid. “And who do I have to thank for breaking you out of your coffin, Nonagesimus?” she said, giving the Harrowhark Nonagesimus in question a mocking bow.
“Save your preening, I came in to find another digital calliper. Mine broke.” Harrow sighed and swept past where Gideon was stranded, to a shelf on the opposite side of the room. She rummaged through the disorganised pile until she found what she was looking for — a gleaming metal calliper, with bright, sharp edges that complemented Harrow’s fingers and personality perfectly.
“Shove it up your ass,” said Gideon helpfully, “and save me the trouble.”
Harrow glared at her. “Your laboratory is a mess. I can’t believe they hired you and let you keep your post. The zooarchaeologists really must be desperate.”
“Hey, I’ll have you know that I am very good at my job and also that this is a shared space. I don’t have anything to do with that shelf.”
“My apologies. Tell me, Griddle, are you proud of where you’ve ended up in life? With an uninspired, unfinished thesis, prying rotting animal flesh from bones day in and day out, smelling like a fishery? No plans on where you’ll go when all this is over?” Harrow’s voice was hung with amusement, like she’d just spent the last few minutes watching a seagull eat something that was too big for its gullet. Gideon stared at her with the intent to kill.
“Listen to me, you stuck-up nepotism-hire bitch. I don’t give a shit about what you have to say about me because you’re a miserable piece of shit and I’ll hate you forever, so get the fuck out of my laboratory.”
“You’ll hate me forever? That’s quite the commitment.”
“Yeah, I’ll hate you forever. My ghost is gonna be kicking your ghost ass for the rest of eternity. I won’t let you rest in peace, mark my fucking words.”
Harrow threw back her head and laughed. Like, actually threw it back and laughed. It was one of the most cartoonishly evil things Gideon had ever seen her do, and she’d once caught Harrow practising a menacing glare in her bedroom mirror. They’d both been kids at the time, but still. “Oh, I have rustled your jimmies,” said Harrow with a fake-polite smile. “I’ll be on my way then.”
Gideon thought of some more choice things to say, but decided against one final barrage of curses. Harrowhark wasn’t worth the effort. But final words didn’t have to be spoken. As Gideon looked back into the bag with the slowly defrosting fish, she had an idea. A horrible, terrible, wonderful idea.
—
The next day, Gideon made sure to get into work extra-early. Because Harrow was a massive fucking freak, she liked to get into work at eight o’clock (she probably slept in the graveyard on the other side of the Grafton bridge, which made it easy for her to get to work so early, Gideon thought) and stay until ungodly hours of the night. Gideon usually left work around five on the days that she wasn’t at her barista job, though the few times she’d stayed later to finish off some model or another, she always saw Harrow through the door of the osteoarchaeology lab, shoulders hunched over a pile of human bones, measuring, inspecting, and muttering to herself. Harrow’s fixation on bones gave Gideon the creeps. Sure, Gideon did bones, but not in the way that Harrow did bones. She did bones in an unhinged, obsessive, and possibly psychosexual way, which was nothing like the hinged, normal, productive way that Gideon did bones.
As Gideon approached the anthropology building at seven o’clock in the morning, she checked both ways before swiping her card and going inside. For her plan to work, Harrow needed to be absent from the building. There was no sign of human life on the street, save for some guy wandering around in his dressing gown outside the medical school and smoking. He nodded at Gideon, who nodded back and ducked inside. The anthropology building at the University of Auckland had not been updated since the seventies, which meant it smelled like musty carpet and generally looked old as balls. She walked up several flights of stairs to her laboratory, taking the stairs two at a time. Once on her floor, she looked through the little panel of glass that was set into the door to the osteoarchaeology lab. Harrow’s usual workspace was empty. Excitement rose in Gideon’s chest. Her plan was actually going to work. She walked quickly to her own lab — Gideon Nav didn’t run unless it was absolutely necessary — and dove into the freezer. The hedgehog would have effect, but would take a while to smell bad, and the whole dead dog was impressive, but overkill. She felt a little bad about taking out one of her fish specimens, but she had to use something that was going to stink upon defrosting. Kōkopu were too rare to use for something as petty as what Gideon was about to do, so one of the larger saltwater specimens would work. She selected a tarakihi — a chunky silver fish, now stiff and dull in frozen death — and stole into Harrow’s lab.
Even without the lights on, the osteoarchaeology lab looked clean and well-lit, with large windows running across two whole walls of the room. The view over the waking city was beautiful. Gideon held the moment with a careful breath, watching the sun creep over the edges of Rangitoto, one of the bigger volcanic islands in the Hauraki Gulf. The city in front of her was drowned in sunlight for a moment as the sun appeared in its full glory. For a moment, it was too much to take in, and Gideon looked away, finding it difficult to imagine why Harrow would bother waking so early to work here. Her demeanour generally suggested a hatred for sunlight, so ‘likes to watch the sunrise’ was out of the question.
Gideon carefully removed the tarakihi specimen from its plastic shroud and placed it on Harrow’s bench. In about an hour, it was going to stink evilly, and Harrow was going to be the only person in the lab for the entire day — Gideon had been sure to check with the lab technician in charge of the space under the guise of health and safety concerns. With a nasty smirk to celebrate the latest advancement in the war against Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Gideon left the laboratory, and wandered over to her own laboratory, waiting patiently for the moment that a blood-curdling scream would rise from the osteo lab down the hall.
—
To Gideon’s despair, that moment never came. For about two hours, Gideon sat at her bench, then stood, then walked circuits around the tables anthropology tutors used for teaching students during the semester. She even spent twenty minutes going in and out of the specimen freezer taking stock of the dead animals available (one adult dog, two stillborn puppies, half a rabbit, a hedgehog, a bag of rats, and a tray of individually-stored fish). At nine in the morning, one whole hour after Harrow was meant to arrive, Gideon got fed up waiting for Harrow to barrel through the door and went downstairs to make herself a cup of coffee in the breakroom.
Walking down the dim, stale-smelling corridors yielded no unexpected interactions, and Gideon let herself relax. Maybe Harrow had called in sick. Gideon felt a twinge of regret at this thought, knowing that someone else would probably find that fish tomorrow and call for the building to be evacuated. She made a mental note to get rid of the fish before the end of the day, and played around with the magnetic letters on the breakroom fridge while she waited for the coffee machine to finish buffering. Rearranging them to spell ‘COCK’ felt uninspired, but a missing ‘Y’ meant ‘PUSSY’ was out of the question. She settled for the whimsical phrase ‘DICK FART’ and took her cup of watery coffee back up to her lab.
As she swiped her card to enter, something felt amiss. One of the doors on the other side of the room had just closed with a bang. She crept inside slowly and peered in between the lab benches. Nobody was crouched underneath them, or hiding around any of the corners. She looked out the door that had shut with such force, but the corridor it led into was as dim and dusty yellow as the rest of the corridors in the building. Probably one of the summer research students walking into the wrong lab. There was still no sign of Harrow either, and a feeling of keen disappointment sunk deeper into her chest. Whatever. There was very little in Gideon’s life that she regretted. Asking out a popular straight girl in high school was one of them, swapping hats as a kid with her cousin who always had nits was another. But besides those, she had done many stupid things and taken the consequences in stride, and the fish bomb had been a valiant effort for a good cause.
Or so she thought, until she went back to the specimen freezer to retrieve yesterday’s banded kōkopu. Lying atop the rack of dead fish was a putrefying human arm, the skin grey-tinged and waxen, pockmarked with grey lacerations where the bloodless flesh had been presumably torn into by scavengers. The smell hit her nostrils and revulsion rose like bile, sending Gideon sprawling. She lay on her hands and knees, panting, trying to stop her stomach contents from leaving her mouth. A door opened softly, followed by a soft clinking. Gideon tried to manage her breathing, tried to contain her fury, tried to do anything to keep her disgust in check until she heard a smug little —
“I see today’s fare is not to your liking?” Harrow’s voice slithered into Gideon’s brain like poison through her ears. She could almost hear the prim smile on Harrow’s face as she tried too hard to cover up her joy at Gideon’s most abject misery. Gideon saw red.
“You psychopathic, sick, twisted —” she began, spitting the words with such force that her eyesight swam.
“Oh, hush. Nice trick with the fish, by the way. I’ve had to open every window in the place. But in my field of study, you’ll find there’s far more opportunity for the grotesque.”
“God, Harrow, what the fuck is wrong with you?” Gideon yelled. Every muscle in her body and every layer of her brain screamed at her to shove Harrow into a barrel of flesh-dissolving lye and leave her there. “A human arm? You rotten fucking freak!”
“Enough expletives, Griddle. Jesting aside, I need that arm to be boiled down to bone so I can study the effect that rodent scavenging has on the bones of larger mammals. It’s part of my forensic research job, I’m sure you understand.” Harrow had tucked her hands into the folds of her absurd, Grim-Reaper-style cloak. A smile was still playing on her lips. Gideon had never wanted to punch anyone in the face so bad in her entire life.
“First of all, there’s a process that comes alongside working with human remains, and that process is fucking telling people that’s what you want them to do . Not leaving your gross bits lying around for them to find!”
Harrow shrugged. “I had to find some way to teach you a valuable lesson.” She looked Gideon in the eye. Her gaze was as sharp and dark as volcanic glass. “Curb your baser instincts and do not enter my lab without explicit permission ever again.”
Gideon stared her down. Her mouth twitched with twenty more explosive insults. She settled for “‘Curb my baser instincts’? What are you, ninety? And I’ll enter your lab as much as I want. In fact, I’ll enter your lab until you’re —”
Harrow held up her hand as though to stop Gideon’s train of thought in its tracks. To Gideon’s horror, it worked. “If you’re turning that pointless statement into some crude joke, I will leave you where you stand. I expect that arm skeletonised, degreased, and on my bench by next Friday. My supervisor, who requested your services, thanks you. I do not.” With a dramatic sweep of her cloak, Harrowhark Nonagesimus turned on her heel and left.
“I’ll enter your mother’s lab,” muttered Gideon, and shoved down her disgust as she approached the arm, still lying necrotic in the freezer.
At that moment, Gideon’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She shut the freezer lid and reached for it. The email banner read:
Dulcinea Septimus
Hamlet Auditions
Hi all, and thank you for signing up to audition for my play! Please find attached your audition pack and allotted time for your audition. I hope to see you there :)
Gideon felt a rush of excitement as she tapped the attached document. It offered several characters to choose from, with a variety of monologues and conversations. She’d been forced to study Shakespeare in high school English, where the teachers made the text as stiff and lacklustre as a poorly taxidermied seagull. Most of them had also refused to acknowledge the plethora of excellent dick jokes throughout every single one of those plays, which, to Gideon, had been a crying shame. The only time she’d really felt close to Shakespeare was when her mums took her to see a production of Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Pop-Up Globe in a carpark near the racecourse, and she’d enjoyed it thoroughly for its raunchy homoeroticism and incredibly hot Titania. The Fairy Court had also spoken entirely in Te Reo Māori, which Gideon, with no small sense of glowing pride, had been able to understand better than most of Shakespearean English. The other time she’d felt close to Shakespeare was when she memorised a particularly nasty passage of insults to use against Harrow whenever necessary. Lots of good stuff about the shitty character in question being possessed by an infernal fury and followed by perturbation, or however the passage went. She swiped through the available options of soliloquies. Hamlet was out of the question. The Prince of Denmark was not a hot ginger butch, nor did he deserve to be. However, a fight between Hamlet and some guy called Laertes caught her eye. By the looks of it, Laertes was a sword fighter, and Gideon has always wanted to learn how to use a sword. Her brain lit up with visions of herself in a bloodstained white shirt, engaging in a furious battle to the death with her sworn enemy, babes swooning all over the place as she swung her sword with bloody violence and brute force. Gideon was sold. She wasn’t even going to bother looking at any more of the characters. Laertes was perfect and Dulcinea was going to love her performance.
A few days later, Gideon was waiting by the door to the audition room. It was in the university’s clocktower, which boasted moth-eaten carpets and a few modernised lecture theatres. She studied the intricate, coloured patterns of the mosaic on the floor of the atrium and strained to hear the goings-on inside the audition room. She could hear Dulcinea’s wheezing laughter and a few strong, slightly British voices. For a moment, she felt overwhelmed. She’d never had an issue with confidence. If she ever needed to make a poster to advertise herself, the tagline would read: Gideon Nav. Loud. Annoying. Hilarious. Overall, a great person to have around. But the longer she thought about it, the more the realisation that for the first time in her life she would have to abandon her identity and become someone else disturbed her. There was all likelihood that Dulcinea would want her to read for a different character than the one she prepared for, and that would mean Gideon’s fantasies of loping around on stage while covered in a sexy amount of blood would all go up in smoke. But hey, that was acting. God, why am I doing this, again? thought Gideon as the previous auditionees left the room. The first of them was tall and radiant, with long, curly hair sitting in a stylish mess on the crown of her head. She gave Gideon a roguish wink as she passed.
“Good luck, sweetheart.” Her gait was bouncy yet casual, like the world was kneeling at her feet and she knew it. Gideon’s brain stopped working.
“Ggggyep, you too,” she stuttered after that blazing sun in human form. The next person out of the audition room was long and pale, with lank blonde hair hanging in oily strands around her face. With some disbelief, Gideon realised that this person had the exact same face as the golden woman, though thinner and more anaemic. She looked straight through Gideon, as though observing something completely mundane. Gideon recoiled slightly, immediately put out by the appearance of this wetter, creepier-looking twin. The final figure to leave the audition room was a young man, similar in age to the women before him. He was clearly in a hurry, though as soon as he saw Gideon, he straightened up and gave her a dismissive toss of his head. His hair had so much gel in it that it crunched when he ran his hand through it, looking Gideon up and down before deciding she wasn’t worth his time.
“Stop posturing, Babs.” It was the pale twin who spoke. Her voice, smooth and dry, echoed around the vast space of the clocktower’s atrium. She rolled her eyes. “God, you’re pathetic.”
“Yeah, Babs,” said the golden twin. She stood next to her sister, throwing their features into direct contrast with each other. Where one stood with her hands on her hips and her lovely chin held high, the other shrunk into herself, hands hung carefully in front her.
Babs, whom Gideon guessed was the coiffed dickhead in front of her, startled away from Gideon and walked over to the twins like a kicked puppy. She half-expected one of the women to pull out a leash or something. It was the weirdest thing she had seen in a while, and she’d recently had to endure an interaction with a summer research student who actually enjoyed the process of obsidian hydration or whatever the fuck the archaeology project she was working on was about.
The sound of scattering papers and muffled curses floated out from behind the audition-room door. A lower, stronger voice gave a calm reply, and Dulcinea’s reedy voice called out “Next!” as Gideon ducked inside.
Inside the cramped little lecture theatre sat Dulcinea and a large, lumpy man with a face like beef mince. She arranged the scripts he handed to her into little piles, and she smiled confidentially when Gideon entered the room, as though they were the only two people privy to some inside joke.
“Gideon! How lovely to see you. When you told me you weren’t an actor I was a little worried you’d only agreed to audition to humour me,” she said.
“Like I’d ever let you down like that,” said Gideon, butterflies in her stomach. “Hey, I didn’t know people could audition in groups.” She gestured towards the door.
“Oh!” said Dulcinea, a little embarrassed. “A bunch of people asked if they could audition with their friends. I know it’s not very professional, but I did want to see which actors would work well together. Usually I limited it to pairs, but the last three insisted. I should have been annoyed, but they were so good as a trio that I didn’t care.”
“Oh? What parts did they audition for?”
Dulcinea gave her a little wink. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,” she said. Gideon felt fuzzy again. So many gorgeous women were winking at her today. Nice. Dulcinea cleared her throat. “Right. To business. Which character have you prepared for?”
“Um. Laertes,” said Gideon. She became very aware that she was standing up before Dulcinea and had nowhere to put her hands. Not in her pockets, it looked closed off. If she held her hands by her sides, it would look unnatural. She settled for crossing her arms over her chest.
“Amazing! Pro, is that one in your pile?”
Pro, the meat-sack of a man sitting next to Dulcinea, nodded and handed Gideon a script. “There you go,” he said, and smiled. His voice and demeanour were much kinder than Gideon had anticipated.
Gideon read through the script, even though she’d almost memorised the scene. She assumed what she hoped was a fighting stance, and began. “My lord, I’ll hit him now.”
Protesilaus, reading for King Claudius, said gravely, “I do not think it.”
“And yet 'tis almost 'gainst my conscience,” said Gideon, angrily.
Dulcinea, reading for Hamlet, said with a violent gesture “Come, for the third, Laertes: you but dally; I pray you, pass with your best violence; I am afeard you make a wanton of me.”
“Say you so? come on. They play.” Gideon bounced on her heels as though ready to strike.
Protesilaus, in a louder voice, “Nothing, neither way.”
With a furious yell, Gideon spat “Have at you now!” and lurched forward. Dulcinea nodded and put down her script.
“Very nice,” she said slowly. Gideon’s heart sank. Dulcinea continued. “It was good, but I’ll give you a little more context to work with. Laertes wants Hamlet dead, but he’s not much of a fighter. Could we run through the scene again, but with you a little more apprehensive about the duel?”
Gideon obeyed, running through the lines a little slower, trying to sound more unsure. Her movements were more jerky and frantic, less surefooted. She even got to say her last line, breathlessly. “It is here, Hamlet. Hamlet, thou art slain. No medicine in the world can do thee good. In thee, there is not half an hour of life.” She panted. Dulcinea looked intrigued. “The treacherous instrument is in thy hand, unbated and envenomed. The foul practice hath turned itself on me. Lo, here I lie never to rise again.” She sunk to her knees. “Thy mother's poisoned;
I can no more. The king, the king's to blame.”
Dulcinea nodded and gave Gideon a small smile. “That was good! Now, I was wondering… How would you feel about reading for a few more characters?”
Gideon tried to sound enthused. So long as I get to have a sword, she thought. Dulcinea handed her a script. The first thing she noticed was a tremendous amount of text.
“In this scene,” Dulcinea explained, “Horatio, Hamlet’s close friend, sees the ghost of Hamlet’s dad. He’s a bit scared but also interested in why the ghost has appeared. Start when you’re ready.”
Gideon read through the passage a few more times, warmed up to all the Thou’s and Lo’s and began. In a grave and slightly fearful voice, she gave life to Horatio’s
lament about the state of Denmark. At the point in the passage when the ghost appeared, she jumped in fright and sunk to her knees, arms waving out to Dulcinea. Protesilaus watched with interest. “ But soft, behold! Lo, where it comes again!” Gideon said, aghast. “I’ll cross it though it blast me.—Stay, illusion! If thou hast any sound or use of voice, speak to me. If there be any good thing to be done that may to thee do ease and grace to me, speak to me.” She crossed an arm over her chest in supplication. “If thou art privy to thy country’s fate, which happily foreknowing may avoid –” her voice rose to a pleading crescendo – “O, speak! Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life extorted treasure in the womb of earth, for which, they say, spirits oft walk in death, speak of it!” She held face for a few moments longer, then broke and stood up.
Dulcinea nodded approvingly. “That was wonderful! I think that’ll do, what do you think, Pro?”
“I think it was a skilled interpretation of the text,” said Protesilaus, also nodding. Gideon groaned inwardly. Never be too good at a job you don’t want, idiot, she thought.
“Right, I think that’s all. Thank you for coming in, Gideon, I’ll see you in class! With a lab coat and cute little safety glasses, I’m sure.” Dulcinea smiled, her head tilted slightly. Gideon blushed.
“Oh, yep, definitely. You’ll see me there.” She gave Dulcinea a little two-fingered salute as she left, trying to rein in her heart rate. That conversation had to mean something, right? It had to. All that flirting contained within about four years had to mean something. Gideon tried to reassure herself of this and almost ran through a thin, bespectacled figure in the clocktower corridor. They made a noise of muffled surprise.
“Ah, Gideon, I’m very sorry,” said the figure. If Gideon’s heart had been a herd of stampeding wildebeest while in the room with Dulcinea, this was the moment where all those wildebeest collectively fell off a cliff and into a river writhing with crocodiles. Beaky, skinny, glasses-wearing crocodiles.
“Hi, Palamedes,” said Gideon through gritted teeth. Palamedes Sextus (he’d chosen his name as such because he was a massive fucking nerd) was a medical student whom Gideon had known since her first year. They’d taken a few entry-level biology papers together, and it had been absolutely miserable. Palamedes himself was fine, it was just his embarrassing, obvious crush on Dulcinea that made Gideon feel antagonistic. She’d never returned his advances, but he was persistent, appearing wherever she was, always laughing at her jokes when they all met up during the Science Student's Annual General Meeting. Of course he’d show up here, now, ready to kiss her feet or whatever.
“It’s good to see you, Gideon, how’s your break been?” he asked politely. Camilla, who for some reason was attached to him, materialised at his shoulder like a ghost. They were both wearing drab grey outfits, though Camilla was probably hiding a knife up her jumper. She was impressive in that way.
“Oh, yeah, it was okay,” said Gideon, trying not to sound too sullen. “So, uh, what brings you here?”
“We’re auditioning for Hamlet ,” said Camilla. Her eyes gave nothing away. Typical med student. They were all insane. From inside the audition room, Dulcinea called for the next batter up. “That’s our cue,” said Palamedes’ spectral companion, motioning him to follow. He nodded enthusiastically and followed her inside.
“I hope to see you at callbacks!” he said cheerily, waving as he left. Gideon gave him a nod and a tight smile. Great! And I hope I don’t, she thought.
—
The next week followed in a blur of preparations for her teaching classes, final wrap-ups for her research job, and a snarkily-written note that told Harrow where she could shove her rotting hand, which Gideon had so considerately packed into a labelled rubbish bag and shoved into the depths of the specimen freezer. She worked a few shifts at the coffee kiosk, which resulted in so few student customers that she had to close early every time.
After one of these slow days, after an arduous journey home – Auckland Transport cancelled several buses from the university that went back to where Gideon lived, meaning she spent about an hour kicking rocks at the bus stop — Gideon was preparing dinner. Her mother had come home at five with several bags of groceries and said Have at it, kid, I’m going to go take a shower. Try not to burn it this time . Gideon huffed and complained but obliged her anyway, pulling out a few recipe books. Given all the fresh vegetables and the chicken in the freezer, chicken fried rice might be a good idea.
A key rattled at the door and her stepmother came in, tracking mud from her work boots onto the doormat. Pyrrha was a tall, thick-set woman with dark skin and rusty red hair. Her face lit up when she saw Gideon, but fell when she noticed the mess she’d made. “Ah shit, not again,” she said. Gideon grinned.
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell Wake. It’s not like she cares anyway, so long as you clean it up,” she said.
Pyrrha snorted and pulled off her boots. “What’s for dinner, kiddo? If you’re making chop suey, try boiling the noodles first.” She walked over to Gideon and ruffled her hair.
“Gggg off,” she said, as a manner of protest. “I’m making chicken fried rice.”
“Ohhh, good one. I love fried rice. Where’s your mother?”
“Shower.”
“Hmm, I might have to join her.”
Gideon cringed. “Gross, mum. Don’t say that.” Pyrrha laughed and ruffled Gideon’s hair again, then left Gideon alone in the kitchen. Gideon called after her. “Wait, mum, d’you know the Shakespeare thing I auditioned for?”
Pyrrha turned, excited. “Yeah, kiddo, I remember. Have you heard anything from your lady about it?”
Gideon blushed. “Yeah, actually. She wants me in for the callbacks.” Pyrhha’s eyes lit up, and she wrapped Gideon in a hug. It was like being cuddled by a bear, if that bear was a construction worker with biceps the size of tree trunks.
“That’s amazing, Kiri! I’m so proud of you. Did you get the character you wanted?”
“Yeah, nah. I think she wants me for Horatio. You know, the best friend who doesn’t get to swordfight?”
“Ah well. It happens. At least she liked your performance enough to call you back. And she might still change her mind, yeah? And if you don’t get the part you wanted —”
Gideon cut her off. She’d had this conversation with Pyrrha before, who really was just doing her best. “I know, it’s better than no part at all.”
“You got it,” said Pyrrha. Gideon dodged the final hair ruffle and ducked back into the kitchen.
“Go shower, mum, you stink,” she said. Pyrrha lifted a hairy armpit at her and Gideon pretended to gag.
“Yeah, okay. I’ll get out of your hair before I ruin dinner.”
“Good,” Gideon called after Pyrrha with a grin as she walked off. She resumed cutting vegetables, and only too late realised that Wake hadn’t bought any more rice. “Goddamnit,” she muttered to herself. Marama, the dog, sniffed around Gideon’s ankles. She was a small, energetic thing despite her old age, probably a fox terrier cross. Pyrrha had found her one day, years ago, and taken her home, which Wake had not been happy with, but it delighted toddler Gideon. Because she was mostly white with small black patches around her ear and back, Gideon had insisted on naming her after the moon. Marama jumped up again, putting her paws against Gideon’s knee. “Shoo,” she said, and gave the dog a pat. “Get away, you little pest.” Marama wagged her tail harder. Gideon relented and gave her a little piece of carrot. Pyrrha would have told her off for encouraging begging behaviour, but Gideon didn’t really care. Marama crunched harder, spraying little carrot bits onto the dog-claw dented wooden floor. Gideon resumed chopping vegetables, and her mind wandered to Harrow. Hamlet was right up her alley. Gideon cringed at the thought. Surely Dulcinea would know better than to force them to work together. Oh well , she thought, watching Marama lick up the floor carrot. If Harrow dared show up the callbacks — she was unparalleled in the art of being mean and sulking, so Gideon had no doubt about her hypothetical success — Gideon would give her hell. She sliced through the heart-like atria of a capsicum, gritting her teeth. Oh, she would give her hell.
—
One week later, Gideon found herself back in front of Dulcinea Septimus with a script in her hand. The parts she read for were varied — she was both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, then Horatio, then Laertes. Dulcinea moved between groups, watching with interest. Her denim-coloured eyes gave nothing away, and Gideon felt lost as Dulcinea moved on halfway through her dramatic Laertes monologue. The other auditionees acting against her also varied in their quality. She read for Polonius with two first years as Ophelia and Laertes and did her best to act fatherly towards two twitchy kids who were only four years her junior. They weren’t bad, but they were nervous and bad at hiding it. She read for Horatio with a young Hamlet who was thin and anaemic-looking, with a long braid of white-blond hair. His voice was reedy and sneering and his eyes were serious and dry. His acting, though convincing, left a bad taste in Gideon’s mouth. Then she read for the gravediggers with a few students she’d done an anthropology course with and felt a bit better. After about an hour, when Dulcinea was satisfied, she gathered everyone into a circle.
“Well done, everybody,” said Dulcinea warmly. The members of the sweaty circle glanced at each other again wearily. One of the twitchy first-years — the girl, specifically — made eye contact with Gideon and looked away quickly. Dulcinea continued. “Thanks so much for coming! I’ll be in contact with you in the next few days if you’re lucky.” She smiled, and a few people laughed awkwardly. “Right! Away you go. The next group is waiting outside.” The unlucky teens scarpered, grabbing their tote bags with reckless abandon on the way out the door. Gideon stayed behind.
“Thanks, Dulcie,” she said.
Dulcinea regarded her with an inscrutable look in her deep-blue eyes. “No need to thank me, Gids, your acting speaks for itself. Now shoo! Make way for fresh meat.”
And so Gideon left the room. As she left, others began filtering in, all wearing similarly blank faces. She saw Palamedes and Camilla waiting to the left of the exit to the building, in grave conversation with — Oh hell no. Gideon felt her knees buckle slightly. A short, sharp figure dressed in black, bracelets clinking as she toyed with them, stood opposite Palamedes, looking over his shoulder slightly as he spoke. Oh hell no. Gideon looked to the lifts on her right and desperately tried to remember her open-day tour of the building about half a decade ago. Were there any other exits? There had to be. As Gideon stood, frozen, Camilla looked up and gave her a curt wave. This alerted Palamedes, which alerted —
“Going somewhere, Griddle? I believe the circus left town a few days ago.” Harrow’s horrible, venomous voice echoed around the wide, empty space of the building’s lobby. The door was so close. So tantalisingly close.
“Fuck you and your entire life, Nonagesimus,” she said, standing with her shoulders squared and her arms crossed over her chest. Her aviator sunglasses, the one thing that could have disguised the panic on her face, hung uselessly from her shirt collar.
“How eloquent. I do much wonder what possessed Dulcinea to call you back,” said Harrow. Gideon felt the twinge in her jaw that always accompanied the visceral need to throw Harrow through a window.
“Because she liked my performance, bitch,” said Gideon. “Hey, I wasn’t aware she was planning on casting someone as the skull Hamlet finds in the graveyard.”
“We should go inside,” interrupted Camilla, thumping her hand on Palamedes’ shoulder. He cleared his throat.
“Yes, Cam’s right. We don’t want to be late. The last callback already ran over time, let’s not give Dulcinea anything more to worry about.” He started towards the door, giving Harrow a gentle nudge. She scowled at him, then directed that scowl at Gideon. Her coal-dark eyes bore into Gideon in a trained stare like artillery fire.
“I’ll see you under the sole of my foot before I see you on a stage,” she said. Then she turned sharply on her heel and strode off towards Palamedes and Camilla, who were waiting by the open door to the audition room. Gideon retaliated with a look of pure disgust. Unfortunately, before she managed to come up with a good foot joke, Harrow was already through the door. She relented. Dulcinea had to know better than to put the two of them in the same play. It would be like letting two angry bears into an arena, if one of the bears was huge and strong and the other bear was malnourished with a nasty temper. Gideon stepped out of the building. The sky outside was still light, though the sun had sunk behind the apartments across the road. A small breeze carried the smell of exhaust from the motorway down Symonds Street. Que sera, sera. If Gideon ever had to work in close contact with Harrow ever again she would kill her. Easy.
—
One week later, Harrowhark Nonagesimus stood in her flat, scanning the floor of her bedroom for her keys. She kicked at a pile of dirty clothing — she assumed she’d left the keys in a pocket somewhere, as they weren’t in her usual place in her bag. She kicked at a different pile. These clothes were mostly clean, with the shirts having been worn for a short period of time. Still nothing. She checked the pockets of the pants she was wearing one more time. Still nothing. She sighed long and hard through her nostrils. The next bus was in ten minutes, but she needed to give herself five minutes to walk to the bus stop, a minute to put her shoes on, and two minutes to get from her apartment to the bottom floor of the building. Panic built in her chest. Harrow had never been in a theatre production before, but she guessed it was much the same as everything else, and that people would be disappointed in her if she was to show up late. And on the first reading, too. The director would probably call it an ill portent or something ridiculous. Just calm down, she thought, rifling through the pocket of a large black skirt. Her hands closed something small and metallic and the tension drained from her shoulders. In what must have been record time, she grabbed her bag from a chair in the kitchen, pulled on a pair of old leather boots, and fled the building, barely remembering to lock the door.
As she waited at the bus stop, she bounced her leg up and down and tried to maintain a normal grip on the wooden seat. Buses kept passing, but none of them were the bright orange Outer Link bus that would take her to the university. She scolded herself. There was no need to be nervous. She’d received an email from the director a few days ago, congratulating her on being bestowed the part of Hamlet. Her breath had caught in her throat and she’d felt faint, but only for a moment. After that she’d been steeled with excitement, envisioning grand soliloquies to rows of darkened seats in the focus of the limelight. She’d never given much thought to acting, but something about the cartoon skull and the mismatched fonts on the little poster in the university library had moved her. In hindsight, it had been a ridiculous poster to advertise such a serious play, but Harrow would have been lying if she was to say she’d never once pictured herself performing as Hamlet.
Five minutes passed, then ten. Harrow looked up at the electronic board above the bus stop. Her bus had been cancelled, and the next would be in fifteen minutes. She groaned inwardly. If Gideon Nav made it to the rehearsal room before she did, she was never going to hear the end of it. It was unfortunate enough that Gideon had been casted — as Horatio, no less — and it was worse that they were going to have to spend time with each other several times a week. When Gideon stopped showing up to her job as a bioarchaeological research assistant, Harrow had almost danced a jig in the breakroom. That is, until she had seen that Gideon’s final action had been to arrange the magnetic letters on the fridge into the words ‘DICK FART’, at which point Harrow had made an unpleasant noise and retreated back to her lab.
Half an hour later, Harrow stepped off the bus onto the small street that ran between the student’s association house and the university library. It had begun to rain, heavy and miserable, and the crowds of first years attending some Orientation Week event were complaining loudly as they clutched at their thin bedsheet togas. Harrow vaguely remembered hearing about such an event at some bar in the city when she was in her first year, but she had been a year younger than the rest of her cohort and therefore too young to go. Not that she’d cared in the slightest, as she had better things to do than go drinking in far less clothes than usual. She checked her phone for the address of the rehearsal room, which appeared to be in the university’s clocktower. She began to make her way there, willing her legs to go as fast as possible without breaking into a sprint. Water ran in cold streams down her face and her clothes were getting heavier by the second. God, fuck it, whatever , she thought, and ran.
—
Gideon drummed her fingers on the table in front of her and scanned the faces of the cast of Dulcinea Septimus’ upcoming production of Hamlet . The whey-faced boy who had read for Hamlet at the callback and a square man sat opposite her, both looking serious and glum. She hoped the boy hadn’t been cast as the character he’d read for. He creeped her out too much. Camilla and Palamedes had come into the room before Gideon had got there and taken seats near Dulcinea, who was sitting at the head of the desks arranged into a long table. Protiselaus was on her other side. Gideon tried not to get annoyed about not sitting next to Dulcinea, but the idea of talking to fresh strangers made her squirm in her seat. The Gideon Nav Confidence always seemed to dissipate the second she was talking to someone she didn’t know, so she crossed her arms and tried to look intimidating. The pair of scared first-years from the callback walked in soon after Gideon had taken her seat, peering around the room like meerkats. The boy had dyed a streak of his hair an unfortunate shade of orange, and the girl was wearing a torn and faded jacket that would have looked cool on someone older and less terrified. They took seats to Gideon’s far right, away from the rest of the cast. To her left, Dulcinea was laughing at something Palamedes had said, and Gideon began fuming slightly. The shiny trio from Gideon’s first audition were also there, preening themselves. The more radiant of the twins pushed her chair back and put her boots up on the shoulders of the coiffed young man, who managed to make being a footrest look like a normal pastime for the rich and snooty. The pale twin had her peculiar eyes fixed on a corner of the room. With some surprise, Gideon realised they were purple, like something out of a dodgy Tumblr story. Carefully, she looked Gideon straight in the eye. It was like being under a microscope. Gideon could almost feel the soft tissues of her body being parted to make way for glistening organs under that terrible gaze. Her sister cleared her throat and leaned across the table.
“You were at the first audition, weren’t you?” said the golden twin, eyeing Gideon with her sister’s eyes. She leaned across the table and her loose white shirt fell open slightly. Gideon felt herself blush.
“Oh, um, yeah. I remember you,” Gideon said with all the intelligence of a cave slug.
“It’s hard not to,” said the pale twin. “My sister has that effect on people.” At this, the sister in question winked at Gideon — for the second time ever — and Gideon felt her stomach dissolve slightly.
“What part did you get?” asked the golden twin.
“Oh, Horatio. The polite nerd,” said Gideon. “What about you?”
The golden twin stuck out her hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m Laertes,” she said. Gideon took her hand and shook it, half hoping the woman would kiss her knuckles. To Gideon’s great disappointment, she did not. The woman — Laertes, apparently — gestured to her shadow. “This is my sister.”
“Ophelia?” Gideon guessed.
“The very same,” she drawled, fixed on Gideon like an entomologist looking at some squirming insect. It wasn’t a feeling Gideon was entirely opposed to.
“And this is Babs,” continued her sister, clapping her hand loudly against the shoulder of her sullen, perfectly sculpted companion. He buckled forward under the force of her hand. Then he straightened up and sniffed, looking at Gideon down his nostrils. He said nothing. Bitch.
“He’s upset because he didn’t get cast as Hamlet. Aren’t you, Babs?” said Laertes, for the lack of a better name. Though, the more Gideon thought about it, the better the name and the role suited her.
“Never be too good at a role you don’t want,” said Ophelia. She had the same ephemeral quality as her character, though her demeanour was more predatory dragonfly than delicate lacewing. “Poor, unfortunate Babs here has been cast as Polonius. A young, foppish Polonius.”
“Do you think they’ll make him wear a wig and old-people makeup?” said Laertes. Babs, who did not suit his name, looked aghast.
“It’s all a big joke, really,” he said. His voice was nasally with a British lilt, though he was markedly more Australian-sounding than the twins. “They cast an old man as King Hamlet, I don’t see why they’re doing this to me.”
“Oh, do stop whining, Babs.” Laertes rolled her eyes.
“He’s been insufferable this entire week,” said Ophelia. “Any more whining and we’re going to have to take you to get put down.”
Babs huffed again. “When are we starting? I’ve been sitting here for an age.”
There was one chair that had yet to be filled. Gideon glanced around. Everyone looked totally vacant. A few of the pairs were conversing in hushed tones. Dulcinea and Protiselaus were absorbed in looking at something on Dulcinea’s laptop. The twins had gone back to ignoring her, and were arguing about something to do with horror movies and film noir. Gideon stared at the ceiling, feeling hopeless. Then, as if her day couldn’t get worse, the door swung open and the final actor stepped in. She was dripping wet from the rain, her dark clothes sticking like a wetsuit to her unpleasant frame. Water ran in rivulets down her nasty, pointy, ratty little face. Harrowhark Nonagesimus, titular character of this sorry bunch and the most unpleasant person Gideon had ever met, stood before the table, one foot placed primly in front of the other and shoulders hunched.
“Apologies for the delay,” she said, scanning the crew before her. When her hateful gaze swept over Gideon, her eyes narrowed.
“Did your hearse break down on the motorway? Sorry to hear it,” said Gideon. Harrow made an expression like she’d just spotted a steaming dog turd on the footpath.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Dulcinea breezily, hand swept out to the empty chair. “Take a seat. We’ll do introductions, then we’ll begin.” Harrow nodded, face implacable.
—
“God,” said Gideon, “It really is unbelievable. I had to work in the same building as her over the summer, and that sucked enough. Now I have to see her multiple times a week? This is bullshit.”
“I’m quite glad to see her again,” said Palamades. Camilla nodded.
“She’s difficult to keep in touch with,” she said. “She seems to avoid people who enjoy her company like the plague.”
Gideon snorted. “Wait a minute. You two actually enjoy her company? You’re telling me you two took a human anatomy paper with her in your first year, sat through all her sneering and preening about being a little bone freak, tried to read her chicken-scratch lecture notes and failed, and you still like her? ”
Palamedes and Camilla looked at each other, then back at Gideon. “Yes,” said Palamedes incredulously. “I do like her. And the chicken scratch didn’t bother me, because I didn’t need to read her lecture notes.”
“Wow. Wooooow. Four years of medical school actually does do weird stuff to people’s brains. I just can’t believe you’ve been so damaged as to actually think of Harrow as good company.”
“She’ll be meet with you, I doubt it not,” said Camilla. Palamedes’ eyes lit up.
“Oh! Yes! Something about a merry war…Ah! ‘They rarely meet, but there’s a skirmish of wit between them.’”
Gideon rolled her eyes. “I know we’re all going to be doing Shakespeare together, but you can cut it out with the verse.”
“Come on, Gideon, you know Much Ado! Two characters who hate each and are constantly locked in a battle of wits. Surely something in that rings true?” said Palamedes, a small smile playing on his lips.
“Ew. Ew. You better not be implying what I think you’re implying. If you ever trick me into falling in love with Harrow, you’re both dead to me. Honour among study buddies be damned.”
Camilla shrugged. “That’s up to you,” she said. “She may be your fated lover in the great plot of your life.”
“If the great plot of my life doesn’t end with me executing a conspiracy to stab Harrow thirty-two times in the chest, I will consider it a life wasted,” said Gideon. “Besides. You shall find her the infernal Ate in good apparel, or whatever that guy in that play said. All disquiet, perturbation, and horror follow her. Said normally, she fucking sucks.”
“Interesting choice of insults,” said Palamedes. “So Benedick’s speech about hating Beatrice stuck with you?”
“Wait, what? I thought it was from, like, The Taming Of The Shrew or something,” said Gideon, dismayed. It was just her luck that the hate-filled soliloquy she’d memorised to slag off Harrow ages ago came from Much Ado, of all plays. Good job, idiot , she thought to herself.
“Oh look, here she comes. I offered her a ride home.” Camilla nodded towards Harrow, who had finished talking to the mayonnaise-coloured young man and his brick-like companion and was sweeping her way over to where Gideon was standing.
“Fine. I’m leaving. Here’s a dish I love not: I cannot endure my Lady Tongue.” Gideon turned and left in a huff. She promised herself she was not going to interact with Harrow any more than strictly necessary, and by God she was going to keep that promise.
“Cannot endure your lady’s tongue?” Palamades called after her. “There’s a double meaning in that.” Gideon said nothing, flipping him off as she fled through the doors and into the night.