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Polonius's body crashed to the ground. Actually, “thudded” might have been a more appropriate word, but using too many Ds at once has a tendency to make a phrase sound clunky. For example, the sentence, “nodding off, drunken Delta Dawn drifted to Dreamland brandishing a fiddle” is not only nonsensical, but extremely unpleasant to read. But that's somewhat beside the point, not least because this story takes place in 1603 and Delta Dawn won't be written for another 368 years. In any case, Polonius ended up on the floor through one sound effect or another and promptly began bleeding all over Hamlet's shoes.
Hamlet, for his part, stood curiously in the growing pool of blood. “Oh,” he eventually said, taking a large step backwards. “This isn't Claudius.”
“D’ya think?!” screamed Gertrude, who'd wrapped herself in a blanket like she was one of those people you always see on cop shows whose house just burned down in front of them.
“What's he doing hiding behind your changing curtain?” Hamlet asked. “Also, why in God's name do you have a changing curtain in here? You don't share your chambers with anybody. That seems overly convenient, plot-wise.”
“What?!”
“I was just wondering abo-” Hamlet broke off with a sudden realization, as characters tend to do in the stories I write. “For God’s sake, Mother, don't tell me you've started some sort of tryst with this weary old man,” he said with a disapproving shake of the head.
“A tryst? Hamlet, this man is dead!” Gertrude screeched. She'd always been one for stating the obvious.
Hamlet kicked at Polonius's body. “Yep, looks like it.”
“Hamlet!” Gertrude screeched again. Hamlet cringed at the noise and thought that her voice must've been getting rather sore.
“What?”
“This man is dead!”
“You already said that, Mother.”
“Hamlet!”
“Fine, Mother,” he sighed. “If it means so much to you, I shall play him a funeral song.” Hamlet then whipped out the emergency flute that he kept on a string around his neck- for one never knows when one will need a flute- and began playing a sad song on it. Well, not a particularly sad song, actually, but the proper adjective would be a very long one that would send people looking for their dictionaries and thus drag them from the gripping narrative that I've so masterfully crafted.
“Hamlet,” exclaimed Gertrude after a moment, “why in God's name are you playing Scotland the Brave?!”
“Why not? What's wrong with it?”
“We're DANISH! And in what world is Scotland the Brave a FUNERAL song?!”
Hamlet shrugged. “It worked in Dead Poets Society.”
“In whose what?!”
“Never mind,” he said, taking a deep breath as he prepared to return to his flute. It was a rather impressive instrument, actually, if slightly pointless and only in existence as a prop for a terrible pun. As a young boy, Hamlet had demanded his servant whittle the flute for him (and all his flute-related emergencies) out of wood from the enchanted forest he'd heard so many bedtime stories about. The servant, unwilling to admit that the enchanted forest was one of those things people are so fond of making up for children who don't know any better- like snipe or happy families- made the flute of spruce wood and dyed it gold. Then, for that extra dash of authenticity, he buried it in the cemetery and let it sit for several weeks. Little Hamlet was overjoyed when it was finally dug up and given to him. So overjoyed, in fact, that he didn't let the flute out of his hands until he fell gravely ill from a flesh-eating bacteria. The flute was disinfected. The servant was fired.
“Oh for the love of God stop the music!” cried Gertrude, too irritated to speak with proper punctuation. Hamlet wrapped up the song with an insolent squeak and let the flute fall back around his neck, where it swung like that odd couple next door that nobody invited to dinner anymore. He then passed his tongue over his thumb and rubbed his bloodstained shoes.
“That's disgusting!” Gertrude uttered in a slightly different agitated manner. “Have some respect!”
“Disgusting?” Hamlet spat. Then he walked to the window and spat several more times. Turning back, he said, “If cleaning one’s shoes of blood is disgusting, what word could possibly describe what you've done? Come here, look at these two ostentatious and unnecessary oil paintings you've got on your wall.”
He waved a proud hand towards the painting of his father. “I mean, take a look at this sexy beast! Those smoldering eyes, hair like a god, a forehead that's… good… You were married to a real hunk of man, you know! But you killed him and married this-” he moved his hand to point at the painting of Claudius- “this mildewed corn cob over here!”
“...corn cob?” Gertrude asked.
“Shut up, alright? It's what came to mind,” said Hamlet. “Now, how dare you, mother? How dare you kill your husband- how dare you deprive our dear country of her noble king? Do you truly believe Claudius to be the superior ruler? Or a ruler even close to equal? No, I stand here and tell you that he is not! He is a rotted man! A murderer! How is it right that he now sits upon that throne that my father once, and not so long ago, dearly graced? It did not even take leave of his body heat before Claudius threw his own slovenly body upon it. And quite soon after, Madam, he threw that same slovenly body upon you! And was it by force? Ah, no, but by your gleeful consent! Thou’rt a whore, Mother, and I a whoreson by relation, though if only in retroaction. You have fouled my name along with yours! What say you of it? Nay, speak not, I know what you say. Nothing at all! As you have since the death of the king. No words of your own, merely the words of your husband's spat back in a softer voice!”
Gertrude stared at Hamlet a moment. “You… do realize you just killed a man, right?”
Hamlet shrugged. Nothing particularly funny happened for several minutes. Then, suddenly (not very suddenly, actually, but it's a good filler word), Old Hamlet's ghost appeared in the doorway. Hamlet screamed in delight. Gertrude screamed in terror. Polonius didn't scream in any way, what with being dead and all.
“Ghostdad!” Hamlet squealed, pointing. “See, Mother, look how hot he is!”
“‘See’? See what?” Gertrude growled, because I've decided to go all in on the barnyard dialogue tags. “What are you looking at? There's nothing there!”
Gertrude was lying, of course. Her son wasn't talking to air; she could see Old Hamlet in the doorway as clearly as she could see Young Hamlet drooling over him. But she was, at that time, indulging in the royal equivalent of sticking her fingers in her ears and saying “la la la la la; I can't hear you!” It was pointless, of course. He was there. Besides, we all know that the ghost is really real because Horatio saw it, and Horatio is sweet, and we all believe everything Horatio says.
“Whaddaya mean, ‘nothing there'? We've got Hercules himself in the house!”
“Oh, will you quit talking about your father like that? I don't think you fully understand how an Oedipal complex works.”
“Oedipal? Ma, that's an old interpretation of the play.”
“Oh?” asked Gertrude. “I'm sorry, I haven't kept up. What's the new interpretation?”
Hamlet stuffed his hands into his anachronistic pockets. “Umm… there… isn't one?” he said, smoothly.
She raised one eyebrow. It had a bright childhood and grew up to become a contributing member of society. But right now she just looked at Hamlet with suspicion.
The ghost, forgotten, cleared his (its? Do ghosts have genders?) throat (do ghosts have throats?).
“Oh, Ghostdad! Sorry!” said Hamlet, looking back towards his father. “Did you come to say something to me?”
“Yes, my son,” said the ghost. Apparently, ghosts do have throats.
“Well, I figured you did, but you haven't always talked when you've shown up before.”
“I choose to speak n-”
“Didn't you just walk past the night guardsman for like four nights without saying anything? What was that all about?”
“It was only three nights, but that's beside the poi-”
“I mean, what would've happened if none of the guards thought to tell me about the weird- that's a Shakespeare word, right?- ghost wandering around the grounds? Would this whole drama not have happened? That seems like a big thing to leave up to chance.”
Old Hamlet rubbed his temples. Apparently ghosts get headaches, too. “Hamlet, I've come to make an announcement.”
Hamlet squinted. “You’re always doing that anymore. Is that all ghosts do?”
“Hamlet, mark me!” the ghost shouted.
“Okay. Do you want me to get a sharpie or something?”
“Listen to me!”
Hamlet listened as his father said, “I've come back because I'm very worried about you, son.”
“Really? How so?”
“I just… I don't think you're fully dedicated to the whole revenge thing. It's been a good few weeks, Hamlet, and you haven't even made an attempt on Claudius’s life yet!”
“Well, I- I'm sorry, Ghostdad, I-”
“I thought I raised you better! You try to install a good sense of hate in your children, but…” he trailed off.
“I got you Polonius!” Hamlet offered, holding the body up like a small boy posing with the two inch bluegill his family let him believe he caught all by himself. Old Hamlet fought the urge to pat his son comfortingly on the head, which I know because I'm the narrator and I'm special. In lieu of the paternal action, he simply disappeared in a puff of stage makeup.
“Ghostdad?” Hamlet cried. “Ghostdad?”
Gertrude, who was just coming out of the state of suspended animation that all characters are placed into when they become briefly unnecessary to the plot, pretended to be confused as to why Hamlet was holding Polonius under the arms. “Hamlet,” she asked, “why are you holding Polonius under the arms?”
Hamlet shrugged and, in so doing, lost his grip on the body. It thudded to the ground. The past 1700 words became a meandering journey through the windswept moors of superfluity. “Perhaps,” Gertrude suggested, being kind enough to assist in moving the story along, “you could take this… this… this this from my chambers?” She pointed a shaking finger at Polonius's body.
“Mother,” Hamlet tutted, taking the finger from her hand and putting it back where it came from, “this is a shaking finger, not a pointing finger.”
“Oh,” Gertrude nefertitied. She took a pointing finger from the box by her bed and trained it on Polonius. “Can you please take him out of my chambers now, Hamlet?”
Hamlet nodded obediently and took Polonius under the arms again. As he began to drag the body towards the door, the ghost threw up his (its?) invisible hands in frustration at the apparent pointlessness of its (his?) visit.
“Alright, I'll leave. All the better; I can't stand the company of sinners, anyway,” said Hamlet, lifting the body higher. “Oh, damn, there's blood all over my good knife.” He dragged Polonius towards the door, but stopped before leaving. “But Mother?”
Gertrude looked towards him.
“Could you maybe not have sex with Claudius tonight?”
Gertrude sighed. “You think witnessing a murder has left me desperate for a piece of your uncle?”
“Hey, I don't know what you're into,” Hamlet shrugged. “The point is that if you refrain tonight, it'll be easier to refrain the next time. And the next time even easier. And soon you'll be walking around without sex on your mind at all!”
“...did your father never have the talk with you?”
“I got a library book,” he said, happy for a chance to remind his mother that he was literate. “And speaking of books, let me tell you a story!”
“If you strained that metaphor any more-”
“It's a story of how I think your night might go. See, I'm picturing you crawling into bed with Claudius. You're touching him, he's touching you, et cetera. And then, just when things are getting hot and heavy, he starts using his masculine wiles to trick you into telling him that I'm only pretending to be crazy!”
Gertrude found herself wishing that the eyebrow she’d raised was there to protect her. “Do you happen to remember the title of that book?”
Hamlet shook his head and backed up towards the door. “Just keep your hands to yourself, Ma.” He continued backing up, and kept doing so even after it became patently clear that the door was not going to open. Unwilling to adjust his grip on Polonius, Hamlet lifted his hip to hit the latch with it. He raised his hip, lowered his hip, raised it, lowered it. When that didn't work, he switched to rocking his hips from side to side. That didn't work either, and neither did his attempts at gyration. His old library book actually had an entire chapter dedicated to this subject, but he’d never read it very closely. Gertrude would have become extremely frustrated with this display had she not lapsed back into stasis, but, like I said, she had. All the better for Hamlet, who spent the next 2.87 minutes trying to open the door with, in turn, his foot, elbows, and mouth. Why he tried his mouth is open to interpretation, seeing as how he got the door open with his elbows.
Hamlet readjusted his grip on Polonius again, leaning warily out Gertrude's door. He then peered down the long hallway like a night guardsman that was also peering down a long hallway. Once he was satisfied that it was empty, he closed the door and began walking. In that order. It took him another 1.35 minutes to get the door open again and shut himself on the other side.
After that, though, things began going according to plan. Or they would have if Hamlet had anything that even remotely resembled a plan. As it stood, he had little more than a general idea, which was to get the body downstairs and figure out more once he was there. But if the best laid plans of mice and men oft’ go awry, then it's not very difficult to imagine how awry the worst laid plans oft’ go. Accordingly, it wasn't too long before Hamlet noticed a shadowy figure leaning against the wall a ways down the hall. For a moment he thought it was his father and considered calling out. Then he remembered that his father had an ethereal glow about him and so was by definition not shadowy and the figure could not possibly be his father so why was he still standing there considering talking to it. He continued staring at the figure for a moment, wondering who it was and if it would be sympathetic towards his situation. Hamlet could, of course, have simply turned around and gone to the other staircase, but who had the energy? Maybe the figure would just disappear by the time he got closer to it.
Well, ten yards later, the figure still hadn't disappeared, but if Hamlet wasn't going to double back ten yards ago, he sure as hell wasn't going to double back now. Besides, it was probably nobody more significant than a footman, and those types of employees would usually let him go on with whatever business he was about. Actually, Hamlet thought, a footman might even have a good idea about what to do with the body.
He continued on with a renewed energy, but all those energetic steps did was finally alert the figure in the hall to Hamlet’s presence. A voice called into the darkness, “Who goes there?” because this is fanfiction and I'm as fond of clichés as I am of proper use of the accent aigu. The voice was unmistakable, and the owner of it will be revealed to you in the following bit of dialogue, in keeping with the laws of show don't tell:
“Horatio?” asked Hamlet.
“No, I am Horatio. Who are you?”
And now, in complete rejection of the laws of show don't tell (because what's life without whimsy): this was not good.
Hamlet allowed himself to take slight comfort in the knowledge that he wasn't completely wrong. Horatio was certainly a man, and a man with feet, no less, but the similarities to a run-of-the-mill footman ended there. Horatio thought far too highly of himself to just let Hamlet go past dragging a body. But luckily, between the darkness and the distance, neither man could clearly see the other. “It's me, Hamlet. What are you doing in the hall?”
“I'm standing, my lord,” Horatio dutifully replied. “And now I'm walking towards you.”
“No, don't!” Hamlet exclaimed. Perhaps he was a bit too sudden, as Horatio's footsteps only accelerated. Just in time (and rather smoothly, if he did say so himself), Hamlet heaved Polonius’s body behind a corner and leaned nonchalantly against the wall. A moment later, Horatio was finally in full view. Hamlet found himself transfixed by the other man's emerald orbs. Then he looked into his eyes.
“So!” Hamlet chirped with all the fake energy of a family therapist in an underfunded inner-city clinic. “How’s it going?”
Horatio blinked. I mean, he had obviously been blinking before, and would blink many more times, but this particular blink is more thematically important. “...what were you doing down the hall?”
Hamlet shrugged. “Nothing, just talking to my mom.” He took that moment to look down at his hands, and happened to notice that they were dripping with Polonius's blood. He wiped them on the front of his shirt and brought one elbow to the wall to attempt an even more relaxed posture. In his failure to do so, he ended up slipping and smearing the blood all over both the wall and his face. The same motion caused Polonius's arm to fall limply from around the corner. Hamlet threw on a huge grin and pushed the arm back around the corner with his heel. “Killed a chicken in there.”
Horatio raised an eyebrow. No, literally.
“Yeah, you shoulda seen it,” Hamlet continued, pointlessly. “Running all around with its head cut off.”
“Mhmm,” said Horatio, folding his arms across his chest. “And how did it get in there?”
“Umm…” Hamlet started. “Would you believe me if I said that it flew in the window?”
Horatio was too tired for this. “...sure.”
“Then that.”
“O-kay.”
“So… I'm just going to change my clothes.”
“Mhmm.”
“I better get to that.”
“Don't let me stop you.” Clearly, he was going nowhere. And neither was this conversation, so let's skip ahead a good twenty minutes to the point where Hamlet finally got Horatio back into his room. Yeah, it's rather unorthodox to jump ahead in time when there are only two paragraphs left, but surely you'll concede that this is a rather unorthodox story.
Once he went back, quite unwillingly, into his chambers, Horatio pressed his ear against the door. “Oh no, not a POV change!” screamed the voice in the walls.
Horatio expected to hear Hamlet stumbling down the hall, but had his fingers crossed that the prince would begin talking to himself as he often did at plot-relevant moments. But the sound Horatio heard, a dragging sound, was even more revealing than a vainglorious soliloquy. He burst out of his room just in time to see what was going on. “My God, Hamlet!” he ejaculated. No, metaphorically.