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Hamlet opens his eyes.
…Well, it’s not something quite that dramatic.
His eyes had in fact been open this whole eve—he thought he’d only blinked. Vision swimming with venom, but also with life, and a somewhat undue vibrance, nonetheless. Life is funny like that: its joys shining brightest when seen from the depths of its tragedies. And for Hamlet—why, if during his final breath he could breathe yet still the essence of humor, he’d be in hysterics.
Though, all tragedies must come to an end. Hamlet cannot quite tell if he is within a tragedy, or if he is the tragedy. Though, that would be most conceited. To think himself that desperately important would blemish the immaculate name of a prince. A prince, a prince, a prince. Of what could Hamlet call himself a prince? Skylarking? Drinking? Hallucinating? Because surely, irrefutably , he’s far more qualified to be the ruler of those wretched things rather than the entire country of Denmark.
Thankfully, that stress plagues him no more; a fatal arrow avoided. For a dead Hamlet, Denmark does not exist. In death, there is peace, Hamlet finds. He presses his cheek to the cold, marble floor as he lays, the dull ache of treachery and betrayal and devastation nothing but an anesthetic to his motionless body and mind.
Hamlet supposes, stricken with Christ-like revelation: not to be. The answer to the question he once thought clouded and gray, shielding some hidden truth of the mortal world he had yet been too young to find. But clouds part to a black and white sky, and… it truly had been that easy. For there is no intermission between life and death—and it apparently, annoyingly, takes dying to realize that.
As he lies on the floor in the wake of his death and the death of his wake, he remembers the Denmark that does not exist. And by proxy, the Claudius that does not exist—good riddance, by God’s grace. But then it follows, the Gertrude that does not exist, and the Ophelia. The Laertes and the Polonius; the Rosencrantz, the Guildenstern; the Fortinbras. And God, the Horatio. The Horatio! These thoughts of people give back to Hamlet what life he believed he had lost—and the pangs of physical affliction plague him once more. Oh, his head pounds for them all. The angry wildfire coalesces with the lovesick torture, the crazed psychosis collides with the grief-stricken agony. Face after face, word after word, feeling after feeling. Everything they mean is what Hamlet wishes for them to mean no more.
So it would seem, only Hamlet is not to be. Of course, of course , he laments—the brunt of all their suffering strikes Hamlet’s flesh and bone, and Hamlet’s alone. Like the Passion, he bears it. And everyone else, with zest and a peculiar hankering to see Hamlet tormented, certainly… is to be.
What tomfoolery.
Tragedy, or comedy? he debates once more. Either way, Hamlet believes he’d fill both roles quite stunningly. But he remembers with exhausted zeal: it’s the comedian who masters the art of tragedy, never the other way around. For, a masterful comedian knows how to deliver the most perfect punchline in the midst of catastrophe.
And by God , he fears he is the comedian, because Hamlet cannot take this have-been-slaughtered realm in seriousness.
With one hand cradling the side of his skull and another pressed to the floor, Hamlet pushes himself to sit upright. He had died a fabulous death, if his recollection of the event that had happened about one, perhaps two minutes ago serves him well. The last thing he remembers seeing is that wondrous, wintry dread in the blue of Horatio’s eyes—the confirmation that life is, in fact, precious. But oh , so very fragile. It slips away like fractured diamonds between fingertips, broken only by a twin that can match its own strength, and in turn splitting the skin of the one holding the fragments desperately, helplessly together. And whether that appraisal of mortality had registered first in Horatio, or himself, Hamlet would never know. But he’ll always know that he is the shattered stone, he is the ruptured royalty, and he is the laughable, ludicrous lunatic. His poison seeps from his heart—it is not poured into him. And when he cuts the palm of the one who dares hold him there, he wonders if Horatio can swallow and survive the bleeding toxins all on his own.
Bliss’s bane, death must be. Damnation, or absolution, is it… well, who’s to say?—those were two things Horatio always could tackle when Hamlet was looking over his shoulder, or sitting at his hip, or drawing idle, fuzzy shapes upon the nape of his neck. But now, what awaits him? With those sensations nothing but a memory, could Horatio live freely after Hamlet’s ruinous—but concurrently righteous—demise?
Hamlet never did see Ophelia’s eyes the moment she died, or even the moments after. They were blue as well, but warm and gentle like the ocean in the evening. He wishes he had seen them crashing and overflowing, one final time, just for the clarity of it. To bathe in his failures, and perhaps even to drown alongside Ophelia in a melodramatic retrospective, with nothing but remorse and a newfound fidelity to guide him under the surface.
But the pit Hamlet’s heart sinks to hovers heavy in his stomach. He loved Ophelia, but he hated Ophelia. He loved Ophelia because he hated Ophelia. And he hated Ophelia, well, because he loved Ophelia. Like math, it is. Ophelia is his morning glory—the glowing rapture with which he greets the day, and the violet flower he holds in the palm of his hand that, if he admires its beauty for too long, overwhelms him with desire to consume it in full. To feel it and its condensed fire in every inch of his body, to know it, better than he knows himself. And so he does it, he caves—he eats the flower, the morning glory. The radiance of a most blessed dawn, all his, all mine.
But soon after—still indeed, all his—the poison flows through his veins like a nasty current. He regurgitates the petals, his insides, his sanity over a flower —oh, nothing but a flower that dissolves weakly in the water, holding onto nothing but microscopic fibers of lucidity unwoven only in moments of madness.
So Ophelia’s poison be. So potent as to override Hamlet’s own—that which sits within his own heart like some boiling liquid in a witch’s cauldron, ready to be poured on unsuspecting, undeserving victims. Perhaps Ophelia had thrown her flowers into Hamlet’s cauldron and made something truly, gut-wrenchingly terrible. Something for her to live through while she’s gone.
Ah, but of course. That would be asinine. How can the poison of Ophelia further kill a man who is already dead? And one slain by Ophelia’s own good brother, nonetheless.
Ah, the good brother, Laertes. With his brow so perturbed and his motivations so pointed. Unlike Hamlet, a softened, cowardly boy with nothing to live for except the lingering poisons of love and the adrenaline that pain brings him.
Ah, but Hamlet forgets once more: he lives not.
The silence of the room in which Hamlet sits unnerves him. It’s the exact hall in which he’d just died; where he had concluded his fight with Laertes, carried out the wishes of his late father, but at the cost of quite literally everything and more. Hamlet’s eyes scan the room, darkened and now undisturbed by the sparse corpses and the distant rumbling of the Norwegian army’s footsteps and the terrified but grating sobs of good Horatio. All things, dead and gone, just like Hamlet.
Yet as he peers down at the floor, his mind plays a trick on him. Hamlet sees a peculiar, worn sheet of notepaper in front of him. Beside it, a quill and a flask of ink. He stares at the objects for a moment. Unsettling, these apparitions are. There’s something vastly different about hallucinating the splendid silhouette of one’s dead father the king versus hallucinating something so mundane and domestic that it shouldn’t even be a point of concern. Nonetheless, Hamlet’s anxieties are most wary of the person to whom they belong, and he curses himself for what he sees.
But, Hamlet pauses. He’s dead. No? Yes, of course. What’s he got to lose that he hasn’t already lost? But again, no—he’d say that even if he were still alive, and perhaps even on one of his good days. So, Hamlet rephrases: he’s dead, so why the goddamned hell not?
He reaches for the quill—
A shiver jolts through his wrist. It’s cold in his hand, but it’s real. Solid, slim, real.
“Plume my heart with peace, now,” Hamlet speaks with breathy apprehension. He reaches for the browned notepaper, his once-thought-dead heart beating as if experiencing life’s finest, most titillating pleasures.
It reads, in a hauntingly familiar handwriting that brings a stinging sentiment to Hamlet’s eyes: ‘Poor Hamlet.’
Hamlet only shakes his head. Grief had crossed his heart for a moment, but it flies by quicker than an arrow.
“Don’t condescend me,” Hamlet says to the notepaper.
Seconds pass. Agonizing, yet uniquely boring all the same. And alas, nothing happens. Nothing at all, would you believe it? Of course you would, because Hamlet is an honest man. A stupid, stupid man, but one who lives by the blade of his verity. And as he stares into those words on the notepaper—Horatio’s, might Hamlet add, as affirmed by the handwriting—that looming feeling of stupidity greatly exacerbates. In a flash of crimson rage and impatience, Hamlet wants to tear the notepaper in two. But he forces a warm, deep sigh through his chest to put to rest his ill temper, swallowing his pride, and simultaneously his embarrassment. And he thinks .
For one second . Perhaps the first second in his life—
No, he’s dead for Christ’s sake. So, then—fuck. Hamlet supposes he’s simply never had a useful, coherent thought in the first place, until right this moment, right at this dead, deceased, afterlifèd moment.
Hamlet groans. He dips the quill in the ink horn, says a quick prayer, and leans forward to write on the notepaper, ‘Don’t condescend me.’
Hamlet leans back. He closes his eyes, wondering what God even has to do with this in the first place.
“What nonsense am I dealing with,” Hamlet carps aloud. “I die, with the impression of leaving all nonsense—in all its ways, shapes, and forms—behind, in the earthly realm which it belongs, but now still , it gives chase? To me ? God, oh God— me ? Have I not had enough?” Silence a moment, before Hamlet continues. “Now my senses are none. Am I the nonsense? I the fool, my jangling bells following me to hell? Signaling my arrival?” Hamlet scoffs. He looks back down at the notepaper that his attention had drifted away from, and—
By the Lord Everlasting, it had a third thing written on it. ‘Never would I do such a thing to someone so virtuous as you.’
Hamlet chuckles something winded with self-effacement. Swiftly, he writes back, ‘You tease me. Me? Virtuous? Hamlet, of Denmark? Why, if you really do believe that’s true, then I must be the first individual to ever have virtuosity and Danish royalty as full parts of my essence.’
The phantom of Horatio’s words write back in haste, ‘And I’m glad to have known that individual so dearly.’
Hamlet can only drink in the words before him with a blank, unthinking, unfeeling stare. Hamlet knows, knows that these are the words of Horatio—kind, gentle, adoring, soft—small but so brutally impactful. But what kind of sorcery allows for this manner of exchange? For some ghastly, unseen force of nature or supernatural will to write words upon the paper before Hamlet, and for Hamlet to write back with his own words, from the underworld. (Because clearly, this isn’t heaven. Even disregarding his grim surroundings, Hamlet ventures he would’ve felt the eternal light of God’s grace within him by now. Or, whatever detail about the place he’d ignored in the sermons.)
Hamlet shakes his head in disbelief. If he could revive himself through shaking his head in disbelief over and over and over again, Hamlet would be animated once more.
So, he writes, ‘What is going on? ’ Concise, but vague. Certain to produce the simplest, broadest answer.
Hamlet watches with deliberate intrigue as new words steadily appear on the notepaper. As if the one writing it doesn’t want to mess up or misorder their words, as if it means everything to hit this nail into the coffin that is Hamlet’s conscience. In full, the message reads, ‘You are dead. Yet you are not in heaven, nor in hell. You are in purgatory—here until you absolve your sins, and until you reconcile with what’s lost.’
Hamlet’s face contorts into an unamused glower. “Perfect,” he scoffs. The last thing he wants to hear about is how oh-so-dramatic he’s been lately. He writes, with an attempt to abate the wildness of his penstrokes, ‘My father? ’
Seconds afterwards, ‘Yes.’
Oh, good, sweet Horatio. Ever down to earth. Hamlet replies not. He waits for nothing, praying that perhaps he could convey the mental image of himself sitting, vexed and with his arms crossed tight over his chest, through silence.
Though annoyingly, Horatio elaborates, dismissing whatever message Hamlet might have been attempting to convey. ‘But not just your father. Everyone. Everything. Every bit of yourself that you’ve lost trying to achieve an unachievable whole. Only then, might you find peace in heaven.’
Hamlet shakes his head, clicks his tongue. He’s never been one to back down from Horatio’s challenges to his wits. He drenches the quill heartily in ink and leans down to write, ‘What if I don’t want to? ’ Childlike stubbornness shall suffice—it always did, when Hamlet was alive, anyway. Even if for just a moment.
‘What? ’
‘What if I don’t want to find peace in heaven? Can I find peace with you here, Horatio? ’
The notepaper does not produce a response for a long moment.
Impatient, Hamlet follows up his remark. ‘Was that too on the nose? I’m sorry. I never said I loved you whilst I still breathed. Which was a waste, I realize. I wasted all my breath on nothing but my own self-lionization, my own self-indignation. What I should’ve said were the things that mattered. Like,’ Hamlet has to turn the notepaper over to continue writing, ‘ “Claudius, my uncle, the Danish propagator, or so you say—it’d do you well to get familiar with what a real Danish propagator is like… by choking on one!” Paha! Do you get it? Of course you do, good Horatio. You’re so smart, you know? Oh, and I’ve just thought of another for Gertrude. And so, the wife of the propagator makes— ’
Scribbling over crude musings of jokes made in poor taste, Horatio protests, ‘Quit this now, Hamlet. Your jokes are not even funny. Nor do they make sense…'
‘But I was just beginning to feel the thrills of live, selfish hatred again! Don’t you want me to feel live once more? ’
‘Of course. I always loved it when you were live. As would anyone else.’ Hamlet chuckles. Horatio’s witty ways of goodwill seem to have stuck by him, even in a place so dreary as this. ‘But you must hear heaven’s ultimatum, if you so wish to spend eternity in bliss rather than in agony. But don’t slice me with the sharp tongue of your pen, now. It’s either nothing, or everlasting paradise. Which would you rather have? ’
‘I tried for everlasting paradise, and look where that brought me. Must I repeat the process, only to fall once more? ’
‘And must you keep circling around what I’m asking of you? ’
‘Not circling—I’m writing on straight lines.’
Hamlet sits, oddly guilty for the defenses he bolsters with each stroke of ink stained on the paper before him. Horatio always had a way of breaking those defenses down, tearing away whatever mask of pretense that might make itself known over Hamlet’s visage. But he can’t help but grow wary in this situation. He can’t help but avoid the inevitable, shun reality, ignore the terrifying gravity that follows in each of Horatio’s words.
Hamlet doesn’t even know if this is the Horatio he knows that speaks to him. It could be God, taking up form in a way that He knows would seize Hamlet by the throat and force him to listen. Or it could simply be a fragment of Hamlet’s crazed head. He’s no stranger to his delirium conjuring impossible things, and he’s not scared of that.
But what Hamlet is scared of is the fact that he doesn’t know the truth of the matter. Perhaps that’s why he’d procrastinated suicide as long as he’d procrastinated his uncle’s murder.
Hamlet grips the quill tight between his fingers, cursing his sick head for stirring his anxieties further than what might be appropriate. He writes with no lack of remorse, ‘I’m sorry. What is it you ask me? ’
The hesitation is harrowing. Like bile, disgust churns in the back of Hamlet’s throat, and he wishes he were anywhere but here. Anywhere but dead, anywhere but cold and alone and without the warm touch of humanity to hold him steady from the edge of lunacy. It’s not fair ! By design, Hamlet is the sorrowful, yet righteous hero! He was supposed to prevail one day, stand triumphant over his uncle’s rotten corpse and feel the surge of true euphoria within him once again—that which blossomed within when his father still could put a hand on young Hamlet’s shoulder, still guide his son and love him the way Hamlet deserved to be loved. God , Hamlet never wanted to despise life. He never wanted to want to die! But nay, nay , God doth withhold His judgment least of all from the most righteous individuals!
Hamlet gazes upon the notepaper. The wet blotches that blight its humble sublimity align with the hot, streaking tears that roll down Hamlet’s cheeks. And a new word graces the fibers:
‘Forgive.’
An unblinking stare beholds it. Frozen in disbelief, grief, offense, impatience—all of it, Hamlet cannot react in a way that would make sense.
“Forgive?” a quivering voice asks. “Forgive what? Murder, fratricide? Treason, incest, manipulation, corruption, lying, hatred ?” Hamlet slams the quill down on the marble floor. It reverberates in the open room, signaling the ascension of madness, of the feeling of being alive once more. And Hamlet consumes that feeling like the poison that ended his mortality as he knows it. “No. I’d rather go to hell for all eternity than extend kindness to the man who killed all that I am!”
Of course, Horatio heard none of that—for better or for worse.
Hamlet calms his temper and manages to write, ‘No. Send me to hell.’
Horatio, surprisingly enough, responds swiftly. ‘My, I never dreamt the day my wits’d outlast yours. I believe you misunderstand.’
Bewildered, Hamlet scoffs. Did he miss something? What is all this about? ‘Excuse me? ’
‘I thought you’d know: you do not have to forgive a man who God does not. I’m talking about yourself, Hamlet.’
Nonplussed silence, stillness.
‘Forgive yourself, Hamlet.’
Horatio had always pushed Hamlet to his limits. After death, Hamlet’d believe that practice would come to an end. But apparently, Horatio won’t let a damned thing get in the way of putting Hamlet up to the test—not even death itself.
‘Now, how do you possibly expect me to do that? ’ The sincerity with which Hamlet writes is something grievous to have to convey, but something he feels necessary all the same. How could Horatio ask him this? He knows Hamlet, better than anyone else he knows, better even than Hamlet’s father knew—and yet, he requests from him the impossible? Does Horatio even really know Hamlet at all ? The Horatio who so tenderly listened to Hamlet’s grievances, so delicately pieced together the fragments of Hamlet’s being without whispering even a single complaint, his hands bruising and bleeding in the process?
But now, it is precisely because Horatio is no longer here to do those things that Hamlet realizes why he asks in the first place.
‘That's something for you to figure out, my sweet lord.’
“No, no, no,” Hamlet says. In a desperate scribble, he demands, ‘Send me to hell already. This is torture enough.’
‘Must you make no room in your heart for thine own? Is it so horrible to think about yourself, think about all the wrong you’ve endured, and reconcile all the hatred that still yet brews? God, even after death, you still want to die. Do you hear how silly that is? My silly, sick, sweet love, you are. Get yourself together—when my time comes as well, I don’t want to suffer an afterlife without you.’
‘I can’t, I can’t. I can’t bear it. Not without you here.’
The dead silence somehow, by some miracle, feels oddly warm.
Hamlet continues, ‘Ophelia’s not in heaven, is she? What about her brother? Do you know? ’
‘I do not know. I was only given this chance—thanks be to God—to communicate with you, in some strange state of lucid rest. I’m as confused as you are, but I know my purpose.’
‘And I don’t. I only ever had one when I could kill it.’
‘So then, find a new purpose. I don’t know what the afterlife is like; I wish I did, but it was you, only you, who besought I stay on this hellish earth. It is through your kindness that I am able to speak with you once more. So, my good lord, this is my wish for you, in exchange for your wish for me: use this notepaper before you to reflect on your existence, journal your inner turmoil, and resolve your blackened anguish. Write of the truth and how it maimed you, scarred you, killed you. And then, as your words heal you, realize that you deserve to live in eternal happiness. Not because you earned it, but because you are human.’
Again, with the conscience-challenging. Except this time, Hamlet fears he isn’t being challenged—he’s being full-on assailed without a second to come up for air. Hands of terror, of reality, all constrict their skeletal fingers around his diaphragm and squeeze out what emotion he has left within him. That is what this situation is: a direct attack on his life, a direct attack on his heart, a direct attack on everything Hamlet thought he knew, thought he loved, thought to be steadfast—
In a tremble of weakness, Hamlet whimpers. He drapes a hand over his eyes, blacking out the source of all his wretched sentiment, and allows the dread to flow in solitude. Desperately familiar anguish disturbs the waters of his previous self. And now, Hamlet wails. Tears fall upon him—the very same tears that had fallen upon the corpse of his father. Hamlet’s life—reflective of a paternal life once revered—taken, all the same. By the touch of poison; by the command of his uncle, Claudius… and all too soon! God, what terror to be murdered in the same exact fashion as his late father!
What had once motivated Hamlet is all splinters now. When he feels not one rejoicing ray of warmth to quell the haunting, lingering agony of his father, Hamlet wonders if it was really worth the trouble. To die, to kill, to scheme, and to suffer. If all of that culminates to this … a nemesis murdered only through one’s own sacrifice… Oh, what a depressing predicament. Hamlet wouldn’t wish worse upon his most despised enemy—to live after death in a manner so agonizing, so taxing, so baffling and tormenting! Even his uncle Claudius shouldn’t be left to wallow in a dim, broken corridor echoing with nothing but the leftover pangs of mortality. At least he is busying himself in the torturous eternal flames. Hamlet is not so lucky.
Tragedy. It must be.
Hamlet wipes his eyes. At least, in this realm, he has no one to scorn him for his expressions of grief. Yet, to grieve oneself is a unique feeling that Hamlet realizes would’ve been impossible to feel on Earth.
On the notepaper, Hamlet’s only semblance of reality, new ink reads: ‘Hamlet? ’
Hamlet is no rude soul, not even as a weeping dead man. He responds, ‘I am here. I apologize. I was just… thinking.’
‘About what, my sweet lord? ’
‘How wretched it all is.’
‘I think that too.’
Hamlet scoffs. ‘Well, you’re not the dead one.’
‘I suppose that’s true. Though, it feels like it. Everyone is gone now, and with no work to be done… the only thing I see left for myself is to return to school and finish my education in Wittenburg.’
‘A lovely idea, Horatio. Do so. It’d make me happy.’
‘Thank you. Good Lord, I pray this conversation is not just in my head. I pray I do not wake up tomorrow and realize this is all a product of my own mad grief.’
‘And I pray you aren’t an illusion… shall we call ourselves even? ’
‘Sure, my lord.’
Hamlet smiles. He remains smiling for a while. But the forced persistence of it brings about a strange and sudden sense of dread. He smiles, but its authenticity fades along with the curvature of his lips. His cheeks ache not with an abundance of joy but rather with a lack thereof. Like he is nothing but the hollow skull of a man, with no mortal flesh or warmth to humanize what he feels.
Hamlet supposes, though, that’s how he’s supposed to feel. Trapped in a soulless purgatory with only his own thoughts to occupy him, swarm him, torture him. And there is truly nothing more bothersome than Hamlet’s thoughts—Hamlet finally feels like he is on the receiving end of them, rather than the conjurer. With no one else to torment, his thoughts must finally have settled on their very own holder. At long last, his thoughts eat him alive from the inside out, and he lays limp, decaying like old Yorick and fading from the memories of all who once enjoyed his antics.
Life surely cannot be so simple in its devastation. There must be more that Hamlet is missing. There is always more, anyway, Hamlet has learned.
He writes, 'Now, I suppose I should do what you ask of me. Which, honestly, I am unsure of. But for you, I can give it a try.'
The gentle, fluid curvature of Horatio’s writing bears a grace to it that bleeds happiness. In response, the notepaper produces, 'That pleases me very much.'
'But, well… I’m a little embarrassed. Shy. My writing is not very good.'
'Though I love your writing, I can understand your sentiment. But if I leave you now… well, I don’t think we’d see each other again for quite some time.'
'Then leave. If you’re confident we’ll meet again, I don’t mind waiting.'
A long, harrowing pause allows the ink of Hamlet’s works to set heavy over his heart and stain his satin facade. Of course he’d mind waiting. He’d mind waiting one interminable minute , let alone an undetermined eternity. Hamlet wants to tear the hair from his head, or perhaps the skin from his bones. Lying through his teeth is the worst vice he’s picked up on, and he still can’t seem to break it, even around the sole man he trusts.
And Horatio, of course, knows Hamlet’s tricks better than Hamlet himself. ‘Of course you’d mind waiting. You are an impatient imp, my lord.’
Hamlet scoffs. And strangely enough, what tears he thought had dried seem to surface once more. At what? The subtle sentiment of understanding another individual? The having of a human connection that cannot be broken, even after death? Hamlet abhors the emotive surges in his stomach. Perhaps this is the love he had been missing, the love that had never planted its seed until this moment in lost time.
'Well, ' Hamlet begins, though dazed and jaded by everything he’s felt up until now. Words slip past him. Perhaps if he had Horatio by his side as he thought, his hand over Hamlet’s own, he could feel inspired once again. But the coldness of his skin, the emptiness around him and within him, was too overwhelming. After a long moment of contemplation, Hamlet begins to write again.
'Then perhaps I’ll just write to you. Would that be alright? '
Quickly, Horatio responds, 'Always, my sweet lord.'