Daniel Brown Webster (labete) wrote in bellumletale, @ 2009-11-09 15:26:00 |
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Entry tags: | beast |
a response to book #4
[In the style of a narrative, for reasons which will become apparent in due course.]
It was one of those mornings Daniel had been forced to see the sun rise, the kind that came after long days and sleepless nights. Every circumstance thereafter just seemed to make his mood fouler. The laptop on the table had seen no change, either from his own hand or by return message from his erstwhile agent. If the birds twittered any louder, it would be in surround-sound, and after a (cold) shower he had not been able to find a clean shirt. Rather than bothering to begin the archeological survey through the mess of R1, Daniel turned up the heat, wandered around half-naked, and muttered darkly about being cold.
The coffee was burbling by the time he went scowling down the entryway to pick up his mail. Dropping the armful of newspapers haphazardly onto the table (not caring which ones slid off to the floor), Daniel paid specific attention the the small parcel wrapped in brown paper, and he opened that one first. Hamlet got an appreciative snort of humor, but received no further inspection.
"Red... I feel like I'm being edited," he commented, eying the ink before focusing on the content. Daniel read his letter standing up, leaning one hip against the kitchen counter, coffee growing cold a few inches from one elbow. The noise of traffic started to pick up outside the windows, the pipes of the building groaned under the pressure of people beginning their mornings, and the furnace made the walls flex as people cranked up their thermostats. Daniel didn't notice. He was frowning slightly in concentration as he read, and on the second re-read he groped blindly behind him for the coffee, which tasted terrible.
Daniel lowered the letter, standing still in the center of the room, thinking. The building was starting to go silent as it emptied. Carefully, Daniel put his coffee cup down on the counter. He put the letter next to the cup. Turning, silent though the kitchen tiles were like ice on his feet, Daniel retraced his steps to the entryway. He stood again, listened, and then, hesitating for only a fraction longer, he pressed his cheek to the door and looked out into the corridor through the peephole.
The painting was hanging on the wall directly across from his door. The frame was ornate, carved wood that was gilt with something a little flashier than paint. Someone kept hanging it up there when he wasn't looking; sometimes it would be there, and sometimes it wouldn't. Kids playing pranks, he figured. Kids with bad taste in art. After all, why do you need a frame within a frame? The depiction was set just inside a medieval castle's window, the stone and mortar clearly defined in the smallest detail, the red velvet draperies set askew over the opening. The viewer looked out over a landscape, held aloft by the window, and a long road spread out over a rolling hill. It was dark and cloudy, and the painting glistened with tiny silver raindrops from the storm outside the window.
Daniel waited a moment longer, listening hard for anyone in the corridor. Not a sound. Carefully, even gently, he turned the locks and lifted the security chain, pulling the door gently open until he stood just inside the doorway. The details of the painting were clearer now: the red draperies were crushed into an endless pattern of falling flower petals, the hill covered with the scrub of an English moor, and the storm darker in the distance as it rolled forward. There, where the road began to curve up toward the hill, a small, indistinguishable silhouette stood. The traveler wore some kind of cloak, and something about the way the hood was pushed about by the wind made Daniel feel like she was looking right at him. She.
He pulled back and slammed the door, retreating two steps before he remembered to lock it again. "I hate this building."
Returning to the kitchen, Daniel stuck the terrible coffee into the microwave and picked up the old copy of Hamlet. He flipped gently through the pages, lingering on the dedication and signature with a look of bemusement. "I'll be damned." Paging through, he stopped at one or two different pages to read the annotations, smiling once or twice, but raising both eyebrows at the doodle of a flower on Ophelia's speech.
He pulled the coffee out mostly to stop the microwave from beeping insistently at him, and sat down at the table to scratch up a reply. Most of the newspapers were deposed of their dubious positions, shoved or kicked out of the way, and he impatiently pushed the laptop back so he would have a space to write.
"Dear L," (he always considered what it might be like to actually write a name there), "I must confess I don't have the attachment to Hamlet that you do, but as you say, that's probably from varying experience. From his comments I must conclude that your father had a keen eye, and from yours, a good heart. That's enough to recommend any play, I think, be it the stupidest one in the world." Daniel scratched under his chin with the back of the pen, wondering whether or not to cross out the word "stupidest," but ultimately, he decided against it, and let it lie.
"Fortunately for us--me?--it is hardly the stupid. If you had burdened me with Lear I might be a little put out with you, but Hamlet does nicely." He hesitated, then, after a moment, continued, "I never much understood Hamlet. My father is, as they say, 'little more than kin, and less than kind.' If he comes rattling his chains at me like Jacob Marley some night hence, I'll laugh myself out of bed. I always felt like if Claudius was such a rum king, then let him sit on the throne and be merry with it. (He is, you know--a good king. I find that supremely ironic. My kind of play.)
"So, not having much sympathy for the unfortunate prince, and totally uncomprehending of his dismissal of Ophelia (what a waste that was, in more ways than one, and whether or not she was crazy is a little beside the point when she's dead), I always enjoyed the ridiculous scenes. The grave-diggers. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The multitude of [Aside]s when one could always whisper so loud as to not be heard.
"It's a pretty fiction, Hamlet. I like it."
The signature "D" is two loops, one wide, one thin. He looked at it as if he disliked the sight. The coffee had gone cold again; he shoved it back into the microwave, retrieved L's letter from the counter, and re-read it. This resulted in a post-script: "P.S. Fear not, your copy shall return to you in entirety. - D"
Daniel turned the pen in his fingers, thinking. He wanted to ignore the inquiry about the roses. He regretted telling someone else about it, because it made the whole thing a little more real, and the last thing he wanted was for that particular nightmare to become real. Yes, he wanted the damn things to thrive, they looked so pathetic out there, but he didn't want them throttling him in his sleep, either. In the end, he put pen to paper again.
"P.P.S. My," he swore when he crossed the word out, "The roses are red. I am sorry that I cannot be as meaningful as you; in the mind's eye, a rose must be red, musn't it? My dreams are colored, but not colorful. - D"
As was his usual habit, Daniel folded up the letter without pushing and prodding at it any longer. Dithering just left him with a series of drafts and no letter at all... and the sooner he sent it, the sooner he got one back.