I talked a long, long time ago (feels like a galaxy far away) about one of my other writing projects, a zombie story that takes place during Romeo and Juliet (though barely featuring the titular characters). It does not, at least in any significant way, overwrite events of the Shakespeare play, but instead takes some of the supporting cast and lines from the play to create a new story and help explain some gaps in the plot of the original (Benvolio, a character with a decent amount of lines and ties to Romeo, disappears during Act III, never to be seen again).
It has probably been 2-3 years since I've done any significant work on the story (I know, probably best not to admit that). The story itself is...fleshed out (a bad pun that didn't work very well. Sorry), and I was in the fourth draft or so of editing. The one thing that I could never nail down was a sonnet that was both a parody of R&J's that incorporates the walking dead and sets up the story.
However, with the time past, it's hard for me to get down the same voice and tone that I used. So, anyway, enough babbling and time to get to the point. Without much further ado, here's the first chapter of A Plague Upon Thee. Enjoy (and if anyone requests it, I can put up a .pdf or other file format so it can be read properly on e-readers and tablets):
Chapter
One - "In Fair Verona Where We Lay Our Scene…"
"I am hurt
A plague o' both your
houses! I am sped.
Is he gone, and hath
nothing."
"No, ‘tis not so deep
as a well, nor so wide as a
church-door; but 'tis
enough,'twill serve: ask for
me to-morrow, and you shall
find me a grave man. I
am peppered, I warrant, for
this world. A plague o'
both your houses! 'Zounds, a
dog, a rat, a mouse, a
cat, to scratch a man to
death! a braggart, a
rogue, a villain, that
fights by the book of
arithmetic! Why the devil
came you between us? I
was hurt under your
arm."
"Help me into some
house, Benvolio,
Or I shall faint. A plague
o' both your houses!
They have made worms' meat
of me: I have it,
And soundly too: your
houses!"
Romeo shielded his eyes from the blinding,
mid-afternoon sun. Sweat mixed with dirt and blood as he watched Benvolio, his
stick of a cousin, gather their wailing friend under his arm and shuffle off
towards the nearest dwelling, leaving Romeo startled and bewildered in the
streets.
"A plague
o' both your houses!"
The
words bounced inside Romeo's head. Dropping to his knees, he ran his hands
through his shaggy, dusty brown hair, his eyes like those of a wounded,
cornered animal. The blood of his friend made his hair stick up in crusty, copper
tuffs. Something warm and sticky touched his midsection. Pools of crimson
gathered on his shirt. His hands flew under the cloth and searched his stomach
for a wound. Finding none, his hands returned to pulling his hair as though he
could somehow decipher what had happened by pulling it out of his scalp.
"Why the devil came you between us? I was hurt
under your arm."
Mercutio had been run through by a sword. Mercutio!
Romeo's best friend and a kinsman to the Prince. With eyes bulging like a
bloated corpse, his hands clasped over his mouth.
Oh! The prince
is going to be pissed!
Benvolio struggled up the crumbling, yellow stone
steps and crashed against a decayed, yet deceptively heavy, wooden door. Pain
exploded in his shoulder and he let out a sharp hiss as he stumbled. He was no
doctor, but he thought he might have separated his shoulder, all in his effort
not to jostle his injured friend. Tears welled up in his eyes and he shifted
his weight to hold onto Mercutio.
"Just hold on, Mercutio," Benvolio said.
"We'll get you inside and your boy will be back with a surgeon before you
know it. You'll be fine. Everything will be just fine."
That last bit was just as much to reassure himself
as it was for Mercutio.
Mercutio gasped into Benvolio's ear. Mercutio was
already dead, and he knew it. It was just a matter of time until his body
caught on.
The door opened, a wrinkled woman peered out from
the doorway. With fear wrought eyes, the elderly woman looked the visitors up
and down, nodded, and opened the door to let them enter.
"A plague…" Mercutio choked out through
chapped lips. The old woman stepped aside to let them pass. Benvolio looked
left and right for a place to put down his friend. The house was dimly lit, the
only source of a light, a small candle in the hand of the old woman. Benvolio
took a couple of steps inside and stopped. His eyes needed to adjust. To the
left, behind the old woman, was the home's bedchamber. In the waning light, he
could make out stain covered sheets. The very thought of being draped in such
filth made him gag.
"Hrm?" Benvolio asked. "What's
that?"
"A plague on both your houses…"
"The plague?" the old woman asked.
"He doesn't have the Black Death, does he?"
"Of course not," Benvolio said. He lifted
Mercutio's hand to reveal the fountain of blood pouring out from his friend's
gut. The woman clasped her hands over her mouth. Benvolio pushed Mercutio's
hands back to his stomach. The lanky blond coughed and hissed.
"A plague…"
Benvolio attempted a wry grin, to little success.
Not only was his friend very quickly bleeding to death, but said blood was
getting all over his clothes, and everyone knows how hard it is to get blood
stains out of anything.
"You keep saying that, but you forget I am a
member of the house of Montague. And I have never done a thing to harm
you," Benvolio said. "Or anyone for that matter."
The slender blond man continued to gasp and wheeze
as the pair was led to a stone table in the middle of a sparse living area.
"You can set him there," the woman said.
She motioned to the table, put down her candle and, with a sweep of her arm,
cleared the table of her belongings.
The candle was knocked on its side, bathing the
house in an eerie, flickering glow.
"A plague…"
*Cough*
"A plague…"
*Cough*
"He keeps repeating that. What does it
mean?"
"He blames the feud between the Montagues and
Capulets for his current predicament."
"Oh. Seems to be more serious th'n that, way he
keeps prattling on about this plague. You're sure he don't have the plague now,
does he?"
Benvolio shook his head. His cocoa brown hair swayed
gently with each turn.
"No, he does not." He frowned. "At
least I don't think so."
"Good. ‘Cause if he did…"
Benvolio didn't know how to respond to that, so he
just nodded along in agreement, lest he make the old coot angry.
"Ben…Benvolio…" Mercutio choked out.
Benvolio remembered he was carrying his friend, felt the warm blood on his skin
and gasped out a quick apology. In his haste, he dumped the body onto the cold,
gray table.
The body landed with a thud, one arm fell over the
side, the other still pressed to his stomach in a poor attempt to keep as much
life fluid and entrails inside.
"Sorry," Benvolio muttered. Mercutio
managed to twist his mouth into a smile.
"I wouldn't worry." Mercution forced a
smile. "Not like it'll make me deader."
Even at death's door, Mercutio cracked jokes. He
coughed again and blood erupted from his mouth.
The housekeeper, as the old woman must have been, as
it was inconceivable for women to own property, gasped in horror and clasped
her hands over her mouth to keep herself from shrieking. Her eyes looked like
two ripe grapes ready to burst.
"Shouldn't…shouldn't be long now..."
"Oh, Mercutio," Benvolio said, looking
pitifully at his dying friend.
With an unexpected surge, Mercutio thrust his arm
from his wound, which had stopped overflowing, to grasp Benvolio by the collar,
blood smudging against cloth.
"I didn't forget."
The light from the candle burned Mercutio's smile
into his brain. Mercutio laid back down on the table, wheezed once, sputtered
out another, "a plague," and then was gone.
Horrified, Benvolio looked down at his bloody,
soiled clothes as though the devil himself had just laid his hands upon them. This will never come out now!
"Well. That was something."
Without so much a second thought, Benvolio spun
around to address the old woman, who stood unmoving, her mouth agape and
unchanged from the moment blood first spurted from Mercutio's mouth.
"I must go tell young Romeo what has
happened."
"But what about him?"
She pointed to Mercutio's bloody corpse.
"I shall return for the body momentarily. I must tell Romeo that Mercutio is no
more."
Before the old bat could raise another protest,
Benvolio had gone. The current left in his wake blew out the candle. The house
was now completely dark and as silent as the tomb, which, technically, it kind
of was.
Out in the blinding sun, Benvolio stumbled down the
steps and fell down onto the street.
"Oomph!"
Great. Now I
have dirt and blood on my clothes. Can this day get any worse?
The sun was still high and bright in the Verona sky,
exactly where it had been before. Though it had seemed like an eternity, the
passing of Mercutio had taken no more than five minutes.
Turning the corner, Benvolio saw that Romeo was
still exactly where he had left him; on his knees, crying like a little girl.
Jeez! What a
whiny little woman! Is there anything that won't make Romeo break down and cry?
His cousin
looked up and watched him with bloodshot eyes. Oh, he sees me approaching. Better pretend to show some concern.
"O Romeo, Romeo, brave
Mercutio's dead!
That gallant spirit hath
aspired the clouds,
Which too untimely here did
scorn the earth."
There. That
was good. I should be an actor.
"This day's black fate
on more days doth depend;
This but begins the woe, others
must end."
Wow! That was laying it on a bit thick there, don't you
think? Oh crap! There's Tybalt. I am not going to stick around for this…
With Tybalt's approach, Romeo's sorrow boiled into
rage and he rose steadily to his feet like a snake coiled to strike. Sweat
poured from Romeo's forehead like wine at his father's parties. Benvolio knew
what his cousin was about to do and there was nothing he could say to stop it.
"Before you do this, which is just a fantastic idea, by the way, I'm going to
fetch Mercutio's totally dead corpse from where I left it. I kind of promised
this old shrew I'd be right back and you know old people, they find just about
any reason to complain."
But Romeo paid him no mind. Romeo was already
shouting a threat to Tybalt, who looked like he couldn't have cared less about
the young Montague. That was, until Romeo decided the best approach would be to
shove the Capulet. Tybalt sprawled to the ground, twisted his supine body to
gaze at young Romeo, and stared as though he himself had just been run through
by the blade.
"Right. I'm just going to go, then,"
Benvolio said. He scampered off towards the house where the poor, slain
Mercutio laid waiting. Now if he could only remember exactly which house it
was.
"Ah. There it is."
