Posted on by Koko2018

bluelikesmoke:

A KING OF INFINITE SPACE

A sci-fi Hamlet AU: 

Mankind left Earth, but there was nowhere for them to go. In a lonely castle of a spaceship, they crowned a King. 

  • There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophies, Hamlet says. He leans against the smooth glass window, the darkness of space outside swallowing him whole. Horatio turns his face up to the stars. I hope you’re right, he says, there better be

  • When the old King dies, they send him floating into nothingness. Horatio knows that an eternity ago, humans used to let their dead sail the oceans upon burning ships. King Hamlet’s death shroud smells of rust and hot metal when they reel it back in.
  • The Elsinore IV is not a prison, but a step outside means death regardless. Sometimes the ship rattles and shakes. Sometimes, the starfields outside are so dense that even if prime galaxy time indicates it is deep night, the sky blazes.
  • Do you think there’s anyone still out there? Hamlet asks one day. Horatio doesn’t have an answer.

  • They get their answer when the King comes back to them as a constellation, dots of light stitching him together just outside the observation deck.
  • Claudius sits in the bridge and prays to a supernova.
  • Ophelia wires an escape pod to take her far away. The little ship sputters, jerks, and all the rest of them can do is watch her spin further and further away. When she is nothing but another blazing star amongst the rest, she opens the hatch and steps out, arms spread out wide, hair spilling out before her. The cold vacuum of space is all that lingers between them.
  • When it is all over, Horatio sits against the wide window port and wonders if he is the last human alive. The deck is painted with blood. In the end, it wasn’t even space that killed most of them.
  • Beside him, the radio crackles.
Posted on by Koko2018

bluelikesmoke:

BOUNDED IN A NUTSHELL

A Kafkaesque Hamlet:

You’ve never been sure where Hamlet calls home, or what exactly he is the Prince of. It’s a shame your first visit to the place he calls home has to be on the heels of his father’s passing. Eventually, you’re not sure if the claw marks Elsinore leaves are permanent. 

  • The castle didn’t exist a moment ago. You step into the grounds of Elsinore and suddenly it hurts to breathe and gadflies buzz in your brain. You turn back to Hamlet—sharp toothy smile and long limbs that don’t fit in school desks—and you suddenly understand.
  • Elsinore birthed Hamlet. Elsinore clings to him like stubborn moss or pebbles to the treads in one’s shoes.
  • You get lost. You find your way. You get lost again the next day. You trace your steps until your blisters bleed and still, still, tomorrow, you will be lost.
  • Sometimes, the King emerges from seemingly nowhere at all and engages you in a pleasant conversation about the necessity of capital punishment, or his favourite book, or the best way to systemically weed a garden. Every time his mild smile and easy words breaks some frozen sea in your heart and you debate long into exhaustion. The next morning, you agree to watch him for guilt, to help Hamlet plan his death. By the scant daylight, the King is spider-fingers and eyes too bright and hissing anger.
  • There are no servants in Elsinore. The meals are still like clockwork.
  • They say Ophelia’s drowned, but you can still hear her wailing in the long and empty halls. Hamlet and Laertes argue in her empty grave as you carefully inch away from her staring ghost.
  • Everyone dies. It happens after dinner.
  • When you emerge, the castle fades away behind you into mist. When you look back, there is only an empty hillside and all that’s left for your is the brightness that is Prague. Has there ever been an overcast sky in Prague? You get lost but when you learn the way this time, it sticks.
  • You ask about Elsinore (of course); nobody answers (of course)