Page 102 of In Harmony

“Thanks,” I said, and we went our separate ways.

Just like we’re supposed to, I thought bitterly.

An hour later, Rebecca took center stage and consulted her clipboard again through her dark-rimmed glasses.

“We need Gertrude, Claudius, Ophelia, Laertes, Horatio and Hamlet. Act Five, Scene One.”

Ophelia’s funeral.

From the prop room, they pulled a wooden stretcher and Martin had Willow lie on it, her hands folded over her heart. Her hair lay spread around her in golden waves. Four actors carried her to the center of the stage where Gertrude, Claudius, and Laertes were waiting. Horatio and I stood stage right, watching the procession in hiding.

The scene began to seep into me, erasing my conscious thought and transporting me into a desolate graveyard…

With tilting tombstones like white, crooked teeth…

Willow was ethereal, lying still with her eyes closed. The single light shining down made her pale skin glow. Lorraine, as Gertrude, mimed laying flowers over Ophelia.

“Sweets to the sweet. Farewell!

I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet’s wife.

I thought thy bride-bed to have decked, sweet maid,

And not have strewed thy grave.”

As Laertes, Justin’s angry rant was overblown next to Gertrude’s dignified grief. He fell to his knees to curse Hamlet’s name.

“Oh, treble woe!

Fall ten times treble on that cursèd head,

Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense

Deprived thee of! Hold off the earth awhile

Till I have caught her once more in mine arms.”

Then Justin got to his feet and threw himself on the bier. He slipped his arms under Willow and hauled her up to him. Her body, graceful and limp before, now stiffened. Her face contorted behind her still-closed eyes, into the expression of someone suffering in barely-contained silence. The struggle to stay still. Stay quiet.

Don’t tell.

My vision clouded. Then sharpened and I saw a guy lying on top of Willow, touching her. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t stop him. He had her while inside she screamed and screamed…

I raced forward, my lines erupting incoherently. The blocking called for Hamlet to throw himself at Ophelia’s bier as well. I went for Justin instead.

Rage coursing through my blood like fire, I tore him off Willow. She fell back with a little gasp, her eyes still squeezed shut.

Justin whipped around, his own readiness to fight boiling over. “The devil take thy soul!”

He flew at me, hard and fast. The stage direction called for him to wrap his fingers around my neck, but Justin wasn’t acting. His hands around my throat squeezed, cutting off my air, his face inches from mine.

“Thou pray’st not well,” I choked out, a sneer on my lips as I took hold of his wrists and gripped hard. “I prithee, take thy fingers from my throat…”

Justin’s eyes flared and his jaw clenched as he squeezed harder through the pain. His eyes were flat with hatred.

Len, as King Claudius, cried his line with genuine fear. “Pluck them asunder!”

The ensemble actors struggled to tear Justin and me apart, and then held us back as we strained at each other like rabid dogs.