Violent Delights & Midsummer Dreams

VIOLENT DELIGHTS & MIDSUMMER DREAMS

A Gothic Anthology of Shakespeare Retellings

Edited by

CASSANDRA L. THOMPSON

with

DAMON BARRET ROE

Violent Delights & Midsummer Dreams

Edited by Cassandra L. Thompson, Damon Barret Roe

Published by Quill & Crow Publishing House

This books contains short stories that are works of fiction. All incidents, dialogue, and characters, except for some well-known historical and public figures, are either products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2023 by Cassandra L. Thompson. Melissa Brinks, Sabrina Howard, Erin Keating, LK Kitney, Amelia Mangan, Cedrick May, Mathew L Reyes, Emma Selle, and William Steffen.

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Quill & Crow Publishing House, Ohio. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

Cover Design by Damon Barret Roe

Interior by Cassandra L. Thompson

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN (ebook): 978-1-958228-42-5

ISBN (paperback): 978-1-958228-43-2

Publisher’s Website: www.quillandcrowpublishinghouse.com

These violent delights have violent ends. And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, which as they kiss consume.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, ROMEO & JULIET

CONTENTS

Foreword

A Document in Madness

(Hamlet)

Melissa Brinks

Othello—An American Tragedy

Cedrick May

The Winds Did Sing

(The Tempest)

LK Kitney

Such Sweet Uncleanness

(Measure for Measure)

Amelia Mangan

The Marriage of Beatrice Messina

(Much Ado About Nothing)

Emma Selle

We, Unhappy

(The Two Gentlemen of Verona)

Sabrina Howard

To Make the Devil’s Blood Run Cold

(Romeo and Juliet)

Mathew L Reyes

Lend Me Thy Hand

(Titus Andronicus)

William Steffen

Follow Darkness Like A Dream

(A Midsummer Night’s Dream)

Erin Keating

Thank You For Reading

Author Biographies

Trigger Warning Index

FOREWORD

Is Shakespeare Gothic?

I’ll admit, my study of Shakespeare’s works pales in comparison to my study of Gothic literature, so I won’t pretend to be an expert here. There are scores of lovely academic journals that answer this very question. But what I can say is, as a woman who can find Gothic tropes in almost everything, it isn’t hard to see them throughout Shakespeare’s plays. From dramatic spectacles to eerie supernatural vibes, many of his tales evoke the same sense of dreadful suspense that would later come to define Gothic literature. In short, Hamlet is goth AF. 

When the idea to do an anthology of Shakespeare retellings came about, it seemed a natural choice for a publishing house dedicated to all things odd and macabre. But like all the anthologies we’ve produced, there is the initial worry that writers won’t be receptive. I’m happy to report, this was not the case. 

Sequestered within this volume are stories bloody, dramatic, and spectacular. We hope that you will love these tales as much as we have, and perhaps discover a new favorite writer or two. It has been a pleasure to put together another Quill & Crow anthology and I hope to do so again one day. Until then, please enjoy another anthology full of dread and woe. 

Dreadfully Yours, 

Cassandra L. Thompson

A DOCUMENT IN MADNESS

(HAMLET)

MELISSA BRINKS

Ophelia is picking flowers.

No, she is trying to drown herself.

No, she is doing both.

She perches like a thrush on a willow branch, hands outstretched, fingers reaching for one perfect blossom. A single flower won’t grow over the grief chewing her from the inside; her father, yes, but also her mother, who died and left her surrounded by all these men and one distant queen. One single flower in her hair won’t charm her lover back to her. She knows this and thinks she may be a fool for trying. They have called her worse. If she is beautiful, or if she is dead, perhaps they will speak more kindly of her.

The bough breaks—you’d have to be mad to rely on the strength of a willow branch—and she falls. For one moment, the real girl’s outstretched hand meets the hand of her foolish reflection, and they merge with a deafening splash. Briefly, she floats there on the surface, light and delicate as a fallen flower borne on the current.

But her skirts drag her down, as they so often do. She struggles, reaching for the surface as the bottom of the brook calls to her, seizing her dress in icy hands. Her fingertips only just break the water. Long, loose hair tangles about her face, blinding her.

If she was trying to drown herself, she is no longer. Death stares at her from the shore, black-eyed and stern. The willow’s long branches stretch above her as if to offer her a hand. She tears her expensive fabrics to break free; her dress, at last, rips and floats away, but it is too late. She breathes water and chokes, kicking her legs and flailing. She’s gone too low, the dark water above her head endless and insurmountable.

She stops struggling. Her limbs, pale as the moon, relax. She floats to the surface.

When they find her later, naked, they weep. She stirs, but no one sees. Her eyelashes flutter. She isn’t ready yet.

Ophelia wakes, but different. She lays atop a stone slab, arms crossed over her chest. They’ve put her in a shroud, a ghastly, gauzy thing that hides her body from the world. She shreds it between her fingernails and, stretching death’s ache from her joints, she rises. She plucks buds from her funeral flowers and weaves them into her hair.

She is aware that Death took her hand and escorted her elsewhere. Perhaps Death brought her back, too; nobody wants a mad girl. Being both dead and mad, she no longer has anything to fear—not the stares of the royal family, not the judgment of her brother, not the scorn of her lover. There were words she couldn’t say before she died. Punishments to be dealt out. It all seems so much easier now.

A smile tugs at her lips. Someone will open the door to her tomb soon enough.

Daylight streams through the crack in the door and she covers her eyes with the back of her hand. It stings, but her eyes grow accustomed to the light; it takes longer to adjust to the screams and cries that greet her. The tomb is quiet, and the rush of people is anything but.

Ophelia, skin pink and heart beating once again, is ushered at once into her brother’s arms. Allowing him to hug her, she smiles. But she slips from his grasp, running barefoot to the hole in the ground meant to hold her body. What a lovely group has gathered for what ought to have been her funeral. Her brother, the Queen, the King. Her father is absent, his mouth full of dirt. Her lover, here, looking surprised, disheveled, out of sorts. He—clad all in black, a sorry but familiar sight—does not look at her.

Ophelia notes the knot between his brows, the way his fingers tense into a fist. He knows something she doesn’t. He knows many things she doesn’t, and she wants to pluck those things like pearls from his mouth and braid them into her hair.

She doesn’t speak, but she hums, a wild, merry tune soon stuck in the heads of all who hear it. Her brother begs her to stop, lest they think her mad. She pauses, smiles, and begins anew. They already thought her mad. Now they will know it.

Her lover watches her, stroking his chin. He does not speak to her. He does not speak to many, not since he returned from his aborted journey to England. There are secrets in his mouth, behind his teeth, beneath his tongue. To open his mouth is to let them spill out. His jaw is tense with the effort of keeping them all in.

She plants a merry kiss upon his cheek.

He doesn’t move, but his whole body stiffens.

She smiles, leans in closer, and seizes his earlobe between her teeth. "I know you," she whispers, and a shiver runs through him.

She leaves him, but not without a glance backward to watch his throat bob with a hard swallow. What secrets has he choked down?

Her lover cannot take his eyes off of her after that. Sometimes they are narrowed, sometimes wide; moods flick over his face faster than she can name them. She carries on humming, dancing barefoot through the halls, her elegant limbs outstretched as if she were about to tumble from a willow branch.

He has had enough. He presses her to the wall, his forearm to her chest, fury in his eyes and liquor on his breath. You drowned, he said. They found your body. I didn’t see it—

I see yours, she says, laughing. I see you now, dark and stormy and—she gasps, raising her eyebrows—mad. Ophelia presses a finger to his chest, drags it down, down, down, loops it through the waist of his trousers. I see you, mad boy.

How did you do it? he asks. There’s sick hope in his voice.

How indeed. She cocks her head and a curl falls into her face. A crown of flowers rests atop her head—rue, of course, and violets, purple little bells all woven in her tangles.

Her lover seizes her by the wrist, encircling it all the way round.

She lifts her chin to meet his eyes. There’s fear there, and her lips twitch. She blinks, the flutter of her eyelashes as delicate as a butterfly’s slow basking.

Tell me, Ophelia, he says. It’s a rare thing to hear her name—most people reserve it for the woman who died, not the woman who came back. Tell me what happened.

You are what you pretend to be, she says, her words a little song. We’re all just players. You most of all.

Her lover tenses, slams his fist into the wall, but she doesn’t move. What game are you playing?

Unhooking her finger from his trousers, she slips away from him. None at all.

Her brother insists she wash her feet, crusted with dirt as they are. She refuses, won’t even let warm water touch her. A doctor is called, pronounces her mad, but everyone knows that already, especially her lover who watches her through narrowed eyes. He envies her for the attention. No one notices his antics when Ophelia’s dancing through the halls laughing, singing songs in languages no one has ever heard.

Her brother casts long, angry looks at her lover, and she smiles. How lovely it is to be wanted, to be seen and heard and fussed over. How lovely it is to be not worth disguising your hateful glares or hushing your voice for.

These looks and words are useful secrets. She ties knots in her hair to remember them by.

Leave me, please, her lover pleads with her.

She follows him from room to room as he paces, tugging at his hair as he thinks aloud.

Lord, shall I lie in your lap? she asks, and sticks her tongue out between her lips.

Ophelia, he says.

Yes, Lord?

Leave me.

She does not. She shuffles after him, mimicking; she tugs at her own hair, whispers, jabs her finger into her palm, until he turns and grabs her by the wrist.

What are you? Another ghost?

Another, Lord? Who else haunts you?

"So you are a ghost?"

Ophelia laughs and cups him through his trousers. A ghost with such appetites! I think not.

Her lover makes a pained sound and lets go of her wrist, stepping away. Another thing sent to torture me.

She laughs and encircles his waist with her thin arms. Only if you wish.

I am tortured enough, he says. He shrugs off her embrace, taking long strides away from her.

She follows as dutifully as a shadow. By whom, Lord? Should I be jealous?

Her lover shoots her a venomous look. Expressions move across his face like clouds over water, until his shoulders relax and he collapses into a plush chair. My father.

She sits before him, cross-legged. Your father is dead.

So were you.

She smiles.

His ghost speaks to me. It says my uncle murdered him, poured poison in his ear. It asks me to avenge him.

And have you?

My uncle still lives, still beds my mother, still wears my father’s crown.

Ophelia leans forward, wiggling her body until she is laying on her chest with her feet in the air. Will you kill him?

He is silent and still while she kicks her feet back and forth, slow and leisurely, as if she were out for a pleasant swim.

I must.

How will you do it?

He pulls at his hair again, suddenly anxious. "I don’t know. He’s proven his guilt to me—"

How?

The play, he says. It was a re-enactment of what the ghost told me of my father’s death.

Ha! she says, and rolls onto her back. Clever boy. You laid a trap and he stepped into it.

Precisely. But—

How will you do the deed? A sword through the chest, just like my dear father? She mimes a thrust, twists her wrist to drive it home. Upside-down, she sees his features darken.

It was an accident.

Oh, yes, she says, nodding so fast, the room turns to a blur. You stretched out your hand and Death met your fingertips.

I didn’t mean to do it, Ophelia. I thought he was my uncle, that I’d be done with the whole bloody affair right then. And my behavior afterward… He pauses.

She imagines she can see inside his mind, the way he gropes for words that will appease her.

I had to act mad. Everything I did was a means to convince my uncle I wasn’t worth being suspicious of. I had no reason to kill your father.

"You were acting, Lord?"

Only acting, yes, he says with a sigh. He had no qualms about killing my father. If he knew I knew, he’d kill me too, and I cannot rest until justice is done.

She rolls back onto her stomach, her chin in her hands. How do you act mad?

Her lover’s mouth opens, shuts again. Unpredictable, he says. Nonsensical. I speak in ways where they can’t grasp my meaning.

She sits up then, crawls forward, and drapes herself across his lap.

He squirms, but he can’t move her without shoving her off, and despite the madness, he does not.

Ophelia looks up at him, batting her long eyelashes slowly, as if she were underwater. Like me.

A pause stretches between them, long and thin as a strand of spider’s silk. Her lover doesn’t speak, so she raises both her hands, fingers pinched to her thumbs.

With one, in a deep voice, she says, "Ophelia, darling, dearest, I acted mad before you went mad. With the other, in a voice higher-pitched than her own, she replies, You speak as if the two things can be separated!"

Hm, says the first voice, and points its beaked face toward the ground in thought.

All your unkindness— says puppet Ophelia, voice shaky with an actor’s practiced tremor.

False! says the first voice. "Faked! Of course I care for you, dearest girl, but I must spurn you, I must murder your father, because my father’s ghost spoke to me!"

The puppet with the high voice fixes the deep-voiced puppet with a stare. "So you are mad."

No, darling, no—it’s faked, to throw my enemies off the scent! The deep-voiced puppet speaks with a note of hysteria.

If one feels compelled to act mad, says puppet Ophelia, and one indulges the impulse, is that not the same thing as being mad?

Her lover—the real one—pushes Ophelia’s hands down and away, ending the show. Please, he says, his voice pained. I can’t bear this.

Oh? she asks. Her hands relax, creeping through her lover’s hair.

He stiffens, but does not pull away.

What will happen if you can’t bear it? Will you go mad?

Ophelia, he says, his voice a warning.

She may be mad, but she is not stupid. She slips off his lap and lets her feet carry her out of the room and away.

The conversation, the longest she’s had since she came back, seems to have sapped the life from her. She spends more hours outdoors despite the growing chill in the air. The blossoms have died, but she crushes their yellowed petals in her fist anyway. They smell of dust and the thick, sweet odor of decay. The brook is even colder now than when it took her, but still she dips her toes in. They turn red, then blue, until her brother grabs her under her arms and drags her away, chastising her for getting too close to the thing that nearly killed her.

Nearly, she repeats, sleepy with the effort. But with the cold nipping at her feet, she feels strength return to her body. She must rest. There is work to be done.

Her brother has one eye on her, always, to catch her misbehaving. He was never this protective before she died; she supposes it’s his way of clinging to the last thing he has that still breathes.

"You’re alive," she says, as he drags her back to the chamber that used to be hers.

Yes, and so are you. You’ll die if you catch cold.

"I did die, though."

You didn’t. You nearly died.

"I came