|
Ophelia's Cure for Madness
|
Strung between two sandstone pillars with cords as fine and as delicate as the path between madness and lucidity you now tread, your head, regal and wise now droops as if weighed down by a circlet of a substance infinitely heavier than the gold it should bear. The twin perils of decision and indecision adorn your phantom crown; your only inheritance from your father. There is a question which reverberates through the dark chambers of your mind as loudly as the cry for help which rang through the twice-damned halls of Elsinore and sent me flying from my virgin bed to your side.
The king is dead, long live the king!
You did not even murmur as I looped the cords round your wrists and bound the ends to the iron sconces nailed into the living rock with the nine knots of promise and power. With every turn of the thread, your power to act slipped from you and into me, and I suppose, the responsibility to act flowed with it. However much these insubstantial fetters freed your hands from the physical dilemma of inaction and action, it cannot still the voice that drips the poison of you must, you daren’t, you should, you couldn’t, you have to into your ear. Venom this strong requires an antidote more effacatious than the fat toad’s jewel your father carried with him.
Hush.
I bend my lips towards your ear and whisper honeysuckle and vervaine. With each drop of comfort the fine slashes of care that scar your brow fade and fine as though thowing a stone into a gale-whpped millpond, sending ripples of white noise across the surface, commanding the east wind that stalks you to cease his tempest. Death weighs heavily on your mind. The succubus who now defiles the Great Bed of Denmark stole your father from you with ignoble brews dripped in his ear in place of prayer and solace. A coward’s hand upon his shoulder brought unquiet as a final comfort, thus binding you to your legacy of his vengeance and me to mine of your salvation. God and the Devil sit on each shoulder.
“Avenge me, or be no more my bright boy”.
One final, filial duty to free his soul to let you take up your rightful inheritance. He should not have asked this price, for in the asking he makes base of the gold he created. Now he haunts you until your love for him makes the granite blush with another’s blood; good stones that were no innocent to war and what men do, but a virgin in this affair.
I stroke your wan cheek, raise your chin to assay the waste those words have brought. Your bright eyes dim as though the act of remembrance is to relive the horror those words engendered. How powerful and few those sounds are! The drop of rain that split the rock asunder, broke your bright mind, setting duty against conscience, emasculated your right hand and loosed that howl of dispair into the wickedest hours of the night. Caught between the salvation of your soul and damnation by your sire, you see no clear way. Your madness, half-smoke, half-mirror leads you to cruelty and insult, delivered with the dull menace of the Bishop’s mace.
I hear a sharp intake of breath that heralds the myriad of eloquent protestations of love and innocence which rise in your throat like the bile you swallowed for the sake of diplomacy and opportunity. They are caught fast behind the revelation of the validity of my complaint, but how long for? I cannot risk once more and thus I stop your mouth with the glove you once kissed, and my favour that once you sought, I grant you and bind your love and vows of confidence with my veil.
Your soul is forfeit.
You see my hair loosed and tumbled over moon-pale breasts and at once stand attention like the soldier-prince before his general. Now you see me drenched in the rivers of potency long dammed by propriety and innocence. Wanton lust and luxury that drove you to the arms of those impotent and lechery-glazed monks seemed to have blunted your honest rapier, though this smithy’s girl may not have honed its edge to part the final veil of knowledge. Yet.
So begins my task.
The resolve is quickened but demands that it be fed with stronger meat than I have yet provided. Quickly I raise your head to look you deep through those windows of your soul to see the nourishment it requires. From my kirtle, I draw the shears and sever your bonds and you fall like a marble angel into my outstretched arms. Your weight is that of the dead and it troubles me. I lie you on the alter behind, sanctified by the blood of Christ spilled for your salvation and soon twice so by the blood of the maiden.
My prince, I bind you with gossamer chains claimed from my throat that you may better withstand the buffeting of the winds of your trial to come. I sanctify your sacrifice, bless your body with my lips and kiss you from throat to hilt. I shed the linens and silks of the courtier and stand before you your conscience and your vengeance. Your place in this Kingdom is in the Great Bed of Denmark that now lies defiled and unclean. The priests will bless it with incence and water ere I take mine beside you.
The Sword of Denmark awaits its whetstone, awaits its scabbard, hot and holy, purposeful and empowering. Adorned with no more than the beauty of my own power and intent, no flowers on our marriage bed, I rise above you and down and thus the sacrifice is made. My virginity feeds you. Writhing like a serpent on a spear you thrash beneath, demand purchase on breath-cold marble, but the acknowledgement of my power holds you as fast though you were fettered with iron. This is my power to give and I will do so as I see fit. Harsh as the barks of the fox in the woods below come your breaths, each thrust fining and refining the edges of the blade that will restore your throne and your sanity.
On and on, relentlessly pressing the blade to the stone, now slicked with the moisture that will bring a deadly edge to your blows. On and on, I feel the blade within sharpen the resolve to amputate the gangrenous flesh that rots the State of Denmark and cut the cankerous usurper from its heart. In the silence that falls before the storm breaks and the sword deemed fit, I see your father’s wraith behind your head.
I know that as I free you, I free him, and free us all from the splintering state which would pierce us heart deep and end our bright hopes before they have begun. The lightning strikes, the storm breaks, the sword is whole.
Becalmed, you weep as I cradle you close to the breast where no viper will nest.
There is a question that plagues you. To be or not to be?
I am the answer.
Tags: Stories Shakespeare Bondage Humiliation
|
|
|
|
