we have enacted our plan.  our trap for caliban and sycorax.

cheryl only really spoke to me in regards to our scheme.  i regret to say that my begging and pleading for her forgiveness was not limited to this blog....and neither were my references to her as "cordelia".

despite the difficulties of working with me, our trap was forged.  it required much skulduggery on our part.  it also required us to look several things up on the internet.  it is a wonder surpassing that of queen mab's court what one can find online these days.

it was decided that i would be the bait.  it was never really a question.  i am the preferential target.  they knew the depths of my hatred, and felt it in kind.

i was to stand, alone, with a makeshift torch and a molotov.  this was the simpler of tasks.

the more difficult, we found, was finding a suitable construction site, one with both the crux of our trap, and the means to deliver it.  sneaking in and operating the machinery in stealth--once the night watchman was carefully subdued--was much easier by comparison.

i stood alone, vulcan's lash in one hand and a vial of his wrath in the other.  mine was to wait.  to observe.

i waited for what felt to be hours before they finally arrived, came suddenly out of the night, the smell of ozone crackling the air, and there they were.  a mother and a child.  they looked so innocent, and i remembered the ice cream.  feeding and laughing and loving.

i wanted to burn them.  i wanted to burn them right then, but they weren't in the right spot.  it was not the plan.  i did not want to be like king ferdinand, all of my labours of hate drowned away.  not when i was so close.  not when i could claim my pound of flesh and any drops of blood i desired.

"so, the base creature and the witch have found me at last, have they?"  i called to them.  "it hast taken thou long enough.  is the murder and its birdhouses so easily avoided?"

"you see this, sweetie?"  sycorax said to her child.  "this is the coward from the diner.  you remember her, right?"

caliban nodded.  "yes, mommy.  i remember.  she left all those people behind."

"oh, she left more than just those people behind."

"still thy tongue!"  i called to them.  my torch approached the makeshift wick of the makeshift bomb.  "or else i shall have to still it myself."

"see how she blusters?  that's how you know she's a coward."  sycorax continued.  "she wasn't nearly this brave when she and her friend killed your aunt and uncle.  remember that, sweetie?"

the little boy tiny fiend nodded.  "she was all curled up and crying, mommy."

"very good, sweetie!  just like she was crying when her terrible, terrible murderer friend killed all our lovely masters."  sycorax locked eyes with me.  "if only you hadn't been so slow, maybe jessica would be alive today, wouldn't she, anya?"

"do not speak of cordelia to me, vermin!"  i growled, and nearly put the flame to wick.  i almost ruined our plan then and there, for surely they were prepared for this.  they would not have come here so brazenly, my weapons of choice in my hands, if they had not been prepared.

cheryl saved me.  she stopped me from ruining everything.

the clamshell excavator above the mother and child opened, and from it, a mass of still warm tar dropped.  they were not in the perfect position, but the shock of the attack, i think, prevented them from avoiding it as they were going to my fire.

when they did not move, under the thickening fluid, and cheryl hopped down from the controls of the machine and ran to me.  i was apologizing for almost ruining everything, and she was just relived i was fine...

...and the next moments are a blur.

sycorax moved from the tar.  she moaned and reached out and tried to stand, and i think cheryl turned, and she was startled and knocked the torch from my hands.

it rolled into the tar.

and they began to burn.

and they screamed, and as we watched, sycorax curled around caliban.  as though trying to protect him.

and cheryl could merely watch.  she watched in horror, and i began to laugh, laugh and laugh and i realized at some point that i wasn't laughing, that i was on my knees sobbing, sobbing until cheryl pulled me away, and sirens grew in the distance.

...there is more.  more, but i do not want to tell it....i think, i think cheryl wishes to, and i shall allow her to do such.  i think it would be best if she told it.

i feel...lost.  i do not....they are dead, and now i do not...

what does one live for, when revenge has been all?  when the lion's share has been taken...what is there left for such a person?

the girl was, indeed, another hiding from the wretched grasp of the murder and did, as well, know the words of the bard i didst speak to her.

any companionship was cut short, however, when in the diner came my nemeses.  caliban and sycorax.  a mother and a child.  a pair of monsters that were neither of those things.  by any name, a rose may yet prick, and pretty feathers may hide the rotten state.

i confess i was not in my right mind when they first arrived.  i rushed to my pack and removed a molotov and tried to light it, crying out, "the villainy you teach me, i will execute, and it shall go hard, but i will better the instruction".

in my rage, i had unfortunately forgotten that society tends to frown on threatening a mother and her young boy with a fuel-based incendiary weapon.  the patrons of the diner, however, had not.

i was knocked to the ground, a large man--one of the cooks--and a pair of college students holding me down.  they were shouting at me but i was too blind with rage to remember what it was they said.

"you have a pentiful lack of wit!  they are both monsters!"  i snarled at them, not helping my case and fighting to get free.   "fortune, giveth me a measure of revenge!"

the hag and her spawn looked at me, smirking behind their feigned fear.  all they had needed to undo me was arrive, and allow my rage to hang me. i now saw its folly, of allowing myself the grip of the eumenides.  i hoped that cordelia would be able to forgive me as her namesake had forgiven lear.

my resignation was postponed, however, by the timely arrival of my new friend, and her taser.  a pop and the smell of ozone signaled my freedom as she pulled me away in the confusion even as the cook went limp.  the students tried for me again, but she pulled me back, into the kitchen.

i confess, i was not, perhaps, in my right mind, as i continued to pull back, towards the diner's main room.  hoping for another chance to end them, i suppose.

any thoughts in that direction, however, were mitigated when we reached the back door, and she threw it open.

in place of an alley, all we saw was a storm-swept beach, extending to the eye's limit.

we are trapped in this accursed place now.  we have closed the kitchen door and engaged the bolt on it.  the witch and her monster child are on the other side, with all those people.  no doubt poisoning them against us....accusing us of this...witchcraft.  if they are not slaying them outright.

i confess, i know not what to do.  this young woman saved my life, and to repay her, i have dragged her directly to my very own hell.

i remember the day she came to school, looking over her shoulder, nearly tripping over herself.  i remember that we laughed at her because we hated her, because she and her friends oppressed us so.

i didn't realize what it was she was fearing.  who would notice it?  when is the last time you noticed birdsong?  perhaps, while trying to sleep?  perhaps actively enjoying it?

unless looking  for it, one never really notices it unless one needs to.  it is a noise ambient to humanity.

to this day, i do not know what she did to get the murder's attention.  to this day, i do not know why sycorax and caliban came after her, and brought my ruin in their wake.  to this day, i do not know why i decided to help her.  why i, unlike my friends, chose her over the birds.

i would lie if i said i have never regretted it.  there were other options for me.  i could have put my head down.  pretended it had not happened.  gone about my life pretending there were no monsters, that humanity is alone, in the dark.

sometimes i wish i had.  but then, what would her sacrifice have been?  i know of them.  i can spread the word.  tell her story.  i can kill them as they come.  perhaps i can even destroy sycorax and caliban--that wretched witch and her accursed spawn.  it would, perhaps, be the only revenge i could get for her.  the only closure i could achieve for my dearest cordelia.

and then, one day, perhaps i will be fortunate enough to die as she did, and perhaps, someone will take my place, tell my story, and warn the world of the shadows in our ambiance.

peace, break thee off

i imagine some may wonder why i am giving so much a fuss over birds

after all, i myself confess to having slain scores of them.

in truth, killing birds is never the problem.  hollow bones.  flammable wings.  a bird can be broken with such accidental ease.

there is a force.  a mind beyond our own.  a soul with many bodies, as many as it can claim.

that is my foe.  others call it what they will.  i first encountered it with crows.

thus, i call it the murder.

as many birds as are slain, as many of their vile devotees, filled with the foul fowl themselves i have burned and shot and run over with farm equipment

in the end, the murder lives on.  breaths on, because it is not a bird.  it is a will.  a force behind them.

perhaps it has a form.  perhaps there is a face to the murder.

i do not wish to know it.

there are times, i think, i have caught a glimpse of the true enemy.  you can see it when they make lightning.  a spark of the divine among the brute intelligence it has claimed.

'tis beautiful, to be honest.  and maddening.  much like the nature it commands, the merest glimpse  of it put spots on the vision of my mind's eye.

but that is a tale for another day.  one i have been putting off telling.

i am not the hero of my story, you see.  much like lear, i was deceived, and the true hero was cast away to her fate.

i merely live in her memory.  live for her memory.  she gave her life for mine unworthy existence.

'tis the least i can do to prolong it.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

CROCODILE TEARS, a hapless rogue

CORDELIA, a young, popular student

REGAN, an unpopular student, friend of CROCODILE TEARS

GONERIL, CROCODILE TEARS' best friend

MACBETH, CROCODILE TEARS' beloved

POLONIUS, a professor of literature

GLOUCESTOR, a school principal

TAMORA, a witch

IAGO, a warlock

ANTONY and CLEOPATRA, parents of CROCODILE TEARS

ASSORTED TEACHERS

ASSORTED PARENTS

CALIBAN and SYCORAX 

CHORUS

SETTING, a high school in the midwestern united states, a time not so long ago