Antic Disposition
by C.M. Green
Hamlet asks you what time it is and you tell him to fuck off because it is two in the goddamn morning and he should be asleep. He’s not asleep. He’s never asleep, as far as you can tell. This time he swears he saw his dad again. He was there, I’m telling you, real-life flesh and blood or maybe not but there.
Days since Hamlet’s last hallucination: zero. This number has not changed for weeks. It’s everything you can do to keep him from taking a kitchen knife to someone’s throat, his own, or his uncle’s, or sometimes yours. You’ve forgotten which one you are, the love interest, or the childhood best friend, or the mother, or the fellow student—and it doesn’t really matter anymore. He’ll say the same things to anyone.
This castle is too small for me, he says, and you’re awake now so you might as well listen. This castle is too small for me and everyone here is watching me, anyway. You tell him that no one is watching him, but that’s not true because you’ve been watching him for days. Trying to get him to eat, trying to get him to sleep, trying to get to him.
Everyone’s father will die. To him this doesn’t matter because his father wasn’t supposed to die. He’s already tried to kill the king once, though the old man claims Hamlet was too chickenshit. He wanted to ship Hamlet off after that but the queen wouldn’t have it. We can watch him here, she said.
You’re part of a multi-cell organism whose only purpose is to keep this man from hurting someone, and you work diligently to do so, but when it is two in the goddamn morning and he won’t shut up you wonder if maybe you should hurt him yourself and save everyone the trouble. He has ruined your life, and you wonder when you decided that was okay. He’s dangerous, and you wonder why you don’t think he’s dangerous to you, what makes you special. The answer is probably nothing and if his dead dad’s hallucinated ghost told him to kill you, he might do it.
But you love him and you remember a year ago when his eyes weren’t on fire and you watched a sunset together like it was the first sunset the earth had ever seen. He wrapped an arm around you and he leaned his head on your shoulder and he said: Just like this, forever, and you thought it was true.
C.M. Green (they/them) is a Boston-based writer with a focus on history, memory, gender, and religion. They are a Hybrid Reader at Abode Press. Their work has been published by Barren Magazine, fifth wheel press, and others, and they are a 2023 Best of the Net nominee. You can find their work at cmgreenwrites.com.