ONCE UPON 24 TIMES: STORY XXIII

Story the Twenty-Third:
Ace of Swords
Coat of Rushes - King Lear
(Dedicated to Lars Dermark, José Eduardo Bufí Otxoa, and Ana Laviste Arner. Merry Christmas for absent kin...)

Our Shadows Taller Than Our Soul

If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now
It's just a spring clean for the May Queen
Yes, there are two paths you can go by
But in the long run there's still time to change the road you're on
And it makes me wonder

Your head is humming and it won't go
In case you don't know, the piper's calling you to join him...

It's me, Cornelia. Don't you remember, Dad? Don't you even remember your name, lying on your sickly sweet sickbed?
Your name is Lars. Lauritz, but we all three called you Lars. You had twin girls, Gunilla and Regina, by your first marriage; and only one, Cornelia, from your second, from the wife you really loved.
My older stepsisters have never come to you in this state; the mere thought of a bedridden pensionist in his eighties tied to a respirator and with an IV sunken into his left arm makes them wince. They're all grown up and too tied with their serious, personal affairs.
While I am a child at heart. And I remember you flying kites, playing cards with me, defending me from bullies... It hurts to see you prostrate, needing those oversized devices to breathe and to keep your blood pure, and eyes shut almost constantly... is this life? Is this a life worth living?
...
Gunilla, the eldest of us three, was and is a valkyrie, a warrior, aggressive, dynamic, powerful, always looking before she leaps. A predator, thirsty for blood, for power, for excitement, and for approval. Regina, the younger twin and the middle child, was and is a knowledge seeker, aloof and reserved, always thinking things through and planning every step... but no less ambitious or ruthless.
At least one of them had to destroy the other. Ever since all three of us told you how much we loved you. I love you, Papa, like the air we breathe and the water we drink. Their comparisons, Gunilla's Moët et Chandon and Regina's tailormade power suit, made my own modest honesty grow pale in comparison. Sadly your memories had begun to fade, and the flattery in their tone was completely lost in reception.
Remember that you disowned me and, leaving the estate, I went to live on campus with Ned? Our bohemian life was something society would deem crazy, growing pot in our planter box to unwind after long hours of study... Ned himself had not touched a croquet mallet either since ages - the two of us are kindred spirits; both disowned by their Papas on account of treacherous, sycophantic stepsiblings - as well as intellectual equals. In lively conversation and discussing existentialism, the days, the hours, five years of what others might deem squalour but that is actually modesty laced with young love and cultural interest have strengthened our ties. See this little ring on my left hand? Ned proposed to me and I said yes. And soon we'll say I do... Tradition comes first, now that the two young cinderfolk are reinstated and high society would frown upon their cohabitation. Though it pains me that you will breathe your last after you have lost, due to illness and impending death, the chance to walk me down the aisle, now that I am the heir to the fortune and your rightful daughter at last. Though also the wife of Edward "Ned" Gloster. As in that clever young man who once, as a boy, flew kites with the two of us and sometimes quipped about wanting to be adopted by our family; his own stepbrother had shown brutish and bullying tendencies, to prove himself, already in those sunny childhood days when he was the most ominous of threats. We retaliated by shortening his first name; Edmund Gloster became simply Mud. Though we've always called him Mud behind his back, and never to his face.
...
Dear Papa, your other daughters are gone forever. And so is Mud, remember? Mr. Gloster walked me down the aisle and there was a great chiffon cake and lots of champagne, though my brand new husband Ned and I stayed sober ourselves. Even though tragedy struck the love triangle formed by the twins and their bad-boy hypotenuse; a borrowed identity, a poisoned drink, a motorbike and sidecar plummeting off a cliff into the Kattegatt.
The last time I read the paper, I suddenly felt a pang of sympathy in my chest for my twin stepsisters and my future stepbrother-in-law, for whose heart and hand they vied - Mud remained stonehearted, heart as black as his leather jacket, in spite of both ladies' attempts to woo him... Then the two of them got one day most pleasantly surprised by the fact that Mud had proposed a rendezvous with Gunilla, to wine and dine her at the cellar of Freden itself.
But it was Regina, wearing Gunilla's little black dress, who first caught the cross-country train to Stockholm; having first locked her twin in the shed on the estate grounds. She had also gotten her sister dead drunk to knock her out, as well as to obtain the name of the quaint little old-town inn where they were to spend the night in the capital.
It was Regina who caught the daytime train; but her sister caught up with her that very night, having awakened and escaped through the shed window before leaving for the railway station, dressed to kill in a red mermaid tail. It was Gunilla who spent the night in the room next to her treacherous twin at the inn, while Regina was being wined and dined in complete decadence - unfortunately, she was sober enough to perceive what had occurred when the three of them met for a split second in the hotel foyer.
That day it was Gunilla's turn to be taken sightseeing on the town; Mud showed her the Riksdag, the Palace, the statues of royalty and old gods... while Regina did a little tour of Stockholm on her own, travelling mostly by underground, and returned home with a Systemet bag and a Jula bag. The former containing a Black Grouse scotch, of which she downed one third, and the latter containing Mellerud drain cleaner, which she poured into the dark-glass bottle of whiskey.
As you might have forgotten, "Gift" means something completely different in English and in German - in the former language it is a present, in the latter a toxic substance. The Grouse that Regina had tampered with for her own sister as a token of reconciliation and congratulation was both. Sadly, the shock of seeing a ruby ring sparkling like a drop of blood on her twin sister's left hand as a brand new ID tag to tell them apart was a surprise that made her forget, in shock, that she had to hand the fatal gift over. It remained untouched until that night at home in Gothenburg, when she suddenly awoke feeling dry and realising that she had brought over a fine scotch from her visit to Stockholm, surely as a self-gift and to console herself for her twin's better luck. Her thirst distorted her judgement, sealing the poisoner's fate forever.
The cleaning lady found Regina the next day lying still on the floor in a crumpled heap, like a lifesize doll, with drain cleaner on her lips and in a bloody puddle next to her. The official cause was stated as suicide in the press and administrative records.
It must have been some very wise person who said that it's fun to see the gunner blown up by his own cannon, "hoist by his own petard," was it Shakespeare? - I mean, every language has the proverb that whoever sets a trap falls into it, but whoever said that such events are fun, from the witch baked in her oven and Robespierre guillotined to Regina's untimely demise, could not be more right.
As soon as they read her death-rune, Mud and Gunilla, also back at home in our town, celebrated. That evening, he invited her on a motorbiking trip along the cliffs of the coast, to watch the sun plunge into the sea from a red sidecar while he himself drove the bike. Elated, Gunilla said yes to her fiancé. Little did she know that he had unscrewed the sidecar just a little - it was a death trap, he was meant to drive the sidecar over the edge of a cliff with her still inside. Little did she know of the impending betrayal. And little did he know that his trick would turn against him as well.
Unfortunately, Mud had not unscrewed the sidecar enough - as the motorbike fell into the Kattegatt with the sidecar still attached, before both of them were claimed by the waves, he yelled at the top of his lungs to his so-called sweetheart that he had never loved her.
The Fates had seen to the fact that the wicked got what was rightfully theirs.
Ashes to ashes, ashes that scatter like grey snow over the daisy-dotted midsummer green where you used to fly our kites and play kubb or croquet with me - my husband Ned holding me by the hand, both of us in mourning black, recalling the songs that played during your requiem service. No Lutheran hymns, but rather the hard rock and the Evert Taube that you always adored and that I have inherited from you as a taste in music. King Lars of his little kingdom will always be where I remember. Childhood, tragedy, justice, lyrics still on my youthful yet freshly-scarred mind; the song that plays inside me ever since I gave the order to turn the respirator off:

If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now
It's just a spring clean for the May Queen
Yes, there are two paths you can go by
But in the long run there's still time to change the road you're on
And it makes me wonder

Your head is humming and it won't go
In case you don't know, the piper's calling you to join him...

COMMENTARIES:
This story is partly autobiographical (when it comes to the problem of euthanasia)... and it's hard to see how Shakespeare's stories are very rarely original. For this day, I drew the Ace of Swords/Coat of Rushes as the card of the day and I knew that I had to take some pages out of the Bard, such as the names and the parent-child tension (between a senior parent and adult children) being far more lifelike than among cookie-cutter fairytale characters.
I also got inspiration from The Tale of Three Brothers by Rowling - as you may have pictured yourself when the ending, with the death of the stepsisters, was revealed.