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This first story is a little bit of a spoof on Shakespeare's Romeo
and Juliet. A little? What am I talking about? It's
pretty obviously and extremely based on R&J. Anyway, one or two
minor details changed in the actual play, as you'll notice once you
get to that point, and if you know R&J pretty well, but this story
actually takes place after the end of the original play. It's not
particularly realistic, and not meant to be- it's just for fun.
Anyway, have fun!

A Lovestruck Romeo
My brother and I walked down the narrow winding road. The landscape
evened out as we left behind the base of a large cliff. The only way
through the rock face was the canyon through which we had just travelled.
Simultaneously, we realized that this was not a safe place to
be. Battle cries, which somehow had not reached us before, shattered
the stillness, along with threats and curses and, every once in a
great while, a cry of pain. That alone would't have bathered us, but
there were also arrows flying back and forth across the road,
uncomfortably close to us. With one thought, we dove for the ground.
"I think," Antonia whispered, glancing at me, "perhapse we'd do well to
go back."
I nodded, and we bgan to slither around. A sudden rumble made us
stop moving and press ourselves once more to the ground. Then the
top of the canyon began to collapse. Quickly we backed away as huge
boulders slammed towards the ground. Everyone seemed to freeze as
the rocks and boulders filled the end of the canyon near us with
about twenty-five feet of rubble.
"Ha-ha!" a voice shouted down as the noise died away. "You won't
get reinforcements that way, foul Montague!"
There was another moment of silence, followed quickly by an answering
roar of, "A pox on the house of Capulet, and upon all who would
believe that reinforcements were needed to defeat the likes of you!"
This, in turn, was followed by the return of curses, threats, and
battle cries. The poorly aimed arrows, too, began to fly once more
through the air.
"I guess we don't go back," Antonia stated.
I shrugged, then went still as an arrow landed an inch from my left
hand. Slowly I thawed again, at least enough to speak. "Do you get
the feeling that we'd be better off if they were aiming at us?"
"Indeed. Then we'd have no worries. I guess we'll just have
to wait 'em out." And so we tried to do. No-one seemed to notice the
pair of us lying in the middle of the road. But the aim of the archers
was bad enough that we were almost hit dozens of times. Neither of us
dared move so much as an inch lest an arrow strike us, so we remained
still. Right up until an arrow caught Antonio in the arm.
It wasn't bad, I foudn when I examined it. Only a scratch, really.
But it pissed me off. "Okay," I said, my words following my thoughts,
"it's not bad. But I'm sick of this shit! If we just wait around we'll
both get skewered! I believe we'll have to put a stop to this."
Raising one brow, Antonio asked interestedly, "What are you
suggesting, little brother?"
"I'm suggesting that if these idiots are no better at fighting than
shooting we can each subdue a side, at least until we're out of range
of these wild arrows."
A wide grin answered me. "My pacifistic little brother suggesting
fighting? Will wonders never cease?"
"It's not like we'll have to hurt anyone," I answered dryly.
"True. Pick your side then."
"Methinks I'll take the ones on the east. Always been my favorite
direction, east. Disappointing to have people shooting at me from it."
Another grin. "They aren't exactly shooting at you."
"Good point. I'd be a helluva lot happier if they were. Shall we?"
"Let's."
Within half an hour each of us had taken down the side we had gone after,
thanks,
mostly, to the fact that we managed to circle behind and take them one
by one- and the fact that, amazingly, they were as bad fighting
face to face as they were at shooting. Antonio and I met back in the
middle of the road, this time with around twenty men behind each of us,
their arms bound. Antonio greeted me, then turned to his group. "Okay.
Someone tell me what all this was about."
The apparent leader of each group leapt forward, faces identical shades
of angry puce. "What???" the leader of my group (who's name,
I was to find later, was Capulet) shouted. "You don't know?
You interrupted our battle without knowing what it was about? Why?"
I rolled my eyes. "Because, you idiots, your arrows weren't hitting
your opponents and were coming far too close to us! One actually hit
Antonio, and we were lying in the middle of the road, nowhere near
anyone you were aiming at."
"What were you doing lying in the road?" the other lead, who we were
to come to know as Montague, and who was both talle and darker than
Capulet asked, confused.
"Wishing you were aming at us rather than them so your
damned arrows wouldn't come so close! Now," I added in a calmer tone,
"if we untie you will you act in a civilized fashion?" Relcutantly
they agreed, and we untied them and their men.
I began to chew my thumbnail contemplatively, wondering what to do
next, and both leaders lept forward.
"How dare you?" Montague shouted, while, simultaneously, Capulet
thundered, "Do you, sirrah, bite your thumb at us?"
"What?!" I shouted back. "What are you talking
about?"
"Your insult, sirrah! You bit your thumb at us!"
"I didn't bite my thumb at anyone! I was just chewing on my thumbnail!,"
I replied, voice full of righteous indignation.
"You ... meant no insult?"
"None!"
"Very well, then," they reluctantly gave up on being insulted.
"So what was this whole thing about," Antonio repeated his question,
once everyone had calmed down.
"They killed my daughter!" Capulet replied sullently.
"Lies! Your daughter killed herself after you killed my son!"
A shocked look crossed the smaller man's face. "We never laid a finger
on your son! He poisoned himself after trespassing on my property to
defile the corpse of my daughter! And she only killed herself because
he killed her fiance, right there at her tomb! And after he'd been
exiled fromthe city! He wasn't even supposed to be there!"
Antonio and I both stared at them, but it was Antonio that finally
spoke. "I thought she was already dead at that point."
Montague glanced at him. "No. She was pretending, that time. As to
why he was in the city, that hussy of yours seduced him! He thought
he was in love with her, so he went to her tomb to say goodbye and
poisoned himself!"
"After killing good ol' Paris, so Juliet killed herself!"
"Oh yeah? Then why'd she use the rest of Romeo's poison rather than
stabbing herself like he did Paris, huh?"
"Afraid of pain. Pure algophobia."
Split between laughter and disgust, Antonio and I were staring at each
other by this point. "Do you get the feelign that we stumbled across
a really bad play?" he asked softly.
"That occured to you, too? Excuse me," I added, turning back to the
arguing clans. "Excuse me!" This time they turned sullenly
to glare at me. "Why was this girl pretending to be dead in the first
place?"
Her father frowned. "She decided to run away and thought that would
be the best way. It was a phase. All children have them."
Before Montague could retort (if, indeed, he had been planning to), an
ear-piercing shriek of "Daaaaaaddyyyy!" drew all of our
attention.
Capulet turned, shocked. "Juliet? But- but you're dead!"
Two figures approached, seeming to carefully ignore each other. "Romeo!"
Montague shouted, as he recognized his son, "We thought you were dead!"
"That was the point," the young man replied dryly. "We wanted
to run away together, you see- we'd already been secretly married- and
didn't want you to know.
"That's the Thing" the girl screeched, putting a definite
capital on the last word. "I don't want to be married to him
anymore!"
"Oh, yeah, and you're great to live with, too," Romeo muttered.
"What?!" both fathers growled at once. Then Montague
added, "Tell us everything. Immediately."
"It happened this way," Romeo began. "We fell in love-"
"Or so we thought."
"- At the ball a week or two ago. I was out walking, later that night,
in the orchard, when I saw Juliet at her window and heard he speak of
love for me."
Juliet shrugged pettishly. "I was smitten. It was the fifth or sixth
time this year. They just don't usually come along and offer themselves
to me at just the wrong moment! How could I resist? I didn't
know I was going to hate him!"
"We arranged to meet and get married the next day," Romeo resumed. "I
went to Father Lawrence and he agreed to marry us. Then I had Juliet's
nurse tell her."
"Which she did. She was certainly excited. Her 'little girl'
growing up and getting married. Anyway, I went off and met Romeo."
"We got married."
"It was an awful ceremony. No gown, no flowers, no presents, no
nothing."
"And we each went back hom. Part way there, I found Mercution and
Tybalt fighting. Mercution was my friend and Tybalt my new kinsman,
so I attempted to stop them."
"And got Mercution killed in the process," Juliet piped up.
"Not on purpose," he complained sullenly. "And I killed Tybalt for it."
"Gre-eat. He and Mercutio weren't really even fighting. You get
Mercutio killed and then kill my cousin for it. Just wonderful."
"Well, he killed my best friend!"
"Then you go and get yourself exiled," Juliet continued
wrathfully, ignorring the interruption. "And, of course, just after
you leave, Mother tells me I'm to marry Paris. So I get something
that makes me look dead. Then you come along, think I'm dead, and
kill Paris at my tomb. You're lucky I woke up before you killed
yourself! Since Paris was dead we had to admit you'd come-"
"So we both took some of Juliet's stuff so you'd think us dead and we
could slip off and ... well- live happily ever after."
"Fat chance of that."
"So ... Dad.... Can we have a divorce?"
The two leaders looked at one another, shocked. "They're married?"
Capulet whispered. "Why- then that means-"
"We're related!" Montague roared. He leapt forward adn drew the other
man into an embrace. "Brother! We must immediately begin making up
for centuries of strife!"
"Indeed, at once!" Capulet roared back.
The two younger people looked at each other with dawning horror in
their eyes. "But we don't want to be married any more!"
Montague shrugged. "You should have thought of that before you got
married. Why do you want a divorce anyway?"
"He snores!"
"She's afraid of exercise!"
"He's afraid of the dark!"
"She goes shrill when she's angry!"
"He gets drunk, and then he's really rude!"
"She tries to control my life!"
"Why not? It's a mess under your control!"
"My life was just fine until I married you!"
The two fathers shook their heads. "Be still now, children. You are
married and will stay so. Indeed, it was a very good idea. You ended
centuries of strife in that one act. Think how pleased the prince will
be!"
Juliet looked up at Capulet for a moment, then burst into tears. "But
I don' wann be married t' him any more!"
"That," her unhappy husband stated, "is another thing. She starts
crying every time something goes against her wishes."
"Well, that's better than killing anyone who annoys me!" she replied,
glaring at him.
"At least I don't faint ever time I see a little blood! I'm
surprised you're still conscious!"
"What do you-" the girl looked around, suddenly, for the first time
since reaching her father. "Oh," she whispred. "oh my..."
Her eyes rolled back inot her head and she fell towards the ground,
caught neatly by Romeo, who moved as though he had a fair ammount of
practice, before landing. "There she goes again," he moaned.
Antonio and I were staring about. This was impossible! It had
to be some kind of joke! Suddenly, shakinghis head in disgust, Antonio
moved forward, too the hand of each of the two leadrs, knicked each
wrist, and held them together, allowing the blood to mingle. "Okay,"
he stated. "Now you're blood brothers. Never again can you harm one
antoher any more than you would a brother by birth. Now let the
children get a divorce and cease this stupidity!"
For several seconds everyone stared at him. Then, one by one, heads
began to nod. "Yes, that makes us closer family than the children
marrying," Capulet nodded thoughtfully. "That works."
"And since the children are now cousins by blood, they really shouldn't
marry anyway," Montague agreed. Ignorring his son's sigh of relief,
he continued, turning to us, "Yes, you're absolutely right! A
wonderful idea! Come back with us to the city. We shall have
a feast celebrating the end of the war, and you shall be the guests
of honor! Come!"
Speechless with amazement, Tony and I followed the two new brothers,
who now walked arm in arm, followed by their squabbling offspring and
sullen guards, towards fair Verona.

So that was A Lovestruck Rome.
To read my other stories, go back to my writing page.
Or just go on back to the beginning o' my page.