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Rosencrantz, or maybe Guildenstern, awoke with a start. The shutters were closed. There was no one knocking, no one summoning. She turned to the half-asleep form beside her.
“Hey,” she whispered, “flip a coin”
“Huh?”
“Please, just flip a coin.”
“All right.” With a grin her partner tosses a coin into the air. Heads. And another. Tails. Heads, tails, heads, tails, heads.
“I had a dream,” she whispered, “Where the laws of probability were suspended, supposedly due to the possibility of sub, super, or unnatural forces. And now, now the laws of probability are proving themselves with overly predictive regularity.”
“I….I had that dream. And, we were summoned to visit Hamlet, and Hamlet was supposed to die, but we died, we ceased to be, oh god are we dead? Rosen?” She frantically turned to face Rosencrantz, or maybe Guildenstern.
“Hey, now, it’s okay, shhh” She brushes hair away from her frantic partner’s face, cupping her cheeks in her hands. “I don’t think so. Maybe we were dead then, because probability wasn’t working. But probability still isn’t working, so maybe we’re dead now and alive then or dead then and still dead now, but it doesn’t really matter, does it? Because it seems to us that we are alive, given that we are breathing and our hearts are beating and we are not in a box, so we must just live the life or death we’re in, yes?”
“What?”
“It doesn’t matter. We might be alive, we might be dead, but it doesn’t matter because we can only live in whatever plain of existence we’re currently situated in.”
There is a knocking at the shutters. “Rosencrantz! Guildenstern!”
Guildenstern, or maybe Rosencrantz, holds a hand over her partner’s mouth. After a few seconds, the man standing on the saddle rides away.
“I don’t want to be summoned anymore. I want to go when I feel like going, and come when I feel like coming (I see that snicker, don’t think I don’t) and be my own master, not dependent on the wills of others, not trapped by their lives. I will not have my importance be defined by my death. I will define my importance by my life.”
“You know what? I think we found it.”
“Found what?”
“The point where we can say no. And we said it.”
“Yeah, we did.”
“Let’s go somewhere.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere we aren’t now. Let’s go.”
So they go, and after a few days in the woods, Rosencrantz turns to Guildenstern. Or maybe Guildenstern turns to Rosencrantz. It doesn’t really matter. What’s in a name anyway?
“The sun is setting.”
“Yes.”
“We should stop, for the night.”
“How can we stop, if we don’t know where we’re going? And really, can we ever stop? There is only one direction, and it can only be measured in time, and time never stops, thus, we are always moving toward somewhere. We don’t know where we’re going. We never know where we’re going. Do you follow me?”
“I love you.”
She is slightly taken aback, though surely she already knew this. “Were you listening to me?” It is meant as a harsh retort, but it is instead a soft whisper.
“I love you.” She says it with more force this time, looking her directly in the eyes.
“I…I love you too. You know that.”
“I can make you stop moving.”
“You can?”
“Yes.”
And she kisses her, her lips soft against her mouth, and maybe time doesn’t stop but it sure feels like it does. A hand brushes against her stomach, beginning to caress her hip, and two hands fly to her shoulders, pulling her against her chest, deepening the kiss. She moans, just a little, and if they move anywhere that night, they move only toward themselves, toward their life together. Or death. It doesn’t really matter.