The End
an excerpt

The groan started up again, and a lone, emaciated figure trudged up towards the stage. A figure with strange curled hair, and a big fucking frilly thing around his neck. When he finally stumbled or rolled or staggered up on stage, his face was in half light, which actually complimented the ghoul, inasmuch that it didn’t actually show all the crags and maggots and gross shit on his face. In fact, it seriously almost looked like that famous picture that hangs in every damn English classroom from first grade through the final year of grad school. The most famous countenance ever conceived besides maybe Greg House, MD or Elvis or something.

Shakespeare. Bill fucking Shakespeare was on stage in a Bangor coffee hut breathing heavily on a dude who’d just Spark Noted one of his plays. It was fucking intense, and better yet, it was kind of divine in its justice.
“Unnnngh,” Shakespeare said darkly, his eye narrowed and locked squarely on the heckler’s suddenly moist face. It was his left eye that did the looking. The right eye seemed to have popped out earlier. If it wasn’t so freaking terrifying, and Lewis weren’t there in person, he totally would’ve paid a comic artist to make a book about zombie Shakespeare campaigning for literary justice. He wouldn’t need any super powers, because he’s a zombie, and if anybody was around butchering the English language or Shakespeare’s plays or something, he could just stalk on over to the person and eat his brains. It’d be fucking awesome! Lewis had to tell Tim about The Crusades of Zombie Shakespeare the next time he saw him—if anyone could do the idea any justice at all, it’d be Tim Bisley, Lewis’ very best drinking buddy and part time comic artist.

“What a strange and surreal costume. Shakespeare, but,” the man on stage trailed off, trying to figure out just what zombie Shakespeare was about. Either he was failing or his awesome Spark Notes power was failing him. Lewis hoped it was the later, just so he could see zombie Shakespeare in action. God, it’d be better than Evil Dead. Lewis found his hands clenched at his thighs while he leaned forward in anticipation of the oncoming slaughter. The man finally found the rest of his sentence from the depths of his brain, or possibly his ass. “I get it, you’re Shakespeare’s ghost, right? You’re supposed to be like the ghost of Hamlet’s father? Cock a doodle dooooo!”

“Grrrrrrrnh.”

The heckler laughed. At least he had a better sense of humour than the chick who’d spoken before him. The one with the jiggling bongos. “That’s great. Cool. You should definitely smite the girl behind me though; she wouldn’t know a great sentence from one that’s been chomped on in Babelfish, seriously.” He laughed some more, leaving zombie Shakespeare with an incredibly bored look on his pasty and unexpressive face. Maybe he was actually very excited, Lewis couldn’t technically tell from his spot at the back of the room.

At any rate, zombie Shakespeare shuffled forwards with a heavy tread. His lower jaw sunk open towards his chest with a wheezed growl that whistled through his black and rotting teeth. His mouth was really moist for a dead person. Bill Shakespeare’s breath, combined with the undead shuffle made the heckler retreat just a bit, so that he didn’t get any rancid spit on his nice yuppie clothes.

“What’s your problem, dude? Just back off, huh?”

“Show time,” Geoff whispered from Lewis’ right. He was already twisted into a strange and unnatural pretzel shape in and effort to reach the machete at his back before Lewis could respond.

“Hey, Geoff, wait, I kinda want to see this. It’s The Crusades of Zombie Shakespeare live, dude, it’ll be hot when it’s a comic book and a movie franchise. Just wait, I want to see Zombie Shakespeare’s inner torment as he eats the fucker’s brains for shitting on his soliloquies like that.”

“What?”

“Oh fine, let’s roll.”