Hamlet was in his RB26 twin-turbo swapped 1967 Ford Fastback Mustang, waiting for Laertes. But little did Hamlet know that the reason Laertes was late was that he was hacking into Hamlet's ECU and messing with his car’s tuning. Everyone was at the race, Claudius, Gertrude and Horatio were sitting at the bottom of the self-proclaimed drift mountain. Claudius was in on the sabotage of Hamlet's engine. If Laertes could win fair and square he would but he had a button on his dash that would tell the ECU in Hamlet's car to cut the fuel from the mixture causing the engine to lock up. Laertes rolls his souped-up Nissan 270Z next to Hamlet, he looks at Hamlet and he looks at the button. He locks eyes with Hamlet and says “That's quite the Frankenstein build you got there.” Hamlet just looks at him as he revs his engine and smiles.
“Horatio and I have been working on it for a couple of weeks now.”
A woman walks into the middle of the road holding a checkered flag, Hamlet and Laertes do a mic check to make sure their walkie-talkies are working. Hamlet takes a deep breath and visualizes the whole track. He is interrupted by Laertes screaming “You killed my father, my sister and now you will be beaten by me!”
“I loved your sister, why would I ever in a million years try to hurt her” replied Hamlet. “Three, two, one, go” the woman screamed while waving her flag.
The squeal of the tires and roar of the engines could be heard for miles in every direction. Hamlet picks up his mic “Why would you ever think I would try to hurt her, she was the love of my life.” They hit the first corner and Hamlet pulls ahead of Laertes. “You never loved her, not as I did, she was my sister!” screamed Laertes. They get to the first switchback Hamlet and Laertes both grab their hand breaks but Hamlet takes the turn too wide and Laertes pulls ahead of him. “You treated her like a dog from day one!” Laertes said with tears in his eyes. Laertes pushes Hamlet's front tire over a cliff “Have you gone mad, I did no such thing.”
I have to figure something out, if I don’t pass Laertes he’s going to kill me. “Come on, Come on, think!” I said in an immense sense of despair. That’s when I realized what Horatio told me: “If you get into trouble, wait till right after a corner, unscrew the valve on the NOS and hit the red button.” I take a deep breath and unscrew the valve, we’re mere seconds from the next corner. Laertes takes the inside line. I grab my hand brake harder than I ever have before and the second I regain traction I hit the button, it releases the Nitrogen Oxide into all six cylinders and I feel as though I’m taking off like a rocket ship. “No, no, no!” I hear Laertes scream into the mic. We’re approaching the last turn and I’m ahead.
Hamlet is still sliding when I decide to cut the power to his engine. I yell in the mic “This is for my family!” I press the button and Hamlet's car flies through the air directly hitting the crowd of people. Horatio jumps out of the way, the King and Queen weren't so lucky. I don’t have enough time to slow down and I slam into his car.
“Hamlet!” I yell. I sprint to his car and pull him out of the wreckage.
“Ow, ow, ow. Well, that sucked.” Hamlet said to me as he was coughing up blood.
“Come on, you're okay, right. If you go I go, that was the deal.” I said to Hamlet with tears in my eyes. “No, I’m not worth it. I’ve made my mistakes and Now I’m going to pay for them. Horatio, you need to go and live your life.” Hamlet said as we both looked up to the noise of hundreds of motorcycles. “Come on buddy it isn’t your time, you need to stay awake.” I said to Hamlet, whether he heard me or not.
“Is that Fortinbras’ crew? All of this, this whole adventure, just to curl up and die. I wanted the kingdom.” Shortly after that statement Hamlet breathed his last breath.
Fortinbras and his crew parked next to the crash. He walked over to me and the first words out of his mouth were “What’s going to happen to his kingdom?”
“I don’t know.” I replied.
“Who will rule it?” he asked me.
“It might be best if you did.”
Reflection
For this adaptation, I decided to merge the final scene from Hamlet with the final scene from Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift. I chose these because they are both head-to-head competitions to figure out who wins. In my adaptation, I decided to write the first two paragraphs in the third person describing the setting and the last four to be in the perspective of each of the most important characters in the scene. I thought that this would help build a more personal connection to the reader and the characters. Throughout the dialogue, I used a lot of commas to add dramatic effect as this is essentially a do-or-die situation.
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