Such Sweet Sorrow by Jenny Trout

symbols; one depicted a chalice spilling its contents, the other the same chalice being filled. The shades pursuing the screaming woman drove her toward the gate with the spilling cup.
    Hamlet considered the other gate for only a blink of an eye before he dismissed it. He pointed in the direction of the fleeing woman. “I suggest we go that way. And I suggest we run.”

Chapter Six
    Hamlet ran toward the gate before Romeo could relay the words to his feet. The shade behind him slashed out, and Romeo hurried away, pushing through a crowd of souls to follow the prince.
    They couldn’t be separated. Well, that was just lovely, wasn’t it, considering Hamlet appeared to be the fastest man alive. Romeo watched in dismay as Hamlet grabbed the woman in blue and fell with her through the stone arch. Both of them seemed to snuff out like the flame of a candle, and the shades turned on Romeo, going all drooling acid and terror in a heartbeat.
    If the choice was to stay with the angry shades or follow the only man who could get him home, Romeo chose the prince. He rushed at the two shades guarding the arch, straight toward their grasping hands and gnashing teeth, and dropped to the ground as they snatched at him. He rolled beneath their floating forms and spilled through the arch.
    The air around him crackled, then changed, and he collided with Hamlet as he rolled to his feet.
    “Where’s the woman?” Romeo demanded. They stood in a long, round hallway. Overhead, doors of all shapes, sizes, and colors nestled in the curve of the ceiling. None of them were accessible from where he and Hamlet stood.
    The prince held out his empty arms. “I don’t know. She was here a moment ago. We went through the arch and she just…vanished.”
    The hall stretched before them, empty and mostly dark, with an occasional shaft of stark white light leaving large circles on the floor. Romeo and Hamlet moved toward one cautiously, and passed their hands through it.
    “Seems safe enough,” Hamlet said with a shrug. “I think this was what the corpseway showed me the first time.”
    “Where do we go, then?” Romeo asked. If they had a ladder, they might crawl through one of those doors, but ladders seemed rather thin on the ground at the moment.
    “I don’t know. I never stepped completely through the corpseway.” Hamlet’s thought trailed off as he moved through the light, sliding his feet cautiously along the floor. “Seems safe enough. Come on.”
    A chillingly familiar shriek sounded behind them.
    “It’s found us.” Hamlet backed slowly away from the direction they’d come. “It knows you’re not supposed to be here. It knows we’re not supposed to be here. Stay with me. Don’t go through any of those doors. Just keep running, and don’t look back.”
    A cold chill raced down Romeo’s spine. Until now, Hamlet had seemed so certain of himself, despite their odd circumstances.
    But now…
    If he was afraid, Romeo felt he definitely should be, as well.
    The shade whipped out of the darkness, its horrible, formless mouth gaping wide, lined with its needle-like teeth. Romeo kept up with Hamlet for a moment, but all too soon the fatigue set into his legs and lungs, and he fell behind.
    “How will we know when we’ve outrun it?” he called, praying the creature would give up its pursuit. Romeo almost lost track of Hamlet racing ahead of him.
    “Keep running!” the prince shouted back.
    As though Romeo needed incentive to run. Behind him, the shade’s cries echoed off the walls. For all the doors overhead, just out of reach, there seemed to be no egress from the tunnel, and the shade came ever closer. A black tendril of smoke lashed in front of Romeo’s eyes, and he ducked it, but only barely. His heart pounded hard enough to burst, and it might, he feared.
    Had Juliet faced these otherworldly terrors? Had she run from them, pleading, as the woman in blue had? Romeo knew his own fear, as the shades shrieked their pursuit, and he