VERSUS: Match One!

WHO: Edgar Allan Poe VERSUS William Shakespeare

PREDICTED WINNER: Poe.

WHY: Poe's wirey and cranky and he's deeply devoted to whatever passion he's fulfilling at the moment.

LET'S GET IT ON!!!!

Poe didn’t care where he was—didn’t even care that after turning down a foggy alley in his beloved Boston the ground beneath his feet had changed from the uneven cobblestones to slimy, pitted earth. All he cared about was finding out where that wonderful smell was coming from. Oh, the sweetness of it. Like burning sugar and cut wood. Whiskey.
After spying a troop of drunken ne’er-do-wells flopping out of a doorway, singing aloud to a song with no melody, Poe figured he’d found his destination. The place was small, dark, and dirty. Just the place for his weary mind and heavy stomach. Again, his tunnel-vision prevented him from noticing that he was being noticed. Everyone in the place was glaring at him. But he sat down and ordered a whiskey. Silently, the inn keeper filled a wooden cup with the brew and gave it to the large-headed man with dark eyes. Poe took a single sip.

“This is terrible,” he said. Then he slugged it down and ordered another. But before he could bring the bowl to his lips, there was a commotion behind him, drawing his attention. A puffy-shirted gentleman came into the bar hollering incessantly about something or other. Poe’s head throbbed too much for him to care.

The huffy man slammed his hands on the bar and bellowed a guttural bark of frustration. Then he turned and looked at Poe, his eyes scanning him up and down like they were on springs. Poe admired the man’s costume, complete with starched, frilly collar. He certainly was a dandy. Must be part of some traveling group of actors up from New York, he thought.

“Sir,” the man said to Poe. “Be thee an alien?”

Poe looked at the man from the corners of his eyes. There was a striking familiarity to him, but the horrible alcohol was already clouding his overcast mind. He simply nodded and drank down his whiskey.

“From where dost thou deliver?” the man asked.

“Boston,” Poe grunted.

“Boss tone,” the man repeated. “Be it near far-Germania?”

Poe set the cup down on the bar and sighed, motioning the inn keeper for a refill.

“If you pardon me, sir, I wish to drown my sorrows in quiet melancholy,” he said. “I bid you good afternoon.”

The man took a step back, his round face reddening in the cheeks as if his wide collar had suddenly gone tight.

“You address me thus?” he huffed.

Poe turned on the man. He just wanted a quiet afternoon with his favorite vice, his most recent muse. Why wouldn’t this over-educated buffoon simply let him drift into maddening inebriation? Instead, he chose to ignore the gaudy purveyor of stage-English and downed his whiskey hurriedly.

But then the man’s hand gripped Poe’s shoulder and thrust him backwards, spilling his wooden cup of liquor.

“Dost thou take me for a rogue?” the man demanded. “Am I little more than the shite ‘neath his lordship’s heel?”

At that instant, Poe saw the man’s hand slipping closer and closer to one of the many belts he wore around his waist—the one carrying the small dagger. Without much need for mental clarity, Poe took up the nearest weapon to him, the wooden bowl, and tossed it into the brash bastard’s face. And in the instant the man closed his eyes and reacted to the projectile, Poe leaned down and charged his rival, slamming his large head into the man’s soft belly.

The two fell to the floor in a tangled heap, Poe doing his best to land a solid hit through all of the fabric the man wore. When that failed he raised up slightly and brought down both hands onto the man’s nose with the force of a meaty hammer. The man yelled in pain and flung his attacker off, curling into a ball. Poe took the opportunity and lashed out with his leg, the wooden heel of his boot connecting firmly with the side of the injured man’s head.

The man went down, groaning. Poe strode up to him, towering over his prostrate frame. He could hear the soft whimpers of defeat coming from the loud-mouth’s bloodied lips. My God, how good he felt. It was the first fight Poe had ever won. All those times as a child when he was the one bleeding came back to him. Like the ghosts of so many of his stories, the faces of the bullies lingered just out of his field of vision. And they made him angry. He wanted them to watch, wanted them to be afraid. He’d tried it with words with some success, but now he would give them something new to fear. Something new to himself.

Poe lifted his leg and brought the heel down again. The patrons in the bar gasped in horror. Good. They gasped when he did it again and again. Soon they stopped gasping, but Poe did not stop. Not until he was drunkenly satisfied.

He left the bar, trailing bloody shoe marks in the rugged dirt road. And after a bit of wandering, he passed through the fog bank and tripped over the memorable cobblestones. When he woke later that night, still in the alley, he found it hard to walk. Upon returning to his apartment, he discovered the heel of his shoe was missing and his trousers caked with dried gore.

With his head buzzing from the inferior whiskey, he lay down. Just before he shut his eyes, he noticed a small bust above his writing desk. It was of a huffy man with a too-wide collar, with similar features to the man Poe had bested the previous night. The engraved name: William Shakespeare.

WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED: Basically, Poe went ballistic and took his adversairy by surprise. I think that had Shakespeare been given another heartbeat, he might have pulled that knife and stuck Poe, ending this early. But Poe's built up rage actually worked to his advantage here. He lives to fight another day--probably with his own demons, though. And he might not win that one.