The Mad Ophelias: Chapter 10
⧗ Sometime in the future.
Previously on TMO: Ophelia went to the gun range with SlyDevil and had a John Wick moment. Now we’re back in the future to see what’s happening with poor Wil, who woke up bound and drugged by MadHatter and her crew.
RESURRECTION. WHAT DID MADHATTER mean by resurrection? Just another Judeo-Christian reference, a resurrection of the movement?
Or a person?“Now will you give us any trouble, or can we untie you and be civilized?” MadHatter asks.
It’s not a hard decision. The pain in his lower back is a fire, and his hands are numb. But he needs to be careful. There are few knowns in his given situation except these: the Mad Ophelias have a fierce rep as expert strategists, so he imagines that wherever he is, escape would be close to impossible; regardless of what they say his life has little value beyond this media stunt, so he needs time to build a case for survival; if he’s online then at least Lucy will know he’s in danger and not quietly grading papers in his office on campus.
A strange irony—all her insistence on video surveillance, and now here he is, hoping that whatever happens next is something she’ll be able to see, in real time.
“I won’t give you any trouble,” Wil says, keeping his voice level, calm.
“Excellent. Because honestly, we’d hate to shoot you in here. The noise from a semiautomatic is deafening.”
The others smirk at that, but he pretends not to notice. The young Ophelia pulls a knife from her boot—a long switchblade with a mother-of-pearl inlay—and walks over to cut him loose while the muscular Ophelia by the door points the rifle in his direction. A dare. Her chin held high, finger on the trigger like she can’t wait to pull it.
“Hold still,” young Ophelia says.
He holds still and says nothing. She cuts the ties by his feet first, then his hands. Slowly he brings his hands around to his chest—his shoulders resist, a deep ache in the muscle—so he can rub his wrists. Pins and needles that burn so bad it makes them tremble, which he tries to hide by clenching his fists. He wonders what her code name is—they all have one, in addition to their number. She’s thin as a whippet, so that’s what he decides to call her, internally at least, Whippet. She could stroll into any of his classes, backpack slung over a shoulder, and fit right in.
Not like the muscular Mad Ophelia. She’s got the ferocity of a pit bull. Not only would she probably kill him in a heartbeat, but she’d enjoy prolonging his suffering first. PitBull. A name that fits.
Whippet heads for the studio light. She turns it on and it’s blinding, a piercing pain that makes him gasp. She adjusts it, facing the bulb to the wall so that the beam doesn’t hit him directly in the eyes. “We should have brought the whole light kit. The glare is going to be harsh.”
“It’ll do,” says MadHatter. “The production value should be low. Otherwise, they won’t take us seriously.”
“Warhol,” says PitBull, and Whippet laughs, some kind of inside joke. Meanwhile, MadHatter’s back in examination mode. He places his hands on his knees and relaxes into the chair back. She’s already got him on two weaknesses—his love for Lucy and his ambition. So he tries a yawn.
She arches an eyebrow, gives him a quizzical look. He turns his head and pretends to be interested in the technical paraphernalia.
“Live stream, huh?” His voice catches. “You must have…a decent encrypted connection.”
This bit of flattery does seem to land. MadHatter holds herself up a little higher. “We have Mad Ophelias embedded in all the major tech companies.”
“I bet you do.”
Whippet is listening but pretending she isn’t. She crosses over to the array laid out on the metal table. Flips one of the laptops open, starts to enter a password, thinks better of it, and turns the screen away so Wil can’t see.
Which means she assumes he’ll be making it out of here alive—it doesn’t matter if future corpses know the password. If there’s a darker plan in place, they haven’t looped her in.
And there would be a reason for that.
While Whippet works on the laptop, Wil takes in what he can of the room. It’s rectangular. Old. Really old—maybe 19th century. The ceilings are low, with rusting, metal pipes that crisscross. Cement walls with cracks that no one’s bothered to patch. No air vents that he can see—not the kind of space where people are meant to be long-term. A single overhead industrial lamp is covered with a thick film of dust. To his right is a massive power strip plugged into the sole electrical outlet which doesn’t look like it’s geared for its current load, or century. And in front of it is a rolling table with three large, monitors with darkened screens.
His guess is that the room’s primary purpose was for storage once, but there’s a derelict feel too, like they’re the first people who have spent any time in it for a while. The room must be secure though, otherwise there’d be graffiti, trash, needles, the remnants of addicts. The door PitBull guards looks thick, made of metal. Maybe an abandoned military barrack? An unfrequented stretch of the Seattle Underground? He doesn’t hear any traffic though.
The door is only about twelve steps away, but he’d never make it through. He could increase his odds if one of them had to leave the room. Feign a medical emergency? Another idea to file away for later.
“So why Women’s Studies? Why put yourself through that?” MadHatter asks.
Not the question he was expecting. Bit of a trap at the end that an unwary misogynist could step in. She’s good.
“Maybe to improve his odds of nailing pussy,” says PitBull. “Seems the type.”
He ignores the slight. “Why do you think?” he asks MadHatter.
She pauses, scrutinizing his face. “Guilt. For something you did.”
Out of the corner of his eye he sees Whippet throw him a curious look, something she immediately tries to hide by busying herself with setting up a pair of tripods with digital cameras. She’s too thin, really. Cheekbones pressing against her skin.
“Guilt for something I didn’t do.”
“Intriguing,” says MadHatter. “Let’s hear it. You can pretend this is a confessional.”
If only it were that easy. What he wouldn’t give for a few moments of queasy shame, followed by clear instructions on how to rectify it. A few Hail Marys, the sacrifice of not eating sugar for a month.
You would have made a great Catholic, Lucy had said to him once.
I did, he’d replied.
“Alright,” Wil says. “My father—my biological father—well I barely remember him and my mother destroyed all the pictures, so he was always more of a theoretical concept. And when my mother remarried…”
God, he remembers that day. She wore a polyester yellow dress and matching heels made of plastic. Beaming with happiness.
“…well my stepfather, he took a keen interest in my sister. I was too young to really understand what was happening. I just heard funny sounds at night, and I thought it wasn’t fair that she got to stay up later than me. Maybe I was a little jealous too—I was invisible to him, and he was always lavishing attention on Miranda, buying her new clothes, makeup, her own phone.”
He can tell they’re absorbed, but he has to be careful. Any hint of self-pity will end him.
“Finally one night I decided I had enough and I was going to confront him,” he continues. “I was eight. And when I threw open Miranda’s door, I couldn’t…didn’t understand what I was seeing. Why were they wrestling so late? Why wasn’t he wearing any pants? He shouted at me to leave and Miranda started screaming, which woke my mother up. I ran to my room, locked the door, and cried while they argued. I felt like I’d ruined everything somehow.”
His room—dark blue walls, a sagging twin bed and one lumpy pillow shaped like a baseball. He’d started to pack a suitcase, sure that he’d be sent away like his real father had been. A sunny day in March he’d come home from school to find his mother tossing out his father’s clothes, dumping them in a heap on the scraggly front lawn, dresser drawers and all.
“But the next morning, I came downstairs and it was like nothing had happened at all. Miranda was eating toast. My mother asked if I wanted my eggs scrambled or fried. My stepfather was reading the newspaper. I knew something wasn’t right, and I thought about telling my teacher, but I didn’t. And I didn’t do anything in the years that followed. Eventually my mother left my stepfather, but still, no one ever talked about it. Not until Miranda tried to kill herself and went into therapy. Although it didn’t wind up helping in the end. I was the one who found her body.”
A quiet falls over the room. His heart is racing—the only other person he’s ever told this to is Lucy.
“So Women’s Studies is your penance then,” says MadHatter. “Atoning for your sins. An ideological hair shirt.”
It strikes him that this is nearly the exact same thing Lucy said in the bookstore the first time they’d met. He’d been hosting a panel to help launch a colleague’s book on Mesopotamian goddesses. Few showed up.
There’s a tremor in his index finger, so he presses it against the plastic of the seat. “When I went to college, I thought maybe I could help change things. That it’s not the sole responsibility of victims to transform our broken, patriarchal systems.”
For a moment no one says anything. Both PitBull and Whippet intently watch to gauge MadHatter’s reaction.
Finally, MadHatter raises a hand with three fingers pointed upward. “Well then I forgive you,” she intones, making the sign of the cross, “in the name of the Father, the Son, and the holy ghost. Amen.”
“Awomen,” says PitBull.
MadHatter watches him closely. “But seriously,” she adds. “You were just a kid then. You had no power. No agency. You should stop blaming yourself.”
He doesn’t quite understand why hearing those words from a half-naked woman in red paint makes him choke up, but it does. Wil looks to the floor and swallows hard.
“Aww…now don’t get all emotional,” says MadHatter. She leans over and pats him on the knee. “We’re all playing the cards we’ve been dealt. The truth is, we don’t need you. We don’t need any male saviors, whether they’re the result of an invisible sky God fucking a never-ending virgin, or a dude like you who witnessed the fucked up in real life. The truth is we suffer from a peculiar disease of the mind.”
“What’s that?”
“Pleasing men,” says MadHatter. “Your mother—trying to please men. Your sister—trying to please men. Hell, the Virgin Mary—trying to please men. We’re all conditioned for it. Raised to believe that we should be quiet, nice, and obedient. That men are worth sacrificing our bodies for. Our lives. Our children’s bodies. Our children’s lives.”
She says it kindly, but there’s nothing kind about her eyes. Not a goddamn thing.
Whippet comes to him with a wireless mic. She reaches over and carefully clips it to his shirt collar, checking to make sure it’s switched ‘on.’ Scars run lengthwise along her lower arm. A suicide attempt, one that was executed correctly—vertically, not horizontally across the wrist. She must have lost a lot of blood.
“Thank you,” he says, but she keeps her eyes focused somewhere else and turns around, walks over to MadHatter and offers her a lanyard with another mic attached, and then heads back for the laptop. MadHatter sits up and places the lanyard over her head, adjusting the length.
“So,” says Wil. “If you’re not going to kill me, is this going to be an interrogation? The evisceration of a man who teaches Women’s Studies?”
“God, I hope not,” says MadHatter. “That doesn’t sound juicy at all.”
His confusion must show.
“You’ve got it the wrong way around. You’re going to interrogate me. Ask me your burning questions and all that. And I’m quite serious when I say nothing is off the table.”
Whippet slips a pair of headphones over her ears. Makes a circular ‘keep talking’ gesture.
“You see, we recognize that in order for our message to penetrate the male gender, so to speak, we need a male interlocutor,” says MadHatter. “Some of us thought we should find a true misogynist, not someone already labeled a cuck, but I successfully argued that a misogynist wouldn’t ask very interesting questions and it’d devolve into an ideological shouting match. Which would muddy our message. Our signal.”
Whippet gives MadHatter a thumbs up.
“And if I don’t agree to do it?”
“Let’s not go there if we don’t have to,” says MadHatter.
Right.
“Glad we’ve got that settled,” says MadHatter.
PitBull stands up a bit straighter, obviously excited that they’re finally getting the thing underway. Whippet types on the laptop keyboard.
One of the flat screen monitors flicks onto CNN2, a panel of three talking heads with a lower graphic that reads senate to vote on bill to make travel to canada for an abortion a federal offense. The sound is muted. The second monitor turns on to the live stream feed of him sitting across from MadHatter (1000 viewers so far, lots of streaming hearts), then the third monitor flicks on—there’s a commercial, again no sound, but a white woman in khakis is kneeling on her floor and running her hand along it, face beaming. A banner flashes across the screen we’ll beat any price and then a phone number with a Seattle area code.
Is he still in the city?
Whippet looks up from the laptop. “I just sent out the text.”
The number of live stream viewers jumps to 6,000.
MadHatter turns to watch the monitor, leaning forward. Wil gets an uneasy feeling in his stomach.
The talking heads on CNN are suddenly cut off by a breaking news graphic, and then it cuts to a close-up of the grey-haired host. He presses a finger against his earpiece, stares at the teleprompter in disbelief.
Whippet un-mutes the monitor.
“We have some breaking news from Washington D.C.,” the anchor says. “A group of terrorists have stormed the Liberty Foundation building…they’re holding several senators hostage. We have some cellphone footage—Sen. O’Neil streamed this before the phone was pulled from his hand. We warn you that what you’re about to see is graphic in nature.”
It’s shaky, but the footage shows a stream of women in camouflage pants, naked from the waist up and armed to the teeth with AR-15s, all with bright red hair. One is spray-painting #MO on a walnut-paneled wall, another spray-paints #RISE. There’s the scattershot of gunfire in the background, and then there’s a muffled cry, and it ends.
An opening salvo. For decades the Liberty Foundation had been a haven for the most extreme of the conservative legislators—they want to limit voting rights for women (they would count for a half vote), end co-ed education, make it illegal to hire a woman who has children under seventeen. All the fun stuff.
But what does that mean they’ll do to him?
“20,000 viewers,” says Whippet.
MadHatter settles back into her chair with a satisfied grin. “All right then. What’s your first question?”
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© 2026 J. Lincoln Fenn. All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction published as a serialized novel on Substack. No part of this work may be reproduced, reposted, or distributed in any form without the author’s prior written permission. First publication rights reserved by the author.
and THISSSSSSS: “The tickle of a baby goat licking dried corn off my palm. Picking straw out of my mittens.” Damn, those are SO good. You brought us right there to the farm in a snap.
a couple parts in particular that I adore: swapping wigs with the prostitute is such a grungy (not an intentional reference to Seattle music in the 90s…just a word that felt right) and desperate idea. Really beautiful. And, catching mice and rats for the family dog to eat alive is subtle horror at its finest.