The Mad Ophelias: Chapter 2
⋈ Sometime in the past.
Previously on TMO: The protest was a dismal failure — hardly anyone showed up. When a skinhead confronted them, a gun fell from MadHatter’s coat, and he ran — leaving Ophelia unsettled, not only because she didn’t know MadHatter carried, but by just how good it felt to get the upper hand.
THE SHELF-STABLE MILK expired three years ago. Ditto the freeze-dried eggs. Toss. Pinto beans dotted with mold. Toss. The ramen, canned beans, corn, peas, and Chef Boyardee should be okay, but the batteries are leaking acid, so those go in a separate trash bag.
Everything in the toss bag goes on the shopping list.
It’s a long list.
My house is not in order.
Milton curls around my ankles, and I nearly trip over him twice. Two years ago, I went to the animal shelter with kitten aspirations, but when I saw Milton, a one-eyed, furless wonder with a limp who hissed at me from the cage and bit me when I reached in to pet him, I knew this 12-year-old, arthritic cat requiring daily medication was what I came for.
I don’t know if he likes me, but we have an understanding. We see each other.
Toleration is a form of love.
What if she knows? What if it wasn’t unintentional? Because it was more than the gun, it was the way she laughed, like she was enjoying herself. The fevered look in her eyes after.
The chocolate bars are melted and bent. I open one anyway, and it’s got a coating of white powder. Toss.
It’s not a big house to keep in order. Just a studio with what the landlord called a den that’s about as big as a large walk-in closet. Curled up, I could probably sleep in there. Instead, I put up industrial steel shelves and hid it all behind a bookshelf on sliders. Glued books to the shelves so they don’t tip over when I need to access the space.
Which I haven’t done in…years. I’ve gotten comfortable. Soft. Complacent.
My father behind the wheel of the rusting Oldsmobile, watching people go into the supermarket, Mushy, mushy, mushy.
I picked this studio because it’s on the third floor. High enough to make it hard to break into, but low enough to escape through the window with the rope ladder that’s tucked under my couch cushion. The apartment building is brick, 1930s-ish, so the walls are thick, practically bulletproof. The first floor is commercial space—a coffee shop, a laundromat, a pizzeria that’s only pick-up or delivery. No egress to the apartments. Residents enter through a side street—a wood-framed glass door you buzz through to a small entry with worn, original marble floors and an elevator that works, sometimes. You need a digital keycard to access the floors in the elevator. A key to access the locked stairwell. Layers.
The window in my studio overlooks a dumpster in the alley. Across the alley is the back of an old department store that’s been unoccupied since the pandemic. Benny sometimes puts a tent up by the dumpster. He was an EMT until his wife and son were murdered—random home invasion kind of thing—then he started using. If I see he’s out there before I take the trash out, I make him a sandwich or bring something hot. Because I get it. And because he’d be a witness, and a witness is a deterrent. Layers.
I get a ping on my burner phone that Samuel is five minutes away.
My cell phone is face down in the kitchen drawer with the sound turned off. I can sense the notifications piling up—SlyDevil for sure, probably Eyasi too. But I need to get my house in order.
Granted, it’s not much. 428 square feet. Plumbing is a constant issue. The hallways smell like mildew and wet dog. But it’s a kind of home. A kind of life. I’m not, as my father predicted, huddled in the basement with him, counting the jerky sticks while the world goes through the death throes of some form of apocalypse.
There’s the small, round bistro table I picked up by the dumpster—a side benefit of my view is that when people move and throw out stuff, I have first dibs. A floor lamp my neighbor was going to toss because it didn’t work (all it needed was a new switch). The sleeper sofa I bought with the last of the option money. Mugs and cutlery and a motley assortment of pans I got at a thrift store.
Now I don’t know if I’ll ever need to exit through the window, or have three months-worth of food, or two file boxes of medical supplies and cigarettes and whiskey to barter—it seems unlikely—which is why there’s a fine layer of dust in the den that’s making me and Milton sneeze. But the gun.
The gun got my attention.
My dad whispers, The world never goes soft, does it.
There’s no way to shut the ghosts in your head up. Not that I’ve found.
Christ, did I look up when MadHatter dropped the gun? Did someone two, three, four stories up capture my face in a picture, a video? Yes, officer, I’m aware I’m prohibited from being around firearms, but I didn’t know she…
So many media interviews—my lawyer’s idea—me with my pale blond hair pulled back too tight in a ponytail with an actual fucking bow. Shirts with Peter Pan collars. Pink or Robin’s egg itchy cardigans with pearl-like buttons. Trotted out for a nation’s inspection, answering questions in a babyish voice a coach had helped me with. A play to the jury members who’d decide whether I was a victim or a perpetrator. You’re lucky you look like a Disney princess, one of the makeup artists said, fanning her hand to dry the lightest application of mascara. I had to ask my lawyer what a Disney princess was. I didn’t know. I’d never seen a movie.
Then they made one about me. My face plastered in news stories all over again. Soon as I was old enough, I made an appointment with a plastic surgeon to make my nose crooked. He thought I was joking. The best I’ve managed is a long, curling tattoo of a Phaya Naga that arcs around my upper arm and left shoulder, with the tip of its horn ending at the back of my neck. Now people look at that first, not my face.
Socially acceptable mutilation.
What if MadHatter knows who I am?
What I’ve done?
But she did step in to defend OddsBots. And didn’t it feel just a teensy, tiny bit good to watch that skinhead run?
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. It’s no good. None of it’s any good.
I cannot, will not be that person. The one I was raised to be.
And where the fuck is Samuel anyway?
Focus on the here and now. Something a therapist told me once, back when I was trying that kind of thing. It never gelled, though—sitting in the leather chair, looking at a diploma on the yellowed wall, as if some evidence was needed that the person sitting across from you was duly licensed to probe all your dark bits. Are you angry at your father?
Isn’t everyone?
My burner phone buzzes at the same time there’s a soft chime as someone passes by the fake rock that houses my motion camera. Finally. But wait, what if it’s the police? MadHatter? The app, though, is on the cell phone. Something I hadn’t thought about and will need to fix.
Layers.
I’M RELIEVED TO SEE SAMUEL at the entrance—she’s dropped a few pounds since the last time I booked her on Tasker; her square jaw is more chiseled, and her hair is now a chestnut brown instead of blond. Calf-high black leather boots with heels that would end me, weatherproof parka with fur trim on the hood that looks expensive, chunky sunglasses even though it’s raining and the sun set an hour ago.
She adjusts her zippered tote bag over her shoulder, gives me an appraising look. “Been a while. I thought maybe you moved away or something.”
“And leave this paradise?”
“Right? I just got back from visiting my cousin in Yakima. At first it was nice but blue skies in winter feels so wrong.”
I pull my cell phone out from my back pocket and hand it to her, along with an envelope with some cash. When I came across her profile years ago on Tasker, she ended her ‘about me’ with just one word—discreet.
She slips the phone and envelope in her bag, not counting. “Same protocol?”
“Yep.”
“What are you in the mood for?”
“Up to you. Just not that Mexican restaurant.”
“I think it closed actually. I should have checked the reviews but I was hangry. Oh! There’s a new Italian restaurant in Belltown I’ve been meaning to try. How long do you need?”
What I appreciate about Samuel is that she only asks the important questions.
“Couple hours.”
“I’ll get dessert then. Bring you back some risotto and a tiramisu. Passwords?”
“In the envelope. And post five pictures of what you order. No, make that six.” I see the rideshare driver I called slowly creeping down the street in a white sedan, step back a bit into the shadow of the building, and give him a wave. As he pulls up to the curb, he’s careful not to splash through the puddle.
Samuel opens the rear passenger-side door.
“And the receipt. Bring the receipt back.”
She doesn’t try to hide her irritation. “I know the protocol. Not my first rodeo and all that.”
That’s new. Samuel’s usually more transactional, which is why there’s an extra under-the-table fifty in the envelope. No secret, though, that the gig workers are getting squeezed. I make a mental note to slip her another fifty when she comes back with the risotto.
Without looking back she gets into the sedan and closes the door behind her. The car pulls back into the street, reaches the corner, and turns left, disappearing from view.
My cell phone is on its way to an Italian restaurant. Or more precisely, my SIM card. A digital doppelgänger pinging cell phone towers, creating a location trail of handoffs sector by sector. Like pins pushed in a map. The images will embed time in the EXIF metadata, then when she posts to social media, they’ll be compressed, transmitted in smaller packets of data and reassembled in seconds, creating another place record. All of it is stored somewhere in a temperature-controlled data center.
I scan the street looking for witnesses, people who shouldn’t be there, parked cars with the engine running, anything out of place.
I hope to God I’m being unnecessarily paranoid. But hope hasn’t done much for me, up to now. God either.
So paranoia it is.
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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.
I'm so in for this ride.
Repetition of the word "layers"...brilliant.
"Toleration is a form of love"...spectacular as a standalone line (but also makes me wonder if it's applicable to other pieces of the story that will be revealed as we go, and even if it ISN'T that, I will stand by my first statement).
Cool. Thanks for sharing.