The Mad Ophelias: Chapter 3
⧗ Sometime in the future.
Previously on TMO: Rattled by MadHatter’s dropped gun, Ophelia retreated to her fortified studio, realizing how complacent she’d become. Afraid MadHatter knows her past—and that even proximity to a firearm could destroy her—she hired Samuel to take her phone out and build a digital alibi.
A SMALL SLIP OF PAPER with the name of a cafe and time slipped under the front door during the night, he doesn’t know when. Footage from his surveillance camera reveals nothing but a strange glitch, a digital blink where they must have cut off the feed and stitched it together.
The apartment is abysmally dark. It’s five in the morning, and the sun won’t rise until seven.
You’re asking the wrong questions, the note says. Come alone. Medusa head stamp.
They know who he is. Where he lives. That he’s been searching.
In the months spent trolling the darkest haunts of the dark web, at first all he’d wanted was to bolster his book. A new line of inquiry he’d accidentally stumbled across in a meme, which led to a discussion thread, which led to a video that was scrubbed the next day. A fragment of cell phone footage said to show the first Mad Ophelia, alias MO1, alive and well, watering a palm tree on a balcony in Morocco.
Too far away to see the face. Just more fuel for the raging discussions that she wasn’t a sacrosanct martyr who’d driven a white van packed with explosives into a football stadium full of Patriot Keepers and blown herself up. That she was still alive. Out there somewhere.
It was a mistake not to take a screenshot. He cursed himself after. The Morocco angle, even if it was just another conspiracy theory, could have added an interesting dimension to Mapping the Mad Ophelias.
There was a well-documented timeline before and up to the suicide bombing, and then it went dark. Nine women were prosecuted and received life sentences, and although the media speculated these were only foot soldiers and the real leaders went underground, nothing else surfaced. The news cycle moved on. Wars, and poxes, and fires, and famines, and political scandals. It looked like the Mad Ophelias movement was over.
But his book had become a kind of obsession—he kept feeling like he was missing something big, obvious. Accounts hinted at a schism early in the Mad Ophelia movement. It was a line of inquiry he’d never been able to fully pursue—no one had. Any publicly available digital records had been carefully and thoroughly scrubbed, so 90% of what was online was a mix of urban legend, fear, and wishful thinking, depending on what platform you were on.
Until now. The explosion at a research lab said to have perfected an artificial womb. The live-streamed execution of a convicted serial rapist who’d been freed on a technicality. The poisoning of an attorney lobbying for mandatory jail time for a woman who miscarried—he considered it either a failed abortion attempt or a sign from God that the woman was ‘impure of heart.’
No one claimed responsibility for the incidents—there was no telltale graffiti—but they all fit the Mad Ophelias profile. Was it a resurgence? Copycats? Or were they false flag operations to justify even more restrictions on women?
And now, this. An offer to meet with an actual Mad Ophelia on the anniversary of the Patriot Keeper bombing. Original research.
The note names a cafe he’s a regular at, which means they’ve been surveilling him, physically or digitally. The meeting could prove fatal, or it could finally make him. He imagines interviews in well-respected journals, a literary agent, and a tenure track at a small, New England liberal arts college with autumnal leaves. A retirement account.
The possibilities feel like a soft, electric current just out of reach.
It could just as easily be the Corps trying to set him up. Technically, they’re not supposed to conduct operations in Washington state. Didn’t stop them from building a realignment center on Blake Island.
Wil listens to the hum of the refrigerator, the rumble of diesel trucks on the city streets outside, the call of an approaching train that will shake the walls when it passes. Something rank drifts from the kitchen drain. It’s the kind of place that passes for housing but feels like a prison cell, a small slice of a small Seattle bungalow split into three one-bedroom apartments, so someone’s always blowing a fuse. The only window overlooks a warehouse that recently caught fire. The bedroom is spotted with mildew.
Lucy deserves better, but it’s all he can manage.
Sometimes his collective failures make him feel like he’s thousands of feet underwater in a dark ocean, where the depths are impossibly cold, the pressure against his lungs crushing. He hardly sleeps these days—always the last to bed, always the first one up.
They must have known that.
He picks up his cell phone. He should call the cops. Someone official. That would be the sensible thing. Failing to report the note is incredibly risky.
He could wake Lucy up and see what she thinks, but even for something as simple as a trip to the grocery store, he has to keep his tracking app on so she can see exactly where he is at all times. Something like this could push her over the edge.
He could ignore it. Burn the note, pretend it never happened. Start the day like it’s any other.
But he finds his fingers tapping an email to the program coordinator at the community college where he teaches a few classes—sorry. killer migraine, won’t be in. will post online assignment—a lame excuse he’ll pay for later. Then he clicks through the surveillance app to the cell phone footage, deletes it so there’s no trace that could trouble Lucy if she gets up before he’s back.
Because they can’t continue the way they are now. Barely getting by check to check in a place with no sun.
He places the phone back down on the counter, camera facing the Formica. Can’t be too careful.
Then he flips on a light switch, opens the fridge, pulls out an egg carton, turns on the coffee maker and makes all the usual morning noises in case someone’s listening. Starts breakfast, the standard routine. But already in his mind, he’s out the door, walking down the street in the grey mist of the morning rain, hands deep in the pockets of his black wool coat.
And if he’s honest with himself, the truth is he’s excited. Maybe he’ll even get a line on what really happened to MO1. He tosses a plastic spatula in the air, and it circles before he catches it.
If, for some strange reason, the Corps finds out, he could always say he thought it was a student prank and that he didn’t want to involve law enforcement until he knew for sure it was truly the Mad Ophelias. And it’s a public place, after all, a mix of men and women, children even.
Not even the wildest conspiracy theory has ever accused them of harming children. He should be reasonably safe.
Emphasis on ‘reasonably’.
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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.
some tasty morsels dropped in here…