The Mad Ophelias: Chapter 5
⋈ Sometime in the past.
Previously on TMO: Following up on a note slipped under his door with an invitation to meet a real Mad Ophelia Wil went to the cafe, but no one showed up. Just as he was about to pack it in and go back to the sad apartment he shares with Lucy, a drug that was slipped in his cappuccino kicked in, and he collapsed on the floor. For new subscribers, you can start the novel here.
I SIT AT MY SMALL KITCHEN TABLE and boot up my janky laptop, the kind you wouldn’t mind tossing into the dumpster. A cracked cappuccino mug waits beside me, two packs of instant coffee and a splash of cream ready for hot water. I log onto the Wi-Fi from the coffee shop below me. Open a browser that routes traffic through three nodes. Pause for a moment when I hear footsteps down the hall. But they keep going.
Milton blinks at me from the couch, curled up against one of the arms he’s clawed to shreds.
First up is a quick search to see if Sen. Walsh or anyone in his camp has posted anything about the protest, the gun, my face. But no. We weren’t a big enough foil to warrant his godly eye or drum up donations.
Next, I type in MadHatter’s real name—or at least the one she’s given us. There are just a few hits and nothing that matches. A software systems engineer in Alabama. An obituary for a librarian in Albany, New York. A five-year-old who’d been named ’Lil Miss Autumn Queen.
I try using her name and address in one of those background search sites just to see if anything pops up that I could pay for—I have a credit card in Milton’s name for these kinds of things—but again, nothing.
She doesn’t drive, so no car, no license plate I could pay my dark web friend to use as a starting point.
Plus he’s expensive and I just paid the rent.
I lean back in my chair, which wobbles. Roll my palm over a pencil.
First initial then last name—tons of hits but nothing in Seattle—so I just use the state and the results narrow to an optometrist with poor reviews, a lawsuit against an HOA, a pedestrian struck in Bellingham—a woman, about the right age, visiting from Seattle for a yoga retreat, maybe…but no, she died. I lean forward, try a first name, last initial—nothing—try it again with the address—nothing—then just the address with her two initials.
Nothing.
MadHatter, MadHatter, MadHatter.
She’s using a fake name.
Like me.
I sit with that for a moment.
The first time we met was in Bellevue. I’d been tasked by my therapist to “try a small stretch outside my comfort zone” and decided on hot yoga because I was still taking things literally. Wound up surrounded by a group of women dedicated to the idea that a lick of body fat was a sign of personal failure. A set of unspoken rules I had no language for.
I decided to learn and became a regular. While technically competition was frowned on, they were all competing.
Whose waist was the smallest.
Who could go fifteen minutes without grabbing the water bottle.
Who could afford a personal trainer, a personal chef, a yacht—Are you on Keto? It’s amazing.
I just got back from an ashram in India. Have you ever been?
OMG, my husband is going to kill me when he finds out how much I spent at Jarbo.
Then one night I was in a tree pose wearing a loose-fitting t-shirt and sweatpants, wondering if this was how you girl, when MadHatter slunk in after the class started. Thick black eyeliner and bloody red lipstick in a room full of women going for the ‘natural’ look, long black hair pulled up into a sloppy bun that she might have slept on, and she was skinny, but far too skinny for that room. Her yoga pants were so long that they piled over her feet, her clingy black halter top sported holes, and she hadn’t bothered shaving her underarms.
A form of girl I’d never seen.
Everyone pretended to ignore her. She rolled her bright red yoga mat out at an odd angle and took her time slipping off her scuffed sneakers and mismatched socks, stuffed her socks in a ball before stuffing them into the sneaker cavities. Her bare feet were calloused, toes bent inward at odd angles, nails yellowed.
The instructor—some kind of Nordic name—told us to drop into a downward-facing dog.
MadHatter didn’t even look at her. Just pulled out an old Walkman, slipped some buds into her ears, and fast-forwarded the tape with a loud clicking and whirring.
We moved into a goddess pose.
MadHatter scratched her ass and started runner’s stretches.
Even I could tell that it took the group less than two minutes to try, judge, render a verdict, and decide on a sentence. All by a secret jury. All without a word. Smirks were exchanged. Eyes rolled. Laughter lightly feigned to sound like coughs.
But if MadHatter noticed, she offered no sign, and instead dove into a perfect firefly pose, although everyone else was doing a half-forward bend. She held it longer than seemed reasonable, possible, not a single droplet of sweat falling from her brow. A furious intensity that was somewhat otherworldly.
Like she was outside time.
Like when I had that mailman sitting in the bead of my shotgun.
The looks changed from ironic, to nervous, and when MadHatter shifted into a wounded peacock pose, it felt like an act of aggression, a dare. No one knew how to handle it. And for the rest of the class, she just did her own thing. Like she was simply using the heat of the room, our bodies, for her own purposes.
No one spoke to her after—or even each other—quickly packing up their mats, their clothes, and clearing out as fast as they could. She just toweled off her forehead and looked at the door as they left, like she was taking stock.
I lingered. Watched as she jammed her feet back in her sneakers, not even bothering with the socks which she stuck inside her bag along with her Walkman, leaving the headphones to hang from her glistening neck. She pulled out a piece of crumpled paper and offered it to me, like I was a feral dog hoping for a chunk of meat.
Which maybe, in a way, I was.
I took it. WOMXN UNITE TO FIGHT THE RIGHT. No description, just a date, time and location. Back when Grace ran the meetings at one of those large conference rooms in the library. Back when there was standing room only.
MadHatter didn’t even say anything. Not a word. Just slung her bag over her shoulder and left. When the door shut behind her, the room felt smaller.
I reach for my mug and take a sip of coffee—oh shit, it’s just room-temperature cream and instant coffee grit. So I get up for the hot water and realize I never turned the burner on. Still don’t own a microwave. Still don’t trust them.
Milton jumps down from the couch and pads over to me.
“You had dinner already,” I say, although I know he doesn’t give a shit. Instead, he plops down on his butt and stares intently at me with green, oval eyes. I wonder how far I could get in this world with Milton-level persistence. Anywhere.
There’s one thing I haven’t tried yet, so I go back to my laptop while the water heats up for real this time.
I open my password manager and click on our private social media discussion group, logging in with my bogus handle, @MilkGlassRiver. I’d sent a request to join over a year ago and because I’m an admin, I let myself in.
A lot of people who didn’t bother to show up asking how it went on the message board. RoskHill and Vajrapani chiming in with a recap, OddsBots offering a selfie in her still-damp pink beanie, sticking out her tongue, and…fuck, they’re talking about the gun. Lots of scattershot comments and exclamation points and cowboy memes, SlyDevil writing, in new york we call that tuesday, no big whoop. A post from Eyasi, a gun is not a toy, it is not something you play with, i have seen what guns can do, which tamped the mood down somewhat and caused the conversation to veer off into punch-a-Nazi comments and you go girl gifs.
No MadHatter.
I click on the photo album and scroll, scanning my handiwork. It’s easier to stay out of them if you’re the designated photographer. Plenty from our meetings over the years, plus our dwindling protests, candids I take when they’re looking somewhere else. There’s always something honest about them, these images. The real face beneath the mask they compose when they’re engaged in conversation. I know I’ve got several of MadHatter in her Capitol Hill apartment—she has a table big enough for us to all sit around. Big windows, but because there’s another building across the street, the light is always soft, filtered. No harsh shadows. I can use one to do a facial recognition search.
But I don’t see them. Gone.
I scroll back farther in time, letting my eye fall on the occasional group pictures that I know she was in.
She’s been cropped out.
The kettle begins to whistle but I ignore it, scrolling faster. I don’t keep the pictures anywhere on me, just here in the group album, and dammit, there’s no cloud backup.
Someone’s been erasing her from the record. My mouth goes dry.
There’s a ping from a new post, and I quickly click over to the feed. MadHatter sharing a flyer with a stretched image of Sigourney Weaver holding her futuristic flame thrower, curly hair wet with sweat, ready to annihilate aliens.
LADIES NITE
EVERY THURSDAY
Puget Sound Rifle and Pistol Club
Free handgun rental, waived lane fee first visit
Women only. Bring a friend.
A flurry of likes, hearts and a John Wick meme from OddsBots. THE QUESTION ISN’T WHO’S GOING TO LET ME. IT’S WHO’S GOING TO STOP ME.
OddsBots. The same OddsBots who once brought a stunned pigeon to the vet and paid the bill? The OddsBots who shares Kickstarters for cancer patients, who once literally gave the coat off her back to a homeless woman on a day with freezing temperatures?
And then another ping with a direct message.
you in?
I stare at it longer than I should.
Does she know it’s me?
Because what I want to say is yes.
Instead, I slam the laptop screen shut, yank out the power cable, and rush it over to the Faraday sleeve, shove it in and zip it.
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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.
Do it.
A microwave oven is essentially a farady cage too.