Ophelia Unknown

The house has an articulated skeleton; shifting forward one story at a time, the attic forever interrogating the front steps. It leers with its cyclops eye, a round window reflecting the rippling grass, the cottonwoods, and a woman in a battered raincoat book ended by two stolen duffel bags.    

Purple? Probably the reflected character in the window is a little too close to looking in a mirror, front and center on everyone’s most hated trope list. 

The support beams are long pale rib bones, forming a cavernous porch. The door is a rectangular shadow, a mouth metaphor would be a bit obvious but as I cross the threshold I relish the feeling of being swallowed.

I take my notebook out of my raincoat pocket and scribble

the house has an articulated skeleton.

Kind of a boring verb, “has.” I flip it closed, the title on the cover reinforcing the notion that my words are still relatively cheap. Not bad, not good, but maybe something one day. 

The title started the fight. I’d been getting dressed. We’d lived together for so long flashes of skin while changing were as interesting as plain oatmeal for breakfast. 

From the kitchen Oliver read it out loud to me, laughed, and said I should turn it into a t-shirt for myself. 

It had struck a nerve. Not because it was mean. Not because I didn’t think it was true. In fact, he was probably right.

Naturally I broke his guitar, smashed it to bits on the hardwood floor. Then I high tailed it to Anna’s couch. She was dashing off to her gloomy timeshare in the Midwest in a week and offered me a “job” house sitting. Then she got sick and decided she’d give it to me for the next two months.

She says it’s mono but I suspect I’m the recipient of a pity vacation. She always knew how much I envied her, drooling over the Instagram account in times of procrastination.

I close my eyes. I can’t let my first in person impression of this magnificent oddity be marred by possibly true, but negative thoughts. I straighten my own articulated skeleton and venture further in, pretending I own the place, pretending I too, am a real writer. 

I twirl and bow to the pewter chandelier hanging over the foot of the stairs with its foot long candle sticks, dripping over the holders. I jump and break off a piece of wax, give it a good sniff, then let it meld with the junkyard of detritus in the bottom of my pocket. I skip toward the collection of odd mirrors, each one added by a member of the timeshare group. They slice me into bits and pieces as I wander down the corridor to the kitchen. Even the molding is gorgeous and strange, tiny screaming faces all in a row in the style of Greek theater masks. I pop my finger tip into one of their mouths. The depression is deeper than I expected. I get my finger in up to my second knuckle before I hit the back of their tiny throats, so deep they must extend behind the wall. 

The kitchen is less ornate, white washed, simple. I stock the fridge with my gas station haul, pulling the antique lever and stuffing it all inside, dry goods right along with the drinks and microwavable sandwiches. I think twice, pull the lever again and take out a bag of pizza flavored combos. I fully expect to stumble out of here at summer’s end fifteen pounds heavier and bedazzled in junk food acne. 

The table is vast, a chair on each end and a bench on either side that could hold at least four people. The surface could hold so much more. I imagine all my creamy pages splayed over the tabletop and grip the strap of the duffel. I’ve always had a weakness for kitchen tables over desks or couches, beds or even coffee shops. It annoyed Oliver, who liked to cook and was constantly cleaning my notebooks, reference materials, and laptop away so he could have a clear surface to work. On my birthday he’d made me homemade pasta. He didn't even use a machine. He still bragged about it, right up to the point I left. 

I tear into the bag of combos, crunching so fiercely my jaw grows sore, and guzzle a twenty ounce bottle of grape soda until my teeth ache. I grip the empty bottle until the plastic crunches in my fist. I have the whole beautiful house I daydreamed about the entire drive. It would be wasteful to spend most of my time in the one uninteresting room.  

“I will not be seduced by the likes of you!” I yell. 

The table remains where it is, impassive, mute. I cringe at my urge to personify every goddamn thing.

I need to get out of here. Once I do the table's siren song will be broken. 

I drag the duffel bags one at a time up the stairs. All my worldly possessions. They’re huge and unwieldy, army surplus, thudding against each carpeted step.

I lay the book bag and the clothes bag out at the foot of the four poster, fondling the heavy purple velvet curtains. They’re musty and dank, the perfume of old books. They must be hiding somewhere. I bend over and lift the bed skirt, three fully stocked bookshelves line the frame, another seduction. 

Work now, read later. Work now, read later. The mantra that had helped me finally finish a draft. Instead of succumbing to temptation I unzip the body bag duffel and lift the dead on arrival manuscript from the depths. 

“Time to liven you up.” I unfold its shroud. 

The first page is blank, I haven’t come up with a title yet and I’m not proud enough to put my name on it either. I flip the page, ready to face the truth of my own inadequacies.

I immediately strike through the first paragraph. It might have been good once but I've seen it so many times opening my document it makes me gag. 

At a hundred pages in I stop and try to take stock of something I like so I can keep going. In the Maybe something someday notebook I write Ophelia in cursive, embellishing it with vines and ivy leaves. I’m thankful each and every day that she’s my main character. Ophelia, the only reason I finished the draft. 

Light footed, lavender scented, quick thinking Ophelia. Burdened by intrusive thoughts and maintenance bills for her crumbling inheritance, a house not entirely but very much inspired by the timeshare. She walks her Komodo dragon through an equally crumbling neighborhood completely oblivious to her impending doom. Ophelia. Forever surprising me, skipping over my neat little plot points like stepping stones in a river, missing some entirely, splashing off to wade into the biting cold of the unknown. Killing her was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Was it because I couldn’t control her? A last ditch effort to fix her in place at last? I close the notebook and pick up the pages.

A storm blows in, wind and rain on the window. The plink of hail pulls me out of the story for the first time in the middle of the witching hour. It’s late, but there’s no way I’m sleeping through the storm so might as well keep going. 

I find coffee in the pantry. The creaking and settling of the house intensifies under the torrent, making me twitch. I take the mug and patter back to the stairs.

I never turn lights on at night in liminal spaces, preferring to stumble around blindly rather than disturb the darkness. When I walk by the mirror collection on my way to the stairs my face distorts from glass to glass. I gaze with dilated pupils at each of my demonesque faces, maiden, mother, and crone twisted around shadowy lesions. I list by the last mirror and wobble back on my heel. It was dark but there was no mistaking it. The shapes are all wrong. A halo of curls, turning on a neck to reveal a familiar face, not my own. The shadows are much more forgiving, the face as beautiful as it is in daylight. 

“Ophelia?”

She nods. 

I wrench the mirror off the wall nail and all.  

“Closer.” She wiggles her finger. I’m almost flesh with the glass when she whispers. “I love you too.” 

Her face jerks up and then drops out of the frame. My own face behind her. 

She’s gone before I can ask her to wait. 

At six in the morning I finish the first read through. It’s clear now what an idiot I’d been. Ophelia hadn’t had to die. Nothing in the plot had pointed to it. It was indulgent, a tragic ending that I’d created to make my work, what, profound? I crumple the offending pages and burn them in the fireplace in the library-living room. The storm has passed but the rain continues. I sweat in front of the flames. What was next? I had to rewrite the ending. But what was it and where was it hiding? 

When the rooms lighten I ramble through them, asking the unusual wallpaper pattern if I was a sadist and the antique lighting fixture what my ending should be, and getting no reply. 

I eat at the kitchen table, the manuscript lies on the table at the opposite sitting area. It’s been twenty-four hours and all I’ve done is cut its leg off. It sits, it judges. 

I finish my sour gummy worms and hot pocket in the library-living room and take one of the books down. It’s an arc about a woman who forgets her last name who is menaced by a killer umbrella. At first when I open it I just suspect it has a few extra end pages, but each one is as blank as the last. I grab another, killer mermaids. Blank. The shelf and a half of Tolkien, blank. Gaiman, blank, Shakespeare plays, blank, Miss Marple, blank, Anna’s breakout romance novel at the height of the vampire craze, all of them, blank. One at a time I place them all back in their homes. It’s easier to pretend this isn’t happening when the evidence is neatly hidden again. 

I get my phone out of the bedroom and try the front door. It’s unlocked but it doesn’t budge. A seam of wood in the cracks.

It rains. The house creaks.  I try the windows and other doors with the same result, and make my way back to my starting point. I press my back against the door and slide down it, dialing Anna, one hand over my eyes as I wait for her to answer. 

“What’s up?” Her voice crackles with static. 

“The house is haunted.”

“Well duh, that’s why we bought it.”

“It’s trapped me in.”

“Oh.”

“That’s the most suspicious ‘oh’ I’ve heard in my life. Spill now. I’m losing my mind. I’m talking to home decor.”

“Don’t worry. It’s done something like this before. With Max. After his mother died.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want you spooking yourself. And honestly I thought you were over Oliver. It shouldn’t have any ammunition like it did with Max.”

“I’m not upset about Max.”

“He was kind of a tool.” She says but it comes out he/kind/a/ool. 

“Yeah, I know!” I stomp my foot like a petulant child. Embarrassment makes me angrier but I bite it back. “I’m sorry, I’m stupid. This is so stupid.”

“Sh, sh. It’ll be alright. It’s not malevolent.”

“What isn’t malevolent about trapping someone?”

“Well, not much. Max said it was treating him like an author treats a character. It was heaping trouble on him, trying to tell him something..” Static hisses through her last word.

“Tell him what?”

“He wouldn’t say.” 

“Okay, okay.” I’m gasping for air. My lungs feel over and underinflated at the same time. 

“Just calm down. I’ll stay-”

“Anna?” Silence. “Anna?”

The screen confirms a dropped call. 

I go limp for a while, trying to find an equilibrium I’m not sure exists. Through my fingers, I spy the mirror wall; a patch of lighter wallpaper, diamond shaped. The mirror is gone. 

Too afraid to sit still I wander the house searching for it, waiting for a rug to trip me up or the lights to flicker, but things stay relatively calm. I check the books again, still blank, the ones in my duffel too. 

“If you’re going to trap me you could at least let me have some reading material!”

The house remains infuriatingly silent. I check the fridge, and all the cabinets, the manuscript watches me. I bump my hip on the corner of the table and the blank top sheet sails off the table and whisks over the floor, the corner slipping under the cellar door. I unlock the door, stepping over the top sheet and pulling the chain. 

Nothing much here. Some canned goods and cleaning supplies, an unfinished white blouse hangs on a dress form with only one sleeve and a pattern of cherries, dust, spiders. 

I find it in the darkest corner. It’s cracked, with a little diamond shaped piece on the floor beside it, a scrap of the cherry cloth underneath. I cut myself on the shard putting it back in place, a red fingerprint on the glass. I suck my finger and walk through lavender scented dust motes to the slanted door. 

With a shove of my shoulder the door opens, banging on its hinges. It’s still raining but a shade tree shelters me from the worst of it.  

I try my phone. 

“Lydia! Are you alright?”

“How long did you know?”

“Know what?”

“That I liked women too?”

“Thank God.” She sighs, coughs deeply, dryly. Maybe she really wasn’t lying about being sick. Dishes clatter.. “I never knew-knew, you know? But there were clues.”

“Clues?”

“Like when I first met you at Max’s party. You were drunk and told me my hair was like a North Carolina sunset.”

“Ew, gross.”

“It wasn’t your best. You could do way better now.”

“With pick up lines, or similes?”

“Similes. That other stuff you’re still a disaster. I mean I’ve seen you at book club, and the grocery store,” she pauses, probably sipping tea to soothe her throat. “And the library, and the park, and that time with the repair woman, that was awe-inspiring really.”

“Okay, I get it, I get it.”