Ophelia Immune: A Novel

by Mattson, Beth

  Kite and Carlos had disappeared into another room. I hurried behind them, glancing at all of the paintings on the walls. The office was unlike the other, childish rooms. It had a door with a lock that Carlos opened with a key. There was only one table. A metal one with drawers around the sides. There was a non-electrical machine sitting on a case of drawers. It had a big handle and dark, rubber rollers. It’s gears were greased and not rusted; it was nicely maintained in a way that Dad would have liked. He would have strode in from the Yard, a well-oiled rag in hand and offered to show me how to keep it in good repair. He would have whistled while we worked. He would have hugged me and pointed out all of the loose screws for me to tighten.

  “It’s a printing press. I can use it to make Flyers!” Kite clutched at my arm, beaming with excitement and then pointed to the next case of drawers. There was a phone, a real phone, with a blinking red light that was in working order. There was a large map and a stereo on the table. The speakers were taller than some of the girls.

  “This is where I do all of my planning. I spend most of my day in here,” Carlos said, “I can listen to the Rangers’ Channel and then all of the pins on this map are the Auctions planned for August, September, and October.”

  I complimented him on his nice map and mentioned to him that I could find anything on a map, as I had practiced it my entire childhood.

  “Driver,” Kite muttered.

  “Excellent,” he smiled kindly and continued, “Now, this phone only rings once in awhile, but I know a few others who have phones, nurses at the Hospital and the Morgue, who alert me to … Special Events.”

  “Wow, you know people who can go to the Hospital?” I erupted disbelievingly. Even if his nurse Wife had been too lowly for his esteemed Family, the services of a nurse were more expensive than most Families could ever afford. Only the Richest Families went to the hospitals when they were sick, even if they disapproved of working there.

  He gave me a golden grin, but became distracted when a short, stout older girl flashed the electric lights off and on in the rest of the warehouse.

  “Bedtime! Lights out in half an hour! Get your pajamas! Brush your teeth! Spit out your gum! Bedtime! Bedtime! Bedtimmmmmme!” she called.

  Smaller girls squealed and ran in every direction, their arms in the air. I gurgled with delight. I wanted to chase them and crawl into a cozy bed to listen to Human stories, to teach them about tightening screws and killing zombies. One of the silliest girls latched herself onto Kite’s leg, an assumed protector from sleepiness and bedtime. Kite looked down at her leg and shook it lightly with her lip curled in distaste. The girl ran away and ducked behind a long, sweeping curtain, her toes sticking out.

  “Thank you for the tour, Carlos. We best get out of your way for the night,” Kite edged towards the door with a sour look on her face.

  Carlos insisted that we couldn’t be in the way and made no moves to supervise bedtime himself, but he showed us to the door nonetheless. Kite and Carlos kissed each other’s cheeks goodbye several times. I twitched as her grey face brushed his copper ear. I never would have dared to touch his bare skin so casually. Didn't she know that she and I could only touch other zombies?

  The door clicked heavily behind us, cutting off the cozy glow. I was happy to note through the darkness that all eight of the locks were fortified from the inside with bolts and gears. They clicked and rolled, locking us outside together.

  Kite pranced nimbly down the stairs. She grabbed my hand and held it tightly as we walked.

  “Can you believe this,” she tittered, “This is soooo cooool!”

  “I like the Safe House, but why are we going to work with him if all he does is Buy little girls? Shouldn't we do more?” I asked.

  “Stop being so simple. Use that melted brain of yours. You can’t just run around attacking things all the time. You’re going to have to learn some Activism – some Community Outreach and Coalition Building. Carlos will be a great Resource for us.”

  I could feel her polished nails against my wrist. I tingled with the solid contact. I wasn’t going to let go until she did. We couldn’t make each other sick.

  “But what does he have to offer them besides money? Shouldn’t he find those girls’ Families?”

  “Geez, Ophelia. Let it go. Old Money is all anybody needs. He is Rich. Loaded. A club in every hand, cash in every pocket. Not everybody wants to talk about their shitty ex-Family constantly, you know.”

  I wanted to talk about my Family. My Family who didn’t really fail to see my Immunity, who hadn’t even seen me or failed to finish me, who might be missing me right now, who might welcome me back if I could find a real Cure. My Family, who had, in the past, when I had more feelings and could touch people, taught me to bake crabapples, to repair drive shafts, and crank the gears of any machine. When I could hold my Family on my lap and tell them stories that we all knew. I gripped Kite’s hand more tightly, and leaned my head against her radiating shoulder.

  She winced away.

  “You’re so scratchy and pointy with all those little kid braids. Do you like your hair this way?”

  “It's how my Mom used to do it.”

  “Well, let's turn you into something besides a baby. You act like a Homo, we might as well make you look like one.”

  “Homo?”

  She dragged me upstairs and slammed me into my chair, her bright red nails digging into my shoulder as she beamed from behind me with a pair of scissors. I didn't care how hard she made me tingle, as long as she stayed near. I sat still and quiet, looking up at her past the shearing blades. If she cut me and I bled on her, it was ok. She wouldn’t die. I couldn’t make her sick. She could cut me. Her knuckles brushed against my face as she trimmed.

  My twisted, familiar locks fell all around us on the floor, the tiny shards tingling and itching on my skin while Kite stomped around me, cutting until my scalp could feel the draft. When she was done and my head felt naked, she poked and prodded me until I stood, squinting in front of the unhidden bathroom mirror.

  “There, now you look better. Open your eyes and see.”

  I didn’t quite look like me. I didn’t have long enough hair to make braids or clip any barrettes, those were all Juliet's now. I looked like a grown-up. I must be seventeen by now. Not a child with pigtails and an ax too big for her britches. I stood up very, very straight and frowned seriously. I flexed my muscles. She kissed my bare forehead, no longer hidden by coiled ropes of hair.

  “Good, isn’t it? You look like a Hot Tart. Very adult,” she pushed me out of the bathroom, “Now, get out of here. You got bristles all over me and I have to shower.”

  I leaned against the closed bathroom door, feeling the spot where she had kissed my forehead, listening to her turn the tap on to its full trickle, staring down at the pile of her removed clothes – her unbuttoned shirt slumped over her limp denim shorts and lacy, polka-dot undershorts – all scented with her lavender oil. I scratched my chin where a flea had bitten me a few days earlier. I sniffed my arms – musty and covered in trimmings. I bet the flea had died when it bit me. Maybe I should shower, too.

  I knocked on the door. It thudded loudly, ringing with my presence.

  “May I come in?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  I turned the knob. The wet, heavy air wrapped around me. I stepped inside and shut the door behind me. I stood very still on the dingy tile. She slid the curtain to the side and poked her head out.

  “What do you want? You need to shower off your trimmings?”

  I leaned in and kissed her forehead like she had kissed mine.

  “Thank you,” I said and blushed.

  “Oh, wow, you are a homo!”

  She clapped her hands lightly, and then she touched me again – first with her fingertips and then with her lips.

  She put her wet, lavender-covered mouth on my slimy grey green one. I didn’t pull away. I pushed my face harder against hers, moaning. She moaned in return. We rattled.

/>   She wrapped her hands around my arms, giving them tight squeezes. She put her hands on my back and squished my whole torso. She hugged me with her naked arms and got my shirts all wet while we kissed and kissed and kissed until my lips tingled, too. My fingers left marks where I gripped her sides.

  I let her run her fingers along the bottom of my shirt. She breathed against my cheek. She pulled my first shirt off. In a fit of glee, I pulled off my next two shirts and giggled with her. I unbuttoned my jeans. I toed off my socks. I removed my last shirt, and then my underwear. I was naked with her.

  I closed my eyes and let her touch my armpits. Her fingers were hot and wet. I climbed into the shower. We stood in front of each other. And then our skin touched from head to toe. Head to toe. So much skin. Ankles, knees, everything. Touching. The whole lengths of our bodies.

  I tasted her mouth. It was saltier than mine. I tasted her neck. It was sweeter than mine. I didn’t bite her. I just ran my teeth along her skin, so that she could feel it.

  Our fingers laced and ran over every inch of the other. I tingled. I tingled in my soles, in my ears, and on my lips. I tingled from my head to my toes, and my middle flamed so loudly that I didn’t know if I fell down or sat down on the porcelain. I didn’t know if we walked or crawled back to the closet. I couldn’t tell which way was up when our knees knocked and my spine tingled and we fell asleep in a tangled heap.

  This wasn’t the front seat of a car. We weren’t breeding. We weren’t working to make or save anyone else. We were just making and saving each other, touching who we could – hard enough to feel the pressure, hard enough to feel what heat we could create. We could take care of each other.

  The Friends

  I woke up alone in the closet, underneath blankets that Kite had dropped onto me, her piles of lavender discards. I didn’t rush to find her. My muscles were loose and pulverized, relaxed to have been used. I could be wrestled with, I could be kissed, I could be slept against. I wasn’t a lonely child, stuck by myself in the backseat, or alone in the world with no one to touch. I could be left to sleep in our shared closet while my lover got up to make coffee and turn the radio on. She would be sitting by the window, my Little Sister at her knee, a regular Family portrait. We would embrace, have breakfast and hold hands as we worked to save the little girls whom we wanted to someday be as lucky as we now were.

  But when I opened the closet door, I couldn’t see Kite’s face. She was hunched over the dining room table, leaning and grunting into a slab of plywood, pushing an awl against the ruts in its surface. She blew the sawdust from the piece of square scrap and held it up for me to see. She had carved a small girl sitting proudly on top of the petals of a blooming flower, her arms tossed up to the air in victory.

  I leaned in for a kiss, but she brushed me away.

  “Come on, Sleepy Head! Slow Poke! Let’s get to the Safe House. I want to use my carving to make some Awareness Raising Flyers on the printing press!”

  “Ok, sure. But first I need to untie Juliet, give her a little attention and exercise, get her some fresh water.”

  “Geez Ophelia, don’t ruin a good morning by talking about your pet.”

  “She’s not my pet. She’s my Sister. You know this.”

  “She’s a zombie.You know this.”

  “So are we. But if we could find a real Cure, all of us could …”

  “There is no real Cure! Must I teach you everything?”

  “No, my Family taught me lots.”

  “Family is the stupidest thing I have ever heard of, Ophelia, and I am glad that mine is gone.”

  “Kite, you can be my Family. We can Love each other and be Family.”

  “We are just Friends. Family is nothing. I will show you.”

  She marched me, in my shorts and mismatched half-sweaters, all the way to the Park by the River. The River was full of fish, so there were no Humans around, certainly none with any common sense. She threw me down on the soggy grass. I clung to her waist, trying to appease her anger, trying to find where she was hurt, wishing that we were still asleep in our closet. She flung me off of her and raced to the water’s edge, plunging in up to her knees.

  “Nooooo,” I screeched, “Don't go in there! There are fish in the water!”

  “So? So what?!”

  She stooped and dragged her hands through the vile water, tempting the slimy, scaly monsters to bite her, their vacant, bulging eyes looking at nothing while they circled her wrists in the dark, willing to eat anything, not caring if it was food. She brought her hands together and stood up, a writhing grey-green fish with whiskers in her grasp. She brought it to me on the grass and thrust it into my face. It slapped me with its muddy tail.

  “Nooooo, noooooo. Get it away!”

  “Why? It can’t make you any sicker. It doesn’t even carry the Plague!”

  “Yes, they do!”

  “No, they don't. Let me enlighten you.”

  She kissed the dripping fish and then she pulled her arm back and launched the fish back into the water where it disappeared into the gloom. She kissed my face. She forced her mouth on my lips until I tasted the River water that had come from the gasping fish. She pinned me until I calmed, her mouth on my forehead.

  “You love the Doctors and your parents. You think they will save us. But I know better. My Father was a Scientist. He studied fish. Let me tell you about them, Ophelia.

  “There were once millions and millions of fish. Healthy fish. People ate them out of the oceans and rivers and ponds and fish farms. The farms were the problem. When fish started to disappear from the overused wild waterways, the farmers had to put more and more and more fish into their farms. They crammed them in until there were fish just brimming and flopping over the side of the fences, gasping and drowning in the air, and not being able to move against the walls.

  “Some of the fish started getting sick because they were so close together. Their eyes got even glossier, and then they died. But they looked ok when they were dead – just a little bloated – so the farmers cut off their heads, sliced them up and sold them to people for food. When Humans ate the sick fish and they would get a fever, and keel over, and then stand right back up and try to eat everything, even other people. Voila – zombies.”

  “I knew that disgusting fish started this,” I said.

  “So the Government – before there were Rangers and Campsites and shortages – told the farmers to kill off all of their fish; not just to kill the fish, but to burn them and turn the ashes over to the President. But the Government didn’t give them enough money to carry out their orders, and the farmers didn’t know any better, or thought it was no big deal, so they just tipped them over and let them flop and slither onto their beaches and fields … or their streams and lakes and seas.”

  “How could they have known that it was a big deal,” I said.

  “So the Scientists had to help kill all of the fish a different way. They dumped huge vats of fish-killer into all of the wild water. It was either the people or the fish, so the fish had to die, but when they looked at the agua the next day – dead. Everything was muerto. Not just the fish – the plants, the birds, the furry animals. All at once. All of the water.

  “They had accidentally killed everything near the land where they dumped the poisons. People started to be thirsty and hungry and riot and not have enough money to buy even cans of food. Parents protested and left their jobs and moved to different cities. The Government was too busy and broken and taking care of the angry, hungry people to watch out for the people who were still getting sick and biting. They bit more and more and more people, who just wanted tax cuts instead of prioritizing services. So the Government collapsed and here we are, with Rangers and Gangsters running the show and patrolling like vultures and ex-humans biting everything that moves.”

  “They were just trying to do the right thing,” I said.

  “But they were too cheap to do things right. Nobody listened for the real data. Luckily, Nature is smart
er than all of us. Any Scientist worth a Government salary should have known: the wild fish who carried the Plague all died, even the ones that weren't near the poison. They didn’t even need the poison – they died of their sickness anyway. It ran its course. And the poison couldn’t reach the healthy fish everywhere on the whole planet, so the fish that survived are coming back and so are the plants, cleaning away the poison from the water. The fish don't carry anything dangerous anymore. The Plague ran its course in the fish naturally. The Government didn’t need to dump the poison that impoverished the world by taking away their food supply.”

  “They didn’t mean to. We could listen and act better than they did.” I argued.

  “You know Rangers don’t listen well. Families don’t listen well. Scientists don’t listen well. You know whose fault that is? My Father’s. He worked for the Government, picking which Doctors to trust. He helped dump the poison.”

  “He was just trying to save us.”

  “He killed the water and destroyed the world. And he’d gladly destroy us. Two years ago, I came home from a party four days late. I had been out partying with my friends in a classmate's Penthouse. One of them thought it would be funny to spin a zombie around like a pinata and poke at it. When they were finished, it was supposed to fall over a balcony into the pool to scare the girls standing near the deep end, but somebody pushed it the wrong way and by the time I looked up from my drink it was sinking its teeth into my cheek.

  “My stupid Friends locked me in a spare bathroom and forgot about me. The cleaning lady let me out two days later, already dead and cold, but clearly Immune. My idiot Friends stuttered out what had happened to me, but not only were they brainless dopes, but I wasn't exactly cool anymore, with my bleeding gums. My Family treated me even worse.

  “I limped home, terrified and depressed. I stood across my Father's study and told him that I was mostly Immune. He sat me down in his spare leather chair and went to get me a cup of hot tea, but when he handed it to me, I could smell the arsenic. He knew that there was no real Cure. He wanted me dead. I threw it on the floor and broke out of the window to the street before he could bash my head in.”