Ophelia Immune: A Novel by Mattson Beth

Author:Mattson, Beth [Mattson, Beth]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Zombies
Published: 2018-06-15T04:00:00+00:00

​The Cell

Swan stood in the pale moonlight and swished her thin hips back and forth, swinging her rag dress about her knees. She held her arms out just so, prancing on her tiptoes and curtseying to me. She hadn’t eaten more than one meal a day for the last three weeks.

“How do I look?”

“Like a poor wisp of a girl who is going to get sold at an Auction.”

She threw her hands to her face, “Oh stop, I am blushing!”

I walked to her and crouched near her hem, feeling along with my fingertips. Beyond the threads and the slight fold of the fabric, I could make out the narrow outlines of two scalpels, stitched into the seams. I looked past her, out the window, my own set of scalpels in my palms. I didn’t smile.

“Why are you always so grouchy?” she stuck out her skimpy bottom lip, “You're even more stern now that you don't look zombie.”

“Or Brown, you bean pole,” I snapped.

The lack of food had made her into a genuine waif. Her jaw chattered in the cool Spring breeze. Goose pimples decorated her pale flesh, completely exposed to the nighttime elements, Summery and mild as they were.

She more than looked the part. The rag dress accentuated the collar bones that I had heard clattering every time we had launched a practice Molotov cocktail at a the charcoal outline of a Dirtbag on the roof of our building. Her bony knees jutted out from behind tendons that I had worried would splice every time she had climbed into a rusty, jagged dumpster to find more bottles to make cocktails.

I worried that her starved arms were no longer strong enough to swing her fire poker that we had already hidden with our other ambush supplies in the alleyway that was advertised as the site of the next Auction. We were prepared. There was very little left to do.

I blinked, focused my eyes and used one of my remaining scalpels to slice open the skin of my forearm in a neat, straight line. I tucked the scalpel inside the slit and pinched the skin back over it, feeling the welcome tingle of the cut and the hum of regenerating skin. When the gash held itself shut, I took the other scalpel and lashed it into my other forearm using the same method.

“Can I touch them?” she asked, “your arms?”

I draped a thin piece of rag over my new wounds and held them out to her. She ran her fingertips lightly over my covered skin and then pressed harder as she followed the razor handles backwards to my elbow, her eyes wide and mouth silent. She brushed a fingerprint across my bare skin.

“No! Never bare skin!” I snapped at her and then was immediately sorry. The abandoned girl’s diet had been hard on her, too. I straightened her rag dress across her shoulders, “Help me use this bleach to lighten the new cuts one last time.”

She bent over my arms with a

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