Ophelia’s Curse
Chapter 1: Into the river
I was named after a girl who drowned herself in a stream. It’s a darkly prescient name, a portent with a sick twist. Instead of plunging myself into the icy deep, I found Sophie beside the Ohio River, her wheaten hair a tangled lattice of mud and reeds. Her face was white and swollen; her mouth hung in a louche scream.
I stared at this artifact of my sister, this waterlogged effigy, until the ground shifted under my feet. I dropped to my knees, not to pray but to curse the demon that had marked our town and our family.
Kneeling in the cold mud, I feared the past and the future. I clung to the moment, to the emptiness between the horror that had happened and the horror to come. I watched the gentle motion of the water and imagined floating with the current.
A gentle tug.
A letting go.
A cool, quiet journey.
The day I found Sophie was sunny and warm. It was the kind of bright spring day that hurts your eyes after a long, gray winter. I was supposed to be joyful, but I wasn’t. I was giddy and anxious, breathing in quick gasps even before I started to run. I did a few halfhearted stretches and then bounded onto the road.
I loped through the neighborhood with a bag of doggie treats in my pocket to buy…
