Ophelia

On June tenth, the day of Adam’s birthday, his parents excused him from his kindergarten class three hours early. He wasn’t sure what they had planned until they pulled into the parking lot adjacent to the new giant stadium-like building, where massive banners boasted images of giant sharks with hundreds of teeth each. This was the new aquarium in town, where the only great white shark in captivity had recently been introduced. When his dad had found a spot to park, Adam started singing a song from school that he had learned a few weeks ago about sharks and whales. His parents smiled and looked at each other with love in their eyes.

Once they had handed their pre-purchased tickets to an employee at the door to the new record-breaking shark tank, they were welcomed to an ovular room, with glass panels all the way around. Families with strollers, grandparents, stoners, and nearly everyone in between lined the thick glass, impatiently waiting for the shark to swim close enough to admire its sixteen-foot body.

White streaks from the water in the glass danced on the black floor, making Adam feel like he was floating deep in the ocean somewhere far from his hometown in Ohio.

While they waited, Adam flagged down an older woman with a volunteer tag and asked about the name of the shark, to which she smiled and revealed that the shark hadn’t been named yet.

They waited almost thirty minutes before hearing a sharp gasp, which was followed by a very brief moment of silence, and then squeals of excitement. A pointed tail oscillated rhythmically in the distance, and the figure of a giant fish was growing larger.

When the beast was close enough to expose its jagged teeth, it began to orbit the elliptical room. After making a few laps, it glided confidently back into the darker parts of the tank, where no artificial lights had been installed. As the crowd thinned out, Adam begged his parents to stay longer, hoping to catch another glimpse of the giant fish, but his father convinced him they would come back, and promised a stuffed animal from the gift shop.

On their way out of the glass room, Adam noticed a large digital “4000” blinking above the door and was opening his mouth to ask his parents what it meant, until the stimulation of the gift shop redirected his attention. He was now inside a massive bright area with marine blue paint on the walls that hardly matched the color of the water in the tank behind them. Hundreds of toys vaguely representing the shark lined the walls on every side of the room, and Adam spent a few minutes figuring out which would be the best fit for his bedroom at home. When he had settled on a little grey shark with a welcoming smile on its face, his father handed the cashier a ten-dollar bill and led his family outside. As Adam was walking back to his dad’s Corolla, he decided that Ophelia was a nice name for both the sixteen-foot great white as well as the stuffed animal that was now tucked close to his chest.

…

Adam had planned out his eighth birthday party about as soon as he had walked into the glass room on his fifth birthday. Although Adam had gone to see Ophelia several times since that particular day, this visit was different. While the tank was generally closed from 1:00-3:00 each day, on Saturdays, visitors over eight years old were invited to witness Ophelia hunt a live seal. Adam, like many eight-year-old boys, admired dangerous animals and especially loved monsters; Ophelia had transcended the former to become the latter for Adam.

His parents were hesitant to take him - Adam had begun to show strong signs of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and they were concerned that a violent scene might leave an unfavorable and unshakable memory in Adam’s head.

Regardless, at two o’clock on his birthday, Adam was accompanied by his parents and two friends from school. Becky and Thomas, Adam’s friends, both looked a little nervous entering the giant shark tank, and when the group entered the elliptical room, their eyes darted back and forth like they were seals on the lookout for a predator.

Adam didn’t have to wait long to see Ophelia this time - at exactly 2:00 pm, a live seal was dropped into Ophelia’s lair, and seconds later, Adam could see her form growing larger. He watched in awe - Adam had never seen Ophelia move this swiftly. As she approached the doomed seal, a bubble of fear and regret began to swell in Adam’s stomach, and when she began to tear into the flesh of the mammal, his awe had fully transformed into terror. He wanted to leave immediately, but instead closed his eyes and tried to think about the fuzzy version of Ophelia waiting on his bed back at home. Adam felt his father’s trembling hand tenderly rub his back, and then gently squeeze the back of his neck when the meal was over. Adam opened his eyes slowly and glimpsed the silhouette of Ophelia getting smaller through a faint red cloud. The blackboard above the exit door blinked the number “1000,” but Adam felt too betrayed to think much about it.

…

Three years had passed since Adam had last visited Ophelia. They had not been easy - his anxiety disorder that the doctor tried to explain didn’t make much sense, but rarely left him at peace nonetheless. The recent death of his father had magnified Adam’s anxiety-driven thoughts and had left him a brutal taste of life.

One day while Adam helped clean out his dad’s closet, he found his own miniature version of Ophelia, dusty and hidden underneath his dad’s shoe rack.

“Look at this mom.” Adam’s mother was folding ties in the other corner of the room. Her eyes recognized the toy in Adam’s hands and then looked at Adam, anticipating pain in his eyes. She offered a small, wounded smile. “Oh hey Ophelia! Here, I can put her away somewhere else.” Her hand reached for the toy animal. Adam held Ophelia closer to his chest, rejecting his mother’s attempt to comfort him by removing a previous source of pain.

“I want to go back,” Adam spoke with a little tremble in his voice.

“Back… to where?”

“To the tank. I want to see Ophelia. I think about her - do you think she’s lonely?”

“Adam, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Please, mom! I’m older! For my birthday we can go, we don’t have anything planned yet.” Adam pleaded with her until she finally conceded.

This time, Adam didn’t invite any friends to the tank; Adam’s friendships had not survived his most recent season of depression and compulsive behaviors.

On the morning of Adam’s birthday, he stepped into the passenger side of his mom’s Highlander, and watched the scene change outside the window as she made her way to the enormous aquarium where Ophelia resided. The ride was silent was almost entirely silent.

Once Adam’s mom had purchased two tickets and they were led into the room with the black floors and the floating white lines, Adam felt a sort of guilty peace. Ophelia was a being who knew loneliness, loss, and confusion, and yet she moved with power and confidence. Every day was the same for her; she was trapped inside of a prison without a single friend and had long since surpassed the previous record for a life lived in captivity by one of her own species.

Adam remembered seeing the wake of her violence, but the past few years of his own life had been full of destruction, and he imagined that the sooner he accepted the inevitable, his life would become a little less painful. Destruction was in her nature - it was what made her beautiful and terrifying all at once. It was what she had to do to survive. And what did she have to live for? Why did she come to visit the crowd while they took pictures on their smartphones, waiting to indulge their own lust for blood vicariously through her? These were thoughts that Adam had as he watched Ophelia glide through the water.

But as Adam and his mother walked to the door exiting the tank, where the number “85” blinked above the door, and then across the parking lot to the car, Adam mostly wondered if she even understood her own loneliness.

…

Adam was twenty-three now. The past five years had been characterized by a series of bad decisions and depression, but Adam finally had a college degree framed above his bedroom door to show for it. Now, he just wanted to dissolve back into his hometown. Between moments of inebriation were hours of pain that trapped him inside of his head. He had tried to keep his thoughts hidden from others, and especially from his mother, whose voice had been dressed with more and more concern in the past several months.

His first night back home after graduating, he lit a cigarette dangling from his mouth and stepped into his dad’s old Corolla that had been passed onto him. Adam had no destination in mind, but he often tried to stay busy enough to keep his most menacing thoughts a few yards behind.

The engine started with a little bit of a sputter, but he was comforted a bit as his fingers sank into their familiar position around the wheel.

Adams St. offered up a medley of his past: a couple of bars that would accept fake IDs when he was a teenager, the good Chinese restaurants, the bad pizza spots, and his old schools. When he reached the top of a hill a few minutes from his house, a giant building entered his view. He wasn’t sure what time the aquarium closed at, but decided to pay a visit to something familiar.

After parking and walking across the nearly empty lot, Adam pushed on the glass door and was relieved when it yielded to his pressure. At the front desk was an older gentleman wearing a shark-shaped badge, who greeted him with a slightly hesitant smile. The man handed Adam a blue ticket, even though there was nobody at the entrance of the tank to accept it. Adam pushed open a blue door and was greeted by the view of over ten million gallons of water that appeared to be completely vacant of any life. Years of apparent neglect had left the tank looking green and sickly.

Adam was the only person in the room - he imagined this would have haunted him as a child, but he walked slowly to a bench in the center of the room, and let his mind wander. He waited and marinated in his own thought until his mind had become too much to bear. He stood up and headed towards the exit door, which now existed under a board blinking the number “1”. Before pushing the door open, he decided to look back at the tank for what he thought might be the last time, when a shape began to materialize in the water. A few seconds later, two smaller shapes appeared beside the large shark. Adam stood in his tracks for a moment, and then walked away from the exit, towards the side of the tank that Ophelia was approaching. As her figure grew larger, Adam made out the shapes of two smaller sharks, one of which seemed to be carrying a large fish in its adolescent jaws. Adam pressed his nose to the thick glass wall, and Ophelia led her two smaller sharks close enough for Adam to see a small red gash on her right side. Her black eyes focused on Adam, and she remained almost still for several seconds. Adam broke the eye contact and instead stared at the white glowing lines gently gliding across the black floor that had danced inside his head for twenty-one years. He smiled and walked towards the exit door.