Jillian Rodseth grew up in Bureau Junc­tion, Illi­nois, a tiny town sur­round­ed by rail­roads and canals, hills and ditches, rivers and ponds. She now lives in a 1800s era utopia on the prairie. She teaches English, directs theater, and writes fiction, poetry, and drama. She has been pub­lished in River Cur­rents, Impres­sions Lit­er­ary Mag­a­zine, Fine Lines, and other publications.

1 — Why do you write?

I write because I’ve always been a pro­lif­ic reader and I reached a point where I wanted to see what my own stories would be like to read.

2 — Is there an author who has most pro­found­ly influ­enced your work?

As a child and teenag­er, I read the usual greats: those dark romantics—Poe, Hawthorne; those pro­to­types of cottagecore—Montgomery, Alcott, Wynne Jones; those masters of time & place—Steinbeck, Twain, Shake­speare, Irving. All of these writers influ­enced my inter­est in writing. But when I was eleven, a pro­found shift in my reading occurred. My father was a car­pen­ter who remod­eled apart­ment houses between tenants. Occa­sion­al­ly he would find things left behind: lava lamps, soccer balls, drug para­pher­na­lia, baby clothes, vases. One day he found a box full of tat­tered Stephen King novels. I was the reader, so he gave them all to me. Tom­my­knock­ers taught me that a single image, if written well, can sear itself into someone’s mind for the rest of their life. The Green Mile taught me that good­ness and evil cannot be assumed. Gerald’s Game taught me that some horrors take time before they can be faced. In all cases, King’s work taught me that char­ac­ters are meant to be put into chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tions, both fan­tas­tic and mundane, and that resilience can help deter­mine sur­vival. But it’s never guaranteed.

3 — Why did you choose Stonecoast? & What is your favorite Stonecoast memory?

When first looking at MFA pro­grams, I created my list based on the lit­er­ary geog­ra­phy of my imag­i­na­tion. I go on kicks—reading books based on loca­tion. New Orleans, South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Maine, Scan­di­navia. Because of King, Russo, Strout, White, Irving, and other nov­el­ists who were either from there or set books there, the Maine of my lit­er­ary imag­i­na­tion was pop­u­lat­ed long before I set foot any­where east of, say, the state of Indiana.

Once I nar­rowed my list by loca­tion, I dug into the indi­vid­ual MFA pro­grams. Stonecoast stood out for its ded­i­ca­tion to the low-res­i­den­cy model—it isn’t a tra­di­tion­al res­i­den­cy program that seemed to add-on a low–residency program. It also stood out for its flex­i­bil­i­ty in types of writing. While my primary focus is lit­er­ary fiction, I also write poetry, non­fic­tion, scripts, and genre fiction. I loved being able to cus­tomize my writing path with my mentors at Stonecoast.

My favorite Stonecoast memory was my final res­i­den­cy. The pan­dem­ic began a few weeks after I was accept­ed into the program, and so my first four res­i­den­cies were online. Being in Maine, being able to meet in person the faculty and my class­mates and being able to hear the nightly read­ings live were invalu­able expe­ri­ences in which I will be forever grateful.

5 — What do you hope to accom­plish in the future?

After spend­ing so many hours explor­ing other parts of the world through reading, my goal this year is to read closer. The land in western Illi­nois where I live was once home to the Sauk led by Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, also called Black Hawk, a leader who fought for his people’ right to their ances­tral agri­cul­tur­al lands, and who was one of the ear­li­est pub­lished Indige­nous authors. I live on the same prairies that Carl Sand­burg wrote award-winning poetry about, and just north of the Spoon River, whose ghostly res­i­dents were made immor­tal by Edgar Lee Masters. These influ­ences, along with the utopian origins of the village in which I live, have inspired my most recent stories.

In addi­tion to hope­ful­ly having my own novel pub­lished one day, I have enjoyed being the dra­mat­ic works editor and a first reader for Stonecoast Review and would love to further explore the world of editing and publishing.

6 — If you could have written one book, story, or poem that already exists, which would you choose?

This is a hard one. I know that when I read Joe Hill’s The Fireman, it was the first book that I fin­ished and thought, man I could have written this book. Mainly because I related so closely with the pop culture ref­er­ences and the author’s cre­ative choices. Like my imag­i­na­tion rec­og­nized his imag­i­na­tion. Other times, I reread some­thing like East of Eden and the prose is so moving that I think, man I wish I could write like this. Ulti­mate­ly, I am most excited to see what I can come up with as I con­tin­ue devel­op­ing as a writer.

The Dead Man on the Table

by Jillian Rodseth

The dead man lay on the dining room table. The stench of his body inter­min­gled with the odor of tallow candles made from hard kidney fat of colony pigs. The table below him was made of red oak, as were the six chairs, the two cab­i­nets on which the tallow candles sat, and the planked floor. The walls and ceiling had been white­washed when the house had been built but were now dark­ened into a sooty grey-black from the burning candle fat. Only one other item was in the dining room: a heavily thumbed and under­lined Bible, decades old and written in Swedish. The dead man had out­lawed all other books. He had had them burned.

Can­dle­light empha­sized the angles of the dead man’s body. Without his cus­tom­ary hat, his head looked naked despite the wheat-color hair whiten­ing at his temples. His nose was promi­nent and crooked, a tal­is­man from when he was pushed out of a wagon, landing on his face, pushed by his brother who was six years old, the dead man four, and their father too drunk to notice his human cargo lying in the wagon tracks of a rural Uppland road. The boy bled from his nose, con­vulsed, and was visited by God—the first of many visits—before being found by a neigh­bor with dew-covered boots and coarse hands and taken back to his father’s homestead.

The dead man’s body was small lying on the dining room table. Alive, his pulpit gave him height. Dead, he shrank into himself, into the smiling wound of his belly. Blood con­gealed around blue stitch­es, the thread taken from the laun­dress­es’ work­shop and used to sew his entrails back into his gut. 

Outside, two hundred people stood, quietly watch­ing the timber-framed house. Waiting for the dead man, their Prophet, to rise and walk among them once again.

*

Lukas was thir­teen years old, much too old to hold his father’s hand, but he did it anyway. There, in the dark­ness at the foot of the porch steps leading to the Prophet’s home, Lukas was not the near-man he had aspired to be in his day­dreams back when his world was still ordered and logical, but a little boy whose mother had just died in childbirth. 

Lukas held tight to his father’s hand and kept his body pressed against his father’s side, a sec­ondary shadow cast by dozens of flick­er­ing lumi­nar­ies scat­tered across the yard. Lumi­nar­ies meant for Saint Lucia’s Night, for Jul. The coun­cil­men had brought the candles out of the com­mu­nal store­room three months early, so that the Prophet’s fol­low­ers wouldn’t have to wait for the holy res­ur­rec­tion in the autumn dark. 

The father, Hans, let Lukas cling. Hans was ashamed that he had for­got­ten about Lukas when the boy had needed him most. Hilde died and twelve hours had passed before Hans remem­bered his son, another four hours passed before he had found him, curled asleep in the little store­room behind the boiling caul­dron where the colony’s supply of com­mu­nal cloth­ing was laun­dered, in the place where Lukas’ mother had worked when she had been alive. Hans picked up his sleep­ing child and, despite the child’s gangly arms and legs of ado­les­cence, carried him like an infant across the village square. Instead of taking the boy back to the children’s quar­ters, Hans carried him to his own living quar­ters under the church. Hans breathed in the boy-scent of dirt and prairie dung and freshly laun­dered clothes and savored the weight of the only family member he had left. He placed Lukas on a pile of quilts near the hearth and tucked him in, notic­ing a hand­print of dried blood on his cheek, a remnant of a mother’s goodbye as she sunk into her birthing bed, hem­or­rhag­ing, dying, the babe already gone.

“Has it been seventy-two hours, yet?” asked Brita, a colony woman who was stand­ing near Hans and Lukas near the front porch of the Prophet’s house. Her ten-year-old twin boys sat back-to-back on the ground near the hem of her dress.

“Aye, I counted nine strikes of the clock about a half hour ago.” Hans said.

Axel, a barrel-chested Viking of a man, with arms sinewy from his occu­pa­tion as head coffin maker and under­tak­er, joined Hans and Brita at the foot of the steps. 

“The hour is near!” said Axel, “He will be risen!” Axel spotted Lukas cling­ing to Hans. “There, boy. Don’t worry. We’ll take care of your ma and little sister soon.”

“What?” asked Brita. “Hilde and the babe are still above ground?”

Hans answered. “Aye, sadly. They repose in the church sanc­tu­ary. With the Prophet how he is there hasn’t been anyone to perform burial rites.”

“No fear, though,” said Axel the under­tak­er, “The Prophet’s hour is near, and we will see the Holy Res­ur­rec­tion! Your wife and babe will be interred prop­er­ly, and even more, news of His rising will spread and reach those doubters across the sea. We will be vindicated!”

“Amen,” Brita said, her face bright­en­ing as she faced the door of the Prophet’s house. Axel strode away from Hans and Brita, spread­ing his pious glee among other small groups con­gre­gat­ing on the Prophet’s lawn. With the undertaker’s renewed message of hope, an excited fervor began. Brita’s twins began rolling on the ground, tus­sling like cubs. 

An Easter hymn rose from a group of little girls, their voices lilting and sweet, the ending of each line rever­ber­at­ing with “Alleluia!” The repeat­ed word rising with the lumi­nary smoke towards heaven.

“It’s going to happen soon, Hans, I can feel it,” Brita said. “Do you see the chil­dren playing? Lukas, you go play, too.”

Lukas stayed where he was. Around them people rejoiced in antic­i­pa­tion. The candles on the lawn elon­gat­ed the celebrant’s swaying, dancing bodies. The little singing girls’ faces glowed golden. Tus­sling cubs rolled in and out of dark pools.  Con­ver­sa­tions were no longer funeral whis­pers, but excited chatter: “He will rise!” “He will rise!” “His time has come!” “His Holi­ness will cast away all doubters!”

Coun­cil­man Wallin stepped out of the Prophet’s house onto his porch. One of the oldest men in the colony, and one of the ear­li­est sup­port­ers of the Prophet back in Sweden, Coun­cil­man Wallin wore his white beard the colony way, with smooth cheeks, upper lip, and chin, and long locks start­ing at his jaw line and flowing down the front of his striped shirt, the sleeves of which were rolled up. His ox-hide hat matched his brown pants, and when he had stepped onto the wooden porch his boots had thumped because of his heavy, muscled weight, devel­oped from years lifting heavy boul­ders out of his fields in Sweden, and honed through his labors build­ing the grand struc­tures in the colony, the largest build­ings west of Chicago. The only thing stronger than Coun­cil­man Wallin when he was sling­ing brick and stone was his faith in the Word of the Prophet. 

Coun­cil­man Wallin stood on the porch emp­ty­hand­ed and looked at the adults and their chil­dren cel­e­brat­ing the Prophet’s eminent res­ur­rec­tion. He gazed at them, his body turning from east to west, search­ing for an answer to his silent inquiry.

Not finding it, Council Wallin returned into the house. Few of the cel­e­brants noticed Wallin’s brief pres­ence except Lukas. 

Coun­cil­man Wallin returned. He clutched rags in his fists. “Look here!” he shouted. “Look here!” He lifted the rags above his head. 

Swaying and dancing and tus­sling on the lawn ceased. Two hundred people took a col­lec­tive step towards the Prophet’s house.

“These are the anoint­ed linens, blessed over the body of our leader.”

People jostled for a closer look. Whis­pered murmurs.

Coun­cil­man Wallin shouted. “Their bless­ings are fruit­less. He has not risen! Do you hear me?” Wallin paced along the porch above the colonists. Again, he turned his body, seeking a face, an expres­sion in the crowd.

His voice lowered, so that the crowd had to lean in to hear him say: “We are not worthy!” 

“And I know the reason. The Prophet, after he had been found up in the praying place on the hill, his belly opened by a blade, sliced across like the grains in the field, like the necks of our winter sows, spoke to me. His voice was weak. We had ini­tial­ly given him up for dead. But then he spoke, just a few words before taking his last Earthly breath. He told me.”

The crowd now pressed against the porch like how Lukas pressed against his father. A closing in, a warmth, a pres­sure of so many bodies strain­ing to hear Coun­cil­man Wallin’s words.

“He has not risen, and the reason is this: Our Judas still walks among us. His pres­ence keeps the Prophet in his earthly tomb. Who is it? The Prophet declared his Judas, he spoke, weak and dying, but adamant: ‘it was a child who slew me.’ I repeat: the Prophet told me that a child killed him. Our very own Judas.” 

Coun­cil­man Wallin walked to the edge of the porch and looked into the eyes of Brita, who stood with her ten-year-old twin sons.

“Where have we failed, that our own flesh con­spired against us,” Wallin asked. “Do we permit this? It is a child-mur­der­er who took our spir­i­tu­al father, and it is the child-mur­der­er who pre­vents our Easter miracle.”

Brita pulled her chil­dren to her, attempt­ing to absorb them back into her body.

“Parents do not let the idol­a­try of attach­ment keep you from your heav­en­ly duty. Don’t let it be you who stands in the way of our Prophet’s second coming!”

A matron­ly gasp. A buzz of chatter. “No” “Surely not” “All the children?”

“Gather all the chil­dren between the ages of, say, five and fifteen,” Coun­cil­man Wallin said. “Bring them to the ox-pens next to the river for ques­tion­ing. Do so now!” 

Hans untan­gled his fingers from his son’s. Can­dle­light streaked across Hans’ face. He stared at Lukas as if he were a stranger, as if the face of Hilde wasn’t in his son’s features.

Coun­cil­man Wallin bel­lowed. “Any who try to halt us will suffer the weight of our col­lec­tive sin. All who help will be honored when our spir­i­tu­al father returns!”

Hans leaned into Lukas. “Fa—no!” Hans grasped Lukas’ arm. He winced at the fin­ger­tips wedged into his bicep. Hans’ look was echoed in other parents’ faces— their chil­dren changelings. 

Brita began to weep.

The candles flashed and flick­ered. A widower—with no kids of his own—snatched one of the twins. The little boy flailed his legs. He kicked the man in the crotch and the man dropped him. The little boy ran, and his twin fol­lowed. The other chil­dren saw this. 

Lukas twisted from his father’s grasp. Pain shot through his arm. He ran with the other chil­dren. They stam­ped­ed, leaving the light of the lumi­nar­ies. They entered the darkness. 

Adults chased.

Down the hill from the Prophet’s house and into the ravine Lukas ran. He couldn’t see the other chil­dren. He heard them. Gasps as stitch­es pierced their sides. Crack­ing of branch­es as their little bodies plowed through. Shrieks as grown-ups caught them. 

Lucas turned from their sounds and went south along the ravine bottom, away from the river. He slowed, quieted. He used his hands in front of him like a blind man. His ankle caught on a winding vine. He stum­bled. Thorns cut his face. He fell onto the muddy ravine floor. 

“Aye! Who’s there?” a man’s voice shouted from the lip of the ravine, a little ways behind him. Coun­cil­man Wallin. Not Hans. “Come out, child. We have questions.”

Lucas flat­tened himself in the muck, down where the dark­ness was absolute. Heart­beat. Heart­beat. The man moved away, river-towards. Heartbeat. 

He crawled. Touched smooth wood—a thresh­old. A doorway carved into the side of the ravine. A dugout shelter from the colony’s first years. His mother had told him about the dugouts, told him not to explore them. They could col­lapse, trap him. Suf­fo­cate him. She wouldn’t know how to find him.

Sticks snapped behind him, coming closer. Lukas reached past the beam into the doorway. He slid on his belly into the dugout, think­ing of snakes. Knowing himself to be one of their number. 

Once in the dugout, Lukas laid against the wall lis­ten­ing for pur­suers. He felt around him. Touched the hard-packed mud ceiling, touched the dried grasses pressed into the walls and the floor. Absolute dark­ness, he used his hands to dis­cov­er this place so close to where he had lived since birth, yet never been. His mother had. She had been a child when they left Sweden one blos­som­ing spring­time and by win­ter­time had lived in a mud-packed crea­ture hole like this one, maybe this very same one, in a land empty of all that she used to know. She had told Lukas about that winter. It was a dif­fer­ent sort of cold than back home, a windier, biting cold. How all she and her sib­lings could do was cling togeth­er on their makeshift cot. How her little sister slept closest to the earthen wall. How one morning her sister was frozen and blue. 

Blue like Lukas’ own baby sister, born with the cord wrapped all around her neck. Lukas’ mother hadn’t been blue. She had been red, deep dark red that soaked into her birthing bed. Lukas had been told to wait outside until the birthing was over. He had lis­tened to direc­tions and sat in the young oak outside the birthing room. Hours, it seemed, he sat in the tree, until he saw the mid­wives come and go, hustle about in a frenzy. Some­thing was wrong. Lukas climbed down and snuck down the outside steps into the birthing room. A midwife was tending the babe, holding it by its feet and spank­ing it. Over and over. Hans stood watch­ing, holding the knife that had sliced the babe’s last con­nec­tion with its mother. Both were turned towards the babe and neither noticed Lukas go to his mother’s side. The quilt over her body was so red. Her eyes looked to the ceiling. She gasped. Lukas took her hand. Clammy, wet. She gasped again. Her fingers tight­ened on Lukas’. She gasped. A moment passed. Her lips moved like she had some­thing to chew. She didn’t gasp again. Her eyes stayed open. Her body locked into place. Her blood con­tin­ued to spill. 

Hans turned towards his wife and real­ized that his atten­tion had been in the wrong place. He ran across the room to the birthing bed. Lukas was knocked to the side. Hans shook his wife’s body, cried “no!” and wept. Her hand, just a moment ago held by her son, fell to the side of the bed, palm open. Lukas scut­tled out of the room back to his tree, the young oak leaves cool against his face, but not as cold as the earthen walls in the dugout where Lukas hid from his pursuers.

Lukas thought to wait until day­break, but light came too soon. Orange flames licked into the ravine, spread­ing from the direc­tion of the Prophet’s house. Fire. From what? Lukas won­dered. The lumi­nar­ies, perhaps.

Flames turned into smoke against the damp ravine walls. Smoke invaded the dugout, became trapped within the earthen hole. Lukas’ lungs filled. He crawled out of the dugout, and he coughed, expect­ing an adult to hear him, grab him. No one came. 

“Quick!” “Water from the river!” “Water from the well!” “Stop it before it takes the house.” “Before it takes the dormitories.”

He had to get out of the ravine. The smoke choked. The cut on his face burned. Up he climbed. Up, around Big Red, the com­mu­ni­ty dining hall. He zagged among the trees in the town square. Passed the ox boys’ dor­mi­to­ry. Almost to the stoop of his family’s—not family, just father’s—rooms below the church. Voices: “Hey! Boy, we need you!” “Quick! I see one.” “No! The fire’s gonna spread to Big Red.”

Lukas shifted his direc­tion. He passed his father’s door. Orange and blue flames licked the sides of the ravine. Lukas darted around the corner of the church. 

He placed his hand on the smooth metal of the stair railing. 

Memory flashed. Leaving the tree outside his mother’s birthing room. Wan­der­ing towards the ox boys’ dor­mi­to­ry. The boys, all older than him, laugh­ing togeth­er after a long day with the animals in the fields, in the pens. Wanting to be with them, accept­ed as part of their group. Swen smiling at him. Another boy, Gunther, laugh­ing at him, saying “Go back to your mother, little boy. You’re not old enough to appren­tice.” Him running away, trip­ping over some­thing behind the tool shed. A wooden handle; a metal blade. A scythe. Picking it up, using it as a staff as he wan­dered across the fields, the woods, the prairie all night until the first pinks of dawn. Until.

“Hey!” A woman’s voice this time. Lukas didn’t turn to see who it was. He ran up the wide double stair­case to the church door and went inside. 

The inside of the church was split down the middle, with the men’s side to the east and the women’s to the west. A railing divided the sides. Lukas’ foot­steps thudded in a way they never did when the sanc­tu­ary was filled with wor­ship­pers. Fire­light lit the western windows. Now, the sanc­tu­ary held a somber silence.

Lukas reached the altar. Spilt wine had stained the com­mu­nion table, the black-redness showing like a wood grain. The church was barren of orna­men­ta­tion and fabric, no cur­tains on the paned windows, no table­cloth strewn over the com­mu­nion table. This Holy place’s purpose was delib­er­ate: to read and reflect upon the Word. Lukas stopped when he came to a long, wide box sitting before the altar. 

“Check up here!” The men again. “Trapped if he’s in here, isn’t he?” They paused on the stair­case landing; two bodies sil­hou­et­ted through the beveled glass of the church doors. More voices, below: “The fire’s under control, for now. It stuck to the grass.” “They still gath­er­ing the chil­dren?” “Aye.”

The only way in or out was on the outside stair­case. Windows too high to jump. Lukas could only hide. Now, with the men on his trail, Lukas went to the only unusual item in the sanc­tu­ary. The long, extra-wide coffin.

The hinged coffin lid was fitted tightly to the coffin, and even without nails or glue, Lukas had to pull hard to open it. It opened with a screech the men outside must have heard. Lukas paused, waited for them to enter, to yell “gotcha, boy.” But they were still on the stairs landing, con­vers­ing with whoever was down below. 

Lukas opened the lid just enough for him to slide in. He lay on his side along his mother’s body, careful to not smush the babe. His mother’s hair smelled as it always did, of the flow­ered soaps, and when he buried his face in her hair, he could almost ignore the subtle scent of new decay. He shifted, made himself as slight as he could. 

The men entered the church. Lukas brought the coffin lid down, sealing himself in. This time he was not alone in the absolute dark­ness and was com­fort­ed by the knowl­edge that he was near his mother once more. 

He could hear the men’s voices muffled through the heavy wood. Their boots clomped heavily up the aisle, perhaps search­ing for their prey under the pews. Lukas tried to listen but was dis­tract­ed by the smell. Like the flow­ered soap, yes, but some­thing else too. Some­thing sickly sweet. He remem­bered the hawthorn bushes in the praying place. 

When his mother had died, he had wan­dered all night through the coun­try­side, using the scythe he had tripped over like a walking stick. Weary, eyes burning, muscles heavy, he had stum­bled back towards the village in the pinken­ing dawn. When he got to the praying place, that sacred circle over­look­ing the village that was only entered by the colonists for special rites such as baptism, Lukas ignored the stone bound­ary and rested in the shade of a hawthorn bush with its cloying berries. 

He had not been asleep long when he was nudged by a boot. The rising sun blinded Lukas, strip­ping the new­com­er of his iden­ti­ty, at least until he spoke. His voice was famil­iar to Lukas, he lis­tened to it from the pulpit every day, and on Sundays he lis­tened to this voice for at least three hours at a time, reading aloud from the Bible, sharing Godly vis­i­ta­tions with his fol­low­ers, pro­claim­ing his Word as a Prophet. 

“You, boy. This is a sacred space,” the Prophet said. “Stand up.”

Lukas nodded as he rose to his feet. Holding the scythe like a staff, he stood before the Prophet, close enough to see what people meant when they said that the Prophet’s eyes gleamed like fire sparks. 

“Yes, I’m sorry. I was just walking. My mother—my mother died.”

“Is that so? Your mother was Hilde?” Lukas nodded. The Prophet con­tin­ued, “She was a good help­mate to the colony.”

“Yes, sir. She was a good mother, too.”

“But not a good enough believ­er. Go, read the bible and pray for for­give­ness,” the Prophet said. “It’s too late for her, but you may ask for atonement.”

“What do you mean it’s too late for my mother?”

“God does not allow the truly good—the truly righteous—to die early. She is dead because she had lost her faith. Death is his punishment.”

“Liar! Liar!” As his body shook, so did his arms, his hands. The scythe.

“You cannot harm me, boy. I am God incarnate.”

The Prophet laughed. Lukas swung his arms. He sliced the Prophet. 

The deep red blood that burst across the Prohet’s belly was the same hue as Hilde’s birthing bed.

The holy man reached out as he fell, touch­ing the boy’s face. He crum­pled to the earth and when his voice quieted and his fires­park eyes finally closed, Lukas ran. 

But Lukas could not run now, there in the coffin in the church sanc­tu­ary, lying beside his mother, his sister. he men’s foot­steps, voices were louder as they searched near the altar.

“Who’s in the coffin?” “Some woman and her baby.” “Going to stink soon.” “The lid’s not on all the way.” 

They were going to find him. They were going to find out. Lukas held his breath. Knuck­les rolled above the lid. Any moment the men would open the coffin. The lid shifted. A spray of fine saw dust landed below his nos­trils. The begin­ning of a sneeze slipped down his sinuses to the tip of his nose. He held it. They would see him. They would find him, carry him to the pens.

Thud the coffin lid shifted in place and all hints of the barest grey shut­tered into deepest black. Hawthorne. Sweet earth dank air caught the sneeze, kept it inside him. Else they would hear him, rip the coffin lid away. 

Lukas waited. 

Foot­steps thudded away from when he lay and the church doors slammed in way they never did on Sundays. 

He stayed where he was. Perhaps it was a trick.

He whis­pered. He told his mother he loved her, that she was a good mother. He told his sister he loved her. He wished he could have met her in life. He wished he could have held her. He said goodbye to them.

Lukas pushed up against the lid of the coffin, pushed with all his might. 

He yelled. 

Pushed some more. 

Screamed inside the coffin, for­get­ting that he was the one for whom the adults had been search­ing, hunting. He lost his voice. The dark­ness. He felt light­head­ed. The hawthorn. The cloying decay.

He pushed against the lid. He snug­gled against his mother. As he lost con­scious­ness he won­dered if he would have his own resurrection.