Beth Sherman

Listen to Beth’s story – read by JP Relph

There are two dozen funerals a week in our town. After each body is placed in a coffin, it’s weighted down with heavy rocks from the river, so the corpse can’t rise. It took all night to dig Violet up, remove the stones, and cover the coffin with dirt again. Afterwards, my fingers were bleeding and one of my nails had fallen off. I put her in the back seat of my Subaru and got home before the first peach streaks of light climbed over the pines. 

She looks good, for a dead girl. Her skin is the color of the granite countertop in our kitchen. Her eyes are open, and though she stares straight ahead, not really seeing me or her old room or Monty, our Cavalier King Charles spaniel, occasionally she blinks and it’s like a sign that she knows she’s home again.

Violet stands by the window, as Monty watches. He’s wary around Violet, like he knows it’s her but not really. She’s on a Keto diet – eggs, lentils, tofu, quinoa, food that’s high in protein – because I know she wouldn’t want me killing sparrows and robins, birds she used to cherish, just so she could eat their brains. No burgers or steak since this whole thing started with cows. They caught some disease that releases neurotoxins and then humans ate the cows and got sick, too. There’s supposed to be a vaccine, but people keep saying the shot’s unsafe so the government stopped making it. 

Violet was in fifth grade before. She liked blueberry pancakes, field hockey, learning about the Presidents, Katy Perry songs, oversized sweatshirts, a boy named Riley Kajowski, who died three weeks before she did. She used to come home from school and tell me about the popular girls on her bus or something funny Riley said. Now she never talks. When she moves she barely picks her feet off the ground, lurching from window to window. I can’t let her go outside. They’re patrolling the streets with flaming arrows and axes from Amazon. They always aim for the head.   

Violet doesn’t sleep and since she got sick, neither do I. Before he took off, her father used to say I should get paid for worrying since I do it so well. That was when my biggest problem was whether to paint the den Savannah Moss or Wasabi. Sometimes, I go into her room and she’s standing there with her hair all crazy and her staring-at-nothing eyes and her tongue flicking back and forth like she’s eating imaginary flies and I think, that’s my baby. She’s here. She hasn’t left me. I sing Sheryl Crow songs to her – about whatever makes you happy not feeling that bad – the way I did when we first brought her home from the hospital and held her up to the mirror to see if she recognized herself. When I try to touch her, she jumps, like I’ve poked her with a cattle prod. 

At work, I tell people I’m still grieving, which is true. I want the old Violet back. My happy girl. My star. Although I shouldn’t complain. At least part of her is with me. Even if it’s the formless, empty part. At Shop Rite, people head the other way when they see me coming, as if loss is contagious. When I run into the other mothers, I pretend not to know them, focus on the brightly colored cans of soda, the way the fluorescent lights make everyone look washed out and sickly. Good sale on eggs this week, Riley Kajowski’s mother tells me when we’re stuck next to each other on the same checkout line. I notice her cart is filled with dozens of egg cartons, too. More than one family could possibly need. 

They’ve built a 12-foot-tall metal wall around the town. To keep the creatures out. To keep us safe. There’s a curfew, too. No one can leave their house after six. I stand at the window, close to Violet but not close enough to spook her, and we both watch a wren plucking seeds from the feeder. Violet’s expression is greedy. Not for my love. For something I can no longer give her. I want to kiss her pale cheek, which I know will be cold as the grave. I want her to tell me secrets again, to laugh and dance, to have sleepovers and soccer practice, a nose ring and a future.   

After the dog disappears, I search for him in all his favorite places. Useless to post flyers on telephone poles. There are so many missing pets these days. Have you seen Monty, I ask Violet. Her lips are crimson, her hands pluck at the stained white dress she had on when we buried her. I’ve tried to get her to change into jeans and a T-shirt, but she won’t. The house smells bad. Like pesticide. She lurches over to the windows, presses her lips to the glass, leaving a blurry red kiss. Then her gaze flicks over to me. My heart wobbles against my ribs – Oh, Violet – and I wonder if there’s enough time to get to the front door.  

Beth Sherman has an MFA in creative writing from Queens College, where she teaches in the English department. Her writing has been published in more than 100 literary magazines, including Portland Review, Tiny Molecules, 100 Word Story, Fictive Dream, and Bending Genres. Her work is featured in Best Microfiction 2024. She’s also a Pushcart, Best Small Fictions, and multiple Best of the Net nominee. She can be reached at @bsherm36 or https://www.bethsherman.site/