Chocolate candies in shiny gold wrappers were piled on the fresh grave like a display at a grocery store. Marina swallowed hard. Little Annie was asleep in her arms, making soft sucking sounds in her sleep, and every tiny sound made Marina’s empty stomach cramp even worse.
She hadn’t eaten in two days, not since finishing the last packet of expired noodles she’d found in a dumpster. She looked around. The cemetery was empty in the fading evening light.
The grounds crew had left an hour earlier after packing down the mound and setting a temporary cross with a plaque that read, “Gregory P. Tarasevich.” The wreaths still smelled like fresh pine. Marina laid Annie in a beat-up stroller with a crooked wheel she’d picked up off the curb and quickly swept the candies into her coat pocket.
Twenty pieces, maybe more. Enough food for two days if she stretched it.
She unwrapped one, bit off half, and closed her eyes. Real chocolate. Dark, slightly bitter, with a burnt-sugar taste. Then the ground beneath her feet gave a dull thump.
Marina jumped back. Her shoes slid in the wet clay. The thump came again.
From below. From inside the mound. Then again, and again. A weak, rhythmic pounding, like someone was hitting the lid from underneath.
She pressed her palm to the earth. The blows traveled up through her wrist. Marina stood frozen for one breath, then dropped to her knees and started digging.
Clay packed under her nails. Her hands burned. She dug with a broken fence board, with her bare hands, with a splintered piece of wood from a nearby neglected grave marker. Annie woke and began to cry, quietly and automatically, the way babies cry when they’ve already learned that screaming doesn’t change much.
The casket was cheap, made of thin boards and covered in red fabric already soaked through from the damp. Marina slammed the board against the lid. Once. Twice. Three times.
The wood cracked. She grabbed the edge and pulled…
