Prose: “Death Cannot Part Them,” by Maiah Jezek

“Death Cannot Part Them” is the winner of Euphony‘s 2025 prose contest, which has a theme of “Endings.”

Ellis shook herself from her tangled bed sheets and rushed to snatch the shrill telephone from its hook. It had been ringing nonstop all morning; savagely disrupting the precious few hours of sleep she’d managed. The only people who phoned her were usually selling underread newspapers and suspicious car warranty extensions, but no salesman on Earth could possibly be this persistent. Her left eye twitched with nerves as she restlessly twisted the glossy cord around her fingertips-pinching them until they turned a dull red. She briefly considered taking her fist and smashing the receiver into tranquil oblivion before she answered on the eighth ring.

“Hello?”

“Good morning Miss Evans. This is Connie from Rosewood Cemetery. So sorry to disturb you this early, but I’m afraid I have some bad news. Your sister’s grave was vandalized last night. The police have been called and are on their way.”

Ellis’ voice caught in her throat “What do you mean it was vandalized?”

“Well, it appears to have been robbed. Do happen to know if your sister was buried with any valuables?”

“None at all. How could this have happened?”

“That’s exactly what we’re trying to figure out ma’am. If possible we’d like for you to come down here and talk to the police sometime today.”

Fragmented recollections of the night before hit Ellis like a speeding train, shaking her from her sleepy haze. Two drained bottles of Jim Beam. A late-night trip to Rosewood. The bulging garbage bag carefully propped on the pillow next to her. Ellis leaned down and peered closer at her cotton pajamas. The usual powder blue and white stripes at her ankles and knees were caked with flaking mud.

“Ms. Evans, are you there?”

She spun around to get a distant glimpse of herself in the bathroom mirror. She was smeared with clay from head to toe. Streaks of dried blood mixed with the sludge on her forearms, coating them like sleeves.

“Ms. Evans, can you hear me?”

Ellis couldn’t speak over the lump forming in her throat. Her head was swimming. All she could think was Alex.

6 hours earlier

She peered down at the tombstone. The plain slate plaque read “ALEXANDRA MAGNOLIA EVANS 1988-2009”. Ellis hadn’t been able to sleep, so she decided to head over to the cemetery. She visited her sister most nights. Her days were filled with petroleum pumps and large diet slushies. Regulars were her highlights. A smile or a comment on the weather were the extent of her friendships, just enough to keep her going.

Alex was twenty-one when she died. Ellis’ ever responsible big sister had gotten an E. coli infection from diving into the local power plant’s cooling pond on a drunken dare. Her heart stopped in a stark white hospital room ten days later. She’d been in perfect health before the stunt. Alex’s passing had completed Ellis’ long history of utter abandonment. Their mother bled out during Ellis’ birth and their father had been given a lethal injection in an Iowa state prison before she could walk, leaving four-year old Alex and an infant Ellis to fend for themselves. Neither of them ever minded much; at least they had each other. The sisters were begrudgingly housed by their great aunt, who promptly moved to Panama City Beach the minute Ellis turned 17. She was left to bury her sister alone six months later. Despite Alex’s popularity in life, Ellis had been the only person to ever visit her grave. She had handpicked the stone’s epitaph herself:

“Death cannot part them.”

The grief had cast an unshakable shadow over Ellis’ life. She dropped out of high school with one month left to go and took a cashier job at the gas station. Whiskey became her new best friend. Depravity sank into her mind with every sunset, like a damsel shifting into a beast. On nights where a fifth of liquor and a fresh joint couldn’t pacify her desperation, she’d grab her keys and begin the mile-walk from her apartment to Alex. She knew the night route like the back of her hand by now. Alex’s plot sat in between two extravagant monuments dedicated to beloved grandmothers “gone too soon”. The towering marble perfectly concealed Ellis’ monstrous sorrow. It had become a second home, a second bed.

These visits usually satiated her desperation for connection. Alex had been her only real family. Her best friend. Ellis hadn’t received any gregarious genes- they’d all gone straight to Alex. She started getting invited to fraternity parties in the eighth grade. She’d bring Ellis along to slumber parties every weekend so she could eat the rich kids’ pizza and waste their nail polish. It was also at these parties where Alex would inevitably start retching cheap tequila in the bushes before sunrise. Ellis was always ready with a glass of water and a breath mint. When Jamie Finch shoved Ellis’ head in a toilet in the sixth grade, Alex yanked him from fourth period and punched his two front teeth out. There was never a need to develop her own social skills or make her own friends. Alex was Ellis’ Charon through childhood, and her quick departure had left her drowning in the Styx for eight years.

Tonight, the full summer grass glimmered with dew under the streetlight. She gently ran her hand over the soft blades. She felt untethered. The idea stalked her day and night. Stepping in front of the morning bus instead of boarding. Letting the steak knife slip inwards. Swallowing ten pills instead of one. Alex had been the only thing chaining her to the ground. To life. In the eight years she’d been gone, Ellis felt she’d been constantly walking the line between heaven and Earth. If the urge ever burned enough she’d be off in a moment. 

Tonight’s visit had done nothing to ease her torment. She couldn’t feel Alex anywhere. She reached further into the grass and pressed her knuckles into the ground. It dimpled beneath her touch. Rainfall that afternoon had softened the earth into mire. It was strange to think that Alex was somewhere underneath it all.

Ellis stared at the ground, hard. Alex was right there. Her breathing became shallow. Years of scattered thoughts were piecing themselves together. Either she had drank more than she remembered that night, or she was having a breakthrough. Her sister wasn’t in heaven or hell. She wasn’t in the leaves or passing butterflies. She had always been right here. All of this hideous misery had been simple ignorance. Alex wasn’t gone, just concealed. Ellis just needed to get closer, somehow.

 Her hooked fingers pushed further into the soil. She just needed to get through. She began clawing at the ground. Piles of dirt gathered at her hips. The loam melted under her touch like butter in a sizzling skillet. Adrenaline rushed through her blood. Her movements became more frantic as the minutes ticked by, her elbows catching on discarded shards of stone. She could feel streams of balmy blood dripping down her forearms. It didn’t hurt.

At least an hour had passed. The muscles and joints in her arms were growing weary and stiff from the exertion. Her mind willed her arms to keep moving, to keep digging, but they grew wearier with each stroke. She had slowed to a glacial pace. Desperation screamed from every molecule in her body to continue. Running out of options, she reluctantly tipped her head downward. Her teeth pierced the earth, her mouth filling and throat choking. She spat it in her lap and repeated. A lump caught in her windpipe on the fifth mouthful. Bile and vomit rushed up her throat and dripped on the mound of dirt below her. Tears of shame prickled in her eyes. All of her efforts had only managed to clear two or three feet. She couldn’t keep doing it purely by hand, she was too weak.  If she was going to find Alex, she’d need help. 

She rose unsteadily from her new pit, her bones aching as she trudged towards the directory building a few hundred yards south. Over the past eight years she’d managed to memorize the layout of the entire cemetery. The careless facility typically left their rusted shovels propped against the back doors.. The pain from her wounds washed over her as she walked. The adrenaline from earlier had dissipated completely, leaving her weary and aching.

Ellis sighed with relief when she eventually spotted a shiny handle glinting against the building wall. It had seen better days, the blade caked in mud and the shaft’s paint flaking from the summer heat. Next to it lay an open box of generic black garbage bags. It would have to do. Gathering the rest of her strength, she stuffed a bag into her back pocket and hoisted the heavy shovel over her aching shoulder. She had to get back.

This was much easier. The blade sliced through the dirt and grass with ease. She worked through the burning in her muscles and the white-hot sores on her palms. She didn’t know how deep under Alex was, but she knew she had to be close. She had been digging feverishly for at least three hours. The bleeding on her forearms had ceased, but the blisters on her hands had burst into a new river of agony. She’d been considering stopping to get rest and trying again in the morning when the tip of the shovel hit something solid. Cautiously, she thrust it down again. The same dull thud met her ears. It was Alex. Clearing away the remaining soil dusting the casket’s lid, Ellis began to tremble with excitement. She had found her.

Present

“Ms. Evans, are you there? Can you hear me?” the woman continued; her voice alarmed.

Ellis took a shaky breath to steady herself.

“Yes, I’m here. We’ll be over as soon as we can.”

Gingerly returning the handset to its cradle, she stumbled to the bathroom in a daze. The cool tile bit her bare feet. She stuffed the rubber plug into the bathtub drain and twisted the faucet to a boiling temperature before tiptoeing back to her bedroom for a change of clothes. The morning sun shone through her curtains over her rumpled bed. She ran her hands across the quilt and smiled softly. Amidst the weeks of dirty laundry coating her mattress, the black waste bag was still neatly propped up on her pillow. She grabbed the heavy bag with her left hand and yesterday’s t-shirt with her right and headed back to the steaming bath.

Some of Ellis’ first memories were of bath time. Their cheapskate aunt had the sisters sharing a tub until they couldn’t squeeze in without their noses touching. Alex would make bubble hats on her head while Ellis squeezed lukewarm water from the bottom of her rubber duck. Their aunt would leave the girls to splash around until the water got cold. After the bubbles had gone flat and their fingers grew wrinkled, they’d always press their foreheads together to keep warm and murmur secrets out of earshot.

 These recollections usually left her hyperventilating and scrambling for the liquor cabinet, but this morning Ellis smiled instead. Alex was back. All was well. Ripples of steam rose from the full tub as Ellis carefully emptied the bag’s contents into the water. She stripped from her muddied pajamas and climbed in after them, moaning in pain as the hot water washed over the fresh scabs on her palms and elbows. Reaching for the used cloth hanging over the tub, Ellis gingerly started to scrub at her raw skin. The water grew murky as she washed the previous night’s heist away. With it, she scrubbed away her years of grief and despair.

She gently fished her hand through the cooling water until it caught on something firm and globular. Cupping the object in both palms, she slowly lifted the object until it was level with her face. Alex’s skull stared back at her. Years underground had erased her once flawless skin; only a few remaining strips clung to her hollow eye sockets like peeling paint. Her crooked grin was the same, only now without her signature cherry-stained lips and Marlboro Lights. Ellis pressed her forehead against Alex’s and sighed. It was close enough.

Maiah Jezak is a third-grade teacher and writer from Midland, Michigan. When Maiah isn’t dazzling her students or writing her next story, she enjoys napping in cars, tuxedo cats, and exploring far away places with the people she loves. She has completed (and is hoping to publish) a middle-grade fiction book about a young girl’s journey encountering zombies, her father’s addiction, and how the two intertwine.