Good evening, and welcome to A Blaker’s Dozen, a newsletter of serialized fiction.
I’m your host, Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone. Our program tonight, “Daddy Lazarus,” concerns the Bethany family, an American household just like any other: unhappy in its own ways, happy in precious few as it grapples with grief. The patriarch, Dominic, has died. A sparse little man, his cruelty exacted in the name of fatherhood warped the lives of his children, Jared, Jane, and David, and his wife, Martha. May he rest in peace, for now.
A certain choice does except the Bethany family from the everyday humdrum and draw our attention: whether to bring Dominic back to life. In another time and another place, death is not so absolute as it is for you and me. A fatality may, in fact, be flexible. Resurrection, once a rarity owned only by the Son of God, can become commonplace.
But with the obstacle of mortality set aside, do we, as human beings, remain the same in all our faults and failures? In just a moment, we’ll see how the family chooses.
In reality, I’m Blake Montgomery, a reporter for The Daily Beast and a science fiction writer. If you subscribe to this newsletter, 300 words of the story will arrive in your inbox twice per week—Monday and Friday—for two-and-a-half months at $1.50 per week.
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