It's Cold

Two babies sat on their graves. They were quite far apart. But the babies didn't know they weren't supposed to be able to hear and see each other. They regarded each other from under translucent blue veined eyelids, their icy pale lips parted slightly. One of the baby had a mouthful of bloody gums.

"Are you new?" said Hilda Mary Murray, the baby with the bleeding gums.

The Nameless Baby just watched her with dead eyes. His dark down of hair looked as though it would blow away at the slightest touch of a breeze.

Hilda Mary folded her arms. They were stick thin little things, all the natural baby chubbiness had melted away from her bones long ago. She was as bald as a little vulture and younger than the Nameless Baby.

"I've been here for sixty-four years," she remarked to the world in general.

A chilling wind sliced through the air at that moment. Hilda Mary pulled her blue blanket tighter around her. The Nameless Baby was naked. He huddled deeper into the fake flowers.

"I died from not having any food," said Hilda Mary, conversationally, "You can see that because I'm thin."

She took a few tottering steps across her grave, inside the little white fence that marked the edge of her tiny plot. Being six weeks old, she wasn't supposed to be able to walk but she didn't know that either, so she did. She wore her blanket like a cloak.

"I had nine brother and two sisters," she said.

The Nameless Baby spoke for the first time.

"Yes," he said.

"I lost them all. They didn't mind."

Skinny Hilda Mary clambered up onto her tombstone and sat swinging her fleshless legs.

"I was unlucky and just another mouth to feed anyway."

Despite the Nameless Baby's earlier prompt, he now appeared to be ignoring her. Three people from back then had come to look at his grave. They weren't old people. The boy with long hair said it looked like a footprint. Hilda Mary thought it was an easy mistake to make, since there was no headstone, no little fence, no marker at all. Just a small dent in the earth filled with fake flowers. They really couldn't see the Nameless Baby, peeping out through the synthetic petals, his dark eyes darting from one towering figure to the other. The girl looked sad. Maybe she understood, even though she laughed at the footprint joke.

Personally, Hilda Mary would have been ashamed to have a resting place that looked like a big footprint. There really was no excuse for that kind of thing. Her family may have been dirt poor, but they knew spending on a proper grave is far more important then spending on bread for the week. She looked sadly at her faded blue pinwheel. It was broken now, and spun in a very lopsided manner.

The statue of the little cherub that had cost a whole week's wages still stood however. The angel had its eyes close and its hands to its cheek. In its bareness, it was perfect, all peaceful smile and podgy limbs with beautifully formed little hands and feet. Hilda Mary was of the opinion that it was to help the family to remember her as a real baby. They could look at the little sculpture and it would help them forget the hunched bony little creature they had wrapped in a blue blanket and buried. They didn't have to remember the tiny, living piece of skin and bone with hollow eyes and purple-tinged fingers. Even as she sat there, her fingers quested for her prominent ribs and the blanket rubbed against the protrusions of her spine. Her gums bled. They were bleeding when she died and now they would bleed forever.

The Nameless Baby lay in his pit as if it were a cradle.

"What did you die of?" asked Hilda Mary.

The Nameless Baby didn't even look at her.

"Die," he said.

"Yes, die," said Hilda Mary.

"I didn't know," he said, "I think it was because of no one."

That confused Hilda Mary.

"Don't you remember? Do you even know who you are?"

The Nameless Baby picked a petal off one of his fake flowers. In turn the wind plucked it from his hand. It fluttered among the desolation of grey headstones like a colourful spirit. The three people from back then didn't even notice it. They felt the wind though. It cut through them only as an annoyance, a discomfort to be endured. They shuddered nevertheless.

Hilda Mary spoke again. Then the Nameless Baby spoke.

"I don't think I was ever back there. I think I was always on this side. If no remembers, then I never existed."

"But some one left you flowers," Hilda Mary pointed out, "Those three from back there came to see you. They remember."

The Nameless Baby shook his head. For the first time, Hilda Mary noticed an evil coloured dark bruise decorating the left side of his face.

"They know," he said, "They don't remember."

They were silent for a long time after that. It began to rain. Hilda Mary began to cry.

"It's cold," she remarked to the world in general, through her sniffles.

"Yes," said the Nameless Baby, "It's cold."