[HR] The tiny casket

The crying was starting to get to me. I can take the worms and the cold and the stiffness, but the crying gets to me. Coupled with the fact that my hearing was intact, I actually think that it was the one part of myself that had not decayed. It may have even gotten better. You know how they say that if you lose one of your senses, like your eyesight or smell, the other ones automatically get stronger? I genuinely think that is what happened. Once my entire body shut down my hearing had no choice but to get better. 

I can even hear what happens above me. Though the layers of mud and dirt and stone should theoretically make it impossible, I can hear it when people come to visit. I can hear their groans and whimpers and their pathetic speeches. I’m glad I can. I would have gone crazy a long time ago if I didn’t have that. 

They buried the baby a month ago, which is not a long time considering…  Its parents cried too as the infant-sized casket was being lowered. I imagined a young couple, dark haired and sickly pale, tall and thin, rich and pampered. These were people who had not known tragedy or hardship coming face to face with perhaps the greatest pain a parent can experience. I am sympathetic to their plight, I too was once alive and prancing about above ground. I am no stranger to strong emotions. 

As the tiny casket fell on the ground with an equally tiny poof, and the ritualistic sermons and speeches were carried out, I couldn’t help but pity the child. To spend an eternity below ground and not have had the time to live was a true travesty. I was still on that same train of thought a few days later, when the crying began. Poor child, let it vent its grief, I thought, and silently grieved with him. 

This attitude was quite reversed after a month. Infernal child! Make peace with your situation. We all have! Yet, its grief must be stronger than mine ever was, for the accursed infant’s shrieking has not dwindled. A few days ago, I began to train myself. I focused the entirety of my being on my throat and vocal chords and slowly began to see some progress. At first I could only manage a slight whimper but soon enough I got louder. I could feel the strength of my voice returning, and what a strength it was! I had not felt anything like it in decades. The only drawback was that I began to lose my hearing. It is necessary, I told myself, this madness must stop. 

I kept up my practice and I got stronger, as the crying itself got weaker. Until one day I succeeded. “Shut up! Shut up!”, I howled, “I can’t take it, do you hear me? I can't take it anymore!” I kept this up for a long time, a very long time, until I suddenly realized I couldn’t hear myself anymore. I shut my trap and felt complete and utter silence. It’s not that I heard nothing, it’s that there was no longer anything to hear. 

I can no longer hear the crying. I can no longer hear at all. I must admit that the silence is getting to me. All I can do to keep my sanity is to keep yelling. I desperately want to be heard, to feel that I haven’t yet lost all contact with the living world. So I tense up my throat and vibrate my vocal chords and let out the most guttural shriek that I can. I know it must be an awful sound and I wonder what the others must be thinking. I myself cannot hear it… 

They opened up my tomb today. Grave robbers, I think. They shoved my body aside and cast another on top of me. A small bundle. I can feel it vibrating against me. As I begin to yell, the vibrating stops. I continue for a long time. I tell it everything: my birth, my life, my death, and everything in between, until I run out of words. I have nothing left to say. 

Slowly, the bundle begins to vibrate. It escalates urgently, shaking my lifeless body with its desperation. A formless voice forms in my unconscious and words begin to appear.

“Where is Mama? I did not mean to swallow the gum. I’m sorry. Is she angry?”