Sleep

Cold as day, but it wasn't morning or the afternoon. It was night, but it was a ghost town.

Over here, the gravestones were still stuck in the ground, and that's a good thing for everybody. The family of the deceased. The gravekeepers. The people handling the cemetary. You'll never know if somebody has the gull to steal a gravestone, or a corpse for certain purposes.

The gravekeeper had just arrived to the cemetary. He was filling for his friend who had just left the premises. For some reason night was as cold as this morning. The gravekeeper never understood why the weather was like this or how it changed, especially when he remembered that he lives in a country that literally only has two seasons: dry and rainy.

"If it's any consolation, at least there isn't mist going about." The gravekeeper said as he took a sip of his coffee. Next to him was the local security guard.

"Not sleepy yet?" the guard asked.

"Not really. Even without the coffee. But this is the night shift, and I've been sleeping since this morning actually."

"Sleeping in the morning so you can work late at night." the guard said. "It's a hit or miss."

"A hit when you can work as long as you want, but a miss if you end up getting a headache or even a hangover by the time you wake up from your sleep."

"Speaking of sleep." The guard replied, pointing his finger to something behind him. The gravekeeper looked at his direction and in his sights was a boy, about 9 or 10. The was covered in worn out clothes, with some dirt smudged on his hands and feet.

"I'll be back later." The gravekeeper said walking towards the boy. "Hello there. What are you doing here?"

The boy pointed towards one of the divided areas of the graveyard.

"I see. Could you please show me where exactly?"

It was a wide place this, so many people resting here to the point where their graves had to be marked by number in order to keep track. The boy was leading the gravekeeper up north, until he had stopped at one particular grave.

In which the casket was wide open. The gravekeeper rolled his eyes and sighed.

***

"I see." The gravekeeper opened his mouth. "Somebody tried to grave rob you?"

The boy nodded, and his face was in gloom.

Every single time, he thought. Grave robbing was a thing around the country very recently. Normally it would be because of the body holding some jewelry, but this kid? That's a mystery I know I won't solve, seeing how right now I gotta fix this. He stared at the boy. "I know, I know. You're not the only one in this place that has that problem. Just get inside your casket first, I'll be back with some things."

The boy went into the casket, and did as he was told. Pretty soon the gravekeeper returned with a glass of milk, and some leftover cookies. The boy gobbled up a cookie and drank the glass. The gravekeeper sat on the ground, right above the boy in the casket.

"Lay your head down, then close the casket." The gravekeeper said. "Now close your eyes and imagine you're in an empty white space. Imagine you're holding a paintbrush, and you are now painting the sky blue and the floor green. You had some brush strokes on the green floor, creating glass. Then you take some white paint and make some clouds. Washing the white paint away, you then paint a happy and smiling sun. You get the white paint again, but this time you make some sheep. You draw so many sheep that you have to count them all. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,11,12,13,14…". The gravekeeper stopped as soon as he heard some snoring. The boy was now sleeping in his casket.

"Good night." The gravekeeper said as he dug away the hole of the boy. It was just another night at the graveyard, another instance of getting a deceased to rest in peace, again.