Snow in London

Snow in London again, sounds pretty but the reality of it is that it's freezing.   I rub my hands together, and inspect them, blue fingers and ingrained soot under my nails.  I shrug and the cold slips under my layers of clothes and bites me bitterly.  I stamp my feet and look at the hole in one shoe.  I lean down and look closer, is that a black toe?   I don't really know if its frostbitten or not really, but it's exposed to the dirt and the soot. I stamp my feet harder trying to feel them, unsuccessfully.

I blow on my hands trying to warm them.  I have wrapped old rags around them in an attempt to keep them warm but they are wet down and I can feel the damp and cold pulling at my very bones.  My stomach gurgles.  How can it gurgle when there is nothing in it?    I walk up and down trying to keep warm, and wait where John said I should wait.  

He has gone to get the cleaning brush and hand cart for the chimneys here.  Should be on a circus wheel that cart, gets passed from person to person like a collection plate.    I'm right proud of how fast I can do them now, been up them since I was five.  First time scared the life out of me, but I get a coin and something warm in my belly.  Once I got past the scared feeling and sped things up like John yelled at me to do, I can go fast and still get coin to have something to eat and do at least 3 houses in a day.  Well depending on how many chimneys there are.   I feel in my pockets, there isn't even a crust of bread left now.   I wonder what it feels like to never be hungry and can't even imagine the feeling because hunger always feels like a rat gnawing my insides.

John says that orphan kids, that's me, were built for chimney jobs.  It's why he chose me really, said I was skinny enough to get in spaces others couldn't.  I'm worried a bit 'cause I keep growing and now at 6 I soon wont be able to fit up some places anymore.    I blow on my hands again.  John's taking his time and the day is growing bitterly cold even though its still so early.  I glance up at the sky, the clouds are reforming and the heavy snow feeling is again on the air.  I stamp my feet harder, the cold is biting through my clothes and I turn and walk over to to the step at the back of the house and pause in horror.   

There's a dead kid sitting on the step.   I step back and look up the roadway.  You can't even see the cobblestones as they are so covered in snow.  This back of house is a place we haven't been to before and no one much passes here.   I glance around again and listen to the clop of horse hooves the next street over.  I glance up at the tall dark building and it seems this kid could be here for days because this back door never seems used much.  

The snow piled up around him looks like he was carved there.   Curiosity gets the better of me and I go in closer and sniff.   Well he doesn't smell so I lean in and look at his face. The lashes of his eyes are dark and leaning on his blue cheeks.   He has an upturned nose sprinkled with freckles with little frozen rivulets of snot over his lip.   There's a sore or something on his lip and a grotty old scarf wrapped twice around his neck.   He has curling dark brown hair escaping out from under his cap which has a dusting of snow on it.   His hands are bright light blue, wrapped, black and filthy nails, resting lightly on his legs like he just took a load off for five minutes.   Ripped dirty trousers are on his thin legs and he looks about 6 years old but it's hard to tell because he's just there and just frozen.   He looks like every other street kid on the street.  Orphans are everywhere.

No puffs of breath in the cold air.  Nothing.   I take a risk and poke his hand.  I snatch my hand back, he's a rock, or like a piece of wood.  No movement, just like stone.  I survey him carefully.  How sad, poor kid, clearly a street kid like me, no one would miss him.   I wonder if I should tell John, if he ever turns up that is.  I turn and look in the darkening early morning light.  Nope still no sign of the blasted man.  Always with the wait here at this house, I'll be back.   Could take forever.

I walk away from the kid.  It's making me feel right morbid being in the same space as him.  There are little flurries of snow now starting in the air and I am starting to feel really annoyed with John.  If I didn't need the coin so much for a bite, I wouldn't be out.  I would be curled down at the Spotted Dick hunkered under a table by the fire.  Bess, the maid, she lets me sneak in and warm myself on these sorts of days.  Thoughts of that bliss make me madder as I stamp up and down with a dead kid for company.

The flurries get thicker and I want to walk away but I know if I do, John will be off after the next kid and I won't have a job again for a long time.   I walk back and lean in to look at the kid again.  I look closer and flick the snow off his scarf and rub my eyes with blackened hands.   Hey!  He has the same material scarf as me!  I brush the snow from the dead kids shoulder, same jacket.  Go figure, what are the chances.  I lean down and flick snow off the shoes and see the hole in the shoe with the black toe.  Just like mine.  I take two steps backwards from the dead kid and look at my own shoes.

That's funny, it seems I can see the snow through my boots and I lean down to have a look.  I seem to be getting less and less solid.   I hold out my hands in front of me and feel a scream forming in the back of my throat, rasping and fighting to be free, my hands are bluish, intangible, becoming see through.  I glance again at the boy with the clothes like mine and I feel the scream break free from my vocal cords and fall into a space of nothing.  No breath puffs from my throat as I realize having never ever seen myself, and the realization bites, that the boy on the step in the same clothes as me, is me.  

I raise vacant eyes to the sky and flurries fall down with softening grace. Funny I don't feel cold anymore.