Dead Baby Jokes

I have been working on this story, in many different forms, for years. I don't know why it suddenly came out, all pink and healthy and crying, but it did. Many thanks to a university professor whose name I have forgotten. He assigned us one of those stereotypical creative writing exercises, and it's what spawned this story. I broke all the rules to the exercise because I thought it was stupid. But it gave me an interesting idea.

As always, feedback of any kind is appreciated. Email me at crediblewitness@gmail.com or leave a comment.


DEAD BABY JOKES
by Nikolaus Maack

Julia entered the bedroom, looked into the crib, and saw the baby was dead. It was obvious. She could tell just looking at it. The sight froze Julia in place -- she just stood there, staring down at the thing, not knowing what to do. After a minute or so, she made a conscious decision to check how she was feeling. She wasn't sad. Instead, Julia was overcome with a sense of relief. It was the same sort of feeling she had waking up from a dream, realizing a terrible experience wasn't real.

There was this baby, and she had to care for it all the time. It cried, it latched on to her, it made demands. She could hardly ever leave the house. She couldn't have a life. Everyone expected Julia to love this baby with all her heart -- only she didn't. She hated it. And now Julia was waking up. There was no baby. It was dead. All the pressure, all the pain, all the worry, the failure to bond, the expense -- all her problems disappeared. This little blue face, the brown eyes open wide, the chest not moving -- it meant she was free again.

The baby was so very still. So silent. The tiny fingers clenched into fists, the grim little line that was its mouth, the delicate blue tinge of its pink skin... It was strangely beautiful. Funny, when it was alive, she never thought of it as beautiful. In death, it looked like a piece of art. It was an intricate sculpture.

Him, she corrected herself. Not "it". Him. She'd been doing that ever since she brought the baby home -- calling him an it. Why did she do that?

I should do something, she thought. I should tell Roger. She sat down on the edge of her king-sized bed and stared at the thing in the crib. They'd kept the baby in their own bedroom. It was less than a month old.

Once she told her husband, everything would change. Roger would cry. He would panic, dial 9-1-1. Scream. Yell. She couldn't face that right now. This was her moment.

Julia just sat there, in the darkened bedroom, listening to the complete silence. Basking in it. How terrible it would be, to destroy this tranquility. Why did Roger have to ruin everything? Why did he always upset her? She inhaled deeply, stared, and waited.

After she'd been in there for fifteen minutes or so, she heard Roger coming down the hall. He was looking for her. Then he called her name. And finally he was in the room, standing next to her. When Roger saw the dead baby, he frantically scooped it up in his hands, moaning, "No, no, no!" and then collapsed on the floor, on to his knees. He held it tenderly in his big hands, sobbing great big shuddering sobs that shook his entire body, as though he were about to explode apart.

Julia knelt down next to him, and put a reassuring hand on his back, stroking him faintly.

Roger's chaos, she thought. Right on schedule.

* * *

Q: How do you make a dead baby float?

A: Take your foot off its head.

* * *

Julia's life felt like riding a wave. Her birth was a shipwreck, and ever since then she'd been clinging to a scrap of wood, sitting on top of an enormous wave that rolled across the ocean. It was never up to her where she went or what happened to her. She went where the wave took her. She hoped some day to be dropped on dry land. But that never happened. The wave just went on and on.

All of her friends from college decided to travel through Europe. So Julia went too. She met Roger, a fellow traveler, working in the same hotel as her. They started a romance, and lived together in West Berlin for three months. He proposed. Not knowing what else to do, she said yes. She wasn't sure she loved him -- but she'd been saying "I love you" for a long time. It made him happy and seemed the thing to do. Roger was likeable enough. He seemed reliable.

They moved back to Canada. For a while, they lived with Julia's parents and saved their money. Then they bought a house. They spent a long time choosing furniture and decorating. And then, apparently, it was time to have kids.

Looking back, trying to figure out how it all happened, Julia couldn't make any sense of it. She never really remembered choosing to do anything. A life sort of grew up around her, without any of her input.

Roger said, "Let's move in together," and she said yes.

He said, "Will you marry me?" and she said she would.

He said, "Let's move back to Canada," and she agreed.

He said, "Let's buy a house," and she went along with it.

And then he said, "Let's have a baby," and she smiled and said okay.

Over and over, she'd agreed with him. These decisions might look like choices, to an outside observer. But to Julia, she was just riding the wave. She agreed with Roger because she didn't know what else to do with herself.

And then one day, she was in the hospital, her legs spread wide, in intense pain. And someone dumped this messy little creature on her stomach and said, "Congratulations, it's a boy."

She looked down at it, feeling nothing, and asked herself, how did this happen? How did she get here? This was something she let happen that she could never take back.

Or so she had thought.

* * *

Q: What's the difference between a dead baby and a trampoline?

A: You take your boots off to jump on a trampoline.

* * *

The only thing more depressing than picking out a crib for a baby is picking out a coffin. Julia and Roger went to a funeral home together. Roger said they had to do this as a couple -- it would help them heal and stay together.

"So many couples break up," Roger told her, "due to the death of a child."

Julia nodded, wondering where he'd learned that particular piece of trivia. Probably from one of the many books he'd bought on the subject. "Grieving for Idiots." "Mourning the Death of Your Child for Dummies".

At first, they sat in an office, flipping through a picture book of possibilities. These were coffins specifically for children that would have to be special ordered. Many of the child coffins looked like cribs. Some were even blue or pink, as though a coffin were just another piece of clothing for your baby. Several pages were devoted to all natural wicker coffins. To Julia, they looked like boxes to store fish.

"None of these feel like real coffins to me," Roger said.

Next, they went down into the basement, where the "real coffins" were kept. They were lined up in angled rows, like cars parked at a slant, a gap between each parking spot. They were all adult-sized, but some worker all in black told them smaller versions could be made.

"Maybe this one," Roger said, looking at a casket.

Julia nodded. "Maybe," she agreed.

But really, she didn't care and was hardly paying attention. All of these coffins looked the same -- shiny wooden boxes that would be buried in dirt. And a funeral for something barely alive three weeks seemed extravagant.

Cemeteries were such a waste of land. Roger's parents had a plot of land in a cemetery. They offered Roger and Julia part of the plot, to bury the dead baby. Roger accepted, of course. Julia supposed it was the sort of present you can't turn down.

Better to cremate the dead baby, put the ashes in a vase. Then you put the vase on display on the mantle for a month or so. One day, you put the vase in some back cupboard, and forget about it. Wasn't that the modern way?

Julia said none of this. She could tell Roger was in a lot of pain, so she kept this sympathetic, mournful look on her face. Feigning sorrow was so tiring. Roger of course assumed she was tired because she was full of sorrow. So it all worked out.

"What about this one?" he asked. "I like this one."

"I don't know, Roger," Julia said.

"You're right. The first one was better."

It doesn't matter what I say, Julia realized. Roger couldn't hear her. Or maybe she just never said anything real. Julia mumbled random words, and Roger interpreted the gibberish into something sensible. How long had that been going on? Since the day they met, she supposed.

Why was she only noticing this now? Maybe it was the contrast between their feelings. She was so happy the baby was dead and out of their lives, hiding the joy as best she could. And Roger was so depressed. That difference -- it brought new clarity to her.

"So, we're agreed?" Roger asked, pointing at a coffin.

"Yes," Julia said, glancing at it. The coffin was a large, white monstrosity.

Roger got out his credit card. Buying a coffin, in the end, was just like buying anything else.

* * *

Q: What's the difference between a truck load of bowling balls and a truck load of dead babies?

A: You can't unload bowling balls with a pitchfork.

* * *

There was an article in the paper once. A fat woman went into a public bathroom with what she thought were intestinal cramps. Maybe she'd eaten a bad burrito. Only she didn't have a crap -- the fat woman gave birth. Right there, in the Wal Mart bathroom. The woman never even realized she was pregnant. Her size had hidden the pregnancy for the entire nine months. And she was so out of touch with her body, she'd never felt a thing.

That's what Julia's pregnancy was like. Her stomach grew, her back hurt -- but she never felt very different.

Roger and Julia went to birthing classes together at a community centre. The other women were all glowing and serene. Like fat Buddhas.

"I was never very spiritual," one woman confided to the class, "until I got pregnant."

"It's hard to be an atheist when you're experiencing the miracle of life," someone quipped in agreement.

All the women smiled, nodding. And Julia nodded too, vacantly. But inside she was thinking, what the hell are these idiots talking about?

A foetus is a parasite. No better than a tapeworm. It steals nutrients from the host. No one ever looks at a tapeworm and makes vapid comments about "the miracle of life". If anything, getting pregnant proves there is no god. Life is all about genetic machinery, desperate to perpetuate its own existence. Sex feels good, so you're tricked into getting pregnant. And the parasite grows, and hormones in your head force you to bond with the thing. These biochemical deceptions are called "motherly love".

Only it doesn't always work that way. Julia, it seemed, was a special case.

She felt a sort of perverse pride when she failed to lactate, and they had to bottle feed the thing. Take that, you tapeworm, she thought.

* * *

Q: What's the difference between a dead baby and a styrofoam cup?

A: You don't harm the ozone layer when you burn a dead baby.

* * *

Something woke Julia up in the middle of the night. Maybe a sound. Or just a feeling. The bedside clock showed 3 AM, and she was wide awake, staring into the darkened room. It was unusual for her to wake up like this. She always slept soundly. Roger was sound asleep next to her, his face deep in his pillow.

Julia sat up, certain something in the bedroom woke her. Something moved. There it was, in the air -- a shape hovering in place, over the foot of the bed. A bat, maybe, she thought. It took a while for her mind to process what she was seeing. It was her dead baby. It was floating in the air, flapping its arms slowly, as though they were wings. The baby looked pretty much the same as it looked when she found it dead in its crib.

It had on a diaper and the pinkish skin was tinted blue. The eyes were open wide, staring at nothing.

"I'm dead," it said in a calm voice, its lips not moving, "because you're dead."

It had a cartoon baby voice, almost lisping. It would have been funny if it weren't so horrifying.

"I'm alive," Julia whispered.

"You're not. You've always been dead. You've never been alive."

"That's not true," she said, getting irritated. "You're lying."

"And because you're dead, you only give birth to dead things."

"You get out of here. You don't belong here."

"What do you mean?" the dead baby asked. It flew closer to Julia, lower and towards her face, always slowly flapping its arms. "Of course I belong here. I live here. This is my home. You're my mother. Aren't you my mother?"

The little blue face approached Julia, seeming to fill her vision completely. She scrambled to get away from it, pulled her legs up, grabbed hold of the headboard, pressing herself against the wall without turning away. She wanted it gone. Forever.

"Get out of here!" Julia screamed, "You don't belong here! You don't even have a name!"

Her yelling woke Roger up. "Honey, what is it?" he asked. He fumbled for the bedside lamp. When he turned it on, the room filled with light and the dead baby disappeared.

Julia cried and shook. Her body was hysterical, but her mind felt clear. What was that all about, she wondered? A dream. A nightmare. An hallucination.

Roger held her and told her it was all right. He wasn't at all disturbed by her yells or her crying. If anything, he seemed a little relieved. The idiot thought she was finally grieving.

But that wasn't what she was doing at all. Was it?

* * *

Q: What is charred black and screams?

A: A baby getting his toy out of the fireplace.

* * *

"We need to put a name on the gravestone," Roger said.

"I don't want to talk about it," Julia said, her face pointed down at her bowl of cereal.

They were eating in the "breakfast nook". That's what Roger called the cramped little booth tucked into an awkward corner of the kitchen. Roger thought it was cute, and it was one of the deciding factors in buying the house.

"We need to discuss these things," Roger said. "It's painful, but it has to be done."

Painful, Julia thought. That wasn't it at all. She was bored of talking about the dead baby. Tomorrow was the funeral. Maybe once it was in the ground, they could talk about something else for a change.

"We put off giving him a name for so long," Roger said. "We have to give him a name. Something to put on the marker."

"No," Julia said firmly. "No name."

"But... why?" Roger asked.

Because I had a nightmare, Julia thought. The dead baby woke me in the middle of the night, floating above my bed, accusing me of terrible things. Giving it a name would make it all the more real. Keep it vague. I can forget the thing if it's vague.

Roger said, "I was thinking we could name him after my grandfather -- Michael. What do you think?"

And that was it. The dead baby was named. The name was in the air, and nothing Julia said could take it away again. There was no way for her to fight it.

"Fine," Julia said, her voice flat. "Michael works just fine."

"Are you sure?" Roger asked. "I don't want to force a name on you."

"It's fine."

* * *

Q. Why do babies have soft spots on their heads ?

A. So the nurses can carry them around five at a time.

* * *

The service was in the same funeral parlour where they picked out the coffin. Family and friends were there -- maybe fifteen people. Roger said they should keep it small. They were Roger's friends, really. Julia didn't have any real friends of her own. She didn't seem to have the time or the energy for them.

Her family made an appearance. They didn't really speak to her, beyond a few platitudes. Julia's sister said, "How you holding up?" and that was pretty much it. Everyone stared at their shoes and said it was a shame. Her father smelled suspiciously of booze.

I don't even have to lie to my family, Julia thought. They can't even pretend to care.

Roger's parents -- Albert and Lorraine -- insisted on hugging her. They were old, white haired people who always seemed to be leaning forward in an earnest, interested way. They creeped Julia out.

Albert was a doctor and he carried a black bag with him. A little black bag of doctor's tricks, brought specifically to save Julia should she get all girly and faint. Were her inner feelings so buried no one could see them?

"Oh Julia," Lorraine said, and started to cry.

Julia recoiled slightly from her mother-in-law. I'm going to have to comfort her, she thought. Or does she expect me to cry too and hug her? What the hell am I going to say to her?

But Albert stepped in, taking hold of his wife by the shoulders and whispering something in her ear.

Roger's parents were so sane and reasonable. It confused Julia to no end.

When everyone was settled, Roger stood up and made a speech. Julia hardly listened. She was so tired. And she'd heard the speech already. Roger ran it by her, when he was writing it. This was a non-religious ceremony, but he had wondered if maybe the words "precious miracle" were still appropriate to describe the fleeting moments they'd shared with their child? Christ, it was disgusting.

Julia did not get up to speak. She'd told Roger she had no intention of saying anything and he said he understood. Whatever that meant.

Ten minutes later, Roger tearfully finished talking and sat down next her. When Julia didn't get up to speak, everyone stared with sympathetic, understanding looks on their faces.

They assumed because she was a woman and a mother that she was completely devastated. Women are so fragile. They have a special bond with their children. Women are emotional and empathetic and caring and nurturing and gentle and kind and...

Fuck all that sexist bullshit, Julia thought.

* * *

Q: What's red, sits in the front of a mirror, and gets smaller and smaller?

A: A baby combing it's hair with a potato peeler.

* * *

There'd been some sort of mistake, and they dug an adult-sized grave instead of one suitable for the tiny casket. Julia heard the cemetery staff -- two anonymous men in black suits -- apologizing to Roger. And because the hole was the wrong size, the device to lower the coffin wouldn't work. They'd have to use ropes, do it the old fashioned way. Roger bit his lip, but said it was fine.

The grave looked like an enormous pit. As far as Julia was concerned, it could never be deep enough.

A priest who wasn't really a priest but just some man with a deep voice -- he read a passage from a book of poetry. The words barely registered. Julia was curious, and strained to hear, but it was like her senses refused to comply with her demands.

"...at peace... sudden... mysterious... life... miracle..."

Those were the only words she could make out. Why are all funerals the same? Julia wondered.

Roger stood next to her. And Roger's parents were there too, watching her, sympathetic looks on their weepy faces. Julia's own family were supposed to be around, but had mysteriously never arrived. Knowing her family, they'd simply gone home. Later they'd give her some feeble excuse about getting lost on the way to the cemetery. The graveside was what, a twenty minute drive from the funeral home? How incompetent and embarrassing her family was. How lazy.

As she was thinking these idle thoughts, hardly paying any attention to her surroundings, the two funeral parlour employees began lowering the coffin with the ropes. One of the men shifted slightly, to get a better grip, and the rope slipped, causing the coffin to wobble.

That was just enough for the lid to open a crack -- Julia swore it had opened. And the dead baby, Michael, floated out and up, flapping his arms like wings. He hovered over the grave, in front of Julia's face. The dead eyes looked blankly at nothing.

"You're dead," Michael said in his cartoon baby voice. "You should be down there in the hole. Not me."

I'm hallucinating again, Julia thought. She looked around, to see how the others were reacting. They weren't looking at a flying dead baby, at Michael. They were staring down, or looking at the pseudo priest. Lorraine turned to face Julia, and gave a weak little supportive smile.

"They can't help you," Michael said, still hanging in space. "I'm no hallucination. I'm real. And I'm going to be with you forever. You can never get rid of me. I'll float along side of you everywhere you go, watching you. Reminding you that you're dead. That you were born dead. You never say what you want to say and you never do what you want to do. You just drift along, your eyes barely open, letting Roger, my daddy, make all your decisions."

"Shut up," Julia whispered loudly. "Shut up."

The fake priest faltered in his poetry reading, then simply stopped.

"Honey?" Roger asked. "What's the matter?"

"You're dead, mommy," Michael said in his cartoon baby voice. "You're dead. You've always been dead."

"Shut up!" Julia yelled. "Shut up! You loathsome thing, I never wanted you! I never wanted to have a baby, I never wanted to be a mother!"

Roger, his eyes wide, barked, "Julia!" And then more quietly, "Please."

Albert, standing next to his son, whispered to him reassuringly, "Grief takes many forms. Go easy on her."

Julia turned on them, her face demonic, her eyes wide, her mouth gaping and savage.

"I'm not grieving. Oh please believe me, I'm not. I couldn't give a shit. At all. I'm glad the baby died. I never wanted a baby. I never wanted a husband. Or a house. I just didn't know what else to do. I'm glad he died." She held up her trembling, twisted hands and said, "I only wish I'd had the courage to wrap my hands around his tiny throat and choke the life out of him myself."

Albert was digging through his doctor's bag of tricks, looking for the right pill, potion, or injection to shut her up. Roger staggered back as if struck, then fell to his knees to cry again -- the fucking faggot. Lorraine was sobbing, her hands bunched together under her chin. The fat fake priest had dropped his pretty book of poetry in the dirt.

"That's it, mother," Michael said. "Tell them all your secrets. Bring it all out into the open. Show them what a loathsome thing you are."

"I will kill you myself," Julia yelled, and in one motion turned and threw herself at the flying baby. He deftly slipped from her fingers, floating up higher, and Julia tumbled into the open grave.

* * *

Q: What's pink and red and silver and crawls into walls?

A: A baby with forks in its eyes.

* * *

When she came to a few seconds later, it was dark and damp. She turned her head and saw an earthy wall a few inches from her face. Underneath her was the coffin. Her weight had crushed it. A smashed egg, she thought strangely. Her egg. Did that make this grave her nest? Her womb?

High above her, she could hear the voices of her husband, his parents, and the two attendants, all trying to figure out how to get her out of there or what to do next.

Albert was saying, "We can't move her -- she could have damaged her spine!"

The others were all disagreeing or agreeing with him in a mad babble.

The fake priest was yelling into a cellphone for an ambulance.

I'll fight them, she realized. I'll fight them if they try to move me. I'm staying down here. I'm never coming out. This is where I belong.

Julia tried to roll over. She wanted to look up at the sky, at Michael. Everyone started yelling at her not to move, but she paid no attention. Her left leg felt strange. Numb. Maybe she'd broken it.

On her back, staring up, she could see Michael floating above, blocking out the sun. The little fucker, she thought. The cursed tapeworm. If only she could get him close enough to her, so she could strangle him. Kill him again. But what would he want? Her son. A dead son born from a dead mother, from a dead womb.

A weird thought came to Julia, and a twisted smile crept on to her face. She began to unbutton her blouse.

"Is this what you want?" she yelled. "Are you a hungry little dead baby?"

The panicking people above her fell silent, stunned. In the distance was the sound of an approaching ambulance siren.

Julia opened up her shirt, unclasped her bra, and offered her breast to the ghost of her dead son. She would make milk, damn it. She would. Squeezing herself as hard as she could, something gave, and Julia let out a yell of triumph. But the feeling was short lived. A fluid oozed out of her breast -- greenish black and sour, more like pus than milk. The stench of it made Julia gag a little. The milk in her tits had curdled, rotted.

Michael floated above her. He didn't fly any closer or say anything.

Julia let out a humiliated sob of pain. She produced the kind of rancid milk that not even a dead baby would drink.

* * *

Q: Why do doctors always bring boiling water to a birth?

A: In case the baby dies, they can make soup.

* * *

"There's postpartum depression. And then there's postpartum psychosis. It's very rare."

That's what the doctors whispered to Roger. Julia heard everything, and resented them talking about her like she wasn't in the room. They were treating her like an object. Of course, ever since they pulled her out of the grave she refused to move or speak. Dead people don't move. Dead people don't talk.

Now she just lay strapped down in a hospital bed, staring up at the ghost of her dead baby. Michael floated a few inches above her chest, facing her, always flapping his little arms in lazy waves. They stared at each other, Julia and Michael, eye to eye. Not speaking.

Julia knew she was dead. As dead as her baby. And dead people don't move and dead people don't talk. So she would just lie there, staring at the dead baby in front of her. Michael would make sure she stayed that way -- obeyed the rules.

They would medicate her. And maybe her thinking would clear up. And maybe Michael would disappear. But even if Julia couldn't see him, he would always be there. Always watching her. Always making sure she stayed dead, until the day she died.

Julia stared into the dead eyes of her dead baby -- cloudy yellow orbs -- and stayed absolutely still. And she felt a strange thrill of pleasure. Not moving. Doing nothing. Being dead. She'd gotten off the wave that dragged her through her life. She was on dry land, for the first time ever.

Finally, Julia was doing exactly what she wanted to do.

* * *

Q: What is 12 inches long, cold and stiff, and makes a woman scream in the morning?

A: Crib death.