A/N: Inspiration for this story came to me from a Yahoo! news article about abandoned children on the streets of Moscow. How long will this story be? Probably short. I cannot say. What is its purpose? To open people's eyes. To make them see the plight of the unknowns.

My name is Skeleton. I am 100 years old. What do I do? I steal. Where am I from? I am from under the platform.

It is not so bad.

My life, it is not so bad. Not so bad as it was. I can still see my father's face as he tore about our home in a blind rage. My mother passed out on the floor, too drunk to know her own name. The faces of the officials as they took me away to the orphanage. My home. My hell. Both the same. I remember "Uncle" Ramil's nightly visits to my home, as well as his threats when he left. I remember seeing retarded boys my age being stripped and beaten for all of us to see. Why did human beings do such things? Because they could. Because others make themselves blind to it.

Now, it is not so bad.

It was not long ago that I left my orphanage, my home, my hell. It was then that I came here, to Moscow. Moscow, the capital city of my great country. Beautiful, some call it. People from other countries come to bask in Great Moscow's glory. I've seen many of these, often posing for pictures in the Red Square and buying souvenir Russian dolls. What these people never see, however, is the dark underbelly of Moscow, where I make my home.

They don't see us.

They will never see us.

I do not think there ever will be a person who comes here and sees starving, abandoned children. Why? Because they do not wish to. They wish only to see grand buildings and to tell their friends back at home that they stood in the Red Square. They do not come to Moscow to see us.

Friend, if you are ever in Moscow, come to the Hammer and Sickle station. There you will find me, beneath the platform. I pray you will not be turned away by the permeating smell of stagnant urine and human feces. I pray that you, unlike others, will care to venture further, and see a boy not so very unlike your own. A boy who is nameless, ageless. A boy who will never find home because others are blind.