I draw the darkness around me like a thick, impenetrable cloak, melting into the shadows. My heart is pounding so violently in my chest that I fear that it can be heard by the men beating the bushes looking for me.

If I'm caught, I'm dead. I know that for the cold hard fact that it is.

Not long ago, I was just one of many people in the streets going to their separate venues and children carrying baskets with enough candy to last them for days. Fairies, knights and princesses mingling with gargoyles and demons, all laughing and skipping along with glee.

It is Halloween, where innocence and depravity meet and walk hand-in-hand for a while.

My stalkers are closing in. The streets are deserted. Children went to bed to dream of chocolates and pirate costumes; everyone else is at an after-party somewhere. There are no more trick-or-treaters around, no more parents wrangling their young. All that remains are the night, the odd barking of a dog or two and streetlamps flickering as insects crowd their light.

I'm crouched among the branches of a shrub blocking a house from the street, making myself as small as possible, my heart a shivering rabbit in my breast. I ran so far that now my breath struggles from my lungs. I'm almost completely out of options. Soon, I'll be trapped with nowhere safe to hide. Panic is stirring in my stomach, a demon with stringy hair gnawing on my entrails.

I am afraid.

I know that from the sweat beading at my hairline and trickling down my back. Fear is a cold emotion, dark and numbing. I push through the paralysis, settling in my limbs, stumbling over tree roots in the dark until I'm crawling over pebbles and dropped thorns, forcing my body through the narrow gap between the unforgiving ground and the bottom of a Bougainvillea. The shrub is throwing its thorny vines up the nearest tree and parts of the house's wall, flashing pretty red flowers to hide how vicious it really is.

I can hear shoes crunching on the ground near me, and I shrink deeper into my hiding place, smothering my frightened whimpers with my hand, ignoring the sharp thorns, digging into my clothes, searching for my skin.

If I'm caught it's over. There will be no mercy. Nobody cares about innocence anymore.

I swallow against the bile rising in my throat, watching the hulking figure sneak past, gun at the ready. One bullet is all it will take for my life to be over. The man is swinging a flashlight around, casting an arc of blinding light into the darkness, and I hold my breath, pinching my eyes shut. The light burns on my hiding place for too long, and I wait for the branches to be ripped apart and for cruel hands to pull me out, but it never comes. The glare leaves my closed eyelids, and when I open them, I see the man moving away, still swinging his light from side to side, going further and further away from me along the street.

I wait a while longer, making sure that there aren't other dangers around, before I stand up straight behind the shrubs and slide along the breadth of the house, my back pressed against the rough wall.

Once I'm free of the biting branches, I run across the yard, adrenaline pumping through my veins until I'm able to dive into the shadows at the hedge separating this yard from the next one. I wait, holding my breath, my heart pounding so hard I can feel its vibrations in my head. Too many times tonight, I'd thought I'd shaken off my stalkers; too many times, I'd been wrong.

Any minute, a bullet could fly past my head again; this time, it might hit its target. My left shoulder burns where one grazed me earlier, tearing through my T-shirt. I crouch next to the hedge, trying to still my heart, wiping at the sweat trickling into my eyes.

Nothing is moving. The night is quiet around me. I'm all alone and scared, I am so afraid.

Taking deep breaths and releasing them with sharp huffs, I finally get to my feet and fight through the foliage, sprinting until I'm standing pressed against the wall of the next house. Nobody waits in the yard to pounce on me and rip me to shreds.

I don't know how my pursuers found me in the first place. I kept to the shadows, hiding in ditches and the cruel embrace of shrubs.

Fear is exhausting me.

I look up at the dark windows above me and notice that one is open at a crack. If I could get up there, I'd be safe. Nobody will find me and hurt me or kill me. I know I'm leaving blood smears against the wall, but it doesn't matter; it's too dark to see it now, and when the sun rises and it becomes visible, I'll be long gone... I hope.

I am grateful for how careless people can be, leaving crates, ladders, and gardening equipment around; if not for that, I would have been lost right now. There's no ladder, but there is a wheelbarrow I noiselessly steer to the wall. Standing on it gives me enough height to climb onto a horizontal section of the pipes, zigzagging across and down the wall, passing underneath the open window on their route.

The window complains loudly when I open it wider, and I freeze, my heart leaping into my throat. I'm exposed out here against the white wall, even if there is no moon and the sky is too overcast to share the light of the stars.

Nothing is moving in the shadows below me; trees and the neighbouring house's roof block my view of the street. Nobody stirs in the dark interior of the room I'm about to climb into. My pulses leap at the idea of someone waiting for me inside, ready to hurt me, but what choice do I have?

Squeezing through the opening is not easy, and the edge of the window frame scrapes my injured shoulder, causing me to hiss in pain, but I dare not stop. I dare not turn back. Forward is the only way... back, there is only death.

I land with a whispered thud on a soft carpet and stay crouched, familiarising myself with my surroundings and listening for threatening sounds. All is quiet, and I risk straightening up.

I'm in a hallway; wall art staggered along its length like dark wounds and doors set at intervals, yawning open. There are two of these open doors on either side of me, and I creep first to one and then the other, breathing shallow, frightened huffs while I look into the gloom. Two bedrooms, both empty.

My pulse is kicking up a terrifying beat in my throat as I sneak along the corridor, searching for what I need. Another empty bedroom leads me to believe I am alone in the house.

The next door I find is closed, immediately putting me on alert. Forcing my breathing to calm down and my heart to stop racing, I carefully turn the knob and push it open, relieved when it doesn't make a sound.

It's another bedroom. This one is bathed in a soft green glow, creating the illusion of stepping into an underwater cave. It comes from a night light shaped like a dolphin, resting on a bedside table. The animal's smooth lines burst from the delicate contours of the plastic waves surrounding it.

Sweet, innocent, and pure.

Moving deeper into the room, I notice posters on the walls, the kind found in the rooms of many teenage girls. Shawn Mendes, Billie Eilish, Zayn, Harry Styles, and more. Old dolls never played with anymore are sitting lonely amongst books on the bookshelf, and make-up is scattered over the vanity's surface.

I stop beside the bed, gazing down at the girl sleeping among the plushies, her blond hair softly splayed over her pillow. She is innocent and pretty in her floral pyjamas.

Innocence is being lost from the world at such an awful pace. It needs to be protected always, but it is driven out of all the places where it still lingers, dragged kicking and screaming, and tossed away like it has no value.

I know this girl from seeing her around the neighbourhood. Her parents are having a ball at a party I passed through earlier. I saw this girl smoking with a boy, hidden behind the low wall at the back of the convenience store three days ago. She is one of many in the neighbourhood ripping her innocence off like a band-aid, flinging it away like trash.

She's at that age where innocence still fights to hold on while the rest of her tries to break free. She wants to become her own person and trample on all the parts of herself, reminding her that she'd only recently been a child. We are always in such a hurry to leave our childhood behind, not realising that, once lost, we can never regain it.

I did not know that I would run into her tonight. I had other plans, but they got interrupted, and I had to flee. I was sure I would be just one more Pipi Longstocking, amongst many others. I was a bit worried that since my outfit was mostly black and I'd lost my braids, I would stand out, but those were the least of my worries because these days, everybody wants to be a vampire, a wizard or Batman. I didn't spot even one other Pipi Longstocking.

The girl is sleeping like a child, curled on her side, her innocence bringing tears to my eyes. Perhaps saving her was more urgent than my other task. There is still time for me to capture this girl's innocence, allowing her to live on in the hearts and memories of all who knew and loved her as the sweet innocent girl she was. They will never have to be disillusioned by the wicked person she's about to become.

She stirs, sighing in her sleep when I draw the knife from the scabbard tied around my waist and hidden in the pocket of my dungaree shorts. The broad blade catches the light, skipping over the dark spatters I didn't manage to wipe off properly when I got interrupted and had to flee from the boy whose innocence I was trying to save tonight.

My mission is clear; I have work to do here.

~~~