Running

She fled down the darkened street, hair streaming wildly in the wind and the rain, feet splashing barefoot through puddles, arm swaying frantically, heart pounding.

She turns to look behind as she runs, forever fearful of footsteps behind.

Rains drives down as the wind howls whilst she flees through intermittent rays of light spraying down from the street lamps above.

Car headlights swim up out of the blackness and rain and speed on past the fleeing girl. She turns off the main street and out of the streets vision.

Hurtling past gardens, of houses sleeping in the night, she runs down by the river, through the undergrowth and falls down upon the pebble shore next to the flowing river.

Laying there, gasping for breathe, she bends over, double up in pain as cramps tear through her body. She holds onto her stomach and raises her hand up to the moonlight to see it covered in blood.

Voices shouting in the night cause her to look around and she scrambles up off the pebble beach and into the trees beside the bank. She presses herself into the blackness of the undergrowth, pulling every part of her out of the moonlight.

The voices grow nearer, calling out her name, asking her to come home, telling her they love her as another cramp surges through her stomach and she bites her own hand to stop herself screaming out loud.

Footsteps come nearer down the path forewarning of the torch light they bring with them. She gently slides back toward the bank, ready to dive into the icy water should the feet find her. She cries silent tears, cascading down a dirty, tired face.

Voices now span across both sides of the water, there is only one way out as she looks wistfully at the moonlit dappled water. The footsteps move past her, they move past her undergrowth. She leans her head back against the tree stump and breathes a quiet sigh of relief, shoulders sagging, arms going limp.

The voices trail off into the darkness.

She pulls her tops off and separates her t-shirt from her jumper. Tearing it along the seams she constructs a make shift bandage across her wound and pulls her jumper back. She rubs her feet to warm them up then slides into the icy water and back tracks her way up stream.

When she has walked for half an hour in the other direction she pulls her near freezing body out of the river and lays quietly behind the houses edging the banks. When she hears no noise she moves furtively forward, hiding behind the coal bunkers at the back of the buildings. Moving quickly now she breaks out onto the street again, once more intermittently splattered with the orange glow of street lamps, glooming hazily out of the rain and the wind. She bends her head into her and walks briskly up the street, taking a short cut through the back of the houses and up on to the main estate.

Hidden out view, halfway up the hill is a den made by the local kids, everyone knows it's there yet no one knows it's there. She crawls inside, where it's out of the cold and the wind and finds a comforting nest of leaves and pine needles. She lays down and pulls herself up into the fetal position, wrapping her arms around her legs and against her stomach to hopefully stem the bleeding.

As she falls sleeps she hopes her friends find her in the morning before the others do.