Nighttime Run

 Nighttime Run

Noel Laflin

10-31-21

Some nights we dared one another to make a run the entire length, and back again, of the cemetery grounds beneath a bright full moon.

As we frequently slept out in one another's back yard on warm nights listening to tunes on a tiny transistor radio, we told ghost stories and tried to scare one another, as children love to do.

Eventually, like a pack of nervous young wolves trying to prove their worth, we'd leave the comfort of our lair and sneak through the dark neighborhood, silently scaling a neighbor's fence abutting the cemetery and run swiftly through this city of the dead.

Barefoot and breathless we finally found our way back to our sleeping bags, listening for our parents voices quietly talking indoors, catching bits and pieces of a sixties television show, willing our hearts to beat normally once more.

We resumed the telling of the same corny kid jokes, the same stupid ghost tales, and greatly embellished our recent dare, eventually falling off to sleep, one by one, awakening to dewy grass and stiff limbs in the morning.