Hide and Seek

A friend and I use to sneak out late at night and meet up at the residential car park in our neighbourhood for a couple of games of Hide and Seek.

I would volunteer to be the Seeker first since my friend was never good at hiding and it typically took him longer to find me than it was for me to find him. So he was always the Seeker in the second round.

But one night, everything changed.

That night we met up at the residential car park as per usual. But this time, when my friend was hiding, I could not find him anywhere.

I looked everywhere for him.

I checked all of his usual hiding spots – including mine - but he was nowhere to be found. He had completely vanished.

I began calling out his name as loudly as I could under the circumstance that neither one of us should have been out playing that late at night. But no matter how much I called, he never once replied.

Hearing a loud scream on the other side of the neighbourhood, I quickly ran to investigate which led me to the main road that fronts my house.

Stationary In the middle of the road was a car with its engine running. The driver was not seated in the car but standing in the road beside the driver's door, staring down at something lying on the road behind his back two tires.

Approaching, the man turned and looked at me with tear filled eyes and an expression of horror and disbelief.

Seeing what he was staring at, I saw a body of a child lying on the ground. The child's head had been crushed into the tarmac, and its legs all broken and twisted.

It was impossible to recognise who the child was because of the trauma inflicted. But after a brief moment of staring at its blood-soaked clothing, I came to realized that what I was staring at was my friend. The friend I was looking for.

Emergency services were called to the scene by the driver of the car himself. And upon their arrival, we both had to give our statements of what happened. And once both sides of the story were put together, the police came to the conclusion that my friend was killed after hiding under the parked car – thinking no one was inside – and the engine started and the car pulled away; running him over in the process.

The driver stood staring, shaking through shock as the heartbroken parents of my friend arrived only to see what was left of their only child.

And although my parents were incredibly angry with me for sneaking out late at night and playing such a dangerous game, I could sense they were relieved I was safe and well. But I was still grounded and unable to see anybody for a couple of weeks after that.

But it was during that first week when I did see somebody one night. Somebody I did not expect.

I saw my dead friend standing outside my back gate, smiling and waving at me to come out and play with him. But I never did.

I was too afraid to.

So I just hid from him.

And every night since, for many years, he would always appear at the same exact time we used to play Hide and Seek. And at that same exact time, I would still be hiding from him.