Trick or Treat - The Annual Teen Massacre

Chapter Four 1AM - 2AM

Chapter four

Quick, I must be quick, David thought. He ran out of the street. Still no movement around him. He turned another corner and started counting the seconds...Twenty seconds since the end of the announcement, forty to go. Why was he so stupid to go to the less populated area?
He became desperate and turned on his flash light. He had no other choice but to give away his position to anyone. As long as he was in time it was fine he thought. He ran past three, four more gardens and at the end he saw another flash light switch on. Twenty more seconds. The light was very far away, but he had to make it. No matter what! He started running even faster. The flash light came closer and closer. Only a few more seconds, he thought. I can make it.

Three more seconds. He started to panic. Everything around him started to move more slowly... He wasn't going to make it. The flash light was still about thirty meters away. 
This was it. This was how his life would end. It wouldn't take long before they found his body, he thought. He hadn't seen a cleaner in the last twenty minutes. So it would be here soon. It's all right. Better this than a violent death.
     "Gotcha!" a voice said right next to him and a hand suddenly grabbed his shoulder. He lost his balance, dropping the flash light. It fell on the ground and remained motionless, shining it's light inside the house.
     "Wha-," David said. But he was too much out of breath to finish his sentence.
     "That was close, wasn't it? If it weren't for that flash light over there you probably wouldn't have ran this way and this fast. We would all three have been goners."
     "I... I suppose... so," David said, still panting. He bent to pick up his flash light and turned it to his rescuer. It was a different girl. Not as tall as Tina, but she seemed more... wild is perhaps the right word. Her long curly hair looked like she had been running through a hurricane. And she was covered in blood. The smell was overwhelming and he became nauseated.

     "What happened to you?" David asked. "You're covered in blood! How... Why?"
     "I've met a few Singles. They're allowed to kill outside their fences already. So they started to slaughter all the children in the crowded streets. A lot of us were grouping up at the time. Laughing at the single people in their costumes at the fence borders. I was in the centre of the slaughter. I had to avoid the bodies while I was running away. But the ways they killed us... It was terrible. Especially when the fanatic with a chainsaw came around. Most of us panicked and bumped into each other. I escaped in the confusion. You seem to be fairly undamaged though. How did you manage that?"
     "Just lucky, I guess. After barely surviving the five house per street rule, I thought that in the less populated area there would be less people feeling murderous," David said. He realized he didn't even tell Tina why he was going this way.
     "Shall we visit a few more houses?" the girl asked.
     "Yes, I suppose so. How many pieces of candy have you been able to give out?"
     "About twenty," the girl said. “How about you?”
     "Only fourteen. This is going to be a long night. I'm David, by the way."
     "I'm Vanessa. Sorry for the smell though. It's not as if I could take a shower. I'm just glad I have all of my limbs. I've seen a few who’ve lost a hand or a leg. And apparently, there are some guys who just love taking off ears. Sometimes one, sometimes two."

David's stomach did another turn. He’d been quite unscathed so far, that's true. But that didn't mean he would be all right at the end. He didn't want to think about it. His father was ear-less. And his mother had her foot replaced by an exact replica. It's good that science was that far advanced. They said the medical technology had improved immensely over the twenty five years since the introduction of the Trick or Treat. Not only that but it also had a huge impact on the crime rate. It almost disappeared overnight. People released their aggression in one bloody night, and then waited until next year. David thought it was sick. But, according to his teachers, measures like this were a necessary evil for humans to live with each other in this town.