Listen! Can you hear? Listen to the children playing out on the moonlit lawn. I can see their shadows. Their shapes shifting. They change after it gets dark, gone are the cherub faces. Somehow they age, become older ... wiser. Different.

I don't want to go out to make them leave. I would rather let them go home on their own ... I'd rather not go out in the dark just now.

Listen. Can you hear the silence? The quiet is worse than the clacking of their sticks hitting the metal garbage cans. Or the dull thuds of the play fights as they pummel one another. The children frighten me after it gets dark.

Shhh. I hear their angelic voices talking ominous and low. They are up to something. I should go out and watch them. But apprehension holds me captive indoors. In here, where I'm safe. In here, where they are not.

I glance furtively from behind my kitchen curtains. The children are huddled by my patio steps. There is a small, dark shape lying on the concrete, barely visible in the moon shadows.

One child touches it with the toe of his white tennis shoe. Tommy Brown, from my English class. I want to scream 'Leave my yard!', 'Go home!', but I'm terrified as I strain to hear. A tear rolls from my eye as I realize it's my beloved Biggsby unmoving at their feet.

I see too late, that as I had listened to the children, they had been busy murdering my cat. I am not young anymore and I cannot move fast enough, as the doorknob slowly turns.