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Think you’re escaping and run into yourself.
Longest way round is the shortest way home.
Joyce, Ulysses

T’was the night before Christmas,
Or Easter or Whitsun, any Christian festival. 
It was dark and cold and dreary.
Dark, black night.
For lettered and unlettered alike.
Fearing the roaring of the skies,
Trembling at the dying of the light;
Fear seeped up from the miasmic ground.
Wind and the rain alight on me, all around.
Scurrying through the lanes and fields
There was thunder in the air.
She'd vowed she’d be good, live plain,
And be there..
Annie had dared not turn around,
She dared not breathe too loud, in case
She missed his footfall. He a-shrieking
In his shroud. Stumbling past the graveyard
A bolt of lightning split the tree and sent her
Stumbling wildly. fearing goblin, ghost and me.
The devil was on the spree.
In the morning her long hair hanging free
As white as white can be ……and she….just twenty-three.