In The Wee Small Hours
	JM Dragon
	© 2003 by J M Dragon

Written for Halloween in the wee small hours…trust me on that one!

For my friends Mel and Heruda who are keeping my web page functioning while I travel the globe for the moment.

To my readers be careful what you wish for on Halloween!

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I, like many of my compatriots, think that life could offer me more!  

More, more and yet more!

So much so that we wish our lives away on things that are very often outside, out of reach or merely dreams of situations and people that we would dearly covert to have within out grasp.

Recalling my life now, I have…no strike that had everything that a levelheaded, normal human being could have possibly wanted. A good job, albeit it is boring as hell, because I knew it inside out. A comfortable home, A simple condo in the centre of a busy thriving town, nothing fancy except perhaps for my small, miniscule by many standards, collection of original watercolor portraits. As a student I wanted to paint like some of my friends, alas I wasn’t that creative! However, I did help some of them out at hard times. I was the one with the extra cash influx having a part-time job to supplement my meagre allowance with a state scholarship. They gave me a sample of their art and I gave them cash! Simple enough deal and one that was to become for me a satisfying journey into a realm I was unable to participate in fully. I lived alone, although I had considered a roommate along the way, which in hindsight might have been my saviour!

No one wants to be alone and most of the time I didn’t think I was. It became a familiar pattern coming home after work, kicking my shoes off down the hall, and collecting the mail, tossing the numerous mail shots into the bin as I passed by, sometimes by accident the odd bill too! Happens to everyone now and again, right?

I’d said good evening to the spinster lady across the hall as I arrived home that evening. For me it was nothing special, another night of warmed up leftovers and relaxing by the TV set. The spinster lady reminded me of the old movies and their stereotyped versions. Did I even know her name…?

The surprise of the whole scenario was that for the first time she talked to me in over a year. I know it was a year because it had happened every year since I’d come to live in the apartment lock. Halloween to be precise, not that she was an odd looking old woman, she wasn’t, merely my idea of what the movies had taught me was an apt description of an old-maid.

What did she say? The same old thing…another familiar event in my boring life; a life I wanted to change but didn’t exactly know how or what I wanted changed. Same old story like millions more in the world, it didn’t overly bother me that I felt this way, just an unsatisfied feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“Watch for the wee small hours it will come…be aware.” That was it, the sum total of my verbal exchange with the spinster lady.

As usual I answered politely, “Watch for what exactly?” A reply was never forthcoming only a long serious contemplation and a small, knowing yet compassionate, smile. Then she walked inside her apartment and I knew that would be the extent of my conversation with her for the next twelve months.

Ever get the feeling you want to go over and shake an answer from someone, that was me and the extent of this scenario. However, as usual I shrugged it off as another, unusual I agree, comfort zone.

I was ready. The TV set as blaring on and on about the recent up turn in violence on the streets that day, the police, in part, attributing it to the crazies that walked out tonight of all nights. Halloween!

Never having particularly taken any part in the celebrations it annoyed me only that the small screen would be primarily taken over with horror movies and the like!

The same old thing! My eyes wandered over the small gallery of portraits that adorned the main living area of my apartment. Often commented on by the friends that occasionally dropped by for my birthday and Christmas Eve.

My favourite was of a woman in a Mardis-Gras costume, billowing skirts and a beautiful painted mask that partially exposed her flawless creamy skin. The eyes were obscured to my view though I often dreamed of them being a warm vibrant chocolaty shade to enhance the woman’s complexion.

A fantasy, a dream…my dream that it was me hidden behind the mask enjoying life to the fullest as the woman appeared to be in my interpretation of the artists work.

As the time slowly ticked towards midnight my body protested that it was time for bed, forcing myself to release the meandering of my mind to a wish that I as someone else in another life. Smiling wryly, I wandered to the window and heard the laughter and screams of those taking part in a small parade that wandered down my street. The whole ambience that of a carnival spirit…like my portrait!

What a fool I was; it was late and my imagination was working overtime…not exactly a first but it didn’t often show itself in such a vivid way. My eyes scanned the people enjoying themselves and I was certain, so very certain, that a woman was beckoning me from the street below and she was wearing the very dress in the portrait.

Spinning round the rush of adrenaline of excitement, incredulity and dare I say it, fear clutch at my body in a way I had never experienced before.

As I stared, for what must have been the hundredth time, at the portrait I saw a reality staring back at me. The face was now turned towards me and though the mask did not expose the features it as clear as day the eyes that sought to capture mine were indeed the colour I had always dreamed they would be!

How incredible and strange! This was surely a figment of my imagination and one that should I close my eyes for one moment would disappear as all dreams had dome before it.

I moved away from the window and towards the portrait. My hand stroked the back of my neck as my signet ring, with my initials, wore abrasively on my sensitive skin. It was a weary gesture normally, but this time in fascination, as I was unable to comprehend what was happening.

My heart was beating strong in my chest as I travelled the few yards separating me from the invitation to join in the fun. I was willing to go along with whatever life offered here in the early hours of the morning. A whisper insinuated inside my head, at first incomprehensible and then it gained clarity, calling to my inner hopes and dreams. My simple request, that all the things I had wished for and never thought could ever happen to me, just might happen after all.

“Follow me for all you desire.” Over and over in my head, stumbling at first through my level headed upbringing then transcending those to appeal to the dreamer in me. The artist that had always longed to be free but had no outward talent to allow it to display.

Would I answer my heart or my head?

Could I go and taste freedom or remain as I was?

The music, laughter and screams began to fade. It was now or never, I knew it in my heart of hearts there could only be one answer….

“The old woman who lives opposite me is kind of strange.”

“Really? Why?”

Sasha grinned, she’d lived in the apartment or over two years and met the woman twice, this being the second time.

“Oh just a feeling gives me the creeps, I’m glad you’ve decided to move in with me Joyce, perhaps then she will stop talking to me about the last tenant here.”

“I’m glad you asked me to move in though I’m now beginning to wonder if you had another reason than the one you mentioned earlier.” Joyce didn’t need to worry on that score as Sasha quickly pulled her close and showed in no uncertain terms why she’d asked for them to live together.

“I love you, Joyce, can’t think of any other reason, I promise.” Sasha winked as she opened the door to the apartment and they walked inside.

The apartment was freshly painted in pastel shades reflecting Sasha’s need to relax when she came home from her job as a supermarket teller. Who said it wasn’t a stressful environment being nice to people every working hour!

“I’ll make coffee, Joyce, you go look around and tell me if you want to change anything around here.” Smiling at her lover as she left her alone in the large living area her eyes scanning the old but comfortable furniture. They would gradually change some of the pieces however, at the moment they would do fine. It was going to be an exciting part of being together.

“Hey, Sash, I thought you said you didn’t like art?”

Walking over to the main wall of the room her glance was caught by a collection of seven portraits all looked remarkably like originals. One in particular struck her as interesting…a woman in a billowing dress highly coloured with her face averted from direct view though the eyes captured you the minute you stared at the scene.

They were haunted and hollow, a dark lacklustre brown appealing for …escape perhaps?

“What do you mean, Joyce?” Sasha walked back into the room with a tray laden with coffee mugs and cookies.

“These here, have you been keeping a secret from me on your heart’s desire?” Laughing at the very thought since meeting this woman she hadn’t kept anything from her. They’d literally met, fallen head over heels in love and the rest was history…or going to be she knew it.

Serious blue eyes looked at the wall her lover was pointing to and she pulled a face. “Hmm I didn’t have the heart to throw them out.. I as hoping the last tenant might come back for them, somehow it struck me as odd that she would leave them behind. They can go into storage though if you hate them, no problem with me, that one there is spooky.”

“I was thinking it rather sad actually and you never told me what the old woman said about the last tenant.”

“That’s true I never did, seems she up and left in the middle of the night and has never been seen again!”

“Wow, how dramatic, romantic or tragic all depends on the circumstance, which was?”

Both women sat down on the sofa close together sipping their coffee and munching on a cookie. “Don’t know exactly. The police were called when she didn’t arrive at work for a few days, questioned her few friends but couldn’t find anything suspicious. Unfortunately her close family are deceased and the police posted her as missing, another unsolved mystery.

“That implies it could e anything, when did this happen?”

Fascinated now, Joyce wanted to know more. “Halloween or as the old crone across the hall says in ‘the wee small hours’ though I think she’s a little short in the mental department.”

“Why do you say that?”

“She keeps asking me to watch out for the woman, one day she might come home if someone else takes her place. Crazy talk if you ask me and thankfully she doesn’t talk much otherwise.”

Thoughtfully Joyce considered her loves comments, “do you think she will be back?”

“Realistically, no! However, who knows one day she might remember she left all her stuff behind and come claim it. I’ll pack up the pictures tomorrow and store them away, if she turns up she can have them back no questions asked, how would that be?”

“No questions? Sasha, you are incredible! I’d want to know everything?”

“Let’s hope you aren’t home if she calls otherwise we might have another room mate.”

“Oh no! One thing I know for certain is that I’m not sharing my time with you ever. You are all I desire.”

Snuggling closer in a loving embrace, “I second that love, you are my life I wouldn’t want anything else.”

Neither saw the portrait change direction as the face fully averted away, resignation and envy replacing the previous visage. A hand showing a ring placed at the back of the neck seemed to appear or was it merely a change of the light?

Some time later…

Rummaging in the boxes, which had obviously never been opened in years, Kerry decided to open one in curiosity.

As she did so she gasped in awe when she came across a portrait of a woman in a splendid outfit. Why on earth was it hidden away the face looked so poignant yet happy!

At least it looked rather more exciting that her life at the moment, not even the advent of Halloween could cheer her up everything was so boring…

In the wee small hours when the body defences are low our mind plays strange tricks on us, what really can happen if you want it badly enough.

Only you can answer that…would you especially now at Halloween?
 

Perhaps the end...who will ever know for sure…