In The Wee Hours

Sarah pulled up and parked, thoroughly disenchanted. Another shift, another round of idiots and zombies to entertain. She looked up at the neon sign, which read “wik-E-Mart”, as the “K” had given up long ago. Much the same as she had. No fireworks or big saga, just quietly stopped working when no one else was looking. She sighed, thinking to herself this tired internal monologue of hers really needed to get a life.

She moved as if she was a zombie herself, scanning items and taking payments, completely lackluster and barely there. Low mumbled hellos and will-that-be-alls were as much as she could muster. Her eyes never quite met with those of her customers. She was turned inward and very clearly expressed in her body language that she didn’t want to be there...or anywhere really.

About halfway through her shift, a couple walked in, very high on who-knows-what. They stumbled and giggled like loons when they knocked over a display of beer, hot dog and hamburger buns, and chips–an arrangement that was intended to entice last-minute preparations for the upcoming Independence Day cookouts. Beer cans skittered all over, several of them making it all the way back down aisle 3. The hot dog and hamburger buns mostly got crushed by the now laughing couple as they continued to stumble in the mess. Chip bags flew, some of them popping open and spewing their contents everywhere. The woman started to dance, while the man slapped his knees, turning beat red; his laughter now more closely resembling crying.

Sarah was not amused. In fact, she was irritated beyond belief and moved quickly to usher the couple out of the store. She turned around to survey the damage, noting with irony that at least she wasn’t bored anymore. As she set about cleaning up the mess, she heard the bell over the door ding, but from her vantage point, couldn’t see who had entered the store. Mumbling under her breath, she reached to pick up the crushed buns and when she straightened, knocked into a small woman who was suddenly right behind her.

Startled, she muttered, “What the hell?” and turned around to find the woman skewering her with a blistering stare.

“I said, where’s your bathroom? Are you deaf?” The woman was dressed all in blue, complete with blue ballet flats and blue combs in her hair.

Nonplussed, Sarah pointed toward the back right corner of the store.

The woman turned on her heel and marched straight back to the proffered location.

Shaking her head to clear a bit of fuzziness that had suddenly crept in, Sarah resumed cleaning up the mess.

Finishing up with the last bit of sweeping, Sarah dumped her dustpan in the trash and resumed her post behind the counter. It was quiet. Really quiet. For a Saturday night, it was awfully dead. She quietly resolved herself to her shift lasting ten lifetimes.

Suddenly, there was a blood-curdling scream from the direction of the Ladies’. Sarah nearly jumped out of her skin. She hurried back and knocked on the restroom door.

“Ma’am, are you okay? Do you need help?”

Mild gurgling was her only response. Sarah felt the hairs stand up on the back of her arms. She didn’t want to be here. She didn’t want to open that door.

She knew she had no choice.

Quickly, she ran behind the counter and grabbed the keys, all the while hating her life just a little more than usual with each passing moment. She returned and started to jam the key in the door knob, when it suddenly opened and she was face-to-face with the strange woman. While nothing appeared to be wrong, something was very wrong.

“You’re out of toilet paper and the sink doesn’t work!” Sarah jumped at the ferocity in the woman’s voice.

“I’m sorry ma’am, I hadn’t noticed…” Sarah started to mumble, when the woman unleashed on her.

“Do you have any idea what being a decent human being is? Do you even know your job? What are you doing here anyway?” The woman advanced menacingly on Sarah, as the latter backed up, apologizing and stumbling.

“You’re selfish. Here’s what I know: you are a person who hurts others.” The accusation hung in the air.

Taken aback, Sarah mumbled, “No ma’am, uh, I don’t know what you’re talking about…”

“You do, as I stand here, you do. I see it in your eyes; they can’t lie to me.” Tears sprung to Sarah’s eyes, trying to think through a fog that seemed to cling to her.

The woman then gave her a knowing look and said, “You’ll be visited by everyone you’ve ever hurt and you will learn the truth, though it will surely break you.”

Sarah’s jaw dropped, “Ma’am, I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else. I’ve never hurt anyone.”

“You might want to get ready for what’s to come…” The old woman cackled as she walked out of the store and into the night.

Sarah stood frozen, unable to wrap her head around what had just happened. She’d had weird customers before—like on a nightly basis—but this was so far beyond what she’d experienced, she just couldn’t. Her mouth dropped open several times in a row, like a dying fish gasping.

Finally coming back to herself and the present, she looked around. Still alone in the store. Good.

She peeked in the restroom. Clogged toilet. Not good. She sighed so hard this time, she felt the shift settle in her toes. This night just kept getting better.

Muttering to herself, “No toilet paper, huh?”, she unclogged the toilet and cleaned up the mess. By the time she finished and resumed her station, she had shaken the weirdness off. She chalked the whole incident up to yet another high customer acting out and went back to barely existing behind the counter again. Normalcy restored.

As Sarah was locking up for the night, she thought it would be nice to have some chocolate. She had a stash of truffles at home. Thinking blissfully of her future indulgence, she was unprepared for the glass next to her head to suddenly shatter. Sarah jumped a foot in the air, yelping like a scalded dog. She dropped into a crouch and scanned the area: a man at the far edge of the parking lot, dressed all in black, was tossing a brick in his hand. Stunned, she watched the brick rise and fall for a moment, before reality set in.

Hearing him cackle, she sprinted toward her car. Her hands were shaking violently and she found herself thankful for her key fob and keyless-start. She narrowly avoided the projectile, which instead smacked into the windshield of her boss’s second car. She peeled out and raced home, thinking it looked better now than it had.

All the way home, she kept glancing out the windows and in her rear view: no menacing man in black on the horizon.

Once home and safely ensconced in her sanctuary, she breathed a sigh of relief. What a weird flipping night!

She worked to calm her still-present jitters, preparing to call in a police report. After getting a drink of water, she turned around to the see the same man standing at the end of her couch, tossing one of her knickknacks—a porcelain cat—from hand to hand.

Dropping her glass, she ran to the nearest escape from harm—her coat closet—pulling the door shut behind her just as the cat shattered against it. Hearing the man’s menacing laughter, she frantically pulled her phone out of her pocket only to realize it was dead. For the love of all that’s holy…

Outside the closet, she could hear the man moving about and more of her precious belongings being shattered against her walls and the door behind which she hid.

Stressed to her max, cornered and out of her mind with fear, the man then said something that pulled her up short.

“I see you gave up on ‘trying on voices’. What was I? An experiment gone wrong?”

Inside the closet, Sarah thought frantically to herself: Weiss? It couldn’t be.

“Why am I wearing leather? It’s the middle of summer! Do I own stock in a tannery?”

She remembered taunting his fashion choices in her description in much the same manner.

Oh.

“Do you even know what you’re doing?”

No, she hadn’t known what she was doing.

Fresh out of college, Weiss had been a side character from her very first manuscript. She had been trying different ideas to bring her characters to life, but there were so many ideas, she had left him like that.

Her muse had been a harsh taskmaster. She had never questioned how her characters might feel about her literary choices.

A small giggle involuntarily escaped her lips.

Weiss then roared, “Are you still mocking me? Even now?” His last word was punctuated with a particularly loud crash against her door.

Sarah thought frantically for a beat. “You’re right, Weiss. I’m sorry I left you hanging like that. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I never meant to hurt you.” Feeling a bit embarrassed to be apologizing to her own creation, she didn’t anticipate his response.

“I just wanted to mean more to you.” His voice was small; there was no anger left at all, only resignation.

Silence.

After a few minutes, Sarah cracked her closet door to peer out at the wreckage. Nobody was there.

She straightened and cautiously crept out of her refuge, slightly flinching, half-expecting to be slammed over the head with a chair. Along with the wreckage, a black leather jacket laid on the back of her chair, neatly folded. Damp with sweat.

After conducting a thorough search of her house to ensure she really was alone, Sarah quietly cleaned up the mess. Shaking her head, a picture began to form.

She’d been through a messy divorce that had all but destroyed her sense of worth. She’d tried many times to write her next novel, but finally gave up as the words choked in her throat, then vanished altogether. Life moved on without her adding her voice to the narrative.

Forgetting the truffles, Sarah made herself a cup of chamomile tea, adding a touch of honey. She took her cup to her chair to sit and think for a while.

She suddenly heard stomping from the back of her house approaching swiftly. Startled, she looked up to see a murky shade of her ex-husband, glowering at her. His short hair stood up straight.

In spite of herself, Sarah chuckled at that hair.

His visage darkened, his features distorting into a sneer, “Oh, I see I have your attention now! Only took five years!”

She lowered her gaze to the floor, biting the inside of her cheek to stop her open laughter.

“You know, Trevor, you had my attention the entire time I was writing you. It never wavered.”

“But I wanted to do things, I wanted to go places with you. I wanted us to spend all our time together and you. Didn’t. Care!” Trevor thrust his hip out one direction, while his sneer cocked in the other.

Sarah’s body shook with the force of containing her mirth.

Straightening her face and smoothing her edges, she looked earnestly at him and said, “I did spend all my time with you for a long while. You helped me work through my ex-husband’s erratic behavior, always trying to suck up the oxygen around me. I could barely breathe before I wrote you!”

“Hmmmph!” He turned his back to her.

“Seriously, Trevor, if not for you, I’d still be stuck: a side-character in his arc. He gave me no room for me. You helped me see that and decide to take my life back.” Her voice gentled as she laid a hand on his shoulder.

“You were never a side-character in the story I wrote. You were the inspiration for it.”

His shoulders settled and he sighed. He turned around and lifted a hand to her chin, wearing a soft smile, and vanished on the spot.

Sarah felt a bit lighter but oh-so-very tired. She swooned slightly on the spot. Rooting herself, she made her way to her bed, falling on her pillows with abandon.

Halfway through a dream of water and eagles, she suddenly felt a weight next to her head. She opened her eyes blearily to see a man laying directly in front of her, eyes inches from her own, boring into her.

“Ah, Jacob. Yeah...about that. I’m really sorry I gave you two lines and a punchline for an exit. You deserved better than to trip on an avocado peel. It was a rough month for me. Sorry.”

He winked, then vanished.

She leaned up for a moment, looking around her room. The quiet darkness prevailed. Sighing, she laid her head back down, marveling to herself that he’d lasted for less than a page, but clearly had wanted more. Much like all the boyfriends she had during college.

A noise in her hallway startled her out of her light doze. She couldn’t quite remember what had happened. Furtively, she crept to her bedroom door. Looking out, she saw a woman holding a mop, facing away from her. Ah, Mary. She had definitely done this one a disservice.

As she approached, Mary turned partway toward her, her eyes questioning, her lips saying nothing.

Sarah swallowed hard.

“Mary, you deserved so much better than what I gave you. I had plans, visions for you. I lost track of my notes and was working toward a deadline. I meant for you to have a degree in psychology; for you to have so much more to say in that story. Instead, I gave you a mop and a menial position. I think I feared your clarity, to be honest.”

Mary smiled wistfully and bowed her head. She turned and vanished from view.

Sarah had been wrestling with her own sense of worth during the time she wrote that story; being steadily smothered under the weight of her ex-husband’s excessive need of her every moment.

She hadn’t thought of the parallel between her and her character—she had just stuffed her into a neat box without a second thought.

Sarah realized something in that moment: these ‘ghosts’ weren’t here to torment her, but to stop being tormented by her neglect. But there was more to it than that. She felt something profound begin to shift beneath her surface, but couldn’t yet name it.

Sarah lay in her bed, thinking. She was bone-weary, but her mind was racing. It felt as if the universe was holding its breath.

She felt a subtle shift in the air and wearily opened her eyes. Perched on the foot of her bed, composed but kind of wilted, was the old woman in blue.

She somehow looked different, as if a drawing not quite finished; her edges blurring into the background. As Sarah looked on, the woman turned her head to look her in the eyes.

Her voice was much softer than before as she gently asked, “Can you see now how much you’ve hurt us?”

Sarah’s voice trembled a little as she replied, “I think I do…”

The lady laughed softly, “You still don’t remember me, do you?”

“I’m trying.” Sarah felt her cheeks flush.

“Of all the people you’ve hurt, you cut yourself the deepest, my dear.” The words fell in the gulf between them. There was no accusation, only quiet truth.

A picture flashed in Sarah’s mind, brief, fleeting, but enough for her to lock onto. The old woman was one of her creations, but mostly unformed. Her sadness then enveloped her.

The lady smiled gently, “There you go. Time for you to talk to your muse. She’s missed you, you know.”

And with that, the lady faded slowly until there was no sign she’d even been there.

Sarah found her face was covered in tears. A thought struck her and she scrambled out of her bed to her desk.

Rummaging around in her drawer, she found what she sought: her last unfinished manuscript. It was still in that rough phase, covered in post-it notes with ideas for her plot and characters. Among these was one that gave a brief description: “Lady in blue—guardian of the eternal, helps main character find her way back.”

Sarah sat down heavily in her desk chair. The manuscript in her lap, she marveled at the events of the night. As her thoughts raced, she realized she had stuffed all her feelings into a small corner, then barricaded it from the rest of herself. She had become convinced she was untalented, a waste of space—not worthy of anyone’s attention, even her own.

Tears slipped down her face, hot and fast, grieving for what she’d lost: her access to herself. She bowed her head in silence.

Under that unbearable weight, a new thought broke the surface: she could start over.

She looked toward the window, where gentle light had begun to filter through the blinds. A new feeling nudged her apathy aside: hope. Tiny, but there. And hers.

She ran to her kitchen and made her pot of coffee, stirring the cup while carrying it back with her to her desk, an age-old ritual, almost forgotten. She powered on her laptop and sat down, pulling her hair into a loose pony. Her phone buzzed from her bedside table, long forgotten.

She walked over to look as several messages populated from her boss. She ignored the clearly increasing tempo and him clearly yelling, evidenced by the texts transitioning to all caps: WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO MY CAR?

Setting her phone to silent, she returned once more to her laptop, opening a fresh document.

She began typing, the words coming faster as she leaned in, a gentle smile curving her lips.