Finally, some time to herself… The week had been intense. Work deadlines that seemed like they would never end, drama at home, friends in family with time and attention needs. But after all of the chaos of the week, the silence was deafening. “Time to slow down.” she thought, and had just the activity in mind.

She walked out to the garage where she had her painting supplies. Easel, paints, drop cloth, brushes, and other miscellaneous supplies, all right where she had left them. She approached the boombox she had rescued from a garage sale the prior year. Old school, tape deck and AM/FM radio… no CD player or AUX plug. The only thing better would have been a record player, but that wouldn’t have been suitable for the garage.

The air was brisk as you would expect it to be on an autumn evening in the North East. It seemed like only yesterday it was still shorts and swimming weather. Now there was frost on everything before the sun came up and all of the trees were going through their festive seasonal transition. It had completely slipped her mind that today was Halloween.

She pressed play on the tape deck, chuckling to herself that this particular piece of equipment probably qualified as an “antique”. The small but mighty speakers sprang to life with the contents of a mix tape from her past. King of Possibilities by Goldie Boutilier started to play as she prepped her brushes and selected a canvas. Oil was by far her favorite medium to work with. It was expensive, but well worth it in flexibility. She flipped a switch on the wall and a vent fan concealed in the rafters sprang to life and she began to paint without direction.

She got lost in the music, letting it guide her brush and her intuition. She always loved painting like this. She never knew what she was going to get because she didn’t have a destination in mind already. Sometimes it was abstract, other times much more defined, but it always had emotion. The painting was starting to take shape and she was completely immersed in the music and the process. Suddenly she was jarred violently from her trance-like state by the piercing sound of her door bell.

She had jumped so intensely that she had knocked into the easel causing the canvas to dance in its tray and then fall in slow motion to the floor. It landed face down, fresh oil paint splattering slightly past the edges of the canvas. She gasped in shock and irritation at the interruption and the destruction that it had prompted. She set down her brush and knife wiping her hands on the black apron she wore as she made her way to the front door.

There was a gaggle of children at the door giddily yelling “Trick or Treat!” at the top of their lungs as she opened the door and laughing at her shocked expression. She had forgotten that it was Halloween, thankfully she had gotten an assorted box of snack size chips a few weeks ago. She retrieved the box and deposited a back of chips in each of the open bags offered up by the children. A steady succession of groups of kids in such a variety of costumes, until she finally ran out of chips. She collapsed the box to recycle it and turned off her porch light heading back to the garage, not looking forward to the mess that waited for her.

She disposed of the chips box and walked over to the canvas on the floor at the feet of the easel and squatted down to grasp it. She pulled expecting it to be stuck to the floor but it came free with no effort. She set it on the easel noting that there was no paint visible on the floor. She stepped back and looked at the painting. There was nothing there! The canvas was clean, she noted with alarm. She looked at her watch, nearly midnight. She would have to figure this conundrum out tomorrow, she decided as she turned around, shutting off the light and leaving the vent fan humming as she went back into the house, locking the door behind her.

It had been a long night, and an even longer day, it was high time she got some sleep. As she dressed for bed, her mind kept wandering to the empty canvas in the garage. How did I hallucinate painting an entire canvas she wondered. She pondered it a little before slipping into a very sound sleep.

She woke slowly that morning, easing out of the week. No alarms, just the gentle morning song of the sparrows and starlings. As her eyes began to open and gradually focus in the dim light filtering in around the curtains, she stirred and stretched. She got up to put on the kettle for coffee. When her coffee was ready to drink, she poured a steaming, fragrant cup. Clutching it in both hands, relishing the warmth, she made her way down the hall to the garage. She walked in flipping on the light, ready to attempt to make sense of what she remembered of the previous night. She approached the easel, but it was empty.

She could have sworn that she had set the canvas back on the easel before she went to bed. But it wasn’t on the floor either. She scratched her head, visibly confused. She walked out of the garage leaving the light on and the door open, deeply pondering the previous night’s events. She made her way back through the hallway from the garage. That’s when she saw it, a painting out of place, sitting on top of the ornate dresser in her hallway.

The painting was leaning against the wall instead of hanging from it like her others and it was facing the wall. She couldn’t see the actual painting, just the back of the canvas. She set down her coffee on the ornate wood, so focused on the painting that she didn’t give a second thought to the water rings she might be leaving. She grabbed the painting, smearing paint on the edge. She looked at her thumb, oil paint, she noted as she rubbed her thumb and middle finger together. Finally she grasped the canvas again, this time turning it around to face her.

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She gasped slightly at the oddly familiar, but also unfamiliar painting. The subject was a man, face mostly obscured by shadow, and his frame mostly obscuring the background of scene. She was entranced, she couldn’t take her eyes off of it. There was something terrifyingly familiar about the figure in the painting, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

The figure’s hand was outstretched, like it was reaching out of the painting. She moved like her body wasn’t under her control. Hand reaching out towards the outstretched hand in the painting. Just has her fingers connected with the shadowed fingers of the figure she had the sudden realization of what was so familiar. Its eyes! her gaze flicked to them. They were burning into her own. They WERE her own! And before her brain could even begin to articulate a physical response…

He smiled with something that looked a little like regret, but mostly like appreciation as he held the painting of the shadowy figure of a woman with a cup of coffee. Appreciation for the journey that had brough him here. This was the first canvas of many in a series depicting this same woman over the course of several years. He placed it on the wall in line with the others. No one would ever know that the first piece of this set to be painted was actually the last in the series. His self portrait.