10 comments/ 6946 views/ 5 favorites The Eyes of Midnight By: SPEN STERLING I think the first time I saw her, she was sitting in an airport gate, just in front of the gate I was going toward. I was randomly people watching, like people do in airports, and she was looking bored and disinterested, like people do at airports. I say I think it was the first time I saw her because when I saw her in the airport, I had the overwhelming sense that I had seen her before. Which was especially surprising, given the fact that she was nondescript in every way. She was small, in size, features and manner. She looked almost like a child, and seemed to blend in with the chair so that she was nearly invisible. Yet for some reason she caught my eye, and as I briefly stared at her as I walked by, she glanced up and looked back at me. She looked back down quickly. It almost looked like she stifled a smile. I looked away and continued walking to my boarding gate, but I positioned myself so that I could still see her in the adjacent area. That vantage point was really too far away to help me figure out why she looked so familiar, but it struck me that it was an exercise in futility anyway. I was sitting in an airport a thousand miles from my home, heading a thousand miles another direction, and she was probably from a thousand miles away going a thousand miles in the other direction. I guess one of the intriguing things about people watching in airports is that it is extremely unlikely that you would ever see the people again. It almost gives you a lonely, angsty feeling. I was in this airport, coming from another airport, wondering about people and where I'd seen this girl before because I was going to Chicago for an art exhibit. An art exhibit that I was speaking at as an expert, because the artist is my wife Anna. Anna happens to be an internationally famous painter, who has a traveling exhibit that visits a different major city every few months. She has a very unique style and subject that has captivated the art world. Most of her work involves close up, detailed depictions of human eyes. Anna had a style of painting details into her eye paintings that had a way of defining the person being painted. The shapes and color combinations that she puts into her paintings are mesmerizing, you can look at the paintings for hours and find hidden shapes within the iris, a subtle but meaningful tint to the whites of the eyes, and a barely visible but profound refection in the pupil. I speak on her paintings as a renowned expert, and it is my life's work to share and promote her art. She would do it herself, but Anna died over 20 years ago. I looked up at the gate and realized that my plane had started boarding, and I looked over where the girl had been. She was gone, leaving behind a lonely seat for the next person who was coming from somewhere else on the way to somewhere else. I filed the experience away into the remote regions of my brain, where I retain a vast library of faces that I will never see again, and boarded the plane for Chicago. I had just settled into my seat by the window when I glanced up towards the front of the plane at the line of people uncomfortably working their way down the aisle when I saw her, the girl from the adjacent gate, standing and waiting while some poor sap tried to stow his carry on. For some reason my heart skipped a beat. I watched her out of the corner of my eyes, trying to get a good look without staring. I'm not sure how to explain my intrigue. She wasn't particularly attractive, though she had a quality about her that was cute. She appeared to be thin, but it was really hard to tell because she was dressed in unflattering, bulky clothes. She had dark hair, stuffed under a baseball cap, her skin was on the lighter side, and her facial features were sharp, from a pert nose to her prominent cheekbones. I had not yet been able to see her eyes well coming down the aisle. Years of discussing Anna's artwork had left me with a bit of an obsession with eyes, an obsession that we had shared in the brief five years we had together before she died. Anna called eyes the windows to the soul. When she painted a subject, she would spend an hour just looking into the person's eyes. She would fall into an almost spell-like trance, and then she would paint those eyes with extraordinary likeness and depth that would shock even the subject of the painting. So I had developed this weird tic of looking into people's eyes to search their soul. I didn't have Anna's knack for it though, I just tended to look creepy staring into the eyes of strangers. As she continued to move down the aisle towards me, I began to be aware of the fact that the two seats beside me were empty, and she had not yet taken a seat. Each aisle she passed made me increasingly tense, wondering if she was destined for my aisle, or perhaps right beside me. I was in the middle of the plane, so it was just as likely that she would be sitting 20 rows behind me. When she reached the row in front of me, she glanced up at the seat numbers and I saw the recognition in her eyes that she had reached her aisle. My heart nearly stopped when she turned towards me and began putting her small bag into the overhead bin. She nodded and smiled slightly to me and I did the same, then she took the aisle seat, leaving an open space between us. I spent the rest of what seemed like an extraordinarily long boarding sequence praying that no one else took the middle seat. I had an odd flashback to a time when Anna was still alive, when she had just started to become famous and we would fly to big cities for her shows. She hated having someone in that third seat on the row, so much so that one time she bought three tickets and we only used two, just so she wouldn't have some obnoxious person beside us. While it appeared that every other seat on the plane was full, somehow I got lucky and no one sat in the seat between us. As the plane took off and I thought about clever ways to start up a conversation. I was actually a bit nervous about talking with this girl who had captured my attention so mysteriously. I noticed that her pocketbook was slightly open, and hanging out of it was a small book, The Eyes of Art. I recognized it immediately, because I was the author. It was a non fiction book I had written about my wife's work, no literary feat and no best seller. I figured that despite the popularity of the subject, there had only been a few thousand sold. "Believe it or not, I have a copy of that book myself," I said, pointing to the book. She looked pretty surprised, probably thinking I was lying. "This book?" she asked pulling it out of the bag. "Yes, that one," I said. I took the book from her, flipped it to the back page, and pointed to the picture of me in the bio on the back inside cover. "I know the guy who wrote it." She looked at the picture, then looked at me, quickly putting it together that we were the same person. Her mouth came open in surprise. "Wow, how's that for a coincidence...what are the odds?" "Definitely a long shot," I said. "I wrote this book about ten years ago, my wife Anna is the artist featured in the book. Was the artist," I corrected. "Yes, I've read the book, I'm sorry for your loss," she said. One of the pitfalls of having someone famous for a spouse, someone famous who dies, is that nearly every conversation you have with most anyone familiar starts with them telling you they are sorry for your loss. After 20 years, I had narrowed my response down to a simple nod. "I am on my way to Chicago to speak on Anna's work at an art gallery," I said. Her mouth came open again. "I am going to Chicago to see that exhibit! I love her work! I saw a magazine article last month and was blown away by the style. It's like nothing I've ever seen before." I knew the article she was referring to, it was a national art magazine that had prominently featured Anna's work. The article had pointed out how widely successful her paintings had continued to be, despite such a short work career and being dead for over 20 years. The impact of the article had been strong, I had been contacted by dozens of galleries to talk about exhibiting her work. "It really is a very unique style," I said. "I never get tired of talking about it." My experience on airplane conversations is that the vast majority are brief, shallow interactions. Occasionally the right two people will be seated together, and catch each other in the right mood, and the conversation becomes intriguing and you almost wish the flight wouldn't end. This conversation quickly became the latter. Her name was Sara, she called herself a wanna-be artist. She was 22 years old, studying art and this was the first trip she had ever taken to see an art exhibit. We spent a lot of time talking about Anna's work, and I was quite impressed with how knowledgeable she was about the work, and also how insightful she was. I had also noted, painfully, that Sara was 22 years old, the exact age that Anna had been when she died, which was also exactly 22 years ago. As I talked with her I noted that she was more attractive than I had initially thought. She was quite small and thin, her skin was on the lighter side and was very smooth, her nose was sharp and pert and she had cute dimples when she smiled. Her eyes were a bit of a disappointment, and as I mentioned before, eyes were a big deal to me. She had deep, brown eyes, almost black, and there were few if any variations of color and depth. I had a bad habit of comparing everyone to Anna, even though she had been gone for over 20 years. She was a striking beauty, though she didn't think she was pretty at all. Her most intriguing feature was her eyes, which were undoubtedly the source for her artistic ventures. Anna had heterochromia, a fairly rare condition where her eyes were different colors. One eye was a mixture of blue and one was a mixture of brown, and they were the most unique eyes I've ever seen before or since. She had an amazing range of color and shapes within her irises, and they would change based on the light she was in. Her most famous paintings were the ones she did of her own eyes. Those eyes were indeed memorable. Sara mentioned that she had spent hours looking at the detail of Anna's self portraits. She was going into the details of Anna's eyes when the captain announced we would be landing soon. It had to be the fastest flight I had ever been on. I couldn't quite put my finger on why, but I was utterly captivated, almost nervous talking to this young girl who was half my age and clearly out of my league. I'm not a bad looking guy, I have stayed fit over the years, but I had no great pretensions that a girl in her early 20s would be interested in a guy pushing middle age. I guess a guy can dream though, and I couldn't help but do just that. All good things must come to an end though, and we went from our pleasant chat to the hustle and bustle of getting off an airplane, finding luggage and trying to figure out how to leave. We bumped into each other a few times during the process, and said that we would see each other later that night at the gallery event. Now would seem like an appropriate time to bring up a few significant facts about myself. Anna and I had met when we were 15, and we had spent less than a month together before we were convinced that we were soul mates. We enjoyed the same things, we did the same things, we thought the same way. Sometimes it seemed like we were two parts of a half. We married at 17, against the wishes of both of our families, and began to pursue our artistic dreams. She was almost immediately successful, and by the time she was 20 had begun to get a following. Her talent was so far beyond mine that I gladly stepped back into the role of promoting her work, rather than creating my own. She was quite prolific in her brief years. When she tackled a project, she would become obsessed, almost hypnotic, and paint non stop until the vision was complete. Just as she was becoming internationally known, we were driving across town and got t-boned by a drunk driver at midnight. She was killed instantly, I was in a coma for a few months. When I woke up, my whole life had changed. I had long term physical problems, I suffered head injuries that had some odd effects on my life, and worst of all, I had lost my soul mate. I spent five years recovering physically, another five years recovering emotionally, and the last dozen years, well, just going through the motions. I had dedicated my life after Anna's death to promoting her work, and that was really the sole focus on my existence. I was not interested in finding another soul mate, or relationships, or even finding someone to date. This is going to sound crazy, but in the 22 years that Anna had been gone, I had not had sex with another person. I checked in at my hotel near the gallery, made the necessary calls and collapsed on the bed. I had enough time to take a solid nap before my speech and wasn't going to waste the opportunity. My last thought before dozing off was to wonder if Sara was staying the night in Chicago. I woke up on the bed with a start, and realized it was from a noise coming from the bathroom. Someone else was in the room. Just as I was standing to walk toward the bathroom, the door opened and out came Anna, dressed to the nines and putting on an earring as she walked towards me. She looked fantastic. "Better get going," she smiled. "You don't want to be late." I smiled back at her. I was having one of my dreams that Anna was alive again. This happened to me so often through the years that it didn't even phase me anymore. These were the dreams that allowed me to never have any reason to pursue any other relationships, or even have sex. I had actually reached the point where I could control my dreams, I could keep myself from waking up so that we could spend time together, and more importantly, I had become so adept at controlling my dreams that I could manipulate the characters in my dreams to do what I wanted. I lived in a dream world where I could have whatever I wanted, whoever I wanted, and however I wanted. I didn't need reality. While I had to work at it to gain this ability, I think it was in part due to the brain damage that I suffered in the accident. As I mentioned, my head injuries in the wreck caused some odd effects, and this was the biggest. My brain had been damaged in one way but had simultaneously developed an incredible skill. So Anna would come to me in dreams, and we would talk, and laugh, and enjoy each other just as before. Sometimes it almost seemed like she knew it was a dream too, but we didn't talk about that, we just enjoyed the time we had. We also had sex, and when you are in complete control of all the images and words and people, sex is pretty fantastic. Imagine being able to do whatever you wanted in your dreams and have other characters look and act the way you want. I could instantly change their hair color, or have them suddenly change into sexy lingerie. I could make them taller or fitter or tanner or whatever. I could give myself a 12 inch cock. I could bring in a third party and have a threeway. Since I controlled the dream, I could control Anna's reactions, so if we had group sex with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, she would enthusiastically enjoy it, and so would they. If I wanted to, I could have Anna suddenly grow an attractive cock and rub it up against mine as I licked and sucked her breasts. I'm not saying I have done that, not saying I haven't, just saying I could. It was realistic, fabulous fulfillment of every fantasy, guilt free. And here she was, visiting me in my hotel room. "I'm almost ready," I said, standing up to wrap my arms around her in a warm embrace. I could feel her, hold her, and smell her. The only shortfall of my dreams was that I could never manage to focus on her eyes. When I looked into her eyes, they became fuzzy and unfocused. If I looked away, they seemed to sharpen, but as soon as I looked back they were out of focus. So I spent a lot of time looking at her almost sideways. She looked fantastic, in a silky black dress that I often dreamed she was wearing. It came up to about mid thigh and showed off her toned and tanned legs, my second favorite thing about her. It also showed just a hint of cleavage up top, and when I wished it I could see her nipples through the fabric. I effortlessly moved the dream in the direction I wanted. I chose to be sitting naked on the edge of the bed, in a candlelit hotel room. I chose to have an impressive eight inch cock (no reason to overdo it) and chose to be semi aroused, so that my cock hung heavy in front of Anna's face. I chose to have her look at me hungrily, licking her lips for a moment, before she moved in and softly kissed my cock, first one side, then the other, then softly again on either side of the head. Then I had her lick the head, her tongue long and full, so long in fact that it could twirl around my cock. My cock quickly became fully aroused, and she had to move up on her knees to take me enthusiastically into her mouth. It didn't take long for my orgasm to well up inside me, and when I came it was like an exploding firehose, the volume and intensity ridiculously well beyond reality. I came in volumes, coating Anna's chest with a thick white cream. "Wow, I think you've missed me," she smiled, as she dragged her index finger across her chest, scooping up some of the milky liquid and sliding her finger seductively into her mouth. "I always miss you," I replied. "You need to visit more often." She smiled and leaned back away from me, she was naked now. She took another handful of the creamy white coating on her chest and used it as a warm lube as she rubbed it on her pussy. "I'm here anytime," she said. "I wish I could see your eyes," I said. She blushed and looked away. She was back in her little black dress again, looking clean and beautiful and ready to go to the art show. After a moment she raised her eyes back up towards mine, and I gasped as I suddenly realized that for the first time in over 20 years of dreams, I could see her eyes, one brown, one blue, both glowing up at me. As I recovered from the initial shock, my eyes refocused, and suddenly I realized that I wasn't looking at Anna anymore. The reason I could see her eyes was that it wasn't her. It was Sara, looking up at me warmly. I jolted awake to find myself alone on the bed in the hotel room. Where did that come from, I thought. Before I could figure that out I got a wake up call from the front desk, and I had to get ready for the show. In the short walk to the art gallery, I couldn't stop thinking about Sara and the dream. I had been controlling my dreams so completely for so long it was shocking to have something change unexpectedly. I had to admit that it was a pleasant surprise, I was wishing I hadn't been startled awake. The art show and my presentation went quite well, it was a script I had been doing so long I could have done it in my sleep. Meet the important people, have the usual conversations, give the speech that I have given once a month for the past five years. My favorite part of the entire process was watching people look at the paintings before and after the presentation, they were often visibly amazed and moved at Anna's work. It made me feel good that her work was still having an impact on people. One thing I didn't see was Sara, not before, during or after the presentation, and I spent a lot of time looking. There were several hundred people at the event, so I easily could've missed her. I had pretty much given up as I watched the crowd thinning out. I found myself standing in front of a large painting of Anna's eyes, gazing into her eyes and remembering what it was like to look into them earlier, in the dream. The Eyes of Midnight "It's almost like she's here, isn't it," said a small voice behind me. I turned and I realized, after a double take, that it was Sara. It was Sara, but she looked a lot different. She was neatly dressed in a sexy librarian look, with a simple white blouse, medium black skirt and black high heels. Her wavy brown hair curled around her face and went down past her shoulders. She was stunning, and so much different that she could have been in the crowd and I wouldn't have noticed. "Sara, so glad to see you," I managed to stammer. "You, uh, dress up quite well." "Thanks," she blushed. "I enjoyed your presentation, very intriguing." We went and got a glass of wine as the crowd continued to thin out, and we walked around together looking at some of the paintings. "There was one painting I was hoping to see that they didn't have on exhibit," she said. "Which one was that?" I asked. "Eyes at Midnight," she said. "It's my favorite. I've seen it on the computer, but I was really hoping to see it for real." Eyes at Midnight was one of the last paintings Anna ever painted. It was not that well received by the critics or by the public, but it was my favorite. It was a dark, brooding self portrait that Anna had painted in the middle of the night. The eyes didn't have as much detail and color as usual, but there was a depth to it that I found mesmerizing. I was impressed that Sara had been moved by it as well. "Interesting that is your favorite, it is mine as well," I said. "In fact, I have a full size print of that piece that I take with me when I travel." The words were just out of my mouth when I realized what I had just said. "Wait, I have the print with me, I could show it to you now." Sara's face lit up. "Oh, would you, that would make this trip complete." "Of course, my hotel room is just a short walk from here, we can go see it now," I said. I suddenly realized that I had just invited a young attractive girl back to my hotel room. To her credit, Sara did not react one way or another, she acted as though there were no implications. I had to remind myself that it was unlikely that a 20 something girl would be interested in a 40 something man, but I still became a bit nervous. We stepped out of the gallery into the cool night air and took a slow stroll down the sidewalk to the hotel. I struggled to make conversation as my mind raced. On the one hand, I was nervous about making an awkward advance to an attractive young girl, on the other hand I was nervous about letting the opportunity pass. And of course I was nervous about spending time with a real woman, something I hadn't done in over 20 years. By the time we got to the elevator I was out of small talk. We went quietly up to the room and then went inside, where I spent the first few moments tossing dirty clothes aside. The room had a double bed and an adjacent living room area with a couch and other chairs. Interestingly, Sara walked by the couch and sat down on the edge of the bed, which I took as either a suggestion that she was interested in having sex or that the idea was so remote that the implications of sitting on the bed didn't matter. I went to the closet and went into my wardrobe case, where I kept the print of the Eyes at Midnight. I hadn't told Sara this, but not only did I travel with the piece, it was generally the last thing I looked at every night before going to bed. The print was about two feet square, so when I handed it to Sara she could easily hold it in front of her to look at. As it came into her hands, she audibly gasped, and one hand came up to her mouth. I've seen a lot of strong reactions to art, but I don't think I have ever seen someone so immediately taken by a work. She didn't say a word, she just sat there, stunned and mesmerized by the painting. Her eyes misted up, but they never left the painting. For the next ten minutes or so, she just sat there, looking into the eyes, occasionally moving her fingers over the print. It was an incredibly moving experience, which she was having all by herself. It was like I wasn't even there. In fact, when I mumbled something about going to the bathroom, she didn't even react. I went into the bathroom and tried to collect myself somewhat. Sara was here for the art, not for me. I splashed cold water on my face and looked at myself in the mirror. I looked into my own eyes, haggard, tired, lonely. As I did ever too frequently, I resigned myself to the idea that I was never going to be with a woman again, and it was best just to be satisfied by my dreams. I figured I would just go back out to the room, talk to Sara about the painting some, then walk her back to wherever she was staying. But when I walked back out into the room, Sara was lying on her back on the bed, and I quickly realized she was fast asleep. She held the painting in her hands over her chest, and she looked peaceful, beautiful and angelic on the bed. I took the opportunity to admire her petite body. She was small, but surprisingly shapely. Even on her back, her breasts pushed impressively upward on her silk blouse. Her skirt had ridden up some on her thighs, and her legs were toned and attractive. I tried to wake her, but I really didn't have the heart to, because she looked so peaceful. I was able to pull her long, delicate fingers off the print and then took her heels off and pulled the covers over her. I thought briefly about sleeping on the couch, but then I decided that the bed was big enough for both of us, it wasn't like anything was going to happen anyway. I stripped down to a t shirt and boxers and collapsed into bed. I left the light by the bed on in case Sara woke in the night. I was exhausted from the tension of my day with Sara, and I was quickly asleep. I'm not sure when exactly that I woke up. I was on my back, and it took me a minute to remember where I was. Hotel room. Chicago. Oh yeah, and there was a young girl in bed with me as well. I turned to look over at Sara and my heart stopped. Her face was turned towards me, she was wide awake, and looking at me intently. By intently, I mean like she was practically studying me, her eyes were wide open. Her eyes were focused, intense, a little sad, but there was something else there as well. I had no idea what to say, so I just looked back at her looking at me. I had a brief run of imagination that involved me being in a news story—man invites stranger into his hotel room and she goes crazy and murders him in the middle of the night. We lay there a long time, just looking at each other, no words were spoken. Then, to my total shock, Sara leaned over and kissed me. My head went into a tailspin and my body practically went crazy. My heart was suddenly pounding, my stomach was doing flip flops. She didn't wait for me to react, she just leaned in further and kissed me harder. I felt my mind go blank as I kissed her back. She was immediately aggressive, sliding over the bed and on top of me, and I realized as her warm skin covered my body that she was naked. Like a hungry animal, she pulled off my shirt and then pushed my boxers off, and before I knew it she had her legs wrapped around mine and her arms pulling me close. Through it all, she never stopped kissing me, warmly and passionately like a longtime lover. I never really had any time to react, she was totally in control. I suddenly realized that my cock was hard, and I could feel her warm, wet pussy poised above my cock. Her eyes met mine, and I noticed her eyes looked much different than before. They had more color, more depth, more emotion. I had seen these eyes somewhere before, and about the moment that I realized her eyes reminded me of a painting, she lowered herself onto me and I gasped as my cock immediately slipped inside her all the way to the hilt. I was completely overcome with the feeling of being inside Sara. It felt incredible, beautiful, like it was meant to be. She was holding me so passionately, like I was some kind of divine object. For me, it had been over 20 years since I was inside a woman, but this was so much more than anything I had ever expected. The sex life of my dreams had been awesome and intense, but this was miles beyond any of that. My hands roamed freely over Sara as she straddled me. I caressed her perfectly shaped breasts, ran my fingers over her face and through her hair. I stroked her arms, her legs, her hips. She continued to control the action as I was on my back. She was grinding her hips onto me, taking my cock deep inside her and then almost all the way out, then back deep inside again. Her eyes were closed with passion now, but I kept mine open, loving every expression, every moan, every time she leaned down to kiss me again. Her kisses were so soft and passionate I couldn't let her go, and I pulled her down close and kissed her hard, and then harder. My hands were on her lower back now, helping her to move her hips rhythmically. She was so small it was easy to move her body. Then my hands moved around to her tight but shapely ass, and both my hands found a cheek. Her ass cheeks were so small and tight that they fit easily into my hands. I lovingly squeezed her ass with both hands, and she gasped with pleasure as I pulled her down hard on my cock. Even though I was on my back, I began to take control of the motion, gripping her ass and driving my cock into her, harder and deeper. I could feel my orgasm slowly beginning to build, and it felt like we were moving onto some other plane. My hips began to thrust upward off the bed, lifting her little body up as I drove my cock up into her, my hands still gripping her ass. She screamed into my mouth as we kissed, and I probably screamed back. My back arched high and I swear I lifted her two feet off the bed. As I exploded into her, I absolutely and completely lost all control. Then I passed out. When I jolted awake, I was still in the bed, and sitting at the foot of the bed was Anna. She was dressed in a short football jersey and cowboy boots. I suddenly realized that I was in one of my dreams. I looked around for Sara but didn't see her. "She's gone," Anna said, smiling slightly. I immediately felt a strange pang of guilt. After all, I had just cheated on my soul mate, albeit one who had been dead for 22 years. "I like her," Anna said. She grinned at me devilishly. "Maybe we could have a threesome with her sometime." I briefly thought about pushing the dream immediately into that direction, but it didn't seem like quite the right moment. Instead, I held out my hand to her, and pulled her up onto the bed with me. She cuddled up beside me in the bed, her head on my chest and my arm around her shoulders. "I love you," I said. She was quiet for a while, I wasn't sure if it was her or me controlling this dream. "I love you too," she said. "But maybe it's time to try something new." I couldn't think of a response, so I just held her in my arms and waited for sleep to come back. Or go away. When I woke up again, it was dawn, and I was alone. I went and looked in the bathroom, stuck my head out the door to search the hall. I walked down to the lobby and looked around, no Sara. I went back to the room and looked around, there was no sign of Sara. Not only was she not there, there were no signs that she had ever been there. No note, no clothes left behind. The painting she had been so intrigued by was on the bed. It took me a while to settle on the realization that she had left without saying goodbye, or leaving a note. I went through the natural progression of thoughts, that I had done something wrong, or done something offensive. But the glaring, overwhelming thought nagging my mind was a completely different concept—that she had never been there. Had Sara been a dream? I sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed my eyes, trying to clear my head. Had it been a dream? Did she even come to the room at all? Or worse yet, had I completely imagined her being on the plane, being at the art exhibit, being in my bed? As I reviewed the details in my head, I realized I didn't know Sara's last name. Had she never given it to me, or did I forget it? I couldn't remember, or didn't know, where she was from. With a mild shiver, I realized that all I knew about her was that she was an artist named Sara. I spent the rest of the morning holding onto hope that she would come back. I visualized her bringing coffee. Climbing back into bed with me. Making love the rest of the day. But none of those things happened. I checked out of the hotel, constantly looking around. I went to the airport, and walked from one end of the terminal to the other, looking for Sara. I sat down on the plane and watched passengers coming down the aisle, desperately hoping that Sara would be one of them. She wasn't. But the time I got home I was so tired and devastated I went straight home. In all honesty, somewhere in the air on the way home I had made peace with the idea that Sara had been all a part of my imagination. I climbed into bed and fell into a deep, disturbed sleep, a sleep that lasted for two straight days, and oddly enough, involved no dreams. When I finally did wake up, I felt refreshed and rejuvenated, ready to get my head together and stop living in the past, and/or stop living in my fantasy life. I took a long hot shower, shaved, had a big breakfast. I cleaned up the old art room that Anna had used, throwing away all the old paints and supplies that had been collecting dust. I was going through some old paintings when I saw it. An old painting of a girl with deep brown eyes. Eyes, that were, without question, the eyes of Sara. I felt a cold shiver down my back as I stared at the picture. How could Anna have painted the eyes of a woman who didn't even exist when she painted it? As I sat there looking into the eyes of the painting, I came to a more logical conclusion—Sara was all in my head, inspired by the painting. I don't know how long I sat there looking at the painting, but at some point I fell asleep. I know this because I looked up and Anna was in the room. She had on a paint smock over pajamas and a fedora on her head. I never knew how she would show up for my dreams, so I was pretty used to random clothing. Anna walked up behind me and embraced me, wrapping her arms around my shoulder and pressing herself into my back. "How's it going?" she smiled. "Ok I guess, except for me losing my mind and not recognizing fantasy from reality," I answered. "I wouldn't get too hung up on the details," Anna said. "Fantasy. Reality. Dreams. We all move back and forth between them." "But don't you think I should be worried about imaginary people?" I said. "You mean Sara?" she asked. "Yes, Sara," I said, turning to look at her. "She doesn't exist, she's just a figment of my imagination, inspired by your painting." "Are you sure?" Anna said. "She seemed pretty real. I mean, did she seem real to you when she was with you?" I looked at Anna and put my head in my hands. I was having a debate about the existence of imaginary people, with an imaginary person. For the first time in a very long time, I didn't want Anna to be in my dream. In the far reaches of my mind, I could hear a soft tapping noise. It gradually grew louder, to the point where I looked around to see where it was coming from. Anna was working on a painting, just a few feet away, and looked over at me and smiled. "You should get that," she said. Then I was awake, sitting in Anna's art studio slumped into a chair in front of the painting of Sara's eyes. It was dark and quiet, and I was all alone. Then I heard the tapping again. I realized someone was knocking, very softly, on the front door. I went over and opened it up, expecting to see the mailman. I was wrong. It was Sara. She was standing in front of the door, her head down, her eyes brimming with tears. She was dressed simply in jeans and a thin sweater. She looked cold, and a kind man would have asked her in. But while I was a kind man, I was incapable of putting enough thoughts together to verbalize anything. After a long silence, she broke the ice. "Hey," she said. I breathed for the first time since I had opened the door. I was still too stunned to formulate any kind of intelligent response. "It's you," I stammered. She nodded, and I noted a kindness and understanding in the way she looked at me. She had totally mind fucked me in Chicago, and it was understandable that I was in a stupor. She didn't give me much chance to collect myself. "I need to show you something," she said. Before I could say anything, she held out her hand towards me, and I didn't know what else to do. So I took her hand. She led me to her car and we got in the front seat without saying a word. She drove the car slowly and deliberately, and I sat there in a trance, not even paying attention to where I was, where we were going, or even how long we had been driving. It wasn't long before I didn't even recognize where I was, even though I had lived in the area for over 20 years. I finally managed to say something. "Are you real?" I asked. She didn't respond right away, she seemed to be trying to gather her emotions. Finally she answered. "Yes, I fairly sure that I am," she said. Just then she turned off the main road and onto a dirt road. The one way road was long and dark and bumpy, and it was a long time before we came to a clearing, where there was a small, attractive cottage. Sara pulled in front and stopped the car. We got out, and once again, she took my hand and led me inside the house. Her hand was warm and slightly sweaty, and it felt good to hold it. It made me feel like Sara was real, even if it was just for now. She turned on some lights as we came in, the cottage was very simply and attractively decorated. She led me toward the back of the house, toward a set of french doors. When we reached the doors she paused, and took a breath. She looked over at me, almost as if she was measuring if I was going to be able t handle what she was going to show me. Then she turned the knobs on both doors and pushed them into the room. The french doors opened into a larger than expected room. No furniture, stark white paint, no windows. In the middle of the room were several easels, with partially completed paintings on them. Covering the walls, in nearly every inch of available space were paintings. Paintings of eyes. They were Anna's paintings. My mind exploded. How did these paintings get here? Had this strange girl stolen my wife's paintings? Why did she bring me here? "What the hell..." I stammered, then suddenly I noticed a tiny detail, just out of the corner of my eye. I walked over to one of the paintings and looked at it closely. Then I looked even closer, looking at the detail. They were Anna's paintings. But she hadn't done them. I knew every painting Anna ever produced, they were filed in my head like an encyclopedia. These paintings looked exactly like Anna's work, but they were different, so subtly different that I may have been the only person to notice. I began to walk around the room, slowly, examining each painting carefully. There were hundreds of individual paintings. I had to admit, each painting was very well done. Someone had done an incredible job of mimicking Anna's style. I turned angrily towards Sara, ready to confront her, challenge her, yell at her. But when I saw her, I stopped myself before I said a word. She looked so tiny, so innocent, so emotional. Her hands were on her mouth and she was crying as she looked at me. She looked almost like she was in pain. I took a breath and reloaded. "Where did you get these paintings?" I said softly. She gulped back tears. "I did them," she said. My eyes squinted at her in disbelief. "You...painted...these?" The Eyes of Midnight She nodded, and I feared she was going to fall to pieces the way she looked, so I waited a moment to let her collect herself. "Sara, there are hundreds of paintings in this room, and you told me that you had only seen Anna's work a month ago in a magazine," I said, somewhat sternly. "How could you have possibly painted all these in a month?" Her eyes glistened back at me, full of tears. Something was clearly tearing her apart. "How could you paint all these in a month?" I said again. "I didn't," she said softly. "I've been painting these since I was 12 years old." I felt my knees get suddenly weak. How could she paint in the exact style of Anna—a very unique style—without ever having seen her work? She had to be lying, or mistaken, or someone was pulling a giant hoax on me. Maybe she had seen Anna's work as a child and it had imprinted on her and she was some kind of genius mimic. Somehow she was using my dead wife to profit off of it all. My fingers were rubbing my temples as I tried to sort out the madness. Sara walked slowly towards me. "I started having visions when I was 12. Visions of these eyes. They haunted me, haunted my thoughts, even my dreams. I didn't paint them, they painted themselves, using me to hold the brush. I've never even sold a single one." Everything she said was confusing me more, I almost wanted her to stop talking so I could sort it out. But I also had to know what the hell was going on. "I don't understand," I said rubbing my forehead. "This doesn't make sense." "When I saw Anna's art in the magazine, I realized where my visions were coming from," she continued. She spoke so softly that I had to strain to hear. I pushed two fingers hard into the center of my forehead. "So are you trying to say that my dead wife has been giving you visions of paintings?" I said. "Not exactly," she mumbled, turning away from me. "Let me show you something else." She walked over to an easel that was holding a covered painting. I followed behind her, my brain still whirling with all the data she was throwing at me. "I painted this a year ago," she said. She reached up and pulled the canvas cover off, and my knees went weak once again. I was staring into my own eyes. They were the exact color, shape, hue, it was like a photograph. Except for one thing. Showing up as a reflection in each pupil, you could see a man and a woman standing side by side, holding hands. As I stood there, completely stupefied, I realized that Sara was standing beside me, holding my hand. I looked closer into the pupil, looking at the detail. The people reflected in the pupils were me and Sara. Not only were we the exact reflection depicted in the painting, as I looked closer, I realized that the reflections in the pupil were wearing the exact same clothing as we had on. I staggered back from the painting, completely overwhelmed. The room was spinning and I had to find a place to sit down. Luckily I collapsed into a chair before passing out. Sara came over and knelt in front of me. Her hands were on my knees and she looked up at me with deep concern. "I didn't know how to tell you," she said. "I saw your picture in the magazine and I knew it was you. I found out you were going to Chicago and booked seats on the same flight." She stopped and smiled to herself. "I even bought two tickets, so we would have privacy to talk. After I met you, that night in the hotel...I suddenly realized what was happening to me." My mind was still scrambling to make rational sense of all this. In a final, desperation grasp at a possible reason for all this, I settled on the idea that Sara was a deranged stalker who had somehow mimicked my wife's work and was probably going to kill me and bury me in the backyard. That made as much sense as anything. I tried to clear my head and start over. "I still don't understand any of this," I said. "If these visions that you have that led you to create these paintings, if they aren't from my wife, where are you getting them from?" Sara looked down for a few moments, collecting herself. She even reached up and took out her contact lenses, which had to be flooded from all the tears. "The visions I'm having are not coming from Anna," she said softly. "I am Anna." She looked up at me as she said it, and my whole body went completely cold as I looked into her teary eyes. One was blue. One was brown. She had been wearing colored lenses to hide it. In a split second that seemed to last for an hour, everything became completely clear. Looking into her eyes immediately explained everything. Like I said at the beginning of the story, I had never seen another pair of eyes like Annas. Until now. And just like Anna had always said, the eyes are the windows to the soul, and looking into her eyes left me absolutely no doubt that I was looking at Anna. I leaned down and swept Sara up into my arms, carried her to her bedroom and eased her down onto the bed. For the next four hours, we made love without speaking a word, stopping from time to time but never leaving each other's side. During the entire time, we never once, for more than a moment, stopped looking into each other's eyes. I was never warmer, never more aroused, never more satisfied. I was completely hypnotized, mesmerized. I was making love with my long dead wife, but I was also having sex with a beautiful young girl. She seemed to know just what to do, so it was almost like I was enjoying one of my controlled dreams. When we finally stopped, we were on the bed, lying on our sides facing each other, looking deep into each other's eyes. It was midnight, dark and quiet. "Do you know what today is?" she whispered. I did not know what day it was. I did not know what month it was, or even what year it was. I did not know what was real or a dream, all I knew was that I was here, and Anna was here. I didn't care what was real or what was a dream, as long as I could be here with her. "Today is the day I died, 22 years ago," Anna whispered. I closed my eyes as the date suddenly hit me. Today was the anniversary of the wreck. "Today is also the day I was born, 22 years ago," Sara said. "Today is my birthday." Epilogue: Dr. Sara Williams was busy finishing up her rounds in the coma patient ward, affectionately known by the staff as the endless party zone. She was neatly dressed in a white blouse and a medium length black skirt, and her wavy brown hair framed up an attractive face. She pulled a chart off the bed of a patient and then checked a printout coming off of a machine hooked up to the patient. "Hm," she said. The attending nurse stepped up closer and looked over her shoulder at the printout. "What is it doctor?" she asked. "Just an interesting anomaly with the brain activity for this patient," she said. "Every year at this time he has a spike in brain activity." "What happened on this date that would cause that?" said the nurse. "Twenty two years ago today he was in a really bad car accident, his wife was killed in the wreck," she said. "Wow, that gives me chills," said the nurse. As Sara put the chart back on the bed and walked towards the door of the room, she glanced up at the wall. Hanging up on the wall was a haunting painting of a pair of eyes, looking down towards the patient on the bed. "Who knows," she said as she walked out the door. "Maybe he's having some really great dreams."