END: Vital Gem
Summary: The gallery was bustling, full of life now. It was no longer dark but bright. And she...
This takes place in the Red Rose universe, just like Wilting Petals. Also, if you wish to get updates on stories within this universe you'll need to do an author follow since as of right now the stories for it are one shots (and are marked as complete).
A statue raised infront of him from the slab it stood upon. The green stem curled once before going straight up, leaves and thorns adorning it on it's path to the flower it held. A rose. Red, petals open forever in full bloom to greet the fluorescent light. A few of the stone petals lay scattered on the ground around it as if they had fallen off, though each one stayed miraculously behind the rope.
Garry stared at the piece of art. It seemed to call to him in some way, reaching out with it's petals but unable to crossover the boundary. It made him feel... hollow. The piece was so full of life, it was vibrant, and yet...
Why did he feel sad as he gazed upon it?
He had always appreciated art and felt something towards each piece he saw but it had never quite affected him this way. As if he were missing a petal like the statue. Like he was incomplete.
There was a tug at his sleeve, ripping him away from his thoughts. "Hm?" He turned around to see a little girl standing there in a white blouse with a red tie and skirt. Her brown hair rolling freely down her back. She couldn't be more than ten years old by the looks of it, even younger than that maybe. Perhaps nine then? "What is it, little lady?" he asked, looking down into red eyes. Like the rose. He felt his attention wandering back to it-
"What's this statue?" her soft, small voice floated through the air interrupting his private thoughts once again.
"Ah... this?" He looked back to the plaque on the wall before focusing back on her. "It's called, Embodiment of Spirit, apparently." Garry turned to glance back at the statue over his shoulder, the deep red so bright it almost seemed to drown him with it's quiet calls. As if it were shouting, notice me! Over and over again. "When I look at this sculpture... I feel somehow sorrowful... I wonder why?" he murmured the words but no one else was around in this section of the gallery so the girl must have heard them. With a chuckle he gazed back into her own vibrant red. "Ah, I'm sorry if I said anything to trouble you. Never mind what I said." Was he seriously rambling to himself out loud now? He should leave before he embarrassed himself like this any further. "Well, bye." He stepped around the girl, walking out of the gallery and down the street to the train that would take him home.
When the door to the studio apartment was closed behind him, secure with the lock in place he took off his shoes slowly, still thinking of that sculpture.
He didn't quite get the surge of emotions he felt when he had seen it. That he kept feeling when it occupied his mind, which had been the whole ride back to his home. If he didn't know better it was as if the vine like stem had wrapped around him for the time he had stood there infront of it. To make it impossible for him to think of anything else. The leaves whispering into his ear too softly for him to hear, even when he strained for so much as a syllable. The thorns brushing against his skin but never breaking the surface, like it was tickling him.
"Good work, Guertena." It was going to stick with him for awhile, he could feel it there in his bones taking root. He chuckled, reaching a hand into his pocket. That was the sort of thing he wished his own artwork would do one day. To effect a person so strongly. He could do nothing but congratulate the man silently for the achievement. It was well deserved.
Garry's fingers wrapped around something soft instead of plastic. He frowned, he could have sworn he had stuck a piece of candy in his pocket this morning, a lemon flavored one. So why was it empty? He brushed his fingers over the spot again while reaching into his other pocket as well to check that he hadn't somehow misplaced it. "Ah," he sighed. It wasn't there. Perhaps it had fallen out then. No matter then, he had more.
A few steps further and he was in the kitchen pulling open a drawer filled to the brim with similar sweets. He snatched one from within, red, probably strawberry then. With a tear the plastic opened and he popped it into in his mouth, savoring the sweet taste as he threw the wrapper out.
He reached into his pocket again, still unsure how he had lost the first one. Was there a hole? If so it would be a disaster if he dropped his keys down there. "Hm?" His finger brushed against something soft again, softer than the inside of the pockets should have been anyways. Curling a finger around the fabric he tugged it up gently from the deep confines of the pocket.
It was a white handkerchief, mostly anyways. There were dots of light red on the lace, a darker streak centered in the middle of it. Dried blood. His brow furrowed. When had he come to have this on him? Turning the fabric in his hand he could see a stiching of two letters in one of the corners.
"Ib?"
He was infront of a painting that had been burned from it's place on the wall. The handkerchief in hand, his palm bleeding over the white lace. A little girl stood there to the side, outstretched hand now empty.
Tiny hands pressing into his back, a groan slipping past his lips as pain blossomed over his shoulders.
Standing in a patch of sun, the word - might as well be his favorite word - macaroons, passing between his lips.
A crumpled form on the floor, light as a feather in his arms to be on the floor once more, his ragged coat covering the little girl beneath it who had collapsed back in the hall after running from...
Mannequin heads, headless statues, women dragged halfway out of paintings. Each one crawling after him, her, that little girl with brown hair and red eyes. Another one had been there as well, blonde and holding a knife, running after them. He could still hear the footsteps in his mind. The roar of flame enveloping a portrait that looked identical to that girl.
With how fast it slammed into him he almost fell backwards onto the tile floor of his kitchen.
That blonde girl had been Mary, now she was just a pile of ashes in that room. Her body probably gone from the floor like a ghost.
The other one though, she was the same as that girl in the gallery. Ib. Yes, that was her name. She had been with him in the other gallery, had gotten his rose back from one of the painted woman, the petals blooming again and looking as healthy as ever.
"Ib," he repeated. His gaze flickered to the clock that adorned the north wall. It wasn't enough time. The gallery closed in ten minutes. Ib would be gone by then, if she wasn't already at her own home, already having left the gallery. That place has been disturbing. If she had remembered-
"Ah," his lips twisted into a frown. That was unlikely. She hadn't given any indication that she knew him back at the gallery. Ib had just wanted to know what the name of that one art piece was. Nothing more. "Hmm," he clicked his tongue, sending the now centimeter sized candy to the other side of his mouth in the process.
This wasn't going to work for today.
With a sigh he brought out his lighter from his pant pocket, snatching a lone cigarette from a small box on the counter that he had been told not to open. Too late now, he thought. Garry brought it to his lips, flicking the lighter on so it glowed red before setting the metal object on the counter.
He took a drag, feeling the smoke swirl into his mouth only to reach for the air when his lips parted, cigarette fitted snugly between two fingers so it wouldn't fall to the floor. That calm wave rolled over him and he took another drag so it came again.
This was the last day of that gallery to and all he had was a first name. Not enough to find her again, to see if she remembered. She was the only other one that had escaped from that place with him. With the creepy dolls...
His fingers shook for a moment and he took another drag so they stilled once more. He shouldn't be doing this. He knew that, and yet... the memory of that place made his skin crawl. From being a petal away from death when Ib found him. Too close, that's what that was. That damned portrait.
Garry looked over to the canvas leaning against the far wall, bare of any color. It was just waiting there for him. He had thought he needed to go back to the store to get more but there was one left he hadn't filled with his images.
He walked over slowly, slipping the cigarette from his mouth to set it down in an ash tray, fighting himself not to pick it back up. Instead his fingers clutched around a paint brush, a new life line. After removing the top of his paints he dipped the brush inside and set to work.
Just imagining Ib standing in front of him again in that gallery, his coat hanging limp around her shoulders. The dark stone beyond her, that doll in a corner, peeking around the edge looking past her to him with an angry stare. The walls leaking rain to collect in small puddles on the floor. In that water, in that reflection was the ceiling. It was laced with a web of green vines that hung down with little dolls clutching onto them, sightless.
Then there was just her. He filled her form in with varying shades of red and white, brown strands rolling down the front, bright red eyes glittering in the odd glow of light contained in the painting. She was smiling, her hands were clasped in front of her, fingers twined around a green stem, a red rose blooming up above them, partially blocking the view of her thin pale wrists. Dark blue stockings ran up her legs to settle beneath her knees, tiny brown shoes adorning her feet. The left placed halfway into a puddle, rippling the water and the view it contained, distorting it further.
The last piece he added was the handkerchef, fallen to the floor landing between two of the smaller puddles, the vines in the reflection looking to be reaching for it. The white lace with fresh drops of blood on it that dribbled down steadily from a spot above. His blood.