This is a weird fic, okay.
Notes: het, paintings being kinda creepy, weird romance (human/painting), amnesia, all around weirdness. Set after the Forgotten Portrait ending.
Garry is alone when his eyes open. How long he's been asleep (no—he's dead, his rose petals are gone, he is dead) he does not know. He's not where he last remembered being, but - then again - he barely remembers much at all, other than entering the gallery and then dying. The time inbetween is blurred, fuzzy almost, as if his memory is behind opaque glass.
Vague, fast flashes of red and yellow made his head hurt, and he stands up from the floor, legs wobbly. Garry looks around for his rose only to find nothing. Not even one single petal, much less the stem. All his pockets are empty as well.
Paintings stare at him from the walls, their eyes fixated on him and him alone.
.:.
The pages in all the books are completely blank. He's been sitting for hours it feels like, flipping through book after book after book, only to find every single one empty of words or pictures.
Garry sighs, the very last book in the gallery held in his lap.
He will not find a way out using the books, it seems.
Something falls to the ground outside, making a light clatter. It scrapes and drags itself by the door, its shadow visible through the crack at the bottom, and then it's gone.
He does not leave the room for a very long time.
.:.
Garry remains optimistic, despite the lack of leads. There has to be someway out, right? He just hasn't tried everything yet, that's all. The books may have been a dead end, but the gallery isn't only made up of books.
The paintings still look at him every time he happens to walk by them, their eyes never blinking. That alone motivates his urge to leave.
It's strange, though. The gallery has not one single piece of food to be found anywhere, but he's not been hungry for even a second since he woke up.
In a way, there is convenience to be had from such an odd and truthfully frightening situation. It is one less thing to worry about. Maybe he won't starve to death before finding out how to escape? But this also unnerves Garry almost as much as the paintings that stare at him. Is it just some trick of the gallery?
Or: is he really actually dead?
He really misses blueberry pie.
.:.
Something is missing; he can tell. He does not know what it is, though. But it's gone now.
And there's no getting it back.
.:.
Time in the gallery is like a photograph: it never moves.
Garry finds a clock once, stuck at quarter past three. At first he thought the clock was simply broken. There are no other clocks to be found so he does not think much of a single clock with immobile hands.
However, he begins to notice peculiar things about his body, like how neither his hair nor fingernails have grown at all. There is no way to tell how long he's been trapped in the gallery, but it feels like long enough for some difference to have popped up with him.
The clock is gone the next time he passes by where it was.
.:.
The scrapping and dragging of things happens more than usual when Garry tries to sleep. He starts putting a chair up under the doorknob to keep it out after he woke one time to the sound of it scratching hard at the wood and paint of the door. There are deep fingernail markings in the door when he checks it later. Further inspection reveals part of a fingernail stuck in the splintered wood.
He does not know if he prefers this over the nightmares.
.:.
It bangs at his door, jerking him harshly out of a light doze. Instantly, Garry scrambles into the very back corner of the room, hoping over and over again that the chair holds.
The banging continues, and he hides his face in his knees, covering his ears.
.:.
The Ladies of Red, Blue, and Yellow cannot speak. They can move, crawl across the floor using their hands with their frames uselessly dragging behind them. Their eyes work just fine (the paintings of the Ladies stare at Garry the most), and sometimes they seem to act almost refined as if they are ladies of high class.
The Lady in Red, however, is slightly different from her fellow Ladies.
Red. There's red in the fuzzier spaces of his memory. She is the only thing in the gallery that resembles the shades red he sees in nightmares and dreams. Actually, each Lady brings up bits of unfocused memory for him.
The Lady in Blue is his missing rose, picked clean of its petals. He still has been unable to find it and cannot recall where it might be.
The Lady in Yellow is scary to him, but he cannot figure out why. He avoids this Lady as much as humanly possible, which isn't as often as he would prefer. He does sort of have to share the gallery with all the paintings and that does include the Ladies.
But the Lady in Red - once again - is different. She is red. Nothing else but red. It nags at Garry's memory whenever he sees her crawl the floors and fraternize with the other Ladies. The blur of red in his brain is more like a smear, a streak of red across his eyes. Being unable to remember impedes his need for sleep.
Confronting the Lady in Red sounds more and more like a good idea the less and less he sleeps.
.:.
The underside of Garry's eyes are dark purple when he finally decides to do it.
Unfortunately, there is more than one copy of the Lady in Red painting in the gallery. He figures any copy of the painting would do, but he hopes to only need one. But there are many other paintings besides the ones of the Ladies, and he's much too tired to actively seek out a single painting.
So, with eyes burning and body listless, Garry sits in front of his damaged door and waits.
.:.
A touch to his face wakes him from a restless and fitful sleep. For a moment, he does not even want to open his eyes. The touch persists, though, so he takes a peek with dry eyes.
It's the Lady in Red.
Startled and fully awake, Garry jerks backwards only to hit the door. He stares at the Lady who looks back at him with blood red eyes gone wide. His breathing picks up in panic. He has nowhere to go now.
One of its hands reaches for him.
Its nails are clipped and broken.
.:.
The Lady in Red stays in his room.
The Lady in Red scratches his face with broken nails.
The Lady in Red watches him sleep.
The Lady in Red holds his hand.
The Lady in Red brushes his hair.
The Lady in Red kisses his cheek.
The Lady in Red is quiet.
The Lady in Red stares at him.
The Lady in Red smiles at him with lips painted like a red rose.
The red memory is fading.
The blue memory is dead.
.:.
A memory.
A red rose held in a small hand.
Three blurred images. One red. One yellow. One blue.
The red one is gone. The yellow one is dead.
The blue one is also dead.
Am I dead?
Is the blue one me?
Did I die?
I don't remember.
.:.
The Lady in Red kisses his mouth, its nails regrown and digging into his hair.
.:.
She is the red memory.
.:.
Time does not move in the gallery.
The dead have no use for time. The dead have no use for memory.
.:.
A blue rose sits in the dark, its petals picked, its memory forgotten.