When Garry awoke, he felt odd. Different, somehow. It was difficult to place, but his body felt lighter, he supposed. Fluid, almost, although he wasn't entirely sure how that was possible.
The first thing he did upon waking was to take a look at his surroundings. The floor at his feet was a dark black, the type of dark color seen with closed eyes. The walls, in sharp contrast, were a bright, blinding white. While normally such a bright color would have bothered him, at this moment it simply seemed to awaken him. The stark contrast between the walls and the floor seemed to jolt his senses back into reality.
He yawned. For a very long time, that was all he was able to do. His body would just yawn and yawn and yawn, until finally he was able to stand. When he was finished, he stretched. A bit of pain stabbed through his lower back, and he pressed in an attempt to alleviate it. It wasn't a very sharp pain, but it was certainly still enough to be noticeable.
When finally satisfied, he took a look down at both ends of the hallway. They both led to a set of what appeared to be crudely-drawn stairs. One leading up, the other back down to-
Wait. What was down there, exactly? His brow furrowed as he tried to concentrate. What was it he had been doing before he came here? For that matter, where was he? The thoughts racing through his mind only increased when he noticed the texture of the wall. It didn't seem like a normal wall. As he felt and poked and prodded along, he noticed that the wall felt suspiciously similar to a crayon drawing.
"Surely that isn't possible. How could a wall be made out of crayon? Although… That does still beg the question, where am I?" Garry voiced his thoughts aloud, with the vague hopes that someone would answer. The silence was his only answer. If anyone was there, they weren't planning to reveal themselves quite yet.
After a few minutes, he came to the realization that nothing was going to make sense if he continued to simply stand there and shout to himself. His only other options were to head to the staircases and either descend or ascend. He weighed each option in his mind, giving both careful consideration before deciding to ascend. Up was good, right? Up was generally good. Plus, even looking at the way down filled him with a sense of inexplicable dread. He couldn't place his finger on why, exactly, but the way down seemed like a place he wanted to avoid at all costs.
With that in mind, he headed towards the only other possible direction. Up. As he continued onward, thoughts kept nagging at his subconscious. And there was something, a hazy memory of a promise, that overtook his thoughts. He still had yet to remember why, but he thought that making sure he kept that promise was important. It was possibly one of the most important things in his entire life. As his mind kept digging, he found he was starting to remember. He remembered brown hair, red eyes, and a body that they belonged to. Wearing a white shirt, and what looked like a red tie?
He collapsed. Remembering that much had sent a sudden shock of pain throughout his body. The pain wasn't necessarily unbearable, but it had been strong enough to send him tumbling to the ground. Internally, he thanked every god there was that nobody had been around to see one of his all-too-common moments of klutziness.
He quickly stood up again and began to climb the stairs. He quickly arrived at the top, as there were very few stairs to begin with. His surroundings now were tainted red, a very bright and off-putting color. It almost appeared to be… blood?
The moment the thought crossed his mind, another wave of pain shot through his body before concentrating at his head. He stepped closer to the center of the room when he noticed another set of stairs, this one leading up. He began to head that way, but stopped for some reason. He couldn't place why, but he felt it was a very bad idea to head that way. So instead, he turned around and looked at the room a little more.
The room itself was nothing remarkable. A bit odd that the walls were all that particular red, but he'd seen weirder. There was that pink that his friend had wanted for their house, now that was a truly disgusting color.
When Garry snapped out of his reverie, however, he noticed that there was something quite odd about the wall with the stairs. It was covered in what looked like vines, with occasional gigantic yellow flowers popping out as well. However, the vines all appeared to stop around the doorway to the stairs. He looked at them even more closely, and gasped when he realized what was so off about them.
"Scorch marks? Here? Who on Earth would do such a horrid thing? My, this is simply dreadful, these plants had done nothing wrong!" He made an attempt at keeping his voice quiet, but it was in vain. It still yelled out, and the silence that befell afterwards seemed louder, somehow. As if silence could somehow be loud.
He forced himself to turn away from the burned plants. Why, if he ever met the person who did such a horrid thing, he would almost certainly give them a stern talking-to! When he turned, he noticed something that had escaped his attention before. It was what looked like a way outside, into an open world full of more inky blackness, but also greens and reds and what looked like a child's drawing of multiple tulips adorning the walls as well. This way seemed much more inviting somehow, or at least, he didn't get the same ominous feeling telling him to stay away. So he didn't.
He walked along the path for a short while. It was a straight path, without very many changes in its direction. Finally, he came to a building. He was at its back, but it seemed like it was painted entirely pink. He briefly questioned the logic of painting a building pink, of all colors, before deciding to simply ignore it and move on.
He approached the door, which seemed to be the only visible part not painted a bright bubblegum door was, instead, a simple wooden door, with a yellow handle to turn. He tried the handle and it was, surprisingly, unlocked, so he pushed the door open and walked inside.
The building's interior was much the same as its exterior, with the only noticeable difference being a fixture in the middle of it that seemed to go to a darker shade of magenta. He once again inspected the building a bit more. As he walked around the fixture, on the other side he found yet another set of stairs, this time leading down. His mind seemed to continue to give him the okay, so he once again continued onwards.
As he began climbing down the steps, he wondered to himself whether he actually had any sort of idea as to where he was going. He realized that he had never really taken the time to slow down and explore his surroundings, he had simply continued with the first available option to him. Though, as he continued to think back on it, he couldn't remember very many options that had presented themselves to him. His only other real choices had been to go down at the white hallway, or up past the singed vines.
As he continued to walk, he noticed that the steps slowly changed. They had started as that same shade of bright pink, but had slowly been changing to a much more sinister-looking black. In fact, as he looked down, he realized he was unable to actually see where he was going. Luckily, the steps were consistent in their height, or he would've slipped and seriously injured and/or possibly killed himself quite some time ago. As it was now, he nearly tripped once or twice, but managed to right himself before actually beginning to fall.
The staircase seemed to stretch on forever as he walked. It provided him with a perfect opportunity to get lost in thought, and so he did. He tried to remember what he could remember about where he might be, but he never quite seemed to get past the things he had initially managed. A girl, a rose, no, roses, one the color of blood and the other the color of a bright night sky. A third rose as well, he remembered, a too-bright yellow. Another girl as well, this one with huge blue eyes and a huge mess of yellow-blonde hair. This girl wore a dress instead of a shirt, a green dress that seemed to be accentuated by white lace and a blue tie.
He spent quite a bit of time trying to remember, until a name finally appeared in his head. The brown-haired girl, the one he felt an inexplicable attachment to, was named Ib. Once he remembered that, the rest of it simply seemed to piece itself together. His rose, the Lady in Blue, meeting Ib, traversing that nightmare of a labyrinth together, giving her the candy, and… his lighter! He stopped on one of the steps and quickly grabbed his lighter. Or attempted to, at any rate. His hand returned only air.
Confused, he began to search his pockets for the lighter. Where could it have gone? Could it have fallen out of his pocket at some point? He remembered having it when they fell down into the toybox-
Oh. It had probably fallen out when they had been pushed into the toybox itself by Mary. That would certainly explain why it wasn't in his pocket like it always was. Although, honestly, considering how dark this staircase was, he was really starting to kick himself for having lost it. He could barely see anything more than an inch or two from his face, although it did seem like the staircase was finally nearing an end of some kind.
As a matter of fact, it was! As he found out when he missed the last step almost entirely and fell flat on his face. He laid there for a minute, simply cursing his misfortune, before finally standing up as slowly as possible. As he stood, he checked himself over to see if there were any external injuries. Hands, fine, legs, fine, feet, fine. His head felt alright, shockingly enough. Even his nose was okay, although he had fallen almost directly on it. It was slightly painful, but nothing he couldn't handle.
When he was finally sure of his status, he looked around at his surroundings yet again. This time, everything was pitch-black. Or at least, it was the way he was looking. He turned himself around, and saw a small glow from a rather familiar-looking desk…
It was the desk from the gallery! The one he had walked by when he first arrived! He almost breathed a sigh of internal relief, before realizing that it wasn't the same place he had first left. It was changed. The walls he remembered were a stark white, not this threatening darkness. They weren't truly black, or at least, it didn't seem that way to Garry. It wasn't so much that they were painted that color as it seemed like there simply was never any color there to begin with. As he walked towards the desk, he took note of everything. It was all still there, somehow. The two windows. The desk. The poster on the wall behind the desk.. Even the pamphlets on the desk were there!
He blinked once or twice, as though trying to spot something out of place. It was amazing, the attention to detail in this recreation of the gallery itself. It was almost enough to make him start questioning his own sense of reality, if maybe this was the real world and his memories were all simply imagined, a world he had fabricated to keep himself from realizing the truth. Yet, no matter how close the fantasy came, it did not become his reality. After all, if the real world was fake, then what did that make Ib?
Speaking of Ib, he needed to find her. Based off of his memory, this was the way they had been intending to come all along, so he figured it was safe to assume she was nearby somewhere. He walked into the main hall again, the one with the big centerpiece of the show. Surely there would be some mistake in its recreation, some kind of flaw in the master design.
Aha! There it was! The fence around the sculpture, Abyss of the Deep. It had been there in the real gallery, but now it was missing. In fact, it almost made the water appear… Real. He kneeled next to it and poked at it once or twice, to test what happened.
The sculpture flared to life almost instantly. Ripples shot across its surface, like dipping your finger into a still lake. In truth, that was what it felt like. He retracted his hand almost instantaneously, and stared in shock as the ripples slowly stopped. He quickly drew his gaze to his finger. It was covered almost entirely in a deep, deep blue. In fact, it felt less like water and possibly more like… Paint?
When he finally came to his senses, he turned around and walked back towards the desk before noticing another (significantly smaller) staircase leading to the upper floors again. He paused when he came to the top, before realizing where Ib was most likely to head to. If he remembered correctly, Ib had said that she had come to this other world when she looked at the mural Fabricated World, so it made sense that he would probably have the most luck finding her there.
He quickly headed toward there, hoping he would make it in time to tell her that he had found a possible way out. Or, at least, something interesting.
When he arrived, however, he saw something very odd. He saw her again, finally, staring at the wall and positioned as though she was prepared to burst into a sprint at any second.
"Ib!" He called, in an attempt to get her to look at him. He smiled when she paused and turned to look, and his smile grew even more when she smiled a soft smile back at him. "Ib! I was looking for you! You went off on your own!" He walked a bit further towards here, but stopped upon finishing.
"I said I'd catch up, didn't I? Sheesh… I was worried. Well, anyway, Ib! I think I found an exit!" He stepped one step closer to her before continuing. "It's not here, it's over there. Wanna go check it out?" He paused when the look on her face seemed to change. "Hey, Ib? This way!"
"No." Garry was taken aback by this. What did she mean, no? Where else was she going to go, exactly? He stepped forward yet again before responding.
"And why not? We might be able to get out!" He could barely stop an expression of shock from flickering across his face.
"This painting will take me out of here." She nodded, as though trying to reassure herself as much as convince him.
"This painting will take you out? How would you know for sure? Come on, let's go! Come with me!" She shook her head slowly at this, and turned back towards the gigantic painting.
"Ib!" He made one last-ditch attempt to stop her verbally before she ran towards the mural. He couldn't stop himself from trying to run to stop her, but she was too quick. She hurtled through the mural just as he reached the spot where she had been mere moments before.
"Ib…?" He questioned, as though unsure of what exactly had just occurred. Objectively, he knew, but it hadn't quite processed through his brain yet. She couldn't have just… left him, right? Of course not. She was still here. Yet… She wasn't. At least, not visibly.
"Ib? It's okay, you can come out now. You don't have to hide from me." Silence was the only answer Garry received, as the horrible truth began to sink in. She had just… Left him. Here. He had survived, somehow. He had come back. He had found her again. And she… She had left. She had left him here. All was… All alone. Again. He couldn't take it.
He began to laugh. It started normal, a recognizable form of his normal laugh. As it continued, it began to sound more and more chilling. It became humorless, a laugh entirely out of fear. As his laughs echoed back to him, they simply sent him even further into hysterics. For the first time in his entire life, he had been betrayed. Abandoned. Simply… Left. His biggest fear, his worst nightmares, nothing compared to the bone-chilling terror that coursed through him right now.
Along with the fear, there was sadness. There was pain. How could she betray him like this? They were meant to work together. To get out of this place. To escape this hellish, twisted landscape. Yet when the time came, when Garry needed her to simply trust him, she didn't. She ignored him and jumped through the painting anyways. She had left him there.
Finally, his laughs began to die down. Or, at least, he didn't physically produce them. The laughs stayed in his mind, along with the one repeating thought. It ran over and over again in his mind, tearing apart every last shred of sanity he may have had. "She left me. And now, I'm all alone."
When he finally was able to move again, it was not the way he wanted to. He did not consciously think of a destination, he simply seemed to move. HIs legs appeared to have a mind of their own. He simply let them move. After all, it was easier to just go along with it. Thinking was painful. Thinking was messy. It was better to simply relax.
His legs carried him over back to the Abyss. The sculpture, the one that had started this entire horror for him in the first place. It seemed only fitting that his adventure, or his nightmare, would end here as well.
He jumped. He threw himself into the Abyss, and slowly he sank. His eyes began to sting, as they became accustomed to the watery substance he was now submerged in. It did not take long, however, for his air supply to run out. He flailed around violently, choking and coughing as his lungs simply filled with more and more of the water. Eventaully, however, he stopped struggling and simply accepted it. Soon after, he stopped breathing as well, and Garry fell asleep for the final time.