Ib was nervous, anxious, and furious all at once. She rolled over in her bed, having just woken up in a bit of a cold sweat, and looked at the calendar: February 29th. She rolled back over, hating her sister. Ib had literally attempted to visit the museum every single day since the month began, and every day, her sister pulled her away from it, needing her for one thing or another. Ib let out a nervous breath. She knew that if she wanted to make it to the museum today, she would have to sneak out of the house, past Mary. She wasn't sure if she could manage it. She let herself sink into her pillow, and just as she was about to entertain the idea of giving up going to the Guertena exhibit, her phone rang. She rolled over flamboyantly to answer it.
"Hello?" she whispered into it.
"Ib! Hello!" Ib recognized the voice as one of her fellow internees. "Hey, something really interesting has happened, and I thought you would like to know."
"What is it?" she asked gently.
"A new painting was added to the Guertena exhibit! And what's even more interesting about it is that no one seems to know where it came from! It's not on the list of works at all!"
"Are you sure it's a Guertena?" Ib asked, her interest piqued.
"His watermark is there and everything! Ib you have to come see this painting!" she cried. Ib rolled onto her back, facing her ceiling. She had to admit to herself that she was intrigued to see this mystery piece, especially considering that she had studied every work by Guertena and knew them all. What could this possibly be? Maybe she knew it? However, her motivation waned as she heard someone walk past the outside of her bedroom door and pause there for a moment before continuing on. It had to be Mary. Why was she so dead set against Ib going to the gallery? Now suspicion crept into Ib's mind.
"Ib? You there?" her friend asked. Ib grunted.
"I don't know. Mary seems to have no let me out of her sights this entire month. And it is kinda her birthday today… I don't know if I can manage getting past her." Ib said, a tone of sadness barely hidden in her voice.
"Ib, listen to me when I say, you have to come over here. Now." Her friend's voice was now a bit uncharacteristically stern, as if it wasn't even her talking anymore. Ib sat up in bed.
"Why?"
"Because it looks exactly like all those pictures you're always drawing." Was all her friend said. The second after hearing this, Ib bolted from her bed and ran over to her desk, ripping open the drawer and pulling out her sketchbook. Tearing it open, she peered at her drawing…the man with the purple hair. Ib could feel tears beginning to fill her eyes. She gulped them away, quickly and return her attention to the call she almost forgot she was on.
"Does the painting have a name?" she asked, not sure if she was ready for the answer. There was a pause. Ib could hear her friend breathing, ready to speak into the phone, and at that instant, for the first time in all the years she tried to remember, it came flooding back.
"Garry," both Ib and her friend said in unison. Tears did not obey the efforts of Ib choking them back this time as they flooded down her face.
"Ib?" her friend asked into the phone.
"I need to get over there. But I don't know how to get around Mary. What should I do?"
"I can come over and keep her occupied while you sneak out, if it's really that bad." Her friend offered.
"Could you, please?" Ib asked so earnestly her friend could not refuse. After ending the call, Ib rushed, albeit as quiet as she could, and got ready to leave. She packed her sketchbook, color pens, and pencils into her book bag. She brushed her long, dark mahogany hair, and rummaged through her closet for something to wear. For some reason, a wine red, mid-length, A-line pleated chiffon skirt caught her eye. She paired it with her favorite lacy, white blouse, a pair of silky black stockings, her red ballet flats, and burgundy cashmere and lace scarf. She hovered at her bedroom door, listening for the doorbell. Finally, it came, and she heard Mary rush to answer it, no doubt thinking it was one of her many admirers with a gift. Ib quickly leapt out her bedroom window and bolted down the block. She hopped onto to a bus that was about to leave the stop, and sighed with relief as she read its destination: The Museum of Contemporary Art. She sat on her edge of her seat the entire way to the museum, filled with anticipation.
Ib burst through the doors of the museum, frantically looking for the sign leading to the exhibit. She ran up to the front desk clerk, who she knew quite well.
"Oh, Ib! I heard you would be stopping by to see that mysterious work by Guertena! It's up the stairs and to the right!" he said cheerfully. Ib smiled in gratitude and ran up the stairs, two steps at a time. Nothing else existed for her as she ran through crowds of people gathered in awe over the works of Guertena. Finally, she reached the painting she had been so longing to see. Not one person was looking at it. It was almost as if no one else seemed to notice it. Ib didn't care. She approached the painting in anticipation, however slowly, as she almost wasn't sure if she was ready to see it. With each step, the painting came more and more into focus, until finally Ib was mere inches from it. She felt her breath become trapped within her chest. She felt as though she couldn't study it hard enough. She looked at the name plate: "Forgotten Portrait: Garry". It read nothing else. She did not blink for a full minute. The painting was simple. A young man, seemingly asleep, his head tilted to be looking downward. His purple, messy, slightly overgrown hair, falling over his eyes, covering his face just enough to conceal any distinguishing features. His clothes were quite elegant albeit slightly edgy; he wore a dark, gray-blue coat with purposefully tattered and frayed edges, which came down, seemingly, to the backs of his knees. He also wore a long- sleeved, sage green shift underneath the coat, as Ib could see the shirt slightly poking out from under the cuffs of his coat, and lastly was the deep brown pants he wore with matching loafers.
Ib was entranced beyond hope. She never wanted to pull her gaze away from this painting, a feeling which was anything but a dramatization, as before she knew it, the lights in the building began shutting off one by one around her. "I must have been looking at this painting for hours!" Ib thought to herself; however, she was slightly dubious of that idea. She had helped close the museum many times and knew that they would never shut off the lights before making sure everyone was out of the building. She figured she would have at least seen the custodians cleaning up before shutting the lights off and locking down the building. "The locks!" Ib thought again to herself. With great hesitation, she pulled herself from the painting and sprinted down the stairs to the lobby. The entire area was empty, but it felt more than empty in a way. It felt as though no form of life had ever made its way through the halls- no natural form of life anyway. Ib felt a massive chill trace the length of her spine. She rushed to the double-door entrance of the museum and pulled them with all her strength. They didn't even buckle an inch under the pressure-it was almost as if they were painted on rather than being actual doors. Ib could feel the thump of her heart in throat by this point. However, something about this situation didn't shock her as much as she would have assumed it would. She even felt familiar with it, as though this had happened before.
"What is going on?" Ib whispered to herself. The sound came out much louder than she thought it would. Suddenly, the sound of footsteps interrupted her train of thought. She froze in place, trying to figure out if it was really the sound of footsteps that she was hearing. Were they close? Were they heading toward her? Before she could answer any of these questions, the sound stopped. It was once again dead silent in the gallery, so much so that the sound of Ib's heartbeat and breath were excruciatingly loud in comparison. Ib tried to focus on lowering the pounding rate of her heart as she headed back up the stairs, as she thought she might have heard the sound of the footsteps coming from there. She chuckled slightly at her decision to go toward the sound of the footsteps, but continued nonetheless. After looking around, admittedly, very quickly due to uneasiness, Ib confirmed there was no one around on the second-floor primary show rooms and hallways. There was, however, another room on the second floor that Ib was nervous about checking. She had never entered the special viewing room before, and it was the last room left to check. The special viewing room was used primarily for massive paintings or sculptures or even some lectures by guest speakers, and while none of those things are inherently frightening, Ib always felt wary of that room. She was about to convince herself that the viewing room wasn't worth checking until she heard a rapid knocking sound coming from that direction. The very moment she turned her head towards the sound, it stopped. It was impossible for her heart to drop any further into her body. Now, Ib couldn't ignore the room any longer. She felt it was literally calling to her now. She moved towards the room with very little feeling in her entire body.
She crossed the threshold into the viewing room very slowly. It was even quieter in there, if that was at all possible-almost as if all sound ended at the door. Ib could hardly hear her own, quick breaths. The room was largely empty, and the lighting was very dim. Ib could only make out one, severely large painting hanging from the main viewing wall. In the dim light, it was very hard to make out what the painting was, but Ib was able to make out the name on the plate below it: "Fabricated World". No sooner had she read the name, mouthing the words to herself, did she catch sight of something written on the floor below her feet: IB. HELP ME IB. They were written in blood red paint. For some reason, this did not strike fear into Ib's heart, but rather intrigued her. She looked towards the ceiling and around the room to see where, if anywhere, the paint may have come from. Finding nothing, she looked back at the message, but it was no longer there. Instead, in it's place were shoeprints made from paint of the same color. Ib could feel fear peel away from her and excitement take its place, and only the notion that she should be scared and wasn't made her feel uneasy. She quickly traced the prints to the first floor. She knew she should be terrified. She knew she shouldn't be following these. She knew she should be worried about how the footprints even made their way to her and down the stairs without her knowing. But none of this could bother her now, as something was pulling her along the path they outlined, practically beyond her own control. Eventually, the prints stopped at a painting the lay along the floor of the first-floor viewing hallway. The eerie thing about this painting, however, was that it was empty. "Empty?", Ib thought to herself, "No, just blank, right?" Ib couldn't shake the feeling that she shouldn't be near this painting, and all at once her fear and self-awareness returned to her aggressively, and she felt panic begin to overcome her.
Unfortunately for Ib, it was already too late.