The Gallery
The condensation from the glass of Coke was starting to make a puddle on the table, so Nicola mopped it up with the napkin they had given her. Whoever said that the world of journalism relied on coffee was a liar.
She opened her phone as if on impulse, and replayed her latest voicemail again.
"Hey Nic," Laura's voice was shaking still, hadn't smoothed out since the last time Nicola had listened to it, "Nic, please come home. We can talk, we can make it work- Look, just call me, OK? I'm worried about you. Ring me back. This is Laura by the way - but you knew that, right?"
Nicola drained the last of her Coke and checked the details of her plan, before standing up and walking out of the cafe.
Nicola Lawson prided herself on being one of the more recognisable names in the world of art criticism, and she loved her job. She wrote for a small newspaper that her friend had founded called the Daily Sunflower; a percentage of the proceeds went to charity which meant the pay wasn't exactly great, but Nicola loved it.
And so that was how she found herself in some prestigious quarter of London, walking out of the cafe and towards the large, modern gallery opposite her.
La Galleria De Sol had been founded some five years ago by Maria Salvadore, and had made quite a name for itself as being innovative, imaginative, and 'out of the box' as it were. So when Nicola was given the opportunity to get a tour of the most recent exhibit, she knew she had to take it.
The reception area was relatively ordinary looking, with a woman behind the counter who smiled at Nicola through a red-lipped smile.
"My name's Nicola Lawson, I'm here for the tour of the newest exhibition," Nicola said in what she hoped was a confident voice. The woman tapped at her keyboard, and threw another smile. A door opened from the wall to her left, and out walked a woman with curly brown hair and dark brown eyes set deep into her face, wearing a suit sharp enough to cut someone on.
"Ah, Ms Lawson, a pleasure to meet you," said Maria Salvadore. Nicola took her hand hesitatingly; she hadn't expected the actual owner of the gallery to greet her.
"The pleasure is all mine," Nicola said, hoping for a quick recovery, "But I must say, I am both surprised and flattered that you would take time out of what must be a busy schedule to show me around. The Daily Sunflower is very grateful."
"I can't abide those big wigs at the bigger papers, often they don't really get art and just look for a good story. I am hoping you will be different, Ms Lawson."
"I will try my best."
"Very well. I must make clear to you a few details first, however. As you are hopefully aware, our newest installation is perhaps more like a piece of immersive theatre than a gallery, and thus it requires complete dedication and commitment to the experience. And so I must ask you to empty your pockets and to leave your bag at the door."
Nicola had heard weirder requests, and so she followed the instructions, taking her pen and notebook in hand. Salvadore looked pointedly down at them and then back up at her.
"I'm sorry, Ms Lawson, it must go against all your training. But you will not truly experience our art if you are constantly making notes. And so I must ask you to bring nothing but yourself into where I am going to take you."
Nicola nodded, though reluctantly, and slipped her notebook and pen back into her bag. She felt vulnerable, almost, without them.
Salvadore nodded, satisfied, and then held open the door from which she had entered and gestured for Nicola to go through into the white-walled corridor beyond.
The corridor stretched away from them on a slight slope, and a series of doors were dotted in the walls at regular intervals.
It was oddly silent.
Salvadore walked purposefully to the closest door, and opened it so that Nicola could go in first. When the door swung shut, they were in semi-complete darkness.
"This is like the airlock," Salvadore explained, "There will be one before every room you enter. It is a way of shaking off the experience of the last room, so that you enter the next experience with a fresh and open mind. I will not accompany you into the rooms. You must go in alone. Walk forward now with your arms out, and feel for the door in front of you. Go in. I will let you know when you are done in there."
With some degree of trepidation, Nicola pushed open the door, and immediately the airlock filled with light, before she walked into the room and the door swung shut behind her.
This first room was painted blood red from the walls to the floor to the ceiling, and Nicola spun in a full circle as she made her way into the middle of the room. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust from the airlock's darkness to the glowing redness she had been assaulted with.
Along the walls were the masks. They were like moulds had been made of devils and demons and haunted, evil faces. They were the basic shape of a human's visage, yes, but they were twisted and grotesque beyond all recognition. You couldn't quite bring yourself to turn your back on one even to look at the one opposite it.
They were fascinating, and the room was well constructed, and there was even a faint pounding sound that seemed to mimic the sound of a heart beat, just to make you feel a tad on edge.
But Nicola was disappointed. Sure she'd never been in an "immersive, emotion experience spanning the whole gallery" before, but she knew that first pieces were meant to give a flavour if something that had never been seen before. And this all felt a little bit familiar; hideous faces, red for anger and danger.
She made a mental note: first room = derivative, samey.
After a few more minutes, three knocks sounded at the door from which she had entered. She slowly made her way back to it like a child goes to its mother's voice, and opened the door to find the airlock now had light again, as though signifying to the world that she had completed the first room.
She nodded to Salvadore who was waiting for her; she was tempted to say something, make a smart comment, but Salvadore was starting off back down the brilliant white corridor that felt a little too sterile towards the next door, and so Nicola simply hurried to follow her.
Again, they passed through the midnight of the airlock, and again Nicola entered the room alone.
In room 2 the walls were great, billowing sheets of some thin purple fabric. They were buffeted and tossed about by some strong winds, though the door had been firmly closed behind her. The floor was slanted too, an even but unnerving slope, and she took a few hesitating steps and felt as though she might fall down from sheer confusion.
The sound of the rippling sheets wafted through her head as though she was being hit by them, and she made herself walk over to inspect them more closely, determined to try and immerse herself in the experience as much as possible.
The fabric looked smooth and silky up close, rippling in the mysterious wind like the sails of some kind of almighty ship. She itched to touch it, and when she did, when she pressed her palm against it, her hand was met from the other side by a flickering shadow that made her lurch backwards.
All around the walls the shadows suddenly emerged as though they had been hiding there all along; they danced behind the fabric sheets like people, but they merged in and out of one another, swarming and then dissolving like particles. Nicola's head was spinning.
Three knocks, and the shadows stood still, and then vanished once more. With shaking legs, Nicola hauled herself over to the door.
Salvadore seemed to relish the cold sweat that had broken out over Nicola's face, and Nicola somehow couldn't articulate her fear.
Onto the next room, and Nicola's heart didn't have time to slow down before the darkness and then the light.
Room 3 was just blue.
An odd kind of blue; not vivid or electrifying, nor a kind of sultry navy. It wasn't soft and pastel, didn't seem to suggest a dream of the future. It was simply blue; a classic blue, one that everyone in the world knew, and yet it could not be described, and never would be.
That was it. It was blue. The ceiling blended into the walls, the walls blended into the floor, and Nicola found herself worrying that the floor would blend into her. She could imagine it, the tendrils of blue watercolour snaking up her legs like disease. She would be blue, too. Salvadore would open the door and never be able to spot her.
She made herself move around the room, looking for gaps in the paintwork or a definite line where the floor met the wall. But she couldn't see anything other than blue, and staring so hard at it made her eyes hurt. Sure she could feel the edges and the corners, but if she were going by sight alone then she may as well have been in a giant bubble, a sphere of sapphire that would never break.
She found herself sat on the floor with her eyes squeezed shut, waiting for the knocks to come, waiting to get out. There was something so terrifying about silence; there had at least been sounds other than her own breathing in the other rooms.
Her thoughts turned to Laura, sat alone in their blue house clutching a blue phone to a blue face.
The three knocks came, at once shocking her and simultaneously being entirely expected.
When she saw Salvadore's knowing smile, she almost wondered if she had been drugged.
"Is it normal to feel like you're going to die in that room?"
"How do you think it felt to create it? I wonder if I did die in there, sometimes."
And there was room 4, after the airlock, stretching out and seeming much bigger than the other three when Nicola stepped inside.
She was standing on a metal platform, and there were a series of straight paths in front of her and going off to the sides. The floor, however, had been hollowed out, and went deep, deep into the ground. And there were shelves and racks and hangers and sewing dummies; for piled up all around her, above and below the metal framework, were thousands and thousands of children's clothes.
The room smelt of clean cotton, and Nicola remembered being young and stepping out of the bath to be wrapped in a fresh warm towel by a pair of strong arms; she did not know how old this memory was, but already there was a lump in her throat.
The room felt like some crazy tailor's shop, or like the house of a hoarding, childless woman who had become obsessed by misery.
Nicola wandered across the metal path, hearing it creak below her but ultimately not caring. She let her hand raise to touch the soft fabrics of tiny raincoats and waist-jackets and bridesmaid dresses, each one seeming to call to her.
And one called so loud it was a shout, making her ears ache. It was her favourite dress growing up, though some part of her knew rationally that it was not her own dress. But she found she was crying, small tears at first, as she lifted the soft pink off of the hanger and held it close to her chest.
"Mama," she heard her child self say to the imaginary woman in front of her, and once more she felt the comfort of warm arms surrounding her. Mrs Lawson was a warm woman, loving and kind though strong, and to return to her arms once more felt like a return to a time when Nicola had been safe.
"Oh God," she said as an adult, barely a whisper, "Mama."
She sunk to the floor as the three knocks materialised, and it took all her strength to take herself back to the door. She would not let go of the dress.
Salvadore shook her head when she saw it clutched, wrinkled and desperate, in Nicola's arms like the child she wanted to be.
"I'm sorry. You have to leave it behind."
"Please... Please, I can't."
"You must let it go. You must leave it here, where it lives."
"Take it from me. I can't just give it to you."
In some terrible way, Nicola wished Salvadore would just rip the awful item from her; she felt she'd never be able to let it go of her own accord. But Salvadore just stood there and shook her head sadly.
"Only you can let it go," she said, "Leave it behind, Ms Lawson. Let the emotions lie with it."
Slowly, so slowly, Nicola bent down and placed the dress on the floor, folded up in some imitation of neatness and order. As her fingers left the fabric, her sobs wracked her body, and it was like saying goodbye to something that she had loved her whole life.
"We must keep going," Salvadore said, not meanly, but without too much softness in her voice.
And so Nicola wiped her eyes and her nose clean, like she had had to do many times, and forced out a few deep breaths. Onto the next room they went.
The next room helped to soothe her a little; it was filled from ceiling to floor with all kinds of tall, majestic flower and plants that towered over her like the walls of a maze. She could lose herself in here, she knew; she would lose herself forever.
Vines brushed her face and leaves tangled in her hair; flowers deposited themselves willingly into her pockets, and her shoulders were dusted with seeds. She felt the plants start to take her, to draw her in, to wipe her tears and whisper of a new world, a better place where she could live forever.
She got deeper and deeper into the room. She couldn't see the door, nor the walls. She felt a tug in her stomach like the plants wanted her to come this way, like this was her destiny.
Three knocks, and she'd barely even begun. She kept walking forward: just one more step, she said to nothing, and then just one more.
Three knocks again, louder, more urgent, and this time the sound of them broke the spell. She found herself spinning around and running, not daring to look back, and when she reached the door it felt like centuries, and her lungs were on fire.
But Salvadore was not there waiting for her. The light was now on in the airlock, but it was empty save for the sound of Nicola panting. She cursed the plants, cursed herself for listening to them. She cursed Salvadore too; perhaps the woman had gotten bored with waiting, but frankly that was irresponsible. Nicola knew, in that moment, that this art was dangerous, and now she was without the protection of its artist.
She went back into the corridor, only intending to leave and find Salvadore. But the lighting seemed a few shades darker now, and this contrast made the last door glow a little. So Nicola went in, because she believed that was her job.
The airlock was terrifying without Salvadore there, but Nicola took a deep breath and plunged into the room. She did not realise that this room was pitch-black too until the door had swung shut behind her.
But whereas the airlock was only mostly dark, with the light from the corridor making things easier, this room was just nothing. Nicola could not see her hand in front of her face, and she did not know if this was deliberate, or whether the lack of Salvadore had somehow managed to break the room.
She walked brazenly forward into what felt like oblivion, hands in front of her, braced for an unexpected impact. But a blow never came, and before she could reach the wall the room flickered into light for the briefest of seconds.
In the moment of blinding illumination, she thought she saw a painting. But the light extinguished, and made the darkness feel even more absolute When another flash happened a few seconds later, she knew she had seen a painting; not just one, the walls were covered in them. They seemed to be portraits.
The constant flashes of light then darkness made her dizzy, and she shut her eyes so it made no difference to her.
That was when a ticking started, loud and clear and regular as a clock, though far more ominous. It took a few seconds, but it eventually convinced her to open her eyes.
When she did, she saw the flashes had stopped, and given way to a darkness lit only by a series of red numbers that were now glowing just above the door behind her. Every now and then one changed, and she realised too slowly that it was a countdown. Ten seconds.
She ran back to the door before she could even wonder if it was the right thing to do. The door somehow seemed heavier, and in the moment in which it wouldn't open she became convinced that she would be stuck in there forever. But it swung open in the end, and she barely registered the darkness of the airlock before she was out in the corridor and running back out into reception.
She burst through the doors and stood panting with her hands on her knees as she looked around her at the daylight in the reception, which was still empty save for the woman behind the desk. People walked about in the town behind the big glass windows, like it were any other ordinary day. But it wasn't at all, not for Nicola.
She eventually straightened up to standing, and walked over to the receptionist, who did not seem in the least bit surprised by her sudden appearance.
Before Nicola could say a word, the woman was handing her a bag.
"Here's your rucksack, and your jacket," she said. Nicola took them with a frown, and nearly found the words to ask about Salvadore before the receptionist continued speaking, "We hope you had a good time at our gallery."
"Yes, but-"
"Ms Salvadore asked me to give you our card," the woman handed over a business card, "And to tell you to please come back soon. Thank you."
Nicola knew then that her time was up, and that she would get nothing more from this experience. So, in defeat, she held onto the card and walked out of the doors.
She was still shaking, her only souvenir from the gallery. She looked back in the window from a few metre's distance and took in how odd the whole establishment looked. Empty, save for that desk and that receptionist. Odd.
