Displays of the Dreary, the Dismal, and the Dismayed

The mind works in mysterious ways, especially if it's biggest concern is running away as fast as it can from something unruly and uncomfortable.

 

“You know I’m not much of an art person,” Rye stated drearily to his girlfriend as they trotted down the busy streets of London. “I don’t mean to put a damper on your plans, but ‘art gallery’ isn’t exactly how I wanted to spend my Friday night.”

“Well,” Marie started with a slight click of her tongue, “last Friday you drug me along to one of your bloody rugby games where we did nothing more than scream and drink beer. Consider this payback.”

Rye smirked discreetly and watched as his boots tromped across the soft, new-fallen snow that covered the sidewalks. Of course he didn’t mind going to the art gallery in the slightest; he just like to see her when she got riled up. “All right, dear, I suppose it’s only fair.”

“Besides, you’ll like it. The exhibits this week are centered around death and loss; it’s right up your ally, isn’t it?”

“Okay, that’s a bit of stretch now. Let’s not make me out to be some sort of psychopath, shall we?”

Marie grabbed a piece of her blonde hair that had gone astray and shoved it behind her ear, stopping at the street corner as she looked to the other side. She motioned for them to turn left, and suddenly they were headed towards an old and dismal building. “I never said that you were a psychopath,” she retorted softly. “I just know what your writing is like. You like the dark stuff; am I wrong? Well, I present to you ‘dark stuff.’ There’s no words, though. This is the dark stuff of a different realm.”

“Well, alright then,” Rye stated, his voice taking on a tentative edge as his girlfriend headed towards the door of what looked like an out-of-date warehouse. “I suppose this would be the wrong time to tell you that I was expecting a professional display set up at the Rouge?”

Marie allowed nothing more than a reluctant smirk as she reached for the door and motioned for him to go inside.

As he entered, he was immediately hit with a wave of damp dust, stale perfume, and the nearly overwhelming sensation of congestion. What would have been a vastly endless room filled with an eerie sense of nothingness had been transformed into a bustling metropolis; the old warehouse was bustling with men in tweed jackets, women in evening gowns, and hundreds upon hundreds of paintings. Paintings hanging on every wall, standing in every open space, and facing the public with outward and fierce tenacity.

“Not too bad, right?” Marie asked with a victorious grin as she grabbed her boyfriend by the hand and urged him forward. “This exhibition is called The Dinning of the Dismal, the Dreary, and the Dead. Talk about dark stuff, huh?” She shot a glance over at Rye to gauge his reaction, but he was too entranced by the stimulation surrounding him to be paying attention to her. His face was stuck in nothing more than a state of perpetual awe.

She followed his gaze as he peered at each painting with an intensity that she hadn’t expected in the slightest; his eyes wide open, his mouth agape, and his gaze vacant, Rye seemed to be lost in a world entirely his own.

“Rye,” she murmured, touching his shoulder. “Honey, are you alright?”

But he didn’t hear her. His eyes were now focused on one painting in particular, a piece called “Dismal Night” painted by an eccentric college student named Leondro. It was meant to be the “counter piece” to “Starry Night,” and it was nothing more than several sad, dying faces scattered across an intensely dark canvas. Marie personally did not find anything over attractive about the piece, but Rye would not take his eyes off it.

“Marie,” a familiar voice stated. “I’m so happy to see you here.”

She turned to find Leondro approaching his own painting, looking from her to her stunned boyfriend with a proud smile on his face. “What do you think of it? I’ve been working on this piece for years, and it was no easy task, let me tell you. I nearly threw it right in the trash on at least twelve different occasions. I finally feel like it’s done, though.”

Marie nodded and gave the painting another polite look over. “Yes, it’s very nice. Fits right in with the theme now, doesn’t it?” There was a momentary pause for appreciation before she smacked her lips loudly and spoke again. “I don’t think you’ve met my boyfriend, Rye.” She grabbed her boyfriend by the elbow and pinched it hard enough to break him from his trance. “Rye, this is Leondro. He’s an intern at my office. I believe this is his last year at the university,” she turned to Leondro, “am I right?”

He nodded and thrust his hand forward to shake Rye’s. “Yes, it is. Thank god. I’m just about done with school, you know. I’m ready to really jump into the job force. I’m hoping that Higher Up Designs will offer me a permanent job on graduation, but we’ll see. I’ll go where the wind takes me, I suppose.”

Rye shook his hand back, but something was off about him. His eyes seemed to look though Leondro instead of at him, and he barely murmured an audible “nice to meet you” before his eyes lazily circled back to the painting.

Marie judged this odd behavior for only a moment before Leondro interrupted.

“Well, I hope you two enjoy the rest of the exhibition,” he stated with the excited grin of the young. “I’m going to keep making rounds.”

Marie waved him off and then turned to her elusive boyfriend. “Rye, what the hell is going on with you?”

But Rye wasn’t there anymore. His eyes were entirely vacant, and he exuded an emptiness that sent a chill down Marie’s spine.

“It’s all just so beautiful, Marie,” he murmured through thin lips. “It’s… Well, it’s frankly unfathomable.”

Suddenly the paintings began to dance. The sorrowful frowns of the faces in “Dismal Night” turned to smiles, and they leapt from the canvas, circling around Rye and encompassing him in a swirl of colors and confusion. He watches with wide eyes, refusing to blink in the fear that it might all go away.

As he took a step closer, the painting came even more to life, and the people around him began to disappear. The voices in the background were replaced with a chilling muteness, and even Marie started to fade into oblivion. It happened slowly and quickly at the same time, as though he could hear each atom of reality pop away into nothingness until there was one momentous bang as they all vanished together, and then all that was left was him and the plethora of beautiful paintings that surrounded him. The swirling faces wrapped him in their soothing embrace, and as he spun around he realized that all of the other paintings were beginning to come to life too.

Out of the portraits stepped skeletons, ghouls, beasts, and other atrocities, each with a warming smile on their face. Though many of them were dead or dying, they danced around the empty room with a grace and a joy that would not be expected, filling the vacantness with their gargled laughter and delighted shouts. Rye suddenly felt as though he had stepped into the prelude to The Monster Mash music video, but he didn’t mind it at all. Being surrounded by these beasts brought him a sense of comfort, and it wasn’t long before he found himself joining them in their bizarrely enticing dance.

He leapt and he bound, flailing his arms in euphoric glee as he swung around skeletons and mummies alike. A tall woman with only half of her face left grabbed him and pulled him into her arms, swinging him around the dancefloor with such grace you would have guessed him weightless. Her blonde hair was stained in the blood that dripped down her neck, and her one good eye was bloodshot and strained, looking down at him complacently. Despite her haggard appearance, though, she smiled at him, and he felt the strong urge to pull himself closer to her and nuzzle himself against her bosom, as though she were some sort of deity sent to protect him.

They waltzed like this for a while; he felt safe. He felt warm. He closed his eyes and grinned contentedly, pressing himself against her as she encircled him in her soothing embrace. He felt the warm drops of her blood hit his face and cascade down his cheek, but he didn’t mind in the slightest; at this moment in time he was happier than he had ever been before. 

In a blink of an eye, though, it all began to change. The unintimidating muteness of the moment before was suddenly exchanged for a harsh ringing that gave him an excruciating headache, and the deformed monsters and ghouls that surrounded him ceased dancing entirely. He peered at them from in between the woman’s arms, and they all peered back, their welcoming smiles replaced with menacing snarls. He felt a chill race down his spine, and he came to realize that the arms encircling him were no longer warm, but had become instead as cold as ice.

              Rye and the woman stood motionless, and, as if in slow motion, he retracted from her bosom and was overcome by another chill when he noticed the terror-stricken frown upon her destroyed face. She didn’t glare at him as all the other monsters seemed to, but stared at him in a desperation that horrified him more than all of the other beasts combined.

He opened his mouth in preparation to speak; he wanted to tell her that it was going to be okay. Whatever it was that was scaring her �" he would take care of it. Everything was going to be just fine, just as long as she would accept his help.

But, before he could speak she opened her mouth too and let out a monstrous cry, screaming in his face with such ferocity that it struck him from her arms and sent him staggering backwards. They were locked in a harrowing stalemate, Rye staring at her speechless as she bawled at the top of her lungs, instilling in him a fear that he had ever truly experienced only once before.

Her screams subsided to sobs, and all of the monsters watched with those angry scowls still stuck to their faces as Rye watched the scene with a confused frown.

Suddenly he noticed loud thumps coming from behind him, and his heartbeat began to race to lethal levels as he swiveled slowly in his spot, turning away from the crying woman and hoping that what was coming from behind wasn’t what some strange little voice in his head was telling him was so.

It was, though.

Stepping out of one of the portraits came a large, bulky, man with a glass eye and a large scar running down one side of his face. His hair was dark with the same grease that stained his mechanic outfit, and in his right hand, he held a large, steel wrench.

Rye felt the strange sensation that he knew the angry mechanic who was currently thumping towards him, hobbling around with what seemed to be a bad hip.

He hurt his hip falling from an excavator when he was 22. That’s what lead him to become a mechanic instead of a construction worker �" remember?

Rye shook his head furiously, trying to force that tiny voice out of his head.

You know the woman too, don’t you? You know why half of her face is ripped off. You know, Rye. Don’t you remember?

The man was only ten feet from Rye now, and his grip on the wrench had hardened into a furious fist. His stone-cold face glared at Rye with such a tenacity that Rye stumbled back once more, and when he hit the solid body of the woman behind him, he felt a mild wash of comfort rain over him. She placed large hand on his shoulder in a protective sort of way, but it brought him little relief when he felt one of her warm, wet tears strike his head and drip down through his hair.

An air of terror reverberated throughout the still room filled with empty portraits and angry monsters, and Rye had the eerie sense than he had been through this all before. The angry, hobbling man, the sad, crying woman… The tears, the screams, the fear…. The pain.

The man was closer now, raising up his arm in preparation to strike.

Rye felt the warm hands of the woman clasp down intently on his shoulders, and he was thrown to the side with a strength much mightier than he had imagined. The man continued to advance, though, and as Rye crumbled to the floor, he saw the wrench rise up one last time.

Rye turned away and refused to look as he heard a horrific thud that interrupted the scream and twisted it into agonized sobs. It was followed by an un-lifelike ripping that ricocheted off the walls and rang repeatedly through his ears.  

You remember that sound, don’t you, Rye?

He shook his head furiously. He slammed his hands against his ears, let out an ear piercing scream, and wished for it to all go away.

You remember that ripping sound.

He wanted back. He wanted to be back in the little warehouse filled with mediocre art that his girlfriend seemed to love so much. He wanted the dim acceptance that he had felt only moments before when he acknowledged the fact that this was going to be an uneventful and utterly boring evening for him. He wanted the underrated contentment back.

Where do you remember that sound from, Rye?

His scream teetered out and his body began to shake. He lay as a crumbled heap of a man, lying with his hands clawing at the side of his head as the entire world began to spin around him like a merry-go-round. This was it. He knew it, somehow; this was the end.

That was the sound of your mother’s face being ripped off.

At that final thought he ran. He ran just as he had ran 15 years prior, and he didn’t make a single look back. With tears streaming down his eyes, he tore through the monsters and ghouls that filled the oblivion, and he didn’t’ stop until his body slammed against some hard, solid surface.

Then everything went black.

 

 

When he finally came to, he opened his eyes to a plethora of white. There was a faint throbbing in his temples, and as he forced himself into a sitting position he realized that he was lying in a hospital bed, and his wearied girlfriend was sitting at his side.

“Marie…” he whimpered.

She let out a relieved sigh and shot up from her seat. He noticed uneasily that her eyes were bloodshot and her hair awry, and as she enveloped him in a hug he realized that her hands were shaking uncontrollably.

Maybe she saw the monsters too, the little voice in his head murmured. Maybe she saw the man with the hobble and the woman with half of a face.

“Rye,” she whispered in his ear. “Rye… what the hell happened to you?” She pulled back from him and contorted her relieved smile into a frustrated frown, holing on to his shoulders the same way that the woman had done earlier.

“What do you mean?” He asked innocently.

Maybe she didn’t see anything. You don’t want to muddle the waters; you don’t want them thinking you’re crazy or something.

“What do you mean ‘what do I mean?’” She was getting angrier now. Something had happened in that warehouse, and Rye didn’t think that it was the same for both of them. “You were completely fine at the art exhibit last night until you started screaming like a bloody fool and running around until you hit a wall and knocked yourself out. You’ve been unconscious for nearly 12 hours now.”

Rye furrowed his brow, confused. Right as he opened his mouth to speak a nurse walked into the room, and after she noticed that he was awake she smiled politely.

“I see you’re finally awake,” she stated, setting a glass of water at his bedside table. “That was some doozy you took last night, wasn’t it?”

Rye grabbed the glass and started to drink from it, murmuring a “yeah, what happened?” before doing so.

“Doctor said that it might have been a case of Stendhal Syndrome.”

“What on earth is that?”

“It’s a psychological phenomenon that usually happens when somebody is exposed to something overwhelming �" like Paris or the sixteenth chapel. It can cause anything from a rise in heartbeat to a series of hallucinations. The Doctor needs to talk to you more to figure out if that’s really the case, but from how your girlfriend described it, that’s what it sounded like.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Rye protested. “I didn’t see anything overwhelming �" we went to a s****y art exhibit, for Christ’s sake.”

He noticed an angry grimace form on Marie’s face, but he ignored it.

“It can happen with anything, really,” the nurse explained. “It’s seen a lot with tourists in places like Florence, but it can happen anywhere, with anyone, and from anything.

Rye opened his mouth to protest, but in that moment the doctor walked in. She was a tall, slim woman of a darker complection, looking at her clipboard through narrow, thick-lensed glasses.

“Good morning, Mr. Howard,” She stated with a cursory smile. “How are you feeling?”

“F*****g confused,” he stated bluntly. “Apparently you guys are tyring to say I suffered from some sort of crazy-a*s syndrome last night?”

“Rye,” Marie snapped. “Watch your language, for crying out loud. These people have done nothing but help you.”

“I don’t give a damn what they’ve done.” He was heated now. As he sat up stiffly in his bed, he could feel his hot blood pulsing along his strained face. “I’m not crazy. I’m just not, and I’m not going to let anyone tell me that I am.”

“We’re not telling you anything of the sort,” the doctor assured. “Stendhal Syndrome has nothing to do with insanity; it can happen to anyone, especially people with traumatic pasts. That was actually something I wanted to talk to you about…” She began flipping through her clipboard. “I see here that you have a childhood history of neglect and abuse…”

Rye felt Marie’s eyes fall on him, and their confused stare began to burn right through his skin. She didn’t know anything about his past, and this was the last way he wanted he to find out.

“Never mind about my past,” he snapped, forcing the doctor to look up from her clipboard with furrowed brows as the papers fluttered back to their place. “Tell me this; am I fine to leave? Am I healthy?”

The doctor paused. “Well, yes, I suppose that you’re free to go whenever you’d like, but I’d really like to sit and talk with you so that we can avoid another incident like this.”

Rye shot up from his bed and tossed the sheets to the side. “Trust me, doctor,” he started as he threw on his coat, “I’ll be sure that another incident like this never happens again.”

He headed for the door, looking behind him to see if his girlfriend was going to follow. She was still plastered in her seat, though, looking at him as if she didn’t even know who he was anymore. He questioned standing there and explaining everything in one long, hurried monologue, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. Instead he rushed out of the door and left her there, sitting with a confused and heartbroken frown fixed to her face, staring at the door as she tried to determine who exactly it was who had just left her stranded in a hospital room.

 

 

He hurried down the streets of London, his hands buried in the pockets of his jacket as he braced himself against the harsh breeze.

After taking a cab to his apartment, he jumped out a raced to the door, fumbling with his keys as he cursed the cold, wishing for nothing more than to be lying alone in the comforting confines of his own bed.

He felt as though he had finally silenced that small voice that seemed to be forever fighting to find a permanent spot in his brain, but the battle in and of itself seemed to have left him exhausted. His brain appeared to be working on minimal levels, and it felt like hours that he had been struggling with his keys in order to get the building door open.

“Would you like me to use mine?” a soft voice asked from behind. “You seem to be having troubles.”

Rye let out an aggravated sigh and subsided, allowing a tall woman to step in front of him and twist her key into the door and open it in one, swift click. She held the door open for him, and when she cocked her head to offer him a courteous smile, he noticed that she was missing one of her brilliant, blue eyes. She was missing half of her entire face, to be exact, and the smile that she offered him was mangled by the blood and decay that oozed over from the ruined sigh.

Rye turned to run, and as he slipped and skidded along the busy streets of London his head was filled with nothing but the ranting and the raving of the little voice inside of his head. It found its way to the very center that controlled him entirely, and it wasn’t long before he was surrounded by nothing but darkness once again, fighting off the ear-piercing roars of cries, sobs, and one monstrous and revolting rip.