The Endless Gallery

I hadn’t felt this moved by a painting in decades. Each tilt of my head brought a different perspective of swirling color. Waves of red swept into eddies of ochre oranges and sulfuric yellows. The longer I looked at it, the less any of the colors wanted to stand still. It might have shown a sunset, or the thin skin of a star. I ached to possess the skill the artist so clearly had possessed. The command of colors, of emotions, all placed on canvas by merely human hands.

Forget decades, I hadn’t felt this moved in centuries. This was a work worthy of Art themself.

“Shit, how did I miss this guy?” I asked aloud.

A snort from the corner of the room. “Probably because he lived in Anatolia during the 16^th century,” the security guard said. Her mouth tugged up in a poorly suppressed smirk. “Little before your time, kid.”

I peered at the card mounted to the wall next to the painting. 1588, sure enough. Where had I been in the 16^th century? I'd a vague feeling that I’d been futzing about in the Iberian Peninsula for…reasons. Quetzalcoatl and that whole gang still hadn’t forgiven me for all that.

“Do you want it?” I asked.

Silence from the guard’s corner. Then, uncertain, “What?”

My attention found a new center, and I ignored the few retirees and a gaggle of high schoolers in the room with us.

“The painting. Do you want it?”

She gave a laugh that would fool most people. “I’d be pretty poor security if I did.” Tension crept into her shoulders as I walked closer, arms outstretched to indicate the wider gallery around us. “A thousand paintings, some worthy of Art’s personal attention, and you don’t want a single one?”

“Nope.” She was even more convincing this time. A hint of a raised eyebrow, arms crossed over her chest, but I could feel the lie underneath as sure as I could feel the body I currently wore. As sure as I could feel the raw need burning in her heart. I stopped a few paces from where she stood. We were of a height.

“But you want something from them. Your working here is nothing but an excuse to orbit condensed works of emotion that can’t be found anywhere else. You worship the scrape of a palette knife against canvas, the caress of a brush swirling in ink, and you wish every night when you leave that you might one day find that same passion yourself before you die.”

I could see sweat on the guard’s skin.

“Yes,” she said, the word slipping past her lips. Her brow furrowed. “No!” She cleared her throat, refusing to make eye contact. “Cute act, kid, but keep moving.”

“Look at me,” I said.

Confusion tinged with a hint of fear played across her face as her eyes were drawn to mine.

“You work here in the hope that when you paint those works that no one else is allowed to see in that room whose door you always keep closed, that some hint of the brilliance you stare at every day will one night be staring back at you from your own easel.”

Silence in the gallery. The guard let out a deep breath. “How,” she whispered, her voice raw.

I took a last step forward, close enough I could have placed a hand on her shoulder, and focused my presence on the flame at her core. A flame that in seconds grew to a blaze.

“You’ve had it wrong,” I said, speaking so quietly she had to lean forward to hear. “The brilliance never appears in front of you. It pours out until you’re staring at your own reflection.”

A long moment stretched itself into existence.

“What are you?” she asked.

I backed up, unable to resist a grin. “A reflection.”

Everyone’s eyes bored into my back as I left. I basked in the sensation of my flame kindling quietly in each of their chests.

“Bro, what the fuck?” one of the high schoolers said, but then I was gone. I made my way through the rest of the gallery, past the over-priced gift shop. A quick stop to swipe a sandwich from the cafeteria to sate the hunger that had been growing over the last day or so—I was still getting used to how much food a male teenager needs, and then I was out into the museum’s grounds. Museums, I was fully convinced, were modern man’s single best idea other than social media. So many different ways to compare yourself to others; so many different ways to come up wanting.

I turned onto an alley, munching my sandwich and mentally mapping out the best way to reach the next gallery on my to-do list. It supposedly had a Chelsea from her monochromatic period, but I suspected it was a forgery. Which was even better, honestly, so long as it was done well. Good forgeries—the genuinely good ones, at least—were only ever done by people who looked at a painting, and really, truly needed it.

The alley turned before I expected it to, dead-ending in a collection of rusted dumpsters and a single deflated car tire. Worn posters reminding people to travel in groups and report any cult-related activity plastered the brick walls. I shoved the last bits of lunch into my mouth and put my hands on my hips. This wasn’t right. It had been a couple hundred years since my last visit, but how much could it have changed, really? I was still trying to figure out which way was north, and why on earth cults would be a problem in an otherwise average city, when a funny-smelling black hood slammed over my head and cinched tight.

I turned around, even though I couldn’t see a thing. Cloves and other, harsher scents burned my nose. Vertigo was already sweeping through my head. I tugged at the hood, feeling waterproofed fabric before my hands were knocked away by what felt like a baseball bat. I clasped my shoulders to prevent my fingers from breaking when I fell, and smiled in appreciation. This was a pretty decent kidnapping. I hoped I got to meet whoever was responsible. I could no longer tell whether I was still standing. Dreams of others filled my head.

**********************

Consciousness was slow to return, but eventually found me naked and strapped face up on a cold table. I flexed bare arms and legs, leather ties on my wrists and ankles restricting me from all but the most basic of movements. A wide belt across my stomach was so tight it was impossible to take a full breath. My head, at least, was unrestrained. It all served to confirm my opinion that whoever had put this together was a professional. The day was looking up.

“Awake at last, I see.”

I glanced at a figure wearing white robes off to my side. Their face was obscured by an odd rectangular piece of framed white cloth or paper held in front of their nose by an elastic band around their head. It was the most impractical mask I’d ever seen.

“How do you even see with that on?”

The man—I’m assuming man because of his build and voice—seemed put off his stride by my question.

“Uh, eye holes covered by…that’s, that’s not important.”

“Were you the one to knock me out and tie me here?”

“No. But I—”

“Didn’t think so. You don’t seem very good at this.” I proceeded to ignore him. Maybe I’d get lucky and my actual captor would show up. I tuned the man’s babbling out as my eyes took in the dim, candle-lit room. Age-darkened stonework repeatedly stained by water and growths of lichen suggested either an old cellar, or maybe even the city sewers. An arched doorway loomed up past my feet, the keystone at the top depicting…something. What was that?

“You are surprisingly calm for one of your age in a place so strange,” the man said loudly. I think he was trying to re-establish some level of control. I suppose I could at least respect the attempt, even if the execution was lacking.

“I’m older than I look,” I said, still absorbed in the symbol that had been carved into the keystone. Where had I seen that before? A perfect circle marred by a splintering web of cracks through the middle. Something was nagging at the back of my mind.

It was still nagging there when a procession of people wearing white robes strode in through the archway. Each wore a similar mask to the man standing at my side, though instead of a white rectangle, these all depicted famous works of art.

No, wait.

They were works of Art. Chelseas, Kholis, a Hyungin, even a photo of Geratoni’s last sculpture. Art themself had a hand in the creation of these pieces. They were the pinnacle of humanity’s creative endeavors over the last five hundred years. The figures took positions surrounding the table.

I looked again at the symbol carved into the archway, and groaned as it finally hit me. It was a plate. It was a fucking broken plate.

“Son of a bitch, you are kidding me.”

“Do you now come to understand your role here?” the man with the blank canvas asked.

“The Order of the Broken Plate?” I asked. I couldn’t believe it. “You guys are still around?”

Everyone froze for a moment. Then, “What?” It was hard to tell who spoke, but I think it was the Hyungin off to my left.

“Yah, you know, the Order of the Broken Plate. Cult dedicated to the God of Art. Your symbol of the broken plate is supposed to represent how any mundane object can through deliberate human action represent something else entirely and become art. Become Art, if your desire is strong enough.”

The figures around me recoiled as if struck. “What have you been telling him?” another voice demanded. This one was feminine, and I had no trouble figuring out it was the Geratoni. Her arms were held in a ‘what the hell?’ posture.

“I haven’t told him anything, I swear!” the blank canvas said. “He woke up a few minutes ago, and then started ignoring me.”

“Then how does he know Forbidden Knowledge of the fourth level?”

“I have no idea!”

Oh, this was the worst. I would never live this down. This was bad. “Art,” I called up at the ceiling. “Art! Get yourself down here and sort this out. Your stupid cult has gotten out of hand.”

“Be silent,” The Hyungin said, slashing her hand in a knife-like gesture aided by the long steel knife she now held.

“No. Art! Haha, funny joke. I swear I will pee on every painting in this city if you don’t get your sorry ass down here.”

Cold hands pressed my head back down onto the table. “If you know our closest secrets, then you know your purpose. Be still, be silent, and revel in your donation to the power of Art.” The knife raised high.

“I’m not donating shit.”

The knife paused. “Then tell us how you know of our Forbidden Knowledge.”

“I know because I founded you guys as a fucking prank ages ago to punk Art. Have you all actually been sacrificing people to them this whole time? You know they hate that, right? Sacrificing people was never their thing. Sacrificing time, money, effort and all for sure, but people? Not so…much.”

It clicked for me that this had been going on for a while. And that it would be entirely reasonable for Art to blame me. And that after being bolstered by several centuries of human sacrifice, their opinion would hold considerably more…weight, than it once did. Shit. I hadn’t thought Art had it in them to be this patient…or this mean. Several interactions I’d had with them over the last hundred years or so were making a lot more sense all of a sudden.

“Very well,” the Hyungin said. “Keep your secrets.”

“Oh, Art must be so pissed.”

The knife descended like the hand of a vengeful—maybe somewhat justified—god. It made a dull punching noise as the blade slid into my chest like it was nothing more than an overripe cantaloupe. Pain flooded my mind, my breath rushing out in a coughing gasp. Several more stabs reduced my heart to a shredded lump of meat.

“His life to you, Art!” the cultists intoned. “May you prosper, and remember your humble servants!”

The ostentatious phrases made me want to wince more than the actual stabbing. I vaguely remembered coming up with them in the back of a pub. As far as ritual dialogue went, it wasn’t bad, but it also wasn’t anything worthy of the stage. I’d never been all that good at actually making things, after all. Not my deal. The body I’d had at that time had also been considerably drunk, if I was remembering correctly, so that hadn’t helped much either.

Hands began working at the ties binding my limbs. The men and women had taken off their masks, and looked more agitated than you’d expect out of a group of folks who thought they’d committed ritualistic murder.

The lady who’d worn the Hyungin mask yanked the wide belt off my middle. “Now that’s done,” she said, “we need to figure out exactly how he knew of our mysteries. We either have a mole, or a tome has been stolen from the sanctum.”

A middle-aged man who looked like he could have been a banker waggled the knife at her. My blood coated the blade. “Well, you just killed the best way of figuring that one out.”

She snatched the knife back and started to clean it. “Don’t get smart with me. If the kid could fire back like he was doing, he was going to keep spinning shit. We weren’t getting anything from him and you know it.”

I sat up.

This caused some excitement. I poked at my chest. “Ugh, come onnnnn, I liked this body.” Blood leaked slowly out of the ruin that had been my chest. Two thuds sounded in the room as a couple cultists straight up fainted. I looked around. A few folks had run out of the room. The remainder were plastered against the walls, staring at me with wide eyes. The lady with the knife held it out in front of her like that would do anything.

An androgynous figure stepped out of the wall to my right as smoothly as someone stepping though a doorway. Their body was made from the same rough stone as our surroundings, and gave a different impression every time you looked at them. First they appeared feminine, then masculine, then somehow both. Features that were Asian, then African, then Polynesian shifted into position, each in the space of a breath, but none appearing to actually change the figure itself. They were constantly in flux.

Three more cultists dropped unconscious.

“Ooo, you got three of them. Nice job, Art.”

“Vy, it’s good to see you again. Been a while.” Their voice was smooth, with an accent I knew was pointless to try and track down. I’d tried. Either it had never existed, or it simply hadn’t existed yet. The remaining humans in the room fell to their knees in supplication before their god.

“Not true!” I said, holding up a blood-stained finger. “We both went to that bodybuilding competition last year.”

“Three years ago.”

“And there was that state fair the year before with that grandma and those pies.”

“Five years ago.”

I slid over so my legs dangled off the altar. “What I’m saying is that a friendship like ours can’t be determined by quantity. It’s the quality of interactions that counts. Which, I feel like I should point out, is currently extremely lacking!”

The priestess on the floor was still holding the knife she’d used to kill my current body. She subtly tried to hide the blade without ever raising from her prostrated position.

“You’ll be fine,” Art said.

“It was basically brand new! I’d had it less than a year.”

“You’ll find a new one. You always do.”

I made a disgusted noise.

Art picked up one of the discarded masks in their stone fingers and examined it before tossing it back to the floor. “Now, fair’s fair. You created a cult of human sacrifice in my name, and I watched as you got sacrificed by that same cult. I’d say we’re even.”

“I literally can’t express how much I wish I had your ability to appreciate schadenfreude in this moment.”

Art laughed.

I kicked my feet back and forth. “So, is there really a Chelsea in the gallery across town?”

“No, it’s a forgery.”

I punched an increasingly floppy hand towards the ceiling. “Yes! I was hoping it was a forgery. Wanna go?”

“You’re lacking a functional body at the moment, Envy.”

I was definitely swaying a little, and I couldn’t feel my feet. Human bodies can only be pushed so far. I let it fall back to the flat stone as my presence expanded to fill the chamber. The remaining cultists collectively gasped, their eyes drawn like lodestones to the works of Art displayed around the room on their discarded masks. Raw emotion burned in their eyes as they stared at the pinnacles of human achievement, and felt me in their veins.

<None of these ones here really feel me on their own, yah know?>

“I’m sure you’ll be able to pick someone up on the way. There are enough people in the city that a host will present itself if we take a more scenic route.”

I mused on that for a second. Art was probably right. And there was a Chelsea to see. <Well, then, what are we waiting for? Let’s go!>