The Pink Gallery

You knew the Livingston Hotel was a place of old, upfront luxury. Black marble floors and pillars decorated its lobby, wrapped around a double-sided hearth, and sneaked their way right up to the front door where everyone could window shop a life they could never have. Its hearth was never without a strong fire in its belly or men circled around its glow.

Money bred in the Livingston. Vacationed there, did business there, and then laid down between the sheets and made sure the cycle continued.

The result was a fabulously elegant space with sixteen floors.

Which was what made the back stairwell so strange.

It was filthy.

Even on the sixteenth floor.

Which was where you stood after sneaking in. You stared at a wallet laying belly up on the landing, empty except for a small sticker of the moon. The paint flecked here and there along the walls. Wine bottles gathered in the corners. Tufts of fur clung to the bannister. You could even spot a few pearls.

The green light trickling through the stairwell didn't help its image.

Taking a long drag on your cigarette, you looked down the steps.

You were useless without a cigarette. Absolutely gutless. And you knew it. You would have never followed that man without a smoke, and you wouldn’t have broken in here either.

It wasn’t the cigarette that gave you a spine, but the act of smoking. Holding embers between your bones triggered an ancestral pride. If your two fingers were enough to cage something as cosmic and elemental as fire, there wasn’t much to be afraid of. You could see the universe's leash in your hand every time you looked at the ass of your cigarette.

"What a joke," you laughed, inhaling deeply on your cigarette as you began your descent.

There was always something to be afraid of even if it was the sound of your own boots. Luckily, there were more concrete worries tonight than ghosts in the wall.

This building was too old to be this tall and its structural integrity was questionable at best. Maybe it didn't matter though. Maybe it would fall on your head and that would be it. Bam. Lights out.

You fidgeted in your jacket.

It was fucking hot. Every couple of stairs the temperature seemed to flip. Cold. Hot. Cold. Fucking hot.

On the next landing, you knocked your hip against the railing and staggered sideways into the wall. Discomfort crawled under your skin as your boot brushed against a pair of panties covered in iridescent hearts.

“Eugh,” you said, the sound scraping out of your throat.

This landing was worse than the other.

You stared at the numbers on the wall for a minute too long, wondering how a place of luxury could have an artery so full of disease. The 'one' was dark, likely red but beneath the green light it turned black. The 'five' beside it was badly degraded. Whole chunks of its paint had chipped away, leaving just the curved bottom. 

Grimacing as cold air sank over your shoulders, you trudged down the stairs and left the fifteenth floor behind.

Cold, cold, cold.

A shudder moved through you.

The temperature hit its lowest on the fourteenth floor before sweeping upwards again. Hot, moist air brushed against the sides of your neck as you rounded one landing and moved toward the next.

A tropical warmth had intruded on the stairwell’s climate now, but the hows and the whys disintegrated at the sight of an immense moss wall.

It was suddenly easy to remember what brought you here.

You'd seen a man last week. A tall one with a dark red dress shirt, deep brown slacks, and a piece of jewelry for every visible part of his body. His dark brows were furrowed and his hair lay in a neat plait against his back, the tip of which brushed against his ass.

The curiosity he sparked was a seductive kind. You had to know. It was as basic as any desire.

Smoke slid down your throat as your cigarette dwindled down to nothing.

Last week, you’d tailed the man all the way to the back stairwell of the Livingston, where you watched him grope the wall, feed his fingers into something, and yank. The wall had shuddered and opened to him. Purple light had blasted out of the door, bathing him and the entire stairwell in its eerie color.

The shock of it loosened your muscles until you were a passive observer, watching the man wet his grinning lips as he vanished into the light.

It wasn’t until the mossen wall shut that you’d realized you missed your opportunity.

A week later, out you went.

Dragged out by curiosity.

Jumping off the last step, you tossed the cigarette onto the floor, scraping it through a puddle as you neared the wall.

You pressed your palm gently against the moss. It was cool and damp, normal by all definitions except that the green light flooding the stairwell made it look fantastical. There was an elven quality that fed your curiosity and forced you closer. Water dripped onto the back of your hand. Another drop splashed beside your boot. Thin fog rolled down next, clinging closely to the moss. Someone cared enough to water it.

So… Not natural.

Fingers wandering, you imagined the way the man’s ringed hand had touched the wall.

Over. Under. Along.

Your thumb brushed against the moss and paused.

There was a lip. Right under the pad of your thumb.

Sliding through the slick moss, you fumbled around, looking more like a virgin than the man who’d opened it. Managing to hook your fingers into something handle-like, you tugged until the wall turned into a door.

The weight immediately crashed onto your shoulder and for once, you were glad for the stolen boots on your feet. Half a size too small, sure, but steady as hell. Wrangling the weight of the door, you launched yourself inside, only there wasn’t any purple light. Just empty darkness.

The door slammed into your ass and sent you flying forward. Body to ground.

Metal clanged against what sounded like tile as your lighter fell out of your pocket, skittering for a while before thumping dully on something else. Carpet? Fur? A pillow? It was too dark to see anything helpful.

“Fuck,” you cursed.

A stinging ache spread out from the point of impact on your elbow. Warmth trickled down your forearm but something cold and wet gathered beneath your jacket. Blood. Hissing, you tried to straighten it but found limited success.

Grimly, you looked out at the space.

Dim was an understatement.

It was black. Nearly fathomless except for a thin ray of purple light which shone like a target on your belly, sitting low in the bowl of your hips. When you reached for it, the light transferred onto the back of your hand. Your gaze carved toward the source.

“A fuckin’ keyhole.”

Which meant another invisible door.

The hackles rose on the back of your neck. This was the purple light, but it wasn’t behaving like it had with the man. Already, you were in the dark where he wasn’t.

You pressed against the concrete door behind you with the heel of your boot and when that didn’t work, the whole weight of your body.

Solid.

“Course. Not gonna budge now.”

It was a longshot anyway. There wasn’t even a handle on this side.

Your steps were heavy now, tugging on your quads with the kind of weight that always followed a bad decision. Laying a hand on the spiralling shape of poorly lit silver handle, you tugged until it opened.

“Goddamn!”

It was brighter than the center of the sun compared to the room you were just in. Blazing and obnoxious and unrelenting. Lines of purple flashed in your eyelids every time you blinked. Tears welled. But, little by little, the space gradually came into focus.

It wasn’t right.

It wasn’t. fucking. right.

This was nearly the same layout as every other floor in the Livingston, only it was flipped over its centerline with rooms on the left instead of the right and mirrors on the right instead of the left. And there were only half the rooms there should have been. Eight instead of sixteen. 

Someone had taken a different design direction as well.

The walls were painted black and the mirrors were frameless things of blue that were more like a lake than a piece of glass. Meanwhile, steady tunnels of purple marked all four edges of the hallway, running to the end where there should have been an elevator. You couldn’t quite see if it was there. Everything was too bright.

You fiddled with the thick silver ring on your index finger.

That wasn’t the only place the light was coming from. It also bled out of the rooms.

All of them.

That was because, you realized, none of them had their doors attached. A pit began to form in your stomach. The mirrors reflected the rooms right back. They exposed everything inside from purple light to… You frowned. Three mirrors down you could see a young woman with blinding red hair, grinning, holding a baby doll.

“Alright,” you muttered, shoving your hands in your pockets. “Only way out’s through.”

You glanced inside the first room. Panic fluttered wildly in your chest. What was this, some kind of avant-garde art exhibit?

A massive couch faced the doorway. Pink stuffed animals of all types covered the thing. There was hardly any couch left and the couch itself was floating in a sea of blue stuffed animals. It should’ve been pretty. Deep unease prickled at the base of your skull.

There wasn’t a window.

You kept walking.

The next room had large hammocks and beds and futons strewn and strung haphazardly about, all in that same hue of pink and blue. The violet light shining down on the display felt sick now. Like a deterrent to sleep.

Still no window.

The girl in the third room was younger than her reflection implied. Much younger. She stood on a pink pedestal above a sea of black marble, the red in her hair flaming. Her face was painted garishly white, but it couldn’t ease the darkness of her pupils, fixed as they were. It must’ve been good art, because the same curiosity that coerced you into coming here was tugging again.

You turned your back on the room and kept moving.

Eyes forward. Eyes down. Eyes up at the end of the hallway.

The elevator wasn’t there. A large, black plaque of similar dimensions replaced it with the words “please remove your shoes” written in dark pink.

Unmoving, you stood at the end of the hallway, looking down at your feet.

These weren’t even your shoes. You’d stolen them while some rich lady was trying on a pair of stilettos. They’d been in your possession for years now.

Slowly, you stooped down and undid the laces. Took the boots off. Set them neatly beneath the sign. And frowned as grief squeezed around your chest. It felt like you weren’t going to see them again.

All at once, the wall gave way.

Magenta light licked down your front, puddling at your feet while a nude figure of a woman posed vulgarly on the edge of a dresser, speared through the gut by a sword. You staggered backwards, wanting to snatch your shoes and run. A man, real and alive and smoking, sat beside her in a chair, pinning you with a look. His hands were coated in blood. His feet were bare.

Terror licked through you, hot as lightning.

You couldn't move.

“Door’s that way.” He drew deeply on the cigarette and nodded to his right. “Hope you’re lucky. I sure as shit wasn’t.”

The room around him was black. Black marble floor. Black furs thrown on top. Black walls made of velvet. Everything was black except the slats carving up the room, pressing fuchsia light into every surface. The color burned in the corners of the stranger’s eyes, catching unshed tears.

“Go,” he said. “Leave the shoes.”

So, you did. You slipped through the room with socked feet and ducked out the back of the room.

It deposited you into another room like some Victorian joke.

Men lay draped across each other, some with makeup smeared down their jaws and others coated in slick red. They were in various states of undress with some wearing full suits and others lying fully exposed. All of them were asleep. Unconscious.

You could see them breathing so they weren't dead.

Above them, where a window should have been was the denotation: 13-B.

“Hello,” a woman’s voice purred. Your eyes flicked up to a small speaker. “Not very often that we get unexpected guests. Enjoying the displays?”

“They’re not very impressive,” you said, trying to bluff your way into boring anonymity.

“Is that so?” Her voice thinned as though she was smiling. A soft laugh rolled through the speakers. “Well, welcome to the Pink Gallery.”

You feigned interest by exploring the room. Minimal as it was. Your eyes found another pair, a man at the bottom of the pile whose nudity was covered by the bodies around him. He fervently shook his head and looked toward the back of the room. The wide blue eyes turned desperate as he jerked his head backwards.

Slowly, you made your way towards the back.

There was the door.

“Upper Echelon or a Private Patron?” she asked as you walked through.

“Upper Echelon,” you murmured, running your hands along the dresser.

It was made of some kind of bone. Everything was. Even the beds were great, spiked cradles of white, clutching onto black sheets and the pale bodies tucked inside. The beds were on opposite sides of the room, unsurprisingly doused in pink light. Each held a woman as good as unconscious. They looked at one another, blinking periodically with a slowness that made you think they wouldn’t open their eyes again.

The strangest part though, was that this place had a door. A real, shut door.

“You are difficult to welcome,” the voice laughed. “So uninterested in stirring up a conversation. Tell me something fun, hm? What’s your favorite color?”

“Blue,” you said, venturing deeper into the room. “It’s a nice color. Solid. Supposed to be calming, I guess.”

The sounds of sex started in the room behind you, permeating the walls and filling the depressed space with clear, cruel irony. A room over, the men thumped in mismatched rhythms, quickening and slowing with no real aim. Here, the women simply laid motionless, closer to dead than alive.

“And this light then?” the woman asked.

“Not my favorite.” Your eyes fell to one of the women, watching the fight for her consciousness begin to fail. What was this feeling in your stomach? Jealousy? You wet your lips as you looked on. “I don’t like it much at all.”

“Ah, I see. Go on. Through the door. I think you'll enjoy this gallery.”

You waited until the woman on the bed slipped under before moving toward the door in the middle of the room. Breaking her line of sight with the other felt uncomfortably cruel.

“Is this better?” The voice was right in your ear now. "Do you like this?"

You tried to run but an arm around your neck stopped you short.

“Sorry, darling. This one’s for you.”

A gloved hand slapped across your face with a damp cloth.

You twisted and staggered through the room with her attached, desperately trying to fling her free, but the burning, chemical stench had already filled your chest. Movement wasn’t an easy feat anymore especially when the cough was a reflex now. It drove the sweet burn deeper into your bones until they melted under the pressure.

“That’s it,” the woman cooed, lowering you into her lap inside an empty blue conversation pit. “Just let go.”

Every limb was burdened with the weight of the drug now. Leaden. The hand pressed insistently as a slackness filled your muscles. For a moment, pleasure hummed in your veins. It was good to relax. To float in the blue. Warmth flooded your veins. You shifted in your jacket and then groaned.

“I need something from you,” she whispered.

Dull curiosity glazed over your eyes as you stared at the empty room around you. Nearly empty, at least, you mentally amended.

There was this pit of blue sofas. And then there was the large bed spotlit with the same blue lights. Along its spine was a sort of thick headboard. Along its top, perfectly spaced, were eight ripe pears.

Pears.

“All I need you to do…" the woman whispered in your ear "...is fuck.”

A weak thrash disrupted the glaze slowly covering your vision.

Your limbs wouldn’t respond further than that.

“We need a new pair of bunnies. Something to carry life…” Lips stickied by rouge brushed against your jaw. “And something to give it.” 

She pressed the cloth more insistently against your nose and mouth, humming as she released her hold entirely. You stayed prone on the cushions, sucking air uselessly through the cloth.

“I’ve got one bunny right here,” she said.

A groan wormed its way out of your throat. The world tilted over itself as a thick fog settled in your brain. Your eyes struggled to track with any meaningful objective now. A spasmodic jerk rocked through you.

“I just need another one. Don't worry, I think they’ll be here when you wake up.”

A guttural sound choked on your lips. The woman only smiled, pretty red lips peeling open with the kind of power that finally sated that curiosity of yours.

It ripped into your bones like a drug and when she said, “let go,” this time, you did.