Six Rooms by Gemma Amor

Author:Gemma Amor [Amor, Gemma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cemetery Gates Media
Published: 2021-09-07T04:00:00+00:00

Statues

The group, now more than a little fatigued and yet thoroughly ensnared by both the Tour Guide and the Sunshire Chateau (who were both, as individual entities reluctantly entwined for many, many years, too many for the Guide to recall with any true clarity, rather skilled in the art of entrapment by various differing means) funneled slowly down a long winding Gallery that greeted them as they emerged from the servant’s passage, blinking.

It was an impressive display of art and grandeur, a high-ceilinged corridor clad in framed paintings, portraits, tapestries and ornate crystalline light fittings that cast a warm, bright glow into the space, a glow that was illuminating but demure enough to not obliterate the detail in the paintings with any overbearing glare. Interspersed between each painting or hanging was a polished white marble sculpture, displayed upon a pedestal, and these lined the Gallery for its whole length, as far as the eye could see and beyond, for the Gallery curved and disappeared around a corner, rather than ending definitively as most corridors do with straight lines and clear horizons, or at the very least a doorway or wall.

But then this was the Sunshire Chateau, where nothing was as it should be, and the guests were slowly beginning to realize this.

As they moved along the Gallery proper, the door to the passage closed behind them with a soft shunk, and then seemed to melt away, the line denoting its existence barely visible against the clean stone of the Gallery wall.

‘Huh,’ said Don, who was beginning to rouse from his stupor. He tried and failed to hide how impressed he was by the ingenuity of design on display. ‘Neat trick.’

Then he looked ahead to the Gallery itself, and Barbara, who could not quite bring herself to stand next to him anymore, experienced a low, sinking, familiar sensation of intense dislike. It crept over her slowly and grew stronger the longer she looked at him, for her husband, chest out, legs braced wide apart, fingers tapping a little irritated tattoo against his waistband, was clearly struggling with himself. The reason for this was evident, to Barbara at least.

Don was enjoying himself. Whatever had been bothering him before was clearly no longer an issue, and he had emerged from his stupor like a man waking up from a long, delicious sleep. He looked refreshed, renewed. The opposite of how Barbara felt.

Yes, Don was secretly enjoying himself, she could tell, and for this reason, Barbara, who knew him far too well after so many years of marriage, began to feel nervous.

Because when Don enjoyed himself, he over-compensated for it.

Enjoying things put Don in a quandary, enjoyment not being a natural emotion for him to experience. This plunged him into a state of both happy-and-not-happy that played havoc with his carefully guarded misery equilibrium. He couldn’t regulate when he was having fun, and this meant his mood would swing wildly from port to port. He cycled through curiosity, annoyance, admiration, envy, wonder, and repulsion, all in a matter of moments.

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