Interpretation

2026-11-01

An art gallery. Seemingly an important one, you can tell by the German spelling. Walking on the thick dusty red carpet gives your feet a false sense of sure-footedness; your hard-soled shoes don't make noise, but you feel your ankles give out at every step, almost as if you were sinking into the floor, not in a gelatinous sense, you think to yourself, the feeling is closer to walking on tightrope.

At once, you stop and look up to face the wall. The shift is palpable, drastic. You look back down at the floor; boring, plain.

The walls form a large canvas, with the frames (no doubt valuable and with important inscriptions) overlapping from picture to picture. The plane doesn't have a border: it seems cut off by the geometry of the building itself, but it surely extends beyond it. You see but a snapshot, a small part. It's an organic structure, and calling it disordered would make you sound stupid.

It makes you feel lost.

Nevertheless, the paintings are appealing, and they're at least different from the dated floor. They distract your eyes once again. Choose at random, or try going off of the recommendations you got at the entrance - it's not like it matters, you are sure to miss most of what is out there anyway.

You cast your eyes on a framed scene. A large puddle of blood draws the viewer's attention. The substance looks shiny, almost greasy, but one can tell it's not fresh, the streaks where the trashing animal smeared it around are now dry. The sterile and surgical whiteness of the room contrasts with the warmth of the slaughterer's dark brown clothes. Only the animal's hind legs are in frame, it might've been a deer. "The blood is fascinating," you think to yourself. "There are almost no signs of a struggle: most of the deer's blood is coagulating on the floor, and the man's clothes are pristine. How does an animal get exsanguinated this efficiently? Does the surgical nature of the room tell us that the animal couldn't defend itself?" You think about the man. Why the warm formal winter clothing? Is he even the one who killed the animal? Why are we left to guess who did?

As you ponder the various possibilities, the painting slowly fades out of view - as it slides along the borderless plane, the floorboards are now in the way. The image in your mind fades and you can't recall important details; the scene felt bold, and the contrast was striking, but since you could see the man's figure in the background, a fill light was probably present. Without a visual reference, however, the exact lightning configuration eludes you.

The corridors of the art gallery are full of empty space. Every step lingers, not in a comforting way. You start feeling uneasy; this part of the building, while not being closed off per se, isn't where you'd normally go. What if someone asks what you're doing here? Do you have an explanation? Would you be able to excuse yourself and leave, then - or would that make you look even more suspicious?

The sound your shoes would normally make when running is muted by the carpet. The mind-numbing burgundy and dated grayish brown are disorienting, they make your vision hazy, hallways blend together, doors feel on the verge of flying open. You probably took a wrong turn, you aren't meant to be here.