Catherine moved through the gallery. She felt like she had been going from room to room forever and yet she seemed to be the only person here.
Her feet echoed through the vast emptiness of the portrait section.
"It's no wonder it never ends ," she said to herself. "Only one portrait for every room. I feel like I have passed through a thousand rooms."
Her feet were tired and her body ached in a way that surprised her. She felt as if she had aged fifty years since she was here and barely had the energy to make one foot move after the other.
The gallery was the strangest she had ever seen. She had never been here before yet each portrait seemed familiar.
When she went to read the names of the pieces she found that the writing was strangely blurred and unreadable. And yet the faces all seemed so familiar.
"Where are all the attendants," she thought. "Not even anyone here to tell me where the exit is."
Catherine had had enough. She was tired to the point of exhaustion and found the place too creepy for comfort.
She moved into another room and felt sure it was one she had past through before. There was a portrait of a young boy standing by a creek with his dog. But the painting was different now, the face of the boy was gone, it was just plain white canvas where only an hour before a face had been.
The strange thing was she could not remember what the boys face had looked like.
Startled she moved through to the next room and found it was again a room she had been to before but now there was a portrait of a young man in riding gear but his face was missing.
She looked for the title but found it even more blurred than before. Catherine moved slowly and ever more painfully from room to room, desperate to find the exit and escape these hauntingly familiar yet now faceless paintings.
She came to a room that featured a statue instead of a painting. It was a male nude, lying back on a bed, a sheet covering his groin but the artist had hinted that he was in a state of arousal.
She was sure it had been white marble before but now it had a flesh like hue all over except for the face.
The face had haunted her with its familiarity but now its features were gone, just smooth marble where once a face had stared back at her with an erotic gaze in his eyes.
