Mr. Gerry’s Dinner Party

Mr. Gerry stood to pour himself another glass of wine, only he left the cork in the bottle when he tipped it into his glass, crafted of a nearly black color like the rest of ours. Ordinarily, it’s not something I would notice, but his obviously sober demeanor unsettled me deeply. I couldn’t see any of the typical sloshing or splattering that occurs when one is pouring his fifth glass of wine in one evening. He walked straight, stood tall, one foot in front of the other, with a forceful grin stretching his cheeks, and his shirt buttoned all the way to his neck.

The others, myself included, were in a much raunchier state. A woman I had met only a few hours ago had laid herself, topless, over the rug, and started rolling from side to side with another stranger jumping over her legs. Two of the more inebriated men had snuck off to a corner, giggling between themselves, pushing books and other heavy objects to the floor, including each other, before they finally rolled behind one of the palm tree pots. A young woman was attempting to play the piano, another was beside her singing one line ahead of the music. It was very late, we were all very tired, and most of us were very drunk. I hadn’t seen my shoes since dinner, my feet kicked up on a pillow at the opposite end of the sofa. Noticing the suspiciously ordinary way Mr. Gerry walked around the room, still holding his empty glass of wine, I dumped my own into the tree directly behind me.

He took a sip and swallowed.

I watched his mouth for little drops of deep crimson or moisture on the tip of his nose, but there were none. He licked his lips. I licked my own. He carried the bottle in his other hand, now without the cork. He bent down to fill the glass of the woman on the rug, who had just been jumped on and was nursing a very sore hip. He found the two giggling men behind the pot and, while I couldn’t exactly see from my spot on the sofa, he filled their glasses too. The bottle tipped up and the men giggled louder. Mr. Gerry smiled at something they had said. He walked on sure feet over to the piano. The woman singing draped herself across him as he filled her glass to kiss him wetly on the cheek. Then he came to me.

“Ah, another?” He already began tipping the bottle.

I set my glass on the table, “no, thank you, I should be going.”

The man that had jumped on the woman on the rug checked his watch, “it’s not late, stay for one more!”

It very much was late. Dinner began at eight that evening and it had been hours since, but I did not have a watch of my own to confirm my suspicions.

“He’s right,” Mr. Gerry filled the glass on the table.

I did not pick it back up.

“What time is it, then?” I asked loudly, trying to yell over the woman on the rug, who had become greatly annoyed that everyone had taken their eyes off her.

“Not yet nine!” He shouted back.

I scoffed, thinking he meant nine in the morning. There were no windows in that room, just as there were none in the dining room, nor in the halls. The outside of the house had windows, it must, but as I racked my brain to remember what the front of the house had looked like, I couldn’t think of anything. I tried to remember how I had arrived or when, but nothing came to me. I thought and thought, while staring at the glass on the table, and thought of nothing.

Mr. Gerry sat beside me, “is everything alright?”

I swallowed, “yes, of course. Has it really been that long?”

“It feels different, doesn’t it?”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

He took another fake sip. While he was sitting next to me I could see into his glass when he tilted it and, as I had suspected, it was empty. My heart skipped a beat. Whatever was in that bottle was not being kind to the others. I only had a few sips after dinner, so perhaps I would be safe from it.

“Do you not like the wine? I have other drinks, if you’d be interested,” Mr. Gerry offered.

I shook my head quickly, “that’s alright. I really should be going, I have somewhere to be for lunch.”

”Lunch?” The woman on the rug rolled over. “What about lunch? We just ate!”

The woman at the piano finished her glass in three large sips and said, “though I wouldn’t say ‘no’ to a bit of dessert!”

The others laughed, Mr. Gerry nodded, and my spine went cold all the way to my toes. Had it really been less than an hour? We ate a full meal! The giggling men played cards, the woman on the rug had worn a blouse at one point, the women at the piano had spent ages arguing over what to play.

Then I realized that no one had excused themselves. None of the men went for a smoke, none of the women to powder their nose. Wine typically went straight through me, but I hadn’t felt the urge to get up once.

When Mr. Gerry stood to go fetch the dessert, I joined him and asked, “where is your powder room?”

He gave me a confused look, “why?”

I blushed.

”Ah, yes. I can walk you, it’s on my way,” but his voice seemed weaker than before. When he opened the large living room doors, he seemed to have a little trouble with the handle.

His eyebrows never untwisted. He fiddled with his thumbs as we walked and he didn’t speak until we arrived at a small red door. I had hoped there would be a window at some point, or a clock, but we passed none.

“Will you be able to find your way back alright?” He asked. “It’s easy to get lost here.”

”Yes, thank you.”

The powder room was simple. There was a small sink, a gold mirror, a toilet against the other wall, and a few framed pictures of birds. I busied myself until I heard his footsteps recede.

I poked my head out to see if he was still in the hall, then I darted down after him. Something was odd immediately. The doors got shorter and shorter until there were none along the wall. I passed no other rooms. There were still no windows anywhere, and the ceiling seemed to be growing taller and taller the further I walked. I walked around curves and down straights but the hallway never changed color or branched off. It was deadly quiet, all the sounds of the party had been left in the living room, and Mr. Gerry’s footsteps didn’t bounce off the walls or echo down the corridor. It was empty, and I was alone.

My heart pounded triple time as I walked without getting anywhere. I constantly glanced over my shoulder for anything to change. It never did. I walked and walked and walked and walked but nothing changed.

The hall took a sharp turn and that’s where I stopped.

I don’t know what made me do it, but at the time, there seemed to be nothing else to do. I walked right up to the wallpaper, set my hands against it, and pushed.

There was a loud crack-

I fell, face first, into a very dusty room. My arms flailed around, trying to get me upright and get rid of the fine, sticky feeling of cobwebs and dust in my face. Behind me the paper ripped into shreds and fluttered to the floor. I could see the hallway through the gash, but I couldn’t bring myself to run back to it.

Then there was another loud crack-

The wallpaper started to stick itself back together. New paper grew from the designs in the wall around it. It sprouted and wound against itself layer by layer. I could hear a faint scribbling, like it was drawing the pattern on the other side. I watched, completely transfixed, until the gash was gone, and the wall was whole.

I listened to the new room first. Wind whistled through somewhere in the back of the room, which gave me hope that I was nearly outside. I could hear a few voices, the voices of those I’d left behind in the living room, but it was very faint. The singing woman was still singing and the piano was still one line behind. The giggling men were there somewhere, very quiet, and the woman on the rug was babbling about what desserts she hoped they’d get. I turned from the wall to face the room, expecting more dust, and I screamed.

I screamed because there was the woman on the rug, rolling around, topless, with her glass of wine now spilling all over the floor. The woman at the piano played on. The singing woman pulled the man off the woman on the rug to dance. Behind the plant pot in the corner the two men were still giggling and talking in hushed voices. None of them turned to look at me. They didn’t see me at all.

I called out, but they didn’t turn. When I ran over to shake the woman playing the piano, my hand passed straight through her. My whole body tumbled with the unexpected momentum right through the whole piano.

Mr. Gerry came back into the room and paused when he didn’t see me. He left again, before I could call out to him or beg him to help me.

Whatever this was, it had to be his doing.

He reappeared a few moments later looking rather distressed, “do any of you know where Miss Lake has gone?”

The woman on the rug licked the wine off the floor.

The singing woman shook her head, sending the tune to a strange note.

Mr. Gerry frowned, “she came back, didn’t she?”

The men behind the pot poked out just enough that I could see their flushed cheeks and their wide eyes, but they ducked back without saying anything.

The man dancing with the singing woman asked, “would you refill my glass, please, sir?”

Mr. Gerry ignored him. He started looking behind all the sofas and chairs, under the desks, behind the standing shelves, and finally behind the palm tree pots. The two men shoved him out when he tried to check behind theirs. He went around, one by one, until he came to the pot behind the sofa where I dumped my glass of wine. His hand felt the unusual mush in the soil. He sniffed it, licked it, and sighed. He looked at my glass that I’d left on the table, still full.

“Miss Lake,” he said, lifting the glass to the room. “I have other beverages if you do not want wine, but please, you must drink something.”

The others stopped what they were doing at the strange announcement.

I took a shaky step forward, but didn’t reach for the cup.

“Drink,” he said, looking directly through me. “Or there will be nothing I can do for you.”

I looked around the room again. Everything was as it was, the only thing missing was me. I ran back to the wall and clawed at the paper, hoping it would spit me back into the corridor and I’d be able to run back to the living room, pretending I’d simply gotten lost.

The wall didn’t budge. It didn’t even scratch.

I flung myself toward the hall, the same way I’d left before, only the door wouldn’t open. My hands couldn’t grab the handle to turn it, they slipped uselessly and clumsily against the wood.

Mr. Gerry hadn’t moved, “please.”

I didn’t want to.

“She isn’t here!” The singing woman croaked.

“Forget about her, where’s the dessert?” Cried the woman on the rug.

I collapsed against the door to wait for whatever was going to happen to me. Anything would be better than this.

Mr. Gerry slowly started walking around. He paused before the desk, held the glass out, then moved when nothing happened. He paused again next to the piano, waited for me to take the glass, and left when I didn’t. He did this all around the room.

The others stopped caring and went back to their jovial party. Everyone except the woman on the rug, who’d just spilled the singing woman’s glass of wine while crying about dessert.

I started to cry. I thought I was going to be stuck there, in that room, at nine o’clock, waiting for dessert, for the rest of my life. Then I thought that I must already be dead. I thought being dead would feel so easy and so free, yet I’d never felt more trapped.

I hit my head against the door and let the tears run. I wasn’t hiding, I told myself, and it did make me feel slightly better.

Mr. Gerry faced the door. His frown had gone, but the worried crease between his eyebrows remained as he looked for me. He still had the wine. He would have kicked me when he walked over to open the door again, I wished he would, but his foot sank through my own.

I didn’t get up. If the door opened, I’d just go right through it, but it wouldn’t let me out, so it wouldn’t open, and I would still be stuck.

I was right. The door shook, but remained closed.

Mr. Gerry tried again, he jiggled the handle, but nothing happened.

Then he smiled. It was the friendliest he’d looked all night. He took a very large step back and held out the glass again.

”Miss Lake. Just one sip, then I can get you something else to drink, but I beg you, drink.”

I pushed my lips inside my mouth.

“None of us can go until you do.”

I closed my eyes.

There was a soft rustle of clothes that rang much louder than anything else in the room.

I cracked one eye open to see that he’d bent down. Now, instead of looking through me, he actually looked straight into my eyes. I don’t think he could see me, but he knew where I was. I glanced down at the wine. I didn’t trust it, I didn’t trust it at all, but… if all it took was one sip, I’d figure it out from there.

I reached for the glass, but my hand went straight through it. I don’t think he really felt anything, but he smiled and held the glass more firmly. I dragged myself on my hands and knees until my lips were right at the edge of the glass. They, too, passed through it. I wanted to scream and cry in frustration. It wasn’t fair. I couldn’t get out. I’d be stuck like this forever, until I died, if I wasn’t dead already. I’d be watching Mr. Gerry hold my glass forever out of my reach.

In one final cry of desperation I stuck my whole mouth over it and plunged my tongue as far down as it would go. The sweet wine hit the very tip. I licked and licked like a dog in its bowl. The wine flung in every direction except into my mouth, where it could slide down my throat to make me whole again. My face went through the glass as the wine got further and further down until I could no longer reach it. I curled my wet tongue into my mouth and savoured the taste. I swallowed to force it down.

The glass shattered in my face.

Mr. Gerry smiled at me, “welcome back.”

I screamed as the taste of my own blood joined the sour wine in my mouth and dripped onto the floor.

Shards of glass dropped from my face. A few were in too deep to fall out. I could see one sticking out from my cheek, worse, I could feel it vibrating against my teeth when I screamed.

The woman on the rug’s head slammed down with a thud. The woman at the piano screamed and finally stopped playing. Both of the men behind the pot jumped up to see what had happened, and the dancing couple got tangled up, and went crashing to the floor.

“Let’s clean you up,” Mr. Gerry helped me off the floor. “What would you like to drink?”