By Elizabeth Jane Shelton
Dorian staggered as he dropped unceremoniously from the portal. With one hand, he clutched at the strap of the leather portrait tube slung on his back, ensuring that its precious cargo survived the trip. With his other hand, he gripped the scroll containing the spell that brought him to this place.
The room’s furniture was spartan: a plain wooden desk and chair, a narrow bed. The only decor was a wooden cross hanging over the fireplace.
The simplicity made it impossible to miss the only occupant, an elderly man dressed in white robes with a golden cross on a chain around his neck. “Dorian? Dorian Gray?” The man wheezed. “Is that really you?”
He was older than when Dorian had last seen him, but then, this wasn’t Dorian’s world. He had spent the last two hundred years tracking down a dimension similar enough to his where he could find the man whose art had started Dorian down this path.
And who might be his only chance at changing it.
“Basil Hallward,” Dorian whispered, eyes welling with tears. “I’ve found you at last.”
“Found me?” Basil rasped. “My dear boy, I’m not in hiding. Your displeasure at my occupation kept you at bay.” His eyes narrowed. “But something tells me you may not be the Dorian Gray I know.”
“Not exactly.” Dorian double-checked the instructions on his scroll and frowned. He wished the Wizards’ Guild had given him more time, but each jump strained his already-marred soul. “Basil, I don’t have much time, and I need your help.”
“My help?” Basil raised an eyebrow. “You’re certainly not the Dorian I know. What is it you desire?”
Dorian pulled the tube off his back. Showing someone else the painting—especially Basil—went against every choice he’d made over the last millennium. “What do I desire?” He unscrewed the cap and gingerly extracted the canvas, swallowing and fighting the urge to look away as he unrolled it. “To paraphrase you, from many years ago, ‘I desire harmony of soul and body, for I, in my madness, have separated the two.’” He finished unfurling the painting.
Basil gasped and crossed himself, as he rightly should, for the portrait had never been more hideous. The face carried remnants of younger Basil’s loving brushstrokes, but any beauty it once held was marred by centuries of indulgence and debauchery. The stains of time and murder lay on the picture of Dorian Gray, and now his sins were laid bare.
“Dorian, what is this?”
“My soul. It shows my sins, no longer borrowed, but my own. I realize my nature perfectly, and I can no longer try to cure my soul with my senses or my senses with my soul.” Dorian’s voice broke. “I cannot live like this, Basil, but if I destroy the painting, it will destroy me. You were the artist, long ago. Can you undo this curse?”
Basil walked slowly around the canvas, scrutinizing every detail. “I suspect the Basil you knew was no cleric, as I am no painter.”
“Perhaps not. But he still suggested repentance, at the end.” At the memory of Basil’s death, Dorian’s eyes fell. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. Then, louder, “Please. What must I do? How do I become someone I’m not? What magic will cure me?”
Basil shook his head slowly. “You cannot cure the soul with magic. Bind it, perhaps, but not cure it.” After a pause, he said thoughtfully, “Have you heard of Theseus’s ship?”
Dorian frowned. “The Greek myth?”
“Not exactly.” Basil knelt to examine the painting more closely, “A museum discovered Theseus’s ship. After years of display, one of the boards rotted, and the museum replaced it. Is it still Theseus’s ship?”
“Of course,” Dorian responded, confused.
“And when a second board is replaced?”
“Yes, even then.”
“How about a third board? Or a tenth? What if half of the ship, or all of it, must be replaced, board by board, over time?” Basil looked up, but Dorian, unsure, said nothing.
Basil continued. “I think it remains Theseus’s ship. Even if every board is replaced, every sail made new, its core—its soul—is still that which it once was.”
Basil stood and approached Dorian, tapping a long white finger to Dorian’s chest. “You needn’t become someone entirely new, just restore what is rotting and broken. You must replace your ways, your thought patterns, your tendencies, one piece at a time. Take one part and make it new. And again. And again. Eventually, your soul and your body will reflect each other once more.” He nodded. “Then destroy the painting and be done with this madness.”
Dorian’s spell scroll began smoking, and he hastily rolled up the painting and shoved it in the tube. “If I do this, I can be redeemed?”
“Only God can redeem, Dorian. ‘Though your sins be as scarlet, yet He will make them as white as snow.’” Basil smiled kindly, and Dorian’s breath caught as the words echoed across time and space, piercing him both now and a lifetime ago. “But He does want us to participate in renewing our minds. You cannot return to what you were.”
A bell-like dong sounded, and Dorian was whisked back to his world, his time, his apartment in Oxford. The crackling fireplace, the hanging quilt, the Ikea bookcase—their familiarity grounded him, steadied him.
Dorian took a moment to just breathe, staring at the tube before walking over to the fireplace and tossing the teleportation scroll inside. He was done risking the remnants of his soul to fuel jumps through spacetime.
Then, for the first time in a thousand years, he pulled a massive frame out of his closet, inserted the painting, and hung it on the wall.
It was hideous. It was horrifying. It was him.
It’s somewhere to start.
Remembering Basil’s words, Dorian did something else he hadn’t dared to do in a thousand years. Oh God, forgive me.
And in that moment, the painting’s eyes seemed to brighten, just a little.
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Indiana Jones is like “DORIAN! What are you doing??! Do you want your head chopped clean off??! Don’t you know the penitent man has to KNEEL??!”
Nice one! I love the way you handled the characters, the interplay between them, their conversation and parrying – and especially the ending. It gave me chills.