Work Text:
Written statement by: Dorian Gray
Regarding: The portrait in my attic
Date: 7th November, 2014
I imagine that any staff of the Magnus Institute who read the name and subject matter at the top of this page is bound to chuckle or roll their eyes, and I couldn't in all fairness blame them. There aren’t many people I could talk to who would fully believe my story, and most of them wouldn't want me around long enough to tell it. I suppose that one of my reasons for coming to this institution is that it’s somewhere I can share what happened to me without being kicked out or politely humoured.
But whether you believe it or not, what I write here is true. My name is Dorian Gray, and I am Oscar Wilde’s original. I was a friend of Wilde’s, and he adapted my life for his readership. I’m presuming you’ve read The Picture of Dorian Gray, or know the story, or can at least read the synopsis on wikipedia. It is not a totally accurate retelling of my life, and the most notable incorrect detail in it is the novel’s conclusion. I did not stab my portrait in the dying days of the 19th century. I lived on for more than a hundred years. I could fill a thousand of your statements with the fantastic and impossible things that I have seen in that time. But I came here specifically because of what happened when I did, eventually, try to murder myself.
Why I did this is not important. It was a fit of self-sacrificial repentance, a bout of emotion that is bound to happen when you live long enough to earn the regrets that I have. What is important is that Oscar Wilde did not know what would happen when I stabbed my portrait. Or maybe I simply didn’t do it right. Maybe I didn’t wish hard enough, or I couldn’t find it within myself to entirely renege on my deal, and that made all the difference.
Rather than find myself in some afterlife- and believe me, I could make a shrewd guess as to which one I was destined for- I found myself trapped in my own painting. Taking the place of the poor, hideous reflection of my soul. I watched as my physical body finally began to look its age, crumbling away to fragments and dust. But it left me behind.
I had no one close enough in my life to search my attic when I went missing, and so I was well and truly alone. At least, I was at first.
My memories, which my mind preserves with horrific clarity and which I have always done my very best to ignore, were the only things left to me. All I could do was pose handsomely and recount endless gruesome episodes from my life. And as I confessed all of my old sins, I became aware that something was listening to them.
I have no idea how or why this awareness came to me, and I could see no proof of it. Even so, it was something I came to feel so strongly that even now I am certain that I was not imagining it. Sometimes I felt that someone must be right outside the attic, ear pressed to the door, and sometimes I felt that they must be in the room itself, just out of view of the canvas. But always I felt them hanging on to each word that I composed. I could not possibly have been making any sound, yet still I knew they heard me.
Your memories are private things. To feel each of my most vulnerable thoughts and experiences exposed was not a pleasant sensation, to say the least. But I had no choice. Even with nothing else in my whole world except for myself, I felt compelled by some awful, uncaring force that pulled my stories out of me one by one by one, like an endless string being tugged out through my throat.
In such circumstances, it is impossible to keep a grip on time. I don’t think it was long after my body died that my devoted listener found me. And afterwards… I learnt later that I was motionless in that attic for a little less than two years. I still don’t fully believe that. It did not feel like two years. My life was almost one hundred and fifty years long, and I felt myself retread all of it, many times over.
I wrote that stabbing my portrait was an act of repentance. This is true. It was to protect others from the harm I could have caused them. But after two years, I would have done anything to take back that repentance.
And I did.
I’m out of my portrait now, which you can tell from the fact that I can pick up a pen to write out this statement. This has hardly been the first time I’ve picked up the pieces of my life after vanishing from polite society without a trace, though it has perhaps been a little more eventful than usual. The dust is settling for me now, which always sounds less boring than it actually is, and despite myself I look forward to whatever is to come next. One effect of my life gradually slipping into a new routine, however, was enough quiet time to have an… upsetting realisation.
In the last month I've been followed closely by both a serial killer stalker, and a micro-managing secret agent-wannabe. The former I locked in a damp little room somewhere no one will ever see him again, and the latter was killed by someone very close to me who, of all things, cut out her eyes. But days after both of them were dead, I realised that I was still feeling that familiar sensation of being watched.
I said that I had more than one reason for coming to this institution today, after purposely avoiding it for a century and a half. My most important reason is one that I find myself coming to only now, after once again reliving a time of my life that I would rather leave behind me. You see, I began to realise that the feeling of being watched sometimes grew stronger while I was in a certain part of the city. And one day, I decided to follow it to its source. You’ll never guess what institution I found myself on the doorstep of.
I did my best to ignore the gaze of the security cameras while I charmed the receptionist of the Magnus Institute into telling me about their work. I can be very charming. Even so, I faltered when I glanced at the bookshelf behind her. It was a decorative thing; it held only a few shiny, thick textbooks… and one other volume. On clear display, but looking quite out of place with its bent paperback binding and grotty old pages, was a copy of the only novel that Oscar Wilde ever wrote.
Like I said, I've seen a lot of impossible things. Monstrous, powerful, sadistic things that have tried to take what they want from me. I’ve killed many of them. Quite a few humans, too. Just something to think about.
I’m leaving London in the next few days, the sooner the better. I’m going to show my boyfriend around my favourite hotel in Malaysia. And if I feel anyone watching us while we’re having our alone time, either I'm going to change the life of some lucky voyeuristic bellboy, or I’m going to come back here and burn this building to the ground. You see if I don’t. So to speak.
End Notes by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London
Date: 30/10/2015
‘Mr Gray’ was quite correct when he imagined that the reader of his statement may roll their eyes, and I also believe that assumption is the only accurate thing here. I can see two likely explanations of this account: firstly, that some (possibly disturbed) member of the public read The Picture of Dorian Gray and, in lieu of an appropriate book club, was determined to make that the Magnus Institute’s problem; or secondly, Tim has decided to play a prank on his new boss. I’ll be reminding the archive staff of my policy on fake statements just in case.
It is out of pure professionalism that I have done any follow-up research to this statement at all. Even so, I didn’t see any need to bother my assistants with it, who all have more important work to be doing.
Any quick web search reveals that there have been several ‘Dorian Gray’s since the novel’s publication, and that Oscar Wilde most likely took the character’s name from John Gray, a contemporary English poet of his acquaintance.
I asked Rosie about our celebrity statement giver, but said that she must not have been the receptionist on-duty at the time, claiming she would have remembered if someone had given that name. While I was there, it was a simple matter to check if there was a copy of Dorian Gray on the shelf behind her. There was not.
The mention of the book near the end of the statement caught my attention, but I like to think that nobody in the Institute’s employ (not even Martin) would be stupid enough to bring a Leitner into the building and then leave it lying around in a public area. Still, I made a quick search of the most likely places in the Institute that a fiction book may be kept. Rosie herself does not remember seeing it, and was not reading it during the last year.
The only place I can think that a copy may be is with a small collection of 19th century literature in the office of the head of the Institute, which I believe is kept for entirely aesthetic purposes. I have no good excuse to enter the office and check right now, and even if it is there, I somehow find it hard to credit that Elias Bouchard would place the book in the foyer simply to taunt a potential statement-giver.
Unfortunately, I can only hope that most of the future research I do in this job is on things fully based in reality.