Entry tags:

dorian gray

Who: Dorian Gray, Juno, Tessa, and Death
What: A rescue, a reaping, and a reckoning
When: Late Wedneday night/early Thursday morning (1/12-1/13)
Where: Building A > Purgatory
Warnings: Violence & Character Death
Status: To be continued in comments.


Dorian woke from a dead sleep to the sound of someone screaming in the hall. No, not someone, something. His namesake, the six inch peacock, to be precise. But if Ickle Avian Dorian was out in the hall at such and ungodly hour, that must mean Juno was too; and that couldn’t bode well.

He rolled out of bed, feeling a flash of irritation as he snatched up his trousers and pulling them on over his nightshirt--which was really the same shirt he’d worn all day. Why couldn’t that confounded girl keep her beastly bird covered up at night so decent persons could get some rest? Of course, Dorian wasn’t any kind of decent, but it did occur to him almost at once that she could be in some kind of trouble.

And indeed she was, running for the elevator as fast as she could waddle, with some kind over rucksack slung over her shoulder and the birdcage banging against her opposite knee, a pair of those blasted toclaphane on her tail.

Dorian didn’t have any weapons, but he picked up his shoes from beside the door and hurled one of them down the corridor at the metal spheres, sending it veering into a wall, and throwing his jacket over another; hoping to stall or distract them. He grabbed for Juno, taking the birdcage from her hands and hurrying her around the corner toward the elevator, the whine of the toclaphane growing louder in his ears.

He and Juno slapped the elevator call button at once, his hand covering her smaller one, both of them cursing the slowness of the machine. The flying globes of death buzzed past, down the hallway, the sound of their laughter fading, pausing, and then growing louder again.

“Damn! They’re coming back!” Dorian slapped at the button again, just as the doors dinged open, and he pushed Juno inside the elevator car.

“Come on, come on!” she chanted, holding the door, and tugging on his arm--but he slapped her hand away as the metal things came buzzing ‘round the corner, tittering with insane glee as they spotted him.

“Get down, Juno,” Dorian hissed, his face twisting with equal madness, edged with determination. “They can’t hurt me. I’ll draw them off! Now go!” He hurled his other shoe at the things just as the door slid closed, carrying the young Madonna and child safely away.

Dorian made a break for it, attempting to get past the toclaphane, which he had only succeeded in angering with his absurd shoe-hurling fetish. They buzzed and slashed at him, their taunts drawing others, which circled him and then drew away, shooting at him with their lasers as he ran. Little did he know that there would be an ambush waiting just around the next corner; a toclaphane hovering in wait to slash his throat as he ran himself into its deadly blade.

The lasers found their mark as he went careening to the floor in two pieces, quite literally beside himself.

* * *

Tessa found him later, after the toclaphane had moved on to more interesting victims, and had to collect his ashes in a coffee can. Why was a Reaper concerned with the mortal remains? Because Dorian Gray had no soul to reap. Or at least, not one that the resident king of the crossroads was willing to part with.

So she gathered what she could, and brought those to the Boss instead. “He’s your problem now,” she said, brushing her palms together as if to shake off the dust of the man’s ashes. “This was all I could get.”

* * *

Meanwhile, in his mind’s eye--or perhaps his soul’s--Dorian saw himself huddled in an attic with no escape; old, misshapen, and decrepit; with sparse, lank hair; and gnarled, bloodstained hands--his body wracked with age, addiction, and disease. The room was in no better condition, the air choked with a corpulent putrescence, unstirred by any breeze; the corners thick with cobwebs, and the floor stained with the same, old blood that crusted beneath his fingernails.

He was hideous, vile--the most wretched of beasts--and the beautiful, earnest youth in the portrait on the wall seemed to mock him with casual insolence. He turned his face away only to be met with a flash of memory; the look of horror frozen upon Basil’s face as he died.

Another look at the painting revealed that the innocent soul held captive there was not mocking, but weeping for him, and Dorian’s eyes darted wildly, searching for some place to alight that would not remind him of his guilt. But it was not to be. This was his hell. His penance. His purgatory.

It wasn’t long until he was scratching at the walls, screaming, threatening, and begging--either to be released, or put out of his misery.

Unfortunately for Dorian, neither was an option and it fell to Death, of course, to explain such a thing to him. Being as this was a rather unusual circumstance, he had considered easing into the conversation. The man, after all, had more than suffered his own torment over the years due to the things he’d done and, really, Death could think of many others - most of whom society viewed as ‘good, successful people’ - who had done much worse than anything Dorian Gray could ever lay claim to.

Unfortunately, Death also knew that Dorian was not going to be an easy one to chat with and saw no reason to tread lightly when it would scarcely go noticed in the man’s current state. And with that decision made, the being known as Death appeared a few feet behind the man scratching at the walls in his own self-contained prison. His demeanor was casual, his tone mild as he spoke.

“I’m afraid you cannot be released as of yet, Mr. Gray, although that outcome is far more likely than being put out of your misery, as you so eloquently phrased it.”

Dorian startled at the sound of another voice in the room besides his own, his head whipping around to eye the man over his shoulder, his body turning almost immediately afterward--placing his back to the wall. His arms he folded across his chest in a gesture that was simultaneously defiant, willful, and defensive. His hands were in fists, but the way that he kept worrying his chipped and broken fingernails, turning the cloudy, tarnished rings around and around his fingers belied his anxiety and withdrawal.

“Please,” he said at last, clutching at his own filthy, bloodstained clothes, “I can’t live like this.”

“You aren’t living at all, Mr. Gray. You’re dead. In a matter of speaking.” Death didn’t elaborate further, instead casting an eye at the surroundings. Honestly, the things some of these humans came up with. It was no wonder they were so terrified of him, if this was the sort of afterlife they expected.

“However,” he added after a moment, fixing his gaze once more upon the man pressed against the wall across from him, “you will not remain here indefinitely. Which is the reason for my visit. I’m here to discuss the price for your return to life.”

Short, simple, to the point. If only it was going to stay that way. Death, however, held no delusions that Dorian Gray was going to be quite so accepting of what he’d said and knew that the man was hardly going to complacently go along even if he didn’t agree.

Dorian hadn’t realized he’d believed in an afterlife until that very moment. Oh, he’d flirted with Catholicism, but mostly for the sheer beauty of its religious artifacts and vestments, rather than any true affinity for religion itself. Once he had attained apparent immortality, he’d always told himself that if he ever did come to an end, all that was left to discover would be oblivion. The true torment was living with himself.

Though he had always said that skepticism was the beginning of belief--and he was beginning to believe that he might have been gravely mistaken about any number of things.

“What do you mean, price?” he asked, his voice tinged with just such skepticism as he surveyed the lean, pale figure before him. “If it’s my soul you’re after, I’m afraid I haven’t got one anymore.”

((to be continued...))