"He seized [the knife] and stabbed the picture with it."
. . . The strokes of paint flew past him at once like a swarm of locusts. Dorian squinted his eyes and covered his face. He thought he was, in fact, in the middle of some horrendous night terror, and in a moment, he would wake. When at last the dried paint strokes ceased to fly past him, he opened his eyes. No, he was not in his own bed. He was still there. He looked up at the painting. He had done it! The thing was gone! All that remained in the picture was the empty room where the figure once stood. He would forever be free! He would make amends for his sins! He would repent! There was hope for him, after all. It was too good to be true.
He smiled his bright, youthful smile. Oh, how he eagerly awaited the future. How pure things could be, again. He turned away from the painting and his smile vanished in an instant. He grew pale and clenched his stomach. He was thrown back with horror, and his back crashed into the wall, causing him to stumble against it. The picture fell and slammed onto the floor. There, standing across from him, with one hand leaning against the chair in which Basil died, was the hideous figure from the painting which had haunted him all these eighteen years. It held its clenched right hand up, mockingly, to display the blood dripping from it. The figure grinned a ferocious grin.
"What's the matter, Dorian?" it spoke in a voice wrought with all the lust, arrogance, and callousness of Dorian's past sins. Its voice was hoarse with the growl of a monster. "Afraid to look at your own soul?" Dorian stayed petrified against the wall. "That's what I am. You need not be afraid as you are. Look at you! You look beautiful! Thirty-eight years old and still the blossoming face of a twenty-year old boy." The thing threw its head back in laughter. It was delighted. "No. Don't worry, now. Don't fear the day you die until you die. Fear it, then, but you need not trouble yourself now. Now, you can live a life so succulent with ripened treats and new sensations that you will drown yourself in their pleasure. Yes, you will drown wonderfully, the way you've always wanted to. And when you do die, then you can be struck with terror! Then you can long to purge yourself of your sins, but it will be too late! You and I will be as one, then. You know it has always been so. I am the reflection of your true self. You will come to bear my face in the eternity of torment that awaits you at the gates of hell. Don't look so surprised, Dorian; that is where you and I are destined to go. Don't you know you can never turn back? You have created in yourself a personality so vile and selfish that no seemingly good deed you might ever do will truly be unselfish of you. You can never be good. You can never be unselfish. Don't you see why I am still so ugly? You never cared for Hetty and you'll never care for anyone. Your one little thing you did to Hetty, which you called self-sacrificing, only broke her heart. You did it for yourself and marked me, marked us, with your hypocrisy. You will only ever be motivated by greed. You spared her for vanity's sake, so that we would bear the face of a good-natured soul. You did it for your curiosity. You wanted to know if there is any pleasure in being good. Ha! As if that one little thing would make you good!"
"Damn you!" Dorian bellowed with mad rage.
Grinning, the thing uttered, "Already done," and chuckled. Dorian grabbed the knife out of the painting on the floor and rushed toward the monster. "Kill me and you kill yourself!" Dorian didn't listen, and he stabbed at the form once more. The strokes of paint that the creature's body was composed of separated themselves in the area where Dorian' knife had been plunged. It laughed, again. "How desperate you are! You think you can wipe your record clean in the sweep of a knife!" Dorian thrashed about at the monster recklessly, but with every slash the strokes evaded. The creature ceased not to taunt him.
Dorian let out an enraged, frustrated cry. Despairing, he dropped the knife and fell to his knees. The holes in the creature healed themselves until they closed. Dorian held his throbbing head, and wept onto the floor. How could this be? How could he be forever damned? Why was there no hope?
Then he remembered the death of his dearest, truest friend: Basil. His death had meant so little to him after the crime had been committed. He made every effort to keep himself from grief and regret; for it was painful to repent such an evil act, but repent he did, now. He always did regret it, but he spent his days pretending he didn't. He had never loved good-natured, boring Basil while he lived. Basil was all he could imagine, now. He loved Basil's memory, now. There was a hope in Basil's words. "Pray, Dorian, pray," he remembered Basil saying. "'Forgive us our sins. Wash away our iniquities.' Let us say that together." Yes, and it would work. It must work. Basil was everything Dorian lied to himself that he loathed to be. Basil was good, and in that goodness was some form of happiness or another. It must feel happy to be good. But to be good is not to long for goodness for selfish reasons, such as finding one's own happiness. No, good is better than happy. How Dorian longed to be good, now. How he longed to find happiness, as well. Was there truly, truly no hope for him? Isn't God a forgiving God? Doesn't God love with no conditions and exclude no one from His mercy?
"Liar!" Dorian rose to his feet.
"You wish that I was lying!"
"You are, you sickly abomination! Don't you start to speak! Every word you say is wrong! Every gnarled feature and evil trait you bear is not my own! It's true; I have done terrible things, and I am ashamed for them as I should be, as I deserve to be! But such sins leave no stain upon a man's soul in the eyes of God! I am sorry! I am sorry for those that I have wronged. What does it matter that there was a vanity or a curiosity in my sparing Hetty? At least she was spared. Many more will be spared, too, if I live through this. I would never hurt another soul; for in their suffering is my own. In their eyes I have seen my own, and pretended I was not moved. I tried to save myself from feeling the pain of concern, but it was always there. I can live on! I am not destined for hell! I will make amends for my sins. The deal is off! In the name of God, the deal is off! Take back my youth! Take it away this instant! Let me be ugly! Let me be so good and ugly! Let me be good! Let others smile around me and share in the happiness I can attain!"
The thing was marred by Dorian's every word, and now was shriveling into a smaller, weaker form. Its dried paint strokes began flying off of it and burning into nothing. Its blood of life was leaving it. It became drier and more withered as it shrank. It did not moan, shriek, or cry in pain, because it was too weak. Stroke by stroke, it vanished until it was no more.
Dorian felt such relieving peace. It was truly gone. Was it truly gone? He panicked for a moment, and searched the room and out the window. He checked the empty portrait on the floor. Yes, it was truly gone. What would he do now? Had he truly defeated it with the goodwill of his own words? By God, he had. What did this mean? This meant that his every word was sincere. This meant that he could go forth and live a life of good. He really, really could.
He had never felt so happy as this, even through the resonating fear and shock of these supernatural occurrences. His formerly hedonistic life was replaced by a happy one. He left the room and locked it behind him. He scurried down his stairs in the ecstasy of new hope and freedom, dreaming of all that his life could be from now on. He dreamed of the positive influence he could have on others. He dreamed of replying to Harry's every wrong remark with a right one. He dreamed his way into his library. There, his eye caught a glimpse of something extraordinary shining back at him in the shattered glass of the mirror on the floor. Were his eyes tricking him? He slowly stepped toward the large shard where he thought he saw himself. Indeed, he did see himself. He held the large shard with both his hands in front of his face. He saw in it the smiling, handsome face of a slightly coarse and slightly wrinkled thirty-eight year old man. He was more beautiful than he had ever been.