Chapter One: Stolen Away
The sunshine was warm and bright in Jump City as the Teen Titans sat in a local park enjoying a picnic. Beast Boy was munching on tofu concoctions, Tofu hotdogs and such. He was content to eat happily. Cyborg and the others were eating normal hotdogs and steak.
Robin looked up as he spotted a little boy walking towards them. "Hey, you guys are the Teen Titans, right?"
"Yes, that would be us!" Cyborg shouted. "Why do you ask?"
"Terra's statue on the outskirts of town is missing," the boy said.
"What do you mean 'missing'?" Beast Boy asked.
"It's gone," the boy explained. "It was ripped right out of the ground."
"No way!" Beast Boy shouted.
"Who would do such a thing?" Starfire asked.
"And we're so close to finding a cure for her," Raven said.
"Well, it looks like we have an investigation on our hands," Robin said. "Hey, do you know when this happened?"
"No, I just stopped by the place, I always liked Terra, you see, and I noticed this gigantic hole in the ground," the boy said. "I thought you guys should know, since she was a Titan and all."
"Thanks for your help," Robin said, thanking the boy. "Titans, let's go see what's going on."
They took the T-Car out to the very spot on the outskirts of Jump City where Terra's statue was. Climbing out, they could obviously see the spot where their friend had once been. Now she was gone, with nothing but an enormous hole where she had been.
"Who could've taken her?" Cyborg asked. "Surely someone would've seen something."
"This has Slade written all over it," Robin said. "He's capable of doing something like this."
"Yes, but to what purpose would that serve him?" Starfire asked. "Terra saved the city, as I recall, correct?"
"Yeah, but maybe if he can cure her he could get her on his side again," Beast Boy said. "We have to find her."
"He's right, you know, but why would Slade bother to chisel her out of the ground? With his fire powers he could just burn out the base of the statue," Cyborg pointed out.
Raven pointed to the spot where Terra had been, "Thesearen't burn marks. Besides, Slade's new powers came from my father and since he renegged on his deal, he took Slade's powers. He doesn't have them anymore."
"Slade could've done it, it looks like he did...Wait!" Beast Boy exclaimed. "I might know who could've taken her!"
"Who took her?" Robin demanded.
"I met this guy yesterday, seemed really interested in Terra. Asked me who she was and stuff," Beast Boy explained. "He wasn't from around here. He sounded like he was British, accent and everything."
"Did you get a name by any chance?" Robin asked.
"Yeah, said his name was Mr. Gray," Beast Boy said.
"Cyborg, when we get back to the Tower, run a search for "Mr. Gray", any hint we can find will help us find Terra." They went back to the Tower.
Back at the Tower, Cyborg ran a search for a "Mr. Gray" in the computer. Evidently, there were thousands of Mr. Grays all over the country. "It's really odd," Cyborg told Robin, "between all the lists of names of real Mr. Grays I keep getting search results for THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY by Oscar Wilde."
"Well, a fictional character won't help us find the real Mr. Gray. Any of these guys have criminal records?"
"No, that doesn't help us at all," Cyborg sighed.
"I suppose we'll have to keep searching," Robin said disappointed.
"Yeah, I guess we will," Cyborg agreed.
The handsome gentleman stood with his friend inside a threadbare, mostly empty room. His curly blond hair gleamed in the candlelight as his friend stared at the portrait with an expression of disgusted horror.
"What does this mean?" cried Hallward, at last. His own voice sounded shrill and curious in his ears.
"Years ago, when I was a boy," said Dorian Gray, crushing the flower in his hand, "you met me, flattered me, and taught me to be vain of my good looks. One day you introduced me to a friend of yours, who explained to me the wonder of youth, and you finished a portrait of me that revealed to me the wonder of beauty. In a mad moment that, even now, I don't know whether I regret or not, I made a wish, perhaps you would call it a prayer. . . ."
"I remember it! Oh, how well I remember it! No! The thing is impossible. The room is damp. Mildew has got into the canvas. The paints I used had some wretched mineral poison in them. I tell you the thing is impossible."
"Ah, what is impossible?" murmured the young man, going over to the window and leaning his forehead against the cold, mist-stained glass.
""Can't you see your ideal in it?" said Dorian bitterly.
"My ideal, as you call it. . ."
"As you called it."
"There was nothing evil in it, nothing shameful. You were to me such an ideal as I shall never meet again. This is the face of a satyr."
"…You told me you had destroyed it." Basil Hallward said after a slight pause.
"I was wrong. It has destroyed me." Replied the man simply.
"I don't believe it is my picture…" the disbelief was evident in his voice. He simply could not have painted…the monstrosity that he was beholding was too horrific for him to even imagine.
"Christ! what a thing I must have worshipped! It has the eyes of a devil."
"Each of us has heaven and hell in him, Basil," cried Dorian with a wild gesture of despair.
Hallward turned again to the portrait and gazed at it. "My God! If it is true," he exclaimed, "and this is what you have done with your life, why, you must be worse even than those who talk against you fancy you to be!" He held the light up again to the canvas and examined it. The surface seemed to be quite undisturbed and as he had left it. It was from within, apparently, that the foulness and horror had come. Through some strange quickening of inner life the leprosies of sin were slowly eating the thing away. The rotting of a corpse in a watery grave was not so fearful.
His hand shook, and the candle fell from its socket on the floor and lay there sputtering. He placed his foot on it and put it out. Then he flung himself into the rickety chair that was standing by the table and buried his face in his hands.
"Good God, Dorian, what a lesson! What an awful lesson!" There was no answer, but he could hear the young man sobbing at the window. "Pray, Dorian, pray," he murmured. "What is it that one was taught to say in one's boyhood? 'Lead us not into temptation. Forgive us our sins. Wash away our iniquities.' Let us say that together. The prayer of your pride has been answered. The prayer of your repentance will be answered also. I worshipped you too much. I am punished for it. You worshipped yourself too much. We are both punished."
Dorian Gray turned slowly around and looked at him with tear-dimmed eyes. "It is too late, Basil," he faltered.
"It is never too late, Dorian. Let us kneel down and try if we cannot remember a prayer. Isn't there a verse somewhere, 'Though your sins be as scarlet, yet I will make them as white as snow'?"
"Those words mean nothing to me now."
"Hush! Don't say that. You have done enough evil in your life. My God! Don't you see that accursed thing leering at us?"
Basil Hallward was sitting at the table, shaking and trembling with shock. The young man felt a feeling of madness come over him, as a hunted animal feels when it is cornered by the hunters. He looked around the room frantically. His eyes lay upon the knife he had brought up there to cut a. silently, he took the knife and walked over to his friend. He quickly plunged the knife into Basil's skull, into the vein right above the man's ear. Two, three times more and the deed was done. He heard the sound of his friend choking on his own blood. Then all was silent, except for his own breathing. Basil Hallward, artist and close friend and acquaintance, murdered.
He woke up in a cold sweat in his hotel room. The young man stared at himself in a mirror as he entered the bathroom. He was indeed a mysterious young man. And he was no ordinary man. He was Mr. Gray. Mr. Dorian Gray. He had sold his soul for eternal youth and beauty, and he was paying for it with a guilty conscience and a miserable, eternal life.
He wasn't just a work of fiction. No, he was very real. Who was anonymous narrator of the story? Oscar Wilde. The one who had told him the story? The living, breathing, immortal Dorian Gray himself. What there logical explanation for Dorian Gray's suicide at the end of the bizarre, disturbing tale? It was indeed true. How he was alive again? Easily explained, the portrait still stood. And while it stood, he still survived, reviving shortly after his own funeral.
He had taken to wandering the world, eventually his paths crossed with Oscar Wilde, whom he told his tale, and was published as a work of "fiction." But he was very real, very real indeed. Now he had come to Jump City, and here he would reside. For the time being, he never stayed in one place too long. Then people would become suspicious.
But he thought he might settle down here, he like what he saw of the city. Tomorrow he would go look around more. He looked at his handsome, comely face once more in the mirror. Washing it quickly, he went back into the room. He couldn't help but glance at the statue of the girl the green boy had called "Terra." He did not know what she looked like when she was human, but she was beautiful to him at any rate.
What as he thinking? Why should he care? But he did, and he wanted to help her. He was acting far different than he had in the past, but why? He had spared someone once just to see how it felt, not that he actually meant it sincerely. He had done it out of curiosity.
Indeed goodness was something that he had not yet mastered. Dorian sighed, and left the room. He slept fitfully, rising early in the morning, he opened the curtains. He looked at the statue intently. He had taken something of great value. He knew the green boy he had met the previous day cared about the girl. He had brought her flowers and said that she was the greatest friend he had ever had. He knew that what he had done was wrong. But what were right and wrong to him. He had nothing to stand for, he believed in nothing, no one.
But he would free her somehow. Many long ages he had lived and had learned all there was to know. He would use all his vast knowledge to free her. He did not feel like turning on a light so he lit a candle. The flame flickered, giving off a soft glow, lighting the statue's features. He noted the resolved, somewhat resigned look on the girl's face, as if she knew this was the end.
He turned his attention to the portrait. Yes, his deepest, darkest secret lay behind the covering. He drew it back and stared intently at the loathsome visage before him. Indeed it was his face, his likeness, but yet horrid and disfigured beyond recognition. This was the face of his soul. His conscious that reminded him of every sin and vice he had committed in his long, long life.
He saw before him, the wrinkled skin, the decaying teeth; the yellow, pallid color of his face, white, straggly hair, thinned by time. Hands were red as if with blood and at his feet, a red stain. Indeed, he was fascinated by the grotesque image before him. The corruption of his own soul, which he felt, in his own mind, could never be redeemed unless some twist of good luck or good fortune befell him, he would never be redeemed.
He wished somehow the other person in the room, trapped in the stone statue would be freed, somehow he wished he could help her learn from his mistakes, so that she would have a better life than he had. But what good were his wishes? His desires only caused others pain. Indeed a wish for eternal youth had cost him his own soul! He sighed, and threw the covering back over the picture. He was about to climb back into bed when he turned his gaze once more upon the statue.
He blinked for a moment; it seemed the eyes glowed with a pale golden color. He rubbed his forehead. No, it was just the flickering of the candlelight. Nothing more. No, steadily the hardened form began to ebb and give way. A beautiful glow filled the room, he moved closer to the figure as a cry was heard. He caught he girl as she fell.
"Wh—where am I?" she asked, breathless.
"In a place called Jump City," Dorian replied kindly.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"It doesn't matter, child," he replied. "But what matters is who you are."
"My name is Terra, and I have no regrets."
"Regrets, about what?"
"What I have done in my past."
"I see. And what have you done?"
"It can wait until tomorrow."
"Then you must stay with me tonight and tell me in the morning," Dorian said simply.
"It seems I have no choice."
"You shall sleep on one bed, I shall take the other."
"Thank you. And you are…"
"Mr. Gray, but you must call me Basil Hallward, at least in front of the clerk."
"Goodnight, Mr. Gray."
"Goodnight Ms. Terra." They both slept peacefully that night. Things were looking up for both of them.
Quick Sticky: Well, there you have it. The revelation of the identity of our mysterious stranger; Mr. Dorian Gray is the creation of Oscar Wilde and not owned by me at all. To find out his story, read THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY. It's a disturbing, thought provoking, and simply a mind blowing piece of literature. It's considered a classic story of greed, corruption of character and the tragedy that result from foolish wishes and the willingness to sacrifice what is really important for the meaninglessness of desiring immortality. This is one of the best books I've ever read.
I paraphrased the murder scene but all the dialogue in the dream is from the book, I copy-pasted a section of the book. I'm saying in this note that it's not mine so I won't be accused of plagiarism, so this is my disclaimer saying that I don't own Dorian Gray.
(Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. New York: Random, 1998.)
