‘For a painted piece of canvas, you claim to know a lot!’ The Doctor was quick to speak over the disembodied voice, not wanting to let it get the upper hand with Oscar. It already had the advantage of infiltrating his dreams; if it took over the writer in his waking state, there would be nothing the Doctor could do.

‘It isn’t a claim, and nor is it your business, interloper!’ There was an angry snap to the voice that hadn’t been present earlier.

To the Doctor’s eye, it seemed that the painting itself was subtly different - Oscar’s painted face had taken on a broodier expression, the lighting was a little darker… The Doctor gestured at the portrait, and Wilde followed the movement with his eyes. ‘You see, Oscar, if this being was speaking the truth, it wouldn’t have anything to worry about. But it is getting angry with me, and you have not yet done what it asks. Because you know, don’t you? You know that what it says cannot be the truth.’

‘I know no such thing, Doctor,’ Wilde replied with sudden passion. ‘I know I am in Paris, dying beyond my means. I know that when I was writing, I had happiness and friends around me. But I also know that writing brought enemies and their petty jealousies, people who could not wait to see me stumble and fall even if they had to interpose obstacles themselves. The voice tells me that the enemies won’t come back, that I’ll be in control and live in an eternal summer of my success, and that the bad days that started after the opening night of “Earnest” with that libellous card that Queensberry sent to trap me…’ The writer broke off, his face a study of terror which he rapidly concealed.

Eternal? The Doctor started, wondering if that was the answer to the question of the enemy’s identity. ‘But you can’t do it Oscar, because if you could have that amount of control over events they would not be real. It would be nothing but an elaborate fiction - every triumph would be false and unsatisfying, your friendships would be hollow and play-acted…’

‘But Doctor, I love acting!’ Wilde laughed. ‘It is so much more real than life. Your arguments support the voice’s claims and that I should -’ The writer broke off and crossed the room once more and stared down at the pens, the ink and the paper, at all the tools of his trade.




He’s not getting through.

Nick, too, was as frustrated by the conversation as Alf. He was half-afraid to jump into the middle of it and break up the Doctor’s flow, but he was watching Oscar and could tell the writer was listening more and more to the portrait and less and less to the Doctor. He had to do something, something different from what the Doctor was doing, to grab Oscar’s attention back again.

Nick glanced around the shabby hotel room desperately, seeking some clue or sign. His gaze fell on the book he’d left on the chaise longue, the one he’d been reading before Alf and the Doctor had burst into the room. “A House of Pomegranates”. And suddenly he had an idea.




‘Oscar?’ Unexpectedly, Nick’s voice broke through the palpable tension in the air. ‘You don’t really believe that, do you? It contradicts what you’ve written,’ he said, and pointed at the book resting on the chaise longue. ‘I was just reading “The Fisherman and His Soul” and - well, isn’t this voice talking to you and trying to lead you astray like the shadow did to the fisherman?’

‘Do you think the voice is my own discarded soul, dear boy?’ Oscar had turned to face Nick, a slightly puzzled look on his face. He shook his head slowly. ‘No, I do not accept the cant of priests - I may have indulged in the sins of the flesh but I have not lost my soul, else how could the scorn of men hurt me so?’

‘No, no,’ replied the younger man, ‘I mean that it may be trying to trick you with its words, like the shadow trying to gain the fisherman’s heart. This voice wants your creativity for some reason, and it is dressing it up to make it look good to you. It’s trying to lure you away. But what does it really want? And are you sure that it won’t ask you to do something - evil?’

As the other two men conversed, the Doctor stared at the book Nick had pointed to while speaking of Oscar’s story. Pomegranates? They reminded him of something… An idea formed in his mind.

‘Surely, Oscar, you remember your Greek myths,’ the Doctor spoke up, drawing the writer’s gaze again. He could see the doubt and confusion there; Nick had left him an opening with which he could push the rest of the way through. ‘You don’t want to end up like Persephone, do you?’

Oscar frowned in slight puzzlement, but didn’t speak. The Doctor persisted. ‘When Persephone was kidnapped by Hades, her mother, Demeter, goddess of the harvest, withheld the Earth’s bounty until her daughter was returned. When forced to release Persephone, who he’d planned to marry, Hades did so on one condition: that she had eaten nothing during her stay in his kingdom, the underworld.’

The Doctor could see Wilde opening his mouth to speak, but the Doctor overrode him, never taking his gaze off the writer. ‘But she had: desperately thirsty, Persephone had picked a pomegranate to quench her thirst with its juice and had inadvertently swallowed seven seeds. Because it had not been intentional, Persephone could not be forced to stay in the underworld, but because the food of the underworld had passed her lips, she could never be free of it. The compromise reached was that Persephone would spend part of the year with her mother, and the other part with her husband, Hades. And during the time she spends in the underworld, Demeter continues to withhold the Earth’s bounty - the goddess of the harvest makes it winter. Because of Persephone’s actions, the world was irrevocably changed. Do you want that to happen to you, Oscar? Do you? Do you want that responsibility, that burden on your shoulders? And do you want that loss of freedom? You, of all people, Oscar, should know the loss of dignity, of self-respect, that comes with the loss of freedom. And you would be willingly giving up your freedom. Could you live with that knowledge?

‘Or like your own Dorian Gray, your life a facade maintained by keeping your true face hidden from probing eyes, but always knowing that, despite appearances, it is not as perfect as it appears. You will never be able to hide the truth from yourself, and it will eat away at you until, like Dorian, you choose to end it.

‘And for what? To amuse this… parasite?’ The Doctor strode across the room and thrust his face at the picture of Oscar Wilde, his voice shaking with rage. ‘How many years do you think poor Oscar can amuse you for? It doesn’t really matter, does it? You Eternals are all the same, having exhausted all of your own emotions during the endless millennia, you can only truly achieve a feeling of being alive through others - and Oscar would suit you so well, able to create so many characters and situations until you at last burn him out. And then on to your next victim.’

‘You Ephemerals spend so little time on the universe’s stage, Doctor, a mere twinkling of an eye,’ the portrait spat back. ‘I’m offering Oscar the chance to reshape the world…’

‘But he can’t, no more than you can. All he can do is provide the creative energy you would use to shape ectoplasm into the semblance of reality, and to provide you with the mindsets you can impose on other people to play out the roles you assign them! But it’s all smoke and mirrors, and the strong wind of boredom will blow it away. And your kind get bored so easily!’