"The Picture of Dorian Gray: Part 2"
(The Story of Vincent Browne)
The year is 1983, Irish editor Vincent Browne is a man about town. Well respected and handsome, no one is aware of the bizarre secret he carries with him: he is 500 years old.
In the middle of 15th Century, around 1450AD the young Vincent met a Moorish witch on the southern coast of present day Spain. She gave to him a box of magic oil paints which she said would grant immortality to whomever's portrait was painted with them.
Upon his return to Hibernia, Vincent commissioned a local artist to paint his portrait with the oils. At the moment of it's completion, he felt a sudden difference upon him. He was aware that something had changed within him but he couldn't pin it down. To others he appeared more sophisticated, more debonair... gone was his usual mumbling, bumbling self.
The years past swiftly and affably for Browne. His status continued to rise with each incarnation of himself. He was forced to relocate residence and fake his own death every 50 or so years, so as not to raise suspicion. His final incarnation as an immortal was to prove his most pivotal. From 1933 to 1945 he was Chancellor of Germany and gave himself the name: Adolf Hitler. He faked his own suicide in a Berlin bunker in 1945, using the body of his personal physician that died previously in an air raid.
He surfaced once again in Ireland in the mid 1960's where he worked as a Late Late Show researcher. He made a name for himself as a journalist before finally settling down as editor for The Sunday Tribune. Things were going as smoothly as ever for the immortal Browne, but it was 1983 that proved to be his eventual undoing.
1983 was a turbulent year in Irish history. The IRA were still active bombing and murdering. Their reign of terrorizing stretched out to even the animal kingdom, when they killed the racehorse Shergar. IRA leaders believed the horse to be a British informant. Paranoia in Ireland at this time was rife, to say the least. To fund their activities the IRA would often steal valuable paintings and sell them on to foreign collectors. It was during raids that Vincent lost his mystical grasp of eternal existence.
Browne was always careful to store the magic painting in a safe location. Unfortunately for him, this "safe location" had become a point of interest for the IRA. On a frosty winter night, 10 raiders made off with millions of pounds worth of artistry. Ironically the protraint of Vincent was left by the raiders, as they thought it a worthless compostion, and he would have remained immortal if it weren't for the fact that one of the raiders saw fit to take a shit on the canvas. As soon as the two substances met the spell was broken, and Vincent returned once more to the world of mortality.
He now lives out the reminder of his mortal life working for TV3 television. It's a long way from the grandiose lifestyle he experienced as an immortal but he makes do. Must troubling for Vincent is not that old age has finally caught up with him, it's the fact that since the destruction of the painting, he now mumbles and slurs his speech more than he ever did before becoming immortal.
In his spare time, Browne videos himself miming to Buddy Holly songs and puts them up on youtube. Below is an example of one such video...
- Vincent Browne, yesterday.
This blog post was part of a series of special posts for Halloween 2010.
This post is a work of fiction. References to any truths are purely incidental.
This post is a work of fiction. References to any truths are purely incidental.
0 comments:
Post a Comment