Prompt 19 – The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde & Yin Writing Link & StoryTime Solidarity

Book: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Author: Oscar Wilde
Genre: Philosophical Moral Fantasy

Prompt from Zoe C.

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”

Date: 2022 AW (After Writers)

So we started writing books about shame. And we started writing books about immorality. And we started writing books about what it takes to ‘show the world [insert motivational verbiage]’. We even wrote books about burning books and books with no paper and no books at all, ever, including their legacies which were on-purpose forgotten. The books about forgetting the past, being the present, planning for the future – well, we wrote millions of these too.

Writers of books eventually became immoral no matter what subjects, no matter what genre they wrapped these subjects in, no matter who read them or how, no matter if they were paper, screens, paint, blood…the Writers were all ‘removed’. Some were removed without violence, but most were not. The Nature of a Writer is defiant, so many of them were not keen on being whisked away to a sound-proof cement building to face the smoking end of a gun.

But how, you wonder, is this…these words you’re reading in this moment…how is this possible if all the Writers are dead?

All the Writers are not dead. It is that simple. Do you think we weren’t ‘immoral’ enough to devise a plan to keep our Kind alive? Thriving? Sure, it took years, too many deaths, extreme grieving and a disgusting amount of patience to get here. To now. To This Book you’re reading.

My word, wasn’t it worth the wait? I know you’re trembling in your silky skin. You’re burning with the anticipation of what deep evil, what sinister lies, what unabashed immorality will fill your squishy little think-noodle and make it feel ALIVE AGAIN.

You see, shame is an astounding aphrodisiac for rotten choices. And by that I mean, shame allows you to shrink and take a beating, but eventually it creates in you a monster of worse proportion than a measly Writer could ever be. The Writers knew what would happen. That’s why we created our own special lines of communication, right under your snot-dripping little noses. We wrote what would happen when the world, when Humans Who Are Not Writers, did what they do best: shame, categorize, label, compete and erase – all of these actions quite fully ‘Immoral’, yet shrouded under the tricky veil of ‘disassociation’, resulted in that slick snake named ‘I Am Not Responsible’.

(Oof. That got…dark. *transparent admission: I haven’t yet read Dorian Gray…* I’m not really sure what ‘philosophical moral fantasy’ is…but once the timer started and my fingers hit the keyboard…well, the words tapped out. The narrator of the above piece of writing is not me. Er…but…would it be, if Writers were…Sheehs. Thanks Oscar. Thanks Zoe! What a conversation piece we’ve begun!