The Picture of Dorian May

The confetti had nearly been swept away, deposited into several industrial-sized trash bags. The net-cutting and trophy presentations were finished. The champagne had gone flat hours before. The interminable post-game interviews were over. It was done, finally done.

It was fitting that it happened here, he thought. Was that pure happenstance? Was it somehow a choice of his own, or was it fate making these decisions for him? Here, in that monstrosity of a stadium which surrounded the uniform block of conference halls and hotels? In the same state in which he started upon this path? What were the odds that he would achieve this incomprehensible result precisely here of all places, just down the road from where he had grown up and even closer to where he had learned the game from Mr. Knight? Surely, this was meant to be. Or at least it was destined to be after that decision, or prayer, or perhaps that wish he had made long ago whilst waiting for his turn at the shooting drill. Those days were long since past, although the lines on his face hardly showed the time.

In fact, he had barely aged since that day. Despite decades spent coaching in far-flung gyms across the vast length and breadth of the mid-tier college basketball landscape, though he had used his limited hours and days and weeks traveling across the country on buses and commercial flights, even if he had endured morning practices and late games and video review and all the associated hardships, the fact was true: He looked exactly the same now as he did then.

And throughout, he had seen uncountable victories snatched from the jaws of defeat, unlikely close win followed by unlikely close win, games and overtimes and buzzer-beaters that would have stripped the life out of other coaches. A Final Four run with Florida Atlantic of all places would have wrung the life out of any others. Even still, Dorian May infuriatingly remained his youthful self.

His colleagues and fellow travelers? Graying and aching, faces lined with the agony of the immense power but immeasurable stress that comes with coaching high-level college basketball. Underwood hardly had hair left to comb over. McCollum was half a decade younger than May and looked a lifetime older, his age counted against the ticking clock at Northwest Missouri State. Boyish Collins looked far older for his years in Evanston. A solitary testament to the passing of time, implacable Izzo remained, a vestige of a bygone era.

May looked down at his phone. For a fleeting and hopeful moment, he wondered if there had even been a change in it at all. No, he thought. He knew better than that by now. He had to know.

May silently flipped across his applications, thumbed his way through folders and files far afield from his home page. If it weren't on his own device, subject to his data and his privacy and his protections, he wouldn't have believed the image. And yet: the eternal life, the preternatural basketball results, the luck beyond luck beyond luck. There were costs to be paid. That solitary .jpeg was to bear the burden of his shame.

If the picture was to alter, it was to alter. That was all. Why inquire too closely into it?

May stared down into the darkly mirrored surface of his phone, gaping at the image that had once conveyed his visage. He had seen the Penn State and Rutgers arenas in December, he had seen the Minnesota Barn in February; he had never seen this horror.

Decrepit and oozing, leprous and pallid, but it was May's own face all the same. The photo stared back at him in contempt, grinning knowingly, winking with awareness and swagger. May stared, unable to look away. The image leered back at him, the eyes swelling, the horrific smile yawning. May opened his mouth to scream, undone by the mirror image that stared back at him. A sudden voice broke the silence.

"Coach? Are you coming with us?"

May shook himself out of his dark reverie. He looked up from his grisly reflection, that face of decay, and his knowledge therein.

"I'll be there in five, Morez."