The Monthly TG Story: The Portrait of Darina Gray (9k words/35 mins)

A lot of TG authors suffer from repetition. As writers in an extremely niche category, we're prone to just revisit the same plot lines and scenes again and again. Something happens to make our hero become a girl. He spends time looking in the mirror at his new body. He - reluctantly - falls in love with a man, and comes to accept his feminine side lying in this stud's arms. Rinse and repeat.

Don't get me wrong. I love classic escapism as much as you do, and formulas are fun to play around with - who was it who said there are only 7 plots in the whole wide world anyway? For my first monthly story though, I knew I wanted to try something different. That was part of the aim in setting up this Patreon, to prove to myself that there were still people out there, willing to pay for quality TG fiction with actual characters and plot lines and dialogue that sparkles. So that meant having to make sure my debut story had all that, and more. No pressure...

You probably recognize the title. You may even think you know where this tale is going. I've tried to throw in a few little twists and turns for you. A dash of the unexpected here. A bit of (suitably disguised) autobiography there. Who knows? You may even find something you've never seen before.

I'm pleased with this story. I hope you like it, too. For a $1 a month, I'd say it wasn't a bad deal. Now I can't wait for January's tale...

Lisa X

The Portrait of Darina Gray

(image via Pixabay)

“Well, what do you think?”

Dorian’s blue eyes flicked over the canvas, taking it in for the first time. He felt himself give an involuntary shiver.

“She’s… She’s…”

“Jesus, Dorian,” nervous laughter, “don’t keep a brother in suspense, huh?”

Dorian shook his head, swept his mop of blond hair out his eyes with one hand, a dazed expression on his youthful face.

“Sorry. It’s just… just…”

“She’s gorgeous,” he admitted at last.

A grin split across Basil’s round face. He clapped the back of one hand in his open palm and let out a laugh.

“Finally. Dude, that look on your face, it’s like you were judging her on some reality show.”

He gave his friend a half-mocking, half-serious look.

“You’d make a terrifying art critic, you know?”

“Thanks,” Dorian murmured, barely listening to what he was saying, “is that a compliment, or a barely-veiled insult?”

Basil grinned again, said something smart in return, but Dorian was no longer paying attention.

He’d completely lost himself in Her.

She was maybe 5ft6, painted on a life size canvas that ballooned around her, isolating her in its old-fashioned wooden frame. She was the project Basil had been working on these past two weeks, tearing through notebooks, through rough drafts in his studio, looking the perfect stereotype of the tortured artist.

(Dorian sometimes thought he put this act on deliberately, when his friends were around).

And she was the reason Dorian had been spending so much time here recently, in this messy warehouse space on the edge of the city, trying to sit as still as possible while Basil worked.

She was the Other Girl.

The Other Girl had been Basil’s pet project for the best part of the semester, a project Dorian had been vaguely hearing about ever since the two had wound up doing coke together at that boat party by the old canal. It was described on Basil’s GoFundMe page as:

“a space where queer theory, gender identity, and the subliminal self all intersect, a movement that will repurpose the tools of art’s hetero, white, old cis-guard to create something revolutionary,”

…but, in practice, the two boys each, privately, referred to it as something else. When he was with the chubby, dark skinned artist, Dorian joined Basil in calling it his “dream factory.” When he was alone with his British friends, drinking in one of the infinite pubs London seemed to possess, he called it something else.

Basil’s sad wank fantasy. Usually delivered with a long-suffering smile and a half-pitying laugh.

Only it didn’t seem quite so sad and pitiable now…

“Basil. For real…” Dorian said, cutting off his friend’s patter. “She’s just…”

He shook his head.

“Wow. I mean… I don’t know what I mean!”

“I knew you’d like her.” Basil tried to hide how obviously pleased he was. “Clearly she’s a prototype; nonetheless…”

He turned back to his painting, gave a small sigh.

“Mind if I do the formal introduction?”

Dorian gave a shrug. At a moment like this, Basil could do whatever the hell he wanted.

“Dorian,” Basil intoned, his normally soft voice becoming deep, mysterious. “Meet Doreen. Your Other Girl.”

At his words, the girl in the painting almost seemed to smile, her oh-so-familiar eyes almost twinkling with coy laughter. Her face – a face Dorian had seen a million times before, looking at him out of mirrors – was illuminated by a mysterious light source Basil had included, almost like she was standing in spotlight.

Looking at her, Dorian briefly felt a swell of vertigo, like he was looking at a long-lost sister he’d somehow recognized in a crowd without ever having met before.

But the glamorous 20-year old beauty stood before him wasn’t any long-lost sister or distant relative.

She was his Other Girl. The nonexistent female him Basil had been slowly creating from nothing more than canvas and blobs of paint.

She was who Dorian would have been if he’d been born female.

As Basil continued to grin up at her, Dorian took in the girl he could have been, the girl he was in any number of parallel universes.

She was slender, like Dorian, with thin arms and a slight body that adjective-prone writers would describe as “willowy”.

But where Dorian male body was rectangular, hers curved, its waist kinked inwards, its hips rounded beneath the fabric of her dress. Two pert little breasts rose from her chest, little A cups, gentle swells on a calm sea.

Her shoulders were narrow, her neck graceful and long. Her face was impish, pixie-like, with a hint of mischief to her blue eyes. She was half-smiling in a careless sort of way, looking out at the viewer from beneath her blonde bangs, her pink, girlish lips parted to reveal a glimpse of white teeth.

She was dressed in a summery sort of dress, a stylish off-white with these retro patterns on it. Her long, slender legs poked out the bottom, bronzed and perfect. Cute little leather ankle boots hid her feet. A thin matching belt clasped around her waist.

Her fingernails were painted a light shade of green. A little clutch bag was clasped in one hand.

She looked like the sort of girl you saw walking around East London at the height of summer. The sort of girl-next-door types who shone with beauty and confidence. She was exactly the sort of girl Dorian would have tried to sleep with.

Except for one, crucial detail. Around those blue eyes, in the shape of her nose, in the way her upper lip reflexively curled a little as she smiled. Something about her poise, a nebulous quality in the way she held herself.

She was undoubtedly Dorian.

“It almost felt like she was talking to me…” Basil murmured as the two boys gazed at the painting. “Every time I was about to take my brush, it was like I could feel her guiding me…”

“Like Doreen wanted me to get her right.”

There was a short silence in which neither friend moved, in which they did nothing but look at the portrait of female Dorian, posing in a painted studio just like Basil’s real warehouse space. At last, Dorian spoke, not taking his eyes off her as he did so.

“Darina.”

“Huh?”

“She’s not Doreen,” Dorian said. “Look at her. Doreen’s the sort of name you give old women who think a church picnic is the height of living dangerously. Nah. She’s Darina.”

Basil opened his mouth in protest, closed it again. Looked back at his painting.

“What?”

“Ah, nothing.” Basil said. “It’s just…”

“Yeah?”

“I was gonna say it’s my painting and she’s Doreen,” he said. “But I guess she isn’t, is she? She’s you. So, if you say she’s Darina…”

He shrugged.

“Then yeah. I guess she’s Darina.”

Inside her portrait, Darina Gray half-smiled out at the two men, one hand resting lazily against her curved hip, one leg slightly kinked, the boot raised. She looked ready to slip away the moment her session with the painter was over, ready to head out onto the streets of London, hook up with her girlfriends, and make the most of her time as a beautiful, young, carefree girl in one of the biggest cities on Earth.

As he was looking at her, Dorian felt the faintest chill run up his spine.

She looks so real… he thought to himself, almost more real than I feel…

How the hell did Basil do that?

“What are you going to do with her?” He asked out loud.

“Oh, she’s just my proof of concept girl,” Basil replied, his eyes still on the painting. “She’s gonna go up on Patreon, on my GoFundMe, maybe on business cards if I’m feeling particularly flamboyant…”

“But the actual painting?”

“Nah, I’m not selling her. She’ll stay in the studio, watch over me while I toil away.”

He gave Dorian a sidelong glance.

“Why? You want her?”

Dorian looked up into Darina’s face again. At the face that was so simultaneously his and so clearly a girl’s. He felt another lurch of vertigo.

“Nah. It’s cool.”

Deep down, he felt a powerful relief that Basil hadn’t tried to gift the painting to him. The thought of seeing Darina every single day was likely more than his brain could handle.

Not that she didn’t… intrigue him, somehow. Like, Dorian wasn’t confused or anything, but there was something about Darina that did make you wonder what it would be like. To be a girl. To be standing there in that dress, with that confident, sexy smile on your face, knowing every straight guy in London was looking at you, knowing that you were always the most-beautiful person in the room.

How it might feel to lounge against the wall at some party, a flirtatious look in your eyes as some broad shouldered man chatted you up, knowing your looks, your body were driving him crazy…

Basil laughed, clapped Dorian on the shoulder, instantly bringing him back to Earth.

“Don’t worry, Dorian. You can come see her any time you like.”

Dorian had barely managed to summon up a smile before there was the loud crash of a metal door and the distant shout of voices.

“Basil. Mate! You in the studio?”

“Is Dorian with you?” Amy’s voice. “Jen’s down Barley, she’s sooo hoping he’ll come with us...”

At the sound of Jen’s name, Dorian almost let out a groan. Amy’s boring friend had been trying to get in his pants for months now.

“In here!” Basil yelled. He lowered his voice and grinned at Dorian. “You head them off at the pass. I’ll protect Darina’s modesty.”

He went to pick up the white dust sheet he sometimes covered paintings with (more to be mysterious than for any practical effect, Dorian had long since decided), when Dorian raised one hand.

“Basil?” He hesitated. “Can I…? I mean, it’s cool. You go ahead. I, uh, I’ll get her covered up for you.”

Basil raised an eyebrow at Dorian, that half-mocking look on his face again.

“Oh, Wow. I must’ve done good. Not like Dorian Gray to ignore the siren call of a drunken harlot.”

“Basil?”

“Huh?”

“Fuck you.”

The tubby artist laughed, a high-pitched sound way too squeaky for his vast frame. He clapped Dorian on the shoulder again.

“You’re an asshole Dorian, God help me I love that in you. Don’t forget to cover her up, hmm?”

Then he was gone, his voice taking on a mockingly camp lilt as he disappeared out the doorway, into the greetings of their little group of friends.

“Amy, you bitch! How’s my favorite sister…?”

For five minutes, Dorian sat there, alone in the semi-darkness, studying Darina. Studying the girl he could have been.

Each time he looked at her, he felt the hairs rising up on his arms, on the back of his neck. Felt that faint vertigo clawing at him.

Felt less like he was face-to-face with a painting than a mysterious, frozen mirror.

That’s us… a voice whispered in the back of his head. In some parallel universe somewhere, that’s what we really look like. A beautiful, straight girl who doesn’t even guess there’s a man-version of her out there…

And then, the oddest thought of all.

I wonder if she’s happy?

When Dorian finally joined the others to go down to the Barley pub, he couldn’t shake the feeling that part of him was still in Basil’s studio. Still looking at the portrait of Darina Gray. Still sat alone with his Other Girl.

He was so distracted that he didn’t even bother trying to resist Jen’s advances, much to the delight of the drunken crowd.

*

It was two months later, at the open view, that Dorian began to suspect something was wrong.

It was the tail end of a long, hot summer, just before college started again, and the artists in Basil’s warehouse block had decided to put on a show. The studios had thrown open their doors, the great and nominally good of East London had been invited in, and young, nubile bodies were coiling through the artists’ rooms, their appreciation for the art on display only matched by their appreciation for the free booze some of the artists had thoughtfully put on.

“Didn’t you use to pose down here?”

“Only for Basil.” Dorian elegantly turned his body to one side, protectively holding up his tin of Red Stripe as a surge of people swept past. “And then only once.”

“Huh.” Jen wrinkled her nose. “I could swear Amy said you’d been down here, like, a bazillion times.”

“It was only two weeks. Honest. Though it really did feel longer sometimes.” Dorian leaned up against the wall beside the petit girl. At 5ft2, Jen was easily the smallest girl he’d ever gone out with. In his 6ft1 frame, he felt like a giant stood next to her.

“Maybe I just used to ask about you all the time.” Jen rolled her dark eyes. “Y’know, back when you were playing hard to get.”

Dorian fixed a smile onto his handsome face, tried to sound playful.

“It worked, didn’t it?”

Jen gave her new boyfriend a sly little look.

“Don’t give yourself the credit, Mr. Dorian Gray. If I hadn’t worked my balls off for this, you’d still be single.”

Dorian laughed, mainly to disguise the fact he didn’t really know what to say. Ever since their tryst at the Barley, he and Jen had found themselves slowly, inexorably becoming an item, as if against his will.

It wasn’t that Jen wasn’t hot. Despite her short size, she had the look of an old-fashioned beauty, with her soft, cute features, her dark, Mediterranean skin and black hair, and her large breasts, often combined with a low-cut top.

Dorian knew other guys lusted after her. Knew some of his male friends glanced longingly at her when they thought he wasn’t looking.

And yet… and yet…

“Hey, is it just me,” Jen said as yet another person elbowed her aside, “or does standing here really kinda suck?”

Dorian looked out over the sea of people, at the anonymous faces all around him. He nodded.

“It sucks balls. Come on.”

He took Jen by the hand, led her through the crowd toward Basil’s studio.

“Isn’t Basil’s place gonna be just as crowded? I mean, I know he does niche stuff, but whoa!”

Dorian smiled to himself.

“With that hanging over the entrance? Probably not.”

Over the doorway to his studio, Basil had hung a large, floridly decorated sign.

THIS IS A GENDER QUEER, TG, NON-BINARY DREAM FACTORY, it read. IF YOU ARE A WHITE, HETERO, CIS MALE, PLEASE DON’T COME IN. XXX

Dorian turned to Jen. Her mouth was hanging open.

“He doesn’t mean it.” He said. “At least, I don’t think he does. It’s more a… prank, I guess?”

“A prank that’s gonna land him on the frontpage of Breitbart,” Jen muttered.

Dorian shrugged, let go of her hand.

“No such thing as bad publicity, right? Coming?”

Jen seemed incapable of looking away from the sign. But she nodded, and followed Dorian through into Basil’s studio.

As expected, it was emptier in here, the crowds nowhere near as bustling as they had been just in the corridor. Dorian wasn’t sure if it was the sign working its magic, but then he noticed at least three other white guys in there with him and began to wonder if it was maybe more the subject matter.

“More surprises.” Jen said beside him. “So that’s what Basil’s been working on.”

The moodily lit studio was decorated with photos, sketches, charcoal drawings and more, all hug up and surrounding five full-length portraits.

Each of the five paintings showed a different girl posed in Basil’s studio. Each had a little photograph of a man next to it, and a caption like “JOE AS HIS OTHER GIRL JOANNA.” Each was well executed, with a strangely lifelike quality.

The other Other Girls.

“Is this what you were posing for?” Jen asked as they slowly made their way into the gloom.

“Nu-uh,” Dorian had already seen Darina’s portrait was missing. “No. Basil just wanted me for like a… a body study.”

Jen gave him a cheeky poke with one finger.

“Who can blame him?” She giggled. “Did he make you get naked?”

“Yeah…” Dorian murmured, his eyes flicking across the portraits, “he made me masturbate for him. Put stuff up my ass.”

“Bullshit.”

“No, I swear. I thought the pictures would be here somewhere…”

He wasn’t even listening to what he was saying any more, his brain on autopilot mode. He was too busy studying the Other Girls.

They were good, that was certain. Strangely like the photos of their male subjects. But… but…

But they’re not right, Dorian realized. Darina had that weird, lifelike quality. These ones…

…these ones just look like paintings.

“Where is Basil?” Jen asked, as they stopped in front of the center painting. “I can’t wait to hear what this is all about.”

“Schmoozing,” Dorian replied. “Probably handing out…”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

It had suddenly occurred to him that Basil might have made good on his promise to put Darina on his business cards.

They stood in silence before the painting, of a blonde girl dressed like Marylin Monroe, but with a certain something about her eyes that reminded Dorian of a guy in their art class, a big, beefy guy who looked like he spent all day in the gym.

I wonder what he made of this painting…

Beside him, he heard Jen sigh.

“I’ve never got this. Guys who want to be women. Not, like, actual trans people, but this. This sort of weird, wish fulfilment thing. It’s not actually that great being a woman, y’know.”

“No?” Dorian was hardly listening.

“Nu-uh. Well, sometimes. But equally, when you’ve got some sleazy guy staring at you on the Tube, or a line like this outside the restroom…”

“Dorian!”

The voice cut across the studio, making everyone briefly jump. Dorian looked up and saw Basil striding across the floor towards him, a hearty grin on his soft face.

“Speak of the devil,” Jen whispered.

“There you are, you sonofabitch! Jen. Darling!”

Basil theatrically kissed Jen’s cheeks, then took out a business card and slipped it into one unprotesting hand.

“My card. It’s been too long, give me a bell next week, we can talk. Dorian!”

“Basil,” Dorian nodded. He’d just noticed that Basil’s business card featured the Marilyn Monroe Other Girl and not Darina.

“I’ve barely seen you all summer, you asshole!” Basil said, even as he air-kissed Dorian’s cheeks.

“I’ve been busy,” Dorian gave Jen a quick sidelong glance. She poked her tongue out at him.

“Of course, the news,” Basil gave Jen a wide-eyed look. “You two, officially together? You’ll have to tell me all about it...”

“First,” Jen smiled, nodded at Basil’s painting. “Maybe you can tell me all about this? I mean, isn’t this trans-face, or fetishism, or…?”

She had to fall silent at this point, because Basil was laughing his ass off. Loudly.

“Trans-face? Jen, I love you, but oh God…” Basil half-composed himself. “It’s a dream, Jen. Nothing more, nothing less. And who can judge us for our dreams, huh?”

“Hmm.” Jen looked less than convinced. Basil turned and pulled Dorian into a one-arm hug, winking conspiratorially at him as he did so.

“I kept a little something out back for a serious conversation like this. Wanna go grab it while I enlighten our mutual friend here?”

Then he was turning back to Jen before Dorian could say a word, his manner already becoming expansive, his high-pitched voice louder than ever. Dorian got the impression he wanted everyone in the room – hell, the entire building – to hear.

“The Other Girl isn’t about appropriation, darling. It’s about longing. Desire for the impossible. When I set up my GoFundMe page…”

Be right back, Dorian mouthed to Jen over Basil’s shoulder. His new girlfriend gave him a secretive wink Dorian pretended to miss.

The storage room at the back of Basil’s studio was cramped, almost dark. Dorian was searching for booze for almost five minutes before he accidentally stumbled across Basil’s stash and realized he’d been sent in here for pot in the first place.

He was about to head back into the studio again, where he could still hear Basil pontificating, when something caught his eye. Made him stop.

There, against the far wall, lay a single, large canvas.

It was covered by an old dust sheet, its contents hidden bar a single corner that had slumped down. But it was still obvious to Dorian what it was. What it must be.

There was nothing else in here that could have been Darina’s portrait.

For a moment, Dorian almost ignored it. Almost went back to the party, back to Basil, back to Jen…

He tugged the corner of the dust cover down, pulled the sheet to one side. Stepped back, and felt a weird sense of disappointment settle over him.

“Oh.” Dorian wasn’t even aware he was speaking out loud.

The portrait before him wasn’t Darina’s. Well, it was, but not the portrait. It was a different one, a sequel or something that Basil had painted without telling him.

It was still set in Basil’s studio. Still featured Darina.

But everything had changed.

The ghostly emptiness of the studio had given way to a party. Where Darina had once been in a summer dress, posed in the center of the room, she now lounged against a wall, a black cocktail dress clinging to her body, her slender legs lost in a pair of dark tights.

She’d done her hair, her blonde curls now more like ringlets, tumbling from her crown in a seductive waterfall. She clasped a beer casually in one hand, playing with her hair with the other. There was a flirty smile on her face as she looked up at a tall, dark haired man stood before her, who was saying something even as he was obviously sneaking glances at her dynamite body.

The two were still the focus of the picture. Still the thing your eyes were drawn to. Only now there were plenty of people in the background, too. People drinking, talking, laughing, admiring paintings. A little group in one corner, listening to someone talk.

It looked just like the real studio did tonight.

I didn’t know Basil made more of these, Dorian thought, uneasily. How many…?

But he never finished his train of thought. Several things in the picture suddenly jumped out at him at once, leaving his head spinning.

The first was the painted figure standing at the center of the little group, the one everyone was listening to. He was small, barely four inches high on the canvas, but Dorian could tell he was meant to be Basil, pontificating about his Other Girls.

The second was the caption, etched into the wooden frame, like it had always been there:

DARINA FLIRTS WITH HER NEW BOYFRIEND, JOE.

The third was the look in Joe’s dark eyes. The indefinable something in his smile that made Dorian think of a male version of…

“Jen…?” Dorian heard himself whisper.

For a moment, he couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but stare at the painting before him, the new painting Basil had created and left where his old one should have been.

Abruptly, he grabbed the dust sheet, pulled it back over the portrait. He slipped out the storeroom, went over to where Jen stood on the edge of the small crowd listening to Basil, no longer the focus of his attention, just another bystander to the artist’s loud declamations.

“Hey,” she frowned at him. “What’s up? You look kinda…”

“It’s nothing,” Dorian forced up a smile. “I’m just… I need to get outta here.”

He nodded toward the door.

“Come with me?”

Jen looked hesitantly over at Basil, then gave herself a little shake and smiled.

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

An hour later, the two of them were back in Dorian’s Shoreditch flat, having urgent sex on the sofa in time to the loud bass booming out of the upstairs neighbor’s apartment.

As Jen moaned and writhed and whimpered, Dorian closed his eyes and tried not to think about Darina. Tried not to think about what she would be feeling at that exact moment, the feeling of her hips bucking softly as the masculine Joe of her world thrust into her, held her pinned to the sofa, used her and abused her as Dorian had always dreamed of being used…

When Jen finally fell asleep just after dawn, Dorian fitfully rolled a joint from Basil’s stash and smoked it on the balcony, looking at the distant lights of the City of London’s skyscrapers, his top half bare and cold in the September air. His mind full of thoughts of Darina, and how she’d be wearing a loose t-shirt she’d borrowed off Joe as she smoked out here, the cotton fabric rubbing gently against her pointed nipples as she smiled at the distant, painted lights of London.

It was then that he realized what he was going to do.

*

BOOM! BOOM!

The thudding of the metal door echoed around the warehouse complex, driving the sleepy, late-morning silence away into the corners and crevices. The detritus of last night’s party sprawled across the ground, as miserable and regretful as a mournful drunk.

Dorian clasped his slender arms across his chest, trying to ignore the faint autumn chill and cursing himself for only wearing a t-shirt. He silently counted ten and raised his fist again.

BOOM! BOOM!

“Whoever is out there,” Basil’s voice, muffled, drunk with sleep (or possibly just drunk), “I swear by all that is gay and girly, I will make you- Dorian?”

Dorian smiled tightly at the blinking face peering out the darkness.

“What the sweet Jesus fuck are you-?”

“Hey, Basil.” Dorian said, quickly. “There’s something I gotta see.”

Ten minutes later, the two were stood in the storeroom, looking up at the portrait of Darina.

A few howls and slurred words echoed through from the studio, where a hardcore set of Basil’s friends were still awake and snorting ket, but to Dorian the world felt almost deathly silent.

“Well?” He heard himself whisper.

“Well what?”

“Look at her!”

The painting before them was not the portrait Basil had painted. But neither was it the painting Dorian had seen last night.

It had changed again.

Gone was Basil’s studio. Gone was the party, the night, everything.

Now the painting showed a balcony on a familiar apartment block, somewhere around Shoreditch. In the distance, skyscrapers twinkled with hazy lights, their shape already visible in the pale dawn air.

In the middle of the picture, Darina leaned on the railings, a half-smoked joint clasped daintily between her fingers, a lazy smile on her face as she looked towards the distant buildings. She was naked except for a man’s loose top that dangled from her frame, just about covering her ass and hiding her tits from view.

Her bare, slender legs were faintly dusted with goosepimples. Her long blonde hair was mussed, wild, falling over one shoulder in a way that was both bohemian and strangely seductive. Her eyes were heavy lidded, her makeup attractively smudged, like she’d just enjoyed a very long night.

Not that the picture left any ambiguity as to what this gorgeous girl had been doing.

In the background, faintly visible through one glass door, a male form lay crumpled on a double bed, his strong body naked, one muscular arm thrown across his eyes.

His long, thick cock still half erect from where he’d just finished fucking his girlfriend.

THE MORNING AFTER, the caption read.

Beside Dorian, Basil gave a long suffering sigh.

“Dorian, please tell me you didn’t drag me away from a significant quantity of drugs just to look at this old thing again.”

“Old thing…? Basil, dude, can’t you see?”

“See what?” Basil said irritably. “I spent every waking minute for two whole weeks staring at that damn thing.”

At his words, Dorian felt a trickle of ice run up his spine. The world seemed to sway around him, like everything was about to go sliding away and leaved in trapped in some strange limbo.

He can’t see it… he realized. He can’t see anything different about it…

“Dorian,” Basil was saying, “it’s delightful that you’re enjoying Darina so much, but please leave this for social hours, yeah?”

When Dorian didn’t respond, he sighed again and clapped him on the shoulder.

“C’mon, join the party. We can do a line and…”

“In a sec.” Dorian’s mouth was dry, his voice weird and scratchy. “I just gotta… I wanna…”

“Whatever.” Basil turned, staggered off with a vague wave. “I’ll save a bit for you. Cover her up, yeah?”

And then he was gone and Dorian was all alone with Darina again.

In silence, the young man looked at the young girl who was living a parallel life to him. The young girl whose adventures and life in the British capital only he could see.

A faint nausea was rising in Dorian, mixing with his vertigo. He wasn’t sure if it was the effect of the painting, or the aftereffects of last night’s alcohol.

What’s happening? He wondered, faintly. Oh God…

There was something about this new version of the painting, something about the expression on Darina’s face, the shape of the man – of Joe – lying in the background.

Almost like…

Almost like, if Dorian closed his eyes, he could remember exactly what it had felt like. To lead Joe back to his apartment, to have the big, strong man pick him up and start kissing him roughly, his powerful hands running through Dorian’s long, blonde hair.

To lie on his back in the darkness, his face screwed up and his mouth opened in a cute little ‘O’ as his boyfriend thrust into him, making him writhe and scream and moan and beg for more.

To stand on that balcony, a warm, dull ache in his crotch and a dreamy smile on his face as he looked at the distant lights of London and thought about what a lucky girl he was.

…What’s happening to me?

For a second, Dorian had a flash of clarity. A sudden desire to grab a sharp object and start tearing at the canvas, tearing at it and slashing away until it was completely destroyed.

The moment passed. Instead, Dorian slowly covered up Darina again, and made his way back out into the studio, where he joined the circle of artists, posers and party crashers all doing drugs.

About an hour later, his mind thick and foggy with ketamine, he found himself sat next to Basil, asking him if he could keep Darina.

To his surprise, Basil said yes.

*

The seasons passed. London moved and shifted, turning gray and dead, then green and bright, before arriving back at the golds and reds of autumn again. Across the city, new towers grew up, old buildings came down, and the writhing mass of people changed subtly, new faces replacing old ones, new fashions flickering over the streets.

Life itself changed, too. Basil moved his studio eastwards, saying Hackney Wick had had its day. Amy met a boy from Bristol and dropped out of their friendship group to join him.

One day, Dorian found himself sat on a bench overlooking Regent’s Park with Jen beside him, and heard her say I love you, and felt himself say I love you too right back at her.

They moved in together not long afterwards, leaving Dorian’s Shoreditch flat for a chic, upmarket place in the suburbs of Leytonstone. A steady stream of cash from Dorian’s mom in Boston meant they could even afford somewhere quite big.

But one thing remained the same, no matter how much the world outside changed.

In Dorian’s head, he was always with Darina.

He’d installed Basil’s painting in a back room of their new flat, not long after they moved in. Jen thought it was a little weird, but Dorian had managed to make it sound suitably ironic, while also reminding her it could appreciate in value if Basil ever got some recognition.

It helped too that, like Basil, Jen couldn’t see the way the painting moved of its own accord. Couldn’t see the secrets it held.

She just saw a weird portrait of her boyfriend as a girl, posing alone in Basil’s old studio.

Nonetheless, Dorian took to keeping the back room locked when Jen was around.

When she wasn’t, he’d simply sit for hours and drink in his female twin’s life.

As Dorian’s life shifted, Darina’s life had shifted, too. Like him, she’d moved to a big new apartment on the other side of London. Like him, she’d moved in with her partner.

But where Dorian often felt like his new life was nothing more than an image, a detailed painting that was flat and false when seen up close, Darina seemed to be having the time of her life.

Often, Dorian would look in on the painting, and see her and Joe in the middle of some romantic moment.

They’d both be lying on the sofa together, Darina curled up in Joe’s strong, manly arms as they watched TV, Joe gently fondling one of Darina’s breasts.

Or they’d be showering together, their naked bodies pressed against one another’s as they kissed beneath a scalding stream of water, Joe’s big cock erect, ready to make love to his woman.

Or they’d simply be in bed, Darina perched on top of Joe, her eyes closed as she gently rode him, her face a mask of perfect bliss as they fucked.

And Dorian would find himself thinking of these moments, whenever he and Jen were together. Find himself wanting to lie in Jen’s arms as they watched Netflix, but unable to ask if she’d hold him in such a girly way.

Find himself stood in the shower, while Jen brushed her teeth at the sink, and wishing the door would open at any second, and Joe would come into the room naked, and take Dorian in his powerful arms, and start kissing him as the water cascaded down their backs.

Find himself making love to Jen, closing his eyes so he couldn’t see her feminine face, trying desperately not to imagine how it would feel to have a big strong man on top of him, violating him and using him and making him feel more alive than he ever had in his life…

But there was other stuff, too. Stuff that had nothing to do with romance, yet still made Dorian feel strangely sad and jealous and hopeless whenever he looked at it.

One day, he came back from a night out with some of his old friends, vaguely depressed at the way they’d just sat in the pub chatting shit to one another. Instead of going upstairs to join Jen in bed, he’d tiptoed to the back room and sneaked a look at Darina.

She’d been sat in a cocktail bar on a night out with three gorgeous female friends. They were all smiling, dressed in short dresses, and looked like they were having the time of their lives.

On the edges of the painting, men were casually sneaking glances at them. Other women were looking at them with clear envy. Yet there were no signs of caring on any of their faces.

It had been like the four women were sitting in a spotlight, the happiest, most carefree girls in the bar, perhaps in the whole of London. Four young, professional women with the world at their feet, so unashamedly comfortable in their lives that they looked like angels.

When Dorian finally went to bed that night, he’d looked down at his own naked, slender male body, then over at the curvy form of Jen and felt a wave of disgust sweeping over him so powerful it almost made him want to vomit.

It wasn’t like Darina’s life was always perfect. There were bad moments, sure. Even moments when she seemed to be worse off than Dorian.

One time, Dorian had peeked into the back room after a quiet, dull morning with Jen, expecting to see Darina and Joe living as the perfect couple. To his surprise, the painting had shown the bedroom in disarray, and Darina lying facedown on her bedsheets, her face a mask of tears and anger all at once.

The caption had simply read: AFTER THE ARGUMENT.

Another time, Dorian had received an unexpectedly high mark for one of his 3rd year essays and gone out to celebrate. It had been a good night, a great night, and he’d been curious whether Darina’s had been better.

It turned out it wasn’t even close. Darina was sat, curled up on the sofa in her pink dressing gown, a miserable look on her face and a pile of tissues beside her as Joe fixed her a cup of tea in the background.

DOWN WITH THE FLU, was the title.

But, by and large, Dorian felt that his double was getting the better deal. As his days in with Jen began to get duller, before becoming boring, then actively something he dreaded, Darina and Joe seemed to fall ever more deeply in love.

As he began to drift apart from his friends, he watched Darina go through a succession of girly nights out, group trips into the English countryside, and shopping sprees on Oxford Street with her gal pals, each time looking more perfect than the last.

And, as he and Jen slowly stopped having sex, he watched as Darina and Joe made love like a couple still in the honeymoon stage. Watched as this big strong man seduced the female him in the most unexpected places – at college, while out for a walk, at a dinner party at a friend’s house – and made love to him, gently, expertly, passionately.

It was after watching Darina and Joe screw on a romantic holiday in the countryside one weekend that Dorian finally went out and bought Jen the ring.

*

“What are you doing?”

“I sort of thought it was obvious.”

Dorian awkwardly shifted the small box in his hand, the small, light box that was heavy with the weight of the future – their future. In all the times he’d run through this moment in his head, he’d never imagined it going quite like this.

Sat across the table from him, Jen looked at the ring box with all the enthusiasm of a woman contemplating a trip to her gynecologist. She let out a tiny sigh.

“Put it away. Please.”

“What? No. You’re supposed to…” Dorian caught himself just in time. “I mean, don’t you wanna…?”

To his surprise, Jen nodded.

“Yeah, of course. More than anything in the world.”

“Well, great. Then-”

“But not like this.”

Dorian glanced around the restaurant. The chic-yet-classy place he’d booked months in advance. The place everyone from Time Out to Vice had been talking about (the latter in a snarky sort of way, but still).

He turned back to Jen.

“Then how?”

“Dorian…” Jen suddenly looked very tired. “I do want this, so, so much. And I want it with you…”

“But…?”

“But with the real you.” Jen sat back. “If there even is such a thing.”

At her words, Dorian had a sudden flash of himself in Darina’s body, sat across a table just like this from Joe, one slender leg crossed over the other, a perfect smile on his feminine face as Joe quietly slid the little box across the table to him, a rush of laughter overwhelming him as he looked from the diamond ring to his future husband’s face and tearfully whispered…

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I know you don’t Dorian, and that’s the whole problem. Like… look at this place. Look at us. This isn’t how people really propose, it’s how they propose in movies.”

“I’m pretty sure,” Dorian said, slowly, “that in the entire history of the world, at least one other man has popped the question over dinner.”

He thought Jen might roll her eyes. Or laugh. Or even poke her tongue out at him.

Instead she just gave him a hopeless little look that chilled him to his soul.

“You’re not a real person Dorian. Everything you do… it’s like you’re doing it because you think you should be doing it. When we talk, it’s like, I dunno…”

“What?”

“Like you’re just making sounds. Like you’re a-a radio or something. Just a dumb piece of plastic giving the impression it’s got life inside it.”

She put one hand on her forehead.

“God, I’ve been trying not to think like this, but when you did that…

It’s like, I want to love you. I think I do love you. But not like you’re meant to love someone. I love the image I had of you, when I was chasing after you like a dumb fucking schoolgirl. That’s all anyone loves about you Dorian. Know what I’ve realized?

That’s all there is. There’s nothing else. God, my life, our lives… it’s like we’re just-”

“Living in a painting?” Dorian could hardly breathe.

“Yeah.” Jen nodded unhappily. “Yeah, that’s it.”

Silence. Nearby diners pretended not to be listening.

At last, Jen stood up.

“I gotta go. My mum, she lives nearby…”

“Will…?” Dorian could hardly believe he was asking this. “Will I… y’know. See you again?”

“Sure.” A pause. “I think.”

Jen kissed his cheek.

“Bye, Dorian. I’ll… I’ll message you soon.”

Then she was gone.

For a long time Dorian sat alone at their table, the expensive little box still in his hand, staring vacantly out the window at the dark shape of the Thames. It occurred to him this moment, this isolated second, in this depressing restaurant, would probably make an excellent picture. A 21st Century Edward Hopper.

When he got back to their darkened flat, the first thing he did was check in on Darina. To his surprise, there was no sign of an engagement. Just her and Joe, sat together on the sofa, reading like old friends.

He was less surprised to see how utterly contented she looked.

*

“WHAT?”

“I said, me and Jen broke up.”

“WHAT?”

“Me and Jen! We-”

“DORIAN, I CAN’T… THE MUSIC.”

Dorian closed his eyes. The heavy bass of the club pressed against his skin, seemed to pour into every pore of his skin, filling him inside and out, suffocating him.

“ME AND JEN! WE’VE BROKEN UP!”

“Oh…”

A pause.

“I’m sorry!”

“What?”

“I SAID: I’M SORRY!”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“WHAT?”

“Oh, for fucks’s sakes…. NEVERMIND!”

“WHAT?!”

Around them, the private party flowed, bodies pulsing, people shouting, a world of darkness and dry ice and flashing lasers. All celebrating Basil’s big break. The Saatchi Gallery, his entrance into the realm of London’s artistic elite.

“DID YOU SAY SOMETHING?”

“I said the painting’s moving!”

“WHAT?”

“I SAID THE PAINTING’S MOVING!”

“WHAT?”

*

It was another year before Joe finally proposed.

In that time, London had changed again. The world had shifted. But Dorian had seen none of it.

After Jen had left him and his course had finished, he’d disconnected. Stopped going outside. Let the world drift away and do its own damn thing.

Now he spent most of his life sat in this one tiny backroom, staring at the life he should have had.

One by one, his friends had stopped calling. His phone stopped vibrating with new chats, messages, WhatsApps. Until there was nothing left but him, and Darina, and Joe, and their perfect lives.

The last year had been a good one for the painted couple.

They’d moved again, into a big house somewhere out in Surrey, in the London commuter belt. Dorian couldn’t be sure as the painting only ever focused on Darina, but he thought Joe had gotten some new job somewhere, maybe as a teacher at a private school. Whatever it was, he thought it was well paid.

Darina had started a business, selling prints in a fancy South London gallery, and putting artists in touch with sellers across Europe. It looked hard work, but she seemed to be relishing the challenge.

But that wasn’t the big news. The news so big it eclipsed everything else, made the little changes feel redundant and filled Dorian with a sad and hopeless longing.

Darina had gotten pregnant.

It had started with a painting of Darina in the bathroom, looking at something in her hands which Dorian hadn’t realized at the time was a home pregnancy kit.

It had continued with a painting of Darina in Joe’s arms, both of smiling and crying at once like there was something in them so big they couldn’t stop it from exploding out in any way possible.

It had included a painting of the two of them at hospital, looking in wonder at the ultra-scan. A painting of Darina, gently rubbing her swollen belly while reading pregnancy books. A painting of the two of them, sat awkwardly, hopefully, side by side at birthing classes.

A painting of the two of them delicately making love, Darina coiled on her side, her large belly swollen, her boobs big and sore with milk, her eyes closed in perfect bliss as her man slowly penetrated her.

And now here they were, with Darina eight months pregnant and practically glowing, and Dorian sat alone in his room watching her happy life unfold in utter misery.

It was the day of Joe’s proposal. The painting showed them stood in a meadow on a sunny day, not far from the old stone cottage Dorian had watched them vacation in together once, long ago.

It was a cool-ish day, and both wore jackets. Darina’s long navy blue coat flapped slightly in the breeze, her golden hair trailing out from beneath her cute woolen cap. She was wearing knee-length boots. Tights. A loose-fitting dress just visible beneath her heavy overcoat.

She was holding one gloved hand to her lips, tears in her eyes as she looked down at the man before her. The man she’d met at that party and fallen in love with. The man of her dreams.

The man who was now down on one knee, asking her to marry him.

You didn’t need to look away and wait for the painting to move to know she’d say yes.

As he stared at the perfect image before him, Dorian felt something rising in him that he’d never felt about Darina before.

He began to feel horribly bitter.

Bitch. He thought, dully, stupid, painted, lucky fucking whore of a bitch…

There was something about how idealized the moment was. How exactly like he’d always wanted to be proposed to that made him almost choke on unhappiness.

It was like, by creating his painting, Basil had somehow taken all the little escapes of Dorian’s psyche, all his private dreams and idle fantasies, and given them to this other girl.

Dorian had got the painting, true. The painting which, as Basil’s star rose, was appreciating in value towards the million mark.

But Darina…

Darina had got the life he’d always wanted.

The unfairness of it all was like a hammer, like the heavy bass of a crowded club, beating out against Dorian’s temple, making him want to lash out. To scream. To smash things.

That should be mine, he thought, savagely. My life, my husband, my…

He sat there silently for another twenty minutes, stewing over the image before him. Then he realized what he had to do.

The knife was sharp, its stainless steel blade and handle glinting in the faint light. Dorian carried it through from the kitchen and stood before the painting, a sulky, closed off look on his handsome face.

“This was meant to be mine,” he whispered, unaware he was talking out loud, “if I can’t have it…”

For a moment, he hesitated. The painting was worth a lot of money. Maybe he could just sell it on to someone, forget about it, go back out into the real world and start enjoying life again. He could even call Jen. He could even…

Fuck that.

With a hysterical laugh, Dorian raised the knife. He aimed it straight at Darina’s head and brought it slashing down, laughing as it sliced through the canvas, laughing as the perfect image folded open, an ugly, jagged tear running down his doppelganger’s face. Laughing… laughing…

And then there was a sudden, brilliant burst of color, almost like a wave of paint was washing over him, and Dorian Gray laughed no more.

*

“Dinny? Hey, Dinny, are you…?”

As Joe watched from the doorway, his pregnant fiancée blinked, glanced up at him, then looked down at herself, as if seeing her swollen breasts and heavy belly for the first time. She was knelt on the wooden floorboards, dressed only in her white dressing gown. Before her, the painting that Basil had done of her as a young boy, all those years ago, lay in tattered ruins.

“Jesus, Dinny. What happened?”

“Huh?” The beautiful woman on the floor slowly looked back up at Joe, her face still so soft, so open, so perfect it gave the big, strong man chills.

Her confusion slowly ebbed away. Darina slowly shook her head.

“Oh, nothing. I just… I just…”

She turned back to the painting. Joe waited for her to go on, a faint worm of fear gnawing in his gut, worried at what the hell had just happened to the woman he loved.

“I just got tired of looking at it is all,” Darina said, slowly. “Of seeing that miserable boy leading his miserable life.”

She looked back up at him.

“He just looked so sad, you know?”

Joe nodded. He’d always thought Basil’s painting had been weirdly melancholy, not at all like the vibrant, laughing Darina he knew.

I guess she thought so, too…

It wasn’t like the painting was worth anything, anyway. Since Basil had given up art to follow Joe into teaching, his old Other Boy paintings were little more than sad reminders of the party life they all used to have.

“Sure.” He said, gently. “But did you really have to…?”

To his surprise, his future wife nodded.

“It-it was starting to feel like he was watching us, y’know?” She murmured, putting down the knife and hugging her arms across her breasts. “Like he was judging us, our lives. Like he hated me…”

“Hey now.”

As she shuddered, Joe stepped into the room, sank to his knees, put his strong, protective arms around her.

She feels so small, he marveled, as he always did, so helpless…

“Is it the pregnancy?” He murmured. “This is a big step, Dinny, we’re only twenty three…”

Darina shook her head. Her long, blonde locks fell casually over one shoulder.

“No, it was something else. Something… don’t laugh, OK? It felt almost… scary.”

Joe clutched his fiancée tighter, suddenly scared himself. He’d heard of psychosis brought on by pregnancy, but he’d never expected-

“It’s OK.” Darina suddenly kissed him, that old, mischievous smile in her eyes. “I know what you’re thinking, and I’m not going mad. I know it’s not real. It was just… more of a metaphor, I guess.”

“OK.” Joe looked doubtfully at his sexy, beautiful, crazy, maddening, wonderful girl. “And now…?”

Darina smiled again.

“I feel… good. Better. Almost like…”

She gave a self-conscious laugh, as if aware of how crazy she sounded.

“…almost like I’m whole again. Like maybe he was part of me, and Basil somehow trapped him in that painting, but now…

…now we’re one person again.”

Joe looked doubtfully at the ruined painting.

“Dinny, you’re not making any…”

“I know.” Joe’s gorgeous fiancée kissed him again, properly this time, her soft lips moving against his, her tongue swirling around the insides of his mouth.

She sat back.

“I don’t expect you to understand. I just want you to know it’s… it’s cool now. I’m happy. And I won’t do any crazy shit like this again. Promise.”

She laughed. Joe smiled.

“So, if he’s back in you, does that mean I’m secretly screwing a…”

“Maybe.” Darina’s eyes twinkled. “Maybe he’s in here with me right now, checking out this body of mine. His. Ours. And maybe, just maybe, he’s looking at you…

…and thinking he wants to make up for lost time.”

Abruptly, she stood up.

“C’mon,” she took Joe’s hand, that twinkle still in her eye. “I’ve got a sudden craving for my man to take me back to bed and show me just how much he loves me.”

Joe grinned up at her, the torn painting already half-forgotten.

“Your wish, my lady,” he growled, raising himself up and sweeping the giggling Darina into his strong, thick arms, “is my command.”

And then they were gone. The perfect couple, with the perfect lives. The lives they always wanted to lead.

On the floor of the back room, a painted face looked up at their retreating backs, a rip down one side where the knife had penetrated its flesh.

If you didn’t know any better you’d swear that, for the first time since it had been painted, the portrait of Dorian Gray – the Other Boy – looked truly happy.

The End

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Kim Madcock

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