lisachanges

The Monthly Story: Now I'm a Girl (an unfinished TG fantasy)

(Image via Pixabay. Used under a public domain license)

Just a little snapshot for y'all this month, the early fragments of a tale I was working on but couldn't quite make fit together. I dunno if the mood was wrong, or if the challenge was just too daunting, or if this story simply had too much potential to be heartbreaking. Whatever the reason, I wound up abandoning this one. Maybe I'll go back to it one day. Maybe not. For now, y'all can take a quick glimpse behind the scenes, and see a teenage TG tale that might have been...

One last quick note. Every single author in the world has a USB drive or folder in the cloud somewhere that's full of unfinished tales. It used to be those pieces never saw the light of day - unless you were so famous that people wanted to pore over everything you ever wrote. Thanks to Patreon, though, that no longer has to happen. Even a lowly TG author like me can share her unfinished pieces here with all her fans. Niche tales like this might not be finished, but now they no longer need to be forgotten.

Lisa X

Now I'm a Girl

Even as I write this, I can’t believe it’s really happening.

Sat at my desk, my mirror in front of me, one slender leg crossed over the other as I type away, I find it hard to believe that this isn’t just some fantastic dream.

Only a few days ago, I was Trey. Until recently, looking in the mirror meant seeing a slightly-nervous boy with dark hair, a weak jaw, and faintly feminine features looking unhappily back at me. Then It happened, and the view got even worse.

But now…

Well, let’s take a look, shall we?

There, look at my reflection. That long, gorgeous blonde hair that curls and bounces, that’s mine. Those high cheekbones, that round face; they’re also mine. That tiny button nose, those pouty lips, those wide, innocent blue eyes that seem to sparkle, that girl with the look of wonder on her teenage features…

Well, you get the idea.

I pause in my writing, push back from the desk. Look down at myself, marvel at what I’m seeing.

Where once my chest was flat, it now has two bumps, right in the middle of it. Two perky little breasts that are technically on the small side but, from where I’m sitting, seem to poke right out like two reminders of my newfound femininity.

Where once my body was V-shaped, it now curves like a slender hourglass; tucking in at the waist, before expanding outward again at the hips.

Where once my legs were dusted with dark teenage hair, they’re now both smooth and slender, poking out the bottom of my cute little denim skirt. The skirt I found myself in when I first woke up. The skirt I like to think of as my lucky skirt.

Like I said. Hard to believe.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking this has to be a lie. Has to be fiction. There’s no way this petit and pretty (if I do say so myself) 18-year old girl could have ever been a boy.

I have two things to say to that. First, looks can be deceptive.

Second, dreams really can come true.

I didn’t use to believe in magic. I didn’t use to believe in fate, or God, or the paranormal, or any of that shit.

I thought this was all there was. A ‘what you see is what you get’ kind of deal. That life deals you a shitty hand and you’re stuck with it, forever.

But sat here now, in my lucky skirt and my plain white tank top, with my cute little leather boots on my tiny new feet and my new breasts resting in my bra, I can see that I was totally, utterly, stupidly wrong. And every time I realize that again, I want to hug myself and laugh out loud in my soft new voice, and smile and smile until I think my face is gonna break.

Coz it’s all true. You really don’t have to be who you’re not. All you have to do is…

Oops. Spoilers. Don’t worry, yeah, we’ll get there in the end.

But first, I want to take you back. Back to when I was still Trey. When happy, vibrant, and oh-so female Tracey was nothing but a dream. I want to take you back to when I was miserable, and everyone around me was miserable, too.

Coz this amazing change, this transformation wasn’t easy. I had to go through hell to get here. So let me take you back to hell.

Let me take you back to when I was in the hospital.

*

“How’s it feeling now?”

I smiled weakly at the nurse; a girl in her mid-twenties. Nodded my head.

“S’OK. Nothing too bad.”

Yet, I wanted to add.

The nurse nodded briskly. Professional but encouraging.

“You might experience some nausea later,” she said, before adding with a smile, “but I guess you knew that already.”

I smiled back. I didn’t want to. My gums ached. My teeth ached. My whole body ached. But I didn’t want to make her feel bad either.

“I guess I did.”

No mention of the pain, the endless sickness, the feeling like my body had vanished, leaving just a stomach that bobbed and churned on a rolling boat, and a nervous system that glowed with a miserable fire.

“Then you’ll also know it passes. And that, no matter how bad you feel, it’s a sign you’re getting better.”

I nodded again. Tried to focus on having a normal conversation.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. What I’m here for.” She checked the drip leading into my arm, an arm that was always short on muscle but had recently become skinnier than ever. “Cool. Looks like you’re nearly done.”

A smile.

“A few more checks, some waiting around and we’ll have you home in no time. Got a book?”

“Sure,” I lied. I don’t know why. Maybe I didn’t want to admit I was gonna spend the rest of the day blankly scrolling through Facebook, trying to absorb all these normal lives.

“That’s good.” She checked the drip again. “Need something to distract you. That’s the worst part. All the waiting.”

*

Let me set the scene here.

I’m guessing you weren’t expecting a hospital scene in a book being sold as a transgender romance. And if you were, I’m guessing you thought it would involve surgery or hormone-boosting, not drugs that make you barf and feel like you’ve died in the middle of the night. Hospitals aren’t romantic places.

But this isn’t an ordinary romance.

Don’t get me wrong. I wish it was. I love the idea of writing a story about how I grew up young, effeminate and bullied and, when I turned 18, suddenly decided I wasn’t gonna hide any more, and went and got the treatment to become the girl I always secretly wanted to be.

I love the idea… but that isn’t what happened.

Instead, It happened. Instead, I grew up effeminate and bullied, and then I turned 18…

…and my whole world came crashing down.

Shortness of breath. Losing weight. Not being able to keep up with my best friend Kyle on those long cycle rides he liked to take.

My mom, getting all concerned. A visit to the doctor. Some tests, and then that word. The one you never wanna hear, especially not age 18 when you’re still stuck in high school.

A word beginning with ‘C’, that is really code for another word beginning with ‘D’. A soft, nice-sounding word that no-one likes to say out loud, coz it means the end. The end of a story.

The end of a life.

Do I have to spell it out? Clue: it ends with a ‘TH’.

When a lot of people first hear the C-word, and think of the D-word, they start figuring out what’s important. They tell people if they have secrets that need to be told, they try and be themselves, the last chance they will ever have.

Unfortunately, I’m not “a lot of people”. I’m polite. Boring. Nice. I don’t like to rock the boat.

Even if it means getting to be myself.

So I spent the next few months trying to ignore the whispered voices in the back of my head even harder than ever. The ones that had been there since I was a kid, that told me I wasn’t meant to look like this, that told me I wasn’t meant to be changing with the boys, and doing boy things.

It just felt too much like letting my parents down, you know?

So I let my chance drift away, let time move on, and tried to console myself that it probably didn’t matter and it was all just a phase, only I’d never get a chance to grow out of it now.

I kept thinking that as my teenage body got weaker, as my hair vanished, and my skin got freakishly pale. I kept thinking that as the treatments began to feel even less like treatment, and more like torture.

I kept thinking that as time ticked away, and I probably would’ve gone on thinking that forever, had there not been this miracle, the one I still can’t get my head around.

We’re coming to it, I promise.

But first, I want you to meet Kyle.

*

“You’re such a pussy.”

Kyle looked down, a frown on his handsome features. The sun was so high the movement cast a shadow over his face, so I could only see one of his clear blue eyes.

“I’m mature. There’s a ton of leeches living in there, plus the current’s kinda strong.”

He shook his head.

“And I don’t wanna swim out to your dumb rock anyway.”

It was a hot Saturday, two days after the upbeat nurse had given me the drip that made me feel so sick I wanted to cry. Insects were buzzing all lazy in the sky, and the air felt like a warm and heavy blanket.

I propped myself up on my elbows, leaning back against the tree. I’d woken up feeling better than I had in weeks, and just being outside and away from my parents was making me feel even better.

“It’s not my dumb rock. It’s ours. We came here last year, remember? We swam out there and had a beer each and you started going on about how buzzed you were.”

Doubt flickered across the half of Kyle’s face that wasn’t in shadow. But I could tell he was bullshitting. I hoped.

Coz, there was no way I was ever gonna forget the day we had.

We’d started early, on our bikes. This was before the C word had ever intruded into my life, and I thought nothing of riding for hours and hours.

We rode out into the country, taking lanes we’d never taken before, looking for a place to sit and have the two beers we’d daringly stolen from Kyle’s dad’s collection. It was a gray, humid day, and the New England countryside looked like a world of mystery.

Around midday, we’d stopped at an old stone bridge over a river. We were hot and sweating, and Kyle said we should take a dip. I was all nervous about being seen with the beer, so I said we should follow the river further down. Kyle called me a pussy, but we went in the end.

And we found paradise.

Well, that’s how I remember it. The great clearing, the shade under the trees. The silence of the forest, and the powerful, flowing river with that rock in the middle of it.

“If there are any bears,” I remember Kyle grunting as he dumped his bike down, “I’m gonna throw them your skinny butt while I haul ass outta here.”

But there weren’t any bears. There was just us, and we both stripped down to our shorts and swam out to the rock.

I remember the way Kyle swam ahead of me, a little pack with the beers in, still fastened to his back.

I watched his shoulders as he moved his arms, making slow, precise movements against the current. Watched the way his muscles moved, bunching and stretching, drawing attention to his broad shoulders and thick biceps.

Later, I remember watching a single bead of water make its way slowly down his chest, and being mesmerized by the way it ran between his defined pecs, so different from my own skinny chest.

On the rock, we drank the beers – all cold from their dip in the river – and chatted shit, like guys always do. And outside I laughed at Kyle’s dumb jokes and told my own.

But inside. Inside I was in another world…

I can write this now, now that everything has changed. But at the time I tried to keep my thoughts a secret, even from myself. They just felt so… wrong, somehow. Like I was committing a crime just by thinking it.

As we sat there, and I watched the first shafts of afternoon sunlight playing through Kyle’s hair, I lifted my beer to my lips and pretended I wasn’t Trey anymore.

That I was someone else. Someone who had long, flowing blonde hair. Who had slender legs and curvy hips and perky breasts. Someone with a high-pitched laugh, someone Kyle would look at not just as a friend…

And that image made everything perfect.

And now here we were again, in the same clearing, and I was trying to get Kyle to swim out to the rock for me again, without telling him why.

It wasn’t exactly going as I’d planned.

“Even if we did go out there…” Kyle yawned, stretching upwards, giving me a momentary view of his chiseled abs, “why bother now? I’ll just be sat over there and you’ll be sat over here. What’s the point?”

“I just wanna see if you can still do it, after all those months of pizza. When was the last time you used the pool, huh?”

Kyle put one hand to his gut, as if slightly hurt.

“I’m carb-loading, dude, not turning into a fatass. But whatever.” He turned away. “I ain’t swimming today.”

“Stop being such a pussy,” I insisted, not quite sure at the time why I was being so insistent. “It’s a challenge.”

“It’s a waste,” Kyle declared, flopping down beside me, “of fucking time.”

For a moment, I simply looked at him. Then, suddenly, I was on my feet. Kyle sat up, surprised.

“Fine. If you’re not going out there, maybe I will.”

Kyle gave a nervous laugh.

“Don’t be a dick, Trey. I mean, I know you’re on the up today…”

“I’m not being a dick.” I replied. “I’m going swimming. You can watch me.”

And with that, I was turning, walking towards the water, trying to ignore Kyle’s cries as he nervously asked if this was a joke.

I was still unsteady, so it took me a while to get to the water. When I did, the river looked black, like midnight itself was flowing past me. The rock was further away than I remembered. The current looked stronger.

“Dude, if you slip and crack your leg, your mom is gonna kill me…”

My heart was hammering in my chest, like it was trying to force its way out. My legs and arms suddenly seemed a lot skinnier than they had been, a lot weaker.

I stuck my foot out. Wobbled on one leg. Let the water flow over my toes, over the ball of my foot. It was cold, like a corpse’s skin.

“C’mon Trey, stop being an asshole…”

“I’m fine,” I yelled back. “People do this shit with cancer all the time. Never heard of Lance Armstrong?”

There was a brief pause.

“You’re kidding, right? Ever heard the phrase disgraced drug cheat?”

I was silent. Deep down, I knew I was being dumb. Knew the ride out here had already left me way more tired than I should have been. Knew the latest round of chemo had left me weaker than I’d been in months.

But, damn. I was gonna go out to that rock if it killed me.

“Wanna know the definition of pussy, dude?” I shouted. “A pussy is someone who can’t swim faster than a guy who’s dying.”

“You’re not dy-”

But it was too late.

I’d already jumped.

The minute I landed in the water, I knew I’d made a mistake.

It closed over too fast, the cold sucking my breath away. The current was too strong. Maybe if I’d waited another coupla days after chemo, I coulda done it.

But like this? I felt like I was drowning.

I broke the surface, gasping for air, kicking towards the rock.

“See?” I yelled, still trying to show Kyle up for forgetting that day. “It’s fine.”

Yeah, right.

Even as my body screamed at me to turn back, I started kicking for that rock. Kicking through the black and the cold, like I was reaching out for a disappearing memory.

I kicked my legs, thrashed my arms. Yet, somehow, the rock didn’t seem to get any closer. Instead, it just slid casually sideways, as the river took me away from it, took me into its cold embrace.

I remember Kyle shouting. I remember ignoring him, and kicking harder. I remember realizing I’d done something stupid, that no amount of kicking would save me. I remember trying to turn back to shore, trying to turn round, trying to yell, my mouth filling with water…

And then I remember that strong arm clasping hold of me. I remember the way the world seemed to stand completely still, frozen between two breathless seconds…

…and then Kyle was swimming, one arm cutting a slow path through the water while the other held me tight, his strong body tensing and rippling beside me, pulling me towards the rock.

“Dude.” I protested weakly, “you don’t gotta…”

“And you don’t gotta be an asshole,” he grunted, spitting out some water that got in his mouth, “but there we are.”

So we spent an hour out on the rock, me pretending like I didn’t need help anyway, and Kyle acting like he was my savior, my knight in shining armor.

Outwardly, I still kept calling him a pussy.

But inside? Inside, I couldn’t stop thinking about how safe I’d felt in his arms. How much I really had felt like a damsel in distress.

And how secretly pleased I was that my knight had come to save me.

*

If you’ve ever been in a state of unrequited love, you’ll know how it feels.

By that, I mean you’ll know how it feels when you have an unexpectedly great day with this person. Like, I dunno, swimming out to some dumb rock in the middle of a river.

You’ll know how it feels to be so happy, so ecstatic, so lost in your little world, the one they don’t even suspect of existing, the one you’re terrified they’ll one day find out about.

And you’ll also know how it feels when that happiness suddenly curdles. When you swim back in off the rock together and both get dressed and cycle home and go your separate ways, and you realize that none of that stuff you imagined was really real.

You might not know how it feels even worse when your time is running out coz you might be dying, and you still haven’t got the guts to tell this person how you really feel.

But you can probably guess.

I know I could tell you. I could take all 12,000 words just telling you all about that feeling.

Only I have something else to tell you instead. Something much more urgent.

Coz this is the part where my story gets really weird.

*

I was lying awake in my room, trying to ignore how shitty I was feeling, when it happened.

It was a little while after the thing with the rock. I’d gone back to the hospital that day, and was now feeling sick as a dog again.

“They’re trying something new today,” the nurse had said as she stuck the needle into my arm. “Nothing too extreme, but you might feel a bit worse than usual.”

I’d nodded glumly, not even bothering to open my mouth. After nearly six weeks of aggressive chemo, I already felt worse.

I’d had no idea how much worse it could get.

The day had been one long slog of sickness. I’d come home feeling dreadful. I’d laid in the front room feeling worse, only giving my mom weak smiles when she asked if I was OK.

I’d gone to bed feeling crap-tacular, and now I was lying in bed, staring at the shadows swirling across the ceiling like eddies in the current of a rushing river, wondering if I’d be better off just dying already.

It’s hard to describe just how bad I felt. Bad and weird.

Like, I was sick, but my arms and legs were tingling, too. There was this sort of strange… tightness in my chest. My scalp itched. My lips were numb. Everything that could be wrong with me, was.

Downstairs, the faint sound of the TV crackled away. Mom and Dad, watching something on Netflix, trying not to think about their ill kid upstairs. Beside my bed, my cell showed the time: 23:59.

I closed my eyes. Took a deep breath. Let out a gentle moan. My cell gently bleeped the hour.

And then it happened.

Even today, I struggle to describe it. It was unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. It was like something you read about in a science fiction novel, only a thousand times weirder.

So bear in mind I’m not doing it justice when I write this. I’ll try my best, but I don’t think anybody could really explain what it felt like.

At the moment it hit midnight…

Well. I began to change.

That was the moment I first turned into a girl…

The Monthly Story: Turned into Her Breasts

This tale originally appeared in my new collection Trapped as a Girl. I'm reprinting it here for free as a little bonus for all my lovely loyal patrons, and because Gender Swap World is taking so damn long to finish (seriously, it's turning into a novel) there was a danger of no story otherwise being ready this month.

I’m a bit of a fan of non-human transformation stories, if only coz they allow you to write the craziest plotlines, and have endless fun while you do so. While they’ve got a bit of a reputation as a weird form of niche erotica (something I'm certainly guilty of indulging in myself from time to time) they’ve got an incredible literary pedigree. Philip Roth, of all people, wrote a book about a man who turns into a gigantic boob. Seriously, it’s called ‘The Breast’. Check it out.

For my own contribution to this not-quite genre, I wanted to write a simple revenge story. This tale is somewhere between a horror story and a little morality play. There's faint elements of the Stepford Wives, and other creepy stories about men forcing women to change their behavior, their very bodies, for the pleasure of their husbands. Only, coz I'm me, it ends with the jerkoff men getting a taste of their own medicine...

This is one of the few tales I’ve written entirely from a female perspective. I’m not sure why, but writing men – even if they’re secretly female deep down, and just need a little wish or magic spell to get the body they should have been born with – has always been easier for me, so it’s nice to flex my literary muscles a little and try doing a first person female character every now and then. Maybe it’s something I’ll revisit more often.

Lisa X

Turned into Her Breasts

Image via Pixabay. Used under a public domain license.

The first thing everyone always notices about me are my breasts.

They’re big, I’d be the first to admit. Far, far bigger than average, especially on a woman as slender as I am.

At first glance you’d probably think they were plastic, but trust me, they’re not. They’re probably the only natural pair of Double-Js in the whole of California. Maybe America.

Heck. Maybe the world.

It’s not just their impossible size that people react to when they involuntarily gape (men), or quickly glance down and let a brief look of disgust flicker across their faces (women). No, there are two other reasons why my chest is always the center of attention, wherever I go.

The first is that I take absolutely no care at all to hide my big, ol’ boobies. Even though it’s not really my style, I take extra care these days to wear low-cut tops, or bust-revealing dresses, or just extremely tight sweaters (as most sweaters are on me, nowadays). Anything that will draw people’s eyes to my chest.

After all, I have the figure for it. With my tight waist, curved hips, long legs and pert ass, I pretty much always look like a supermodel escaped from the Playboy mansion.

I don’t always enjoy it, if I’m being honest. The attention can easily get too much. Not just from the men, but from the women who are clearly whispering behind my back about cosmetic surgery and implants.

Well, what can I do? I let them whisper. After all, I’m fated to look like this now for the rest of my life. Have been ever since Trey…

Whoops. I’m getting ahead of myself now, overtaking my story.

Trust me, we’ll come back to Trey.

The attention doesn’t both my lover, Jessica. She likes having a girlfriend who men and women alike can’t stop staring at. I think it turns her on to go out with someone whose boobs are even bigger than her own Double-H pair (plastic, in her case). Whenever I start feeling a bit shy about my new figure, she’ll just roll her eyes and laugh.

“Brooke…” she’ll say in that tinkly voice of hers, one hand placed gently on my bare arm, “babe. Just stop. You look fantastic. Everyone thinks so.”

Then, with that warm little smile that always makes me melt inside:

“You’re the best looking girl here.”

And I know she’s right, but it still makes me feel good to hear her say it.

At those moments, I can almost understand what Trey used to see in her.

The other reason people are always staring at my new tits is because they’re exactly that: new. I didn’t have them a year ago, just like I didn’t have my current figure, or my supermodel looks.

Oh, I wasn’t bad looking before. Just normal and neurotic about it, y’know?

I worried about my weight, and I sometimes thought my boobs – normal, C-cup boobs, back then – were getting saggy but, by and large, I was quietly pleased with my body. Quietly pleased with the woman I’d grown up to become.

I used to think Trey was pleased, too. It was only after he found It that I realized just how wrong I’d been.

That’s my husband, by the way. Or was. Still is, perhaps. We never got a divorce, after all, and it’s not like he’d be able to sign the paper or anything now.

Not that I’d let him, even if he could. There’s something so… intoxicating about knowing we’re still married. Even after these crazy 12 months. Even after my moving in with Jessica. To know I still have his ring on my finger…

Let’s just say it reminds me that what I did was right.

(Do you hear that, Trey, do you hear what I just told these people? Can you still remember what you did to me? I think they’ll agree with my decision, won’t they, when they hear the whole story…)

Anyway, back to my husband. Or my ex. Or whatever.

Trey was a prop man working on the movies. Yeah, I know, right? What a perfectly stereotypical job to have in the Golden State.

I was no better. At the time – before I became famous worldwide as a swimwear model – I was writing erotic stories from our home in the mountains, dreaming up naughty scenarios sat in a wicker rocking chair on our porch and publishing them online.

Under my pen name I was even semi-famous. When we first got together, it turned out that Jessica had read a few of them over the years, and I thought that was just about the hottest thing ever.

But back to the story.

We’d been married for three or so years when Trey came home one day, all excited over something he’d found in an old prop room at the back of some movie lot.

He used to bring a lot of spare props home, in those days. A ray gun from a sci-fi flick here. An old, heavy clock from an unreleased steampunk movie there.

Not that he’d ever brought home anything like this before.

I can still remember it clearly. The battered old, twisted lamp with its curled spout and chipped handle. The one that looked like an ancient Arabian treasure.

I still remember the way it seemed to draw my eyes in as I looked at it. The way it faintly vibrated as I held it in my hands. Trey was prattling on that it was from an old Errol Flynn film from the silent era, and there were rumors that it was the real deal. An actual lamp from Arabia, picked up at a junk store by some long-dead prop man, nearly a century ago.

I don’t know why, but looking at it made me shiver. Like there was something very, very wrong with it. Something that made me wish Trey had left it in that dusty old prop room.

Today, he probably wishes exactly the same thing.

But at the time he was all excited, and evidently disappointed that I wasn’t equally interested in his find. So he took it next door to show Jessica, who back then was just our big boobed neighbor with the plastic HH tits, while I tried to go back to my writing and shake off my feelings of worry.

Oh, if only I’d listened to them, to those little voices telling me something was off, something was wrong.

I might still be a normal-looking woman. Jessica might still be straight. And Trey…

Trey might still be human.

There was a storm that night. A big wall of roiling cloud and lightning that rolled in off the distant ocean and pummeled our little house on the hillside.

I was lying awake in bed, unable to get to sleep, turning over something Trey had said to me when he came back from Jessica’s, a sheepish sort of grin on his face. When I’d asked what was up, he’d vaguely talked about putting the lamp to good use.

Good use, like, what? You made a wish? I’d asked, semi-sarcastically. Trey had just grinned some more.

Oh yeah, totally, he’d giggled. Two actually. If they come true…

You’ll be rich beyond your wildest dreams? I’d replied, keeping the dry humor thing up. But Trey had barely seemed to notice.

Trust me. If these come true, my life will be awesome without any riches.

I was reliving these odd words in the darkness, listening to the crash of lightning outside, when I heard it.

“It” was a distant sort of ringing, like a tuning fork vibrating almost beyond the pitch of human hearing, strange and musical. It was coming from the living room of our modernist home, seeming to fill the darkened house.

What the-? I remember thinking. Is that the lamp…?

No sooner had I finished the thought than I became aware that I wasn’t just hearing something unusual. I was feeling it, too.

Not in my head, where you might expect a high-pitched noise to vibrate. Oh no.

In my chest.

It was a weird, tingly sort of feeling. Like electricity was dancing over my boobs. Like a pressure was growing behind them, causing them to swell slightly. Like they were starting to hurt. Like they were…

And then I looked down and nearly went mad.

There, in the half-light of the bedroom, I could clearly see my boobs were growing.

They were gently swelling up, slowly inflating from a C-cup to a D-cup, to a DD, right before my eyes.

As I watched in horror, I could feel the fabric of my once-loose top start to stretch, start to squash my expanding breasts, start to get uncomfortable. With a little squeak, I remember tearing it off over my head, looking down in fright…

And realizing, with a feeling like I was going mad, that it wasn’t just my boobs that were changing.

My entire body was shifting and warping like crazy.

I’d love to be able to give you the details here, of every little thing that happened. Of every little change that affected me. But I can’t. My mind is a near-blank, my memory wiped by a sea of panic.

I dimly remember screaming Trey’s name and leaping out of bed. Then, next thing I knew, I was stood topless before the bathroom mirror, howling with terror as I watched my entire body change.

It was the scariest, most surreal thing that’s ever happened to me, by a goddamn country mile.

Before my eyes, I was forced to watch as my normal chest swelled up and up and up until my boobs became the enormous, Double-J monsters they are today, all huge and swollen and so heavy I thought I was gonna topple over.

I was forced to watch, too, as my waist magically tightened. As my body grew curvier. As my legs got longer, as the faint traces of fat dribbled away from my sides and my body became a perfectly-shaped male fantasy.

My face also changed. Even as I wailed, my eyes grew incrementally wider. My skin grew springier, more youthful, like I was 18 instead of nearly 30. My cheekbones got sharper, my features more symmetrical. My hair took on more of a bounce and shine.

By the time it was over, barely thirty seconds later, I’d gone from being an averagely good-looking woman with a relatively normal body…

…to a dynamite 18-year old girl with a supermodel figure, a face that could launch ten thousand ships, and boobs that were bigger than any woman’s had any right to be.

I remember staring at my reflection in shock, thinking that I was going mad. That there was no way this could happen!

I still looked like myself, that was the freaky part. My face was still recognizably mine, only like I was a younger, more-beautiful version of me. My hair was still in the same style, only now it had more volume to it, more shine, more sleekness, like I was in a shampoo commercial.

I recall whimpering in fright as I ran my fingers over my perfect new features, over my suddenly flawless skin. Remember the way I hesitated before touching my new boobs, and the horrifying realization that they were now as real, as a part of me, as my old, normal-sized tits had been only moments ago.

I remember, too, the way the shadow appeared in the doorway of the bathroom. The way I turned to Trey, my face pale with shock, expecting him to share my terror with me.

And, most of all, I remember the way he slowly looked over my altered body. The way his surprised look turned to one of delight. The way he gently shook his head and said, with a happy sigh:

I guess the lamp really does grant wishes.

Neat.

I’ve since asked Jessica if she can remember what happened that day, if she can remember what wish Trey made. And she just shrugs and says she can’t really recall, but she knows my husband had spent most of the time he was showing her that lamp covertly peeking at her HH tits, like he always did.

Evidently, at some point, the bastard had a brainwave. Wondered why he was just peeking at big tits he couldn’t touch, when he could use the lamp to create a pair he would always be allowed to play with.

While Jessica was out, getting coffee or tea or a beer or something, he must’ve closed his eyes, held the lamp, and wished that his wife Brooke had tits even bigger than Jessica’s (and that the rest of her body would get fixed up, while the lamp was at it).

When he saw that his wish had come true, he must’ve felt like the luckiest guy on Earth.

Poor, dumb bastard.

Well, you can imagine what happened next.

After my body changed like that, we had the most furious row. I remember screaming at him that he should have just dumped me if my body wasn’t good enough for him, instead of turning me into a freak, while he screamed back and said I looked better now, didn’t I, so what was the big deal?

I remember, too, that I burst into tears at one point and, instead of comforting me, he just picked up the lamp and waved it in front of me.

Brooke, I remember him sighing, shut up, OK? Just calm down or I’ll… I’ll…

You’ll what? I spat back. Make my boobs even bigger?

I laughed hollowly and waved at his crotch.

You could have at least fixed something else from being too small while you were at it!

At my words, Trey’s face went dark as a thundercloud.

Careful, Brooke… he whispered. I did you a favor, OK? One more ungrateful word out of your bitch face and I’ll use my last wish to turn you into our maid.

He waved the lamp threateningly, but I was too busy blinking at him to notice.

Our…?

Mine and Jessica’s. I remember oh-so clearly the way he said it, so casual, so cruel. My second wish. I made her attracted to me and to me only. She’ll never look at another person again. Never think of anything but me.

There was a knock at the door. I saw his face light up.

That’ll probably be her. Don’t go anywhere. If you’re good, I’ll use my last wish to give us a happy 3-way relationship. But if you dare annoy me again…

…it’s maid time for you, Brooke.

And, sneering, he went to open the door.

I don’t remember how long I sat there, trembling with rage, with fear, with all this pent up awfulness. I don’t recall how long I sat there as I heard Trey’s voice, indistinct, say something, and Jessica distantly laugh that wonderful, tinkly laugh of hers.

All I remember was that my head suddenly cleared, and I realized what I had to do.

Trey and Jessica were still standing in the doorway as I padded into the hall, my brand new boobs still on display, my sexy new hips rolling seductively with every step. The lamp was in one of Trey’s hands, the other resting on Jessica’s hip as they kissed.

As I entered, Trey leaned back from Jessica’s perfect lips, turned, and smiled at me.

Brooke. He said. Have you decided to…?

I’ve decided to be whatever you want me to be, I said, forcing up a smile that was ten thousand times more stunning on my reworked face. I-I don’t wanna be a maid, Trey. If you want to use your last wish to make all three of us happy, to make the two of us into your sexy wives…

…then so be it.

I’ll never forget the way he smiled at that. So smug. So patronizing. Like he’d finally ditched boring old monogamous Brooke for the dream bisexual, top-heavy wife he’d always secretly wanted.

OK, then. He said. In that case…

He let go of Jessica. Closed his eyes. Began rubbing the lamp.

I wish…

That was as far as he got.

The split-second his eyes closed, I’d grabbed one of his old props from the hallway table, the fist-sized mechanical clock from that failed steampunk movie. Now I hurled it with all my strength, letting out a scream as I threw the heavy object right at his cheating head.

There was a crack that set my teeth on edge. Trey’s eyes went wide. He staggered against the wall, dropped the lamp, his face white as a sheet as Jessica devotedly screamed his name.

You BITCH! He gasped. You bitch! I’ll turn you into a pig! I’ll…

But by then it was too late.

The moment he stumbled, I’d darted forwards, ignoring the painful way my enormous new boobs bounced as I ran, ran like my life depended on it.

I grabbed the lamp, pushed myself to my feet and backed away from my evil husband, holding the lamp before me like a weapon.

BROOKE! Trey shouted, blood running down his face. Don’t you dare! You’re my wife and I order you not to undo my-!

You think I’m gonna waste this last wish turning us all back? I laughed, hysterically. Fuck that. You’ve got your just desserts coming.

As Trey continued to scream at me and Jessica clung to him, her face white as the wish forced her to act completely into him, I calmly rubbed the lamp, an evil little grin of my own on my face.

You like big boobs, huh, Trey? THEN I WISH YOU WERE A PAIR!

There was a scream, from Trey or Jessica, I’m not sure. The lamp began to tremble in my hands. I heard someone charging towards me, yelling that they were gonna kill me…!

And then there was a blinding flash of light. And, when it finally vanished, our old lives had vanished with it.

*

So, that’s my story. Me, Brooke Klein, 18-year old supermodel, forever fated by magic to look like a beautiful teenager, forever fated by magic to have these gigantic tits sticking out in front of me.

Forever fated by magic to have a girlfriend who is obsessed with my boobs. Who can’t keep her eyes off them. Who is incapable of feeling attraction for anything but my breasts, and can barely go ten minutes without begging me to let her fondle them.

Because here’s the strangest part.

After I made my wish, Trey transformed into a pair of breasts, all right. But not just any tits.

For some reason, the lamp took his mind and his soul, and transported them into my new boobs. Turned him into the huge JJ things growing from my chest.

And he’s been trapped there ever since.

Oh, his other wishes are still working. I’m still a supermodel. Jessica remains utterly devoted to him, even if, in practical terms, that means she’s basically in love with my tits.

Yeah, we became lovers mainly so Jessica could get her hands – and her lips – onto my boobs. Like I said, she’s utterly obsessed with them. As Trey wished, she’s only really happy when she’s kissing him, or sucking him, or playing with his new form.

For my part, though, that works for me.

Somehow, the wish left me able to communicate with Trey mentally, even inside his new home. I know he’s still conscious inside my breasts, able to feel, even able to see.

But I also know that, no matter how much Jessica tweaks his nipples, or licks his areolas, or squeezes his flesh, his pleasure can only grow so much.

It’s me who gets the orgasms, who gets to have great sex with the woman of Trey’s dreams, while all he can do is listen in misery to me moaning, able to get aroused, but never able to experience relief.

What a perfect punishment, huh?

I’m also able to feel his humiliation at being a pair of big ripe titties. That’s why I dress the way I do, so he can see all the horny men leering down at him as he bounces and jiggles in my bra, so he can be completely aware of what he is and what people think of him now, and not do a damn thing about it.

Sometimes at night, when Jessica is fast asleep, I like to tease him. I go and stand in front of the mirror, when he can get a full view of my perfect body, and gently tweak my nipples and softly caress my breasts and let him watch the show.

And I ask him if he likes it, if he likes watching me play with my big new tits, if he likes watching me play with him… and I hear his answer, in a distant part of my brain. A male sobbing and wailing as he begs me to change him back, to find the lamp again and make everything normal.

Well, fat chance of that happening, Trey.

The lamp is gone. It vanished after I made my last – and only – wish, gone off to cause havoc in someone else’s life, no doubt. Trey keeps mentally trying to tell me that it would still work for Jessica if we found it and gave it to her and instructed her to wish what we wanted, but I’m not really all that bothered about looking.

After all, I’m rich now. I’m famous. I’ve got a wonderful girlfriend.

And I’ve got the best natural tits in the whole of LA.

I keep whispering to Trey that, one day, I’m going to go out, find a well-hung black man, and let him violate me. I’m going to let him come all over my big new boobies, and give him as many titwanks as he wants, all in the name of humiliating Trey.

I’m not really gonna do that, of course. It’d be humiliating for me, too, but Trey doesn’t know that. So I let him believe it could happen, any day now.

So there you are. If you ever see an impossibly hot 18-year old supermodel with a gravity-defying rack wandering around LA with a well-stacked girlfriend on one arm and a faint smile on her pretty face, do come up and say hi.

And make sure you stare down at these big tits of mine, and leer over them, and maybe even give them a naughty squeeze if you want.

Because there’s a nasty little creep trapped inside them, who used to think women’s bodies were his to do with as he pleased.

And he deserves everything that happens to him.

The End.

The Monthly TG Story: The Loneliest Girl in the Galaxy (11.5k words)

I’m not a fan of hard sci-fi, at least as a wri

Free sample story: Gender Swap Day

We've all got our favorites. As readers, as writers. The stories that stay with you. It's kinda like being a parent in some ways: deep down you know you shouldn't love one of your babies more, but you know what? You kinda secretly do. Heck, we all do.

So here it is. My little baby. The story I secretly love more than any other short I've ever written.

I wrote this for my blog about 9 months ago, as one of the free giveaways I occasionally do. I wasn't expecting much when I started. A few hours sat at the laptop. A quick tale. Something I would be pleased with for about a day and then forget about. To my surprise, I instead got a tale that keeps sneaking back up on me, time and time again, to remind me why I love it more than any of the others.

I'm not sure why I'm so smitten with Gender Swap Day. Maybe it's the simplicity of the story. Maybe it's the wish-fulfillment aspect. Maybe it's - whisper it - the happy ending. Whatever, I love my little baby. And now I'm introducing her to you, and hoping you feel the same way I do.

Gender Swap Day

Decades later, they’d celebrate the date when It happened.

There would be global parties, the kind that go on till the early hours and leave you drunk and lost, blearily trying to make your way home at 3am. Presidents would gather to shake hands and make speeches commemorating it all.

But at the time, things were very different. For those of us who were there, the Great Swap was terrifying.

I was in London when it happened. If I close my eyes and try, I can just about remember what I used to look like. Short, close-cropped blond hair. A square jaw. A young, muscular body.

In short, very different from how I look now.

I was in Britain as a student, doing some dumbass degree and trying to soak up as many British parties as possible. I’d been there for, like, 5 months and got pretty settled. I’d even had a British girlfriend for a while, a cute blonde called Sofia with a soft, pretty face and a curvy body, the sort guys like me used to go wild over.

Strange as it is to say now, I actually thought what happened was her fault. Like, at first. We ended on pretty bad terms. I kinda screwed around behind her back, and when It first happened, I panicked and worried that she’d found a genie or something, and made a cruel wish to get back at me.

Yeah, right. Like I was ever that important.

Still, at the time, it coulda been true. I was in class when It happened. Or rather, I was meant to be in class, but I’d wandered off to the restroom.

Yeah, I know. The biggest thing that has happened in human history and I basically missed it. No stories from me about the giant flash of green light everyone saw in the sky. No stories from me about turning to the people stood beside me and watching as they started to change…

Nah, if you want that stuff, you can go elsewhere. Trust me, there’s plenty of books on it. Me? I was just washing my hands and thinking about Sofia – again – when I suddenly felt It.

If you’re old enough, you probably remember It. Wasn’t nice, was it? That weird feeling that started in your gut, like you were about to be sick.

I remember even now that I doubled over the basin, just in case I was gonna spew. I heard later that the nausea wasn’t so bad for everyone, that it had some weird, genetic component to it. I felt worse than others.

But everyone felt what came next. When the sensation passed out your gut and into your skin.

The feeling that your entire body was starting to change.

If you didn’t live through it, you’ll have a hard time imagining It. Imaging how it felt to see your skin start twitching and rippling.

Imagining how it felt to have your bones suddenly start shifting and twisting.

Imagining how it felt to suddenly look up from the sink you were trying not to barf into, and find someone else’s face staring back at you.

OK, yeah, I know. It’s not really someone else’s face. It’s my face now, has been for most of my life. I’m so used to seeing its high cheekbones, tiny button nose and wide, innocent blue eyes that I barely even register them anymore.

But at the time…

Well. You can imagine how I felt. How panicked I was.

To my horror, I was clearly, visibly, starting to transform into a girl.

We’re used to the idea now. All those history books, those movies, the stories we tell our kids… If you’re young, you probably don’t see what the big deal was.

Lemme tell you, though. Right then, I felt like screaming. Or even crying.

Not that I’d have admitted it. One thing about being a man in those days was you weren’t meant to cry, even when bad shit happened. I remember being a kid and being told by my dad to man up after our dog, Chancer, died.

Compare that to now. Today, I’m the one who gets teary at stuff. The one who has to be held in her husband’s arms while these big, salty, girl-tears run down my cheeks.

I’m the one who buries her pretty little head against his broad, strong chest and whispers to him to hold me, like the silly girl I am…

Almost like it suits me to be a girl.

Not that I was thinking all this in the restroom. I was too busy shrieking as my entire body went crazy, too busy watching in the mirror as my male form disappeared forever.

I remember the weird itching in my scalp as my short hair suddenly became all long and flowing and shiny.

I remember the strange sensation of my bones rearranging: of my legs getting longer, my hips pushing out and my shoulders pulling in. I know some said it hurt, but it really didn’t for me. It just felt weird.

Lastly, I remember when my… y’know, my stuff changed. That heavy pressure in my chest, just before these pert little boobs of mine came bursting out. That sorta wobbly feel as my butt got fuller and rounder. And that feeling as my… my thing gave one last twitch and went rocketing back inside me.

I had to stop writing, just then. The idea that I used to have a… a dick – smaller than my husband’s and less thick, but still a dick – is just so fucking odd now. The idea that I used to pee standing up is just… gross.

When I have a bath, even now, I like to look down at my girl-body. Like to see the soft space between my legs and my breasts, not as ripe as they once were, but not too saggy yet. I like the fact that I pushed a kid outta that hole down there. I like the fact that it’s the perfect size for my husband’s thing.

Just think. If It had never happened, I’d never have known what any of that was like. I’d still be thinking with my cock, still thinking of girls as these weird things that needed to be conquered…

Anyways, back to my little restroom drama. After It was over, I’m sorry to say I did the clichéd thing and stared at myself in the mirror for what felt like forever.

I know, I know. But hear me out. I’d been so used to seeing a strong, handsome (I think I was handsome, or maybe I’m misremembering) and very male boy, and now there was this slender, willowy girl with an adorable face, shell shocked eyes and two boobies sticking out her chest, staring right back at me.

Maybe it’s no wonder I froze.

What else? I remember thinking that I couldn’t go back to class like this. I mean… what a dumb thing to think, huh? Even if It had just affected me, where else was I meant to go?

Luckily, It had affected way more than just me…

When I try to think back, the rest of the morning comes just in flashes, now. Frozen images. Snatches of sound.

The screams coming from the streets, as London’s citizens looked down at their new bodies in terror.

Pushing open the door to my classroom and seeing ten female faces gape back at me in horror, as the cute, big-boobed brunette wearing the same clothes as my male lecturer tried to restore order.

Everyone crowding around John’s phone when he gave a girly shriek, and watching in amazement as we realized it was global.

All across the world, beautiful women were blinking in shock, staring down at their formerly-male bodies and trying not to scream.

Newscasters in studios had started one sentence as sober, serious men, and finished it as stunning blondes with slender legs and fantastic tits.

Politicians had stood up in the Senate, and suddenly found themselves as dark-haired beauties with wide hips and a desperate desire to get pregnant.

Men who’d been groping women, mugging them, raping them, suddenly found that they were the tiny, helpless ones, at the mercy of big, strong men.

Coz It didn’t just affect us men, oh no.

At the same time we were squealing, and grabbing our new boobs in shock, the planet’s women were letting out shouts in deep, booming voices. Flexing their new biceps, feeling their stubble…

…and looking in wonder at the great, big things now swinging between their legs.

I might be wrong here, but as far as I know, no-one ever figured out why our genders were swapped in such an extreme way. No guy on Earth, no matter how old or fat or ugly, didn’t find himself trapped in the body of a stunning, supermodel girl. No woman didn’t find herself trapped as a handsome, muscular stud.

Oh, sure, there were differences. Some of us guys found ourselves with Double-H breasts and statuesque bimbo faces, while some of us were suddenly short girls with flat chests, short hair and androgynous features. The girls, too, found their new bodies ran the gamut from beefcakes with shaved heads, to tall guys with dark, floppy hair and slender frames.

But, still. No-one was what we used to call ugly, not anymore. Even now, with most of us approaching our 50s, we still look young and beautiful.

Like I say, it’s a mystery.

There’s not much more to tell. Well, I mean, there is on a global scale, for sure. The way the old clerics in those theocratic kingdoms suddenly found they were the ones being forced to wear burkas and forbidden to drive.

The way those guys who openly perved over women suddenly found themselves walking nervously down the street at night, their tote bags clutched in their dainty hands, trying to ignore the way heads turned to watch them pass, leering over their boobs and butts.

The way loud college bros, like me, suddenly found ourselves as the pretty girls on campus, no longer able to sleep around without being labeled sluts.

And here we get to the last little bit there is to tell amid all this madness. The end of my personal story.

The day I met Sofia.

It was a month after It happened that we bumped into each other. After a fortnight of open panic, the world was – reluctantly – settling back down to normal again. I mean, someone’s gotta go to work, and put out fires, and teach in schools, and keep the economy going, right?

I was still clinging to the hope that I’d get my boy-body back, eventually. I was showering with my eyes closed, trying not to look in mirrors, trying to avoid all evidence of what had happened to me.

And then I met him.

I mean, I didn’t realize he was Sofia at first. How could I? All I knew was that when my stupid heels gave out and I dropped my textbooks, he was there to pick them up for me. There with his broad shoulders, thick biceps and reassuring smile. With his shaved head and muscles that would’ve taken years of intensive gym training to build.

As he handed me back my shit, I remember my mouth going all dry. I think I even giggled, like some stupid little schoolgirl. Inside I was horrified. I didn’t want to be attracted to men! Especially not big, powerful studs like this guy!

But then he started talking to me, and I couldn’t help but talk back to him, playing with my hair as I did so, and, next thing I knew, I’d arranged my first date as a girl.

I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t nearly drop out. The whole week was spent with my boy brain screaming at me not to get romantically involved with a-a dude while my girl-body did her best to ignore it.

When the night came, I felt like I was going mad. I’d had to uncover my mirrors to get dressed up, and squeezing my new body into the fancy little dress I'd bought specially was uncomfortable in the extreme.

Not only did I feel like I was crossdressing, I felt like I was dressing up somebody else. I mean, this wasn’t my body!

As I added a last touch of lipstick in the mirror, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The girl looking back at me was gorgeous, but she wasn’t me. I couldn’t go out like this! It was ridiculous! I decided then and there to call my date and cancel and try and forget all about living life as a girl…

So, of course, I found myself half an hour later, sat opposite him in a restaurant, trying to ignore just how fucking horny the sight of his beefcake body was making me.

Jesus, am I glad I went on that date. It was just… just perfect, y’know?

Somehow, both knowing we were in the wrong bodies made the whole thing a lot easier. It was like we could talk about the weird feelings our new hormones kept forcing on us, knowing the other would understand.

Even when we finally figured out that he was Sofia and I was me, Harrison, it was still all cool. It was like, by switching gender, we’d been forgiven our sins. Like this was some fresh start, and the whole world was experiencing it with us.

When we left the restaurant it was sunset and London glistened with the last traces of that morning’s rain. And I did something I’d never expected to do, for as long as I lived.

Impulsively, I reached up and gently wrapped a slender arm round one of Sofia’s big, strong biceps. Felt his strength, his raw power. I remember resting my head on his shoulder and marveling that Sofia was now the tall, masculine one, and I was just the weak and helpless girl.

And I remember realizing, with a shameful little thrill, how good that felt.

So we hailed a taxi. And – somehow – found ourselves back at her apartment. And we went back to the room we’d screwed so many times in, only now it somehow felt different, even though it looked the same.

And we made love for the first time in our new bodies. I don’t wanna gross you out with the details, but I remember being shocked at how much pleasure my new form could feel. How being touched, like, anywhere by a guy who knew what he was doing would make me gasp and shriek like crazy. And Sofia knew what he was doing.

He could still remember being a girl himself.

Of course, all that’s a long time ago, now. All that crazy screwing, all that breathless exploration of one another’s bodies.

Today, we’re Simon and Harriet; an attractive, middle-aged couple living out in Surrey with our two beautiful daughters. And, like everyone else on Earth, we’ve almost forgotten what It was like. We’re used to our new lives. Happy.

Coz it’s not just us two who are cool with the changes. See, It didn’t just swap all our genders. It made all of us realize what life was like for one another. It made us see that ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ were meaningless, and that we were all just… well. People.

Oh, sure, there are some who push back against it. Those chicks who cut their hair off every morning, despite knowing it will magically grow back in 24 hours. Who put on suits and deliberately treat other girls like trash, openly letching over our butts and boobs even though we know their magically-altered minds only let them get turned on by men. The ones who keep talking about finding a cure, as if one could be found after all this time.

But most of us? We’re happy. We’re comfortable in our gender-swapped bodies, and we don’t want to go back. I mean, the idea of never again being able to lie in Simon’s arms as he gently penetrates me, me whimpering softly, trying to keep quiet in case we wake up the kids, is one that fills me with horror.

The idea of looking down one day, and seeing not my slender, curved body, but a hard, masculine one, is almost unimaginable.

So I’ll be at the celebrations tonight. I’ll be cheering and clapping as they make speeches and show archive footage of us all getting transformed like that. Wrapped up snug in Simon’s broad arms, a smile on my supermodel face, I’ll be watching.

And I’ll be thinking how glad I am that I got turned into a girl.

(Wanna see more stuff like this? Sign up! For only $1 a month, you'll get access to my 5k-10k word monthly TG story, which will never be published elsewere!)

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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This story was made possible with the contributions of my $3-plus Patrons:

Kim Madcock

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