Baz
I am better than this.
Stronger than this.
Hell, I’m more of a feminist than this.
But Dorian, Dorian, Dorian threads his way into my mind as I lie on too-hot pillows, alone in my room.
When I close my eyes, I see his long fingers encircling the crystal tumbler. I see his lean, half-naked body curved against the wall of my bathroom. I see his perfect lips parting to accept the cigarette, sucking, pursing, then releasing a swirl of smoke.
I see the angled tendons of his throat, the shadows along his collarbones. The neat line of his nose. The sharp corner of his jaw.
And his eyes, like the ocean iced over, turbulent beneath a facade of apathetic calm.
He could cosplay Howl fucking Pendragon, or Alucard fromCastlevania. I’d like to paint him as both of them.
Normally when I’m obsessed with images, I simply draw them. I birth them onto canvas, paper, or a digital screen, and there’s relief in the process—a purging. I can rest afterward.
There’s no relief this time, because I can’t capture Dorian that way. Even if my vow permitted it, I couldn’t draw him while he’s absent. That could result in a distorted capture of his soul…I think. My mother never told me what happens if you draw someone from memory while their soul is already captured in a portrait. I don’t dare try it.
The one time she succeeded in reversing a soul capture, she coated the subject’s portrait with their own blood and hers, tracing every line, then filling in the spaces between, little by little. And while she worked, she wept, mentally and emotionally disconnecting herself from that person, piece by piece. She said the severing of those connections caused excruciating pain for her and the subject, and the process took hours. But when it was done, her subject could feel that it had worked. They were disconnected from the link Dorian mentioned—the tether between them and the painting.
My mother never saw them again, and she never told me who it was. When she spoke of it, I could tell she still hadn’t forgiven herself for putting them at risk. Just like she never forgave me for Dad.
I can’t sleep. The comforting warmth of the drink Lloyd made me has worn off, and my mind is bright and buzzing. When I’m in this state, only one thing will fix it.
If I can’t paint Dorian himself, I can paint things that remind me of him.
I lunge out of bed, my foot landing on something soft. Thankfully I manage to stop myself from putting my full weight down, but Screwtape yowls anyway. Of course, the one time he ventures close to me at night, Istepon him. Just my fucking luck.
Swearing and apologizing under my breath, I stumble to the tiny second bedroom where I keep extra painting supplies, some canvas and paper, and all the boxes and wrapping materials forshipping out any paintings people buy from my online shop. The shop is part of my website—a small, poorly constructed, barely visible part. I really need to take the time to figure out how it make it better.
But not now.
Right now, I will paint all the things that arenotDorian and yetare.
A skeleton hand, poised like his, clutching a crystal goblet rimmed with flies.
A pair of hills, the exact shape of his upper lip, overlooking a bay the color of his eyes.
Collarbones like his, but with a more feminine shape, with black moths perched along them.
Swirls of pale hair like his, but longer, vomiting out of a girl’s silent, screaming throat.
The last two are black-and-white sketches on the largest sheets of paper I have, scrawled with choking, rigid, wild, orgasmic intensity.
Then I paint a bicep—not Dorian’s, I tell myself, not his—with the skin curling back to expose a curve of glistening red muscle, striated with white tendons. I paint a corrosive black rot creeping onto that beautiful living red, threading it with dark veins of death.
I draw a random mouth—not Dorian’s—the lit end of a cigarette pressing onto the full lower lip, searing, scorching. I paint until I can practically hear the hiss and crackle of the burning skin.
And then I step back, my hand trembling, and I breathe.
The little workroom is a mess. My eyes feel swollen, and they sting from the strain of painting without enough light. My mouth is cotton-dry, my tongue thick with thirst. I have to pee so badly I whimper.
But I can breathe. And I’m tired. Tired enough to rest, I think.
I stumble into the bathroom, take a piss, and gulp water from the faucet. Then I stagger to my bed and collapse straight into a leaden sleep.
