"Portrait" - Dorian Gray (2020)

𝖕𝖔𝖗𝖙𝖗𝖆𝖎𝖙;

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He was beautiful — a genderless creature, woven in sharp edges and smooth valleys. Peach-soft skin covered a defined figure, narrow shoulders and a slender neck giving way to a sculpted chest, slim hips and a poise otherworldly.

His perfect body, oh how he 𝒹𝓇𝒶𝓅𝑒𝒹 it in the finest silks, the most luxurious velvets, fabric like liquid gold spilling over limb and torso. Although he rarely left his home, the statuesque beauty decorated his form every day, a figure entwined in jewels, exotic cashmere, with swipes of colour patterning his face.

𝓐𝓷𝓭 𝔀𝓱𝓪𝓽 𝓪 𝓯𝓪𝓬𝓮 𝓲𝓽 𝔀𝓪𝓼.

A squared jaw presented full, pink lips. A nose, as if sculpted from marble, sat perfectly central, surrounded by high, defined cheekbones. Almond-shaped eyes bore midnight black irises, and each lay ringed by a dense bushel of long, dark eyelashes. Angular, thick eyebrows, delicate shell-like ears; every inch of the handsome youth was perfect. Atop his head, sat a plentiful bounty of wavy, pitch hair, a veritable mane carved expertly into short sides and an intentional, deliberate, luxuriant mess.

Although a captivating experience to behold, the people of the town knew that the magnificent entity denied all attempts at photographs. His visage would never be captured on film, nor digital, and even pencil sketches had been expressly forbidden. It seemed almost cruel, to the masses, that he would deny them such simple pleasure as capturing their own piece of his arresting appearance.

But, deep in the dusty basement of his home, propped between decade-aged wine and artefacts ancient, laid precisely that.

A piece of him, captured in gouache and edged in a gilded frame.

Smears of paint made up a countenance quite different. The peaks of his defined cheekbones shattered into cracked edges. His full, pink lips stained a miserable grey, dry and contorted into a fierce sneer. His statuesque nose mashed flat, bruised and broken. The forest of lashes had all but departed, instead replaced with sagging, charcoal bags, and each sparkling eye instead scowled in permanent disdain ⁣—

— 𝔄 𝔫𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱𝔪𝔞𝔯𝔦𝔰𝔥 𝔳𝔦𝔰𝔦𝔬𝔫 𝔬𝔣 𝔇𝔬𝔯𝔦𝔞𝔫 𝔊𝔯𝔞𝔶.⁣

Originally written and shared as part of Verbuary 2020: https://tinyurl.com/2ymc5pw4