Highlights

“I was told you could actually watch the light leave a person’s eyes. It’s not just a thing said by angry hitmen in books and stuff; you can see it. I’ve always wanted to.

“It was my art teacher, actually. I never was very good at painting eyes. I could get the shape and the texture. I never painted eyelids, that was something I didn’t even realise… but for some reason the eyes never looked lifelike. Not like the rest of my work. They didn’t pop, that’s what he said. And you know the reason was…” She leaned close, widening her eyes as she circled her iris with her pinky. “Highlights. It was as simple as that.

“Eyes are wet. Humans in general are very wet, but eyes need to be especially so to stay clean and healthy. Lubricated. It’s why you blink so much. It’s why the fact that I don’t scares you. And because they’re wet, they reflect the tiniest pinpricks of light. If you render those highlights, your eyes will look so real you won’t believe. It’s funny, how tiny differences like that can have such an impact.”

Taking another drink, long, throat pulsing gently with each heavy swallow, she sat back and soothed her stomach with an absentminded massage. “But as I was saying; When someone dies, they stop blinking altogether. The...the layer at the front, the retina? dries and dulls, I guess as the moisture evaporates. The ‘light’ that leaves your eyes isn’t some mystical ‘I can see your soul leaving’ crap. You’re just drying up. The lights in the room are having a harder time reflecting off a dry surface, and because of it you look dead.”

His lips came together and parted over and over when she pulled away, sat her plump backside on the pillow next to his head. “P…pl…p…”

“Shhhhhhhshshshshh,” she hissed between hiccupy burps. “Let it happen. Let your heart still. I can hear it struggling.”

Breath wheezed pathetically. It seemed to rasp on the inside of his dying lungs, trying to seize oxygen to fuel a body that had no further need for it. His vision blurred. His eyelids flickered, and he tried to sleep.

“No!” she growled, “nonono. I want to watch you die!” Clambering atop him, she let her blood-gorged belly jiggle and slosh on his chest. A person contains enough to sate at least five vampires. She had devoured everything on her own. With her sharp fingernails, she dug into his face and levered the flaps open. He thrashed, but she was much to heavy and he was much too weak.

Creaking and irreverent, loose air rumbled in her belly. She tracked it all the way up her throat with little clenching muscles in her stomach before, “BruUuuUuuuuurrrk,” rippled in a long note between her lips. It left them moist and pouting. They stayed that way as she held his eyes unwillingly open.

The minutes ticked past agonizingly. The gash at his throat slowed, but would never seal. He stopped seeing her. She was only a dark shape, impish and translucent. His brain hurt until, finally, it clicked off and he died.

And as those highlights faded, a stray drop of blood she hadn’t lapped up pooled and fell from the corner of her mouth. It was such a small thing, and yet it splashed and spread across his cornea, clouding it with highlights one last time.