The Model

His hand was starting to hurt.

His wrist jerked as he dragged the pencil across the page in a quick, arched line. This was the curve of her cheek. Soft. He shifted his hand slightly to sketch out the gentle line of her nose and the swoop of her Cupid's bow. Her lips came next, lightly shaded graphite on paper, but in his mind they were full and pink and tasted like nothing at all. They were slightly parted, those lips, and he could see the white pearls of her teeth laying as bright beacons in the darkness beyond. A lock of curled hair clung to her lips, but it did not stir with breath. She was a very good model, holding so still so that he could draw her for hours and hours.

All around him lay sketches and half-finished drawings, scattered in every direction, some of them drenched with blood.

He had told her. He told her over and over to hold still. Did she not understand how intricate the human form was? Did she not understand that even a slight movement from his precious model could ruin everything? But she knew now. Now she was being very, very good.

He flexed his tired hand and moved his attention to his portrait's brow. Fine, gentle eyebrows, with a perfectly delicate line of blood going from her hairline to the bridge of her nose. That chunk of missing flesh at her temple would add some wonderful variation to the drawing, and those perfect Pollack-like spatters of deep red created a beautiful pattern of chaos. Oh, she was wonderful.

And finally, he came to her eyes. The window to the soul, they say. But hers were now windows to the inside of her head. He giggled a little at his own sense of humour. her eye sockets gaped like hungry mouths, but that was alright. The splendour of her exposed anatomy was far more pleasing than her set of baby blues ever were. With hard, feverish motions, he shaded in the pulpy voids and his heart burst with joy to see what a truly ecstatic beauty they had created together.

He licked the sweat from his upper lip and turned his easel to face her.

"You see?" he asked her, giddy with the thrills of destruction and creation

"You see what we've made?"

The model, basking in a pool of blood, still motionless at his command, said nothing.