There’s an odd tug through my middle, a fuzzy static in my head. My heartbeat is erratic, each thud vibrating through my bones a match to thelub-dub, lub-dubinside the studio. My fingers caress the desk’s keypad, then…beep, beep, beep, beep.I’ve entered the code as though by rote. The drawer unlocks, and the fingers I don’t recognize as mine slowly slide it out until I can reach the back of the tray.
I don’t want to look at the syringe; I can’t take my eyes off of it.
My fingers are steady as they retrieve the syringe, slowly pulling it out of the drawer. A haze blankets my mind, the rational part of me screaming from somewhere far away. Straightening, I grip the syringe like it’s an extension of my hand and slowly walk over to the workbench.
The canvas pulses, the heartbeat louder, as though acknowledging my presence. My hand moves mechanically, like I’m a puppet being manipulated. I’m not in control, but I don’t resist it either. The syringe in my hand hovers over the painting, and the crimson liquid within gleams in my watch’s low light. The blood should be clotted after all this time, but the syringe is warm to the touch, as though I drew it moments ago.
“Beautiful,” I murmur, mesmerized by the scene, peculiarly fearless. Something within the painting catches my eye—the faintest of undulations—then, ariiiiiipsound like Velcro being pulled apart, ever so slowly.
I watch the subject’s mouth open, tentative. Her lips part, a hollow black slit forming between them. There’s a sigh, then a breath out, and the chill of it hits me in the face.
I know what she’s waiting for.
She wants to be fed, Tilly.
Without hesitation I lean over the painting and press the syringe’s plunger, releasing the thin stream of my blood between the subject’s lips. It disappears, sucked into the blackness, and the now-empty syringe drops from my hand.
“Thank you, Mathilde.”
The heart in the subject’s hand begins beating. Visibly, audibly beating.
Lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub…
At first that’s all I focus on. The small pink heart, the size of a large apple, glistens as it contracts in her hand. Over and over. But then I see another flicker above it—near the top of the canvas—and my gaze shifts.
At first I don’t understand what’s different, even though I know without a doubt that something is. It takes a second longer, and then I see it.
Her eyes are open.
I try to take in this impossibility—rejecting and then accepting it over and over so quickly I’m woozy from my seesawing thoughts.
Two unavoidable things percolate to the surface, speeding through my mind: one, the eyeswereclosed (I’m sure of it, because I remember the care I took with the eyelids, as though dealing with the thin skin on an actual human face); and two, these eyes are identical to my own—green, with a thick ring of gold around the pupil.
Did I do this?
Suddenly, I’m overwhelmed by the idea that I restored the subject’s eyes to match my own. Maybe I came up here earlier in the week, had an episode where I lost time, and somehow painted open eyes on top of the closed lids.
In a frenzy I swing my arm around the room, using my watch light to see if there are supplies left out to offer a clue. My own heart flutters; I’m sweating and shaking like I’m ill. But everything is where I left it the last time I was in here, a week ago. No used brushes or paints, no sign I’ve been in the studio. The only thing different is the empty syringe, now on the floor beside me.
I look back at the painting. I haven’t imagined it—the subject’s eyes are open, they are the same as my own, and there is no evidence I had anything to do with this.
Which means…which means…
A blink. Once, twice. A smile forms on the woman’s lips, the delicate paint-laden dragonfly wing I glued back on holding its shape.
I can’t pull air into my lungs. I can’t move.
The subject’s hand—the one with the elongated, grotesque fingers that rest on her chest, above the black hourglass hole—twitches. I watch as she pries the hand from her chest with a crackling sound, before extending it slowly toward me. The hand flips over so her palm faces up. Her bony pointer finger beckons me.
“Come here, Mathilde. Come closer.”
The baby shifts sharply inside me. “Oh!” I press a hand against my swollen, clenched abdomen.
There’s a drawing-in sensation, as though some invisible string is being tugged from my belly button. Then an overwhelming pressure outward. My breathing is as rapid as my heartbeat.
I take an involuntary step toward the painting, countering my strong desire to move farther away. The subject’s finger continues beckoning, and the wrenching in my core becomes unbearable. I have no control over my body. The baby inside me strains toward thesubject, to the point of excruciating pain from the pull of it. I can’t breathe.
“Momma?” Three tentative but rapid knocks on the studio door. “Are you in there?”
