The vampire was absolutely alone.  He lay upon the sacred bloodstained rock, watched the morning sun rise.  His last sacrificed long consumed, he had nothing left to eat. 

He re-tore the partially healed scar on the underside of his wrist and drank again.  The act made him feel dizzy and confused.

He glanced upward at the sun darting its rays through leafy branches.  The sun will heat up the sacred boulder later in the day, but for now it was in shadow.  The shadows cast can look like different shapes to his imagination.  Now these shadows of two crossed lines made his hands burn.

He rose and stumbled into the cool of the ocean.  He rubbed them in the sea until the sensation dissipated.  He turned to the horizon.  The vampire looked past the sharply jutting outcropping of jumbled rocks.  They split the ocean from his island home, where he was king of nothing.

The king made his way back to shore and the sacred rock.  His breathing intensified.

The vampire was a boy king, one whom was served by others.  Never once in his entire life had he to fend for himself.  The king never hunted.  He was always, simply, presented with prey. 

The king grew fat with the blood of his island.  No outsiders ever came until long after all was gone, their civilization perished.  He never saw any, save islanders similar to him.  He did not know of the outside world.  The king didn’t think the world any greater or deeper in meaning than what he saw and felt.  When he became king, following his father’s death, he did what he always did; he fed.

The last one, his very last subject, gave herself to him.  He drank her like she was the season’s first fruit instead of the last.  He never realized there wasn’t any more.  He only knew he was hungry right now and had been for a long time.  The overstretched skin of the king hung now in folds.  Like a tick leeched of its blood.

He lay back as the sun rose over him.  He was so cold.  He was tired.  He suckled on his wrist until it numbed.  He no longer had the strength to raise his other wrist to hungry lips.  Wouldn’t have mattered anyway; he had nothing left.  The king was dying.

He began to cry, this king, knowing what it meant to be absolutely alone.  He understood he was dying.  It was painful and there was none left to feed or comfort him.

The smell rose with the sun.  Heat renewed its baking of bodies throughout this idyllic garden.  It was more than the king could count.  More than the island predators and scavengers could readily consume.  More than the jungle could reclaim.

The sun reached apex and split the starved vampire’s skin.  The blackened husk separated itself from the wet fascia beneath.  The pain would have brought stark madness, but the vampire had died.  His people, their civilization, and the king all shared the same final hitching gasp.

Then there was nothing left.  Not even memories.