Dinner always strolls by the graveyard gates at about 8 in the evening when the moon is full and the night sky dances with stars. I want to reach through the gates, grab her brown hair and broom figure, and carry her back to my corner of the mausoleum, but I know better. If I bring some for me, I have to bring her back to share, and I’m not sure I want to do that. She’s mine.

I’d rather do it this way. Follow her down the suburban streets of this middle American town with lampposts wrapped in blue, green, and red Christmas lights year-round, magnificent in the summer as they are in the winter. She walks home with her friends, too distracted to notice that I’m here. I have a suit and tie on anyway, and my curls wave in the wind as I walk like I’m a well todo man out for an evening on a ritual around the neighborhood.

One by one, her friends stop at houses as they walk down the sidewalk, turning into their white picket fences and lattice gates made to keep the dogs in. As I pass, the dogs are confused at my presence. I guess it’s my heart. They whine, heads tilted. Fine with me. I hate barking dogs.

Finally, she parts from her last few friends, waving goodbye as they walk on. I stop as they disappear into the distance and stare at her residence. A two story blue house with a staircase leading to the main door, a well grown oak on the right that reaches up to a few windows on the second floor. The yellow lights of the house emanate through the windows.

I jump into the tree and lay against the high trunk, hidden by leafy branches that wave in the breeze of the evening. Through a window, I see an old woman in a bed with a heart monitor and an IV drip. Her hair white as freshly fallen snow, in a blue night gown under flowery bed covers. And so I stare. A snack perhaps? Best to stay on task. Old blood is close to dead blood, and anyone who’s anyone knows what that would do to me.

There she is. She’s entered the old women’s room with a tray of a microwaved meal. So modern. I guess she cares for the lady. Too bad for you, grandma. Christ, I’m probably old enough to be the elder woman’s grandfather. Never bothered me in the past. She leaves the room.

I slip from the branch down to a door on the side of the house with a window. A kitchen laden with a blender, dishwasher… all the essentials. I see her coming back down with the tray. She puts it in the sink and turns to leave. I knock on the window and hide beside the door.

I can sense her walking back to the door. Like the naive child she is, she opens the door and steps outside with a chef’s knife. And this is where I stand before her and say, “Evening, my darling. Careful not to scream. You might give grandma a heart attack.”

Much to her credit, she stares at me for a moment, then plunges the knife into my stomach. Sad for her, I pull it out and hold it back handed. “Never mind, you can scream. It might be your only hope.”

She backs into the house as I encroach upon her. The house rule is a lie made by the superstitious. She runs through the kitchen and through the hallway. I follow her as she runs up the red carpet staircase. I find her in the old lady’s room. She sees me in the door frame, red dripping from my suit.

And that’s where I see the old lady again. Do I really wish to part a young girl and her grandmother as I was parted from my family? And so, I use the oldest of Dracula’s tricks and turn into mist, creeping through the room, over the two mortals. Through the cracks in the room’s window, I make my escape back onto the branch outside. No. I don’t wish to take her as I was taken.

Nearly now, I will take her soon. I will wait for her grandmother to pass, and as sure as she stabbed me in stomach, I will make her my dinner, and god, if she stabs me again, maybe my wife.