“Welcome, Welcome!”

Awaiting their guests, the Count and Countess stand in the foyer of their castle-esque home with smiles uncontainable.

The butler—a hideously hunchbacked man whose visage is so disfigured as to discourage its regard for any lasting duration—opens the massive wooden portal. Six inches thick and no less than twelve feet high, it moves only with apparent strain, and each degree of aperture yields a cacophonous creak.

“Dear, you must see to it that the hinges get oiled! Why poor Sergei is positively struggling to allow our guests in!” 

“Yes, of course, I’ll take care of it first thing when I arise tomorrow.”

Bats swoop down through the open door into the moonlit night sky, causing the guests to duck reflexively as they advance through the stone entryway. 

“Don’t mind them,” the Count reassures. “They are like kids—just needing to go out and play.” His “are” is guttural and his pronunciation of consonants staccato, making for an accent not readily identifiable, but apparently foreign.

Four guests gather before the Count and Countess. A candle lit wrought-iron chandelier, hoisted by a heavy chain, hangs above them all, casting shadows against the walls: A theater of silhouette figures dances with each flame’s flicker.

Outside, the bats flit to and fro, visible against the rising moon, as Sergei proceeds to close the door.

Candle lit lanterns sconce the stone walls of a hallway behind the cavernous entryway. 

“Welcome, welcome!”

The Count’s words echo off the walls giving the sense that someone is behind him, before him, or surrounding them all, as he leers and licks his overbite. 

He hides his oversized eye teeth behind his lips, so as not to alarm those whom he invites for dinner. His practiced technique he developed studiously without ever using a mirror.

“I am your host, Count Daragul, and this is my wife, Deena, the Countess. We are most appreciative of your acceptance of our invitation, lovely neighbors.”

“Yes, indeed,” the Countess chimes in. “You are all so … how shall I say it? Delectable in your ensembles.”

“What my wife means to say is, you make for a most handsome entourage,” the Count hastily counters.

“Charmed, I’m sure,” says the Good Lady Willikers, as she extends her arm to the Count, who quite to her surprise, licks, rather than kisses, her hand.

She discreetly searches for a kerchief in her handbag as she continues, “Lord Willikers sends his regrets, as he has been under the weather for a spell.”

The spell worked then! Thinks the Countess, as she glances over her shoulder at the crystal ball on the entryway table.

“Please, pass on our best wishes for a quick recovery,” says the Count. “And whom have we here?”

“Allow me to present my eldest daughter, Nadia.”

“Nadia! Why, that is a quite popular name in my country, going back a thousand years.”

Nadia curtsies for the Count and Countess.

“My next eldest, Antoinette…”

“Will you let us eat cake?” jokes the Count, as he and the Countess exchange raised eyebrows upon seeing the protrusion of her voluptuous veins.

“I guess so,” says the nubile Antoinette, oblivious to both the reference and the extent of their gamely reification of her.

“And finally,” Lady Willikers concludes, “our only son Oliver. Had he been a girl as well, we would have named him Olivia.”

“An olive of a different ilk,” parries the Count.

“But no less edible,” adds the Countess.

“I must say, I am rather partial to olives, myself,” agrees Lady Willikers.

“Well come in, come in,” the Countess motions.

“Yes, please join us in the parlor for libations,” invites the Count, who ushers them down the hall.

Inside the parlor, Lady Willikers’ initial alarm at visible cobwebs is dispelled by Oliver’s boyish delight.

“Look Mumsy, the Halloween decorations are so realistic. Even that spider looks real!”

As if on cue, a large wolf spider scurries to the corner of its web and hides in a shadow.

A tabletop, formed from the cross-section of a colossal tree, beckons them with a punch bowl surrounded by glasses.

“What eclectic decor,” Lady Willikers says upon seeing it, adding, “It really is quite charming,” to clarify her diplomatic intent.

“It’s been in our family for a thousand years, maybe more. Have some sangria,” the Countess offers.

“It looks like blood!” Oliver shouts, gleeful at the notion. “Mumsy, may I?”

“If it’s being offered, then, of course, Oliver. I’m sure it’s not blood.”

“Please. Help yourselves,” the Countess hastens. “We made it for you.”

Oliver scoops a cup for himself, and drinks thirstily. It is more tepid than he anticipated and far more syrupy than he might have guessed. In fact, it does taste quite like blood, as he recalls the metallic sensation in his mouth having once sucked on a cut finger to stop the bleeding.

He wishes to exclaim, This is blood!, but his tongue sticks to the top of his mouth and his lips are pursed, glued together involuntarily. 

In response to his mother asking him if he likes it, he can only emit “Hmmm,” which she interprets as an affirmative response. 

Lady Willikers serves herself a glass then passes the ladle to Nadia, who fills her own glass, and, in turn, passes the ladle to Antoinette.

Before serving herself, Antoinette offers to serve the Countess, then the Count, both of whom decline. “We really make it for our guests,” the Countess demurs.

“I don’t want to fill up before the meal,” the Count explains.

Antoinette sips and immediately her tongue cleaves to the roof of her mouth. Suddenly, with horror in her eyes, she realizes that she and her family have been rendered mute. Each of them is in various stages of a soporific trance. 

“Antoinette, are you feeling parched? Perhaps you’d like some water. Join me in the kitchen,” the Countess commands. 

“Deena, please, you’ve outdone yourself already. Allow me to host our most voluptuous maiden,” the Count steps in front of the two of them, taking Antoinette by the hand.

Antoinette’s eyes widen and her carotid artery pulses visibly, inciting the Count to pull her forcibly from his wife’s grip.

“Please, Daragul, you’re being greedy!” The Countess chastises.

“But, Deena, dear, having had the least, she is still the ripest,” he argues, then cunningly whispers, “Don’t you want to deflower the boy?”

The Countess turns to look at Oliver, who remains standing, glassy-eyed in a sheer stupor.

Having distracted his wife, the Count yanks Antoinette off her feet and drags her from the parlor.

Still ambulatory, but addled by the elixir, Lady Willikers stumbles forward in an effort to follow her daughter. The tree trunk table moves with apparent weightlessness, impossibly blocking her progress.

Pounding the table at her inability to scream at the sight of Oliver and Antoinette being led away, she then turns to Nadia just in time to see her open eyes roll back into her head. She darts from the table in an effort to catch her fainting daughter’s body as it crumples to the floor. 

Pulling the alluring Antoinette into a room with a legless black table, suspended by chains hanging from the ceiling, and no chairs, Count Daragul hoists her onto the table. 

Sergei appears, as all good butlers do, without summons. Silently skillful, he secures Antoinette’s limbs: First ankles, then wrists, to assist his master with the meal in which he is about to partake. 

Antoinette squirms to no avail, as the Count says to her, “Oh, yes! The lovely ones who resist are the best! Pump that heart for me. It does wonders for the freshness and the flavor!” 

He sinks his teeth into her neck, puncturing precisely, two holes into the artery, each pulse emptying her lifeblood into his being, until he can drink no more.

Antoinette’s porcelain visage, drained of its rosy radiance, is white as bone china. Even her lips lack hue as the Count pulls back from her still body, licking his lips, from which her bright red blood trickles down his chin. 

Sergei hands the Count a clean, white cotton napkin, then departs the room. 

The Count holds it absentmindedly, still standing over motionless Antoinette. He does not move to wipe his mouth or dab his chin. 

The Countess arrives and chides him. “Feel better, Daragul? You’re like a boy who wishes to lick the plate after the meal. Wipe your mouth!”

Deena had her own morsel of a meal in the kitchen and left young Oliver to awaken to his new undead existence, though she had no need to bind his limbs, given his comparative stupor. Nor had she gotten the satisfaction of a racing pulse pouring forth, with accelerating contractions, the nectar she desires so desperately. On the contrary, the boy was a limp lover by comparison. That said, she did not doubt he would soon seek his mother’s milk in a new and different way. 

Hearing a clatter, the Count and Countess leave the dining room together for the foyer. 

As her hosts dined, Lady Willikers managed to traverse the tree trunk table, find her way into the entry hall, and pursue a misguided notion that she could escape. She was, of course, unaware of Sergei’s expertise in preventing unauthorized egress or ingress, so that even if she had opened the door, it would have given way to the wall of the drawn bridge.

Upon seeing the Lady in the front hall, Sergei reflexively releases the chains holding up the wrought iron chandelier, neatly imprisoning Lady Willikers within it, encircling her from torso to toes, trapped like a bird in a medieval cage.

The fall of the chandelier created the clatter and the downdraft extinguished the flames of the candles. The moon’s glimmer shining through slats between stones provides the only light to evidence Sergei’s predatory prowess.

As the Count and Countess arrive, Oliver, now ravenous, follows them into the foyer. 

“Help me, Oliver!” Lady Willikers calls out.

Oliver responds with reptilian alertness, moving towards her, somehow slithering into the wrought iron cage.

By the time the Lady sees his lifeless eyes and realizes what is happening, she is in no position to resist his advances towards her. 

Being unpracticed in the ways of the Count and Countess, Oliver seeks to pierce her well below the neckline, finding veins, rather than arteries, in the flesh of her mammaries. 

The Lady passes out and comes to, repeatedly, while the audience of the Count and Countess, and the periodically looming figure of Sergei behind them, watch silently in reverent awe.

“It’s always so special to see the first time for the recently initiated,” says the Countess to the Count, when Oliver has finished feeding.

“Which reminds me, we should check on our other dinner guests,” says the Count.

They look up to find the always attentive Sergei leading the still handcuffed Antoinette, now bearing the look of yearning hunger herself. They follow him into the parlor where he leads her to Nadia, just beginning to stir. 

Antoinette places her cuffed hands behind her sister’s neck and draws it to her mouth.  As Antoinette begins to feed, her lifeless lips turn crimson once again, while the draining Nadia turns lily white pale.

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The following dusk, Sergei lowers the drawbridge. Lord Willikers has come calling. 

“Welcome, welcome!” The Count invites him in.

The door creaks with each incremental movement, as Sergei brings it ajar.

“Dear, you really must lubricate the hinges for poor Sergei,” the Countess reminds him.

As Lord Willikers enters, four bats fly out, causing him to duck instinctively, 

“Just like children, needing to go out and play,” the Count explains dismissively.

Lord Willikers replies, cringing at the succession of shrieks the massive door emits as Sergei forces it closed behind him.

“Indeed, I suppose that is true…. In any case, I was just wondering…  if you might know … the whereabouts…  of my wife and children. I understood … they were here … for dinner last night. … When I finally recovered … from my illness just earlier.”

With a thump, the door finally closes. “They were nowhere to be found.”

“Come in, come in,” says the Countess, leading him into the parlor. “Would you like some sangria?”

THE END