“You have to invite me in,” a high, clean voice called into the apartment.

Clutching the neck of her lavender silk robe, Rosemary tiptoed to the screen door. Its pattern spliced her visitor’s form into pieces, fragments of the stranger who had accosted her in the alleyway the night before with undeniable appeal and impossible promises. She reached for the doorknob, her hand neither hesitating nor quivering as it neared the lock. The swing of the door forced him to take a step back; her porch light transformed him into a slender, black silhouette.

He entered the apartment brazenly, moving past her and stopping in her living room where he perused its contents: a red sofa; the two tall bookcases stuffed with romance novels; the mahogany coffee table; the television, stereo, and DVD player perfectly placed in an entertainment center; the three pictures that hung on her wall: one of her deceased parents, one taken at the 40th birthday party thrown by her co-workers, and one of herself.

Closing the door, Rosemary said, “You know I’m old enough to be your mother.” He laughed, shook his head, and jammed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. The gesture elongated his thin body for an instant. She edged into the apartment, clutching her bathrobe even tighter. Her visitor faced her, the corner of his mouth lifted, and she saw his pupils pulse and expand within the hazel of his eyes. Starting with his silky black hair, her fingers trailed down his luminous cheek, and settled on his throat. She wondered if he truly was a vampire.

When she first saw him last night in the alley behind her apartment building, she immediately detected his uniqueness. She had just tossed her recycling into the purple bin. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw something slink from out of the shadows, and for a moment, she thought it was a cat. But then the movement headed for her, and she turned to face it head on. A young man moved slowly, but purposefully toward her; she wondered if she had been targeted for an assault. She asked him if she could help him; he said that he was there to help her.

But now, she thought she felt a pulse, a beat, beneath his cold skin.

The vampire looked down at her fingertips pressed against his skin, and folded his bony, cold hands over hers. “The flow of blood,” he said simply. “I fed before coming here.”

Seizing the back of her neck, he held her thin white lips very close to his plump pink ones. Rosemary ran her thumb over his long eyelashes, over his ample, red mouth, over the hard line of his jaw. Pressing her hand against his chest, Rosemary repeated what he had said to her in the alleyway: “No heartbeat.”

“No pulse,” he finished. He ran his tongue over his unusually long canines. “But I can make you happy.”

“So you promised.”

He began nibbling on her lips until she opened her mouth. Catching her bottom lip between his teeth, he bit down. The pain set off bursts of light behind her closed eyes, but Rosemary struggled to hide her resistance. His tongue slid into her mouth, lapping up the blood that now flooded it. Suddenly he pulled back, slurping and swallowing.

Grasping Rosemary by the waist, he crushed her against him. She felt her soft, weathered flesh give against his cold, hard body. Tracing the tips of his sharpened fingernails down her neck, he paused at her collarbone and pierced the skin just above it. His eyes flashed as her blood trickled and, leaning over, he closed his lips around the wound and sucked. Rosemary grabbed his shoulders as her knees buckled; he lowered her to the ground.

Staring down into her face, he smiled. His fingers gently brushed the lines stemming from the corners of her blue eyes. Taking a handful of her brown hair, he studied it. She thought of the fine weeds of grey sprouting at her temples. “The signs of life: so revealing,” he said.

“What do they reveal?” Rosemary said.

“Pain,” he said simply. “Loneliness.”

Easy answers; reliable guesses. Yes, Rosemary felt pain when her parents died and loneliness when she had no family to turn to. She also felt pain after each of her miscarriages, and loneliness when her husband refused to have a barren wife. But that legacy could not be carried by flaws of the skin. No one would stare down into her coffin and read the lines on her face, trying to find a story within the creases. They would simply pity and forget because there would be no one there to remind them.

“I will make this all disappear,” he whispered, gliding his fingertips over her face.

He peeled back her lavender robe and studied her nudity. Heat swarmed up her body and a fire flamed in her cheeks. His nails trailed all over, piercing the soft tissue of her breasts, stomach, thighs. He’d watch the blood for a moment, then drink. At first, she locked her shimmering eyes on the ceiling, riding the waves of adrenaline that the pain brought her. After a few moments, individual pricks blended into a rippling warm hum that burned her skin. Then she found herself watching him: his lips dragging over her skin; his tongue lapping up streams of blood. Strange that blood, the sign of life, flowed from her body. Strange that she could nourish another.

When his face appeared above hers again, blood trickled down his chin. Closing his mouth around his own wrist, he bit down. He said, “I can make it so that you’ll never die. You will be immune to all human suffering. Your skin will smooth and soften. Regret will be a memory, because you will have all the time you need to fulfill all of your desires.”

A red drop splashed onto her face and rolled over her cheek. She pursed her lips together to keep it out of her mouth.

“But you must sacrifice your identity,” he said. “You must learn to live in the shadows, unknown to anyone... human, if you wish to survive.”

Another drop struck her cheek, and Rosemary blinked. Slowly lifting her hand to her face, she wiped the blood away. “I don’t want to live forever in the shadows. I’ve lived there long enough.”

The vampire blinked and drew back his bloody wrist. “Then why did you invite me in if not for the gift of immortality?”

“I don’t want the immortality you claim you can offer me,” she said. “I want the kind of immortality any monster can give me. Kill me, and make it horrible.”

“I will kill you,” he said. “Then I will resurrect you to a new life.”

“I don’t want a new life. I want my blood on the walls...” she murmured, closing her eyes. “I want young police officers screaming ‘Oh my God,’ when they walk in here. I want detectives to stay up late at night, plagued by the violence of my death and their inability to find my killer.” There would be journalists digging into and publishing the details of her life. Documentaries would be made; true crime books would be written. Photos would be taken and splashed across the Internet. The significance of her death would elevate the insignificance of her life into something profound. Her death could be her only legacy.

“I want someone... someone to remember me,” she said. Opening her eyes, she stared into the vampire’s face.

“Very well,” he answered. He reared up, his nails punctured through the thin layers of flesh between her breasts, hooked onto bone, and tore her chest open.