Cooking wasn't just a hobby of his. It was a need. Well, not a need in the same way it was for others. Now, he could easily steal a corpse from the morgue and devour it with his hands, but that taste was horrid. He had to hide the acrid taste with marinades and spices, right? He only ate it raw once when he couldn't control his hunger no more after he first turned. After he found out what he turned into.

Eesh. He shivered at the memory. Now wasn't the time. Now was the time to season and stir his meal. Ha. It was an average home-cooked meal, from any outsider's view. Some sort of beef and pork meatball he was shaping with his hands. But nope. It was Lindsey Douglas from down the street. And no, he didn't get it fresh. She was well over a month dead by the time he dug up her grave, cut off the corpse's legs, and hauled them home in his cooler. Not like he would ever kill. He didn't even want to do this, for hell's sake.

He was a ghoul. He had to eat dead human flesh. It had to be previously dead. He found that out about a year into this hell, taking an ear and gnawing on it. It was some corpse that he was about the embalm, and he got so sick he couldn't get out off the toilet for two straight days. Felt like food poisoning if he ate freshly-dead flesh.

Now, if he was a psychopath, he would've gone off the deep end after the little accident that landed him this... what? Gift? Curse? Even if he could lift the body weight of an elephant with one arm, it felt like a curse. He could kill. The thing that he became sorta made him into a killing machine. The strength, the lack of sleep he needed, the... everything of it. But he wouldn't even hurt a fly.

And he had the best job for this. A freakin' mortician. Yep. Pacgrave's local mortician ate the corpses he was supposed to throw in the cremator. And, yes, he hated it. That's why he ran from Texas to here. Thats why he never fell in love. He let life pass him by, day by day, surviving off of corpses, until...

Well, until his little woman ran into his life. Every beautiful inch of her. She didn't walk, she didn't strut his way into his heart. She may as well have put pedal to the metal and raced into his life. Cause after one night at Rumor's bar, he was hooked. Had to go there every Friday night after work just to see her again. They'd sit and talk on the cracking leather stools until the bartender would give last call, then go to his house and make sweet love until sunlight. She had a grip on his heart even before...

Before the announcement. The way she showed up to his door, sobbing like the grieving families in his funeral parlor would, and asking what she should do. The words "I'm pregnant and it's yours," silencing the house, probably the creatures in the woods stopped to listen in on his heavy breathing, his "What?" that followed. To see the tears that rimmed his eyes, to hear his heart beat so fast he started to shake.

Not because he wasn't happy. God, was he happy. He never dreamt of himself holding down a real woman like her, let alone starting a family with one.

But because of his... affliction. When he thought of him having a baby, he just knew his little angel would be a little fucking devil. Have the same curse he did. Maybe he would crave blood like a vampire at first, then move to human bodies. Fuck if he knew. All he knew was he panicked, total, complete fucking panic, of creating a new life.

But what choice was there? To lose this beautiful, wonderful, smart, funny woman? Or to start a life with her? One filled with gore and guts, sure, but a life. An actual life he avoided living for fifty-fucking-eight years.

So, no. He kept his trap shut and held her as she sobbed. He made a plan. He was all in now, too far in. Over his head. Cooking for himself before she came here to talk about the baby. Because sure, it had only been a month in, but he prayed to God every day to protect this baby from his curse. And after he was bit, he no longer believed in God. But he always held the thought that if that twisted bastard was out there, maybe feeding off corpses and not killin' would give him some good luck.

He finished the meatballs, sat himself down at his lonely little dinner table. He missed her. Every day. But asking her to move in meant her finding out what 'meat' he always had cut up in his fridge was.

Which, he should tell her, considering the future of their baby. But that meant she would run, didn't it? What crazy lady would stay with a man—a beast like him? One that feeds off the dead? One too old to be having children?

If it was anyone else but her, he'd be sure she would run. But as he took a bite of the Lindsey-meatball, silently hoping she's truly in a better place, he realized it would be her. She would stay.

Hopefully.