A Father's Wish

>Scouting out a new place for perspective prey.
>Find a promising aging male, lives alone, the wife left him.
>My instincts scream at me. This is definitely the guy I'm going to drain.
>Disguise myself as a female and follow him into a bar one night, planning to try to seduce him.
>After a couple drinks he starts going on about a son he used to have.
>The barman starts giving him shit, tells him to shut up. According to him he comes in here almost every night. He always talks about the kid.
>Change plans. Do a little more digging.
>Turn into this guys kid based on townsfolk description of the guy.
>Show up on dads doorstep out of the blue.
>He's overjoyed to see me. We talk about the last time we ever saw each other.
>One of my more difficult performances.
>He buys it.
>Apparently we had a fight, and I left. No one has seen me since then.
>Good.
>Go ahead with the plan.
>Things go as they usually do. He doesn't go out very much, and I almost never leave the house.
>He doesn't have friends.
>He tells me he lost them when he started drinking.
>But that's okay, he says. He doesn't need them anymore.
>Very good.
>Aside from the first encounter, this ends up being the easiest gig I've ever done.
>Have a good twelve years sucking this guys energy.
>He doesn't really move around anymore. He's going to croak soon.
>It's a shame, I'm going to miss things being this simple.
>For some reason I feel like I should see him off before wrapping up and moving on.
>Stick around for another two years as he withers and grows sick, even though he isn't really giving me much anymore.
>One morning he calls for me from his bed.
>Go to him.
>He tells me that his son has been dead for over twenty years.
>Play it cool. I tell him that he's just delusional, it must be the drugs that he's on.
>He says that his son was more or less a prick who cut off all contact with him after he grew up, and that after he left, the next time he saw him was in an open coffin at his funeral.
>I shut up.
>He tells me that there isn't a day that goes by where he doesn't think about where he went wrong.
>So, after his wife left, he eventually came up with his own fantasy world, where his life played out exactly how he dreamed it. Just to keep him going.
>Then, I showed up, and he just thought I was just a part of it too.
>Until that time four years ago where I tried to work on my character a bit, and told him I missed mom.
>Apparently he knew right then and there that I wasn't really his son.
>He wasn't disgusted, frightened, or angry with me when he found out. He was just happy someone granted him his wish for him in his last days.
>Something overcomes me, and I ask if it was alright if I still called him dad.

He said, "Yes son."

And then he died.

And left a little love left for me.

For some reason, I don't think I could ever bring myself to eat it.