She was dressed in white, wearing an old fashioned dress far too fancy for an evening alone in a small restaurant like ours. Her wide-brimmed hat was adorned with lilies, and she refused to take it off, leaving half of her face hidden in its shadow. Nobody had noticed her come in. It was as if she had just materialized into her chair.

She had chosen to sit all the way in the back at one of our least favorite tables. The lighting didn’t properly reach this part of the room, leaving it in a state of perpetual darkness. People generally avoided sitting here. She didn’t seem to mind. There were lots of other free tables, but she didn’t make a move for any of them. She barely moved at all in fact. She didn’t wave, or call out for somebody to serve her. She just sat there - silent, and motionless.

My co-worker was already busy waiting on a few tables, which meant that the woman in white was my responsibility. I approached her, carrying a menu, and a tray of napkins in one hand, and a glass jar containing a tealight in the other. Her head tracked my movement as I weaved past a bunch of empty tables. I forced a smile onto my face.

“Hello. Glad to have you as our guest. Can I get you something to drink while you look through our menu?” I felt a growing sense of unease as I rattled down my standard greeting. Something was very off about this woman.

Her dress was not the pristine white it had seemed from a distance. Large yellowish stains littered the fabric, as if it had been left lying in a damp place for a long time. The long strands of her straight black hair were of uneven length, and stuck together in a strange way. The sight evoked an unpleasant memory. Once upon a time, when I was a kid, I had gotten a bad case of head lice. My hair had looked exactly like that back then.

Even more unsettling than all of that was her smell - a dense cloying scent - intense and artificial - the smell of flowers layered on so thickly that it bit my nostrils. It smelled as if she had dumped an entire bottle of perfume over her body, and even that couldn’t completely hide the underlying moldy odor. Breathing it all in nearly made me gag. Somehow I managed to keep my composure.

“I can highly recommend our fresh carp today,” I said, while positioning the menu and the napkins in front of her. “Or the mushroom-potato casserole if you’re looking for a vegan option.” I hastily grabbed the glass jar to light up the candle inside. The faster I was done here, the quicker I could get away.

“I already know what I want.” Her voice was raw and deep. By now the candle was burning. I reached for my little notebook, and turned back towards her. My body froze.

The light of the candle hadn’t dispelled the creepy atmosphere surrounding the woman. It had made it worse. Now I could see the unnatural stillness of her face. There was not a single twitch of a muscle, no wrinkling of the skin, no rising of her cheek bones - nothing. Her features would have been stunningly beautiful otherwise, but this lack of motion made her look uncanny and disturbing. She didn’t seem like a person. She seemed like something else entirely.

The candlelight had also done nothing to drive away the shadow hiding her upper face. It just made the darkness stand out even more. The fire was reflected back from her eyes, and they suddenly sparked up within the darkness - two glowing orbs fixated right on me - unblinking and merciless.

“I already know what I want,” she said again, and I noticed that I had just been staring at her for the last few seconds. I swallowed, and forced myself to look down onto my notebook.

“That’s great,” I said, my voice suddenly hoarse. “What can I get you?”

“Sit with me,” she said.

“What?” - I looked up, the tip of my pen still resting on my notebook. Her head turned towards the chair on the opposite side of the table, then back towards me.

“Such a warm and pretty thing,” she said. “Come sit with me.”

“Uhm…” I struggled to keep the neutral smile on my face. A clenching pressure began building up within my bowels, as if some invisible hand had pushed into my abdomen, and was now squeezing down on my innards. “S-sorry, but I’m in the middle of work. I’m afraid I can’t just sit with you. I’d be happy to get you your order though - or anything else you might need.”

“Come sit with me,” she repeated, and just as she spoke something suddenly moved on her face. It was minuscule, but it stood out among the unnatural stillness of her features. The left side of her nose bulged a little. Something thin and black poked out with a little twitch. I thought it was a hair at first, but then it twitched again, and it grew longer and wider, and then…

A big blowfly emerged from her nostril.

It came to rest above her upper lip, rubbing its hindlegs over its wings. She didn’t react at all. After a few seconds the fly lifted off, circled around the flickering candle twice, then headed towards the kitchen entrance. I stood there frozen, my mind reeling from what I had just witnessed.

“Come sit with me,” the woman repeated a third time, and I stumbled away from her.

“I - sorry… I just… - need to work -” I gestured towards the room with a slightly panicked movement. “Lots of other table to wait on - I just… I need to… Just call me if you’ve decided on your order - uhm -...”

I never found a way to properly finish my stuttering speech. I just turned away mid-sentence, and hurried back towards the well-lit sections of the room. Her stare burned into the back of my neck, but she didn’t stop me. She also didn’t call me back all evening. At some point I noticed that she had vanished from the table. Nobody had seen her come in, and nobody had seen her leave either.

The tension within me began to seep away. My body allowed itself to relax. It had been a creepy encounter, but nothing actually bad had happened. Now it was over. It’d probably make for a good story to tell at a party.

My workday came to a close. The last guests left. We cleaned up, and said our good-byes for the night. It was just past 1am when I finally got home.

I kicked off my shoes, rubbed my aching feet, and headed to the kitchen to make myself a little bedtime snack. I was in the middle of rummaging through one of the pantry lockers, when the lightbulb above me suddenly blew. For a short moment I stood in the darkness. Then a candle flame whisked to life behind me. I froze in horror.

She was still dressed in white, now sitting at my kitchen table, hands folded in her lap. The menu of our restaurant was lying next to her, the tray of napkins right beside it. The small glass jar holding the tea light was positioned at the center of the table.

“No more work,” she said. “No other tables to wait on. Now you can sit with me. Such a warm and pretty thing. Come and sit with me.”

I tried to say something, but the sudden crushing tension of my fear squeezed my throat tight. The only sound coming out of my mouth was a feeble choking whimper.

“Sit with me!” A forceful note crept into her voice and she leaned forward. I shoved myself away.

Her head abruptly jerked to the side with a series of twitches. Something squirmed within the shadow beneath her hat. The silhouette of a small wriggling body began emerging from her ear, until a final violent twitch of knocked it free. The thing tumbled down, hit her shoulder, and landed right in front of her. It was a huge black cockroach.

The insect lay on its back, frantically kicking its legs to get upright. It looked just as panicked and disoriented as I felt myself. The woman looked at it for a moment, then swooped down. She extended her tongue - a blackish and bloated thing - and licked across the tabletop, scooping up the roach. A single leg still stuck out from between her lips when she pulled back. There was a faint crunching sound. She swallowed.

“Sit with me. I will eat, and when I am finished we can go to my place,” she said “Won’t that be wonderful? Come sit with me. Sit with me! Sit with me!”

She raised one hand, beckoning me to step closer. Her nails were broken and chipped, with something dark clinging beneath them. Her arm stretched towards me. I should have been far out of her reach, but just as the extended limb seemed to have reached its limits, it began to grow longer, inching closer and closer, her fingers clawing through the air.

I scrambled backwards - or I tried at least, because I was already forced flat against the wall. There was nowhere to retreat. The woman was sitting between me and the only door. The only other exit was the window to my back - a five story drop onto asphalt pavement.

“Sit with me,” the woman said. “Sit with me. Sit with me. Sit with me. Sit…” - And her hand stretched closer and closer, the faint touch of her long broken nails already brushing against the front of my shirt. I tried to move, or to think, or to do anything, but I was completely frozen, and her hand came even closer, and my mouth snapped open and shut, struggling to scream for help, or to beg for mercy, to make any sound at all…

And then I managed to squeeze out one lone sentence. It was a sentence ingrained into me after years of working in the food service industry, an empty automatic response that I didn’t even have to think about. That was probably the only reason my mind was able to utter it at all.

“D-did you make a reservation?” - It was a ridiculous thing to say. The woman hesitated. She slowly pulled her hand back into her lap.

“No reservation”

“W-we… we are sadly booked out for today.” My voice was hoarse and strained and barely audible. “I’m afraid you’ll need to come back some other time.”

She sat there in silence. The steady ticking of the kitchen clock above the kitchen sink was the only sound in the room.

“I would like to make a reservation,” she finally said. “For tomorrow.”

“We’re all booked out tomorrow, too.”

“Next week…”

“We’re booked out all week. We’re booked out ALL YEAR!” I nearly shouted those last two words.

“All year?” The glowing orbs that were her eyes suddenly flared up. They visibly widened within the darkness. She suddenly leaned forward. Her hands slammed onto the table. Her nails dug deep into the wooded surface, leaving deep scratch marks. “All year - all year - ALL YEAR!”

This was it. I had pushed the lie too far. Any moment now she would fling herself from the chair and onto me.

“ALL YEAR! ALL YEAR! ALL YEAR!” Her voice grew louder and louder, and her body threw itself downward, shivering and pulsing, fists slamming onto the table - and then - all of the sudden - all tension fell away from her. She pushed herself back into a sitting position, now perfectly still once more.

“Next year then,” she said. “This day. I’m making a reservation for this very day - one year from now.”

Before I could think of a way to respond she reached for the candle. Her hand pushed into the glass jar, showing no sign of being affected by the heat. Her fingertips closed around the flame. There was a sharp hiss when the fire touched her skin, and then there was darkness, and then she was gone. The only evidence that she had ever been there were the deep uneven scratches on the table, and the cloying sweet smell of her perfume still hanging in the air. A whispering echo reached my ears, sounding from everywhere and nowhere at once.

“...such a warm and pretty thing…”

-

One day has already passed since then, but since next year is a leap year there are still 365 days remaining. 365 days to figure out how to cancel a dinner date with a monster…