# HNTBL 65: Don’t Yell In The Halls

By: TheDragonBoy

## Content

How Not To Become Lunch: 65 - Don’t Yell In The Halls

“Alright, now to recap: many of the stronger known magics, particularly those affecting the mind, are accomplished through potions, as opposed to spellcraft alone,” Ms. Caster lectured. “There are three important factors when it comes to potion crafting, who can tell me what those are?”

A small number of students raised their hands, and the witch teacher pointed to one of them.

“Ingredients, incubation and incantations,” answered a young lady’s voice.

“Very good, Allison. Ingredients refer to the physical items you combine within your mixture. Incubation refers to the time and conditions in which you allow those ingredients to brew together. And incantations refer to the spells you cast on the ingredients, or the mixture as a whole. As beginners, it’s very important to follow a potion’s instructions correctly to avoid lackluster or unintended results. Remember that these three factors can come into play multiple times in various orders; you might need to let a mixture incubate with only the first two ingredients for some time before adding a third.

“Now, there are several classes of ingredients,” she continued, shifting the subject. “Who can tell me the most important one?”

Another small flurry of hands rose, and again Ms. Caster selected one.

“That would be ‘human ingredients’.”

“Yes, that’s right. Nearly every potion requires some part of the human body. These ingredients are instrumental in shaping and fueling the magical effects of the potion. Who can give me some examples of human ingredients? Keep your hands up, now, I expect most of you to have an answer for this one.”

Numerous hands rose, Jack’s included, and the teacher began pointing them out, one by one.

“Tears.”

“Fingernails.”

“Toenails.” (Ms. Caster shot that kid a look, as if warning that piggybacking off other students’ answers would only get them so far.)

“Blood.”

“Hair.”

“Hair’s a tricky one,” the witch teacher added. “Hair from different areas of the body has different effects, even the color and character of the hair can play a role in certain potions.”

“Ear wax.”

Several more answers came and went, before Ms. Caster’s finger was cast in Jack’s direction. Naturally, she’d been saving him for last, perhaps hoping that the other students would use all the easy answers before he had the chance. In fact, he thought he could see the touch of drool teasing its way out from her lips.

“Um, saliva,” Jack answered.

She nodded acceptingly, if a bit reluctant, and her tongue darted out to clear her mouth.

And then came the bell, signaling the end of class, followed by the collective sighs of relief of several students whose hands were still raised.

“Alright students and snacks, see you all Monday- well, most of you probably. Remember this weekend’s homework: you’re all to come back with a sleeping potion. Make sure to get enough human drool into the mixture. And remember to use your purification spell on the water before starting the brew, you can get all kinds of side effects from contaminated water.”

As the teacher finished her final instructions, numerous kids rose from their desks. Jack glanced around, partly from idle curiosity, and partly from a healthy desire for self-preservation. But he remained in his seat; he wouldn’t be leaving just yet.

Looking around, his eyes happened to catch sight of a familiar face a few desks back. It took him a moment to remember, but eventually it came back to him.

“Hey, Arin,” Jack called in greeting, just loud enough to be heard over the distance.

The other boy looked up, seeming a bit startled. His eyes found Jack and his face seemed to relax a touch- meaning he only looked quite nervous instead of extra nervous. Arin had had his wand out, seemingly about to cast a spell, but he lowered it now and, after glancing around for safety, walked over to Jack.

“Hi, Jack.” He gave a somewhat tense smile.

“Having a good day?”

“I guess,” Arin replied casually with a shrug, before a thought seemed to catch his attention. “This lizard girl caught a kid right in front of me this morning. Freaked me out so much I almost lost concentration and messed up my invisibility spell. I was terrified she was going to smell me, she was right there.”

Jack could practically see the kid’s heart rate increasing.

“Well, uh, good job keeping it together,” Jack replied. “Glad you’re okay.”

Arin smiled a touch in response. “Say, um, want to go to lunch with me?” Then he quickly added, “You know the invisibility spell too, right?”

“Yeah,” Jack replied to the latter, “but I can’t go yet, I’m waiting for my friend, she’s meeting me here.”

Arin’s little smile faded. Anxiety growing, he glanced around at the other students quickly exiting the room, his eyes lingering on the door.

“Oh… well… I’m gonna go. Waiting around is way too dangerous.” He seemed to speak half to himself as a reminder, and half to Jack as a warning.

“Right, safety in numbers,” Jack replied, remembering his classmate’s words from when they had first met. “Well, see you around.”

Arin nodded, and then quickly cast his invisibility spell, and could be seen no more.

After a few moments, Jack was- presumably- alone once more. Well, not really alone, but definitely getting closer to it; the classroom continued to empty out fairly quickly, as kids rushed off to get lunch- or avoid becoming one.

Several minutes passed, noticeably longer than he usually had to wait, but he knew Fiona had her special pred class today: ‘advanced physical education’ out in the hunting grounds. It made sense she might take a little more time to get to him. He kept himself calm, but he couldn’t help but start feeling a little nervous. He eventually became the only person left in the room; if any preds prowling the halls decided to check the classrooms- or if they caught his scent- he would practically be up on a pedestal with a spotlight. There was also the worry that something had potentially happened to Fi- she was up against the best mages in their grade, after all- but he kept that worry buried way down, deep as he could.

Thankfully, both concerns more or less dissolved when a familiar flash of fur caught his eye.

“Hey, Jack,” Fiona greeted casually with a small gesture of her hand as she stepped into the doorway. Jack naturally smiled, standing up from his desk and starting toward her.

“Hey,” he greeted in return.

He could see a touch of anxiety on her face disappear when her eyes found him; she’d been having much the same worries as he had. There was something else, though: a very slight weight in her voice. As he reached her and they began to walk together, he noticed she seemed a bit tired. Or at least that’s what he put together. It wasn’t always easy for him to tell with preds; he’d been kept away from them most of his life so reading them wasn’t a skill he’d had much chance to develop, and all the differences between species didn’t help with that. But something about the way her tail sagged a touch, and her normally smooth, elegant gait seemed to lag.

“How’d it go in class?” he asked. “Anything cool happen?”

“Hm… not really,” she answered, thinking. “One of the mages almost got me with some spell, but Udon saved my tail.”

Jack considered for a moment the types of spells magic students commonly used in the hunting grounds. He’d heard of preds coming out smelling like skunk-sprayed garbage for days, or going bald for a week. But that was assuming the mage in question wasn’t a human-predator; those kids, when they could land a spell, tended to go for the kill…

“You get a lot of close calls?” Jack asked, keeping most of the nervousness from that thought out of his voice. After all, he’d heard that ‘catches’ on either side during the ‘hunting games’ were pretty rare.

“No, not really,” she answered. “I was just kinda distracted, I guess. I spent most of the time keeping an eye on Ozzy.”

“Oh…” Jack hadn’t really seen him outside of Ms. Hali’s math class, much less talked with him, despite one or two attempts. It was good to hear Fiona was looking out for him in there, considering what had happened during the last A.P.E.… “Thanks for that. …Any idea how he’s doing?”

“It’s kinda the least I could do,” she replied, running her fingers through her fur in a moment of anxious guilt. “I think he’s doing alright; he’s grouped up with a few kids from his class. They fought off a couple other preds pretty well.”

Jack took a fair bit of comfort in that. The last thing he needed was another one of his friends ending up on the food chain.

*groooaaan*

Correction: the last thing he needed was another one of his friends ending up lower on the food chain. It sounded like Fi needed to make some use of her position at the higher end.

Fiona put a hand to her belly. All that activity in A.P.E. had really worked up an appetite, and every edible scent that reached her snout had her- *grk* she swallowed a bit of drool.

“You planning to hunt for lunch, or…?” Jack asked.

“Uh… no, I’ll just take the cafeteria food,” she replied, though she didn’t sound particularly happy about that.

*gluurg* *grumble*

And neither did her empty belly.

Jack thought something seemed off about that, but he wasn’t sure what. He didn’t have any firsthand knowledge when it came to taking care of a hungry belly. He might have pondered further, but thoughts and attention were alike distracted by a sudden sound from up ahead.

“Whoa- ooof!”

Down at the far end of the hall, a boy came rushing around the corner. Classes had gotten out a little while ago now, and the halls were clearing quickly as everyone rushed to the lunchroom or to their next period. Unfortunately for both involved, that particular boy had managed to careen right into another kid, knocking them both to the floor.

“Hey!”

“Oh!”

“Ow! Get off!”

Jack watched them flail for a few moments, having managed to tangle themselves together. The second student, a girl with long black hair and a dress to match, seemed to complain and thwart the boy’s attempts to right himself, as each one ended up inadvertently pulling on her hair or pressing on her body.

“Will you just get off!” She managed to finally shove the boy in a way that separated them. “Haven’t you learned to watch where you’re going yet?” she complained, picking herself up and hastily straightening her dress, which had shifted to an almost inappropriate extent. The boy likewise picked himself up, maybe a bit more frantically, and rushed to readjust his glasses so he could see.

“Sorry! Sorry! I just need to-” he moved to start running again the moment he got back to his feet.

“Excuse me!?” the girl interrupted, blocking him. “You’re just gonna run off? Do you realize how dangerous it is to rush around like that? I mean, what if she was hungry?” the kid in black asked, gesturing toward the nearest pred in sight, who just happened to be Fiona. “We’d be easy lunch!”

Jack felt a touch awkward, maybe out of sympathy for the spectacled boy, or maybe just for being pointed out by association as he walked next to Fi. He watched the other boy attempting to get a word in, but the kid he’d run into seemed adamant on lecturing him for a moment.

“If you keep acting like that you won’t last the- NO!”

Jack’s eyes widened slightly in surprise, though nowhere near as much as the girl’s did. A thick, black-furred, trunk of a leg appeared from around the corner, followed quickly by a second, and a pair of arms to match. The pred was large and close enough that they might have heard them coming if Goth Hair hadn’t been yelling. Instead, she only realized how close the predator was when that bright, tie-dyed shirt came into view, and those large arms came from around the corner, reaching to make a catch.

“Wha-!?” The boy with the glasses turned around- or rather, he tried to, but one of the large, clawed hands grabbed him from his side before he could. The girl tried to turn and run, but the pred’s reach was just far enough to catch the back of her dress and haul her in closer.

Now Jack really felt sorry for the other boy- for both of them. The panda girl stepped fully out from around the corner and straightened up slowly, eyeing her two captured prey from behind a pair of red-tinted shades. Her belly, poking out beneath her tie-dye shirt, was a bit too pudgy to be called ‘flat’, but was definitely empty.

As the humans used their first few seconds of captivity to test their predator’s grip and attempt to pull away, their predator seemed to glance back and forth between them somewhat lazily, before eventually making a choice.

“No! Not me! Wait-!” The black-haired girl began to yell and twist more vigorously as she was hoisted off the floor.

“Good choice,” Fiona muttered quietly to herself.

“Huh?” Jack asked, mostly out of reflex. He’d been somewhat transfixed by the scene. When Fiona’s word’s registered, he couldn’t help but wonder for a moment in morbid, awkward curiosity if something about the girl seemed… tastier? Or… more filling?

“Oh, uh,” Fi stuttered, realizing she’d accidentally said that aloud. Truthfully, it had only been her pred class lessons showing. “See how she has her claws around his arm and waist?”

Jack took a moment to notice how the panda girl’s grip on her male prey encompassed both one of his arms, and a portion of his hip, pinning the two together.

“She has a better grip on him, so it makes sense to go after the other one first, before she can get away,” Fiona explained, covering up the awkward nature of the conversation with the flat, clinicalness with which it had been taught to her.

“Right…” Jack replied. Those were the kinds of things you’d expect a decent predator to know, especially someone in Fiona’s class. The little lesson in predatory technique didn’t make it any easier to watch, though.

“No! No no no NO-”

*NOM*

The panda’s white-furred snout came down over the girl’s head, her black hair, and the collar of her black dress, instantly muffling her protests.

“She’s taking her backwards, though,” Fiona commented, “so she might have a harder time-”

The panda hoisted the girl heels-over-head with a firm shove of her clawed hand, and a lurch of her muzzle around the human’s upper chest. And as the momentum gave out:

*GULP*

The girl’s shoulders disappeared from view, wrapped in the fur-covered bulges of the bear’s neck. Her back was still held up at an angle, her legs kicking helplessly in the air, all supported by just one of the panda’s meaty hands.

“…Or not…” Fiona finished. She was more than a bit surprised at how obviously strong the panda was. No way she could hold a human up one-handed like that.

*GULP*

The girl’s angle increased, forced more vertical as more of her slipped down into the hungry predator’s growing throat. Parts of her black dress began falling ‘up’ around her belly, but the bear’s clawed grip inadvertently held most of it in place. At least she might go down with some of her dignity still intact.

“Ugh! Ugh!” went the spectacled boy, caught in a similar grasp. Jack glanced down at him for a moment. Fiona had been right, the kid was pretty well trapped in those claws. He considered, for a brief moment, maybe casting a little spell to help him slip free. After all, the panda was distracted and already had another human for a meal, right? But the last, last thing he needed was to make himself an enemy of a pred like that. She could give Grizz a run for his money. Plus, he didn’t want to cause trouble for Fiona either.

*GULP*

Jack was briefly aware of the sound of his own footsteps, like the rhythmic ticking of a clock, counting down his schoolmate’s final moments.

*GULP*

As they started to draw closer to the scene, Fiona silently took Jack’s hand and led him a bit further toward the far side of the hall, so they could pass with as much distance as possible. Jack followed trustingly, but found himself asking:

“You really think she’d go for me? She’d already be full.”

“She’s still holding the other boy, isn’t she?” Fiona replied rhetorically- and quietly now that they were getting closer. “Looks like she wants seconds to me, and she’d probably be happy to trade up.” She gripped his hand just a bit more tightly with those last words.

*GULP*

Jack squeezed Fiona’s hand back, as the girl’s black shoes disappeared into the white-furred muzzle, and the panda’s gaze lazily drifted down toward the boy in her clutches, as the bulge in her neck drifted down into her gut. She slowly brought her second, now-free hand around to hold him as well.

Jack had seen some pred students take two human prey at once before, but it was pretty rare. Only the biggest kids could manage it, and only the hungriest or cruelest attempted it. He watched the spectacled boy’s feet leave the ground and felt a chill run down his spine as the kid eyed the bulging, squirming belly on his way up. Jack had been packed away in a belly before, more than once, it was not a pleasant time, but he was truly frightened to imagine what it would be like to be crammed inside with some other unlucky soul.

The boy watched the panda’s empty muzzle come into view as he was lifted higher, his breath coming fast and hard, as if his lungs knew they’d better breathe now, while they still had the fresh air.

“You- No, come on, you already ate someone,” he pleaded frantically. “You- you don’t really need me too, do you? Do you even have room?” He could see her jaws shifting slightly as her tongue moved within, gathering up the remaining taste of her first course, and then those jaws began to part. White fur and black lips drew apart to reveal the deceptively soft pink of a hungry, predatory maw, along with a-

*buuuuuurp*

The wave of hot, fetid air rushed over his face, lightly fogging his glasses, filling his nose with the scent of her stomach’s acrid atmosphere; a terrifying preview of exactly what was waiting for him at the bottom of that dark, tight chute. The thick, saliva-soaked tongue slopped around the moist interior lethargically, wiping the new taste from the ridges of her palette, before speaking a few, leisurely words:

“I think that should give you enough room.”

With that, her jaws parted again, wider this time. The boy renewed his struggles as that hungry gullet drew closer. He still had his wand, but it was pinned to his side along with his arm, and he just couldn’t reach it no matter how hard he tried.

“No no no no n-”

*NOM*

His mouth became muffled by slick muscle. His world fell into shadow, light fleeting, quickly coming and fading as he felt the jaws shift around him, feeling him, pressing into him to draw out more of his flavor. The gluttonous, pulsing entryway to the panda’s throat rested directly before his eyes, far closer than any human would ever wish to see, the sick scent of her innards drifting up through its slimy passage. This was it; despite the many countless days he’d manage to stay safe, today he’d finally made his one, fatal mistake which would place him solidly on the other side of the line, the one which separated the kids who made it through school, from the ones who made it into a hungry, churning abyss.

*GULP*

The wet, meaty sound filled his ears, along with the hot slime, which also covered most of his face. The last thing he saw was that fleshy crevasse behind her tongue suddenly open wide, pink muscle squishing over the lenses of his glasses, pushing them firmly against his face as the saliva worked its way towards his eyes, finally forcing him to squeeze them shut.

He felt strong muscle envelope around his head, holding it firmly in place. The back of her tongue pressed tight against his collar, keeping him from sliding his head out of its squelching embrace, while the rest of her tongue was free to play over his chest and sample his flavor. Further back, what seemed like a world away, his wrists wriggled, and his legs flailed with no ground to be found.

*SCHLURP*

The wet muscle slid over his ears as he was dragged deeper. The sound of the swallow from inside was both uncomfortably familiar and terrifyingly new, as every little detail of the panda’s shifting gullet made itself known through the muffled little noises. He could feel his shoulders wedged into the opening of that tight throat now, the sides of his arms pressed up against her teeth. He instinctively pulled his arms in closer, scared of their piercing bite, but all that did was make him easier to gulp down.

*G-LURP*

He lurched deeper. The pressure around his head increased; the flesh around his ears less giving. He was entering her chest now. He could hear new sounds, or perhaps the sounds he had been hearing earlier were now just too loud to ignore: the thumping of another heartbeat, the light rush of air between lungs and nostrils helping to fill every brief lull in the near constant squelches. And something else too, growing louder with each lurch: irregular grunts and yelps, and the occasional long, rumbling gurgle; the sound of the panda’s belly below, and the other human meal already marinating inside.

*SCHLURP*

His shoulders pressed tight into his neck, her tongue lapping at his belly, his hands wrapped in hers as her gripped worked its way down her body in step with her gullet. The sound of her swallows was changing again, the hard, characteristic ‘gulp’ from up above becoming drowned out by the wet, sickening slurps of her depths. And just as that concept began to flutter through his frightened mind, she gave him something much worse to focus on.

*SPLORCH*

All at once, he felt his head slip free of the throat’s grip. He took a gasp and immediately regretted it, coughing and sputtering on the foul air of the panda’s gut. Most prey at least got to experience a last moment of relative freedom, released into the comparatively roomy space of their predator’s belly before the rest of their body came to follow, but he wasn’t so ‘lucky’, he could already feel the crown of his head pressing up against something firm and bony.

“Wha-!? No! NO NO!!”

But those weren’t his words, they were hers. Not the panda’s, but the girl she’d swallowed down a moment before.

“No! *cough* You can’t!” the girl pleaded, though her tone sounded more desperate than demanding. Her response came in the form of another deep:

*GLURK*

Pressing hard against some indeterminate part of his belly-mate’s body, he was forced to bend his neck sharply as his shoulders were forced into the confines of the tight stomach walls. The organ gave a soft grumble as it stretched and shifted, taking in its second course. He was still fighting to get his breath under control when the next wave of peristalsis came to drive him deeper.

*GLURK*

He felt himself slip against the slime-coated walls, the force of the panda’s gullet driving him into whatever small, open space remained and forcing the elastic muscles to stretch further. He could feel the desperation of the girl who’d been eaten first, wriggling and writhing with all her might, jabbing and shoving him with every move she made. But the belly only grew and grew, the walls pressing back tighter with each fresh pound of human they took in.

*guuuurgle*
*G-LURK*!

The sound rumbled in his ears. The crown of his head dipped into something hot and wet- even wetter and hotter than the slime around him. His fear spiked to a new high, the pressure continued to increase, and the other human’s struggles grew even more frantic, hurting him far more than their predator. He began shoving back, each millimeter he gained promising a slight reprieve. He shoved and fought and struggled. He knew every forceful jab only pushed that poor girl he was being ingested with further into the stomach walls, but it was the only way he could stop her from doing the same to him. It was the only thing he could do, and his instincts screamed to do something.

*SPLURSH*

Their meager struggles were nothing compared to the might of the panda’s gullet, it seemed. Another firm swallow thrust him even deeper into the growing belly, shoving his head into and then out of the pool of growing juices as his form was plastered and curved along the bulging walls. He’d lost his sense of direction by now, but it was meaningless anyway with the outside world hardly even a thought next to his desperate struggle for mobility and breath.

He registered that his glasses were no longer on his face, having been pushed off at some point. And a moment later he vaguely noticed that his feet had left the outside world some time ago, his body now completely in the grasp of his predator, but these thoughts hardly held any presence at all next to the thought of the mounting pressure, squeezed harder and harder as he wrestled for space within the ever-tightening gut.

His waist slipped inside, his thighs, his knees, slower and slower as the panda’s body worked to pack him away, insides gurgling and groaning. And then with a last lurching squelch, his feet slipped past and the sphincter closed tight. He felt the finality of it, even amidst the chaos.

*GUUUURGLE*
*SQUELCH*
*GROOOOOAAAN*
*SPLORCH*
*GLRK*

Every move one of them made elicited some kind of noise from their captor’s gut, but none promised anything other than an imminent, digestive end.

“Let us out!” the girl screamed as she shoved, but her voice was hoarse and harshly muffled. He was probably the only one who could actually make out the words. Still he hopelessly added his own cries.

“Let us out! *cough*” He winced. There wasn’t enough room to cough. Especially not with her- elbow? -knee? -whatever-it-was jammed into his chest.

*BUUUUUUUUUURP*

“Ahhhhh”
“Ahhhhh”

Both meals screamed as the belly tightened that much further, following the exit of what sounded like most of their air.

*GUUUUUUUURGLE*
*GLORP*

*thud*
*thud*
*thud*

A new sensation came to them. In addition to their own struggles, the unyielding pressure forcing them closer, and the constant slipping and sliding against the walls as they fought to stay apart, there was now the slow, steady rhythm of the panda’s stride, swaying them back and forth, back and forth.

And it kept going. No matter how much he fought, how much he struggled. It was too late now, wasn’t it? This was the end for him. For both of them. And the most he could do was attempt to minimize his discomfort as he waited for this hungry belly to take him.

*GUUUUR-thud-GLE*
*thud*
*SQUELCH*
*thud*
*GLORP*
*thud*
“Hhhhmmmmmm!”
*thud*

“Uhhh…”

That last sound rumbled especially loud in his ears. It hadn’t come from him or the girl digesting next to/on top of him. It had come from the panda.

*thud*
*GUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRG*
*GROOOOOOOOOOAN*
…*thud*….
*SQUELCH*

“Ugh-”

…*thud*…

His whole world reduced to the small space between the greedy predator’s stomach walls, he hardly even noticed how those steps were slowing down, and how those sounds didn’t exactly sound like signs of enjoyment.

*thud*
*thud*
*thud*
*thud*
*GUUUUUUUURGLE*

“Ahhhhhh!”
“Ahhhhhh!”

Both humans cried out as the stomach squeezed even tighter around them, threatening to crush them. The pounding footfalls were speeding up now, subconsciously spurring the two doomed students to fight even harder, both now bruised, thoroughly battered, and caked with thick stomach slime.

*thud*
*GRR-thud-RRRR-thud*
*thud*
*GROOOOOAN*
*thud*
*thud*
*urp*
*thud*
*thud*
*SCHLERK*

“AHHHHH!”
“AHHHHH!”

The panda’s stomach squeezed him hard. Painfully hard. His mind retreated from his senses, he teetered on the edge of numbness, of unconsciousness, of death. The only slight echo of sensation he had left was a mayhem of movement and force, he couldn’t even feel the poor girl he was being digested with anymore, there was only the chaos of the Abyss.

…No… wait… he couldn’t feel the girl anymore! Far from able to consider the implications of the fact, he was just barely able to register the feeling- or rather, the absence of the feeling. There were no stiff bones jabbing into him, no writhing limbs to endure, it was almost a relief, despite the soul-crushing pressure which still enveloped every inch of his body, shifting and squeezing and squelching and-

*BLECH!*

*SPLAT*

“OOF!” *GASP*!

Cold. Hard ground. Open space. His limbs went limp. His chest heaved. He sputtered and coughed and finally panted.

*guuuuuurgle*
*thud*

He opened his eyes. The lids moved slowly, blinking away the slime. He saw black and white fur, splashes of color from a shirt, and worn ceiling tiles above.

“Ugh…” came the panda’s voice, half in disgust, half in fatigue.

He managed to focus loosely on her face, looming over him with her rose-tinted shades.

“Guess I didn’t really have room for you after all.” She put a single, massive hand to her belly, still kicking and squirming with her other catch.

*uuurp*

“Definitely better,” she muttered to herself.

*thud*
*thud*
*thud*

The hulking predator stepped over him and left his view.

“If you want your glasses back, I think I burped them up somewhere in the hall,” she informed him idly, almost absentmindedly. Then he heard the opening of a door, and the thudding footsteps faded out, along with one last, muffled cry from the poor girl still digesting inside.

…Seconds passed as his breathing slowed, how many he couldn’t say. He didn’t move until he heard the door start to open again, at which point he frantically scrambled to sit up, pulled himself into a ball and spun to face the sound.

“Eeeeeew!”
*slam*

He caught his breath again. It had only been a girl- a human girl. …But the next one might be a pred…

With some effort, he peeled himself off the bathroom floor, the sounds of slime parting with tile uncomfortably reminiscent of those noises he’d heard packed inside those hungry guts. He stepped out of the puddle of slop he’d been regurgitated with and over to the sink.

The sound of the water was soothing. He took towel after towel and proceeded to wipe himself, staring his blurry face in the mirror with his glasses-less eyes. He couldn’t quite believe it… he was alive… Slowly, as the slop left his skin, his grasp of the world began to return. He remembered home, and family, and teachers and classes.

I think… maybe I’ll go to the nurse. Hopefully they have some spare clothes there too.

That would also give him an alibi, he realized, since at this point he doubted he’d be on time for next period. As he thought about it, he could start to feel some pain returning to his body from his ordeal, now that the adrenaline was fading out. Maybe he’d get to stay in the nurse’s office until his lunchtime? Skip his next class and let his mind process… all of that.

I’d stay there through lunch if they’d let me. The last thing I want to think about is eating.

After a fair bit of effort, he got as clean as he could, and mustered up some courage to make for the door. He didn’t want to face the halls again, but he knew hiding out in the girl’s bathroom wouldn’t be any better. It would only take one angry huntress to send him right back into another gut. Best to leave before-

He opened the exit, and immediately he came face to face with a girl who had been about to walk inside. There was a jolt of surprise, but it faded as he quickly noticed the lack of fur and the snout-less, human face. He instinctively squinted a bit to try and make out some of her finer features; she was just at the edge of his clear vision and he wanted to see just how upset she was to find a boy in the wrong bathroom. That’s when he noticed her ears, and his eyes bulged.

Vampire!! He tensed up and held his breath.

The predator scowled at him, and looked him up and down with about the level of disdain one might give to a pile of vomit. He braced himself for the worst.

“I would like to present you with this invitation to a gala at my family’s estate, held in celebration of the anniversary of my birth,” the vampire informed him. Her hand extended toward him slightly, and within the manicured fingers was held an ornate envelope bearing the surname ‘Beatricia’. “Would you accept my invitation?” she asked, eyebrows raising ever so slightly.

He rushed to gather his senses. He couldn’t quite understand what was going on or why. All he did know is that he had a vampire in front of him inviting him to a party, and he had enough sense not squeezed out of him to know that she probably wouldn’t take kindly to being rejected.

“Um, sure. T-thank you,” he replied, reaching out rather reluctantly and taking the envelope from her as calmly as he could. Her expression softened and she gave the smallest of smiles before nodding her head in agreement.

“Excellent, might I have your name?” she asked.

“H-Harry.”

“Sarabeth,” the vampire said in turn. “I look forward to seeing you there.” She stepped aside, leaving him a path to finally exit the girls’ room.

He cautiously stepped by her, never taking his eyes from her face, and the deadly fangs he knew lay within. She kept his gaze all the while.

“Do clean yourself up well before attending,” she instructed him. Then she broke eye contact and stepped inside the restroom.

Harry let out a shaky breath, looked down at the invite he was holding, and then headed off with heavy steps and a foul scent towards the nurse’s office.

Originally Published: 2-Oct-2022