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How Not To Become Lunch: 15 - Sleep Tight
For tonight, he wouldn’t have anything to worry about.
Funny thing, you can always find something to worry about.
*gurgle*
*glorp*
*squelch*
*groan*
Jack lay, wide awake in his sleeping bag, listening uneasily as the sounds of Fiona’s belly filled the otherwise silent room. Fiona herself was fast asleep, she had been for at least an hour now, but her stomach was far from it. Her body had an important job to do: digesting the boy she’d eaten for lunch. And presently, with nothing else to distract him, lying alone in that darkened room, that boy was all Jack could think about, no matter how much he tried not to.
Cause that boy wasn’t a boy anymore. He was mostly liquid now, from what Jack could hear. The drawn out, gentle gurgling, and the sudden, loud sloshes gave him a very clear picture of that. Previously a human, now some goopy batch of human stew, like some twisted brew Ms. Caster might cook up, sitting lifelessly inside the steaming belly of a predator, slowly being absorbed.
But it wasn’t digestion itself that plagued his thoughts. He wished he could just say he was ‘scared of getting eaten’ and leave it at that. But the thought that kept coming back to haunt him, no matter how much he tried to explain it away, was that it was Fiona lying there, happily digesting another human into nothing while he lay untouched just a few feet away. And she hadn’t just eaten him, she’d devoured him.
The scene played over and over in his head. It had been a boy, just like him. Jack hadn’t even learned his name; neither had Fiona. But the boy had been a magic student, just like him. Trying to make it through another day, trying to survive the world. And because of Fiona’s whim, now he was a meal.
It’s not like she just suddenly decided to eat someone without thinking. She had an assignment. She asked me if I recognized him. He was stupid enough to be out on his own!
Fiona had done away with his wand before he’d even known it. She’d left it discarded on the floor. It never did him any good.
Fiona wouldn’t even need to disarm me, she could just ask me to hand it over.
No! Quit it!
Jack turned over aggravatedly in his sleeping bag.
*rumble*
*glurk*
She’d grabbed the boy without a hint of warning and sunk her teeth into him. The same teeth that had marked Jack all those years ago. In the shortest instant she’d changed the course of his life. Whatever else he could have been, from that moment on, he was destined to be a meal. Her meal.
And then she’d stood there. He’d watched her. Staring into the boy’s eyes. The boy she’d claimed as her prey, her food. She stood there and faced him dead on, without a single qualm, for minutes.
What was she supposed to do!? She’s a PREDATOR! Was she supposed to look away in shame!? Ask her prey permission!?
And then when she’d finally cornered him in that classroom. That look in her eyes, the way she’d moved, the way she’d taken him.
She ate him. She’s a werewolf, he was a human, it’s no big deal!
She devoured him, ravenously, hungrily. It wasn’t just a homework assignment anymore, and it wasn’t about a filling lunch. She enjoyed it, she craved it.
So what if she did!? She’s allowed to like her food!
The taste of a human. The taste of a marked prey.
It’s fine!
The taste of Jack.
No!
The taste that would fall off his own skin one day when she finally swallowed him down-
NO!!
Jack clenched his fists in revolt, and caught himself breathing heavily.
No, he thought more calmly, but just as intensely. Fiona would never do that to me, he told himself emphatically, as if he were trying to pound the words into his own mind. I don’t care if she eats other humans, I don’t even care if she… really likes it. We’ve been friends our whole lives. She’s fought every day to keep me safe.
To keep you for herself, snuck the thought.
No!! You’re being crazy! You KNOW her! He took a deep, steadier breath. I know Fiona.
And you know part of her wants to eat you. An image flashed through his mind of their first sleepover, when he’d woken up with her mouth poised above his face, ready to gobble him up.
It doesn’t matter. Even if that’s true, that ‘part’ isn’t Fiona. Fi is my friend, and she’s strong. She’d never let it happen.
That look of hungry satisfaction on the werewolf’s face danced through his mind’s eye once again. But it was followed by another memory: Fiona’s face just after her marked meal had escaped, after she’d saved Jack from that neko. Remorseful, frightened, frustrated; just like him. The words she’d said: “I’m just worried that when you watch me hunt, you’ll feel… like him.”
It helped him remember what she was really like: compassionate and caring. But there was something else as well. For a moment, Jack imagined what might’ve happened if he had shown his fear then- his stupid, unfounded, irrational fear. She’d have frowned, maybe even taken a step back, a rift of heavy air forming between them. He could imagine her thoughts:
If he’s really so scared of me, maybe… maybe we shouldn’t hang out so much? I could still protect him from a distance… Maybe he’d feel safer that way? …Maybe he’d be safer that way?
Somehow, just the thought of that struck him with a sadness, far deeper and more painful than any fear. The sight of a thousand predators’ maws couldn’t compare.
I won’t be scared of you Fiona, no matter what you do, you’re my friend.
“Uhhhh…” the sleeping werewolf groaned quietly.
*glorp*
…
“Fiona!” called Jack’s voice.
The werewolf perked up immediately and looked down the corridor towards her friend’s call. Knowing what the cry had meant, she quickly started pushing past other students, moving as fast as she could manage. The halls seemed like a maze; she rounded one corner, then another, then a third; worry evolving into fear with every second that passed.
Finally she laid eyes on him. He was in the clutches of a predator alright: a girl, fur-covered with a canine muzzle and an elegant tail. It was another werewolf.
No… it was… her.
Suddenly Fiona was there, looking down at Jack’s fearful face, one strong hand clutched tightly against each of his arms. She could feel the drool pooling up in her mouth; the acid building up in her stomach. She opened her jaws slowly and brought them closer to him, breathing in his delicious scent.
NO!! screamed Fiona, but the cry was lost somewhere in the depths of her mind. Overshadowing it were the much more immediate thoughts of how good he would taste, how nice he would feel going down, slipping inside. Such trivial things as grief and regret would come and go afterwards- nothing compared to the moment.
She pressed his fear-soaked face against her tongue. Her taste buds lit up like shooting stars, her fur bristling, her eyes went wide. She could feel her heart begin to pound.
She slid her muzzle down over him, feeling his head push into her neck. She hardly even needed to swallow, her throat opened up with almost no effort, almost of its own accord, delighted to make way for such a mouthwatering meal.
STOP!! But she continued, and in the most decisive way possible.
*GULP*
Her body pulled at his, drawing him inside. She felt him jerk hard, a reflex from his own terror. Her conscious, unwilling self, expected to feel sick. She expected to feel her blood run cold, maybe to have her eyes well up with tears. But to her horror she felt warm. She felt Jack’s head sink into her throat, and she felt nothing but the warm, burning anticipation, all throughout her core. Her belly gave a loud, drawn out gurgle. It was ready for him, it had been waiting all this time.
*GULP*
His shoulders stretched her gullet, pressing his unbelievable flavor into every sensitive nook and cranny of her maw. His taste soaked in, washing through her, gently trickling downwards toward her gut, but not fast enough.
*GULP*
His weight and balance shifted. He was no longer on the ground anymore. She held him in her mouth, in her throat; half his body concealed, half protruding hopelessly from her lips. She felt she could almost complete her meal without so much as one more swallow. If she just leaned back, lifted him up a bit higher, he would just slide down inside her, simply and easily.
STOP IT!
Instead, she swallowed anyway, just for the pleasure of it. Just a tiny one. Feeling the satisfaction as the hungry wave rolled over her human, dragging him just a smidge further within. She felt a bloom of exhilarated anticipation blossom inside her and she knew. His head was right on the precipice, just the tiniest little twitch away from her stomach. It waited for him, it hungered for him.
NO! NO!! He doesn’t belong in there!!
*GULP*
The satisfaction was immense. It spurred her on like nothing else possibly could. She let him start to slip, so eager to have him filling her that she had no choice but to let his flavor pass. His waist disappeared beyond her jaws, then his thighs, his knees.
She watched his feet glide closer and closer and then disappear from view under her nose. But she still felt them: slipping past her teeth, brushing her palate. His heels slid up against the drop of her throat.
It was the last bit of him, she knew. The last little mouthful that separated her from her perfect meal. Her hungry, predatory mind delighted at the thought. As for the rest of her, that tiny little speck of consciousness, she feared more than anything that if she took that last gulp, she’d never be able to bring him back. He’d be so comfortably, so perfectly inside her that she wasn’t sure she’d be capable of coughing him up no matter how much she tried to force herself.
NOOOO!!
*gulp*
Fiona felt Jack slip inside. Down he went, down her hungry throat, caressing him as it pushed him along. Down into her hungry belly, which swelled up around him and sealed him in tight, hugging him inside herself with the welcoming embrace of digestion and death.
And then she felt him begin to struggle. He jostled back and forth and up and down, violently. She looked down at her own belly, watching it bounce, knowing her best friend was inside. And it felt good, horrifyingly good.
“Fiona! Fiona! Fiona!” he started to call out, growing more and more desperate.
But her belly didn’t release him. It never would. She felt it swell around him, preparing to start its long-awaited task of digesting her long-marked prey.
“Fiona!!”
Suddenly, the world became unreal, and everything hit her at once. The cold, bone chilling terror, the gut wrenching remorse, the self-loathing of betrayal, the overwhelming grief- all the feelings that she’d known she should be feeling, that she’d practically begged herself to feel, everything came in an instant. And she felt it all physically, all through her body.
*GASP*!!
Fiona opened her eyes, breathing heavily, heart pounding like the footfalls of a predator in pursuit. All her attention rushed to her belly. It was flat, empty- though her bowels sure weren’t. She looked to her side. Jack was standing there; he’d been calling her name. She was lying in her bed. A gentle gust blew past the open window, where morning sunlight was beginning to stream into the room.
“It’s okay, Fi. You were just having a nightmare,” Jack soothed.
Fiona looked at him. She wanted to cry, to hug him- marked scent be damned, she wanted to smell him just to know he was still alive! But she caught herself. What would she say when he asked her to explain herself? What would he say when she told him what she’d just been through? What she’d just fantasized about? She imagined the horrified look on his face, and she held back.
The next few moments seemed to drag on for Fiona, but Jack just stood there with her, watching to make sure she was calming down. Eventually, as her breathing and heartrate slowed, her sense started to return as well. She began to contextualize.
It was just a nightmare, she told herself, half with relief and half to convince herself. She mindfully flexed her fingers and toes; they were quite definitely under her own control.
“Thanks for waking me,” she said earnestly in her morning voice.
“No problem,” Jack replied with a smile. It seemed a somewhat tired smile, considering they’d just finished sleeping for the night, but Fiona was too preoccupied to notice. Frankly, seeing him smile at all put her at great ease.
“Jack, it’s breakfast time!” called a voice from beyond the bedroom. But it wasn’t Mrs. Lupella, it was Sissy.
“There she goes again,” Jack muttered, smirking slightly but also rolling his eyes. “Ready for another day?” he asked casually.
“I-” Fiona shifted for the first time, and the pressure in her lower abdomen became much more apparent. “I need to use the bathroom.”