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How Not To Become Lunch: 18 - Avoid Brooding Predators
She sat at her table, alone, on the outskirts of the room. Her eyes were fixed rigidly. She wasn’t glaring, of course, because she knew that would be far too obvious and rather rude, but all the same she felt it increasingly difficult to hold herself back; to keep the elegant, well mannered countenance that she had worked so hard to cultivate.
Jack… she thought with cold fury. How is it that that boy is still alive?!
When Ms. Ivy had given out that homework assignment, she’d thought surely that would’ve done him in. Every predator in their class had been sniffing at him for a week, that assignment had been an open invitation. She’d even sent one or two predators deliberately his way- with all discretion of course. But alas, what could be done when the finest predator in class was his personal bodyguard?
Her eyes shifted as Fiona arrived to sit down next to Jack, and the two exchanged smiles and pleasantries. With her vampiric ears, she could just barely make out the contours of their voices, even over that distance in the raucous lunchroom. Fiona’s voice had become somewhat of a specialty of hers over the past few years of shared schooling.
Oh, how she wished the werewolf would just reach over and devour him. Then her friend would come back to their old table and they’d sit nearby again, they’d hear each other’s voices, they’d have the occasional chat, just as things used to be, and maybe one day it would be more.
The vampire wished so much to see Fiona take Jack as a meal that she felt the urge herself. But of course she couldn’t, for if she did Fiona might never speak to her again. Even if she did it in secret, she had no doubt the werewolf’s nose would smell his alluring scent on her even days later. Yet still she felt the urge, especially now as she stared at their cheery faces.
Without looking away, she reached over sharply and grabbed hold of an arm. There was a scream, followed quickly by three more in unison, and then by the sounds of three pairs of shoes pattering away, leaving one human struggling in her grasp. She pulled him closer with a jerk, bending his torso over her lap, and sunk her bared fangs silently into his neck.
If she couldn’t eat Jack, she’d have to sate her urges on some other human boy.
“No! Wait! Stop!! Guys, help!!” cried her prey. But even as he did, she could hear the voices and hurried footfalls of his companions, just as she’d heard them approaching and knew they’d be passing too close for their own good.
“Shouldn’t we help him? There’s four of us.”
“That’s Sarabeth, do you really want to get into a fight with a vampire!?”
“Yeah, she could shrink us all down and have us for lunch one day at a time!”
“Oh man! Sorry, Billy…”
Sarabeth resisted the urge to smirk around her already shrinking meal, for it was too unbecoming, but nevertheless she complemented herself silently on another well executed catch.
“Stop it! Please! Let me go! I’ll do anything!!” The voice was getting quieter and slightly tinnier even as it grew more frantic.
“He shouldn’t have gotten so close to her table…” said one of his former friends, trying to ease their conscience, even as they continued to flee.
“They gave him detention today, didn’t they?” another asked rhetorically. “I hate to say it, but he was probably as good as gurgled anyway…”
Dubious little unfortunates… she thought cynically. How easily they abandon their own.
But then she had another thought, sparked by what that other child had said. She dwelled on it for a moment, mulling it over in her mind meticulously- almost more like a spider than a bat, carefully examining a meal caught in its web. She felt a malevolent excitement begin to bloom in her chest, as her sharp wit quickly began pulling pieces into place, arranging and rearranging ideas into a devious plan. One piece, then another, and another until everything was neatly in place; and this plan was so ingenious that she couldn’t help but smirk.
She looked down at her prey, now nearly bite-sized. She’d been tuning out his cries in a practiced fashion, but now she paid some attention. His screams were much quieter and higher pitched now, a bit of a strain for humans, and even for a number of preds, but not the slightest problem for herself.
“Please don’t eat me! I’ll do anything! Anything!!”
That’s exactly what she wanted to hear from her final puzzle piece. She withdrew the tiny boy from her teeth and placed him rather gently on the table in front of her, but before releasing him, she spoke.
“So, ‘Billy’ is it? Or might you prefer ‘William’?”
The vampire stared at him with piercing, hungry eyes, and the undertones of excitement within only served to terrify him even more. Even when she released him, he didn’t dare move a muscle while pinned under that gaze. He hardly even dared to speak, except he feared far worse what the predator might do if he ignored her.
“B-Billy is fine,” he stammered.
“Very well then,” she replied with a subtle hint of disdain for such a crude nickname. “I have a very generous proposal for you, Billy. You see I was just about to eat you,”- she saw the little human flinch- “but as it just so happens there’s something I think you can do for me.”
“Whatever it is, I’ll do it! Just please don’t eat me!”
“Ah, very good,” she said with slightly exaggerated satisfaction- as if she hadn’t fully predicted that response. “You see, I’m going to need someone of your current, inconspicuous stature to help me with something during my next class.”
“You- uh- what do you need, exactly?” Billy asked extra nervously. The vampire rolled her eyes; she’d have to be simple.
“There is a test coming, and you can move around the classroom at your size without being noticed,” she explained. That itself didn’t explain her actual plan, but if he couldn’t at least make an educated guess at that point, perhaps she’d be better off finding another pawn and keeping this one solely for lunch.
“You want me to help you cheat somehow? I can do that!”
Good.
“Of course I don’t need to cheat,” she replied, feigning minor insult. The boy cowered in terror, thinking he’d just doomed himself. “But there is another student. Let’s see, he should be here somewhere, I’ll show him to you.”
Sarabeth took her eyes off the shrunken boy and scanned slowly over the crowd. To Billy, it felt like a dagger had been removed from the edge of his throat. He breathed heavily, still watching her with gripping fear. But she kept looking out at the other students, glancing around at various parts of the room, looking for this ‘other kid’ to show him.
Billy spared a hasty glance in the direction she was looking, but saw only a sea of faces and fur. He looked quickly back toward Sarabeth, terrified that he’d taken his eyes off her for even that small moment. But she hadn’t moved an inch except for her own eyes, still searching, as if she were having a hard time finding whomever she was looking for.
It stayed like this for several seconds, with the vampire never even glancing at him. It almost seemed to Billy that she had forgotten about him, too preoccupied with her current task. He glanced at the far side of the table, hope colliding with the fear in his chest to form a volatile, explosive compound. The lunchroom was a sea of students, if he could get away, she’d never be able to find him, he could hide somewhere until her shrinking wore off. He looked back at Sarabeth. She kept her eyes on the crowd, flicking between faces, but never to his.
He hesitated… he hesitated… his heart was pounding…
He ran.
Sprinting as quickly as his tiny legs could possibly carry him, he made a mad dash for the far edge of the table.
He didn’t make it two inches.
*thwack*!
“Pity,” came Sarabeth’s voice from beyond her hand. “I thought we had an agreement.” She lifted his panicking form up lightly between two fingers and brought him to her mildly disappointed face. “But if I can’t trust you not to run off, I suppose you’re only good use to me is as a meal.” She popped him nonchalantly between her fangs, her tongue taking him in. He began to scream.
“No!! I’m sorry! Please! I’m sorry!!”
But she closed her mouth around him, her lips sealing off the light of the outside world, giving him a flash of vivid red before everything suddenly disappeared into darkness. She rolled him around on her tongue lightly for a moment, but just for a moment. It would be indecent of her to indulge herself too greatly; it was bad enough that she’d conversed with her prey as long as she had.
“Please don’t do it!! I swear I’ll do whatever you say! I won’t run again! I promise!”
Sarabeth could hear him clear as day. There was a small pause as the tongue beneath him relented. Billy took a huge, sobbing breath, the last bit of hope nearly completely swallowed up by fear.
And then she swallowed him.
*gulp*
Billy screamed and was sharply cut off as the vampire’s throat took him. Thrown backwards into the deathly passage by the practiced tongue, it formed up around him and closed over his body, pushing him downward with indifferent determination. He tried to yell and cry but he couldn’t, his face was enveloped by slime and flesh, sliding against him as he was ingested.
And then there was a spurt and a splat, and Billy landed in a puddle of foul liquids within a chamber of ghastly smells.
“NO!!” he bawled and pounded against the walls, but they were supple and fleshy, absorbing his impacts with wet squelches, as they were soon to absorb him.
He felt a jerk and fell backwards, and then soon another and another. His surroundings bounced, over and over, jostling him and splashing him and sending him tumbling headfirst into slime-covered folds of muscle. And all the while he screamed, and all the while his predator ignored him. Was this what it was like to be eaten? Was this the terror that other humans had felt, as he’d watched predators walking around with wriggling bulges in their bellies?
“No! Let me out! I don’t want to be food! I’ll listen! I’ll do whatever you want! Please! Have mercy!”
But still the vampire said nothing. She just kept walking. Could she not even hear him? Was it all pointless? Was it over?
“Please!! I’ll help you! I’ll help you! I’ll never run again! I swear!!”
Suddenly the bouncing stopped.
“Feeling a bit guilty about trying to run out on me?” came the vampire’s voice, muffled, yet vibrating loudly around him.
“YES!!” he cried. He had never been so happy just to be spoken to.
“Well, don’t let that trouble you. I suppose it’s only natural. I forgive you. You can rest your head with a clean conscience while you digest.”
“NO!! Wait! Please! You still need help, right?! Let me out and I swear I’ll do whatever you say! I won’t move an inch unless you tell me to! Please, I’m begging you! I don’t want to die in here!”
“Oh, you really want to help me so badly? Well, I wonder if I can trust you...” she trailed off ponderingly.
*gurgle* went her belly.
“You can! You can!!”
“Hmm… promise?”
“Yes!! I promise! I promise!!”
“Well, I suppose I can give you another chance.”
The stomach walls suddenly compressed around him, squeezing him frightfully tight. There was a chorus of gurgles and squelches and he felt himself begin to slip, but upwards this time. That little bit of hope began to return to him, even as the mortal fear gripped him and his lungs cried out for air.
With a particularly loud squelch, he found himself expelled onto the vampire’s tongue. Gasping, he saw a pair of slender fingers approach quickly, sticking in past the pearly-white fangs and blood-red lips to grab his slimy body and extract him.
And then he was in front of her face again. She looked down at him angrily, or perhaps it was with disgust. He dripped with her saliva and whatever else he’d been bathed in while buried inside her belly. He blinked and wiped his eyes, almost unable to believe what was happening. He was almost as shocked to find himself outside again as he was to think that he’d been swallowed alive in the first place.
He glanced around and quickly recognized the narrow, confined space of a bathroom stall. The tiny rooms had never seemed so large, and not just because he was shrunken down to the size of a rodent. But Sarabeth’s voice very quickly riveted his attention back to her looming face.
“So, I trust you’re happy to have been released?”
“Yes!! Thank you so much!”
“I apologize that I had to let you out in such an unsightly place, but I couldn’t well regurgitate my lunch in front of all my classmates, you understand.”
“Totally! I’m- It- Thank you!” Came his stumbling attempt at a reply. Eventually he could only fall back on his gratitude in lieu of words.
“So then I can also trust you to follow my instructions and not to run off again?” Her eyes focused on him intently, and Billy could’ve sworn that they were capable of seeing any trace of hesitation or dishonesty within him.
“Yes!!” he exclaimed earnestly.
“Very well, then. I’m sure I don’t have to clarify that if you do break our agreement again, your next trip to the lady’s washroom will be much more unpleasant for you.”
“O- of course! I understand,” he said grimly, finally starting to calm down.
She nodded curtly.
Sarabeth opened the stall where she stood and walked normally- by which I mean stiffly and elegantly- over to the sinks. She opened the faucet and shoved the sullied boy under the water along with her sullied hands. Billy accepted the waterfall gratefully, despite the shock of cold, eager to wash away all traces of the vampire’s inner juices and any latent digestive potential they might carry.
When Sarabeth deemed that both the boy and her hands were clean, she placed him almost nonchalantly on the countertop to dry herself. She didn’t even glance his way once she’d set him down, just as she hadn’t watched him in the lunchroom. Terrified within an inch of his life, Billy stood impeccably still.
“Dry yourself,” ordered the vampire, placing a sheet of towel in front of him. He took it as instructed.
“So, S-Sarabeth, who is this other kid you need me to help with the test? Maybe I know him?” And maybe if he showed some helpful initiative, it would serve to please her.
“Oh, you’re not going to help him with his test. You’re going to frame him.”