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How Not To Become Lunch: 4 - Don’t Let Your Guard Down
“Wow…” Jack muttered.
“What?” Fiona asked.
“It’s just- I still can’t believe I’m here again.”
“Ha! Come on Jack, we’ve been here for like two hours already.”
“Yeah, but I was gone for like ten years! It feels like some kind of weird dream. Everything’s the same.”
“Not really. My bed’s new, so’s the dresser.”
“Yeah, but- like- the closet is the same. Remember when we used to play hide and seek? I would hide in there all the time.”
“Yeah, back before you realized I could follow your scent anywhere in the house,” she chuckled.
“Well at least I didn’t leave a trail of fur,” he countered.
“Touché.”
“Hey, you mind if I go grab a snack from the kitchen?”
“Be my guest.”
Jack stood up and walked out of Fiona’s room, through the hall and down the stairs, marveling at every little detail of the old house as it continued to jog his memory. As he made his way through the living room, a distinct sound reached his ears:
*click* *creeeeeaaaaak*
“Alright Sissy, before you run off just let me know what you want for dinn-”
Two werewolves, one a grown woman, and the other a young pup, stood in the newly opened doorway at the front of the house. Jack turned around to see them just as the adult of the pair noticed him standing there. Her eyes immediately took on a threatening edge.
“Excuse me, what exactly do you think you’re doing in my house!?” she asked hostilely.
Jack stared at her for a second, a faint smile grew on his face. She looked almost exactly as he remembered her.
“Don’t you recognize me?” he asked warmly.
“Recognize…?” The werewolf sniffed noticeably, searching for a familiar scent. Her eyes widened a bit.
Jack’s smile widened too.
The woman approached wordlessly with a few slow steps.
“That scent…” she muttered.
Jack readied himself for the loving embrace he was sure to receive as she came within arm’s reach. Then he noticed something: a little trickle of drool, just starting to escape her lips. His smile faded.
“…it’s heavenly…” she finished.
“Wait- no!”
Looking as if she were possessed by some otherworldly force, the werewolf woman grabbed his sides to hold him in place and parted her jaws wide. Long strings of saliva stretching across her red maw.
“Mrs. Lupella! Stop!!” he cried.
She hesitated. She looked down at him again, blinking a few times.
“…Wait…Jack? …Jack!?”
“Yes! It’s me! It’s Jack!” he asserted.
She stood frozen like that for a moment, confused, surprised, horrified and a bit embarrassed. Luckily, it was at that moment that Fiona popped in to interrupt the awkward reunion.
“Welcome home, mom! I have a surprise for y- Oh, looks like you already found him.”
“Yes, I- urm- It’s so nice to see you again, Jack,” she managed.
“He just moved back to town, I ran into him at school, he’s a student there now! Isn’t that great!”
“Yes, that’s wonderful!” Mrs. Lupella replied, forcing some enthusiasm as she started to regain a bit of her composure.
“I was hoping we could have a sleepover tonight. We really want to spend more time catching up.”
“Well isn’t that a nice idea. Um… why don’t you come help me in the kitchen for a moment and we can figure out the details.”
Fiona gave her mom a strange look; she could tell something was up.
“Sure…” she replied.
“Jack, you just wait here. Make yourself at home,” Mrs. Lupella offered.
The werewolf woman finally released the boy’s arms as inconspicuously as she could and walked rather briskly toward the kitchen. Fiona followed with a vaguely puzzled expression.
“…Fiona, I’m not so sure having him here is such a good idea, much less having him sleep here,” her mother said once they were safely out of earshot.
“What are you talking about?”
“The mark, Fiona! Can’t you smell him!? He’s so enticing I almost gulped him down the minute I saw him!”
“But that was before you recognized him, right?”
“Well, yes, but…”
“Come on, he’s not that tempting, I’ve been with him all day. Besides, it’s not like you’d try that now that you know who he is, no matter how good he smells. Right mom?”
She looked her daughter in the eyes for a moment and then sighed in defeat.
“No, of course not. I wouldn’t hurt Jack for the world.”
“So he can stay?”
“…Fine, just keep a close eye on him.”
“Yes! Thanks mom! Don’t worry about a thing. It’s not like anyone in our house is gonna try anything.”
Fiona turned away from her mother with an ear to ear grin and ran back towards the living room.
“Good news Jack! I convinced my mom to let you stay!”
*URP*!
“Jack?” Fiona turned the corner. Her mouth fell open. “Sissy!!”
“Fiona, look! I caught my first human!” The little pup sat in the middle of the living room with an enormous wriggling belly, almost as big as the rest of her entire body. Fiona’s face was overtaken by horror and fury.
“Sissy!! You let him out right now!!” she yelled.
“What!? Why!? He was so tasty and he feels so good!! You can’t take my first human!”
“Jack’s my friend! He’s not for eating!!”
“Can’t you make more friends?”
“What’s all this now?” Mrs. Lupella asked, walking in behind her daughter.
“Sissy ate Jack!!” Fiona yelled. You could see the wave of panic wash over their mother’s face, but she restrained herself.
“Sissy, let him out right this second,” she ordered sternly, but without raising her voice.
“But moooom, it’s my first humaaan,” she wined.
“I know, honey, but you have to let him out. You should have known better than to eat a guest.”
The pup pouted dramatically. Seemingly on the verge of tears at the thought of having to release such a delicious, filling meal, she very reluctantly constricted the muscles around her bloated belly. Her face contorted as a little bulge appeared in her tiny neck and then the huge mass in her gut suddenly shifted. In one abrupt jerk, Jack was forcefully squeezed up through Sissy’s petite throat and spilled out onto the living room floor, covered head to toe in pungent slime.
“Jack!!” Fiona cried. She ran over and knelt by his side. The poor boy was curled up in a tight ball, shaking faintly.
“…Fiona, is that you?” he whispered, disoriented.
“Yeah, it’s me,” she said soothingly. “Don’t worry, you’re safe now.”
“Stupid special human…” Sissy muttered with a sniffle.
Fiona shot her a furious glare, accompanied by a growl.
“Mom! Fiona’s growling at me!”
“Fiona, why don’t you take Jack upstairs and draw him a bath,” their mother suggested.
Fiona nodded. She glanced over her friend, and seeing that he was in no frame of mind to stand on his own, reached down and did her best to lift the slime-covered boy bridal-style.
“Come on, Jack, let’s get you cleaned up,” she said, carrying him off.
“I think I got eaten…” he murmured.
…
“So, you have a little sister now?” Jack asked.
“Yeah, Sissy,” Fiona replied distastefully. “I’m really sorry about her, I didn’t even think she could swallow a human yet.”
“How old were you when you did it the first time?”
“Uhhhh… I guess I was around her age. I was at a sleepaway camp and one of the other kids thought it would be a funny idea to sneak into my tent at night to try to scare me. I freaked out and pounced on him- gobbled him down on the spot.”
“Huh, remind me never to try that.”
“Afterwards I passed right out. The next day all the other kids were crowding around me, trying to get a look at what was left of the bulge. I couldn’t believe how quickly he digested.”
“Kids have pretty quick metabolisms,” he figured.
“Guess you almost found that out the hard way. How did you let the little squirt nom you anyway?”
“She caught me off guard. She was all tiny and innocent when she walked up, and then suddenly I was staring down her throat. How long was I in there?”
“I don’t know, maybe like a minute?”
“Wow, it felt so much longer. It was so tight… and dark… and wet… and all I could hear was her stomach gurgling, and all I could think about was being digested and-”
“Calm down,” she interrupted, hearing him gradually getting more and more frazzled.
“Sorry. It’s just- I’ve had a few close calls, but I’ve never actually been in a pred’s belly before. It’s kinda freaky.”
“Well you’re okay now. And I’m not letting her within ten feet of you for the rest of forever.”
“Yeah…” he said, starting to drift off again.
“Maybe we should talk about something else?” she offered.
“Yeah, good idea,” he agreed.
“So, um, what was your room like at your aunt’s place?”
“You mean her ingredients room?”
“Wait, what?”
“Yeah, she didn’t have enough rooms for both me and my mom, so I got stuck in her ingredients room.”
“‘Ingredients’? You mean like for her potions and stuff?”
“Uh-huh. I had to sleep next to shelves filled with everything from eye of newt to toe of frog.”
“She kept body parts of random animals on a shelf?”
“Oh, those are actually names of plants. She had to move the animals into my closet to make room for my bed.”
“Seriously?!”
“Toads, bats, beetles, cats, all in little cages. You’d probably go nuts with your nose.”
“Sounds like a buffet.”
“Oh man, she’d go nuts if you went in there and ate everything, she’s almost as protective of those critters as she was of me- at least until she needed one for a potion.”
“Wow, I don’t feel so bad anymore for making you sleep in a sleeping bag.”
“Are you kidding, it’s just like how we used to do sleepovers as kids. It’s perfect.”
Fiona yawned wide, showing off her sparkling, pointed teeth.
“Speaking of which, I’m getting pretty tired.”
“Yeah, I guess it is kinda late now. We should probably get to bed. I have a whole ‘nother day of school to survive tomorrow.”
…
Fiona turned over in her bed once again, a peaceful expression on her sleeping face. Despite being deep in slumber, her nose twitched furiously. Grumbling some indistinct gibberish, her tongue briefly poked out from between her lips. Then, with a lazy lurch, she slowly let her legs slip off the side of her mattress.
Her eyes still heavily shut, Fiona slid down off her bed and onto her knees. Her arms quickly followed as she shifted onto all fours and stuck her face up into the cool night air. Her nose twitched a few more times, she grew a smile and her tail began to drift gently back and forth in idle joy.
She took a few steps, still down on her hands and knees, her head extended out in front as she unconsciously followed her nose onward. The magical scent that called out to her grew stronger and stronger. Her tongue poked eagerly out of her mouth again.
Suddenly, her hand felt something new: a warm, soft, fluffy surface, very different from the hard floor. She lowered her head and took a big whiff. The smell was overwhelming. She felt around, getting an idea of the shape and size of her discovery.
Jack grunted. He felt something strange. Something kept moving around him, touching him, pushing against his body, shifting him around. The sleeping boy slowly began to awaken. He heard a few quiet scuffles and reluctantly lifted his eyelids. He blinked a few times, staring up at the ceiling. He was about to turn onto his side when something suddenly jutted into view.
“Fiona…?” he muttered tiredly. Her face hung over him, looking down onto his own. Except she wasn’t looking; her eyes were still closed. He felt a big glob of something warm and wet land on his cheek. Startled, he grunted and blinked a few more times, the unexpected liquid waking him up quite a bit further, just in time to fully process what happened next.
After a few more twitches of her nose, the sleeping werewolf slowly opened her mouth, parting her jaws exceedingly wide. The pale moonlight creeping in from the window shone dimly on her white, jagged teeth. Between ridged walls of red flesh hung thick strands of glittering saliva, one of which gave way to fall as another glob of sultry drool onto Jack’s now terrified face. He felt her warm breath wash over him, and then her crimson maw slowly started to descend.
“Fiona!!”
The jaws suddenly snapped shut, inches from his face. Fiona’s face now visible again, he saw her eyes shoot open. She blinked a few times, and then her brow furrowed in confusion.
“Jack?... What- Where am- What am I doing on the floor like this?” She leaned back into a sitting position so she was no longer looming over him.
“I’m not really sure… You woke me up and I saw you, um, open your mouth…” he explained casually. Though in his head he was practically screaming: Gulping gullets! Was she about to eat me!?
“Huh?” she asked, confused, “I must have been having some weird sleepwalking dream,” she figured aloud, but she had a sinking feeling it was something a bit more than that. She saw him pull a hand out of his sleeping bag and wipe a few globs of drool from his face. But they weren’t in the right place to be his own.
Is that my drool? she thought uncomfortably. That’s when she took her first conscious whiff of the air around her. Her eyes bulged wide, but she rushed to contain herself.
Whoa, that’s a good smell... Oh wolfsbane! Was I about to eat him!? She stood up rather quickly and walked towards her window. Jack sat up in his sleeping bag to watch her.
“Fiona?” he asked, concerned.
“I think the room could use some air,” she said, opening the window and sticking her snout out into the fresh night breeze.
Wow, his scent really builds up while he’s sleeping in here, she realized.
Maybe after being together in the same room for so long the smell from my mark’s finally starting to get to her, he considered.
“If you wanna leave it open for the rest of the night, that’s fine with me,” Jack offered.
“Yeah, that sounds good. Maybe the cold will convince me to stay under the covers while I’m asleep. Sorry for waking you up.”
“It’s fine,” Jack replied in an equally polite tone. But truth be told neither of them were particularly comfortable with what had just happened. Fiona slipped back into her bed.
Maybe my aunt was on to something, making me sleep with all her ingredients. All the different plants and animals probably helped cover up the smell, he thought.
Jack laid back down and tried to relax, doing his best to keep the image of his friend’s maw from his mind. Fiona shifted under the covers, scowling at herself as she resisted the very idea of even considering what Jack would feel like inside her belly.
Neither of them thought she would ever let things actually get that far, but it would be a lie to say that neither of them were worried about it…