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How Not To Become Lunch: 73 - Face Your Fear
“Wow,” Jack practically exclaimed, taking another fork-full from his plate. “Sarabeth, I have to hand it to ya. I wasn’t expecting a predator party to have food this good.”
“Ha!” came a snicker from across the table, specifically from the frog girl seated next to Fiona. Lily drew several looks, including a not-too-approving one from Sarabeth at the table’s head, just two seats away. “Sorry, it’s just that’s pretty ironic coming from you,” she explained, offering Jack an ‘apologetic’ smirk. Her tone was somewhat straightforward and crass, but knowing her she really didn’t mean anything by it, that was just Lily being Lily.
“Heh, yeah, I see what you mean…” Jack replied, trying to be sociable and seem only mildly uncomfortable- which he deemed was a healthy, socially acceptable level of ‘uncomfortable’ for a marked human sitting at the dinner table of a vampire’s birthday party. “So, um, how’s Grizz?” he asked.
“Oh, he’s great. We had a date last weekend, and he can be so romantic,” the amphibian replied, grinning.
Somehow, Jack couldn’t quite imagine the eight-foot-tall, man-eating bear teen bully as ‘romantic’, but what did he know?
“What about you, Jack?” Lily asked in return. “You seeing anyone?”
The marked boy nearly choked on his mouthful, swallowing loudly (for a human) and catching a breath while stealing a glance in Fiona’s direction- she was directly across the table from him, so it didn’t seem too conspicuous.
Even so, Sarabeth’s eyes widened, but everyone who was paying attention seemed too focused on Jack or Lily to notice.
“Uh, no- I- um…” Jack stumbled. Why was he tripping over that question like it was a predator’s ambush? Why was he looking at Fiona? Why was he so worried about her reaction to the question? Sure, they had said- But, but they weren’t dating, right? They hadn’t meant- Had they meant-
“That’s…” Fiona chimed in, “maybe sort of a touchy subject for him,” she warned gently. She glanced down.
For a moment Jack thought she was deliberately covering for him, and maybe she was, but then he noticed she wasn’t just looking down, she was looking down at herself, at her empty belly.
Ruby… Jack thought. His expression dropped, like a boy who’d just seen a ghost, but didn’t want to sound crazy by mentioning it.
Lily gave an intrigued smirk, the scent of gossip calling out to her like prey, but she knew better than to ruffle fur like that at Sarabeth’s table. She let it go, for now.
Sarabeth, on the other hand, was doing her best not to bleach her knuckles as she clenched her fists under the table. How dare he look at Fiona that way! How dare he have even the slightest seed of the notion! Fiona Lupella was entirely out of his league, not to mention his place on the food chain. The vampire’s composure might have slipped right then and there except for the fact that she’d quickly convinced herself that any ‘relationship’ between the two of them would be completely, utterly, socially, practically and in all other manners, impossible.
“You know,” Fiona continued, shifting the subject, “it’s too bad Grizz couldn’t come, but I’m glad you’re here,” she told Lily. “Gives us some time to hang out, you know?”
“Heh, yeah, even he understood he wouldn’t exactly fit in at an event like this. Happy I made the cut this year, though. You do throw one heck of a party, Sarabeth,” the amphibian complimented. Their hostess gave the tiniest, practically imperceptible little flinch as she was called back to reality, and took half a second to compose herself before speaking.
“Yes, well, I’m happy to extend my hospitality,” the vampire replied. Truth be told, she wasn’t exactly happy about it. Lily wasn’t really the most… refined young lady in school, as well exemplified by her choice of mate, but letting Jack in while excluding her would definitely have been a grievous insult. Besides, she was a much more useful pawn to have on the inside. And all Sarabeth could think of in that moment, as she stared back toward the amphibian, was that if she picked her moves carefully, she’d be getting rid of both of Fiona’s remaining distractions with a single gambit.
There was a lull in the conversation, and Jack took the opportunity to snag another bite off his plate. Sure, all of this human food was technically just stuffing as far as his predatory hosts were concerned, but that didn’t mean it tasted any less amazing. At least the poor kids who survived this long would get a great last meal, right?
Speaking of surviving, Jack looked to his left and glanced over Harry, sitting next to him and staring down fixedly at his untouched plate.
“You, um, managing?” he asked.
Harry’s face twitched; a reaction more than a response.
*gurg*!
“Mmmmph!! Hm-mmmf!!”
*glorp*
Jack looked past Harry to the next seat over. It had two occupants: an innocent-looking human girl with glasses, and the large predatory panda bear currently digesting her. The prominent, white-furred bulge wriggled and writhed as it rumbled, shaking with the struggles of the doomed meal melting away inside.
Right next to poor Harry.
Why? Why had she decided to sit next to him? He’d taken his seat beside Jack, everything had been fine, and then she’d just thudded up to the table and plonked herself down in the next chair over without a single word! And she wasn’t even eating anything! She was just- just digesting there!
And the worst part was, he could hear it all. Every squish and squeal. He could see it. He tried not to look, but he could still make it out from his peripheral. The way her belly rippled slowly, the fuzzy, rounded surface caving in with every gurgle as the muscles inside clenched and squeezed and churned.
The sights and sounds overtook him. It was like he was inside it again. Inside that same belly that had nearly claimed him just yesterday. Just like it had claimed that girl he’d run into in the hall- now nothing but panda pudge. Just like it was claiming the girl still screaming behind those fresh, pudgy layers, muffled and cramped, well on her way to becoming more of the same. It would do the exact same to him if he wound up back between those slick, unforgiving walls.
*dink* *dink* *dink*
The sounds pulled Harry from his trance. Mr. Belv had walked up to the head of the table, up to Sarabeth’s side, holding up a glass which he struck lightly with a spoon.
“It is my honor, on this occasion, to call for a toast.” He gestured elegantly to the young vampire sitting beside him. “To the lady of the evening: Sarabeth Antoinette Beatricia. May her birthday celebration be filled with splendor, and may she live to see many, many more.” He raised his glass high.
The guests, all seated down the length of the long table, followed suit, some even clinking theirs together with another’s.
“Say, um…” one boy near the front spoke up as the glasses came down. “How old are you today?” he asked with a smile, clearly trying to be friendly.
Sarabeth’s face turned stormy, and before the kid could even contemplate what he’d done wrong, a vampire had darted in from out of nowhere, clamped a hand over his mouth, and a pair of fangs into his neck. The crowd gave a collective start (Harry in particular), but quickly hushed itself under the vampiress’ firm glare.
“One does not ask a lady her age,” Mr. Belv advised quietly. But everyone heard him; they were all paying attention now. “To Lady Sarabeth,” he repeated, and then he took a sip.
Harry saw Petal, beside him, down her glass in one gulp, and he was pretty sure he could hear it splash onto her stewing meal a few seconds later. He put his cup to his lips, but couldn’t bring himself to drink.
“Ahem,” went Jack quietly. Harry turned to see his new friend now had a shirt covered in water, with his glass nowhere to be seen. The marked boy shot him a look.
“O-oh, sorry,” the spectacled boy replied, finally realizing. He hadn’t even noticed at the time, but when that vampire made his move, he’d flinched so hard that he’d knocked Jack’s arm and sent the glass straight to the floor. He offered Jack his napkin to help wipe up the mess, and a furred arm came into view as Fiona reached across the table to offer hers as well, having seen the whole thing. He glanced at the werewolf and she returned a sympathetic expression.
“Mr. Belv,” she called quietly, “could you bring Jack another glass?” The butler glanced over the situation.
“Of course, miss,” he replied. Raising his wand, he muttered a quiet spell and the old glass floated toward him off the floor, thankfully still in one piece. He walked off with it.
“Thanks,” Jack offered to his friend, sparing a glance as he dabbed at his shirt. That’s when he noticed her caring expression suddenly flip like a light switch; ears perking up, eyes darting over.
“Excuse me,” Fiona said politely, hardly a moment later. “I need to visit the restroom.” She stood up neatly from the table. Harry suddenly shot her a look of ‘PLEASE don’t go’, he was clearly a nervous wreck and could use all the moral and physical support he could find. Jack seemed more surprised than concerned for the moment, pausing his task to look up. “Sarabeth will keep an eye on you two till I get back, right?” She turned to her fanged friend.
“Of course,” the vampire replied, in her characteristically composed tone. Her manner was so practiced that she was almost as unreadable as Chelsie. Even Fiona could only take her at her literal words. That seemed to satisfy her, though. The werewolf gave an encouraging nod to her two friends and then quickly turned and started off.
Jack watched her go, almost more concerned for her and how abruptly she’d left, then he noticed something: there was someone else already headed off in the direction of the bathroom; a human. He smirked understandingly and rolled his eyes, now it all made sense.
Taking his eyes off her, he glanced back at his shirt, decided it was dry enough, and then cast his eyes passingly across the table. An unfed vampire directly next to him, a gluttonous panda bear two seats down on the other side, and a frog girl across from him with a tongue far longer than the meager width of the table. He took a deep breath. He put in a conscious effort to keep his nerves at bay, and turned his attention back down to his plate to continue to eat.
“…Dude,” Harry called in a hushed whisper, “how are you not freaking out right now?”
“I’m… used to feeling nervous like this,” Jack replied at a similar volume. ‘Nervous’ was a fairly mild choice of word for potential mortal peril. But that itself was one of the coping techniques he’d developed. He’d come up with a few of them, he suddenly realized, glancing at his new friend’s increasingly uneasy face. “You know, one thing I’d do when a pred really started to freak me out was try and talk to them,” he suggested quietly.
“Seriously?” Harry asked.
It wasn’t a get-out-of-belly-free card. At least half the preds Jack had tried to talk to did end up trying to eat him. But those preds had been about to eat him anyway, whether he’d tried talking to them first or not. For the preds who somehow hadn’t decided to nom him, getting a conversation going did usually help him feel less nervous. Harry didn’t seem convinced, though. …Maybe if Jack gave him an example?
“So, Sarabeth,” the marked boy asked bravely, returning to a normal speaking volume. “Are you, uh, going to eat anything yourself?” A bold move- a human inviting the topic of a pred’s meal- but he trusted the vampire enough. She looked at him, holding back any hint of drool from leaking through her facade. If he only knew…
“I’ve provided this banquet for my guests,” she replied. “I myself have other plans.” Other plans indeed.
“See?” Jack whispered to Harry.
*gurgle* went Petal’s belly. The boy squirmed in his seat, not unlike the girl in the panda’s gut.
“Come now, are we so inapproachable?” Sarabeth interjected casually with an inward smirk. She spoke as if she’d been a part of their hushed conversation the entire time. With her vampiric hearing, that wasn’t far from the truth.
Yes! Harry thought in response. But Jack hadn’t steered him wrong yet. Maybe… maybe he could…
Slowly, very slowly, Harry turned his head in the other direction, the one he’d been vehemently avoiding. A large, vaguely rounded mass of white fur slipped over his vision like an eclipse, jiggling erratically as it rested on the edge of the chair between the panda’s legs. The sight, much like the stomach itself, threatened to pull him in and drown him in darkness, but he grabbed hold of himself. He forced himself to look higher. If he was going to try to talk to this… girl, he’d have to face her, not her belly.
Petal, despite seating herself right next to Harry, seemingly hadn’t noticed the hushed conversation going on beside her. Her eyes, much like the boy next to her, were focused largely on her bouncing bulge. She had one hand propped up on top of what looked like her prey’s shoulder, running lightly back and forth through her thinly-stretched belly fur, feeling the contours of her meal within her. Every few moments, she’d give her dinner’s shoulder a little shove, smiling at the sensation, the sounds, and the occasional struggles that followed.
Harry gulped, he met her eyes around the side of her red shades. She seemed well distracted by her ‘dinner’. For a moment, he found himself unsure how one even started a conversation, like he was a little kid who didn’t even know how to talk. Perhaps it was his life flashing before his eyes, but he remembered the advice he’d been given back then.
“H- …Hi,” he mumbled. It came out so flaccid that for a moment he wasn’t even sure she’d heard him, but then her head turned.
Her sunglasses glinted in the firelight as they shifted to face him, obscuring her eyes behind veils of pink. Her expression shifted a bit as well, but it was hard to tell exactly how she was feeling with the shades in the way. Surprised? Curious? Amused? …Hungry? She stared at him for a moment, saying nothing.
“…H-hi,” Harry managed again.
“…Hey,” the panda replied after a moment, like the word was something she’d eventually gotten around to saying.
Okay, so far so good, the boy told himself. …But now what? What was he supposed to say next!? What kind of conversation was he supposed to have with the girl that tried to digest him alive 24 hours ago? Was he just supposed to make small talk and pretend everything was fine? No, that sounded stupid! But then what? It’s not like he had anything he wanted to say to her, right? …Well, there were those questions that kept thrashing around in his skull like a- he glanced down as the girl in the panda’s gut thrashed for a moment, jiggling the pudgy dome.
“Why… um. Why did you decide to sit next to… me?” Harry asked meekly. Petal seemed to process the question at a relaxed pace.
“…I guess I wanted to see what you’d do…” she replied after a moment. “A squirming human is always fun.” She smiled as she gave her stomach a slow, gentle rub, the human-shaped bulge continuing to wiggle lightly with the movements of her meal.
The slow, methodical gesture brought his attention down to her stomach yet again. Watching her caressing her digesting meal, still alive and kicking, his imagination began to run wild again. But now that he was talking, his thoughts began to leak out through his mouth.
“You… you almost digested me… I was inside your stomach… That girl, from yesterday… she melted alive in there… gone… I almost melted with her…”
“Yeah, tasty...” Petal replied, smacking her lips as if she could still taste the moment. The idle act seemed to get interrupted as her jaws began gaping wider, cheeks stretching as she revealed her maw in a big, toothy-
*yaaaawwn- URP*
A burst of gas leaked from her gut as her meal wriggled, shooting up her throat and back over her tongue, spilling out into the world… mainly in Harry’s direction. The invisible atmosphere of the panda’s stomach crept into his nose. His whole body tensed. He recognized the deathly smell.
“Excuse me,” Petal offered in a low-effort attempt at manners, putting her toothy maw away.
Harry shuddered silently. The panda’s meal shuddered as well- probably a response to the walls packing in tighter and stealing the last of her air. Petal grinned in satisfaction. She watched the boy stewing in his muted hysteria for a few moments, until it started to seem like he was too preoccupied with his terror to carry on with their little exchange. Her head slowly started turning away from him, but then he spoke again.
“Are you-” The words caught in his throat. Why was this question so hard to ask? Why did it feel like hearing the answer would be just as terrifying as experiencing it? He forced out the thought. “…Are you planning to eat me again?”
Harry had heard that some predators could hear the heartbeats of their prospective prey. Maybe that was just vampires, but with the way the boy’s heart was pounding, he thought the panda had a decent chance. She looked back in his direction, taking a long pause to consider, her smile returning at the thought.
“…Maybe,” she answered. “Your friend next to you smells pretty good too.”
Jack’s head instantly half-turned in her direction so he could keep a half-eye on her.
“…But… that werewolf’s got some kind of thing with you two, right? Sounds like it would be a lot of trouble,” the bloated bear sighed. “Maybe if I can get one of you alone, while she’s away, like she is now…”
Sarabeth held back a smirk and pretended not to be paying attention; plausible deniability. Jack inconspicuously lowered one hand toward his wand. Harry’s eyes widened. Petal’s belly gave a loud, ominous, ravenous rumble.
“…Eh, maybe later…” Petal shrugged. “Honestly, this one’s doing me just fine.” She patted her bulge rather firmly. Her meal gave muffled cries of protest in response. “Besides, gotta make sure I have room. Don’t want to make a mess like yesterday and get kicked out.” She jostled her big white belly lightly; the faint sounds of rising gastric juices could be heard sloshing around inside. “Maybe this one will be soft enough by the end of the night to make room for seconds? Guess we’ll see, huh?”
“Excuse me,” Jack said. He directed his words at Sarabeth, but he was loud and near enough to the conversation that he effectively interrupted it. “I’m pretty thirsty, I’m going to go ask Mr. Belv about that water.”
Sarabeth gave an approving wave of her hand. After all, if Jack wanted to leave the ‘safety’ of her supervision at the table, she wouldn’t stop him, especially now that another pred had formally declared interest in him. Even if Sarabeth did end up needing to assign a servant the task of cleaning up the panda’s regurgitated, half-digested meal, it would be well worth it to know Jack had taken said meal’s place.
“Harry, would you care to join me?” the marked boy asked as he stood up.
“Uh, y-yeah, sure,” he replied, catching on. He quickly stood up too, following Jack away from the table and the looming lump of black and white fur.
Petal reached over and began nibbling at his abandoned plate. Jack had been right, Sarabeth’s party did have pretty good human food, and very good human food.