swimming 02

Harriet breaches the water and then freezes. Something in her subconscious sees the look in your eye, the roundness of your belly. Floating towards her like that, there is something of the crocodile about you.

Sensing that your prey has become alert, you switch to breaststroke. Knives flash in your grin. Inside your stomach, her twin is just beginning to lose hope and strength. Frenzy rises, hot and lively in your chest.

“Let’s play a game. You be the fish. I’ll be the shark.”

She yells something incoherent, rising in a screech as she calls her sister’s name. Deep inside your packed tummy, her sister hears nothing. Just the close, wet sounds of the chamber vigorously trying to crush and digest her.

Water sprays as Harriet beaches herself on the side of the pool. I’m there to block her. “Let me out!”

“This is where you belong now,” I say, not unkindly and with a strange, sad smile. You slip underwater.

Harriet’s legs appear in another inverted explosion of bubbles. You see them kick frantically, orienting her to face the pool. She’s looking for you, and you can see when she spots you because she starts kicking off to one side.

You let her make her escape. Every limb windmills, while your own stroke is measured and smooth. She will tire herself, and then you will feast.

The next minutes of pursuit fill the tiled chamber with frantic echoes of Harriet’s pleading and screams. Chloë is silent but busy in there. Her weakening seems to mirror her sister’s.

Then Harriet swims too close for you to let her slip by. A duck underwater and you put your considerable strength into a kick. Despite Chloë’s drag you intercept Harriet with open arms around her hips.

She goes mad, punching and kicking. The punches buffet you but are robbed of power by the water. The kicking is more or less neutralised by your hold around her hips. And so her thigh is right there, smooth and pale, when you open your mouth and bite down.

There is a special pleasure in severing a mouthful of living meat from a person. Skin is tough but your fangs tear guide holes and the rest of your teeth finish the job. Muscle gives way like hot steak—which makes sense if you think about it. And when you’ve taken your mouthful, christened with a parting gush of fresh blood, you feel the life still latent within it. A simple swallow commits the chunk to its digestive end, and your teeth are right there to take another bite.

Your ears are underwater so the screams are strangely muted. Chlorine brings a sour chemical note but it’s more than drowned out by beautiful copper. You manage five tearing mouthfuls of Harriet’s thigh before you release your grip enough that she can push herself away.

Viewed from above as you take a breath, the blood trail is visible as a wavering crimson slash through the pool. Your quarry is pale as snow and staring, swimming a clumsy back-stroke as she retreats. Unwilling for even one second to take her eyes off you.

Her meat settles around her sister’s body, which paws sluggishly at your internal walls. Does she know what has slipped into her jail in the dark? Your stomach already tasted of acid and blood—her blood. The twins mix in the caldron of your stomach. They will be joined before you force them through your intestines and take everything they are.

Displacement teases a tiny burp up your throat. It rolls across your tongue as you stare at your captive prey. Horror drives her heart to pour out more strength into the water. A waste. You need to suck down more while her heart still beats.

Underwater, her injured leg kicks less effectively. She favours it, which puts her unmolested leg in range of your grasp. As before, you isolate the joints. She fights more weakly. You can take seven huge mouthfuls of her before you need air. Your fangs scrape bone.

Crimson follows her in a wide wash. The way it curls in the water like smoke is beautiful. Her every breath is laboured and her eyes are glassy when she turns to see you following. She must know she cannot escape, but fear drives her to blindly stay away.

The sister begins to die as you make your final approach. You can feel her fitting, oxygen-starved brain shutting down. The sensation is of beautiful rhythmic squirming. It continues as you embrace the weakly-struggling Harriet and close your lips on her throat. Chloë dies washed in Harriet’s blood, the final vestige of breath expelled hot against Harriet’s mortal neck wound.

Blood fills up the gaps in your stomach, but the warm pressure stretching you out is not enough. Never enough. Your textbook, photogenic bite degenerates in a fit of gluttony into a flesh-ripping tear. Skin and delicate muscles fray away from her throat. You gulp it down and go in for more.

“Raven, a little closer,” I murmur, carefully leaning over the water.. If I fall in I’m dead, no question. The pink water may as well be acid. It’s not clear to me if you even understand, but the force of your greedy attacks across her throat and breast cause you both to drift to the side.

Silky rich tit fat gloops across your cradling tongue and is mercilessly squashed down a throat increasingly reluctant to accept food. I take her by the armpits and pull her to the edge, holding her fast so your bites tear into something motionless.

The red in your eyes as you snarl at me is more acute than ever I’ve seen it. The animal in you is visible plain as day. Crocodile, shark, wolf: every creature that has claimed another is visible in that dread gaze. My blood runs cold but I could not love you more than I do in that moment.

You eat her from her legs up. Bones are striped and discarded to saunter to the white tiled floor. It takes half an hour to tear her apart and cram her into your gut. The snarling, tearing, gulping, lip-smacking carnage of it will live with me all my days.

And you do eat all of her. Even when you hold her head between your hands, precariously pinioned on a free-floating spine, you strip away the facial muscles and kiss away her tongue with the care of a lover. Her eyes squidge past your tonsils to be destroyed.

When it is done you let go of her ruined skull and roll onto your back in a starfish float. From the very bottom of your overstretched and tender guts comes a mighty belch, tearing out your clean-washed lips from a hidden scene of body horror:

~guh-broOoOOuUUuUUaAAarp~

Your fat keeps you afloat. Your stomach is shiny-taut, two sisters melting as one within. Your eyes stare unseeing at the beautiful abstract mosaic on the ceiling. All your body aches for sleep.

“Paddle here, my love,” I murmur. Eventually you heed, sculling hands propelling you only slowly towards the ramp.

I help you stand and shower. A backwards glance shows a uniform-pink pool. But most of her blood is inside you, gurgling softly into your duodenum.

“Let’s get you home. I’ll massage your tummy as you work on those two girls.”

On our way out we pass a vending machine. “Could you get me a chicken soup?” you murmur, then burp heavily into your fist. The contents of your gut slosh with every step. “Swimming always makes me hungry.”