Tingling anticipation. The heat is evocative. The mic/I i/am being put into place. Your heartbeat, distant, slightly rapid. Maybe you’re excited. It’s exciting to me. I love it here already. 00.44: Sudden squeaky gurgle. Like an introduction. Hello, Raven’s stomach. 00.46: Almost a grunt of a gurgle. So unladylike. Imagine, your beauty and intelligence and humanity… None of it applies to those you eat. We get this caustic liquid chamber, agony.

It started when you said you were starving. I looked up from the floor where I was surrounded by A4 cartridge paper, maths self-consciously scribbled as I tried to get my head around some fluid dynamics algorithm that would lead to better jiggle physics. “I cooked you breakfast. You ate a doctor yesterday.” “Didn’t know she was a doctor. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

The lobby is full and I’ve been swearing at my console for an hour, now. I carefully mute myself as I do, then unmute and calmly explain to yet another random user what room they need to be in, what mods they need to enable or disable, that no, they will not be getting one-on-one time with you, they are food. “But I thought there’d be full tour,” wheedles a sharp American-accented voice, loud enough you can hear it from my headphones.

“I can’t believe how much you’ve put on since last week!” My avatar is a raccoon with bulging eyes. Those eyes are trained on your belly, which balloons out in front of you as far out as you can reach. You look down and see it stretch away from you, your tits balanced precariously on top. Close-to they’re a little pixelated but you’ve loved watching them get higher and higher as each meal made your belly larger and larger.

At some point the binge ends. You leave me to return to normality, taking with you half again your original mass, more than half of that being my former life partner. The clothes you came in are useless. Shirt buttons are knitted together by gaping holes, your tits spill out over your bra, and even your skirt has a waistband that cannot contain the growing magnificence of your arse. Your panties are a non-starter.

The stairs seemed like too much effort so I made up a pillow nest in the living room. We towelled off and snuggled up, taking turns with the controller as we played a little Limbo, a game I chatted about making a clone of. “Are you okay there?” I ask, looking at your chest harness. You bite your bottom lip. The rope reveals just how much you’ve put on. The bra you wore when you arrived wouldn’t support the half of your chest now.

I sent you a key and my address. I told you it was the blue house with lots of plants out front. I warned you that it’s possessed by a vampire so you’ve got to be careful when you step on the grounds because she eats people alive and whole. You said she sounded pretty scary but you could probably handle her. I said you’d be the first. I also told you not to come before ten.

Awareness filters from wherever you were roaming back into your body. The curtains don’t block out a lot of light so the room is bright. Your eyelids show you a bright red field. It’s morning. Late morning, perhaps. Let’s explore what it feels like to pour back into your body. You’re on your back. Your weight presses the mattress hardest at your butt and shoulderblades, but your belly presses you down so firmly that you feel softness cup you lovingly all the way up your back.

Delirium. I read your words, hear your voice. Your name bursts soft as a dandelion clock in the sweltering darkness, three times three times. I study your sigil, recalling the time I anointed it with my blood. The place I burned it is now sacred to me. As I picture you, you appear. Your smile is mischievous. Your eyes hold mine. Today they seize something deep inside of me and I feel the world shift.

I loved one other woman. Still do. We knew one another from the age of fourteen. We almost had kids. I know her most intimate secrets, things she won’t tell anyone else because who would understand? She is perhaps the person I cherish the most in this whole world. So what that we parted, and that it was the right thing to do? I would protect her to the ends of the earth.