“Undress yourself,” I say, immediately. It’s clearly been on my mind. “And undress her. Leave the ropes.” You do both simultaneously. Your clothes peel off your gorgeous round form while impossible tendrils of darkness lash out. They raise squeaks of pain and terror from your dinner. Her clothes peel away, red-edged where you didn’t preserve her skin. “Lick her clean,” I say, stern in the face of your smirk, “put your lips on her throat, and then open your legs.

It begins as a gift. She’s waiting in a hotel room. Her big, smokey eyes are heavy with something soporiphic, but given her nice clothes she might have taken it herself. Little black, red and orange dress, full face of makeup. Her red lips purse around the ball of a gag. This pretty girl looks up at you with an avalanche of emotions crossing her face at glacial pace: surprise, confusion, hope, fear.

You wake into your body. Thin, painfully so. Ribs stand out beneath tits that barely stand proud of your chest. Clearly see belly, so big. So big it stretches your skin thin. Shapes within. Pointed edges glide under skin tone. Pale. Pale skin for the dark-skinned being inside you. Funny. Laughter is exhausting. Sit and watch. Learn her shape moving inside stomach. Forearm gliding inside stomach lining. Trying to keep face away from it.

It’s surprising how invisible a tall, powerful-looking man can be when he is perfectly at ease. You sit in the back of a car in a nighttime carpark, waiting for its owner to come and help tie up a loose end. Waiting could be boring. The glow of a mobile would make you conspicuous and you’re not the kind to sit still. So you stretch your astral legs, stalking the nearby streets in as great a degree of clarity as you can manage.

Twelve whole croissants. Enough to pack out a standard stomach. That and three pints of my blood just about convince yours that you have eaten something. Round about the ninth croissant my arm began shaking with a very mild case of hypovolemic shock. “Sorry, sorry,” I murmur, embarrassed by the involuntary reaction. Your lips flake lamina of pastry over my chest and neck. You are still crouched over me like a conquering wolf.

It’s ten-and-a-half minutes, in the end. Thumping announces my approach as I literally sprint up the stairs at the limit of my legs’ ability. You hear another donk as I allow my shoulder to collide with the wall, preferring to use the bounced momentum rather than slow down. It’s like an elephant is approaching. Thoughts of elephants recall last night’s meal. Salvia floods your mouth and your stomach rumbles with nostalgia.

I really must have been exhausted because you wake starving hungry and there’s no scent of cooking in the air. This Airbnb is going to get a terrible review. Your roll onto your back makes the poor abused bed creak and wakes me too. I blink sleep out of my eyes and you get to watch my expression as yesterday spools past my eyes: shock, lust, bashfulness, adoration. “Good morning, my dear—”

I wonder, do you blame poor Chloë, for ramming herself against your aching back door? Do you blame yourself for your greed? Do you blame me for literally feeding another human being to you, and choosing the biggest woman in my acquaintance? I guess we’re all to blame. Fullness has its effect so differently depending on where your food is. She stretched your stomach to breaking point, made you close to tears.

Duodenum, jejenum, ileum. Caecum. Ascending, transverse, descending. Sigmoid. Rectum. Chloë takes so long to break down that her products are already trickling through your ascending colon by the time your stomach is actually empty. I mark off the parts of the intestines as I watch. Moment by moment your rope-restricted fat is only moved by your breathing, if it moves at all. But over tens of minutes… rope that was tight slackens, and space is taken up lower down.

Only enhanced biology makes possible what you are doing. Whatever ritual you did that made you able to devour the living allowed your stomach to swell bulbous and immense. Large enough to contain a woman almost as big as you. Only the crippling tightness of the rope prevents your belly from being nearly a perfect sphere. You felt her die, and now the struggles of her spirit feather at the latex-tight lining of your stomach.