Chapter Text
Hunger was a jagged, toothy thing squirming in the hollow of Cecil’s stomach. There was nothing that could distract from it: not pacing his cell, not gnawing the well-worn cage bars that surrounded him on three sides, not curling up in a ball on the floor, not even talking to the walls – his “listeners.”
“They’ll be sending my new handler soon,” he told the walls, and himself. “It won’t take much longer for them to reassign me. There’s plenty of work to be done and they need me to do it. They need me to… Augh…” The thought of work – of feeding – made his stomach ache with need, and he pressed a fist against it as it emitted a ferocious growl. “They could’ve at least brought me a snack,” he complained, surly, “something to tide me over.”
They had brought him nothing. Since the Accident – as Cecil had taken to referring to it in his head – a week prior, Cecil had been left in his cage with the door locked. No one had even looked in on him. He hadn’t cared for the first few days, his stomach being hard at work on his heavy meal, inclining him to sleep most of the time in the torpor of digestion, but since his body had finished processing his former handler, the days had become increasingly long stretches of trying to soothe his rumbling belly as it demanded more food.
Cecil supposed it was possible that the delay might be a form of punishment. Eat your handler and we’ll take our good old time assigning you a new one – he had to admit that was probably fair. But it wasn’t his fault, what had happened. Not that they could know that for certain. It had definitely looked pretty incriminating, he knew, when they had discovered him lying on the exam table hugging the still-squirming human-shaped bulge in his gut, belching his satisfaction, eyes rolled back with primal bliss. He hadn’t even noticed their presence, so caught up in the exquisite fullness and the absurdly pleasurable sensations the movements inside his belly elicited, until one of them had slapped him across the face.
Between rich burps and moans of pleasure he couldn’t seem to stifle, Cecil had tried to explain what happened, tried to explain that it had been an accident but, as they knew full well, he couldn’t spit up his handler now that he was completely lodged in his stomach cavity, so he was sorry – really he was – but they were just going to have to get him a new one.
They had turned away to confer amongst themselves, and Cecil couldn’t make out more than a word or two – “worthless,” “expensive” – of their solemnly whispered conversation. But when they turned back to him, they had merely directed him – and when he proved reluctant to move, shunted him – back to his cage, closing and locking the door, and left him alone.
Cecil had lain down there in his usual spot, savoring the movements in his belly until there were no more and his stomach began to gurgle and groan in earnest with digestion. Then he had fallen into blissful sleep while his brutally efficient gut broke down and absorbed every part of his handler, from skin to fat to muscle to organs to bones, and even clothes. In the few times he woke, massaging his softening, shrinking belly and hiccupping softly, he did not feel any remorse; it was his handler’s fault what had happened, after all. His body had merely done what came naturally to it, and no one could blame him for that.
But now, with an empty room and an equally empty belly, Cecil doubted. Was there something he could have done differently? When his handler had put the jaw-crank in his mouth and stuck his head inside, headlamp at his brow to get a better look at the back of Cecil’s throat, he could have signaled that the crank was a little loose, that his jaw wasn’t fully immobilized. He supposed that when his handler had pressed his head further in to make sure Cecil’s esophageal tract was clear of any blockages, Cecil could have tried to pull back, told him that was a bit too far. But it had felt so good to start swallowing, and he hadn’t been able to stop, and before he knew it his hands were clutching at his handler’s hips, his tentacles winding around his legs, pulling him up vertical to ease his path down Cecil’s gullet, and the crank had come free and gotten swallowed down too. There was nothing he could do then, helplessly swallowing as his handler’s body pressed in and in and in, and then with a final desperate GULP of kicking feet he had him completely inside, sliding down until he settled inside Cecil’s stomach, which greeted its occupant with a contented groan.
It had been, without question, the most satisfying meal of his life. He had had some bigger ones, certainly, and tastier ones (dusty clothes were not particularly pleasant on the palate), but he had never fed on a live human before. He had fantasized about it, of course, the way it would feel to force a struggling body down his gullet rather than a limp dead weight, how his stomach would react to kicking and squirming within, but even the daydreams that made him salivate the most could not have compared to the delicious reality. Not only had the movements of his living meal filled him with carnal pleasure, but the flesh had been so very, very fresh, warm and rich compared to his usual cold fare. It had been easier on his digestion, and so much more satisfying. The idea that it had only been a fluke, that he was never going to get the opportunity to glut on a live human again, was enough to make him whimper.
But feeding on live humans was not Cecil’s purpose, and he knew that. He had been made and brought up to feed on corpses, to clean up the wastelands, to protect those still living from even more terrible monsters that might come calling if drawn by the scent of a decaying or burning body. Satisfying his own appetite was secondary to that purpose, as they never let him forget. If he kept up this behavior, filling his belly with the living rather than the dead, he knew they would have him put down. And that thought scared him more than knowing he could never fully satisfy his stomach again. He knew he would have to be on his best behavior for his new handler, prove that he wasn’t a risk.
He had to admit he was not doing well on that count thus far. His new handler hadn’t even appeared yet, and he already found himself imagining what he or she might look like, what he or she might taste like… It didn’t help that his stomach growled and rumbled with want every time that thought crossed his mind. He tried to reassure himself that as soon as his handler did appear, there would be work for him to do, and that would be enough to distract him, displacing his craving for fresh flesh onto the corpse he was supposed to eat. It would be easier after that, as the temptation would surely be tempered by a full stomach. As long as they kept him on a reasonably full schedule, ensuring that his belly was never quite empty, it ought to be easy enough.
Cecil perked up, holding his breath as finally – finally – he heard footsteps approaching his cell. Could it be? Was his new handler finally coming to claim him? Cecil scrambled to his feet and pressed as close to the front of his cage as he could, hands gripping the bars, tentacles snaking around them in tight, anxious coils.
The door opened, a man stepped inside, and Cecil got his first look at his new handler. His heart melted and his stomach groaned. The scientist, in his slightly rumpled white lab coat, with his gorgeous, delicate dark skin, and the most beautiful, full head of hair Cecil had ever seen, made his heart flutter at the same time as it made his mouth wet with drool. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted more to kiss him or devour him – both, probably. But he knew he would be allowed to do neither.
The scientist looked up from his clipboard, met Cecil’s eyes. He looked slightly startled, but then again, most people were when they saw Cecil’s faintly glowing pinkish irises for the first time, and then of course there were his tentacles. But the scientist didn’t lose composure. “Cecil?” he said, in oaky tones that made Cecil’s tentacles shiver and writhe. “I’m your new handler, Carlos.”
“Carlos,” Cecil breathed reverently. He noticed a slightly concerned-looking frown cross Carlos’s face, and realized he had been licking his lips hungrily, thin ribbons of drool dripping from his chin. He hastened to wipe it away on the back of his hand, feeling his face heat with embarrassment. “Sorry – about that,” he stammered, feeling like he was tripping over his own tongue – he, to whom words and speaking aloud usually came so effortlessly. “They, uh, haven’t fed me in… a while.”
“Oh, I understand,” said Carlos, and then proceeded to say some things about enzymes and salivation that were so science-y that Cecil felt like his eyes must be glazing over.
“Um, right,” he said lamely when Carlos had finished, “That’s neat.” Neat? NEAT?! He cursed himself silently the moment the idiotic word had passed his lips.
But Carlos smiled, revealing the most beautiful, straight, perfect teeth. The antithesis of Cecil’s own sharp, jagged yellowish ones, he knew. “It is,” Carlos agreed. “I’d love to get a sample of yours to do some analyses.”
“Sure, but… is there any work for me on the schedule today?” Cecil tried not to sound too desperate, tried not to let this handsome scientist see how enslaved he was to his appetite, but the fact was that he needed to feed and his body wasn’t about to let him forget it. His stomach chimed in with a protracted, whiny growl, which Carlos definitely heard, based on the way his gaze flicked down – with scientific interest, it seemed to Cecil – to Cecil’s abdomen.
“They haven’t put any calls through to me yet,” Carlos admitted, somewhat apologetically. “I think they wanted to give me a little time to adjust to my new… work environment. It’s my first time being a handler for one of you. My first time doing field work in years, really.” He sounded excited at the prospect. Cecil would have found it cute, if he wasn’t so hungry.
Cecil abruptly found himself wondering whether Carlos had been told about what had happened to Cecil’s last handler. Mostly, he hoped he hadn’t. But maybe if he had been, he would understand that it was important – not just for Cecil’s comfort, but for Carlos’s own safety – that Cecil be fed. “It’s been a week since I ate,” he informed Carlos, trying not to sound like he was whining.
“Yes, so it says here,” Carlos concurred, consulting a chart on his clipboard. “It says you were fed after the death of your former handler, and left to wait for reassignment.” He frowned, flipping a few pages. “If you weren’t on a call that day, how was your handler killed?”
Cecil averted his eyes guiltily. He doesn’t know. “Let’s not talk about that,” he said. “It was a tragic accident.”
Carlos nodded thoughtfully, looking sympathetic. He probably thought “tragic accident” meant something more along the lines of a filing cabinet falling on the man’s head, or eating a contaminated batch of beans. His look certainly didn’t suggest he had even the slightest inkling that his predecessor had ended up alive in Cecil’s stomach. “No place is safe these days,” he said solemnly.
“No, I guess not,” Cecil agreed, ruminating on the fact that standing with one’s head stuck down the throat of a creature designed and trained to eat human bodies was a particularly unsafe place to find oneself. Definitely not his fault, what had followed.
“Well, I’ll let you know as soon as they page me with a call for you,” said Carlos, moving to the side of the cell to investigate the exam table and the tools that lay on one side of it. Cecil knew he would find the jaw-crank missing.
“Thanks,” Cecil said lamely, knowing there was nothing else he could do. Waiting, waiting, and more waiting. When a call finally did come in, he might be so desperate to eat that he would fall upon Carlos the moment his cage was opened. Sullen, he retreated to a back corner of his cage and sat down there, hunching over his painfully empty stomach like an animal licking its wounds.
Having Carlos there only took things from bad to worse as far as his appetite was concerned. The smell of him slowly permeating the cell made Cecil’s stomach growl and complain twice as often, and he had to mop drool from his lips with increasing frequency. He couldn’t help but fantasize about Carlos unlocking his cage door and coming inside, maybe even willingly submitting himself to Cecil, surrendering his perfect body as Cecil’s lunch. The idea, farfetched as it was, made his heart beat faster and his face flush with heat, and he licked his lips, watching Carlos categorize and label his new tools outside the cage.
It seemed like hours of agony before Cecil heard the muffled beeping of the pager in Carlos’s lab coat pocket. “Got a call,” Carlos announced after he had plucked the device from his pocket and checked the message on it. He sounded a little nervous, Cecil couldn’t help but notice. That wasn’t unusual for handlers on their first call, though.
Thank goodness! Cecil hoped it wouldn’t be a long drive to the location; he didn’t know how long he would be able to stand sitting next to Carlos. But what mattered was that he had a finite goal to focus on now, a meal ready and waiting for him. He sprang to his feet and went to the front of the cage, standing ready by the door for Carlos to let him out.
Carlos fumbled a little with the keys as he unlocked the cage door; he seemed distracted by the writhing movement of Cecil’s tentacles. Cecil, meanwhile, bounced impatiently from one foot to the other until the cage door sprung open, letting him step out into the cell outside his cage. He did not allow himself to look at Carlos. There would be plenty of time to admire his handsome new handler after he had something in his stomach.
Cecil, well-accustomed to the routine of calls, marched purposefully out of the cell and down the corridor toward the exit that would take him to the vehicle lot. Carlos hurried after him. Once outside, Cecil climbed into the passenger seat of the nearest jeep, waiting impatiently for Carlos to catch up and take the driver’s side.
Carlos did so, then looked rather nonplussed about programming the GPS unit. Cecil supposed he would not have had occasion to use one before. After a few minutes’ frustrating wait as Carlos examined the unit with lingering curiosity and not much proactive progress toward actually programming in their destination, Cecil, without looking at him, informed him that he knew where most of the common locations were, and that he might be able to just tell Carlos the way if he read the coordinates to him. Carlos, though seeming a little disappointed at finding his scientific exploration of the GPS unit cut short, relayed the coordinates, and Cecil was relieved to find that he knew the location, and moreover that it was just about the nearest location he could have had the good luck to be called to.
At Cecil’s encouragement, Carlos started up the jeep and began to drive. Cecil directed him, using his knowledge of the subtle and not-so-subtle landmarks of the seemingly featureless desert wasteland to guide Carlos to their intended destination. Directing and narrating their progress was a welcome distraction from the hungry gurgling in Cecil’s impatient belly. He found himself pointing out things to Carlos outside of what was necessary for directions, cheerfully indicating the canyon from which strange lights could be seen and human-sounding screams could be heard dusk till dawn, the cacti that often seemed to be making particularly rude gestures with their spiny limbs, and the dunes from which giant subterranean worms could burst at any given moment.
Carlos took in all this information with interest and only some indication of trepidation, but he seemed too preoccupied with the goal they were driving towards to be diverted much by the interests of the landscape. Cecil was still doing his best not to look at his handler, but occasional sidelong glances in his general direction showed that his hands were gripping the steering wheel very tightly, and Cecil thought he heard him mutter under his breath more than once, like some sort of self-affirming mantra, “A scientist is always fine.”
It was only about a half an hour before the tumbledown concrete ruin of a military base, a location which bands of human civilians had been using as shelter and redoubt for many years now, appeared on the horizon, and soon enough they had pulled up in front of it. Carlos parked, but didn’t turn off the engine; his hands were still on the wheel. “How does this work?” he asked after a long moment.
“Well, going in is a start,” said Cecil, too impatient to be as gentle as he might have liked. “They show us to the body. I eat. Then we head back.”
“Right.” Carlos took a breath, turned off the ignition, and got out of the jeep. Cecil followed, keeping behind him; years of experience had taught him to let his handler go first, as not all humans were accustomed to the sight of his kind, and plenty of them were trigger-happy when it came to anything with tentacles and sharp teeth.
After Carlos introduced himself to the door sentry, they were admitted into the dark, musty-smelling interior of the building, and a few somber-faced humans with battered guns prominent on their belts or clutched in their hands led them deep into its catacombs. Cecil had been here before; the layout was not unfamiliar to him, and he knew where they were going – they reserved a particular room for the purpose, a dark place far from the sleeping and eating quarters of the living. As they passed into the dim back passageways, Carlos’s white lab coat stood out like a beacon in the grimy dankness. Cecil’s stomach knew what was coming, and growled more and more as they neared their goal; in the solemn quiet, it was impossible for it to go unnoticed, and it drew looks from the humans that were, if not downright disgusted, certainly cold.
Finally, they reached the right chamber. A few objects had been piled seemingly arbitrarily near the doorway – a gun; a candle; an old photograph of a woman, singed at the edges; a teddy bear with most of the stuffing fallen out bearing a note scrawled in a child’s hand. Cecil had seen this sort of thing enough to know that it was a shrine or tribute of sorts to the person who had died and now lay within the room beyond, waiting for him. He licked his lips.
The humans gestured Carlos and Cecil into the room, and then the door was shut behind them. The small, dank chamber was illuminated by a single, sputtering bare bulb near the center of the room, and below it, as if under a spotlight, lay the corpse: an older middle-aged man, his hands arranged to be folded over his upper abdomen, though they couldn’t fully conceal the gory hole there that bespoke of a fatal encounter with something with very large horns or teeth.
Cecil wasted no time in going to his work. If the clothes had been clean, he would have undressed the body first, but these were covered in blood, and he had been trained to eat clothes that were thus contaminated, the better to defend against the possibility of other monsters being attracted by the lingering smell. So he knelt right away at by the corpse’s head, lifting it up with one hand at either temple, his tentacles winding around the dead man’s limbs and torso.
He felt immediately that the body had not gone stiff yet, which he was glad of, as it would make for a more pleasant and less effortful meal. He turned the corpse on its side first, wholly undoing the peaceful arrangement of the hands. Having the body sideways made getting the shoulders into his throat easier; it was not impossible otherwise, but just getting his jaws around horizontal shoulders took more time than Cecil was prepared to expend. He put the crown of the head to his lips and worked his jaws open around it. His mouth was already well-lubricated with thick saliva, and once his jaw had clicked out of place, the corpse’s head slid inside very easily. His throat was ready and eager to receive it, and his first hard gulp sent the entire head into his throat. Subsequent swallows were as natural as breathing, even as the corpse’s broad shoulders forced his jaw and gullet to distend greatly and abruptly. His tentacles helped heft the corpse up as he continued to gulp, and were useful for a few helpful pushes downward when the dead man’s clothes became sticky and heavy and damp with saliva and caught in Cecil’s throat. It was a considerable relief when Cecil felt the head of the corpse press into his waiting stomach, and felt it begin to distend as the shoulders joined the head in the elastic cavity. He arched his back and spread his legs to accommodate his belly swelling as it filled, leaning on his hands, having given all the support of what remained of the corpse outside of him over to his tentacles. It barely took any active swallowing anymore once the body was in up to the hips; the legs slid slowly inward almost by the force of gravity alone. Shoes, of course, were too valuable to be spared and had been removed by the humans, and so the corpse’s cold feet were bare as they finally slid past Cecil’s lips. He held them in his mouth for a moment, savoring the salt-sweat taste of human skin, before at last, with a thick gu-ulp, he sent the last of the dead man down his gullet.
He leaned back with a hand on his belly as peristalsis in his lower esophagus slowly worked the legs down. The pressure in his chest decreased as all the weight of his meal settled lower, his stomach finally closing over the heavy load. He took a deep breath, sighing in relief, eyes half-closed as the torpid pleasure of fullness settled over his satisfied body.
Carlos had watched all this with as much detached scientific fascination as he could muster, but if truth was told, he had found it rather disturbing watching an entire man slowly disappear down Cecil’s throat and come to rest as a rounded bulge in his middle. Perhaps most mortifying of all was how normal this action seemed to Cecil. Carlos watched Cecil lick his lips and fingers thoroughly, watched him belch luxuriantly and shamelessly, watched him give his human-filled belly an appreciative pat. His behavior made it quite clear that he thought of the dead man as nothing more than food. And if he could see a dead man that way, would it be much of a stretch to consider a live one the same way? Carlos shook his head, trying not to dwell on it. It was silly, not to mention far from empirical, to feel fear like that over one observation. No trials had been done. And anyway, Cecil’s kind were carefully and selectively bred and trained to devour the dead, not the living.
Cecil didn’t even think of Carlos’s presence until some minutes after he had finished his meal, and when he did, he turned a satisfied smile on him. “Our first call together seems to be – urrp – a success,” he said.
Carlos merely nodded. “So – we go back now?” He hoped he would remember the way, or be able to program the GPS unit; Cecil looked in imminent danger of falling asleep even now, so Carlos was not banking on receiving his directions for the return journey.
“Yeahhh,” Cecil replied languidly. His mind was already on returning to his cage, curling up in the corner and napping while his full belly did its work.
He stood, using his tentacles to help him get to his feet. He was accustomed to the sensation of significant weight being added to his belly, but he was always glad to have his tentacles to support him as he adjusted to his altered center of gravity. He leaned back on his heels to keep from tipping forward, and set his feet wide apart to help distribute the weight inside more evenly across his hips. The material in which his owners dressed him was a help, too; skintight, flexible and highly elastic, yet firm and supportive, it helped keep his belly, when full, from swaying or sloshing too much and throwing off his balance.
He followed Carlos out of the room. The humans who had stayed sentry outside the door looked away from him, turning immediately to lead them back outside. Cecil’s footsteps felt plodding and heavy with the weight of the meal inside him, and he could already feel his stomach beginning to churn and groan, digesting. He tried not to burp, knowing that would draw looks of ultimate disgust and disdain from the humans leading them. When he was younger, he had once tried to tell some offended humans that it was a compliment, but that assertion had not been well-received. Apparently it brought no one any comfort to know that their friend or family member had been a satisfying meal.
He was able to keep down everything but a few soft hiccups until he and Carlos were safely outside and climbing back into the jeep. He leaned back in the passenger seat, resting his hands on his belly with a sigh and a long, rich burp now that the humans were out of earshot. “You can find the way back, right?” he mumbled to Carlos, already half-asleep
“Yeah. I think so,” said Carlos, but Cecil was already snoring. Carlos shook his head and started up the jeep, backing away from the redoubt and turning back into the desert.
The drive back was more than a bit uncomfortable for Carlos. Beneath the soft drone of Cecil’s snoring and the growl of the jeep’s engine, he could literally hear the dead man digesting. Rich liquid gurgles, glurps, groans, rumbles, and churns were all too audible from within Cecil’s bloated belly, and Carlos couldn’t help visualizing the corpse’s flesh breaking down as the enzymes did their work. Some fearful, primal part of his otherwise rational brain whispered that That could be you in there. What makes you think you couldn’t be food to him? What could you possibly do to stop him if he decided you were dinner? His mind’s eye fixed on the image of the corpse being pulled further and further into Cecil with the inexorable power of each swallow, until the feet had disappeared. Carlos’s skin itched with claustrophobia as he thought of what it would be like to be in that man’s position, only still alive. Surely the entire body could not be forced to fit in Cecil’s stomach without breaking bones.
He endeavored to push the thought from his mind. He was Cecil’s handler now, his supervisor, his caregiver; the idea that Cecil would even think of doing him harm was ridiculous, and didn’t bear thinking about.
It was growing dark when the drive was through. When Carlos pulled into the vehicle lot, he turned off the ignition and sat still for a moment. He eyed one of Cecil’s tentacles, laying near him, slack in sleep; he found himself curious about how the smooth, slightly spongy-looking purplish-black skin would feel to the touch. It looked a bit like how Carlos imagined the surface of a tongue would look, minus the slime. He imagined the tentacles were as flexible and strong as tongues, too. He hoped there would be opportunity to give them the thorough study they deserved.
He touched Cecil’s arm gently, waking him, and quietly told him that they had arrived back. Cecil yawned, smacked his lips sleepily, and stretched all his limbs, tentacles that had been draped here and there across the seats of the jeep rising and uncurling to their fullest extent before they relaxed again. Then he slid out of the jeep, nearly overbalancing and grasping the side of the jeep with hands and tentacles to right himself. Carlos supposed it was only natural to have a little trouble regulating balance with the weight of an entire other person inside you, particularly after a deep sleep. Carlos could have sworn even in the dimness that Cecil’s cheeks colored a little when he noticed him watching, and if it weren’t for the present circumstances, Carlos might have found it… endearing.
They went inside and returned to Cecil’s cell. Cecil went into his cage straightaway without Carlos needing to ask him to, and lay down in the corner by the wall, yawning and curling up around his belly. He seemed to be asleep again before Carlos had even closed the cage door.