The hit in which Brendan had played a part had taken place three days ago. They had since been paid by Harvey but Brendan had not given the money much thought. He still had a ton of dough from the bank robbery earlier that week. Now someone was knocking on the door. He walked away from his computer and looked through the peep hole. Jason was standing on the other side.

The door opened and Jason walked through. Brendan looked tired, his normal clean appearance was somewhat tarnished. His eyes were bloodshot and his face unshaven. He was not wearing a shirt, although there was a pile of dirty clothes in the corner that overflowing the hamper. Food wrappers, apple cores and orange peelings were laying on the table and a stack of dirty dishes were in the sink. His bed was unmade.  The studio smelled funny. All in all, the room looked like something several frat brothers had occupied over a long weekend.

“Brendan, you look awful? Have you slept recently?”

Bad breath washed over Jason as Brendan responded.

“A little. Its been hard the past few days.”

Jason walked over to the table where there were several drawings of what appeared to be a woman’s face. Drawing was not one of Brendan’s talents so the pictures had come out badly. Nevertheless, Jason recognized who it was supposed to be.

“Are you upset about the job three days ago?”

“Why would you say that?”

“You haven’t been to the gym to spar with me since the hit. Besides, I talked to Frankie. You guys haven’t been lifting weights or running together since then. Kevin hasn’t seen you either and nether has any of your other friends except fleeting glances of you walking here or there. Something is bothering you and as your friend I would like it if you told me.”

“Well… You have to promise to keep a secret.”

“You went to college for me bro. (For those of you who do not know; ‘college’ in this instance means jail.) I won’t say a word of what you tell me.” 

Brendan was silent for a few moments before speaking.

“all I have been thinking about the past few days was the hit,” he confessed. “I lift weights, do karate and rob banks Jason. I don’t kill people. I feel terrible about the guys we offed. I know they were bad guys, worse then us even, but it’s not in my nature.”

He sighed loudly.

“Dude, I understand that you are upset but you weren’t the one to wack ‘em. That was the girl. Besides, I never even told you that it was a death mission. Plus, I talked to Harvey after the job. These guys were horrible. You wouldn’t believe some of the things they did.”

“True, but let me finish,” Brendan sighed again. “I have never told anyone about this before but I am into vore.”

“Vore?” Jason echoed with a look of confusion on his face. “Is that a… drug?”

“You know I don’t like drugs, they ruin your body and your mind. No, vore is the word for eating in Latin.  I am into giantess vore. It means I would like to be eaten by a giantess.”

He said the last few words rather quickly and quietly while looking at the floor.

“You want to be eaten by a giantess?” Jason reiterated his speech again.

“Yes. I know its weird but I can’t help it. Ever since I was a kid and first figuring out what turned me on I was fascinated with women and watching them eat. It was especially fun for me to watch them eat something like shrimp or oysters or something that they would eat almost the entire body of an animal. I always wanted to be the animal. Its weird and I cant explain it,” Brendan said all this quickly, as if a lifetime of keeping a secret had finally found an outlet and was coming out in a torrent that, once uncorked, Brendan was powerless to stop.

“I feel awful thinking about the Chinese. They were people who suffered a horrible fate but at the same time I envy them and wish I could have been eaten too! Isn’t that a horrible wish?”                             

“Er… Yes,” said Jason who was still processing everything he had just been told. “But don’t feel bad.” Jason reassured him. “It’s just what turned you on. You didn’t eat those guys.”

“Anyway, why don’t you and I go down to the Warf Rat’s Rose and get a drink? My treat.”

Brendan nodded and silently pulled on a shirt, a jacket and his scally cap. They walked through the darkness together Jason all the time reassuring Brendan that it would be normal to feel like he just did after so many years of hiding his fetish in secret.

They walked into the pub and past the bouncer who smiled, genuinely happy to see them. They were friends with him and occasionally bought him beer.

The inside of the joint was packed, noisy and dimly lit. There was no live music session that night so the juke box was playing something awful.

“Uugh,” said Jason. “It’s hard to believe that someone thought this was worth recording.”

Jason insisted the Brendan get something to eat so they ordered two dark beers and a burger with some fries.

Brendan was halfway through his meal and Jason on his second pint when they both saw her; an average sized woman with light hair that the both had not trouble placing. It was her.

Brendan was staring at her. He shook his head blinked a few times and pinched himself. Then he took as sip of beer and looked again. She was definitely the girl from the other night and had sat down at the bar alone.

“I gotta go,” said Brendan and stood up to make his way towards the woman. “Brendan, wait. Maybe we better not go talk to her.” Brendan wasn’t listening as he weaved between the tables separating him from the bar.

“Excuse me,” said Brendan sliding into the seat next to her. “Is this seat taken?”

“It is now that you’re in it,” said the woman to him.

I was supposed to ask permission first, then sit down, Brendan thought to himself. He was having trouble feeling confident now that the woman whom he had obsessed over was sitting next to him.

“May I buy you a drink?” he inquired.

“I suppose.”

He ordered her what she asked for and then politely asked her to join him and Jason at their table, motion to where Jason sat. She obliged and together they adjourned to the table.

“I remember you guys from the job the other day,” she began. “You seemed a bit shocked that I was there. As for what I did who wouldn’t have been shocked.”

“Well, it was a surprise to have a woman arrive when that kind of work is traditionally male,” admitted Jason.

“I remember you asking who the fuck I was,” she said looking at Jason. “My name is Siobhan. I’ve been working for Harvey for almost a year, once she discovered my talent.

As for you guys, Harvey told me a bit about you. He said you were professional.”

Brendan hurriedly introduced himself, sticking out a huge hand for her to shake. She obliged. “… and my friend is Jason. He was the mastermind behind our bank robbery which you no doubt read about in the newspaper.” 

Jason suspected that Brendan was trying to impress her with boasts of their former accomplishments or get the point across that he had plenty of money.

“So, how did you come to the neighborhood?” asked Jason. He hoped to stay off the topic of crime and vore.

“A few years ago. I moved with my mother when we…”

The conversation turned to the normal topics when people are trying to get to know each other. They avoided speaking about their first encounter.

Brendan thought that the whole thing went rather well. He made a few clever jokes here and there and the conversation was lively, without the general pauses between topics that so often plague discussions between people who first met.

Both Brendan and Siobhan seemed to be getting on well, which worried Jason. He knew what Siobhan could do and Brendan seemed an all too willing victim. He had to try and prevent them going home together. Fortunately, Siobhan didn’t seem to want to return to Brendan’s place when he offered. She agreed to him walking him home. Jason got the distinct impression that he was unwanted by his friend and excused himself to Siobhan but under his breath he added to Brendan; “Be careful partner, don’t disappear on me.”

The two walked down the disserted street. It was late and no one was around. When they finally arrived at the third level apartment that belonged to Siobhan, she invited him in for a cup of tea before Brendan went on his way. It was then that she brought up the topic that had been avoided.

“Brendan, it was nice of you to invite me to your table tonight. You and your friend are nice, at least to me, but I know that you loved what I did to those men the other night.

Brendan looked shocked.

“How did you…?”

“It was written across your face. Besides, why else would someone invite a man eating woman to their table if not for the vore?”

 She had him there. Brendan confessed to it. “You’re so pretty and then when you…”

“Do you know why I work for Harvey?” she interrupted. “He figures I’m a good way to kill a man and take care of the body all in one. Essentially, I’m a dumpster to him.”

“That’s awful!” Brendan exclaimed in a sympathetic voice.

“You didn’t seem to think so the other night,” she accused him.

“No…yes. Uh… yes.”

“I hate what I do. Do you know why I do it?” She did not wait for a response but continued on her own. “I can’t help it. I simply can’t help myself. I enjoy doing it way too much to stop. I started working for Harvey because I figured that I would at least be eating criminals rather than innocent people.”

“That was…”

“I don’t want to eat you,” she blurted, cutting him off in mid-sentence. “But it’s what happened to my last boyfriend. Please don’t tempt me to start a relationship that will end in death.”

“Siobhan, I would love to be your boyfriend… and your dinner.”

“Don’t say that!” she almost shouted, but managed to restrain herself before waking her mother.

“Let’s just be friends for a while then,” offered Brendan. “At least that way I will know you.”

Siobhan nodded. “I would like that,” She said quietly.

The days turned into weeks and Jason noted a sort of oddness about Brendan, a preoccupation. He seemed to be doing everything with half a will. He also knew Brendan was spending time with Siobhan. She was all he talked about. It was getting annoying pretty damn fast.

Brendan was in the Italian section of the city. He hated being here but Siobhan had let slip that she loved cannolies so he figured he would drop them off as a surprise. It was when he was getting into his car that he heard a voice behind him.

“Freeze!”

Brendan froze.

“Put your hands on the roof of the car and don’t you move if you value your life.”

How could he have been some dumb? He was dreaming about his heart throb and wasn’t paying attention to his surroundings. Now look at the mess he was in. With no one to blame but himself, he put his hands on the hood. The guy was not that smart. He started reaching for Brendan’s pocket to find his wallet. In so doing, the barrel of the gun was aimed away from his head. It was all that was needed for a seasoned criminal.

Brendan’s arm came around and knocked the thief’s arms so the gun pointed away from him. He then grabbed the upper arm of the gunman and pummeled a kick to the man’s chest. A twist of the man’s wrist caused the weapon fell from his hands. A blow to the side of the man’s head was all that was needed to knock him out.

Brendan used his toe to kick the gun into a nearby drain and then looked back at the body. His blood was up from having a gun pointed at him. He was too angry to simply leave the man on the street. Instead he picked up the body, threw him into the trunk and sped off.

“Brendan, what a pleasant surprise,” said Siobhan as she opened the door. “Why, are you carrying an unconscious man?”

“Thought you might like a midnight snack,” he said and quickly told her of what happened.

The world Tony awoke to was quite different to the one he left when he was knocked out. He remembered that the guy who he had held up had done a number on his ribs and then blackness. Now a huge face of a good looking gal was looming above him. It was somewhat bigger than it should be, he thought to himself. The proportional size of that head compared to its apparent distance from him seemed all wrong. He looked about himself, despite the pain this caused to his throbbing head, and confirmed his suspicions. The room was way out of whack. Everything was huge. That bastard must have really hit him hard. He wondered if, when falling, he had struck his occipital lobe on the pavement which would account in damage to his vision.  

“You’re not dreaming,” said the woman in what was a soft tone. The intensity of the sound seemed to Tony as if someone had just set up a speaker next to him and cranked the volume.

She picked him up between her thumb and finger. This was when Tony began to suspect that something was going on indeed. The woman’s mouth opened wide, showing giant teeth that exceeded even his own size, strands of saliva glistening between the top and bottom of her mouth and at the back, the dancing uvula.

“What! Wait! What’s going on?” shouted Tony, all useless of course because Siobhan had lowered him onto her soft tongue by now.

“No!” cried Tony as her mouth snapped shut behind him.

Brendan watched as Siobhan swallowed, giving him a smile.

“Thanks for the midnight snack,”

Brendan didn’t say anything. His feelings were of extreme sympathy on the part of the man, despite the fact that the thief had held a gun to his head not long before. He also was incredibly turned on.

Siobhan showed no signs of remorse as she reached for a cannoli and took a bite.

Brendan took a bite from his own canola and tried to calm down and come to terms with his conflicting emotions.

What the hell was that? Something else entered the stomach. It fell on Tony who inadvertently got some in his mouth. She was eating a cannoli. He was nothing more than an after dinner treat!

“That was delicious,” said Siobhan. “Thanks for dropping by.” She sipped her tea which scalded the man within her.   

Brendan could not stay any longer, he had to get out. He had to leave before he went insane. Guilt had crept over him in the realization that he had once again been an agent to shovel live human beings into the mouth of a predator.

You wouldn’t feed someone to a shark, he thought to himself as he watched the girl before him sit and drink her tea. You would never feed someone to a tiger, so why feed them to a woman? The end result was the same.

Siobhan did not know anything was wrong. She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. She had kissed him just like that! She had kissed him with the same mouth that had swallowed so many people. He was instantly more excited and more remorseful than ever. He tried to smile, if only for the sake of politeness.

“I won’t keep you any longer, sorry to have intruded so late in the evening.” He stood up and turned to go.

“It’s no intrusion. I’m happy to see you. Why don’t you stay for a bit longer?”

Brendan couldn’t. He couldn’t bear the idea of someone in her belly being digested as they spoke.

“No, I’m sorry. I have an early day tomorrow. I really must be going.”

“Well, will I see you later?” Siobhan asked.

“I’m not really sure. I will try and call if I can.” He walked towards the door. “Anyway, I will see you around.”

Once in the hallway, he breathed a sigh of relief. Then he went down the stairs to where his car waited for him.