“It's done,” you reply. “As in, finished,” you say, tipping the roasting tray to show her its contents. They resemble something that's been alive only insofar as its been compressed beneath the earth for a few thousand years – charcoal.

“Ah,” she replies. “I guess for any future meals with friends-” she chops the sentence off as a look of pain shoots across your face. She steps close, beautiful as ever, and hugs you tight. At least, it feels tight. If she used her full strength, cracked ribs would be the least of it. “-you should do the cooking,” she finishes somewhat sadly. “I'm so sorry, love.”

“No, you're not,” you reply. Bolder than you would've dared some minutes ago.

Elizabeth only smiles at this, sadness written across her face but unwilling to lie to the love of her life. “Take me out to dinner,” she replies. “We'll make it a date. I was... kinda hoping for a little action, tonight,” she whispers, teasing with the buttons of your shirt. Though she could as easily have ripped them from the fabric. Or shredded the shirt itself in her haste to get to the man beneath it.

For sex, if that man was lucky enough to be you. You don't want to think about other reasons your wife might be ripping people's clothes off.

“I'm not sure we can afford it,” you reply. “Business is going to get... awfully hard, for awhile. What else do we have in, that I can cook up quickly.”

“Not much,” she replies mournfully, perhaps thinking of the meal she's so recently ruined.

“Oh, I'm sure that's not true,” you reply with false cheer. “I'm sure I'll be able to whip something up in a jiffy. What've we got,” you asks theatrically, opening the fridge. “Eggs, see, I'll make a couple of nice big omelettes...”

“Sugah Dumplin'” she says, dropping into the drawl of her – your – youth in a way you haven't heard her do in years, catching your arm as you reach for the egg-box.

You note, not without a certain amount of horror, that her jaw is hanging low on her mouth – an early, unconscious stage of dislocating it before voring a human-sized meal.

She must've seen it in your eyes, because her jaw snaps shut with a click. “Sorry,” she blushes, snatching her hand back like you're scalding. “But, I meant, we don't have enough in to satisfy me. I'm... seriously hungry.” She admits, and you hope the lip-licking is unconscious too.

“I haven't eaten,” and you know she doesn't mean regular food, “for almost a month. We can afford it,” she says. “I won't be ordering off the menu.” Her eyes are down, studying her toes peeking out from beneath the black bow of her crimson three-inch-heeled-pumps. She really had been intent on getting laid tonight. “And seeing Connie full up like that...” She trails off. Now, apparently, other hungers are dominating.

“With my friend. Having eaten Fred,” you reply.

“Don't make this about that,” she says, turning from you. Pleading. “I wouldn't have. I wouldn't be needing this if she hadn't have. But she did and I do,” she explains beseechingly, as you lean heavily on the work-surface. You're grieving for your partner and friend here, who your eldest – in every sense but legally is slowly murdering right now – and she's asking you to please understand, please accept, that I need to eat people like you. That knowing Connie'd eaten Fred makes her want to do the same thing. Not just in the abstract. Not just in some distant sense. But please-come-out-with-me, and relish a plate of your own whilst I actually do it.

“I don't think you want to go to bed with a hungry vore tonight,” she says.

You snap round as if shot. Her hand covers her gaping mouth, a stunned expression on her face, her eyes wide and fearful, as if hoping she might call back words already said.

You could, a moment ago, count how many times your wife has, even implicitly, intentionally threatened to devour you.

“I take it back,” she blurts. “I'm sorry. We'll have omelette. I'll sleep in the spare room. In the garden. You can lock me in the shed.” As if a layer of plywood – heck, the walls of the house itself – could keep a hungry vore from her prey.

Do you...