“Yes,” you reply.

“Great! I'm starved,” Nicole replies, ripping the cellophane wrapping off her meal without pause. “Brother's up in his room, to terrified to come down,” she continues, licking her lips as the little Han-boy begins to cry. “Matthew! Dinner!” She calls.

A thump echoes from the top of porch roof, followed by the sound of something rolling down it and off the edge.

“Did Matt...?” Colleen asks wonderingly.

“I think so,” you reply, opening the kitchen door, picking up your son and dusting him off. “Dinner I bought, sweetheart,” you tell him. “But nice survival instincts. You find a nice girl to marry and have me some grandkids with yet?”

“Mom!” He exclaims. “I'm thirteen.”

“Which makes you middle-aged, kiddo,” you reply. “ You see this?” You gently rub the remains of Tommy, digesting down in your belly. The bulge is noticeably smaller again, and there's not a hint of struggling any more. Though the occasional burp and gurgle of air escaping from his body as yours digests it feels almost as good. “He was twenty-two,” you explain. “Not a bad innings. Most men don't make it past twenty-five. And I've never met an unmarried man over thirty.”

“I met his mother, you know,” you tell your son. “She looked into my eyes and I knew she knew that I was going to eat her son. Soon, and as nothing at all to me. I don't want to see that look in the eyes of any woman but your bride, okay?”

“Okay,” he replies, wincing somewhat. He's the most serious of your children. It happens. Men are either serious, fey, or stupid. “It's not like I want to die, you know. I just... my chances...”

“Your chances would be much better if you married before college,” you tell him. “Whilst your sisters and I can still give you a bit of protection from a bad breakup. You don't want to know how many men it took to get me through my degree. Universities take twice as many male students as they have tuition spaces, because half of them aren't even going to survive freshers week. Though if you have a digestion-death wish, then I'm sure your little sister-”

“Mom!” Matthew exclaims. “I'm not a breakfast. I'm just... not.”

“I know, darling,” you reply, ruffling his hair. Breakfasts don't last five minutes in this vorish world. If you want to get eaten, there's always a vore who'll be happy to eat you. In a vorish household, a breakfast wouldn't have lasted five seconds. “Are you sure you're not a lunch?” You enquire casually. “If you don't fancy Nicole, you could always come home to mommy,” you suggest, rubbing your Tommy-filled belly.

It gurgles eagerly.

“No!” Matthew shouts, leaning very slightly away from you. “Or rather, yes, I'm definitely not a lunch.” Lunch: Someone curious enough about devouring and digestion... to want to experience it from the inside. Even some vores are lunches. Very, very rarely. “If anything, I'm going to be a dinner-”

“Mmm, dinner,” Colleen purrs, ripping the cellophane clean off her China-boy and slurping him feet-first into her mouth.

“-or a supper or preferably a left-in-the-fridge to die of old age after a long and happy marriage,” Matthew finishes.

“Fine,” you tell him. “Then you'd better plan on getting hitched before college young man, because I'm telling you – they're basically buffets! Do you have a date for the dance yet?”

Matthew sighs. You've both been here before. “Colleen, will you take me?” He asks.

She closes her lips over the head of her weeping but nice and quiet meal, before slurping up a few strands of hair and swallowing the doomed stock-boy down. “Sure,” she replies. “But I'm getting my date inside me before the night's out one way or another, and since we can't screw...”

“Nicole?” Matthew asks, just a little desperately.

His little sister just shakes her head. Her stockboy's already nothing but a sizeable bulge beneath her budding breasts. “It's the senior dance, brother,” she reminds him.

Which of your children's issues will you address first?