We exchanged uncomfortable glances - all of us, but especially She and I.

'She' was 'Woman Across the Table'. I knew her screen name, but it seemed weird to call a real person by a fake name, even in my mind. As it happened, I knew her real name, too, but I couldn't use that, either. So I'd settled on names for everyone, just to fill the gap. 'Pink-hair Girl' was loud and funny and occasionally obnoxious, but most importantly she had a 'Rogue-ish' stripe in her bangs, just hot pink instead of white. 'Fuzzy Kitty' was called that because of the face on her hoodie. The portly, ever-smiling guy with the goatee, the perfectly-feathered hair (perfect for the 80's, anyway), and the radio voice was 'The Host'. It was his room, and his fursuit head resting like an altar god on the pillow. There was the Nose, and Squeaks, and a bunch of others, and just to be fair I was 'the Quiet Guy', because I was, mostly. Not that I was debilitatingly shy or anything, but I liked to listen. Or maybe I could have been 'the Writer Guy', but that seemed vain. And Her? The Woman across the Table? Nothing else stuck. Glasses weren't distinguishing enough. She looked pretty normal, really, and that was actually distinguishing. But mostly she was the one I kept glancing back to, so 'Her' worked, but she was officially 'Woman Across the Table'.

We were crowded into a none-too-large hotel room, nearly a dozen of us, sitting around the small dinette table, leaning against the wall or the TV, sitting on the edge of one of the two beds. Boxes of pizza, some empty and discarded, some still vainly advertising their wares, were scattered around the room. It was an overly-cozy setting for a group of people who barely knew each other and were talking about things that some people felt embarrassed to type.

The question still hung in the air, and our Host scanned his collected assembly for an answer. Even though most, if not all of us had answered this question a dozen times before, in forums or IMs or the chat, answering it person made it more real. More personal. Now we weren't just talking heads, but the actual people occupying meatspace, bound by our imperfect, mundane bodies and untrained, awkward reactions. Before today, I didn't know any of these meatspace people, really. Before I wouldn't have really considered the uncomfortable difference between knowing a screen name and an actual person, as ridiculous as that sounds. But maybe that was the kind of lie I had to tell myself to make this convention's informal 'Vore Meetup' palatable.

Maybe it would have been different if I actually went to the convention. A few of the people here were wearing tails or ears, and our Host had the rest of his fursuit somewhere. Some of the people in the room traveled the country going to cons and knew each other like family. I already felt a little out of place, but I lived nearby, and I wasn't the only one who had driven into town just for the night.

Not all of us were the quiet, awkward types, thankfully. It just kind of felt that way. When even Pink-hair didn't answer, our Host laughed like it was a great joke and in that sonorous voice of his said, "Then let me ask it this way - 'Who really wouldn't?'"

That got the conversation flowing, as people began speaking over each other to insist that it was only a fantasy and blending it into reality in any way sapped all the fun out of it. (Then why this meeting? I wondered.) But they were only the noisy half, and many of us still held our tongues. Our silence was pregnant with implication, and the ones who were disavowing blending knew it, and insisted with their expressions and tones of voice that we join them in their sanity.

"I would," She said, this time looking at our Host. Her voice was only conversational, not confrontational, but it still cut everyone else off.

"Now we're getting somewhere," he crowed, rubbing his hands together gleefully. "Pred or prey?" For the moment, all the naysayers were silenced.

Her teeth parted, and she traced her teeth with the tip of the tongue - less apropos to the situation and more an unconscious gesture of thought, but we still hung on her answer. I knew enough about her to expect her answer, to suspect that she wasn't deciding which, but whether she really wanted to commit to pigeonholing herself in front of everyone. "Pred."

There were giddy, nervous laughs around the room, until Pink-hair, the foremost fantasy-only spokeswoman, turned to the Woman Across the Table. That one lock of hair demanded attention even when she wasn't making her intelligent points a little too loudly. "Well, that's easy enough to say, because unless you pull out a knife and fork and massive barbecue grill, it's impossible. You're just saying that for a thrill because you know it's impossible."

The Woman Across the Table pushed her hair back behind her ear on one side and settled her glasses higher up on her nose. She didn't have to talk nearly as loud for all of us to pay attention, and it wasn't just because we were hanging on her response. It was something in her expression - something a little wild, barely restrained behind a veneer of sociability adopted for the night, like the relatively plain appearance was camouflage. Like she might do anything. "I'd do that, too. But that's not what I'm talking about. I would. I have. I will. Tonight."

For a moment, nobody knew how to respond to that, but our announcer-voice Host broke the stifling silence to say, "So who still thinks they'd really go through with it? Any volunteers? Any prey this time? Let's make a match."

"No," She said. "If I'm pred, I choose."

"But they still get to opt out if they want," he stipulated.

"Of course. I'm a murderer, not an asshole. Not about this, anyway." She was the only one who chuckled, but that didn't seem to faze her. "I'm serious, though. If you don't want to be an accomplice to murder, you should get out."

"You're going to do it here?" Not even Pink-hair got up to leave, though she didn't seem to believe and of this. Her arms were crossed firmly over her chest.

"If nobody's kicking me out."

She glanced over at the Host, who lifted his open hands. "Not me. I've got to see this."

Without a second to sweep the room and make her decision, the Woman Across the Table fixed her eyes on me. No the occasional glance or flicker like before, but completely focused. "Come here."

A complex mixture of emotions from around the room escaped as a collective sigh. Pink-hair and a couple of the other holdouts seemed to realize that this was becoming more serious than they'd expected, but at least it wasn't somebody they knew. They probably thought this was like some magic act, and I was the magician's plant in the audience. Across the Table and I were in cahoots. The people who hadn't given into sense, who still held onto the idea they the really really could be prey, seemed conflicted between disappointment that they weren't chosen, and relief for the same, and that they wouldn't have to back out of their commitment to realizing the fantasy. I had the opposite problem - trying to decide whether courage was to admit I had been ridiculous and acknowledge Pink-hair's point, or to go along with the Woman Across the Table. At least go along or the moment, because it was impossible, no matter what she said. I just took it as another amusing story when she'd told me over IM a few months back that she'd done it before. She'd been short on details then, besides the kind of vague descriptions that showed up in everyone's fiction.

Somehow, for some reason, I stood up. The room had gone still, and even more eyes were on me than her. My heart was pounding, and I felt cold and hot at the same time, but I still teetered my way through the tight, crowded room, between bodies pulling their legs up onto the bed and those shrinking back against the TV to let me pass. I made it around to her without actually managing to step on anyone. I almost felt drunk, as awkward and unstable as I felt, though I hadn't had anything to drink. She still sat as I loomed over her, which made things even more gawky for me. I was no small guy, after all, and she wasn't exactly a giant, but that only made whatever was happening between us feel all the more real. It made me start thinking about mechanics, about physiology. I guess it was plain on my face, because she smirked up at me, and unfolded her arms to extend a hand to me. "Pleasure to finally eat you in person." She chuckled in that self-amused way again before I took her hand. It was a firm, business-like shake between us, except for the stare we both held.

"Do you two already know each other well?" our Host asked.

She broke eye contact with me long enough to lean around my hips and quip, "Well enough that he should have known better." She didn't let go of my hand, though - instead she turned it, as though double-checking for a watch or a ring, and then lifted it closer to her mouth. "Calm down. I'm the one who's going to have to live with this afterward. You have the easy job. Just try to relax for me. Don't move."

She paused, like she was giving me a chance to be witty or clever or maybe back out, but I just stood there, dumbstruck, and I suppose following her instructions. All my energy was spent on trying to figure out what I was supposed to do with myself, if this was really real, if I should be as frightened as I felt. Most of me knew this was going to be some kind of trick, that she was just trying to get a rise out of me - out of all of us. She'd told me that she did that kind of thing - that she liked to 'experiment on people' by putting them in uncomfortable situations and watch them react. She was right - I should have known better. It was only then that I realized why she'd told me to calm down. I was trembling. I took a deep breath and nodded.

By reflex I balled my hand into a fist when she opened her jaws wide, but other than repositioning her grip to my wrist and changing the angle of her head, it didn't slow her down. We all looked on while her top teeth hooked over my first finger, into the softer meat between my finger and thumb, and her lower jaw just enveloped the bottom half, simple as that. At least from my perspective it was simple; it didn't look like her jaws had unhinged or had gone elastic. If it weren't for the fact that my hand was shortly enveloped, surrounded by a wet tongue and cheeks that squeezed tight when she swallowed to gulp it down, I would have thought it was a trick of perspective. Her hand slid up to my elbow and gripped tight, her eyes flicked back up to lock to mine, and she pulled and swallowed, and my hand slipped into her throat. It was like she'd swallowed me entire. Darkness closed around me, and I felt warmth over my entire body as my limbs went weightless. A pulse thumped in my ears.

"Get him on the bed! Get him on the bed!" the Host was practically shouting, or it sounded like it over the buzzing in my ears. "We should stop. Right? Does he want her to stop?" Pink-hair asked nobody in particular. It all blended together with the throaty, groany sounds the Woman no longer Across the Table was making as she swallowed past my elbow. She wasn't slowing down - except to follow me to the edge of the bed and finding the right orientation so my arm went in straight, She seemed oblivious to the fact that there was anyone else in the room. One hand pressed hard on my breastbone, as though to pin me to the bed, while the other pushed my sleeve up high on my shoulder and hooked there for leverage to pull me in.

My hand was more of a loose lump, just waking up from the tingles, when it pushed through the tight ring into her stomach and brushed against the slimy, wrinkled wall inside. It was hotter than I'd expected, and I hadn't expected to feel her pulse clenching around me, or the squeeze of her regular, heavy breath through her nose. Call me an idiot, but I didn't expect it to be such an invasion of personal space, to see her right up on my shoulder, close enough that our noses could almost touch as we stared at each other. Her lips curled back to expose her teeth: My shoulder presented a dead end beyond which she couldn't go any further. After a pause She bit - hard - and slid her teeth back and forth like she intended to saw my limb off at the joint. I must have looked pretty panicked, because she grinned. Then she released me and made a disgusting-sounding vomiting hack before my arm came sliding back out her stomach and throat and mouth. After grabbing a napkin to wipe her tongue and lips, she laughed again. "Your expression was priceless."

The room was a whirl of activity - I'd sat up but was still stunned, and just sort of lifted my arm while someone used a hotel towel to wipe it down and mop up the vomit-smelling slime that clung to the fine blond hair on my forearm. She guzzled water from a plastic bottle that someone had thrust on her, and answered questions coming from every direction. All of that demanding attention focused on her seemed the most taxing part of the whole affair, and occasionally she glanced over at me impatiently, as if to make sure I hadn't run away or passed out. "It's not that hard, really. It's harder hocking something that big back up, really - my stomach doesn't want to let go, I guess." There was that chuckle again. "I don't know - taste your own arm. It tastes like that. Kind of neutral. It's not really about the taste. But, yeah, I guess I do like it. He tasted good. Eight out of ten, would eat again." She curled her lips back, sneering and screwing up her mouth at the last question. "No, it does not feel like sex. Or like pregnancy, trust me. It's not comfortable for either of us, but... That doesn't mean it doesn't feel good. Some people like flogging each other. And think it 'feels good'. I'm partial to this. Ask him what it's like."

I'd hadn't said anything this whole time, but now I had so much to say the words were jostling to be first out of my mouth, and bottlenecking there. "Well?" someone asked. "What did it feel like? What you expected?"

"No," I answered. "Because it was real. It was warm, and wet, and all that. All the things you would expect." I barely looked at anyone else but Her, even though I tried to tear my gaze away. I still wasn't entirely sure what had happened. "But there's just so much... detail, I guess. Textures! Different firmnesses. Some parts were a little stretchy, but most of it felt like a muscle, like the inside of a fist squeezing. There's no room! It's not... not like there's this empty sack I could move my hand around in. I can't imagine trying to fit more in."

She grinned at me like a cat.

Pink-hair took a deep breath where she stood in the middle of the room, hands on her hips, and let it out as a sigh. "Well, I for one am glad it was just a joke. Or sample, or whatever it was. It was interesting. I'm impressed. But still a fantasy."

"Oh, no. No, no." The Woman shook her head, reseating her glasses again. The chuckles were gone. "No, I was proving that I could. I said I will, and that's what I meant. Unless he backs out, I'm going to eat him - tonight. But that, I sure as hell can't do in this room and expect to waddle back to mine. Do you know what it's like to try to walk around with another person in your stomach? It doesn't happen. No..." She stood, and stretched her back. "We're going back to my room. And he's getting naked, and if that bothers anyone, you don't belong in the room anyway. And then I'm eating him, and he's going to die in my stomach, and it's going to be very 'real', and very 'detailed', and probably not very pretty. But anyone who wants to watch - for science, or whatever, I don't care - can come. And if you'd rather stay here and talk about fantasy, that's cool, too." She flashed a quick, conciliatory smile at Pink-hair.

There were a lot of silent exchanged glances - just like before - a lot of hesitation before the first person committed by stepping over toward the door. Another person joined him, and soon most of the attendees were crowding in the entryway, waiting to head out into the hotel corridor. Our Host was among them, and he gave an apologetic shrug toward Pink-hair. "I'm definitely watching this. We can pick up again later tonight or something?"

"No - it's fine," she responded. "I'm coming, too. All for one, and that shit. It's not murder if he's volunteering, right? It's just... a really freaky story you never ever tell anyone about again."

"Right." The others nodded.

And that meant everyone was waiting near the door - for me. I still sat alone on the bed, still a little out of sorts, still hyperaware of the reality of the situation, or maybe unaware of the reality, but either way not quite believing it. The Woman crossed back over to me - the three or so steps it took to pick her way between luggage and pizza boxes, and stood close enough to nudge my knee with hers. "Hey."

I looked up.

"You're coming, right?" Glancing at the others, she bent a little and lowered her voice, as if that would keep anyone from hearing. "I know I'm acting like this is all casual and every day and whatever, like it's no big deal. But I really want this. I've been waiting for this. Hoping for this, when I saw who was coming. All you have to do is just lay there and let it happen - I'm not going to make it hard. So you'll come, yeah?"

I don't know what I was planning on doing before that - if I intended to go or to stay. My brain was just idling, just processing the experience. Her words, though, somehow fit me just like a key. "Yeah," I agreed, and offered my hand. "I'm coming."

Instead of taking my hand in hers, she grabbed me by the wrist and led me out of the room.