Smaller Luke Theory
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Game Night
🕑 Added 2024-10-31 21:43:16 +0000 UTCA discord I'm in held a contest for Halloween size fics, which I entered with the story below!
The prompt was for it to be spooky, Halloween-themed, and somehow incorporate the idea of "Betrayal." This is not really the kind of thing I normally write, because I'll be dead-honest, I really wanted to win and was trying to play to what I thought would be popular with the judges and not just what I normally like :p If, like me, you're not into vore, you can go ahead and skip this one! And if you ARE into vore, well, enjoy it, because it is not going to be very often that I write a story that uses it!
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“Oh god, it’s happening,” Kate moaned, chin resting on the tabletop as she slumped forward in her seat. “We’re getting old.”
“Oh, Kate, don’t be like that. This will be fun!” Will, her fiance, rubbed her back as Bret and Mary rolled their eyes at her from across the table.
“It’s Halloween. Tonight’s supposed to be about dressing up in a slutty costume, drinking way too much, and pigging out on candy the way I wish I could all year long.”
“I mean, no one’s stopping you from dressing up in a—ow!” Bret was cut off by a sharp punch in the arm from Mary, who sat down next to Kate and took her hand.
“Kate, sweetie, it’s Thursday. We’ve all got work tomorrow, including you. Do you really want to burn a sick day on a hangover?”
“I wanna not care about that,” Kate whined. “It doesn’t even matter anyway. This is the closest thing to a ‘party’ that’s going on tonight. I couldn’t have fun if I wanted to.”
“We’re gonna have—”
“I don’t even know about any parties tomorrow! It’s over, I’m done! I got boring and old while I wasn’t looking. Now, instead of parties, I get invited to…” she cringed. “Board game nights.”
“Alright,” Bret said, letting his backpack hit the table with a thud. “If you’re that miserable, Kate, no one’s making you be here. I’m sorry if this isn’t your idea of fun, but you don’t have to ruin it for us.”
“Hey, c’mon man,” Will said.
“No, it’s fine, hon. He’s right, I’m being a spoilsport. I’ll… try to be open-minded.” She sat up and took a breath.
Bret grinned and unzipped his bag. “I do think you’re gonna have fun with this, Kate. This game’s a classic, and it’s perfect for tonight!” He pulled out a large, black-and-green box, scuffed and battered from years of use. Bold letters in a spooky font read “BETRAYAL AT HOUSE ON THE HILL.”
“Is that our copy, babe?” Mary asked. “I didn’t remember it being that beat-up.”
“Nope. Found this in the used section at the hobby shop. Check it out!” Bret pointed to some smaller type underneath the game’s title: “NaN Edition.”
“That’s supposed to be a number. Manufacturing error maybe? There might be some cool misprints in the manual!” Bret eagerly started unboxing the game.
“Bret. Buddy. I love you,” Kate said, deadpan. “But you gotta meet me halfway here. If you wanna convince me that this won’t be boring you can not get that excited about board game typos.”
Bret blushed, and Mary couldn’t help but giggle. “Yeah, alright. I earned that one.”
Bret and Mary set the game up while Will thumbed through the rulebook, the size of which alone making it clear that this was an extremely “Bret” kind of game.
“Since when do you like this kind of stuff, Mary?” It wasn’t that long ago that Mary was just as much of a party girl as her.
Mary shrugged. “I dunno, it’s fun! And it’s not as complicated as it looks, I promise.” Kate frowned. That was exactly what Bret always said, right before explaining a game so complicated that there wasn’t any time to play after he finished.
Mary smiled, rolling her eyes as she disappeared into the kitchen. She came back with a bowl of fun-sized Reese’s and a beer.
“I know you keep saying you got old, but the way you’ve been behaving tonight I think you might only be mature enough for one of these.”
Kate affected a pout and made grabby hands at the bottle. “Pwease?”
“Eugh, only if you promise not to do that again,” Mary said with a laugh. Well, at least there was candy and booze.
Bret started doing one of his famous bone-dry rule explainers, with Will occasionally jumping in to ask questions and cross-reference the rulebook. It was kind of killing Kate that he was apparently not just following this, but into it. She didn’t realize her husband-to-be had a secret dorky side. For her part, Kate couldn’t manage to focus on a word Bret was saying.
Luckily, Mary was there to translate the important parts from “nerd” into “English.” Basically, it was a game about exploring a haunted house, Scooby-Doo-style. There were thick square cards that represented the different rooms, which they’d lay down as they explored. They’d find haunted treasures and… stuff, and then at some point, something something, one of them would turn bad?
Whatever. Kate understood the rules well enough to make it through her turns quickly and go back to eating an irresponsible number of Reese’s, and that was all that really mattered.
If she was being honest, she really wasn’t having a bad time. I mean, she was hanging out with her fiance and two of her oldest friends. They were all clearly more into the game than she was, but there was nevertheless plenty of time to just shoot the shit and joke around in between turns. Every now and then she’d roll some dice and move her little guy around but otherwise it was just a normal hangout.
…Until suddenly, all eyes were on her as she had to draw a card from a deck labeled “OMENS.” Kate suddenly felt a little self-conscious as everyone eyed her nervously while she read from the card:
ERROR
Something has gone terribly
wrong.
A power not meant for mortal
hands has seeped through a
crack in reality, oozing into your
grasp and congealing into the
shape of a card.
Gain 10 Knowledge, Might,
and Speed. Lose 1
Sanity at the beginning of every
turn.
Make a haunt roll now.
“Wait. ‘Error?’ That’s not a normal card, lemme see it.” Bret reached across the table to take the card, then recoiled back sharply. “Ah, shit! How’d that happen? I barely touched the thing and it gave me a papercut!” Mary immediately started fussing over his wounded finger while Kate set the card down in front of her.
“Uh, Kate?” her fiance said, breaking her concentration as he slid a pile of dice over to her. “You’ve gotta make a haunt roll. You’ve gotta beat a ten, so… good luck.”
“Right… Remind me what happens if I lose?”
“That’s when The Haunt starts. You’ll sort of take over as the villain and it’ll be you against the three of us.”
“Huh. Okay.” Kate scooped up the dice, praying that she wouldn’t have to be the bad guy; she’d have to start paying closer attention if she did.
“Kiss for luck?” Will offered. Smiling, Kate leaned over and gave him a quick smooch as she shook the dice and dumped them out on the table.
Kate was scratching Vegas off of her potential honeymoon ideas. She’d rolled a whopping three.
“Ahh! Oh my god, Kate’s in charge of the haunt!” Mary and Bret were clearly excited, and Kate hoped the smile she was forcing was doing a good enough job of masking her dread as Bret reached into the box and pulled out a second rulebook, sliding it over to her.
“There’s a table in the front, you use the card you drew and the room you drew it in to determine which Haunt you reveal. You’re in the… dining room, so go with that.” Bret furrowed his brow. “But I still don’t know what’s up with the Omen you drew, there might not be anything for it in there.”
“No, I see it, it’s right here on the far end of the chart.”
“Huh. Guess this really was a weird edition of the game. Maybe like a beta version that got out in the wild?”
Kate paid Bret no mind as he continued rambling about nerd shit, and flipped to the indicated page near the back of the book, reading aloud as the page instructed:
THE SWEETEST TREATS
You look up from the strange card you found and realize that the dining room of this old house is strangely familiar. Haven’t you been here before? Yes… yes, of course, it looks just like the dining room of your old college buddy, Bret.
Kate looked up from the book, confused and suspicious.
“Is this… some kind of prank, Bret?”
“I… how could it be? You’re the one who rolled the Haunt.”
Faintly alarmed but morbidly curious, Kate continued to read:
Bret’s sweet, but he’s such a bore, isn’t he? Who wastes Halloween on board games when you could be partying?
“Okay, this again? You don’t have to ruin the game, Kate!”
“I’m not making it up! Look for yourself, this is what it says!” Kate flipped the book around to show him, which only raised Mary and Bret’s alarm.
“Kate… that’s not… what language is that?”
“What are you talking about? It’s English! Look!” She showed the book to Will, who was just as baffled.
“It’s just… symbols. I can’t read this at all, Kate.”
Kate’s hands were starting to tremble. Someone at this table was fucking with everyone else, but she couldn’t figure out who.
Fine. Playing along with this dumb prank was more interesting than the game. She kept reading:
There, on the table, his silly little game is just the way you left it. Far too complicated and boring. Halloween isn’t a night for thinking, it’s a night for fun! Scares! Parties! Candy! The peanut butter cups are nice, but I can think of a candy that would taste even sweeter…
The text ended there. Kate looked up from the book and nearly fell out of her seat: everyone else was gone.
“Guys? Where did you go? Guys?! This isn’t fucking funny! I am gonna kill you, Bret! And I swear to God, if you’re in on this Will, you are sleeping on the couch until the wedding.”
There was no response… at first. Then, slowly, Kate was drawn to a soft squeaking sound coming up from the table.
There on the board were Will, Mary, and Bret, each standing only a few inches tall, screaming in abject horror.
Quietly awed, Kate lowered her head down to inspect her shrunken friends.
“G… guys?” she muttered, her voice barely a whisper.
The three of them staggered backwards, terrified of her colossal face.
Slowly, she reached out for them. They were too frightened to try and avoid her hand as it slowly moved to encircle them… but suddenly, a voice resonated in the back of Kate’s head.
Wait your turn.
“Okay,” she muttered quietly. “Clearly, Bret bought some kind of cursed fucking board game. Maybe, um… maybe if we just play it out, things will go back to normal?”
Kate couldn’t understand any of the tiny-high pitched chirps she got in response, but the screaming faces and flailing arms suggested disagreement.
“Well, look! Do you have any better ideas? We can at least try it, and if it doesn’t work, then… I don’t know, we’ll figure it out I guess! Here, Mary, it’s your turn right?”
Mary, shivering, looked around the game board, each tile now the size of an actual room to her. She was shaking so violently that it didn’t look like she could move. Worried for her tiny friend, Kate reached out to touch her reassuringly, but again felt that strange voice in the back of her mind: wait your turn.
Will and Bret moved to comfort her instead, and eventually Mary worked up the courage to walk, taking a few trepidatious steps across the board. As soon as she reached the limit of her movement, she tripped, falling to her knees a few squares over.
Bret went next, then Will. Kate watched in fascination as the three miniature people roved around the board. At their scale, they seemed less like living and breathing humans and more like intricate little dolls. Or, less than dolls even. She unwrapped another Reese’s and popped it into her mouth as Will took his turn, but for some reason, it tasted strangely bland. Maybe she’d had too many? She was definitely craving something… but what?
As soon as Will’s turn ended, Mary’s character plaque began to move on its own, the little plastic slider representing her “Sanity” slipping down to a peg. Somehow, that didn’t seem strange to her. Nor did the fact that her overriding emotion wasn’t worry for her friends, but hunger.
“Hey, Mary, um. Do you guys have any other candy?”
Mary squeaked something in response that Kate couldn’t hear.
“Here, hold on.” She pinched her friend between her fingers and deposited her on her palm, the voice doing nothing to stop her this time. Mary screamed for dear life as Kate lifted her up into the air, holding her up to her ear.
“Sorry, say that again?”
“How can you think about eating right now? What’s wrong with you?!”
“Hey! Rude. I was just asking.”
“Kate, I’m so scared right now, I don’t, I don’t know what’s going on, and—” Mary suddenly burst into tears.
For some reason, this did nothing but annoy Kate. “Come on, stop it. This is the first interesting thing that’s happened all night! Isn’t it kind of cool?”
“Cool!? Look at me! You can say that because it’s not happening to you! This is terrible! Why don’t you care!?”
Kate was surprised at just how angry it was making her to be lectured by such a fussy little thing. The longer she listened, the more frustrated she got. And the more hungry. She began to breathe heavier and heavier as Mary continued to rant…
…And then, she popped her into her mouth, biting down hard.
Holy shit, she tasted incredible! The most extreme burst of flavor Kate had ever experienced, not savory or salty at all but sweet and fruity, her bones cracking under the pressure of her molars so satisfyingly as her candy-flavored blood gushed through her mouth. It was so delicious that she didn’t even register the tiny little screams rising up from the table.
As she swallowed, two thoughts ran through her mind.
The first: Oh god, what have I done?
The second: I need another.
“Alright, boys! It’s Bret’s turn now!” The shrunken men ignored her, continuing to scream in rage and agony. With a burst of anger, she slammed her first on the table so hard that they temporarily popped into the air, landing painfully on their faces.
“I said, it’s Bret’s turn now.” She leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms.
“I think there’s technically a way you guys can win? But I get to eat one of you every turn so, odds are kind of stacked against you. Now move.”
The two of them looked up at her pitifully, recoiling as she raised her hand again. Finally, Bret started to take a few creeping steps across the board, and Will slowly followed.
The second he’d finished moving, Kate shot a hand out and snatched Bret off the table, stuffing him into her mouth as her Sanity score lowered even further. She let out a moan of pleasure as his juices flowed across her tongue; he tasted even better than Mary had! She resisted the urge to swallow right away, instead chewing him thoughtfully as she caught her reflection in a mirror on the wall.
Oh, neat. My eyes are glowing green.
She leaned down to the table, her fiance collapsed to his knees, sobbing.
“Will… you know I love you, right? I love you so much, baby. That’s why I saved you for last. I wanna savor you. I want the aftertaste of you to linger in my mouth all. Night. Long. I’m gonna eat you so nice. Don’t worry about the wedding; this will be even better. A true union of our bodies as you nourish me with your flesh. Go on, sweetheart. Make your move. Consider it your wedding vow.”
Will didn’t move from his prostrate position, pin-pricks of water dripping from his tiny eyes. Kate prodded him with a fingernail half as tall as he was, nudging his body to one adjacent square, then another. The pathetic little guy dug his fingers into the board, leaving a trail of little scratches behind him as he struggled against her. She couldn’t even feel his resistance.
When she’d moved him the requisite number of spaces, she gingerly lifted him up, collar pinched delicately between her nails. He sobbed and pleaded as she planted her lips on his miniscule form, savoring the sugary flavor of him. Her tongue lolled out of her mouth as she took a few slow, excruciating licks. With one smooth motion, she tilted her head back and released him, grinning as he slid down her tongue. She didn’t chew this time. Instead, she sucked, mashing him against the roof of her mouth as she let the intense flavors of his little body overwhelm her senses, giggling as he struggled uselessly against her. She sucked until he couldn’t resist any longer, then tilted her head back once more, swallowing her dear, beloved fiance whole.
***
Kate and Will were driving home. They’d stayed later than they’d meant to, and Will was absolutely wiped.
Kate though. Kate felt fantastic.
“That was actually a lot of fun! I wasn’t into it at first, but I’ll admit, I came around on it.”
Will grunted, too sleepy to offer more of a reply. Mary and Bret had been exhausted too; Kate was half-worried they wouldn’t make it to their bedroom after they left.
It was strange. Kate was certain she’d had a good time, but her memories were oddly hazy. She couldn’t really remember what had happened during the second half of the game.
“C’mon Will, It’s only 1 AM. Where’s your Halloween spirit?”
“Based on how spunky you are… I think you might’ve eaten it.”
Kate laughed and turned her attention back to the road, thinking for a moment that she saw the glint of something green glowing in the eyes of her reflection.
