Chewed Out

 The plate spread out around her, the size of a living room. Hash browns took up one half, next to the still sizzling strips of bacon and fried eggs, sprinkled with salt and pepper flakes the size of quarters. Natalie scrambled to her feet, only to tumble over again as the plate launched upwards, knocking her into a piece of buttered toast, the height of a coffee table. The ceiling scrolled overhead, beyond the underside of Trev’s chin as he carried the plate towards the couch. 

A series of emotions ricocheted through her; chief among them terror, shrouded by a heavy layer of exasperation and she yelled up at him, “The fuck you doing, Trevor!”

He ignored her as he plopped down on the couch, the fall knocking her over again. He set the plate in his lap and the shadow of his torso fell over her as he reached forward to grab the TV remote from the coffee table. 

She huffed and stormed towards the edge of the plate, but her path was blocked as his hand lowered down to pick up the fork, knocking her back into the pile of hot, greasy hash browns.

“Oh, what, now you’re gonna eat me cause I tried to make a phone call?” she hollered, stomping to her feet, half her body smeared with hash brown grease. “Can you fucking BLAME ME?”

But his attention was on the TV and not on the plate below as he absentmindedly twiddled the fork between his fingers. 

“To be fair!” Natalie yelled. “You made me promise not to ‘run away’! You never said ANYTHING about calling for help! So technically, I didn’t do anything worth losing your shit ov–!”

His fork stabbed down into the hash browns before her and she squealed, toppling backwards. The fork lifted back up again, skewering a hunk of hash browns larger than her entire body, then dunked into the eggs and lifted over her, dribbling yolk down upon her.

“FOR FUCK’S SAKE, TREVOR!” she screeched, swatting the yolk from her face as the fork rose to his mouth, the tip disappearing between his lips. “Calm down, it didn’t even fucking work!” He chewed slowly, then swallowed with a loud gulp, the muscles of his throat flexing and his stomach gurgling above her. “Chill the FUCK OUT before you do something you’re gonna–!”

The fork lowered back down in her direction and Natalie jumped backwards as its prongs sank into the hash browns, then swept towards her, scooping up everything in its path and she darted out its way, taking shelter behind the slice of toast. “This isn’t a fair reaction!” she wailed, tears forming in her eyes as they followed his fork up to his mouth for another bite. “I didn’t run away!”

Her eyes were so focused on the fork above that she didn’t notice the movement of his other hand until his fingers were suddenly crunching into the toast on her other side and she yelped, whipping around as the toast lifted upwards, knocking her to her back. He took a loud, crunching bite, raining crumbs down upon her. As he chewed he lowered the toast back down upon her and she scrambled out from under it, smacking hard on her knees in the bite mark with her arms over her head. She looked up in time to see the fork sweeping towards her again and hurriedly sprung herself over the toast, rolling through a smear of melted butter and landing on a greasy strip of bacon on the other side.

She gave up trying to reason with him, as he was adamantly refusing to acknowledge her as anything more than part of his breakfast, and instead focused her attention on vacating the plate. But even with his eyes overhead, he must have been able to see her in his periphery, because every time he brought the fork stabbing down, it was directly in her path, forcing her back into the center on his breakfast, until it finally knocked her shins out from under her and she collapsed onto her stomach atop the scooped up pile of hash browns. She tried to push herself to her elbows, just a heavy, slimy blanket of egg was scooped up on top of her.

She screamed her throat raw as the fork rose up his torso towards his face, his gaze still overhead, slowly approaching his mouth as it opened wide, like the Cave of fucking Wonders, revealing chunks of food lodged between his teeth, his tongue coated in gunky saliva, and, at the far back, the endless black abyss of his esophagus, the entryway to his digestive system.

“TREVOR STOP!” she screamed, genuinely afraid, now.

He paused, peering around without looking down at his fork. “Huh, that’s weird,” he said, his eggy breath blasting over her. “I coulda sworn I heard a little mouse girl.”

“Oh my God, Trevor!” Natalie wailed, grasping to the slickened hash browns with one hand while the other slapped around behind her back, trying to shove the fried egg off of her. “This is insane! Put me down!”

“But that can’t be right,” Trev continued, gunky saliva stretching between his tongue and the roof of his mouth. “I explicitly told the little mouse girl to stay right where she was. She’s not dumb enough to go running around, again. Not when she’s so hard to hear, not when she might wind up getting herself eaten for breakfast.” His lips parted, strands of saliva stretching between them, as his mouth opened wide again.

“Please, Trevor!” she cried.

His eyes shifted down to the fork. “Did my breakfast just say something?” he said, with a barely concealed smirk.

“This is isn’t fucking funny!”

“Huh, you sound like Natalie, but…” The fork jerked up to his eye level and she screamed, clutching onto the hash browns. “You look like my breakfast.” It dropped rapidly down beneath his nostrils as they took a big whiff. “And you smell like my breakfast.” His fingers pinched a corner of the egg and peeled it off of her, plopping it into his mouth. As he chewed he said, “Hmm, you taste like my breakfast, too.”

“You’re such a fucking prick!” she screeched, tears running down her cheeks.

His lips split into a crooked grin. “Oof now you really shouldn’t have said that.” He opened his mouth wide again with a “Gyaaah,” revealing the partially chewed egg already on his tongue and Natalie threw her arms around her head as the fork slowly slid into the gaping maw.

His lips smushed over the fork with a “Gyam!” and it pulled out from under her, spilling her and the hash browns onto his eggy tongue. She screamed, trying to fight off his tongue as it slammed her around his mouth, knocking her and his food between his teeth, then swiping her out of the way at the last second before they chomped down, mashing and grinding his food to mush. Pools of saliva crashed over her from beneath his tongue, treating her no differently from the rest of his mouthful.

It took all her strength to keep her arms wrapped protectively around her face as she screamed at the top of her lungs, “STOP IIIIIT!”

“Thtop iiiid,” he teased, his tongue slamming into her with every syllable, along with his chewed food. “Why’th my brea-fathd bein’ tho noithy in dere?” 

“OH MY GOD, TREVOR, OH MY GOD, PLEASE LET ME OUT, PLEASE LET ME OUT PLEASE PLEASE PLE–!”

“Food ith for eading, no’ for dalking.” His tongue mashed her into a pile with his chewed food, then tilted towards the back of his throat.

Natalie screamed, throwing her arms around his tongue and holding on for dear life. It slammed her against the roof of his mouth, pinning her there as the rest of his bite slid down his gullet with a maddening GULP.

“Wha’s thith clingin’ to my ton’ue?” His mouth was suddenly illuminated as his teeth parted and his thumb and index finger came in and pinched around her wrist. His lips puckered closed around his fingers as he pulled her out between them with a sick squelch, sucking off most of the egg and food residue. She gasped in the fresh air, swinging from her arm before his face while his eyes widened in mock surprise. “Why, it’s a little mouse girl!” Then his eyes narrowed, wagging his finger in her face, scolding, “Little mouse girl, whaddo you think you’re doing in my breakfast? Shouldn’t you be on the counter where I left you?” 

She gaped up at him, quivering with sobs, her tears leaving thin trails through the eggy saliva smeared across her face.

“Awwwe,” he pouted with a big frown. “Poor little mouse girl.” He lowered her back down his torso, dangling her from her arm, then dropped her onto his abdomen, where she landed with an “Umph” and toppled over. She shakily tried to lift herself just as the palm of his hand slammed down on top of her, patting her against his belly. “Why don’t you sit right there and think about your choices. It coulda been a lot worse. You could be in my belly right now.” 

She shoved at his hand, screaming, “YOU CRAZY MOTHER FU–!”

“Shut up, Nat.” His palm slapped over her, smothering her against him, while his other hand picked up the fork again. 

He went back to eating, holding her against his belly so she could hear his breakfast gurgling around inside, could feel it rumbling against her. Rage boiled in the pit of her empty stomach and she panted for breath, struggling beneath his palm, knowing it was useless, hating him with every fiber of her tiny, weak, pathetic body. 

With every beat of her pounding heart, she was struck by another image flashing through her mind. She saw the tons upon tons of food breaking down inside him. She saw his refrigerator, loaded with milk and eggs and fruits and vegetables, and then another, empty but for expired condiments and Natty Lights. She saw one brother, pouring his pathetic little half bowl of cheerios into the other’s, so that at least one of them could go to school with a full belly. She felt the slime of chewed food coating her skin, more than she’d eaten in days. 

Oh how she hungered to hurt Trevor Dalton.

When he finished eating, he sighed a dramatic sigh of content. “Ahh, I’m stuffed.” He leaned forward to set the plate on the coffee table. “You hungry, yet, Nat?” His fingers pinched around her waist and plopped her back onto the plate and she toppled into a scattering of crumbs and smeared egg yolk. He pressed his forearms against his knees to lean over the plate, smiling down at her.

“I figure you must be if you’re so adamantly trying to share my breakfast with me. So I’ll give you two choices; if you ask me very, very nicely, I’ll let you lick the scraps from my plate, otherwise–sit still, I’m not finished.” For she had risen to her feet, fists clenched, snarling up at him. He whacked the heel of his hand against her forehead and she plopped backwards into a puddle of egg yolk with a splat! “Other-wise, you can go back in my mouth and pick the scraps from between my teeth. And I won’t let you out until my teeth are fucking sparkling. Whaddo you think, Nat? Gotta preference?”

“You’re fucking sick,” she snarled.

“What was that?” He scooped her onto his fork, lifting it up to his mouth again. “Didn’t quite catch that down there, you wanna say it again?”

She clutched onto the fork’s yolky prongs to raise herself to her hands and knees, glaring up at him. “Have you ever managed to figure out why nobody loves you, Trevor?”

“Ooh, ouch,” he smirked. “What a big mouth you have, little mouse girl. When are you gonna learn that my mouth is infinitely bigger.”

“It’s because you’re BROKEN,” she spat. “I knew it, and your MOM KNEW IT, TOO!”

His grin vanished in an instant. 

“That’s why you’ve been left here all alone,” she continued. “That’s why everybody leaves you. That’s why no one will ever stay, why no one will ever love you, and why you are so, fucking, obsessed with me!”

He glared. “What makes you think I give two flying fucks about you?”

“I know you do. I know I’m the only fucking thing you’ve ever cared about in your entire, lonely, miserable goddamn life. And that's why I terrify you and why you're trying so hard to break me. Does it make you feel strong to torment me? Does it make you feel powerful? Your dad was right about you all along. You’re FUCKING PATHETIC!”

His free hand shot up, squeezing around her, and the fork clattered to the plate below. “You really wanna call me pathetic right now?” 

Her ribs strained in his clenched fist but she choked out, “You’re just like him! You’ve turned into the abusive fucking prick you hate most in the world, just like everybody always knew you would!”

His jaw tightened, as well as his grip. “This is your problem, Natalie, you never know when to shut the fuck up. I was planning on taking you home after breakfast. Now I’m thinking, ‘Man. What a bitch. Why should I take her anywhere?’”

“Like fuck you were, you broken ass piece of shit! You weren’t taking me anywhere because you love me and hate me too much to ever let me go! That’s your problem, Trevor, you just can’t figure out how to love someone without fucking hurting them!”

“And you just keep talking. Now I’m thinking, ‘Man I wish she’d shut up. How long am I gonna let her go on blabbering before I make her shut her fucking mouth.’”

“You can stop me from talking but you'll still hear me. Now you’re thinking, ‘She’s wrong. I’m nothing like my dad. I’ll prove it.’ And once you do, my voice will be right there, saying, ‘I told you so.’”

“Wanna bet?”

“Bring it, you pathetic, broken little bit–!”

He squeezed the breath out of her. His clenched fist quivered as he glared down at her. “And so what if you’re right, Natalie? So what if I am broken? What does that make you? You think a normal person would still be shooting their fucking mouth off right now? You think you wouldn’t have broken by now if there was anything left to fucking break? You think that little bitch Mattie Thompson would ever love you if he had any idea how broken you really are? 

“We’re the same, Natalie. You’re mine, you always have been. I was yours, too, once, but you blew it all to fucking pieces, just for the hell of it, and look what happened, look where you wound up, stuck with an abusive fucking prick, just like everybody always knew you would be. You could have let me love you, but instead you went and made me fucking hate you, and now you're nothing but a toy to me. You’re my little mouse girl, and I can keep you or I can break you. I can play with you when I want and I can hurt you when I want. And if you keep running your fucking mouth off I’ll stick you back in mine and this time I’ll swallow you and you can yell and yell all you want where I can’t hear your annoying fucking voice and then you’ll be stuck with me forever and never leave again.”

Natalie clenched her teeth against the agony in her ribs, and her lips split into a mocking sneer that said what she lacked the breath to say, I told you so.

Trev sneered back. “I hate you, you know that? I really fucking hate you.” He lowered her to the floor between his legs and unwrapped his fingers, pinning her to the rug beneath his palm. She sucked in breath as his socked foot arched over her and his big toe slammed down atop her entire body from her shoulders down, knocking the wind from her. Up the length of his shin she could see his arms leaning across his knees, and above that his face glaring down at her. 

“It’s your own fucking fault that I’m doing this to you, you know. I’m getting really fucking sick of you acting like you’re the victim in all this, like you left me because I treated you like shit. I know you, too, asshole. You left me because our lives were shit, and you wanted out, and you were afraid I’d drag you down, that your new little hipster friends would see you with your trashy, psycho boyfriend and see you for who you really are. So don’t act like I ever woulda done this to you if you hadn’t been such a colossal fucking bitch to me, first.

“I never would have hurt you, Natalie. Never. You were the only person in the entire fucking world I ever gave a shit about, I would have done absolutely anything for you. I would have killed for you. I would have died for you. You were there for me when my mom split and I was there for you when your’s died. You always made me laugh, even all those times my dad beat the shit out of me. And when yours beat you, you still laughed, like it was nothing, and I wanted to fucking kill him. I dreamt of running away together. Really running away, and never coming back. I always imagined we’d get out someday and get married and have kids of our own, a couple of loudmouth trouble makers, just like we were, and I’d be a better dad to them than either of ours were to us. But you crushed that dream. Without ever even giving me a fucking reason. 

“It was you that broke me, Natalie. You were more than just my girlfriend, you were my best fucking friend, you were my family. The only family I fucking had after Mom left, and you ripped it all away, like it meant nothing to you. I couldn’t stand the thought of someone else holding you. And touching you. But I could have gotten over it. We could have gone back to being friends, if you’d given me half a fucking minute to fucking process. If you hadn’t immediately started fucking Mattie fucking Thompson!

“But, yeah! Okay! I was the dick! I was the asshole! I was the fucking psycho for hooking up with a girl you didn’t like, because it was obviously all about you, right? It couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with the fact that she was actually fucking nice to me? And then I had the fucking nerve to fucking care when some mother fucker bashed your fucking face in! I had to hear about it from one of Brittany’s fucking spoiled ass friends. She’d fabricated the story to make you out to be some whore, but I knew immediately what really happened. You went and ran your big fucking mouth to someone bigger than you, only this time I wasn’t there to fucking save your stupidass.

“So some asshole threw you onto a table and hit you in front of everyone. And your friends got him offa you, but did anyone throw his ass down? Did your pussy ass boyfriend beat the ever living shit outta him? Some bitchboy piece of shit thought he could get away with messing up the pretty fucking face of the loudmouth little bitch with the dead mom and the deadbeat dad. And I wasn’t there. Do you have any idea what that did to me? And when I asked his name you know what that cunt did? She laughed. She fucking laughed. She said, ‘Whadda you care? You’re Brit’s boy-toy now.’ 

“I wanted to kill her. I wanted to kill everyone. I was so fucking angry and the only person that ever would have understood was you, just like I was the only one who’d understand how angry you musta been when that bitchboy hit you and you couldn’t hit him back, how you must have laughed. It was crushing me, eating me alive, and I just wanted to fucking talk to you, just to make sure you were okay, just to tell you that I understood, that you weren’t the only one that was fucking angry. But you wouldn’t talk to me, you wouldn’t text me, you wouldn’t even fucking look at me. Your new friends told me to fuck off and leave you alone, like they knew you better then me, like I was a fucking stalker or something.

“But now I have you back again. I don’t have to worry about some other asshole holding you, or hurting you, ever again. Is it fucked up that I would rather crush you under my toe right now than ever let you go, again? Yeah, probably. Do I care? Not really. You're mine, and I can do what I want to you. And right now, Natalie, I want to hurt you. I want to break you, shatter you, like you shattered me. I think about how satisfying it would be to feel your tiny little body crunch beneath my foot, and wipe that fucking smirk off your face, once and for all. 

“I had the biggest fucking boner of my life while you struggled around so helplessly in my mouth. How powerless you must have felt in there, how pathetic, to know what you’d been reduced to. It took every ounce of self-control I had not to swallow you, to feel you struggle all the way down my throat. I wasn’t sure if I’d still be able to feel you in my stomach, but I didn’t care. It would be enough to know you were in there, losing your shit as I sat back and effortlessly digested you, as I broke you down into a million little pieces. I couldn’t decide if I’d jerk off right away or finish eating my breakfast first, so that you’d be smothered by even more food inside me. But I stopped myself from swallowing you because I know if I kill you, it’s done, I can’t play with you anymore. I don’t need to kill you, so long as I fucking break you. And when we’re both good and broken then maybe, just maybe, I can stop hating you so fucking much.”

Natalie lay on the ground beneath his toe, gaping up at him with wide, terrified eyes as he panted through clenched teeth, glaring down at her. Silent tears ran down her cheeks and, high above, his glare slowly softened. He lifted his foot away, and his hands lowered from his knees towards her and she flinched away from them, squeezing her eyes shut.

“My poor little mouse girl,” he muttered, cupping his hands gently beneath her. “Come here.” He lifted her to his lap, pressing her up against his lower abdomen, and Natalie broke down into sobs. He stroked his huge finger down her back. “Please don’t cry, Natty. I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

She buried her face against him, her tiny tears soaking into the thick fabric of his tee-shirt. She knew she should hate him, should loathe him or fear him, but right now she just wanted him to hold her, like he always did, anytime she was hurt or afraid. 

“I won’t hurt you anymore,” he murmured, holding her against him. “I really was just fucking with you. I took it too far. You want me to make you some coffee? Would that make you feel better?”

“In a minute,” she whimpered.

“You want me to keep holding you for a while?”

She nodded, nuzzling against him.

“Awe,” he smiled softly, stroking her back. “You’re so fucking cute. I’ll hold you for as long as you want. And when you’re ready I’ll make you some coffee and an itty bitty little breakfast, just for you. Then I’ll keep cuddling you and petting you and maybe we can watch a movie or something. Would you like that?”

She sniffed and nodded again.

“Okay,” he cooed. She cried against him while he gently stroked her hair with the back of his fingernail. After a while he muttered, “Only, maybe I’ll give you another bath first.” He kneaded her yolky hair between his fingers. “You’re all eggy.”

She wiped her face against his tee-shirt, grumbling, “And who’s fault is that, Trevor?”

“Awe, my cheeky little mouse girl,” he smirked, giving her tiny waist a light pinch. “It’s yours, of course.”