Ben Franklin once said of the two that, after a few days, they began to smell.
 
You never quite understood what that meant until your friend from work told you she needed a place to stay for a couple days; said she was “on dire straights” and “just needed to get out of the apartment for a bit to clear her head.”
 
Fortunately for the both of you, your girlfriend was out of town on a business trip for a couple days, so within a day, your coworker was moved in.
 
Which was the perfect excuse to try getting to know her since, upon her moving in, you realized you kind of didn’t. Like, at all.
 
You knew her name was Maggie Lerun, you knew she was learning the bass guitar (as was apparent in her frequent practicing on your couch) and you knew she was pretty damn good at Rocket League.
 
Beside that, she was just another semi-attractive person who worked the electronics section with you sometimes; a total mystery, in other words, though that impression didn’t last long, thankfully.
 
After only a day, Maggie seemed to be getting strangely casual with you.
 
Not in a romantic or womanly sort of way.
 
It was more of a… “brotherly” sort of thing.
 
And by that, I mean she began openly burping around you and walking about topless whether you were in the room or not.
 
She didn’t seem to mind you taking slight glances at the impressive body that laid partially cloaked underneath the bathrobe she seemed to basically wear 24/7.
 
Not that she even looked aware of what she was doing; it truly did seem as though she didn’t care.
 
Speaking of not caring, there was another thing that factored into Maggie’s slovenly tendencies: her eating.
 
Her endless, borderline gluttonous amount of eating.
 
Every hour of the day, you’d come home from work to find rummaging through your pantry, looking for any snacks she hadn’t already stuffed inside of her monstrous gut already, and while her usual body was objectively nice to glance at earth now and then…
 
Looking as though you were seven months pregnant SOLELY from eating food was a little bit weird, even for you.
 
Nevertheless, you tolerated it, always making sure to bring home a new bag of chips on every drive back from work just to keep her from eating TOO much of your own stuff.
 
Despite your best interests, however, it seemed as though Maggie’s hunger craved something a bit more… filling.
 
Which is why, during a particularly rowdy game of Rocket League, Maggie’s guts gurgles before sending a slobbery dog collar up and out of her mouth alongside a meaty belch.
 
Her being her, she simply let it fall to the side and off of her body as she continued her game, not noticing your eyes widening immediately upon seeing it.
 
So she was a predator.
 
While it was surprising at first, realizing that she was only made you remember that pred girls came in all kinds of shapes and colors; you never could tell who was one these days.
 
So you let it go, when you really, really shouldn’t have.
 
~~~
 
Come the next day and the same old routine went just as it always did; get ready for work, possibly chat with Maggie a bit before petting your cat and heading off to work, calling your girlfriend once you got the car just to assure her everything would be a-okay once she got back.
 
Walking through the door, you said hi to Maggie as you reached up to an upper shelf in order to grab the cat’s food but, strangely enough, the bin the cat food was usually in was completely empty.
 
Come to think of it, that darn thing was usually sitting by his bowl right about now.
 
A slow glance to the floor revealed, just like you suspected, there was no cat to be seen.
 
*BUORP*
 
A loud belch diverts your attention from the food bowl to Maggie, who was casually picking her teeth with her nail as she browsed her phone.
 
Before you could ask, she said she was sorry and explained that, in an attempt to feed the cat earlier in the day, it ran off, apparently not having been back since you got home.
 
When you asked about the cat food (and how she can possibly feed a cat with no food), her only response was-
 
“Didn’t know you were out.”
 
Setting aside the fact that you definitely weren’t out when you left for work this morning, you were pretty sure you knew damn well what had happened to the cat at this point.
 
With all the animals she’d been stuffing herself with the last couple days, it didn’t take a PHD to understand that Maggie ate your girlfriend’s cat.
 
Because she was hungry. As per usual.
 
Nevertheless, you played along, taking Maggie’s word for it and going about the rest of your day without thinking too much about it.
 
The rest of the day was spent watching a movie in your bedroom and playing Rocket League with Maggie well into the night, where, as per usual, you decided to call it a night before she did by heading off to bed.
 
What sleep you COULD’VE gotten, however, was rudely interrupted in middle of the night by two people taking right outside your front door.
 
Living downtown in a shitty apartment complex, you were somewhat used to people being obnoxiously loud in the middle of the night.
 
This one seemed to be exactly the same, with both parties talking softly before, inevitably, it turned into a rather loud, one-sided argument.
 
At least until the shouting stopped suddenly, followed by silence for a few seconds and a strange sound following soon after.
 
Almost as if it were a belch, muffled by the wall separating you and the outside world.
 
The front door began to jiggle a bit as the door itself opened, a muffled shouting being heard only before a distinctive-
 
*BEURP*
 
-told you exactly who it was.
 
What the hell was Maggie doing up this late at night?
 
“Shut up!”, you heard her say in the same drab tone she talked to everybody with as she shuffled past your door.
 
You laid silently for a moment, listening in on… whoever it was’ screams cry out for help from inside Maggie’s stomach, before hearing he distinctive sound of Maggie collapsing onto the couch and letting out a loud snore a few minutes later.
 
Thinking back on it now, that should’ve been the point.
 
The point at which you kicked her out, apologizing profusely that her living with you just wasn’t going to work out.
 
But you didn’t.
 
Instead, you simply nestled yourself back into bed and drifted off to sleep.
 
If you remembered anything from high school, it was that the mitochondria was the powerhouse of the cell and that an angry predator was normally a death sentence for the person who’d angered them, so maybe it was best to ignore it.
 
And then there was today.
 
You woke up at a decent time, finding Maggie flipping through her phone on the living room couch (as per usual) before she noticed you walk in, at which point she leaned over the couch and explained to you that, as an apology for making so much noise last night, she’d gone out and bought you breakfast.
 
Nevertheless, you sat down and enjoyed your semi-warm food as Maggie clicked on the TV in the other room and belched; business as usual.
 
Or at least it would have been, until you noticed a couple strange objects by the front door.
 
They were your girlfriend’s bags; the two polka-dotted suitcases she’d taken with her on her business trip.
 
Your mind wracked with questions as to why the bags were there until you remembered what day it was.
 
Tuesday, January the 24th.
 
The day girlfriend was supposed to be coming back home.
 
“Oh, she came by earlier just to drop off her things.”, she said back to you.
“Said she forgot something back at the airport or something; told me she might be back in a couple hours.”
 
A couple HOURS? But the airport was only thirty minutes away! What the hell would she need a few hours for?
 
When you asked what time your girlfriend had shown up at your apartment, Maggie simply replied with an-
 
“I dunno.”
 
-along with a shrug of her shoulders.
 
Maybe it was the sleep in your eyes, but you could’ve sworn you saw what looked to be a bone bulging out ever so slightly from beneath the soft skin covering Maggie’s stomach.
 
And not an animal’s bone, either. A HUMAN bone.
 
A seed of doubt crossed your mind, remembering that she most certainly ate somebody last night; what are the chances she’d eat somebody else so soon after the last one?
 
Or maybe the person she ate last was…
 
A stray-
 
*DING*
 
-from your pocket drew your attention to your phone.
 
Opening it, you saw a missed phone call from your girlfriend about an hour ago.
 
You hesitated in checking it out.
 
If your girlfriend really WAS trying to call you as she was getting eaten, then she must still have her phone on her now, right?
 
You look back at Maggie, rubbing over her bare stomach as another loud-
 
*BEURP*
 
-escaped from her lips.
 
You held your finger over the call button for a bit before putting your phone back into your pocket.
 
Surely this woman you barely knew from work couldn’t have eaten your girlfriend, right?
 
You two were supposed to be engaged in a couple months, married by this time next year.
 
Surely a work friend of yours wouldn’t ruin your life like that all for the sake of her appetite, right?
 
Before you could think too long on it, she asked if you wanted to call out from work and play Rocket League today.
 
Instead of joining her, you hesitated for a bit; she noticed and asked what was up.
 
You wondered when she’d be moving out.
 
You also wondered if she’d EVER be moving out…