Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It had been almost a week since that man had thrust his left arm past The Mouth’s teeth and allowed it to bite the limb off. That arm was still digesting – very, very slowly – inside The Mouth’s stomach. Since that day, no other person had stumbled inside The Mouth’s apartment, and it had not eaten any other food.

Not that The Mouth was complaining, no, not one bit!

The Mouth felt thoroughly satisfied with the delectable arm it was digesting, and instinctively knew it would continue remaining satisfied for quite a few weeks before it finally grew hungry again. How different its digestive system – its entire biology! – had become from what it was originally!

Once upon a time, The Mouth had been a regular human being. A human being who’d worked as a plumber. Driven all over town, fixing other people’s pipes. Jogged through the neighborhood before going to work. Went camping in forests when he had vacations. Had friends and visited them often.

Then, one day, he happened to look outside for a few seconds, and doing that somehow caused all his windows, furniture and personal belongings to disappear, and most of his floor to be replaced by a grate, and his body to mutate and become fused into one of his apartment’s walls, with only his face sticking out into the open air. Completely unable to move… like a barnacle on a rock at the beach. A regular human being no longer.

Such a fantastic improvement!

The Mouth would’ve spent more time gratefully reflecting on how much better its new life was over its old one, but then its apartment door swung open and a small figure scurried inside.

It was the child. The EXACT SAME CHILD.

The Mouth remembered the first time this child had been here, (given the state of his body, there was little else for The Mouth to do these days besides reminisce…)

He had been hidden inside the backpack of that one man… the one who had let himself into The Mouth’s apartment with those three other people who’d been following him. But since its transformation into its current form, The Mouth’s sense of smell had become even better than a bloodhound’s, so sniffing out the child’s tantalizing aroma had been no problem at all.

“FEED ME A CHILD…” The Mouth had told the man.

In response, the man simply turned around and tried to exit his apartment with his companions… as though the Mouth had demanded something completely unreasonable!

‘Tried’ being the operative word.

For as soon as the man and his companions had left its room, The Mouth activated the mysterious, supernatural power that its mutation had blessed it with: the power to extend the length of Apartment 13 to an infinite magnitude.

Once the man and his companions had tired of walking down a hallway which had no end… they had returned to the Mouth’s room and once again, the Mouth told the man to feed the child to it.

“Never!” the man had snapped back, and once again turned to leave.

“WHY NOT FEED ME…?” The Mouth had asked in disbelief.

“I can’t,” the man had replied, turning back towards the Mouth with a surprising degree of raw emotion on his face.

“THEN STAY HERE FOREVER...” The Mouth had snarled.

The man’s companions traded nervous looks with the man, who took the backpack off his back, bent down and unzipped it, and began rummaging through it.

“Eat all of my food instead! I’ve got lots of good stuff… a granola bar, gummi bears, a chicken sandwich, some spicy chips…” One by one, the man showed The Mouth each item of food he was carrying.

“NO,” The Mouth had said.

The man might as well have tried offering The Mouth dry cat kibble! It had evolved beyond such pitiful forms of nourishment as cheeseburgers, pizza and tacos. And there was something much more wonderful-smelling that was currently stirring softly from within the man’s backpack, making a high-pitched cooing sound.

The man had then taken a long, long, unblinking look inside his backpack at the food the Mouth truly wanted to be fed. Then he stood up.

“Eat my arm instead,” The man had said, rolling up the sleeve of his left arm.

The man’s companions had balked and protested quite noisily at this, but the man ignored them while staring pointedly at the Mouth, awaiting to see what it would say as it studied his outstretched arm.

“…YES. FEED ME YOUR ARM…”

The Mouth could not begin to guess what had motivated the man to take such a course of action. Perhaps he desperately wanted to bring the child to his home to cook in his oven… that’s exactly what The Mouth would have done in the man’s place. Or maybe the man had simply never liked that particular limb.

Either way, fresh flesh was fresh flesh. And though the meat of the man’s arm might not have been as supple and tender as the child’s would have been, it was thick and fatty and so very rich with blood!

The man had howled and convulsed in absolute agony as The Mouth had gnawed his arm off. After he’d passed out on the floor, the child had curled up next to him and slept by the man’s side, until the man eventually woke back up. Then the man had taken some object off the ground which The Mouth had regurgitated from some earlier meal, and then The Mouth allowed him to leave with his comrades and the child.

And now, the child was back. The man was not with him, nor were any of the man’s followers… the child had returned here alone. Considering it hadn’t even been a full week, the child had already undergone quite an amazing growth spurt; he’d gotten too large to fit inside the man’s backpack. Also, the child was no longer entirely naked. He was wearing a red baseball cap and a backpack of his own.

It was hard for The Mouth to determine the child’s mood, since his face was so rat-like, but his four intelligent little eyes had been staring at The Mouth with great intensity since he’d stepped inside.

“…WHY ARE YOU HERE?” The Mouth asked.

Instead of answering with words, the child scampered closer to The Mouth. He climbed right up the wall that housed The Mouth’s face with his six clawed limbs and… and placed his body right up against The Mouth’s noseless nostrils. Deliberately letting The Mouth breathe in his savory scent.

The Mouth’s maw dropped open in surprise. And then drool began pouring out of it.

“…YOU WISH TO FEED ME WITH YOURSELF, CHILD?” The Mouth inquired, feeling its hunger suddenly returning in a hurry!

The child nodded his head energetically.

He was so much bigger today than he’d been almost a week ago. Back then, he’d been such a thin, scrawny, starved little creature, but now he looked well-fed and well-cared-for. So much more meat on his crunchy little bones!

“…OH, WHAT GRACIOUS, GENEROUS NEIGHBORS I HAVE!” The Mouth sighed happily. “SACRIFICING THEMSELVES THAT I MAY EAT WELL!”

The Mouth opened its jaws so that the child could enter inside, wondering what his tail would taste like. And that was when the child leaned forward and bit down viciously into The Mouth’s cheek.

As a mutant, the child had a lot more teeth than he naturally should have, due to the second inner mouth nested within his outer one. The Mouth screamed and thrashed its face back and forth to throw the child off. But not only did the nasty little rodent remain latched on as firmly as a tick – sinking every tooth within his two muzzles even further into the side of The Mouth’s face – he grabbed the backpack off his back, unzipped it and brought out three roundish objects. Even with his hands busy and his mouths full, the child was also making all sorts of shrill high-pitched mousey squeaking noises filled with anger and hate.

Using two of his free hands, the child pulled bits of metal off each of the roundish objects, after which he lobbed them down The Mouth’s screaming wide-open throat, one by one. They rolled down The Mouth’s esophagus very uncomfortably.

Only after all three of the roundish objects had landed in The Mouth’s belly did the vile rat leap backwards, landing on the ground and spitting out the bit of flesh it had ripped off its cheek as though it were the most disgusting thing in the world.

The last thing The Mouth saw was four small ratty middle fingers raised up towards its face. And then the grenades in its stomach exploded.

Chapter Text

After kicking Apartment 13’s door behind him, Ratrick found his way back to the stairway, and scurried up to the third floor, encountering no other monsters on his way. It was very, very late at night; around one in the morning. Ratrick was feeling very tired, yet also thrilled at his accomplishment. Standing on tiptoe, he opened the door to Apartment 33 as silently as he could before locking it behind him.

All the lights were off. Almost all the others were fast asleep – Joel and Sophie on the couch, while Dan, Hellen, and Papineau were slumbering on the floor. The only one still awake was that shadowy white-masked creature that loomed in one corner of Apartment 33’s kitchen; Ratrick was certain it never slept at all.

None of them had any idea of what he’d gone and done, and Ratrick didn’t really see any need to tell them. It would be his little secret! He only hoped his Dad wouldn’t miss any of the grenades he’d borrowed. Dad had gotten them from that weird warzone place down on the ground floor.

The eyes behind the shadowy thing’s mask silently followed Ratrick as he crept around Papineau and Hellen’s sleeping forms, and made his way into his Dad’s bedroom.

Dad was fast asleep in his bed. But he was sweating as he slept, and had a troubled look on his face while tossing about under his blanket, his one remaining hand clutching at the stump of his left arm. If Ratrick was better at speaking, he might have woken his Dad up and told him all about how he’d gone downstairs and singlehandedly killed the cruel, greedy monster that he’d lost that arm to. But talking was still so challenging for him; it was not easy forming words with one muzzle inside another!

Maybe another day.

Instead, Ratrick took the backpack off his back and the cap off his head, and climbed onto his father’s bed and snuggled up on top of Dad's stomach without waking him, tucking his body underneath his arm. Before long, Dad’s hand dropped from his left arm’s stump, his palm settling on Ratrick’s back. And as Dad smiled in his sleep, Ratrick smiled as well, and shut his own eyes.