What if you had a friend who was some kind of mad scientist pred?
They keep their predatory affairs pretty quiet, never talking about what prey species they like to prey upon or when their last feed was, other than reassuring you that they've got a super ethical setup for their meals. You figure that they're just more of a closed-off and private person, or maybe they think that the topic would make you, a prey species, uncomfortable to hear and thus avoid talking about it around you.
One day though you arrive at their house early while they're out getting some last-minute supplies for the dinner they were going to make for you that they had forgotten before your arrival.
You let yourself in and while they're gone you take a peep at their lab. The code on the door was easy to crack - you knew their birthday already.
Looking around inside you find the walls lined with large, futuristic looking test-tubes filled with some kind of liquid, with figures suspended inside obfuscated by the dark liquid.
You walk around, finding a rather ghoulish contraption in the corner for the incineration of undigested bones. It looks like your friend opts to burn up multiple prey remnants at once rather than one at a time - there's a decent pile of bones in the contraption, with at least 3 skulls that you can see among them. They all look to be of the same species, looking identical to one-another.
Things began to click into place, and you realise what this "super ethical setup" that your pred friend had spoken of - this is some kind of complex cloning setup! All of the figures are clones of one another, rapidly developing inside the tanks into adult preythings for your friend to snack on without concern for the life, career, friends or family that they'd leave behind.
It's still a little ethically dubious in your opinion - they're still living, breathing things that can experience pain and fear of death - but a lot better than the alternative you supposed.
Not thinking much of it, your curiosity gets the best of you. You wipe down the front of one of the tubes - the one with the largest figure inside - and shine your phone light inside the glass tube, illuminating the prey's face within the liquid. Disturbed by the light, the clone's eyes part weakly.
You lock eyes with yourself behind the glass, before the clone shuts its eyes again, determined to sleep.
Your beating heart is wracked by the horror of this new revelation. Your hands shake uncontrollably. You peer into several more of the tanks and confirm your worst fear - these are your clones. Your "friend" has been eating you.
Backing away from the glass tubes, the full incinerator catches your eye once more - your legs move themselves against your will towards it, and you reach for one of the skulls on top. Your own empty eye sockets stare unblinking up at you.
All the times that you had met up with your friend and noticed the irrefutable bulge of a full stomach you were seeing your own body fill out your friend's belly. The churning noises you had heard within when you had hugged them tight were the sounds of your own flesh digesting within.
How many times had your friend sent you sliding down their gullet? How many times had you died deep within their gut? For how many years have they known your taste? Or the exact way that you struggle when pushed into the jaws that will seal your fate and claim your life in order to prolong theirs? Do they enjoy the pathetic sounds you make as you struggle against their grasp? Do they revel in the way that you taste? The weight of your body enclosed helplessly within theirs? When you spend time together do they take pleasure in knowing that they could turn you into nothing but calories so easily, having had so much practice already? Does their mouth begin to water like Pavlov's dog every time they see you?
You're snapped out of your frantic line of questioning when you hear the front door swing open upstairs, the predator innocently calling your name.
