The badger hole By Strega "Only you would steal a car with no gas in it!" "Shut up, Jerry." Greg took a corner so fast the Tahoe threatened to go up on two wheels, and Jerry grabbed the Jesus Christ handle next to the door. The flashing lights in the rear view mirror got a little farther away as the cops took the turn a bit more carefully. Greg glanced down at the fuel gauge, which had started out on "E" and hadn't moved. "They're backing off!" Jerry twisted around in the passenger seat to look just as they clipped a sedan, For a moment the Tahoe came almost to a stop and Greg cursed Jerry popped the door and bailed out. They were only a mile from the chop shop that'd promised him a thousand bucks for a new Tahoe and Greg mashed the accelerator pedal. A flash of lights ahead heralded the arrival of a second cop car and Greg swore. A twist of the wheel and he evaded both cops, but at the cost of turning onto a road that led to little but sagebrush. He was heading out of town and there was no easy way to turn back. The good news was the cops were half a mile or more behind, probably worried he'd crash into someone on the twisty road if they pressed him too hard. As the occasional car whizzed by in the opposite direction they backed off even more. They were probably calling ahead to get a roadblock set up but he'd take what he could get. Fifteen minutes later the cops were so far back that he lost track of them every time he went around a curve in the rolling desert, which was just as well as the Tahoe's engine began to cough. With the last sip of gas he turned off the paved road onto onto of the rutted desert tracks suited more to ATVs than cars. He just managed to nurse the Tahoe into an arroyo as it died. "Damn it." This would all be easier if they'd waited for dark the way he wanted, but Jerry thought it'd be easier to find an SUV to steal at midday. Now he was miles from anywhere and it wouldn't be long before the cops found him. He couldn't stay near the road or the Tahoe, but maybe there was a place to hide nearby. Greg hiked out of the arroyo onto the chaparral. There were no trees here in the high desert, just sagebrush and other shrubs he couldn't have identified to save his life. He had to watch his step lest he step on a snake but he made the best time he could, looking for a hiding place. Half a mile from the arroyo he started getting worried about how easy he'd be able to see from a distance. If a cop climbed up out of the arroyo they would see him in an instant and he didn't have the guts to just drop flat and hope they didn't look for him. Just ahead was a mound of dirt, and Greg stopped when he saw the sizable hole at its base. It looked tight but he could probably fit, and it'd get him out of sight. He shook his head, only to hear the chirp of a siren back the way he came. The cops had found the Tahoe. With no better place to hide Greg flopped reluctantly onto his belly and crawled feet first into the hole. As he'd hoped his legs just fit, and he slipped his ass in after, his butt scraping the rocky edges of the hole. He was going to have to slide himself in with his arms stretched out in front of him, but he should fit, and once he was all the way in he could peer out through the entrance and wait for dark to crawl back out. As he crawled deeper and deeper the cool earth surrounded his legs and the tunnel became tighter. His reluctance to squeeze into the claustrophobic space was overcome by a flicker of motion on the horizon. The dark figures of two men appeared, and even from this far away he could see they were looking around. Greg redoubled his efforts to squirm out of sight, hoping that what little of him protruded from the hole was too low to the ground to be seen. Bit by bit he stuffed himself into the burrow until he lost sight of the sagebrush and his view was reduced to the dirt and rocks of the burrow. His shoulders barely fit into the tunnel and sure enough he was forced to stretch his arms out in front of him as he wriggled deeper. He had to be nearly out of sight but he forced himself deeper. Down in the dark earth what little light normally made it to the wider space of the den was cut off and the sleeping badger woke. In the safety of its burrow it had slept through the first noises but it now knew that something large was coming down the tunnel after it. It could retreat deeper and dig an escape tunnel up to the surface, being a powerful little beast with claws hollow on the underside for burrowing, but badgers are cantankerous creatures and rudely woken from its nap it opened its muzzle to snarl at the intruder. To its great surprise no sooner did it do so than a pair of shoes were stuffed into its maw. Startled, the badger froze for a moment, and with another shove the shoes were pushed deeper. With a pop its jaws unhinged and the shoes slipped into the slippery chute of its gullet. Ankles and calves followed, protected from the scrape of its teeth by the blue jeans wrapped around their flesh, and the little badger could smell that flesh. The shoes and fabric didn't smell like something it wanted to eat but the meat inside them was another matter and crept forward as far as it could in the wide space of its den, gaping its jaws at the entrance to the tunnel and letting the meal continue to feed itself into his throat. By all rights Greg should have noticed the maw hungrily accepted his calves but he was so focused on escape from the police that he was instead relieved that it was easier to slip himself deeper. What he thought were sharp rocks but were in fact fangs scraped upward along his thighs as his legs slid neatly into a badger gullet and soon enough his outstretched feet squeezed through a rubbery constriction. Probing downward still further he found the bottom of the burrow and bent his legs to fit more of himself into this tight space. His butt scraped through a narrow spot and he sagged deeper into the broader space beyond. He was far enough from the surface now to begin to relax. Unless someone looked directly into the burrow they wouldn't catch a glimpse of him, and even if they did they might not see him unless they knelt down and stuck their head in. He could hide out here and emerge when it was safe, hitch a ride or if all else failed hike back to town and lay low. About then he began to notice a couple of disquieting things. The first was the wetness beginning to soak through his jeans. Over the course of a couple of minutes the fabric began to stick to his flesh, and there was a tingling sensation spreading up his legs. That he might explain by a damp tunnel and his legs being folded tight in the available space, but the other thing that was happening was harder to fathom. It almost felt as though the tunnel was moving! Slowly the smooth, wet part of the burrow was advancing over his hips, led by the scraping sensation he'd felt on his thighs before. It wasn't until his hips slipped entirely past the scrape that he was sure he wasn't imagining things. It was at that point that two little paws equipped with heavy claws grabbed him by the shirt and tugged. The swollen little badger, its belly fur already outrageously distended around Greg's lower body, had decided that having an entire man in its middle was greatly superior to having half of one hanging out. Greg's eyes went wide in the dark tunnel as two sets of hooked claws dug into his shirt and tugged, and suddenly the jab of fangs against his skin didn't feel like rocks any more. Dirt scraped past his shoulders as he slid deeper into the tunnel, and an awful contraction gripped down around his hips as the badger swallowed. Its jaws and throat were trying to resume their usual shape, and for that to happen he had to be either entirely outside or inside its gut. It knew which of those it wanted and Greg, suddenly aware he was being eaten, wanted the opposite. He didn't know what predatory thing was swallowing him but he clawed at the dirt floor of the tunnel to drag himself free. It didn't work. The badger was stretched so tightly around him that its throat and stomach gripped with a pneumatic suction, and it could not be pulled out of the wider space of the den since the added thickness of badger flesh made his ass too wide for the entry tunnel. with a desperate effort he managed to cram his hands down past his sides to push it away. He almost had to disjoint his shoulders to fold his arms in the tightness of the tunnel but it was worth it when he felt the furry little face wrapped around his body. Greg got his thumbs into the stretchy maw and pushed with all his might. He'd underestimated the strength of the thing and his face twisted in horror as the little long-clawed paws gripped his hands and stuffed them into the waiting maw. It tugged, the fangs digging into his ribs, and Grey slipped another foot farther from the daylight. The wide spot of the badger den was just big enough to accommodate a human and a grossly stretched badger and with his upper arms still trapped to his sides by the tunnel and his hands in the thing's throat he could only squirm and panic as with a wriggle of its jaws his hands and forearms were swallowed. The wetness and tingling on his legs were easy to understand now, if horrifying. It was the sensation you felt as something started to digest you. He was to his armpits in the gullet of some carnivorous creature and bit by bit it was working its jaws up toward his shoulders. Once it got that far its jaw would slip easily over his face and it would finish its meal with a gulp. Greg wriggled, tried to kick, but the distended badger filled the wide space of its den like a cork in a bottle and past its thinly stretched hide was dirt and rock and kept him from doing more than bulge its flesh. There was the scrape of fangs as jaws began to slide up over his shoulders from behind and Greg screamed. "Help! Hellllp! Somebody!" A quarter mile away a cop looked up alertly, scanning the sagebrush. He gestured to his partner and the two spread out, trying to triangulate the source of the sound. There were a lot of little arroyos here and they expected their perp was in one of those, maybe suffering from a rattlesnake bite. In the burrow Greg squirmed and screamed, hoping for help. It didn't occur to him that even if someone arrived he was a dozen feet down a badger tunnel and had barely fit when he crawled in. He was half curled up inside the beast now and its bulging body filled every cubic inch of space. Without hands to grab whatever air was offered he had no way to keep it from swallowing him and once it did he wasn't getting out from inside it unless it disgorged him or, less pleasantly, after it digested him. The exposed skin of his hands was burning as the badger's stomach juices started their work and his pants were soaked with the same caustic fluids now. It might not be able to digest cloth but meat was another matter and Greg's scream went high-pitched and panicky off as its jaws slipped over his shoulders. Long blunt claws wrapped across his forehead and with a great effort the badger stuffed him into its maw, its narrow jaws sliding over and beneath his face as they at last started to close. It pushed him into its gullet and Greg stared out of the closing jaws as the muscle wrapped around his neck and shoulders began to tense. He knew what was about to happen and a last scream echoed up the tunnel as the badger swallowed. For a moment light peeked through the fangs as the swollen badger struggled to finish its meal. Greg thought he saw a shape silhouetted against the blinding light of the burrow mouth but then the narrow jaws closed and his face slipped past wet folds of flesh into the slick confines of the badger's belly. With a click the little beast's jaws snapped shut and it lay in its den, muzzle and face and paws protruding from the massive bulk of its swollen neck and body. The little beast was a ball of fur, stretched around a meal far larger than it was, but its elastic body cavity hadn't quite reached its limits. It struggled to get the last of him down until with a final gulp it stretched out its muzzle, forcing his face into its stomach with the rest. Hungry and determined it had consumed its prey and it was stuck tight in its den now, fur pressed against the dirt on all sides and much too full to move even were it not wedged in place by the walls of the den. It had never eaten anything half this large and its distended stomach slipped like stretched clothing over the surface of its meal. There was less than an inch of badger between the man and the dirt but the inward pressing walls of the den kept Greg still. He screamed and tried to struggle inside the thin layer of pelt but was no escape from the slimy confines of the badger's stomach. It would take it days to digest such a gargantuan meal and it was helpless until it had but that was no consolation to the man who would spend those days making his way through its intestinal tract. The badger blinked as something obstructed the tunnel once more and glared at the shapes that appeared at the entrance. It had gone to a lot of work to get its meal down and very much wanted some peace and quiet to sleep it off. "It came from the hole?" "I think so." The cop knelt down by the mound of dirt and pointed at a fresh hand print. It was facing away from the entrance, as though the man had climbed in feetfirst. He shaded his eyes from the sunset and shone his powerful flashlight into the hole. Instantly he swore and waved at his partner to look as well. "What the hell am I looking at?" The second cop blinked at the bright reflection of two feral eyes in a pointed muzzle. He had seen badgers before but the weaselly face bulged from a wall of fur far larger than any badger should be. Horrified, the two cops watched as a shape formed out of the fur. Hollows outlined eyes and a mouth as a screaming face tried to push through the badger's pelt. The little beast had swallowed a man whole, a man so much larger than it was that it was little more than stubby legs and muzzle on a great swollen mound of fur. Strong curved claws locked over the face as the badger held its meal still inside it and it chattered irritably at the rudeness of the man who wouldn't just lie there and dissolve peacefully. "Hold on, Matt." The other cop put his hand on his partner's to keep him from drawing his gun. "It ate a guy, RJ." "Your bullets will go through it and hit our perp. If we get a shovel and dig it out the perp will suffocate before we even get back. And it's way too fat to get out without digging. Any way you slice it the perp is dead. Let the badger have its meal." "It ate a guy!" "A guy who climbed into its burrow. What was it supposed to do?" "It ate him in self defense?" RJ had to laugh. "Look, the guy was a dick. With the parole violation, and grand theft auto, evasion and so one, they'd have thrown away the key." His partner shone the flashlight into the badger burrow, unable to repress a shudder as the sharp-fanged jaws at the bottom coughed up a shoe that had come loose from its meal. Somehow it had swallowed a man several times its size and through he couldn't see the whole badger what he could see proved his partner right. There was simply no way to get to it before its prey suffocated. The perp would probably be partly digested by the time they got him out and and no one needed that hassle. "I guess you're right," he said. "Say, we never actually saw this guy. Maybe the other one we caught was lying. 'Second suspect, if any, never located.' We only have his word there were two." Matt had a thought and knelt to pick up a scrap of wood from the dirt around the burrow. RJ leaned close to see what he was scratching on it with his knife, but his partner grinned and turned away. He was still working when a long belch came up out of the badger hole, and RJ shone the flashlight in to see the swollen badger's pelt no longer twitching. Life had departed the luckless perp and the little beast was settling down to digest its enormous meal. Their car thief had managed to bury himself, six feet under even, without a shovel in sight. His coffin was made of badger fur, but it would do. Matt finished scratching at the board and RJ had to smile as he saw what his partner had written. "So our perp just disappeared into the wilderness," Matt said as he stuck the board upright in the dirt next to the hole. "Or he was never here at all." "Sure enough, partner." They made their way back to the police cruiser, leaving only footprints and a little makeshift tombstone behind. On it, crudely scratched, were words that wouldn't have been out of place in a Boot Hill cemetery. His name was Greg, He tried to skip town. Badger shit, Is what he is now.