At Badger Hill 2

By Strega


He was a big badger, almost as big as a man, and he (or perhaps a series of such badgers) had lived at Badger Hill for a human lifetime and more.  Grandmothers told their children of the talking badger, and how their grandmothers had told them of him, and so on as far back as anyone could remember.   No one knew how far back the chain went, just that Badger Hill always had its badger.

Now the talking badger had burrowed his hill full of tunnels and rooms, most too small for a man to easily crawl through, and the prevailing wisdom was that it was a bad idea to try to get his pelt. You could send dogs in but they only rarely came out and if you asked the badger politely later what happened to the ones that didn't he'd just smile smugly, and maybe burp. You could try digging him out, but the Hill was a maze of tunnels wrapped around rocks and roots and there were always more tunnels and never a badger.  

Or maybe you could try crawling in after him yourself, in the larger tunnels.  Most likely you'd go in and not come back out, and if someone politely asked the badger later where you'd got to, they might get a smug smile (and a burp) in reply. More than one man had known the horror of being partly buried by a collapsing burrow, then to have the badger come along and swallow him alive, headfirst if he was unarmed, feetfirst if he was, maybe with some additional dirt pulled down atop him first if he resisted too vigorously. "I ate him in self defense," the badger would say with a straight face, and it was hard to argue that he hadn't. 

If on the other hand you approached the badger in a friendly way, and especially if you brought a jar of moonshine or a picnic basket with you, he might stick his furry nose from a burrow and talk about the weather, or the local wildlife, or many another thing he was well versed in due to great age and extensive experience.  If you were a pretty local girl and curious about the talking badger you might even learn other things. It happened; from time to time a girl ('girl' potentially meaning anything from teenager to grandmother, and maybe even a girlish man or two) returned to town and showed off the scratches a friendly badger might accidentally give a woman he liked.

So it was no great surprise that a pretty young lady, maybe in her mid-twenties, brought a picnic cloth and a basket one warm spring evening, set it all up by one of the well known burrows, and clicked her tongue until a cream and black muzzled face appeared.

"Good evening," growled the badger, and sniffed the night air to make sure she was alone.  She was.

"Good eve, mister badger," said the woman.  "Would you like some raspberry pie?"

He would, it turned out, and soon enough he was stretched out next to her on the picnic cloth, long flank fur making him look almost like a turtle as he ate grapes and pie from her hand. His fur was coarse and long on back, where it acted as a raincoat and protection against scratches when he burrowed. It was salt-and-pepper there and cream colored underneath, where it was shorter and softer, and the badger did not object when her fingers stroked down through his belly fur until they found the long ridge of his sheath.

Her fingers gripped down, pressing the fur against the shaft inside, and the badger's haunches lurched involuntarily as he thrust against her grip. In moments he was hard, his thick pink tip sliding forth like lipstick, but when she pulled up her skirt and lay back back the badger did not step up over her.

The big badger sniffed at her inner thighs briefly, whiskers tickling her skin, then growled.  "If you wanted this, you would already be excited. I could nuzzle and lick, and then you would be, but women who come to me for this know what they want before they arrive. What do you really want, Darlene?"

Darlene Perry shrank back, surprised.  "How do you know who I am?"

"I know the scent of many families," the badger growled.  "Including yours.  A few generations back one of your kinfolk came to me, and she knew what she wanted.  Her daughter had dark eyes and sharp teeth, and perhaps a little of my blood is in you still. From scent, and the many people I talk to, I know people.  Even ones I haven't met, if they live hereabouts."

Darlene was silent, but her hand gripped his sheath again, and if he would not mate he also wouldn't refuse such an offer. He growled and thrust against her fingers for long minutes until a final chattering growl and hot spurt over her wrist settled the matter.

"Thank you," the badger said eventually, after licking her forearm clean.  "Now say your piece."

But Darlene, still silent, bent down over him, pried his lower jaw open with a finger (aided by the fact that he let her) and put her entire head into the big badger's maw.

Long-clawed forepaws reached up to grip her and she expected the next thing she would feel was a push of his tongue as the badger started to swallow her. But just as he'd refused to mate, the badger chose not to accept the offered meal. Instead he turned his muzzle to disgorge her head and rolled to the side, hugging her against his belly and viewing her face to face.

"You may yet lie under me, Darlene.  Or inside me.  But before either happens, I would know why."

Darlene sighed.  "I'd hoped to just end it. Pay you with pleasure, then lie in your belly and...end. Do I really need to explain myself?"

"You don't need to pay me," the badger said, for the first time a bit irritated. "You owe me nothing.  Not sex, not a meal. I'd take either under different circumstances, but if I eat you I may have to explain to others why you are in my stomach. So help me keep the peace. Explain."

"Fine," said Darlene, and rolled away so she at least wouldn't have to look into the badger's beady black eyes as she talked.

"It is my husband," she said. "I loved him once, but he is jealous. Every man is a possible rival. He locks me in the house and if another man so much as sees me he goes berserk. Eventually even other women were somehow a threat to him.  When he starting beating me for even going near a window I had enough."

"Leave him," the badger growled reasonably. It examined the back of her neck, and for lack of fur to groom nuzzled into her hair. "He doesn't deserve you."

"I have, twice," Darlene said.  "Three times if you count this one.  He always finds me and beats me.  His relatives lie for him and I don't have anyone to turn to, or money to take to another town.  Your stomach, badger, sounds like a refuge after what I've been through."

Under other circumstances, spooned up behind a woman like this, the badger would pull her against his belly and nibble her nape as they mated. This was not the time.  "Very well," the badger growled.  "Come with me, and I'll give you what you want."

She gathered up the picnic cloth and packed the food back in the basket, and with the one in her hand and the other dangling from the badger's jaws by the handle the badger and woman made their way to the burrow and entered, one easily, one on hands and knees. 

That was the last anyone thereabouts saw of Darlene Perry, but it wasn't the last time anyone talked about her, for a day later the badger poked his muzzle from the burrow, drawn by the sound of a shovel banging against a rock.

"C'mon out, badger!" It was a drunken, slurring voice. They usually were after someone worked up the courage to come out here and start trouble.  The badger watched from the shadows of one of his many burrows, sniffing the air to see if the man was alone (he was) and spying the rifle leaning against a tree. "Or I'll dig ya out!"

"Leave the rifle and come over here," the badger said quietly, and was rewarded by a shout of rage as the man charged up and started jabbing the shovel into the den. By then of course the badger had made his way to another entrance, and seeing the man still attacking the first the badger calmly padded over to the rifle, picked it up in his jaws and disappeared back into his den.

Eventually the man wore himself out and stood panting, leaning on the shovel.  When things calmed down the badger poked his muzzle from yet a different burrow.  "Are you ready to talk reasonably now, Samuel?"

"I know ya got my wife," the man slurred.  "She came here ta fuck you just like she wants ta fuck every man she sees."

"She came here," the badger said calmly, "To get away from you. And I haven't fucked her.  That's not what she wanted from me."

"I know ya fuck women," the man said.  He picked up a jar of moonshine and took a swig.  If he'd offered some to the badger maybe it all could have been worked out, for the badger did like his shine. Instead he screwed the lid back on with fumbling fingers, set it down and went back to shouting.  "But yer not gonna have mine! She's mine, I tell ya!"

"When that's what they want, yes," said the badger. "But that's not what happened here.  Just a moment." His muzzled face disappeared and reappeared a moment later in the largest of the nearby den entrances. "Put down the shovel and come in here and I'll show you."

"I come in there and ya'll eat me," said the man, who wasn't too drunk to realize that much.

"I don't eat people unless they deserve it," growled the badger.  "You have my word, I won't unless you attack me or ask me to."

The badger had a reputation for keeping his word and not hurting people who didn't bring it on themselves, however many dogs and badger hunters ended up inside him. After a moment's thought Sam Perry nodded and crawled into the den after the badger. He'd apparently forgotten the rifle, which was just as well since the badger had long since squirreled it away.

The hill was, as local rumor indicated, a veritable labyrinth of intersecting tunnels and rooms. Fortunately the badger only led Sam about twenty yards in. Phosphorescent fungi on the tunnel walls provided a bit of light and they passed through one small room, much too low for a man to stand up, and came to a larger one. This room had so many fungi you could read by the glow and rather surprisingly the floor was not dirt but rather carefully laid fieldstone covered with an assortment of rugs.  A pile of blankets and assorted clothing in a corner was one of the badger's many beds.

"Gifts from locals," the badger said when Sam stopped and stared. (This was mostly true; the stonework and rugs were, and the blankets. Only the clothes were for the most part less 'gifts' than 'things the badger coughed up after digesting the owners.')   "Just a moment." It rooted around in the pile for a moment, then turned toward Sam. It had something it its mouth this time.

"Here," said the badger, and flipped a bundle of cloth toward him. Sam caught it and an instant later realized he was holding a yellow sun dress, the same dress Darlene had on when she left the house.

"Your wife was not a happy woman," the badger growled.  "She came to me not to have an affair, as you thought, but to escape the hell you made of her life. And she did." The badger opened its jaws and pointed a claw at its fang-studded maw.
"You et her?!" Sam stood bolt upright, just missing the roots and dirt that loomed low overhead.  "She was mine, dammit!"

"To escape you," the badger growled, "She would climb willingly down my throat."

"We'll see about that," said Sam, who was angry, drunk, and not the smartest of men to begin with, "I'm gettin' her back!" And with that he leapt forward, pried the badger's jaws open (aided by the beast quite willingly opening them) and shoved his arms down the creature's throat.

"You're not gettin' away that easy!" Sam's head followed his arms into the gaping maw as he did his utmost to reach his wife, who if he'd applied any thought clearly wasn't there to recover. The absence of a great bulge in the badger's middle meant she must already be digested. There was no point to worming his way into the badger's jaws but he did anyway. His head soon disappeared into the throat as well and he didn't notice the badger easing its muzzle forward each time he shoved, doubling the rate at which he slid in. 

There's a limit to how far alcohol-fueled stupidity will take someone.  In Sam's case it was to the armpits, head first into a badger's throat. Unfortunately that was far enough in that the badger decided this qualified as "Asked to be eaten." This was a bit dishonest on the badger's part as Sam's goal was to recover his wife from its stomach, not end up in there himself, but just the same two powerful forepaws reached out, dug their claws into his Levis and stuffed him into the badger's maw all the way to his hips.

As his head slid into the inhospitable place that was the badger's stomach Sam suddenly had doubts about this course of action and began to kick and thrash. All this accomplished was to throw the rugs into disarray as the badger once more dug its claws into his Levis, this time  to strip them off his legs.  His shoes came off as well and the badger stepped forward, pressing the now naked soles of his feet against the dirt wall of the room. As the big badger advanced there was simply nowhere for Sam's legs to go but down its throat and in a remarkably short time it sat back on its haunches, belly fat and squirming and with a human foot protruding from either corner of its mouth.

The slippery throat and elastic jaws had let him into the badger all too easily and Sam awoke from his drunken stupor a bit late to save himself.  "Hey! I din' ask to be eaten, you horrible thing!" He jabbed his elbows into the slick folds of stomach wall and tried to punch his way out, but inward-pressing muscle and hide, plus the lack of space to build up any momentum, muffled his efforts to nothing. He didn't see the badger hesitate, shoot a glance into one of the tunnels, then lift its muzzle and swallow.  All Sam knew was the clench of the thing's gullet and the scrape of fang across his insteps as his feet, following the rest of him, slid heavily down the badger's throat. 

With a last bob of its muzzle the badger swallowed him whole, just as it had a hundred or more men over the years, and dogs, and other critters it chose not to tear apart. It swallowed Sam, who weighed at least as much as it did, without any special difficulty, only grunting with something like effort as the sudden bulge in its middle made it move its hindpaws farther apart. Sam squirmed and kicked, making its fat gut twitch and bulge, but soon enough the badger let out a great belch that left nothing for him to breathe but sips of air and a quickly rising pool of digestive fluids. 

Sam's flannel shirt (soon to be part of the badger's bed) provided protection only until it soaked through and the rest of him already stung as caustic stomach juices attacked the badger's meal. The last thing he heard was its heartbeat, the low gurgle of the stomach as it began its work and what sounded almost like a conversation, muffled to nothing by several inches of muscle, fat and fur.

" 'To escape you'," Darlene quoted as she emerged on her hands and knees from a tunnel, " 'She would climb willingly down my throat'." Not 'Climbed', I notice."

The badger studied her for a moment, and decided he had judged her well.  It wasn't inconceivable that someone might lie to get rid of an enemy this way, and if he'd thought she was doing that, her husband wouldn't be the only one digested tonight. “Well of course not," he growled, after yawning to rehinge his jaws and letting out a burp comprised mostly of air from her husband's lungs. "That would be a lie."

"You are a sneak," Darlene said, and sat cross-legged on the rug, wearing nothing but her linen undies. She gave the badger's thick neck a hug. "But thank you." 

"You did try to," the badger reminded her. "If I had taken you up on your offer when you put your head in my mouth we wouldn't be having this conversation."

"But you don't hurt people unless they are a threat to you," Darlene said.

"Or are drunk, angry and stupid," the badger agreed, and adjusted the lump in its middle with the push of a forepaw. "A combination that has sent  many men to my belly." He flicked the pair of Levis onto the blanket-bed with a dismissive swipe of a paw, sniffed then swallowed the cheap leather shoes one after another, and with that there was nothing to show that Sam Perry had been in the room at all but a man-shaped bulge in a badger's middle.

Darlene sighed.  "But I still can't go home.  The house is mine but Sam's relatives would make my life hell. They might even burn the place down.". She reached over and slid a finger into the badger's jaws.  "Maybe you should just have another meal and be done with it."

The badger shook its head and waddled fat-bellied into one of the tunnels. Walking with his own weight in human swallowed was tough for the short-legged beast.  "Just a moment," he said over his shoulder. This was the same thing Darlene heard it say to her now-digesting husband but she waited nevertheless.  Where did she have to go?

It was impossible to judge the passage of time with nothing but fungal light to go by but it seemed a very long time before the badger reappeared.  Darlene jerked awake from a doze as claws clicked on the flagstones where the rugs had been pulled away. Her husband's last kicks had disarrayed them and she'd had other things on her mind than straightening up.

The badger had a wooden tube in its mouth which he dropped in her lap. She popped the cap off the end and peered in at a rolled-up document.

"Sorry that took so long," the badger growled.  "I'd mislaid it.  This deed is to a house in McAllisterville, three counties over.  The Perrys don't travel much and I have a friend a few miles over who can get you transportation there. Once I'm mobile again I'll get you started on your way. Hopefully you can make a fresh start there."

Darlene blinked at the badger in astonishment.  "Thank you! But...why would you have a house deed?"

The badger shrugged.  "You aren't the first person I've helped. People put me in their wills and I've had a long time to accumulate things. I'll bring a pen and paper so you can write me a letter willing your house here to me. I'll tell people that you willingly fed yourself to me, and then Sam attacked me and I ate him in self defense.  That almost happened, after all.  That'll keep anyone from looking for you and I can give the house to someone who needs it."

"Are you sure? The Perrys may come after you."

"They're not all bad," the badger growled.  "After all, they have some badger blood in them."

"I think I'm starting to like you, Mister Badger," Darlene said with a smile.  "And now I really do owe you something.  How long until you can travel?"
"A day," the badger growled, and felt the bulge in his middle with a paw.  The body in there had barely begun to soften despite the gurgling efforts of his stomach. "Maybe a bit more."

"However will we pass the time," Darlene said, and shoved the badger's flank until he rolled onto his bed.  When he lifted his head to look she was wearing nothing at all.

"You don't have to do this you know," growled the badger, but there was already a thick pink tip protruding from his swollen sheath. He was a little smaller than a man overall, but parts of him were easily as large. Larger, even. 

"I know," Darlene said as she dug her fingers into the fur over the bulge her husband made and straddled him. "But now I want to." With that she impaled herself, and the badger's forepaws reached out to grip her hips as she began to bounce.

It seemed longer than a day to the badger, her visit, but then, it'd been a long time since he had such pleasant company. They even had a picnic basket full of food and a jar of moonshine to sip, when  they weren't doing other things.  And if he didn't add any new badger blood to the Perry line over the course of that day-and-a-bit, it was definitely not for lack for trying.