The next best thing

By Strega

Bagheera belched contentedly.  It had been hours since he fed and the bulge in his middle was a heavy, sloshing mass of liquefied meat and slowly softening bones, but somehow a bubble of air had survived this long.

"What was it this time," Mowgli wondered.  He pressed his hands against the panther's ink-dark fur, sinking his fingers into the bulge, and Bagheera groaned.

"A little higher," the panther purred, and Mowgli smiled. The man-cub was still curious, though, and as he rubbed the panther's swollen belly he tried to make out the shapes of the as yet undigested bones shifting beneath his fingers.  Bagheera saw his interest.  "It was a fine, fat doe," he purred as Mowgli felt the hard shape beneath the dark fur.  

"It is very round for a doe skull," Mowlgi said, and Bagheera's tail flicked.  A padded paw guided the boy's hand to rub elsewhere.

"You know they do not stay the same," Bagheera purred.  "As they dissolve inside me the bones clump up, collapse. You probably feel part of the ribcage and think it something else."

"I guess," Mowgli said doubtfully.  "Are you sure it was not a bandar-log?"

"I know what I ate," the panther said in mock-irritation, while making a mental note to say next time that it had indeed been one.  Mowgli grew clever as he approached adulthood.  "Now it is just something to digest."

Mowgli smiled. "If you didn't swallow them whole like Kaa does, there wouldn't be all these bones in there.". He kneaded the panther's fat belly forcefully and yet another bubble worked its way loose, provoking a long burp from Bagheera.

"It's an efficient trick," Bagheera purred.  "I don't waste anything when I eat his way." 

He couldn't resist.  As Mowgli's hands worked their way over the bulge they approached his muzzle and a broad wash of sandpapery pink tongue came out to scrape the back of the boy's hand.

"Tasting me?" Mowgli giggled.  

"Of course not," Bagheera purred.  "Your hand was dirty, and you are giving me a nice belly-rub. I am just returning the favor. You know I would never eat you, little frog."

But a day before...

It was the taste.  Not just the smell, though that made him hungry enough. The taste! He couldn't stop thinking about it, and as he always did when he couldn't get it out of his head, he sought out Baloo.

"Every taste," the panther grumbled.  "Every sniff.  Every year he tastes and smells more succulent.  I salivate just being around him, remembering the flavor when I lick him.  Thinking about what it'd be like to taste all of him, inch by inch as I swallow. Until there's just the bulge, and the taste of him on my burps."
 
Baloo nodded.  "Every so often the smell of him is almost too much for me, too. I used to think Shere Khan eats humans because he hates them.  No, he eats them because they are delicious.  If it weren't for you keeping me honest he'd be in my belly by now."

"Or in mine," Bagheera growled.  "But he is our son in all but name.  We raised him, taught him, along with he wolves.  Delicious though he is, I will resist the urge."

You know what you need to do," Baloo said, and Bagheera nodded.  There was only one way to stop thinking about it.

So silent as a shadow Bagheera crept through the jungle.  It was a fair trek to the nearest man-trails, more so because he did not dare return to the one he'd gone to the last time the urges rose.  Just as Baloo did, he went in a different direction each time.

The smell of other cats was strong, for he was outside his own territory, and he was cautious.  Being caught here would spark a fight if they realized his intent. At best he'd have to retreat, for this was not the mating time and even a female would chase him away, much less the local male.

Luck was with him and he found a man-trail, one of the dirt paths that led between the villages. He found a spot with a good view, hunkered down in the undergrowth and waited.

An hour passed, and then another. The man-folk did not travel much at night, and when they did it was usually in groups.  Four men stumbled by, drunk, singing an off-key song.  Bagheera tensed on the chance that one would wander away from the others, be left behind.  More than one man sleeping off a bender beneath a jungle tree had ended up with a fine panther-fur coat. Yet they stayed together, and Bagheera sighed and settled down to wait longer.

He might go an entire night without a good chance.  It had happened before. Tonight he was lucky. Halfway through the dark his ears perked up.  A young woman in a sarong made her way uncertainly down the trail, picking her way by moonlight.

Where she was going in the middle of the night Bagheera could not say.  To visit a lover, a relative?  Muscles supple as silk and strong as iron tensed beneath Bagheera's night-dark pelt.  He did not know where she planned to go, but he knew where he wanted to send her. Before she even knew he was there he was on her, bowling her off the trail and into the brush.  Padded paws with claws still carefully sheathed pinned her to the ground and she had time only for the briefest of startled yelps before the panther's fanged jaws closed around her skull.

The taste!  Bagheera held her, saliva filling his maw and running down her neck. The smell!  This was what he wanted, what he needed.  Clawless human hands pushed at him, trying futilely to push away a predator twice her weight and ten times her strength. Weak human legs tried to kick him off.  Bagheera held her, tasting, smelling, and very slowly, deliberately, he began to swallow her.

Bit by bit, almost lazily he worked his jaws over her shoulders, and her struggle was frantic as she felt his throat muscles grip her face. A thick coating of lubricating slime eased her trip into his gullet as his jaws creaked wide.  Man-folk did not know that some panthers knew this snake-trick and it was the best way to leave no trace of what he did tonight.  When he was done there would be nothing left of her but the bulge and the belch, nothing here to mark it but some panther-tracks that could easily be those of a local cat.

His sandpapery tongue roamed as he fed, slicking her down for swallowing, tasting her. He did not enjoy the flavor of her sarong but at least it was of cool, smooth material, as easy to slide into his gullet as she was. He'd like to tear it free and taste more of her but then there'd be shreds, scraps.  Evidence. He let her keep it as the swell of her breasts filled his jaws, felt the push of his strong tongue forcing them into his throat.  For the first time, almost reluctantly, Bagheera swallowed. The undulations of his gullet gripped and squeezed her deeper and half a woman kicked frantically out of his maw.  Much as he wanted to taste her for hours and swallow her a millimeter at a time he would need to breathe eventually.

To the waist in a hot slick gullet the delicious woman kicked and squirmed, trying to extricate herself from his gullet before she was swallowed whole.  Bagheera grinned, licked, tasted, and pushed her rump into his maw with his forepaws. The great bulge in his ebon neckfur swelled as her hips slid in and twitched as her newly swallowed hands pushed at his gullet from the inside.  She tried with new desperation to escape, digging her knees into the loam and managing to slam her heel into his skull a few times.  It just made him smile.

There would be no escape.  Bagheera pulled her sarong up with a paw and tasted her thigh as hot panther saliva dripped down her leg.  The intoxicating smell of human meat filled his nostrils and down in his middle his empty belly rumbled as it sensed the coming meal. The legs kicking from his jaws slipped in past the knees as he swallowed again and there was a shudder and even more violent squirm from within his gullet as the great contraction of his throat muscles pushed her face into his stomach.

Desperate, she kicked and wriggled. Bagheera sat back on his haunches, sucked the scent of human into his nostrils, and swallowed.  The sandaled feet slipped into his jaws and he tasted the dirt on her shoes.  He also tasted the thick leather soles and nodded fractionally.  The leather would dissolve just as her flesh and bone would and the rope that tied them to her feet would make its way easily through his guts. The sarong was a greater concern but hopefully it would stay in his stomach to be coughed up as opposed to making its way uncomfortably through him like the last one.  The one before that, made of some other material, had dissolved entirely with no more effect than to turn his droppings the color of its dye for a few days.

Bagheera rose to all fours, belly already drooping and a twitching bulge of feet swelling his ebon neckfur. He tensed, arched, and swallowed, and there was a convulsive struggle from within as the doomed woman slid down his throat.  She knew what was happening to her and that the caustic juices consuming her face would soon be at work on the rest on the rest of her but there was no resisting the pull of the swallowing muscles gripping her entire body. With a last squeeze her feet were forced into the waiting belly after the rest and it was with near disappointment that the panther finished his meal.  If he could, he would make it last all day.

Saliva still dripped from his jaws, for the flavor of woman clung thickly to his tongue and he licked his chops, savoring the last of her taste. There was another way to enjoy it and Bagheera tensed his belly until a great human-flavored burp bubbled up out of him. At once he swallowed another mouthful of air so he could repeat the process.

Deep down inside him the woman squirmed in the tight pocket of his stomach and swallowing air had the side effect of keeping her alive longer.  Bagheera did not hate humans and had no urge to deliberately torture one but the flavor of the belches was as savory as that of her flesh and as fast as he burped it up he swallowed more. At the same time the stomach acids filled his gut as his body went to work on its meal. The squirming inside him weakened as the heat and acid wore her down and several minutes after swallowing, and despite his best effort to swallow still more air, there was a last kick and then nothing but the slow gurgles as his stomach juices began to consume her.

For a minute longer Bagheera sat, senses filled with the taste and smell of human and now full and content. He wanted nothing more than to settle down and sleep off his meal here, but that would not do and he rose to his feet. Heavy-bellied he padded back to his own territory, careful to walk on rocks and grass as much as possible so as to leave as few tracks as was practical.  Before he left he nosed around to make sure he'd left no scrap of clothing, no trace. This, after all, was why he'd learned to swallow people whole. The villagers would have no idea what had happened to their kin.  Perhaps she had run off with a lover, or been swept away in a muddy river?  They would never know that she kicked her last as a bulge in a well-fed panther's middle.

A really skillful tracker might divine what had happened from the scuffle marks and the fact that his tracks were deeper on the way back than on the way in. That was why, upon deciding that his urges could be satisfied no other way, the very first human to slide down his throat had been the region's foremost tracker and the second had been the tracker's apprentice. This woman was, by his count, the seventeenth human to occupy has stomach. Baloo's count was twelve or thirteen.

Back in the familiar scents and sights of his home territory Bagheera licked his chops, smiled once more, and stretched out to sleep off his meal.  His gut gurgled and churned as it consumed an entire human, which was enough of a challenge that he slept for hours as meat and bone broke down. By the time Mowgli came looking for him at dawn he'd already padded into the brush to relieve himself, the first of many such trips he'd need to dispose of what used to be a pretty young human.

Perhaps Mowgli thought the reluctance of villagers to set up new camps in the local jungle was due to a fear of Shere Khan.  And perhaps that was true.  But he and Baloo helped give the area  the reputation of a place people entered and never left.  If a human came into this jungle, there was not one but three predators who would happily make a meal of them, and that didn't even count Kaa's occasional man-shaped bulges.

Mowgli must never know.  Never know that he was responsible, if indirectly, for creating two new man-eaters.  He and Baloo resisted the urge until the very sight of him made them drool and then they'd creep off and another man or woman would kick their last in a hungry belly. Their urges satisfied, they'd return and all be a family until their hunger for man-flesh grew once again.

As Mowgli rubbed his belly Baloo lumbered into the clearing, his own belly newly swollen, and he and the panther shared a smile.

"You know I would never eat you, little frog," he'd said to the man-cub, and that was true.  Even if he was starving, he'd never eat Mowgli.  He, and Baloo, would settle for the next best thing.