The slide by the sea 3

By Strega

The big sea otter swam lazily along, head turned to the side so he could peer out of the water at the beach.  It was exactly as his sea lion friend said. There was the slide, recently installed on the beach and from which he'd had several good meals of human.  And the new addition, a life guard tower not a hundred feet from the slide.

"That's inconvenient," grumbled the otter, for he was hungry.  His cute whiskery face disarmed suspicion despite his bulk - he was nearly ten feet long nose to tail tip - and more than one unsuspecting human had slid happily down the slide toward the "friendly otter" only to find his jaws gaping wide to meet them. A wet thump, a gulp, and he was off to a quiet place to digest his meal.

Though he and the sea lion he taught the trick had been careful to leave no witnesses - anyone who knew about them couldn't talk on the basis of being too digested to pass on the info - enough people disappeared along the stretch of beach that the other humans took notice.  A dozen well-fed belches was all it took and now there was the life guard to spoil their fun.

There were people swimming in the water and normally he might fall back on the old "swim in a friendly manner toward one and if they don't dodge aside, yawn' trick, but the only reason they'd managed so many human meals was they kept it a secret. If even one human saw them eat and got away the game was up.  The otter turned away from the beach.  One human was close enough to reach out and pet his tail as he went by and while he didn't mind being petted his hunger was fierce enough that he had to resist the urge to turn in the water and gulp the man down.
 
He could almost rationalize it as doing the man a favor.  A layer of otter fur will keep even a thin-skinned human snug and warm in the cold ocean just fine, provided they didn't mind being digested as a consequence.

He stayed strong.  'Just a big friendly otter,' he thought.  'Nothing to see here.'

Fortunately he had another source of prey. A mile or two down the beach was one of many piers, and this one had humans who liked to leap off the end and try to dive through plastic rings floating in the water. The rings weren't much wider than his head and as the otter approached he saw a solitary human at the end of the pier, looking down at the ring.

While he'd discussed the idea with his sea lion friend, who had come here ahead of him while he checked out the slide, the otter had never actually taken a meal this way.  With an ottery shrug he sank under the waves, sliding silently through the water until his muzzle was directly under the ring.  Here he would wait until the man dived.

'Nothing ventured, nothing gained,' thought the otter as the blurry silhouette of the man appeared over the edge of the pier.

This particular diver's name was Brian.  A slender but strong young man just turned twenty, he smiled as he saw the yellow plastic ring bobbing in the water.  The reflection of sunlight off the water kept him from seeing the ottery face below the surface.  Brian made sure his bathing suit was snug, not wanting a repeat of the unfortunate teenage incident in which he dove deep into a pool while his shorts stayed at the surface.  With a last glance at the bright white beach and all the happy people in view he leaned forward and dove toward the ring.

The merest flicker of motion below attracted his eye but he did not have time to register the fanged maw yawning wide under the surface before with a splash and a thump he hit the water.  Or he hit something, anyway.  Instead of cool salty ocean he passed through the ring, his momentum driving him deep into a slick fleshy chute that by all rights should not be there.

For a moment Brian was frozen in confusion and in that moment the long chute of flesh squeezed in on him. Before he could even begin to struggle a rolling contraction in the walls pushed him through an equally fleshy valve into yet another long tube of flesh. He was already partly into this second chamber after his dive and the new one expanded more easily to accommodate him. Unfortunately it was also nearly full of hot, caustic juices and Brian suddenly realized what had happened.

There was the barest scrape of fangs as his toes slid in and that was the last clue he needed.  He'd dived right into the maw of some creature and his momentum jammed him down its throat.  All it had to do was swallow and that was just what it did. A muscular contraction squeezed him out of the throat and into what was plainly a stomach seemingly perfectly made to hold a man, tight and pressing in from all sides but long enough and just elastic enough to hold him without obvious strain. 
 
Horrified, Brian began to struggle, but the thick stomach walls smothered most of his efforts.  He could feel the long body in whose belly he rested and feel the heat all around that told him he was in a warm-blooded creature's gut, but that was all the information he had as to the identity of the predator.  All he knew what that caustic juices seared his skin and unless he got out right now he was going to be food for whatever beast it was.

His struggle was brief, fueled by only one lungful of air as none went down with him, and was doomed from the start.  Though the creature's long body twitched as though in sympathy due to the inner struggle Brian quickly ran out of oxygen and was still.  A mere minute before he'd dived from the pier and here he was stretched out nearly asphyxiated in the long stomach of an aquatic predator, destined only for a short trip through a digestive tract.  His shorts, synthetic material apparently resistant to the gastric juices, would pass entirely through its guts intact.  The rest of him was not so fortunate.

The otter blinked and pressed his webby forepaws against the long bulge in his body.  He wasn't sure he liked this method of hunting.  Letting prey jam themselves into his gullet as they rode down the slide was fun, but this meal had hit him with such force it actually hurt.  The good news was that a minute before he was hungry. He wasn't hungry now. A few bubbles of air came up in a light belch as his meal released the air in its lungs.  Not a soul had seen it happen and that was just perfect. Or at least no human saw.

"Oh, that was clever," chirped a voice from behind him, and the otter turned wide-eyed to see a smallish dolphin looking at him.  "Yawn, gulp, and they are in your stomach before they know what happened."

'Oops,' thought the otter, whose attention had been focused on the pier above to make sure no humans were in sight.  Humans made so much noise in the water he would hear one coming but he'd neglected to listen for non-human swimmers.

"That was the idea," said the otter, who of course was familiar with the language of dolphins.  She (he was certain it was a she) knew the language of otters equally well.  "But you have to be careful."

"Why," she chittered, and to his horror she moved beneath the ring.  Even were his belly empty he could not keep up with a dolphin and out of the corner of his eye he saw movement up on the pier.  

"It looks easy," she said, and before he could reach her to push her aside a man dove from the pier, through the floating ring and right into her suddenly wide-open beak.

She got her mouth open just in time and the impact pushed her several feet deeper in the water.  It also sent the nearly naked man - as usual for divers he wore just a tight fitting swimsuit - down her throat. With a splash and a thump he disappeared to the ankles and a long bulge swelled instantly out of her perfectly streamlined body.

The otter winced, glancing up in the hopes that no one was watching, and as he looked back at her the feet slid into her closing jaws. The dolphin's sleek body undulated as she swallowed and the long bulge of human made its way down until it stood out of her hide like a sculpture.  He had fur to blur the outline and his friend the sea lion had inches of fat but the dolphin was smaller and thinner than either of them and he could actually see the horrified expression on the man's face as it bulged through her hide.

"You shouldn't have done that," he said, and the dolphin giggled.

"Why," she chittered, and pressed her flippers against the wriggling bulge to show it off.  The still living man squirmed inside her, stretched out in a stomach almost as long as his and probably partly in her throat.  Eventually all of him would pass into her gut but she'd have to digest his head and upper body before his legs could slide into her stomach. "It was easy!"

There was a last kick from beneath her hide as the startled human struggled his last and the giggling dolphin swam in a circle around him, turning to show him the bulge as she went. "There are plenty of humans, no one will miss one more!"

"But you have to make sure no one sees!" The frustrated otter swiped halfheartedly at the bulging dolphin, but she swayed effortlessly away, darting out of reach with a flip of her flukes. She just giggled.

"Jealous my bulge is bigger than yours?" She chittered, grinning at him as she stayed almost close enough to touch.

He knew he couldn't catch her.  Maybe if she was full and his belly empty, but he had a long lump of man in his belly too. Just the same he swam after her, surfacing to take a breath before kicking his webbed hindpaws to propel himself. "Its all right to eat them, but if even one human sees and gets away it'll spoil the game."

"Spoilsport," she giggled, and swam away in a burst of speed.  She doubled back and despite the long bulge in her middle she sped toward him. At the last moment before they collided nose to nose she burst from the water, leaping lengthwise over him.
"Don't do that!  Men will see!" The otter considered retching up his meal to add to his speed, but even then he might not catch her and then there'd be a human body in the water. He didn't know what to do with the unreasonable dolphin.

And yet he was beginning to like her. He smiled as she doubled back to leap over him again.

It was only as she left the water that he sensed something in the water behind him. Heavy with his meal of human he turned just in time for her to complete her leap, spearing back into the water...and right into the open maw of his sea lion friend.

She was small for a dolphin and the sea lion was big, fat and hungry. Her beak disappeared into his maw and the only reason her long streamlined body didn't disappear like a letter into a mailbox, driven whole down his throat by the momentum of her leap, was the long swelling of swallowed human in her middle. She still vanished halfway into his gullet, ending with her flippers pressed against her sides by his distended jaws.

Where she lingered only for a moment before sliding deeper. As her flukes began to thrash in a desperate effort to backwater herself out of this trap and great muscular contraction moved through the stretched muscle of the sea lion's swollen neck. The sea lion pushed his muzzle forward and up, lifting his head momentarily from the water as a thick column of dolphin tail slipped into his maw.  Too much of the dolphin was in the grip of his swallowing muscles for her to escape and gravity helped send her into his stomach. Already his long torpedo of the body bulged oddly as a man and dolphin went down his throat, one neatly inside the other and both bound for a trip through his digestive tract.

"Hold on a second," the otter said. He was happy to see that this was all happening in the shade of the pier where no human was likely to see but that was a secondary consideration. "You don't have to -"

But it was too late.  The big sea lion arched his body, then thrust his muzzle forward.  The she-dolphin's flukes folded into the corners of his maw and he swallowed massively. It was by far the biggest thing the otter had seen him swallow but the dolphin's sleek, streamlined body was the perfect shape to fit down a throat and the bulge of human was not enough to stop her slide. With a last gulp even the tips of her flukes were gone and there was just the huge long bulge in his thick body.  It was a bulge that immediately began to thrash.

"Guh," the sea lion protested.  The dolphin was so strong that her struggles threw him around in the water.  "Do something!"

With the dolphin gone down his friend's throat there was nothing for it but to help. The otter wrapped his webbed forepaws around the thickly bulging sea lion and held on as something like five hundred pounds of muscle (not counting the swallowed human) struggled to get out.

She could hold her breath longer than a human but she was just as vulnerable to the weight of thick sea lion fat pressing in from all sides. Despite her frantic effort to get the predator to disgorge her within a minute she was too exhausted to fight any more.

"I was talking to her," the otter complained as he at last let go of the gorged sea lion. The massive bulge of human-filled dolphin filled his whole body cavity but their habit of swallowing entire humans had trained their guts to stretch in length as well as girth. Some of her still lay stretched out in the sea lion's gullet but like the swallowed human in her throat that would only last until digestion made room in his stomach for the rest.  "I kind of liked her."

"Oh," grunted the sea lion, and then a long series of bubbles erupted from his jaws as he belched up the air he'd swallowed with his meal. He rose to the surface for a breath before continuing.

"Was someone sweet on her," he said with a grin.  "I've heard of your sort trying to see if they can make half-otters with dolphins."

"No! Well, maybe," the otter admitted.  "Anyway, I was trying to explain why we have to be careful eating humans."

"It's explained," grunted the sea lion, and burped again.  "Now she knows not to do it in our territory."

There was nothing to say about that and the two swam out into the bay, the well fed otter at two-thirds speed and the sea lion so slow and clumsy while stretched around his vast meal that even a slowed otter swam rings around them. When they reached their favorite sunning rocks the sea lion stayed half in the water, letting the waves break against his tail. He was so full that he needed the water to help support the weight of the body-filling bulge.

The otter had his meal as well and his belly gurgled and churned as an entire human was rapidly broken down.  It takes a great many calories to keep a big sea otter going but though he would digest and pass the last of the human in barely a day - the swim shorts would most likely go all the way through him unchanged, as had happened with other items of clothing - he wouldn't need to eat for several days. He'd put on fat and then burn it off until he grew hungry again.

The groaning sea lion lay in the surf, fat body stretched tightly around an entire dolphin and her meal. He'd need longer to digest his catch and his already thick fat would grow thicker still. He was very uncomfortable, and though his stomach set to work with a will and was clearly going to eventually digest the entire dolphin it made odd noises.  Strange creaks and groans emerged from the distended sea lion to add to his complaints.

"Okay," he grunted.  "I think I cracked a rib when she struggled.  Next time I'll let you talk to a dolphin. Even if she is perfectly shaped to fit down my throat."

"Thank you," purred the otter.  He had his own meal to digest and unlike the sea lion he was comfortable with his catch. The human fit perfectly in his long stomach and was already softening nicely.  Unlike the sea lion he settled comfortably down for a nap.

As he dozed off he considered what the sea lion said.  Make a half-otter with a dolphin?  Or at least try?

"Why not," he muttered. "Maybe next time."

He'd genuinely started to like the sea lion's meal. If she hadn't been eaten...but it was too late to worry about that now and soon the otter was sound asleep, happily digesting a man.

And maybe, just maybe, doing some things with a dolphin in dreams that he'd like to try out - soon - in the real world.