Big Fish part 2

By Strega

"Call the cops already, man.  I ain't got all night."

Raoul squirmed in the chair, his hands cuffed in front of him and the heavy hand of the sea life center security guard on his shoulder from behind. The other guard was going through his backpack. Half a dozen cans of spray paint sat next to it, along with Raoul's switchblade and the wire cutters he used to get through the fence.

"Tagging is one thing," the guard behind him said. "But you cut through two fences and then the grounding lines for the cell tower. What the hell were you thinking?"
"Copper is worth money, man."

"You did ten thousand dollars worth of damage for two bucks worth of copper."
"That's what insurance is for, man."

"Yeah." The guard going through his pack looked at the one behind him.  "Better strip him to make sure he hasn't got anything else, Bill."

There was something in the look the two shared, a hidden meaning. The guard behind him hesitated, then Raoul felt him nod.

"Oh what the hell." Raoul cursed as the backpack guard pulled his shoes and socks off. He tried to kick the man but fell just short. It took both the guards to get his pants off and then the one behind him held him still as the first used his own switchblade to cut his T-shirt off!  In moments he was down to his underwear and then they didn't even bother to search his clothes. The one holding him in the chair hauled him to his feet.

"Vandalism isn't a felony, man," Raoul complained.  "I'll be in and out of jail in a day."

"Yeah, that's what happened last time," said the first guard, whose nametag Raoul finally managed to read.  Ron, it said.

"This time I'm taking you to meet someone," he went on. He finished taking the battery out of Raoul's phone and put it on the neat pile of clothing he'd set on the counter.

"Scared straight, huh?" Raoul thought about running as they marched him down a concrete hallway. The security kiosk was built into the back of the sea life center and they were in the staff  spaces one wall away from various exhibits and also one wall away from freedom. At two A.M. there wasn't another soul to be seen. But the bigger of the two guards never let go of his arm and the other was one step behind.

"Something like that," Bill said.  Raoul could hear the smile. "Get that gate, Ron."

"Got it." Ron unlocked a steel door and swung it wide. Raoul grunted as a strong hand shoved him in, and went sprawling face down.  Landing on the cold concrete stunned him for a moment and he looked up to see a wide-eyed sea lion looking him over. It was a fat thing easily as long as he was, with bright attentive eyes and whiskers that twitched as he studied him. There was a sudden splatter of liquid on his back as one of the guards poured something from a bottle and suddenly the stink of fish filled his nostrils.

"This is my friend Charlie," Ron said. "He likes meeting people."

Raoul didn't like the way the sea lion sniffed, smelled the fish and then licked its chops as it looked down at him. He didn't like it at all.

"Did I say 'meet?'" The guard chuckled, and Raoul watched in horror as the sea lion yawned. Fanged jaws creaked impossibly wide as it slid its salivating maw over his face.

"Don't worry," the guard said. "You'll be in and out of 'jail' in a day. Two, tops. I doubt you'll like your cell much, though."

"Oh, shit," Raoul muttered, but the last of it was cut off as the sea lion's jaws engulfed his head. Fangs scraped over his skull as it wrapped its maw around his face and a thick, muscular tongue pushed up beneath his chin.

"Hold on!" He cried, but if they heard there was no sign. The tongue pushed as the sea lion swallowed and Raoul's whole head slipped into the fleshy chute of gullet. Slimy throatskin slithered past his face as the sea lion pushed its muzzle forward, working its jaws over his shoulders with a side to side undulation of its nose. Whiskers tickled his naked back as the sea lion clamped down, tugging him upward and then pushing its jaws further over him.

It was swallowing him! Raoul screamed as the fangs scraped his skin and squirmed with all his strength. The sea lion grunted as his struggle shifted it where it lay, but it simply braced its flippers against the floor and swallowed again. A great contraction of its throat muscles squeezed him deeper into the slippery innards of the beast and he felt the thing's ribcage creak as it expanded to let him in. The damn thing must be half snake!  It wasn't much bigger than he was and yet it was almost to his waist already. All he could do was try to kick it, accomplishing little other than scraping his knees on the concrete.  Charlie's thick fat meant kicking him was like hitting a rubber wall.

Muffled words made it through the fat and muscle stretched over Raoul's face and the sea lion paused long enough for one of the guards to take the handcuffs off. The second they were off Raoul redoubled his efforts to escape.

It was already too late. By the time his arms were free of the cuffs the thing's jaws pinned them to his sides and a moment later even his hands were swallowed. The sea lion heaved its muzzle upward, thrusting its nose into the air, and fangs scraped painfully over Raoul's hips as his hips and butt slipped into the thing's maw. It lifted him clear off the ground and gravity sent him sliding deeper into the hungry sea lion.

Slimy throat skin pulsed over him as the thing swallowed, taking his naked legs in a series of gulps.   Down the slick gullet he went, his face squeezing through a muscular valve into the sea lion's stomach. The long fleshy tube of gullet with its fangs at one end and the valve at the other squeezed tight around him as Charlie prepared to swallow him alive.

"You can't do this!" He knew they wouldn't hear. Thick walls of muscle and fat lay between him and the cool outside air. With a grunt of effort the sea lion lifted its head, his toes poking out out past its whiskers. Raoul screamed and kicked, squirming with all his might. He could feel Charlie tensing and knew what would happen next.

For a moment the thing paused, seemingly confused by the violent struggle taking place in its gullet. Raoul felt the bulges he made in its neck and flanks as he fought for his life. He could still feel the air on his toes, maybe it would spit him back up if he kicked hard enough!

Then the jaws shifted around his feet. The broad salivating tongue gathered itself against his insteps just as it had beneath his chin, and Raoul let out a last panicked cry. He felt the sea lion tense, lift its nose...and swallow with all its might.

With an undulation of its body it swallowed him down, the bulge draining out of its thick neck to add to the long lump in its middle. Raoul slithered heavily into the sea lion's stomach, lubricated for easy swallowing by a thick coating of slime coating the walls of its gullet. The same slime made it almost impossible to gain any leverage to fight. A suffocating weight of sea lion pressed in from all directions as he struggled, trying to avoid the remainder of a trip through the thing's guts.

"You can't do this!" He felt the valve close behind his feet and Raoul could only squirm, stretched out in the thing's long belly. Thick inward pressing fat and muscle held him still, constricting him into helplessness like a snake's coils. Already he felt the sting as the mucus coating the walls of the belly soaked into his skin. This slime had a different function than the stuff in the throat and the tingle he felt was the beginnings of digestion. He was wholly inside Charlie, swallowed whole as though he were nothing but a huge fish.  

"I'm sorry!" His cries sank into the belly walls, soft and slick and dripping with digestive juices. Thick liquid rolled down the walls and across his skin in heavy droplets, adding to the pool building up in the belly. The pain was bad enough where his skin was merely coated with the stuff. It was much worse where he lay partly submerged in digestive juices.

"Please," Raoul whimpered as the darkness and heat pressed in. All he got in reply was the slow heavy pulse throbbing through the flesh wrapped around him and a growing gurgle.

With his last strength Raoul wriggled, driving his elbows into the meat pressing in. He felt the sea lion shift where it lay and grunt uncomfortably. Then it tensed, and for a moment he felt wonderful hope at the thought he'd bothered it enough for it to heave him back up feetfirst, slimy and stung but alive.

He hadn't. The sea lion grunted, tensed...and let out a long burp as it vented the air that went down with its meal. Acid rushed in to fill the space vacated by the air and Raoul squirmed and kicked in his form-fitting coffin of sea lion gut. The last thing he heard was the gurgle and groan as the beast's belly went to work. 

"So, Charlie," Ron said to the sea lion. "Like your fish?"

Charlie belched contentedly and waved a flipper before rolling onto his back. The vandal made a long bulge in his body, the shape of human head and shoulders and hips standing out even though inches of muscle and fat. Charlie was a lot heavier these days than he'd been just a few months before. Eating over 150,000 calories of human (according to the vet) in one gulp will do that to a sea lion. Especially when he'd had three meals like that in just a month.

They hadn't lied.  Their vandal friend would be out of confinement in a day, two at most. He'd just come out looking a lot different than when he went in, the part of him that didn't end up as sea lion fat anyway.

For the hours the incriminating bulge would stand out of Charlie's belly but by the time the center opened at nine AM Charlie's gut would have done a lot of work. The flesh and connective tissue would go first and by nine Raoul would be a soft, sloshing mass of half digested meat and slowly softening bone.  The man-shaped bulge would by then be a smooth, streamlined swelling and people were used to sea lions being fat. Charlie would yawn and wave sleepily through the glass at people who wouldn't know about the man on his way through a sea lion's guts.

Even the bones would ultimately break down in the acid bath and the pair of underwear would make its way through the sea lion's guts without incident. They hadn't bothered to remove those knowing in advance that Charlie had no problem with those. He'd passed bigger indigestibles.

Ron chuckled. "It's sure funny how we have all these security cameras and we still keep losing these vandals and trespassers."

"Yep," Bill said.  "They just slip right out of sight and disappear."

They shared a laugh before heading back to the security kiosk. Between Charlie, their walrus, and even that incident with one of their dolphins they had remarkably few repeat offenders.  Minor offenses like littering or annoying the animals just got you scolded or kicked out of the sea life center. Occasionally the local cops got a call.

Major offenses like break-ins?  That was another story. Charlie's first human meal was a hapless intern he ate quite by accident.  Since then, more than one poor soul met a slimy digestive end in his belly.  Thanks to the intern incident Charlie saw people - thankfully, after some training, only tied up ones - as big, tasty fish. A little fish oil was all it took to let him know that yes, this latest troublemaker was all his.   

Charlie was always happy to help with their little problems and a sea lion's stomach knows what to do with a fish. Even, as was the case lately, the fish was sometimes a man.