The first time you see her, you're in the town market.

Italy isn't like the United States. There aren't any supermarkets. Not anywhere near Aviano, anyway. There are small speciality stores like bakeries, but the closest thing to a Walmart are small markets, little more than convenience stores. Want more variety than that? Wait for the weekly market in the town square.
A caravan of vans will show up in the morning and set up. Different vans sell different things. Gelato, cosmetics, meat, toilet paper...

It takes some getting used to. So do the aliens.

It turns out the clinic that hired you is right down the street from an alien embassy. The old air force base outside Aviano is a spaceport now and alien species have embassies scattered around town. The one a few doors from where you work is the Mwee embassy. Mwee are massive bears, or you supposed bear-taurs, the better part of a ton of fur and muscle and oversized genitalia. Mwee don't wear clothes and unlike some of the other alien species you've seen they have obvious genders.
 
Really obvious ones. The huge breasts on the females are clue enough, but then there are the thigh-thick sheaths on the maies, the bowling-ball-sized testes, the great purple clam below the tail of the females.

You're not a xenophile. Seeing all that hang out makes you uncomfortable. They know that, though, and so they have a receptionist who is humanoid.  Mostly.

She's the one you see in the market that day.  Her name is Mira and she could pass for a human in really bad light, assuming she wrapped her long furry tail around her waist. She'd probably want a hat to cover up her ears, too. You've seen plenty of mrish, which a lot of people refer to as carnivorous space squirrels, but she's some sort of subspecies of offshoot.  

Bipedal instead of quadrupedal, longer tail. You see her in the market and like her on sight.  She's friendly and personable. Just the sort of person you want as a receptionist.

You're not a xenophile. You can ignore the small breasts and the one time you meet her face to face you exchange polite nods and go back to shopping. She comes to the town market too.

It's when you see her eating gelato with Arturo that the problem develops.

You know Arturo. He's one of the merchants who travels with the market and he's here with his van every Wednesday. He's got a heart problem. Nothing can be done without a complicated operation and that's not a sure thing. Congenital heart problems are a bitch.

You watch him drink espresso with the long-tailed alien woman and you wonder. You've seen him at the clinic a dozen times over the last two years. But not for months.

The furry woman laughs and you see the flash of sharp white teeth. Arturo's are as white as he shares the joke, but blunt in comparison. It's clear they are more than friends. They leave the market with her strong furry tail wrapped around his waist.

That's none of your business. Interspecies hanky-panky is a thing since the aliens showed up. Mrish are the chief offenders. They are very active and humans aren't the only local mammals they jump in bed with. Even other aliens develop an amused or embarrassed expression when the subject of mrish "openness" comes up. They are notorious for it.

Still none of your business. But medical records are. In your spare time in the clinic you go over Arturo's.

It's as bad as you remember. The doctors give him five or ten years to live at most before a catastrophic heart failure strikes him down. The least exertion is a threat. He has no endurance at all.

Had no endurance. You saw him laughing and even dancing with the mrish at the market. He should have been red-faced with effort. He wasn't. And where is he getting his pills? He's supposed to be on two medications for his heart.
There is a prescription database. You do a quick inquiry and as far as you can tell he hasn't gotten his pills anywhere in months.

His records don't show any recent operations either. And that's a problem.

The aliens have far more advanced medical technology that humans. Especially the mwee, it's said.  Human medical tech has advanced a lot in just a few years with their help but their own tech is still vastly ahead of humanity's. When they first showed up they plopped down clinics in poor areas and everyone was happy...except the medical industry.

As a result, most countries forbade them from offering medical care to humans save in the case of emergencies. There was no record of such an emergency involving Arturo.

You sit back in your chair. If it comes out that the boyfriend of a mwee embassy employee got medical care when he shouldn't, it'll create a bit of a stink. Not everyone is happy with fifteen-hundred-pound beartaurs wandering the streets with their bits hanging out for all to see as it is. Some whole countries ban mwee from entering. The same ones that ban things like women not having their faces covered, admittedly, but still.

You think about it. You could go to the newspapers and have them investigate the incident, but what would you get out of that? Or....

The next morning you push the button outside the embassy door. The screen on the wall lights up and you're looking at a black and white mwee. It looks a bit like a panda and is very obviously female. The pair of hundred-pound boobs are a dead giveaway.

"I wish to speak to Mira," you say. "It's important."

"Is she expecting you?" Mwee have an imposing rumble of a voice. This one manages to sound feminine just the same.

"She isn't, but she will want to hear what I say."

"One moment." The screen goes dark and you pass the time by looking around. The embassy is a squat green structure painted with arcing gray lines.  The whole thing is made of some alien metal. Even the huge windows are some sort of transparent alloy. The other alien embassies you've seen all look to be made of the same stuff. They don't take chances when making contact with less advanced species. You suspect that if someone nuked Aviano the embassies would still be intact when the smoke cleared.

The screen lights up again. "Mira will see you," the panda says. The door slides open, revealing a corridor large enough for a couple of the bears with an identical door at the end.

Suspecting it works like an airlock, you step in. The door that closes behind you is four inches thick. After a pause during which you are presumably scanned for weapons, the inner door open. Mira is waiting.

"Good morning," she purrs. She stands on four-toed feet like a cat's, complete with the barely visible tips of retracted claws. Her hands are humanlike, their claws merely sharp almost-fingernails. She has squirrel-brown fur with a lighter belly and wears only a grey belt that supports a few pouches. Small breasts try to hide in her chest fluff and her feminine bits are similarly concealed by fur farther down.

Mira's face is long-muzzled and round-eared, reminding you of a pine marten's. Unlike a marten's her tail is immensely long, longer than she is tall by a couple of feet.  With its fluffy fur it's as thick as your hand is long but somehow eight feet of tail flirts weightlessly behind her. At the moment it is curled up into a huge question mark.

She rises from behind a half-circle of metal desk and gestures to a side door. The panda-mwee watches as you follow her. You don't have time to take in much of the embassy. The part you saw was a big oval room with a number of doors.

The room she leads you into is still large, but large rooms and three-quarter-ton beartaurs go together. There is nothing here but beanbags of various sizes, some big enough to hold a couple of bears and others more human sized. The huge windows are dimmed so all you see is the outlines of buildings. From the outside, you know, they are opaque.

"I apologize if my bring nude bothers you," she purrs. The door seals shut behind her with a Star-Trek like whoosh. "Outside I wear a dress to not shock the public."

You can't help but match her smile.  She's a likeable sort. That's her job.

"So, what did you need to talk to me about?"

Down to business. "There's an irregularity with your boyfriend. A legal one."

Her tail quirks quizzically to the side. "Which boyfriend?"

Oh, right. Mrish. Of course she doesn't have just one lover. She probably has at least a dozen boyfriends, and girlfriends too. The dislike you have for mwee and their giant bits overflows onto this pretty lady and its suddenly a lot easier to be mean.

"Arturo," you say, and fill her in on the medical records issue. "He must have received treatment here, and that is against the law. In accordance with the Treaty of Tycho, section -"

She holds up her hand.  "I am familiar with the Treaty. Just a moment." She cocks her head, listening to some implanted communicator.

She nods. "The ambassador has been listening in and wishes to speak to me. One moment."

You smile as her tail disappears through the door. The ambassador! You must have them by the short hairs. Short fur. Whatever.

The lights flicker overhead and you blink in annoyance. You'd think a species this advanced -

The door whooshes open and Mira is back. She plops her butt down on a small beanbag, close enough to talk.  "So, tell me how we can resolve this issue. I've been given authority to deal with it."

"Well, I'm the only one who knows about it, but sooner or later someone else will figure it out too. It shouldn't be too hard to find a loophole. Maybe Arturo had a heart attack while here, uh, visiting with you.  Of course, I'll want a consultant's fee for smoothing things over in our records."

She nods, smiling, as you lay out your terms. She has yellow eyes and slit pupils, like a cat.  You ask for quite a lot of money. Her smile gets wider. When she rises and extends a padded hand to shake on the deal you smile too.

That is when things go horribly wrong. She steps forward, her tail flicks with unexpected speed, and suddenly a loop had a half of the fuzzy thing has your arms pinned to your sides. The damn thing is as strong as a python.

That's the first surprise. The second is when her tail lifts you bodily from the floor. She doesn't even shift her feet to bear the weight. She just smiles as her tail hoists you up over her.

"Tiny anti-gravity generators implanted in my tail-spine," she said cheerfully. "It was meant for microgravity. Not so good here in a gravity well without a little help."

"Let go," you grunt, and try to wriggle free from her tail. That does make her shift her footpaws, but its not enough to tip her over. The blood rushes to your head as you are suspended upside down right over her face.

"Arturo didn't have a heart attack here," she purrs. "He needed a whole new body. Something bad happened to his old one. Let me show you what that was."

And she smiles, and the smile gets wider, and suddenly you are looking past slick folds of flesh into the purple tunnel of her gullet. She yawns, jaws creaking unnaturally wide, and then her tail lowers you into her waiting maw.

"Now, wait a minute -" Your protest ends in a squelch as your face slaps into her tongue. Your own weight forces the top of her head past her fangs as her tail lowers you and suddenly her jaws are wrapped around your whole head. She pauses, licks your cheek teasingly, and swallows.

Jesus! Your whole head is in her throat! You try to struggle, try to kick, but its too late to unbalance her. With your head in her gullet the two of are connected and you can only squirm helplessly as with a side-to-side wriggle of her jaws she works them past your shoulders. Gullet slithers wetly past your eyes, wide with horror. She's no bigger than you are, but she's doing it. The mwee's furry receptionist is swallowing you alive.

It was just a little blackmail! You struggle against the constricting grip of her tail, which is far stronger than it has any right to be. It eases its grip only enough for you to slide further into her maw. Her fangs scrape your upper arms as he tail clamps down again, and she reaches neatly past it and plucks your cell phone from your pocket. She leaves your wallet and her tail relaxes again.

Wet flesh slithers past on all sides as gravity sends you down her throat. Her slender body bulges unnaturally, bones creaking and popping as her ribcage expands to let you in. She tenses, swallows, and you face slips into her stomach.

The thick later of slime coating you for easy swallowing was harmless. The juices here are not. At once your skin begins to tingle. With most of you outside her jaws she has already begun to digest her meal.

You struggle. You kick. She eats you anyway. Your desperate squirming finally makes her drop to her knees for balance but her muzzle is still pointed at the ceiling and each inch of you that slips past her tail-wrap finds her wide-open jaws waiting for it. Your arms are freed from her strong tail only when she's swallowed you to the wrists and now her tail is free to keep your legs bound together in turn.

With a lurch her jaws are around your thighs and your weight still pushes you down her throat. It takes only two gulps and a wriggle of her muzzle and you're in her to the knees. At last her tail unwraps from around you, but only because it's much too late for you to save yourself.

The great bulge in her furry middle shifts as your shoulders join your face in her stomach. You can feel your shirt dissolving. Alien digestive juices make short work of it and then it's your turn. At least it doesn't hurt.  You can feel your skin softening, but her stomach acids contain some sort of numbing agent.

Your calves slip easily into her maw and her jaws wrap loosely around your shoes. She doesn't bother to take them off. She wriggles her muzzle from side to side to take them in, tenses, and swallows on last time. Still propelled by your own weight, you slide heavily down her throat.

Finally coming to rest in the slippery cauldron of her stomach, you gather your strength. Without the powerful tail holding you still and recovering from the dizziness of hanging head-down, you can finally put up a fight. There's only an inch of flesh and fur between you and escape.

Before you can put that thought into action she wraps her arms and tail around the bulge. She's a lot stronger than she looks and she knows exactly where to grip to muffle your effort. You kick once, twice, feeling the slick stomach walls shift around you, and it only makes her grunt.

There is a click. In the faint pink light that makes it through her stretched pelt you see the stomach wall shiver. When she speaks, her voice is as clear as when you were outside her stomach. Somehow her gut acts as a speaker.

"Thank you," she purrs. She carefully positions her hands and tail, keeping you still.  "I don't get to eat humans as much as I'd like, and I was hungry."

"You can't do this!" Somehow you know she can hear you.  "The police will come!"

"Will they." Her throaty chuckle mocks you. "You didn't tell anyone you came here, did you?  Blackmail is a private affair. Now you'll just be another missing person. Those cases are almost never solved unless they find the body."

The horror of it freezes you inside her. She's right. Missing persons cases stay open for years, decades.  Unless they find the body. And there won't be a body to find, will there?  Even your shoes are dissolving. You can feel them falling off your feet. Her stomach acids will break you down, clothes, wallet, credit card and all.

In a couple of days your boss at the clinic will note with annoyance your absence and pick up the phone. About that time Mira will be lifting her tail and saying goodbye to the last of what used to be you. Some of you will linger as fat on her trim frame. The rest will disappear down whatever they use for a toilet in the embassy. You entered the place via the door. You'll leave via a different route.

"I'm sorry," you plead.  "Please cough me up."

"Too late," she purrs. Her hands and tail squeeze the stomach in against you. The air she swallowed with you leaves in a rush. You hear Mira let out a long belch, and there is nothing to breathe but the acid that comes rushing in to replace the air. The last thing you hear in the gurgling dark is her satisfied purr.

*****

The lights flicker. You'd think advanced aliens would have more reliable lighting.

Annoyed, you pick your phone off the nearby table. You don't remember taking it out of your pocket. You shrug. You've never been to an alien embassy before.

The door whooshes open. Its not Mira, but a mwee female in an elaborate harness. She has dark red fur with a lighter underbelly, like a more colorful version of Mira.

"I'm ambassador Denivive," she rumbles, and you shoot up out of the beanbag as though called to attention.  You didn't expect to meet the ambassador!

"Mira has been called away," she rumbles.  "An unexpected visitor needed a tour.  I know you asked to speak with her specifically, but if it is not a personal matter..."

Haltingly you explain the medical records issue.  You leave out the blackmail part. You didn't expect to run head-on into the ambassador and it's a lot harder to work up the nerve when you're talking to someone ten times your size.

"Oh yes," Deniveve murmurs when you are finished. "That was an oversight.  Arturo had a heart attack and we treated him here. It slipped my mind that we needed to report that."

She slips a business card out of a pocket on her harness.  "I am grateful. I will correspond with you to get this properly reported. This card is good for one favor from the Mwee. I could, for example, grant you a tour of our orbital facilities."
Suddenly the bears don't seem so bad. And for that matter... "Could I turn it for another visit with Mira? She's, um, nice."

"No," the ambassador rumbles. "That would have to be her decision. But," she says with a smile, "Mira likes humans. The odds are good."

The security guard nods politely to you as you leave the embassy.  Your day seems brighter already. You didn't get any money, but you made some new friends. There are still aliens you dislike on sight � the Xsir look too much like football-sized bugs for example � but you'll give a pass to ones as friendly as the ambassador and her crew.

You didn't think to ask who was getting a tour, or what they were getting a tour of. Its just as well.  Maybe you'll see Mira again, though. And maybe this time you'll remember the tour you end up getting.