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It all starts with a softball.

You're out walking one afternoon down by the farm. Not a block from your house, and only a hundred yards from the edge of the cornfield. It's corn now, anyway. Sometimes its soybeans. Crop rotation, you guess.

You take a short cut through the rough ground between the corn and the woods, avoiding the poison ivy you know grows under the trees, and there you see it. A softball, sitting in a patch of grass with a downed tree on one side and a few shrubs on the other.

What luck! Ever since that Bobby kid ran away or whatever it was that happened to him, you're always short on softballs. One swing of the bat and you can spend an hour looking for the darn thing. Sometimes you find it, sometimes not, and without Bobby watching where it flew it is often 'not'. This must be one of the balls you didn't find.

You double check to make sure the ball isn't resting on or close to poison ivy. The stuff is everywhere and can look like a vine, a shrub or low growing plant. Nope! All good. With a grin you step up and collect your prize.

It happens so fast. Just as you lean down to grab the ball the ground gives way beneath your feet and you plummet into a hole almost exactly as wide as you are. You're too surprised to grab the surrounding grass to stop yourself and you drop into a pit. Before you can worry about falling to your death you slam to a sudden stop. A gradual taper in the walls of the pit let you drop maybe ten feet before the scrape of the dirt and rocks stops you.

What the heck just happened? You peer up past your arms, which are stretched out above you in the hole, and see daylight overhead. Everything else you can see is dirt and rocks. Marks on the sides of the pit look like they were made by claws. It's not a sinkhole, but a weirdly vertical tunnel dug by some animal.

You try to pull yourself up the hole. No go. It's so narrow your arms are stuck stretched out above you and your fingers are just shy of the top. All it gets you is a bonk on the head when you let go of the softball and it drops on your face. You try to wriggle, to squirm free somehow. No good there either. You're stuck in a pit just exactly wide enough for your body. The only loose space you feel is around your feet.

You're trapped. This is bad.

Something bumps into your foot. You go wide-eyed in alarm as a cold nose touches your ankle right above the sock. Strong claws scrabble at the rubber of your shoe and pull it off your foot. The other one follows. There's nothing between you and whatever it is but socks now.

"Shoo!" You try to kick it away, but the only free space is around your feet. It feels like there is a small cave or burrow down there but only your toes are in it, your legs are stuck in the narrow pit like the rest of you.

And then somehow it gets even worse. You feel the thing sniffing your toes. It tickles, as does the scrape of long claws as the thing pushes your feet together. In other circumstances it'd be funny. All the funny drains out of it as small, but long clawed paws stuff your feet into its mouth.

"Hey!" You try to kick. You feel the little beast thrown about by your efforts, even restrained as they are by the narrow pit. If you had more room to fight you could punt the thing like a soccer ball, you've had pet dogs bigger than whatever it is.

But you don't have the room to put up a real fight. You can't even pull your feet away as with a scrape of fangs it pushes its jaws further over you. Your toes slip into slimy gullet, there is a push of tongue and with a wet gulp it swallows your feet.

"Get off!" Kicking has even less effect now. You just push your toes down its throat. It's braced against the floor down there and while it is little it is very strong. Claws reach up, scraping the dirt away from your lower legs. You feel it crumble and fall onto the animal, but it just climbs atop the growing pile. Bit by bit it loosens the soil, widening the pit trap until with a lurch you slide a foot downward.

A foot farther from the light ahead. A foot deeper into its throat. It doesn't even have to swallow. Your own weight pushes your feet into its stomach.

At once your socks are soaked with caustic juices and your skin begins to tingle. The bare skin above the sock doesn't even have that protection. Your feet are in a hungry beast's stomach and already it is beginning to digest you. Even if this is all it swallows, things will get very bad very quickly. Is its plan to just sit there and slowly swallow more as digestion makes room in its belly?

No, that isn't its plan. Once again it scrapes away at the dirt pressing in from all sides. You feel it flinch and hear it growl as a rock bounces off its head. The growl is muffled by two human legs in its maw to the knees. The dirt crumbles away. You fall another foot.

It has swallowed you almost to the waist. Slimy throat slides over you and your feet press against the floor of its belly. If you keep your legs straight it won't be able to swallow any more, right? The second sudden drop foils that plan. Your feet slip and your knees bend. Fur stretches into a lumpy bulge as the little creature somehow manages to engulf half of a human several times its size.

It is hot and wet in its stomach and the tingling is turning into real pain. Almost as painful is the scrape of sharp fangs digging into your groin. The thing's muzzle is only as wide as your wrist but it pushes its way upward, clawing at the soil that holds you in place. Inch by inch, with each movement of its head scraping sharp teeth over your shorts, it works its way over your hips. Slimy gullet glides over your legs as a thick layer of mucus lubricates you for easy swallowing.

This is impossible. It's so little! It's already swallowed two or three times its weight in human. Its lower body has deformed into the shape of your bent legs. Even snakes don't swallow things this much bigger than they are. What does it think it is, one of those weird deep sea fish you read about in National Geographic?

It's scraping at the walls again, digging loose more dirt. Not to free you this time, but to add to the pile it stands on. Every inch it climbs is another inch of you it can swallow. Sharp teeth scrape their way up your spine. Long, curved claws scratch you, more by accident than malice, and you realize what it is.

It's a badger! You saw a really fat badger glaring at you from a burrow last week. Even with the long flank fur you could see the rolls of fat. At the time, you said "Must be a good year for ground squirrels."

It's not eating a ground squirrel now. Suddenly it all makes sense. That pit trap wasn't an accident. It dug it on purpose and even baited it with the softball, leaving a thin crust of grass at the top so it looked safe to grab it.

It's to your armpits. If you fell into the wide spot at the bottom of the pit you could still save yourself. Though it has you nearly swallowed, you're way bigger than it is and could pull it off you like stripping off a furry sock.

And that is why it isn't letting you fall. It's not just hungry and devious. It's smart. It digs away just enough dirt to slide its cheeks over your shoulders from below without letting you drop into the wide space where you could fight. Sharp canine teeth scrape up the back of your head and suddenly you're looking out of its mouth. Its so little, you're wearing its skull like a hat. Little paws with long, curved digging claws reach up and grab your forehead and chin. It pulls. Swallows.

"Help! Hellllp!" You should have started screaming a long time ago. Things go dim and pink as your face follows the rest of you into its throat. The only thing keeping its jaws open now is your outstretched arms. Instinctively, pointlessly, you grab the softball that's been sitting atop your face this whole time.

"Hellllp!" The base of the pit is wider now, but the top is still barely a foot wide. Just wide enough for a teenager, propelled by gravity, to fall into. Someone would have to be right next to the hole to hear your cries. If someone does see hole, later, when you can't scream any more, they won't think anything of it. Chances are no one will ever know that you slid down a pit trap and into a hungry badger's maw.

Gulp. Slimy flesh slips over you as you sink into the thing's stomach. You're looking up a undulating tube of gullet, past your arms and its fangs to the daylight overhead. So close, and yet so far.

Only your hands are still outside its jaws and finally it drops down on all fours. It's a swollen bag of fur, stretched over a meal four times its size. Impossible. But it doesn't know it's impossible. It's just a stubborn, hungry badger. A long-clawed paw hooks onto the softball and pulls it from your fingers. It's little, but it's very strong. With a grunt it tenses, swallows. Before you can think to grab its lower jaw your hands are in its mouth.

"No! Please!" It doesn't listen. Why would it? Digging this pit must have been a lot of work. So is swallowing you. It tenses, readying itself for the final gulp. Past your saliva-slicked hands and the fangs you see the softball roll a couple of feet, then stop. It comes to rest at the mouth of a side tunnel, atop a pile of discolored clothing. Shirt and shorts, and shoes, all looking like they've been through the worst wash cycle in the world. You recognize them.

The badger tenses, swallows. Swollen hide slithers over you and just like that you're balled up in a pocket of hot slimy flesh and stretched fur. The last light is gone as its throat closes above you. You hear it grunt and feel it collapse onto the pile of dirt. It's much too full to move. Luckily, it doesn't need to. All the hard work is done.

"Let me out!" You press at the slimy walls, but it's impossible to get any leverage. Just the same, the badger chatters unhappily. It can't be very comfortable to have someone four times your size wriggling in your belly.

It's less comfortable still for you. There is a slow, growing gurgle as the stomach acids come flowing in. In the hot dark all you hear is that and the badger's heartbeat, rapid and excited but slowing now that its meal is finished. You sting all over as the slow process of digestion starts. It'll take it ages to digest a whole human. That pile of coughed-up clothing shows that it's done it before. It knew exactly what it was doing when it dug the trap.

You try to fight. The wide spot at the base of the pit is hardly bigger than the swollen badger. Most of your efforts just push the thing's pelt against the walls. It grunts, wraps its forepaws around the bulge your face makes. It doesn't like you fighting.

Screw it. You fight anyway. The struggle pushes out a big bubble of air and the badger lets out a long belch. The walls seem to shrink inward as it deflates a fraction. There's a lot less air now, a lot more acid. The swelling you make in its middle is like a sculpture. You even feel your face bulging out through the fur. For now, anyway. Until it digests you.

It burps again and things get still worse. In the hot, suffocating dark you remember what you saw just before its jaws closed. A pair of shoes you recognized. Bobby's shoes, the last of him you saw when he went down that hole to get the softball. The badger hole, you now realize. The ball came back up, but Bobby didn't. At the time, you thought he was just fooling around. You didn't connect the dots when you heard later that he was missing.

You know what happened to Bobby now, and how the badger knew to set its trap. The swollen beast lets out a last belch and settles down to sleep off its meal. You know what happened to Bobby. The badger was really fat after digesting him. You're about to make it even fatter.