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An orca's skin is rubbery. You thought it might be slimy, which made sense since fish are, but no. It's smooth and slick and perfectly streamlined, but not slimy. It's taken you years to work up the courage to find out first hand, and now here you are. Not slimy.

Years of working up the nerve, then a month. A month of patience, hard work, and more patience.

They are careful hiring interns at the sea life center. First you had to prove you're in a veterinary or marine biology program at the university down the road. Which you are. Then they went over your background to make sure you aren't some PETA nut who will let the animals loose. Which you aren't. Your interest in sea life is of an altogether different nature.

Even PETA would admit that the sea life is well treated here. The pens are big, the animals are happy and well fed. The sea lions, the dolphins, the sea otters all seem perfectly content. None of the scary neurotic behavior you see at zoos where the big cats pace their enclosures until they wear a path in the grass.

Once you got hired, you spent a month doing the grunt work before you were allowed to so much as touch an animal. Someone has to collect the trash visitors leave behind. Someone has to clean the filters in the big water tanks once the animals are moved elsewhere. That someone is you. Get in the wet suit and swim around, looking for junk people threw into the tanks, clean or replace the filters.

A lot of the animals crap in the water, even the ones who come onto the shore to rest. It mostly dissipates, but some detritus ends up in there. Some of the rest ends up as particulate at the bottom of the tank and you suck that up with a water vac. You find stuff in the filters, and on the bottom too. Coins. A nylon wallet with money still in it. Twice you find dead cell phones. Most of the stuff you find is weirdly corroded, almost eaten away. Salt water, you suppose. It sure eats the metal railings when the paint breaks down. Painting them is an intern's job too.

Yesterday you pulled a pair of shorts out of the filters in Mabel's tank. Once they were white, you think. Now they are mottled yellow-green and brown. Algae, maybe.

Mabel. She's the whole reason you are here. The dolphins, the sea lions, the big sea otters, you want to play with them. But not as much as you want to play with Mabel.

You're trusted now. You have a key, you can work a shift solo. There's no one in the center but a couple of security guards when you show up in the middle of the night. They just nod and go back to watching the closed circuit camera feeds. There's no feed watching Mabel's tank and that's where you go.

Mabel. Three tons of orca female. Friendly, well trained. She's swimming in slow circles in the tank, as asleep as orcas ever get, when you slip into the cool water. Nothing on but shorts. Nothing between you and her but a little cloth and water.

You walked right past the NO SWIMMING WITH THE ANIMALS signs to get here. People swim with Mabel every day. It's part of the training routine. They're in wet suits, but how much difference can that make?

Smooth. Her skin is so smooth. You resist the urge to swim under her and check out her privates. That can wait. It's exciting enough just being with her.

An ink-dark eye blinks. She's fully awake now, and turns toward you with a ponderous grace, slides past with the nearer eye fixed on you. She's never seen you in the water before and never in just shorts. Odds are she has no idea who you are. She doesn't seem alarmed.

At a distance she's huge. Up close, even more so. She swims in a tight circle and you turn, peering out of your goggles. There's a full moon and her dramatic black and white coloring shows through the water.

Her broad head turns toward you and for a moment you're worried, but she slips beneath you and lifts. You sprawl out across the great dome of her head, where the sonar melon hides, as she hoists you from the water. You can't stop grinning. She probably can't feel how hard you are in your shorts, even though your groin is pressed against her smooth skin.

You've seen her do this in her show. A trainer will balance on her head, sometimes even doing a handstand. As she rises from the water you can't resist. You kick off and balance on your hands, bare feet toward the sky as you grin down at her.

She grins back, then lurches in the water. A powerful stroke of her hind flukes jerks her a yard upward and you are flung into the air, still nose down and vertical. You don't remember seeing this in the show. You don't remember her suddenly yawning underneath her trainer, either.

For a moment you stare into a vast pink gape lined with conical, inward hooking teeth. Just for a moment. At the back of the great fleshy tongue is a purple chute of gullet and gravity wants to have its say. You open your mouth to shout but there is just no time. There is a squelch as everything goes dark.

Hot. Dark. Slippery throat slides over you as you vanish halfway into Mabel's maw. Your knees bang into her lower jaw and there is a painful jab as one of her teeth sinks into your thigh, not hard enough to pierce, but hard enough for hurt. An orca's teeth aren't built to cut. Their main job is to hold prey as it is swallowed whole.

She doesn't need their help. She stands upright in the water, her thick fleshy tongue rolling back against your belly, and swallows. You have time for one startled kick as her throat grips down, squeezing you deeper, and not ten seconds after you did a grinning handstand on her head you feel her jaws shut neatly around your feet. Gravity and one gulp put you to the knees in her gullet and though you struggle and kick, it's already much too late. A wall of interlocking teeth trap your feet in her mouth and almost your whole body is already down her throat.

You sense her movements as she settles back into the water. She's in no hurry. Why would she be? You're surrounded by slimy flesh and the only reason you aren't already in her stomach is she's chosen not to swallow yet. A slow throb of orca pulse drums through the slimy throatflesh. You squirm and kick, but it's hopeless. There's at least a full foot of orca muscle and hide between you and the water. You were doomed the moment she opened her mouth.

In the sweltering darkness of an orca's throat you protest silently: Why? Why did she eat you? You've seen her swim with trainers, seen them do all the things you did. She's placid, happy. Friendly.

Suddenly it hits you. The difference is that you're not wearing a wet suit. The trainers always wear one. No wet suit equals intruder. Intruder equals food. Too bad you didn't know that five minutes ago.

Mabel swallows. A great contraction of her throat muscles drags you along as her thick tongue gives your feet a push. There is a last scrape of teeth against your toes and you're sliding heavily down her throat. She's so big you barely bulge out her neck, if orcas can be said to have a neck. A moment later the bulge is in her midsection. Only a trained eye would make it out at all. A hundred and seventy pounds of intern is just a snack to Mabel.

You squeeze through a fleshy valve into her forestomach. You remember your orca anatomy. This chamber is just for holding food. Other than the slight problem of soon running out of air, you'd be safe here. Shame you don't stay there. A muscular contraction squeezes you into a second chamber and it's not safe here at all.

You kick. You squirm. It's pointless. You're stretched out in the main stomach of an orca, squeezed into near immobility by thick, inward-pressing walls. A layer of slime as thick as a finger coats the walls, and this isn't like the saliva that lubricated you for easy swallowing. Already your skin stings as strong digestive enzymes begin their work. Your white shorts provide a moment's protection for your groin, and your goggles protect your eyes. Too bad about the rest of you.

The water was cool. It's anything but cool here. You feel her stomach clench down, squeezing out the bubble of air she swallowed by eating you with her head out of the water. Distantly, you hear Mabel belch. You didn't know orcas burped. What a useful piece of information to take with you on your trip through her bowels.

You haven't much time, here in the gurgling dark. Just enough time to remember all those things you found in the tanks. The corroded cell phones, that orphaned wallet, the shorts you pulled out of the filter yesterday.

Who would throw shorts into a animal tank? A wallet, a cell phone? No one would. Those phones were corroded for a reason. Tomorrow a new intern will pull your shorts out of the filter in Mabel's tank and ask the same questions you did. Hopefully they won't learn the rules the same way. Hopefully they won't go for a swim in the dolphin or sea lion or otter tanks either, because you found things there too. It does raise certain questions about the sea life center's management. Well, you won't be the one to answer them.

Not much time. Mabel's stomach is gurgling as even more acid is pumped in. Her belly is a churning cauldron that will consume you in hours. Maybe they'll notice your car in the parking lot, find your clothes in the locker, and reason out what happened.

It won't make any difference to you if they do. There is just enough time to slide your hand down into your pants. You're still hard, and luckily all that digestive slime is really slippery.

*****