FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

They call it The Swamp. The place is cursed, or at least that's the most popular theory. You went for a walk in the woods on your nice, safe, civilized world, and ended up looking at the brackish waters of the lagoon and the meadow around it. This was someplace you very much wanted not to be as the meadow and water were populated by a variety of hungry creatures who don't care if you scream or struggle. They only care about how you'll taste and the shape of bulge you'll make.

You turn around to go home. It's the only sane thing to do. You try. Every time the path bend back, even if it's arrow straight, and you're at the meadow again.

Some can come and go, it turns out. Unfortunately that is mostly the predators. They stop by, eat their fill and wander off. People like you, not so much. The only escape from the horrors here is via the twisting path of some hungry creature's digestive tract. And even that isn't enough to end it most of the time.

You've seen the same deer-man eaten half a dozen times. He seems to deliberately provoke predators and you've seen him torn to bits and eaten one bite at a time. Yesterday a ten-ton feral wolverine dug a car-sized rock out of the ground, dropped the deer in the hole and stomped the rock down again. Then pissed on it. Still the deer came back. There is the shy blue-haired woman who you've seen chased down and eaten more than once and yet there she is, hiding in the undergrowth writing in her journal.

You avoid people. Even the innocent-looking ones are often predatory. Their frail, vulnerable look is just a lure. You saw a little raccoon woman blow up like a balloon, the most harmless fuzzy thing imaginable. Right up until sometime climbed atop the 'balloon' and somehow managed to slip right into the balloon-raccoon's sex. Afterward she deflated and waddled away to digest her meal, extremely full of very surprised man.

Avoid everyone. Sneak in to take food from the cornucopia by the water when the predator population is thin. Watch out for big trees, predators hide in them and drop on people, or just shoot out a sticky tongue and reel them in. You don't know what hides in the oak tree by the water, but you've heard it burp after it pulls someone in and the grass under its tree is well fertilized with the digested remains of its prey. Even some of the plants are predatory. You saw someone get eaten by a picnic basket once, and by a big rock that is apparently some sort of snail. It isn't just the obvious predators like the red dragon or the huge shark. Be careful.

So far you've survived. But it only takes one mistake.

As you sneak through the undergrowth you come across something very strange. A great pile of clothing, whites and colors mixed together. Your first thought is some sort of communal midden where the preds cough up indigestibles, but it all looks clean. The next thought is that it's a nest that some creature sleeps in but if so, there is no sign of it.

The temptation is great. You could do with a blanket or two so you don't have to sleep on bare grass. You poke the pile with a stick to make sure it is not a disguised creature like whatever the picnic basket is and then root through it, looking for something to make your own sleeping nest.

As you dig through the pile of clothing there is a swish of vegetation as some large creature approaches. It is already very close and it's very big. For a moment you freeze, then you dive into the pile of clean clothes to hide. That is your mistake. It costs you.

You peer out of the pile of clothes and see the thing approach. It's a huge otter, or you suppose the right term is otter-taur. Huge otter-man in front, with his humanoid torso blending smoothly into an equally huge feral otter body. Enormous. He must weigh tons. Assuming it's actually a he. Not every female around here has boobs or obvious markers. Whatever its gender it is enormous, six or more feet tall at the feral shoulder. There's no fighting something this size. You hide.

Maybe if you'd burst out of the far side of the pile you'd have gotten away. You imagined the worst case scenario was the thing flopped down on the pile and went to sleep. Instead enormous hands reach out and gather up a ball of clothes that just happens to have you in it. Clothes squeeze in on you and you manage to find a crevice in the ball to breathe through, and incidentally look out of.

"Mm, mm, mm," the otter says. Its great hands bunch the ball of clothes tighter around you, but not on purpose. As far as you can tell it doesn't even know you are there. Oddly enough its hands aren't webbed like an otter's paws, but they are nimble enough. It's peering at the big ball of clothes it gathered up. You don't like the way it's salivating. A wash of pink tongue pushes back the abundant whiskers as it licks its chops.

It can't possible mean to eat the clothes! You've heard local predators complain about the things a hundred times. Sometimes they cough them up, sometimes they shit them out, but except for the really big preds or the ones like dragons who can digest everything, clothes are a real issue. No one eats clothes on purpose.

Except the otter. You draw in a breath to shout, just in case it's one of the rare harmless ones. Too late. Before the sound leaves your lips the otter yawns a jaw-cracking yawn and stuffs the ball of clothes in.

Got to get out. Got to get out. But it's like being in a washing machine. The otter is salivating copiously and the clothes are soaked almost at once with slippery water-weasel drool. It tongues the clothes to and fro in its jaws, mumbling something unintelligible about how good they taste. You tumble with the clothes, one living thing in a mass of what should by all rights be inedibles.

Not to the otter. As you scrabble for a grip, and grip - you'd grab its fangs and crawl out that way, risking getting chewed up if you could - it is already too late. A broad salivating tongue pushes the sodden mass of clothing to the back of its jaws and the otter tilts its nose upward.

"No! Don't!" Too late. The otter's nose bobs as it swallows and with one great wet gulp you're sliding heavily down its throat, bundled in with a dozen wash loads of clothing all soaked in otter drool.

It's a really big otter. You feel its ribs creak and its muscles groan as they stretch to let an unusually dense ball of clothing through its gullet, but it barely makes a bulge in the otter's long body. The unusually dense mass of clothing that just happens to be you kicks and squirms all the way down, for all the good it does you. The otter is too busy drooling over the next ball of laundry it's gathered up to notice.

"Damn it!" The traveling contraction of its throat muscles expels you into a fleshy place that can only be its stomach. Despite the otter's size the long chamber only expands enough to let you and the clothing in. None of this cartoon nonsense about being able to stand up, start fires, or play the ribs like a xylophone. Its a tight place that could probably expand much further if it had reason to, but it doesn't. It's just two hundred pounds of clothing and a hundred and fifty pounds of you.

A great pulse drums through the surrounding flesh as you try it think of a way out. The place is already sloshing with fluids that burn your skin on contact. You burrow deeper into the mass of clothing for shelter. So much for the hope that the ambulatory washing machine was just that and not an actual predator. It ate clothes, but it is still an otter, and otters are...what was the term you heard? 'Obligate carnivores'. An otter's stomach knows what to do with meat. Even when that meat is an entire person swallowed by accident.

More clothes arrive, soaked with drool and then stomach acids. You kick the stomach wall as hard as you can. There's enough room for that, at least. Packed in with a mass of slimy clothing there isn't much else you can do to show your displeasure.

The otter doesn't even notice. You can hear it mumbling, sorting clothing. Deciding what to eat next. Stupid otter. It just wanted to eat clothes.

A dim green light appears in the sloshing darkness and you blink otter drool out of your eyes. Wedged into a fold of the now visible stomach wall is a partially digested skeleton. Some sort of smart watch on one bony wrist survives to cast the light.

So. Either the strange otter is more predatory than it seems or you aren't the first person to get tangled up in clothing and swallowed by accident. You suppose it doesn't make much difference which. The result for the skeleton, and for you, is the same. A short trip through an otter's guts.

The otter has finished eating. You hear it yawn and burp, then settle down to digest its meal. A real gurgle and churn is building up in here, and the washing machine effect is going pretty good. The stomach walls ripple, keeping the clothing moving. The light fades as the movements crumble the half digested victim wedged in the crevice. Maybe the watch is acid resistant enough to survive a trip through an otter. You sure aren't.

You burrow as deep as you can into the sloshing mass of clothing, trying to avoid the wash cycle for as long as possible. Most predators can't digest clothes. Then there's this otter. The stomach acids sting your skin and they are working even faster on the clothing. It's dissolving all around you, turning into slime that may or may not provide the otter nutrients. Good thing it ate something that absolutely will. Once the acid gets through with the clothing, it'll be your turn.

The sleepy otter belches, and most of the remaining air leaves. Nothing left now but saliva, and the acid that's replacing it as the clothes dissolve.

You've never died before. Not before you came to the swamp, obviously, and not since you got here. You wonder if everyone who gets eaten reappears, as the deer man and blue-haired girl do, or if it only happens sometimes. You wonder if this sloshing ottery hell is the last thing you'll ever experience, if otter shit is the last thing you'll ever be.

Time to find out.