FSE

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You love walking down the beach. It's your after-school thing, following the tide line for a mile, then doubling back and returning to the dorm. It's different every day, with one thing after another washed up on the beach. Usually it's just kelp and shells, other times jellyfish.

Sometimes you find cans and other detritus. You're not homeless or anything, but if you collect a whole string bag of cans you can turn it in for enough money to buy a hot dog on the way home. Plus, it gives you a warm feeling to help clean up the beach.

You're extra alert when you pass under the pier, because lots of junk gets caught in the barnacles growing on the pier pilings. You're in the shade under the pier when you see the sea lion.

It's a long fat torpedo of a beast, its own weight making it bulge out to the sides on the sand like a deflating tire. It looks to be sound asleep and you are close enough to see its brown fur. They don't look furry from a distance, or when they are wet.

You blink as you see something poking out from under a foreflipper. It's a blue nylon wallet with a bit of green paper sticking out. More than one bit of green , actually.

You lick your lips. You've found wallets on the beach before. They're usually oddly discolored and eaten away by sea water, but sometimes the money inside, while also discolored, is still good.

The sea lion is huge, more than ten feet long and several times your weight. It's not a good idea to piss off something that big. Still, wallet. Free money is free money.

"Hey." Tentatively you poke it in the neck with your toe. The thick layer of blubber makes it feel like it's made of rubber. Blubber. Rubber. You smile. Rubber blubber!

It doesn't even notice. Three-inch-thick fat pads it like armor. You haul back your foot and kick it with some force. Thud. It still doesn't move.

You look around to make sure no one is watching. You walked past a Do Not Feed Or Annoy The Wildlife sign as you went under the pier. There's a pretty big fine if you do. No one else in in sight. The barnacle encrusted rocks and pier pilings block your view of the beach, and vice versa.

"Hey!" You kick the sea lion's neck full force, then again and again. Finally its eyes open. It grunts and peers at you out of inky marble eyes. You back off a yard in case it snaps at you, but it just yawns and puts its head back down.

There! When it moved the wallet was freed. You take a chance and step forward again. It only takes a second to lean down and grab it.

Mistake. You had to reach over its head to get the wallet. As your fingers close around your prize its eyes snap open. Before you can move it heaves its head up on a column of thick neck and its nose butts you in the chest. The air leaves your lungs in a rush as the blow lifts you right off the sand.

You gasp in a breath as it flips you into the air. Another bump of its nose and you're spinning head over heels. You're reminded of the trained seals at the sea life center who balance a ball on their whiskery noses.

The big sea lion has you tumbling helplessly in the air. The spin is nauseating and you are afraid it'll flip you onto the rocks when it's done tormenting you. You'll get all bruised and scraped on the barnacles even if you don't break anything.

It has something even worse in mind. With a last push of its nose it kills your spin and for just a moment you hang upside-down in the air, staring down at the inky eyes and whiskery muzzle directly below. Then its jaws snap open.

"What -" you throw out your arms to stop your fall, but too slow. There is a flash of pink and ivory white followed by a wet thump as purple gullet expands smoothly to accommodate you. Your half raised arms are slammed back against your sides as your own weight sends you sliding down the sea lion's throat. The scrape of teeth isn't nearly enough to stop you.

Your hands are in the sea lion's mouth, slipping on the broad salivating tongue. It's already too late to grab anything and stop your slide and the walls of its throat are covered with a thick layer of slime that slicks you down for easy swallowing. Reflexively you kick, but your foot misses the sea lion's bulging neck as it heaves its muzzle upward. With that simple motion it gathers up your rump and suddenly there's nothing but a kicking set of legs protruding from its maw.

With another toss of its muzzle your feet are in its mouth and you feel it tense. You are just a long bulge in its thick neck and upper body and you know what's about to happen. A wordless scream bursts from your mouth only to sink into the surrounding flesh. At least it keeps you from hearing the slimy GULP as the sea lion's throat grips down.

Your face squeezes through a muscular valve into a place of slimy folds and thick, caustic juices and you kick and squirm as though your life depends on it. Which it does. It's not nearly enough. Your slide pauses for just a moment, then the sea lion gathers its strength and swallows again. The throat grips you as a hand grabs a wet bar of soap and unfortunately it's a lot easier to go forward than back. That second gulp squeezes you into the waiting stomach.

You feel the sea lion relax as you slide into its gut. Its long body seems to be mostly stomach and you slither along until the valve closes behind you, trapping you inside it. You're stretched out in a long pocket of flesh, surrounded by hundreds of pounds of sea lion fat and muscle. It is like being buried alive in meat and copious quantities of stomach fluid coat you from head to foot, making your skin tingle everywhere save where you are covered by your shorts.

"Let me out!" You try to squirm, try to kick. Useless. The inward-pressing flesh is wrapped around you like a constricting snake, squeezing you into near immobility. About all you can move is your hands and only to slide them between your body and the stomach wall, which is helpfully coated with a thick layer of slippery mucus. Less helpfully, that same mucus is already beginning to digest you. There is a slimy feel to your skin as the acids begin to work.

Your shorts on the other hand seem perfectly intact. They will show up in the big pile of what used to be be you when the sea lion is done digesting its meal. You remember all the stuff you found on the beach, the wallets, the shoes, the discolored clothing, all looking like it's been through the worst wash cycle ever. You thought it was just sea water that ate away at them. You have a better idea what happened now. You wonder if it deliberately left that wallet under its flipper to lure you close.

The sea lion's pulse throbs through you, excited at first but slowing now that it's finished its hunt. It doesn't need to exert itself any more, just lie there and let its stomach work. You're still alive, still intact, but there is simply no way out of this that doesn't involve a trip through the thing's bowels. Five minutes ago you were a college student. Now you're just sea lion food.

Voices! You hear voices approaching, even through an inches-thick layer of sea lion. Sounds like a couple of people passing by the beast. You on the other hand are just passing through it, and you'd rather not. You use your last breaths of air to scream.

"Help! Helllp!" The voices pause, and for one wonderful moment you feel hope. Then someone laughs and they keep going. They must think it's just the sea lion's gut making a weird noise. Maybe you can make the bulge wriggle? You burn up more precious air kicking. The voices keep going. The sea lion is so big that the bulge you make barely stands out of the fat.

Exhausted, you go limp in the sea lion's gut. It had been a faint hope at best. Even if they ran off to get a life guard, what could he do? By the time emergency services or animal control got to the pier you'd be dead. Best case is they recover your partially digested body so your family knows what happened to you. Now no one will. Your wallet is back at the dorm.

Wallet. You slide your hand up your belly until it's in front of your face. You've still got the wallet. You can feel the money poking out of it. Isn't that great. You wonder if it's been in here before.

You taste bile as the sea lion's stomach juices enter your mouth. Smell the acid, feel the flesh around you ripple as it keeps the stomach fluids moving, hear the gurgle as digestion gets going. A faint phosphoresce, or maybe it's light somehow making its way through four inches of fat, lets you see the folds of stomach pressed against your face. Who knew being digested was a full sensory experience?

Your struggles worked loose a bubble of air that went down with you. You hear the sea lion let out a long, grunting belch, then settle down to digest its meal. The walls squeeze in and the gurgling gets louder. The acid is starting to hurt quite a lot now. Good thing you'll make the rest of this trip sans consciousness. Also sans life.

You let go of the wallet and pull at something that sticks out of a crevice in the belly wall. It's a ball cap, wadded up and coated in slime. So. You're not the first person to end up in here. In the dim phosphorence you make out USC on the front of the cap. At least one other college student has traveled this alimentary canal. You're just the latest visitor to the sea lion's guts.

In a last act of morbid defiance you pull the hat onto your head. it's a thick cloth hat and pretty rigid. You hope it hurts when the sea lion shits it out.

*****