A Seaside Stroll
Another older story
Cal yawned as he shifted his car into park. He turned and pulled his keys out of the ignition while leaning back, listening to the muffled sound of waves hitting shore though his car doors for a few moments before pulling the handle and letting the cool night air wash over his face. The smell of salt and seaweed was thick in the air, and Cal could not get enough, it had been too long since the last time he had gone for a walk on this beach.
He stretched as he shut the car door, the sound almost being drowned out by the crash of a wave on the other side of the dunes. Making sure the door was locked, he turned and stepped towards the ocean. Moments like these were the only real opportunity he ever got to calmly think to himself, something about the sound of the waves always made him content.
As he reached the end of the wooden planks leading to the beach he kicked his flip-flops off of his feet, leaving them behind at the entrance, no one ever took them. He sank his bare feet into the cool sand with a sigh and began walking down along the shoreline, the waves just barely missing his feet as the spread across the wet sand to his side.
It had been almost a year since his last walk, the beach seemed so foreign to him now, though he could now quite place what had changed. He spotted a few "No Trespassing" signs as he walked, but he ignored them, there were no other vehicles in the parking lot, it was not likely he would run into anyone else here.
He used the time to reflect, the stress had been building up on him lately, it just seemed like it was one thing after another and nothing ever went his way. He ran his fingers through his short blonde hair as he walked, taking deep breaths. The sky was very clear, and he could always see countless stars in the sky when he was at the beach, it seemed like he was approaching a feeling of contentment for the first time in a long while.
Hours passed as he walked, reaching parts of the beach that he was pretty sure he had never visited before. He was about to turn and head back when he spotted some sort of long log in the sand a few feet in front of him. He stepped forward, bending down to look at it. It was very long and about as thick as his leg, it almost seemed to reach all the way to the water. He lifted his bare foot up and pressed his toes against it, intending to roll it over. His toes sank down, it was not a log at all, but something warm and slimy feeling.
Cal yelped in disgust and went to take a step back from whatever it was, but his toes were stuck. He yanked his foot back but could not get the thing to budge. He only had a moment to feel disquieted by the situation when the bizarre object gave a yank that pulled him off of his feet. He tumbled down to the sand as that thing pulled hard towards the water, his body being dragged through the sand with it.
He found his voice and began screaming. He grabbed fistfuls of sand as he slid, trying to pry himself away from whatever this thing was, but he might as well have been grasping at thin air for all the good it did. He slid into the cold shallow waters as the sticky worm-like thing stopped it's descent into the ocean. Cal breathed half of a sigh of relief before choking on his own terror. A massive creature surfaced from the shallow waters, only just silhouetted by the stars and the dim cast of moonlight on the water.
The creature was huge, it had serpentine-like neck leading to a thick and long body, long flippers seemed to be at its side, the waves making it difficult to tell. The head appeared to be fairly dragon-like, its eyes glinted in the faint light. The aspect that caused the most terror in Cal was the tongue. The beast's tongue was protruding from its mouth, a long thick cylindrical muscle, leading right to his foot.
Cal fought then, trying to kick at the beast with his free foot as it slowly bent its giant head towards him. The thing was bigger than he initially gauged it, the creatures head seemed big enough for his whole body to fit inside. Thoughts like that made him nervous, especially when he noticed that the beast did not seem to have any teeth.
The creature began pulling its tongue up into its mouth. Cal felt his body lift as his foot was pulled in with it, the warm heat of the beast's maw coating his right leg. Panicked, Cal thrust his other leg in the other direction, halting the beast's attempt to pull Cal into its mouth. The creature tugged, yanking Cal upwards fruitlessly for a moment, his crotch shoved up against the side of monster's mouth, his left leg pressed against the soft flesh of the tongue and the harder flesh that was the roof of the beast's mouth.
Cal's heart started racing, realizing the gravity of his situation. He leaned up from his lying position in the wet sand, his shirt sticking to him with the cold water. The beast seemed unable to move very fast apart from his tongue, and its attempts to snatch Cal's other leg into its mouth were thankfully failing. He tried to pull free again but to no avail, the grip from the tongue on his leg was very strong.
Without warning the beast lowered its head and shifted, forcing Cal on his side and pressed him face first into the cold wet sand. He sputtered, trying to get a mouthful of sand out of his mouth, as he regained his senses, keeping his free leg out of the beasts path. His body was forced forward and he screamed as the pressure against his back spiked, the front of the creature's mouth pressing hard against him, his body sinking slightly into the sand as he felt the weight shift and a slick warm muscle slid around his other leg.
His heart skipped a beat,_No..._He changed a look behind him, his face still half pressed into sand, in time to see the beast slide his other leg into the toothless maw. The pressure suddenly released as he was dragged backwards, his chest sliding in the damp sand and into about a couple inches of water, his shirt getting pulled off from the friction. He grasped at more sand as he was slid into the cold water, screaming at the top of his lungs as he did so, why did he have to walk so far? There was no chance someone would hear him...
His body was tugged back and slightly upwards, both of his legs now securely pinned in the creature's mouth. His body mercilessly thrashed down into the water between tugs. He sputtered water and coughed as a poorly timed scream pulled salt water into his mouth. The sticky tongue, slid forward along his body and clutched at his chest, pulling on him. The sand stuck to him, rubbing uncomfortably against his skin as the tongue gripped him, dragging him upwards.
The warm flesh was almost a welcome change from the cold ocean water. Cal thrashed, reaching desperately out of the beast's mouth, still coughing from the water, the warm slick muscles were coated with sand from the struggle. He was in up to his shoulders, his feet had started to dip into a tight passage of flesh, causing him to curl his legs up to him as best he could as the rest of his body slid farther in. The beast seemed to be retreating into the sea as it feasted, every other tug dunking his head partially in the water. The creature bit down against his head, the soft pressure holding him in place as the powerful tongue uncoiled around him, sliding out around his arms, still free from the beast's maw, and crammed them inside with the rest of him.
The dim light faded, the sound of waves cut off, the smell of salt water added to with the reek of some powerful fish-like odor. Sand rubbed against his body as the beast's tongue shifted around him, no longer sticky for some reason, and all his weight seemed to shift. The back of the beast's throat had gone from slightly up to directly down. His body flung, the pressure forcing him against the roof of the mouth for a split second before he slid down, his feet plunging into the esophagus as an audible swallow echoed though the dank humid chamber.
The sensation of going from contrasting hard flesh and soft flesh to a tight gripping tube of narrow flesh, greedily pulling him downwards, was an alien experience. He tried to scream but found himself unable, tears had been wetting his face but they were almost unnoticeable under the mix of salt water and saliva. The tight squeezing throat muscles climbed his body as he sank down, gasping for one last breath of fresh air as the creature did the same, his last sight of the stars framed by the inside of the monster's maw for a split second before his eyes met the greedy tube of flesh as well.
He sank fast. Not as fast as a free fall, but slid quickly against the slick and powerful throat, the peristalsis forcing him down. His eyes were shut tight but he could feel the movement of the throat on his eyelids, trying to force them open, the sliding against his ears making the only audible sound a consistent squelching noise. The flesh pushed in against him hard in every direction, his legs pinned below him, his arms above him, seeming to grasp helplessly at the beast's maw. The place that was so fear inspiring and hellish to him just a moment ago was now tremendously preferable. The descent must have only taken a few seconds, but it felt like hours.
His feet seemed to pass through a tight ring before being released from the torturous pressure of the monster's esophagus. Panic filled him to an even more extensive degree, that was the stomach, he was going to be digested. Nothing but food... was this his fate? He struggled, hopelessly trying to force himself back up against the forces of gravity and the peristalsis together. His efforts earned him an accelerated passage through the tight ring as it ascended his body and squeezed him into the only slightly roomier stomach.
His legs were forced to curl up as his body was forced into the small chamber of flesh. He pressed against the walls, trying to stretch himself out, make the beast uncomfortable, but he might as well have tried to push over a building for the effect it had on his situation. The smell hit him hard, a mixture of salt water, rotting seafood, and something he could not quite place. He opened his eyes, but there was no noticeable to difference to keeping them tightly shut.
The walls of the beast's belly pressed in on him, then out, then in, then out, then in... The cycle repeated itself and Cal struggled. The stomach was filled about a third of the way with salt water that had been swallowed with him, along with some sand that still stuck tot he fleshy walls around him, rubbing against his skin every now and then.
He was running out of air, he sloshed himself around in the creature's belly, running his hands against the slimy walls that encased his body, where had he even come from? He was so disoriented he was unable to find the hole that had forced him in here no matter where he searched. He needed a plan, was he really going to die here? He shifted his body, punching the stomach walls, doing anything he could think of to make the beast vomit him back to freedom, he was starting to get light-headed.
It was then that he noticed the water in the stomach seemed to be rising, the walls pressing in on him harder than before, and a strange feeling of pressure overcoming him. What was going on? He pondered before the realization hit him hard. All hope and effort leaked from him as he ceased his movements and let his body slide around in the monsters belly. The pressure intensifying, the beast was diving, swimming into the deep waters. Even if by some miracle he escaped the stomach, what then? The beast was probably so deep that even if he could swim away without being eaten again he would surely drown. That was it, there was no hope, he had been eaten, he was gone, he gave up.
Cal sobbed and clutched at his own body, trying not to think about what had happened to him, trying to ignore the flesh holding his body, the tingling feeling around his sensitive skin, and willing for unconsciousness. He just wanted the feeling to stop, wanted the experience to end, and as the stomach filled up with seawater, he got his wish. He closed his eyes, engulfed by stomach-warmed ocean water, his mind felt fuzzy, the pain of suffocating slowly subsiding as his body relaxed and he took a breath...