Just Eating a Car

The fox’s hand shook violently as he struggled to try to fit the car’s key into the ignition. The terror induced spasms and jerks of his wrist made each attempt to jam the key home cause it to glance off against the outer rim of the ignition instead. Before he was able to get more than three or four attempts at it the car lurched forwards then back, causing the keys to fall from his hand and tumble down underneath his front seat. Rather than try to jam his hand underneath the seat to grab for them, however, instead the fox simply turned his head to glance out of the side window in terror. Or he would…

If the view wasn’t blocked by a solid wall of red.

Fingers thick around as telephone poles were wrapped around the frame of his little four door car, gripping with so much force that the fox could actually see the sides of the car bend and warp inwards slightly. Out of sheer panic he backpedaled from the driver’s side door, scrambling into the middle of the front seat as if putting a few extra inches of space between himself and the door would somehow offer him additional safety. The car suddenly lurched again, this time seeming to bounce upwards, though never lowering from the apex of its bounce. Instead, it kept rising higher and higher, causing the fox to blanch as the abrupt increase in elevation made his stomach bottom out in nauseating protest. When the movement finally stopped and the fox could regain his senses, he pushed himself back up into a sitting position and looked out of the front windshield. Immediately he wished he hadn’t.

He found himself staring straight into the face of the monster that had been rampaging its way through the city for the last half hour or so. An enormous red dragon with sapphire blue eyes, whose face now filled the view of his car’s front windshield as if he had parked in front of a billboard with the dragon’s face on it. Unlike a billboard, however, this face was grinning and clearly moving and shifting with the subtle animation of a living creature. His nostrils flared every second or so, his eyes dilated their slitted pupils slightly as he focused on the fox inside the car instead of the car itself, and his lips curled back into a slightly wider smirk at the sight of the vulpine trapped within his vehicle.

The fox noticed that the fingers to either side of the car were now gone, and he could only assume that the vehicle was now resting on the dragon’s open palm instead. Too scared to think beyond one step at a time, the fox leapt at the driver side door, slamming his weight against it as his hand fumbled at the latch in a frantic attempt to escape the vehicle. Unfortunately, the powerful grip the dragon had used to lift the car off of the ground seemed to have warped the frame of the doors far enough that they were jammed shut. He could feel the latch disengage but the door wouldn’t budge more than a centimeter or two before it smacked up against a solid surface that kept it closed. He was trapped.

For a split second, the fox debated trying to grab the keys from where they had fallen under the seat, and take his chances trying to drive off of the dragon’s open palm. Before he had a chance too, the dragon’s fingers curled inwards again, rows of fingers clenching up against the passenger side of the car to grip at the vehicle once more, and it started moving closer towards the dragon’s face. Within a few seconds the fox’s eyes went wide with horror as he saw the dragon’s jaws open wide. He realized the car wasn’t moving towards the dragon’s face.

It was going towards his mouth.

All of his frantic struggling and flailing around inside of the vehicle amounted to nothing. None of the doors would open, all seemingly jammed shut by the bent frame. He even tried planting his feet against the back windshield to kick it out, but ended up falling down into the floorboard in his panic before he could brace himself properly. By the time he had pulled himself up the front windshield had gone dark, and all of the windows were fogging up from the outside. The car was in the dragon’s mouth.

He could actually hear the sharp snap of the dragon’s jaw clamping shut, teeth the size of traffic cones clattering like marble sculptures being banged together. A wet slurping sound could be heard inconsistently outside of the car, the sound of what had to be gallons upon gallons of saliva casually being sloshed and rolled about inside of the dragon’s maw. There was a bit of light that gleamed through the dragon’s cheeks, heavily tinted red by the thick hide separating his mouth from the outside. But even with that, there wasn’t much to see. The dragon couldn’t be more than a hundred feet tall or so, and the car was a pretty decent mouthful even for such a massive beast like the dragon. Even if the doors worked, there was a strong chance there wasn’t enough space between the door and the dragon’s tooth line for it to get open enough to escape.

Abruptly the car lurched upwards, tipping backwards onto its front wheels as the enormous carpet of pink muscle for the dragon’s tongue lifted the back end of it. A sharp blaring of the horn seemed to echo through the tunnel at the end of the dragon’s throat when the fox landed hard on the steering wheel from being tossed about so carelessly. Slowly the car began to slide backwards, the tongue both rising to let gravity help pull the car, as well as curling its end around the bumper to push it backwards.

The screeching of warping metal and fiberglass seemed muffled by the walls of undulating, saliva slickened flesh surrounding the vehicle. As the ring of muscle that was the entrance to the dragon’s throat constricted around the front hood of the car, it simply crushed it inwards several inches from all directions, compacting pieces of the motor assembly within together around the engine block. The fox’s ears popped several times from the sudden, harsh changing of pressure that were very obviously the dragon’s multiple attempts at swallowing, using both the movement of his tongue and power of his throat along with shifting pressure to try to suck the car down into his gullet. Inch after inch the car slid backwards down into the waiting tube of flesh, causing its occupant to continue beating at the doors fruitlessly in his maddening panic. The roof of the car began to warp inwards, and loud crashes accompanied showers of glass bursting in on the fox from all sides. The growing pressure on the vehicle had caused the windows to break and shatter when the roof’s frame couldn’t withstand the pressure being put on it anymore. The fox soon found himself laying down in the back floorboard as the roof lowered in on him, legs bending as the sides of the car crushed inwards as well. It was like being in some kind of hellish car compactor mixed with a car wash.

Splatters of saliva spewed into the shrinking hollow of the car’s cabin as it was forced down the dragon’s throat, helping to slicken every inch of it and allow it to more easily slide downwards. All the while the unceasing force of the muscle and sinew of his esophagus compacted the car like a tin can to make it a more manageable amount to swallow. The fox could actually feel the car slide back upwards a few inches once or twice, accompanied by loud gurgling gasps from the beast who was currently trying to swallow him. Clearly the car was a bit more than the dragon normally could swallow, and he was fighting his gag reflex to force it down whole.

Unfortunately for him the dragon’s victory was inevitable, and a few more moments of fighting had compacted the car into a thin metal tube barely recognizable as a former vehicle. The little captive fox was crammed in a small box of what was left of the car’s cabin, as a final resounding GULP sent the car slipping down the dragon’s throat with little further resistance.

Outside the dragon pulled his fingers away from his throat, where he had been rubbing the visible bulge around his Adams apple that had been the car he had struggled to swallow. His jaw hung open lazily as a sharp exhalation of air escaped his lips in relief. He could actually feel the large, compacted mass of metal drop down into his belly, leaving a satisfying weight there. Before he could say anything, the dragon’s maw opened wider on reflex and a thunderous belch boomed from his throat with enough force to rattle nearby windows. The uncontrolled burp only made the dragon grin in smug self-satisfaction as he rumbled aloud to no one in particular, without even an iota of apology in his voice whatsoever

“scuse me”