Jacob and the skunk-snake
By Strega

It was a cool spring morning in the Pennsylvania woods when Jacob met the skunk-snake.

He was out for a morning jog on the old dirt bike-trail, half a mile from the road, when he ran headfirst into a spray of fluid. Droplets of viscous goo clung to his bare legs, arms and face and Jacob blinked, slowing his jog only slightly as he wiped a hand across his face. The leaves overhead should have blocked any drizzle, and why was the rain so gooey?

Then he stumbled. In the course of just a few seconds Jacob staggered to a stop, suddenly and inexplicably weak. He was down on all fours and fumbling for his cell phone, wondering if he was having a heart attack at twenty-two, when he saw the pile of dark leaves stir.

They weren't leaves. Long black and white hair rustled as something like a huge skunk uncoiled. A skunk-snake, he'd have called it, had he anyone to talk to. Thick as his thigh and at least ten feet long, with a triangular ferrety face as big as Jacob's head. He'd been sprayed by a skunk, but the result hadn't been the usual stench. Instead the spray had done this to him.

Beady black eyes watched as his nerveless fingers let the phone fall to the mossy trail. The thing lay in a coiled mass as he tried to lift himself off the ground and failed. A pink nose twitched as it sniffed, but it was not until he collapsed entirely that it slithered forward.

"What're...you," Jacob mumbled, awake and aware but just too weak to move. If the skunk-snake heard, it didn't react. It slithered forward with essing movements of its coils until they were close enough to touch. It nuzzled his hip, then his thigh before its muzzle quested back upward. His hip again, his elbow, shoulder, the back of his head, and it followed the grain of his hair forward until it was sniffing at his face. Jacob realized that its vision wasn't good at all. It had found its way to him to scent and hearing. If he had lain still, maybe it wouldn't have found him at all.

But it was here now, a ten-foot coil of black and white fur like a broad and heavy snake. Jacob had a last look at its inquisitively sniffing noise before its broad jaws opened and slid over his face.

"Wait..." he mumbled, and tried to pull away, but he was too weak to do more than shift an arm. Soft, warm flesh slid over and around his face as the thing worked its jaws forward, soon encasing his entire head in its mouth. Dozens of little inward-hooking teeth slid forward only to dig in, so fine as to be nearly painless, but still letting it grip his head in its jaws.

Jacob's eyes went wide in the dark as the soft maw gripping his skull twisted. One side of the skunk's mouth pushed forward, moved by some internal musculature and supported by bones attached only by elastic ligaments, and those little teeth took a grip on the nape of his neck. The other side of the jaws repeated the motion, pushing past the first. Jacob's face slipped into the warm, slippery chute of skunk-snake throat as it effortlessly swallowed his head.

'It's eating me,' Jacob realized, and tried to find the strength to pull himself free. 'It's only ten feet long! It can't eat me!' But as he pushed weakly at the ground, doing little more than shift leaves with his legs, the broad skunky jaws were working their way over his shoulders. Seemingly familiar with this obstacle, the skunk twisted its muzzle, sliding its nose over one shoulder and its long lower jaw over the other. Skin stretched between its wide-open jaws and the little fangs gripped and released, gripped and released as it worked itself rapidly over his torso.

As the slick gullet slid easily over him he was reminded of pulling a sock over a foot. The skunk-snake was so stretchy it need only flip its fat tail around to hold his legs to the ground and then push its jaws forward. He slipped into the long smooth tunnel of throat, feeling the wet tissues of the the beast press his T-shirt close to his body. A thick coating of mucus lined the sides of its gullet, lubricating him for easy swallowing as his skin was coated and his light jogging clothes soaked.

Only a minute before he'd been lying helpless and weak on the trail, staring into ink-dark skunk eyes. Now only half of him was out in the cool air, the rest having vanished down the throat of the strange and hungry creature. He kicked weakly at the trail as the throat gripped down for the first time, a long traveling contraction of its muscles gripping and easing him deeper. His rump, shorts and all, and his weakly clutching hands slipped past the little side fangs and into its maw. Jacob was too weak to grip at its lower jaw and stop his slide, managing only to slow it for a moment before his fingers uncurled and slipped into the waiting throat.

'This is impossible', he thought. 'Skunks don't eat people.' But the skunk-snake didn't know that, or didn't care. Its forward movements as it swallowed him forced its swollen neck into a sharp bend, and it once more trapped his feebly kicking feet to the trail with its tail and pushed its nose forward. As the kink in its neck straightened the advancing jaws slipped over his knees, his hips having already sunk deep into the thing's gullet.

It was almost done with its meal. Its strong neck muscles gripped him tight as it once more pulled its head back toward its body, and held still by the internal muscles, the ess it created in its neck pressed against his butt, sliding him neatly down its throat. With a forward stretch of its head its loose jaws slipped over his running shoes. He felt a tug as a shoelace caught between two fangs and then he was entirely inside the thing, wrapped head to toe in warm wet skunk flesh.

His face had long since slipped past a muscular tightness into what must be the skunk-snake's incredibly lengthy stomach, and he felt it tense as it prepared itself to finish its meal. With a side to side wriggle of its jaws it worked them past his toes, stretching out its nose a last time to let them slip into its gullet, and then it once more formed a bend in its neck and gradually forced it downward, the traveling ess helping slide him down its throat.

It had taken only a few minutes to swallow him whole. Weren't snakes supposed to be slow eaters? This one wasn't. Stretched out in the long, long stomach, with only a few feet of skunk-snake left un-swollen at either end of a bulge as heavy as it was, Jacob tried to struggle. Thick muscle and fat and fur pressed in from every side, squeezing his arms against his sides. There was just no leverage. Even if he'd ended up in here at full strength, it was too late to save himself. He was a meal now, plain and simple. Unless someone happened by in the next few minutes he was going to leave the thing's body only when it was done digesting him.

Gripped by the long stomach and too weak to fight, Jacob couldn't even discomfit the thing by kicking. All he could do was lie helplessly in its long stomach as the skunk-snake shifted itself where it lay. He felt it stretch and work its jaws, re-hinging the elaborate apparatus that had allowed it to swallow him so easily, and then there was the twitch of muscles all around. It was almost like a massage, but it was just the gorged skunk-snake slithering off the trail. Rocks and irregularities in the ground bumped at him through the surrounding meat as ten feet of skunk-snake with a six-foot bulge in its middle disappeared into the woods.

It was looking for a quiet place to digest its meal, Jacob knew. And only now did he remember the missing-person reports. There had been searches. Everyone assumed people were being kidnapped, thrown into cars and taken who-knew-where. No bodies were found. They weren't being kidnapped, he knew now. And he knew exactly what had happened to the bodies.

'Maybe someone will find my cell phone,' Jacob thought. 'Maybe they'll at least know where I was. Maybe they'll find the trail the thing made and follow it. Not that helps me any, but still.'

The skunk-snake was still now, panting from the effort of dragging the great bulge in its middle to wherever it had gone. It must have reached a sheltered spot, whatever served as its lair. And now that it was still, the long, long stomach was becoming less hospitable. Undulations of its musculature were squeezing the air out, and warm, stinging fluid was taking its place. His light clothing was already sodden with the stuff and his exposed skin had a greasy feel against his fingertips. It was beginning to digest him, slowly at first, but surely.

'Hope you get a blockage from my clothing', was Jacob's last thought as the long slow gurgle began. There were a few twitches beneath the stretched fur as he ran out of air, which the sleepy skunk-snake watched with mild interest. Had it been able to hear him, and understand, and reply, it would still only have belched and smiled. This human wasn't the first to end up in its stomach. It had ultimately coughed up items in their possession too hard to digest and too large to pass through its intestinal tract. Against one wall of the old raccoon den it slept in was a pile of shoes with the more digestible bits dissolved away. Soon enough, this man's red running shoes would join them.