The badger hole 2

By Strega

Dave lay on the cold concrete floor, ankles and wrists bound together with the same duct tape that was stuck across his mouth, and glared at his captors.

The drug deal had gone bad faster than he could have imagined. Sure, the coke was cut with filler, but how had they known so fast? The blond one tasted a fingertip worth of it and an instant later he'd found himself on the floor.

"Mistake number one," said the blond, "Was to try to rip us off. Mistake number two was to come alone. A message needs to be sent, and you're that message."

For a moment there was hope that meant they'd only beat him up and let him go, but that hope fled as the second man spoke up.

"What are we going to do with the body? Dump it in the desert?"

The blond shook his head. "Might work. Might get found even if we bury him. People go hiking out in the sagebrush, then there are the ranchers - hey! I might have something."

"Don't keep me in suspense, Matt."

The blond snarled, "No names, stupid!" But the snarl soon turned to a smile. "You still got that ATV at your place?"

Soon Dave was in the trunk of a car and for half an hour after that the occasional bumps of first a paved road, then the more frequent and jarring ones of a dirt one throbbed through his bones. He finally saw light again, albeit electric light that barely kept back the shadows, when he was dragged from the trunk and thrown into the cargo bed of a two-man ATV.

He'd tried to rip the duct tape on his wrists but there were many windings and it stubbornly refused to tear. He'd managed to gnaw through his gag but only enough for a whisper to escape. There was no one else in sight of the run-down garage where the two drug dealers retrieved the ATV so he kept his silence, planning the bribe that would hopefully save his life. If they didn't just shoot him when they got wherever they were going, anyway.

For the moment he listened to the two men as they bounced along.

"What the hell are we looking for, anyway?" That was the dark haired one.

The blond, Matt he thought it was, replied. "Badger hole."
"A what?"
"I didn't tell you about it. Who'd believe it? But a couple of months ago I saw the craziest thing with my partner. Hold on...yeah! Stop here."

Lying on his side in the cargo bed Dave saw a series of dirt mounds lit by the ATV's headlight. Near each was in front of a hole in the dirt just barely big enough to crawl into. Did they mean to stuff him into a badger hole?

The blond one, who he knew was a crooked cop padding his earnings with drug deals like the one that'd gone horribly wrong tonight, walked among the mounds shining a flashlight into one after another. Dave craned his neck trying to follow the action but the man was out of sight when he let out an exclamation. All he could do was lie there and try to hear what what was going on.

"There," the blond said. "Look how big that hole is."

"Christ," said the other. "Look at that."

Moments later hands hauled Dave out of the cargo basket and the light from the ATV's headlamps finally let him see what was going on. There were half a dozen of the burrows in sight and he was being dragged toward one far larger than the others. A man might just have fit down the average one but the hole they were approaching would have accommodated even a very fat person.

Or very fat badger. One of the men was wearing a hunter's head lamp and its beam penetrated the dark of the burrow opening. Green eyeshine from dark feral eyes in a pointed muzzle glittered back at them and Dave stared as an angry and very, very fat badger hissed and snapped. It was so obese its short legs barely reached the dirt floor of its den. The width of the burrow was explained now; it had to be this big to accommodate its owner.

"A couple of months ago that badger was normal sized," said the blond. "And now its about to get even fatter."

"Wait a minute," Dave gasped through the tape, but they tossed him headfirst into the burrow. Light made it in past his butt as they shoved him deeper, the cold rough dirt finding its way into the hem of his pants as he slid on his belly closer to the angry green eyeshine. With a last shove the men let go of his legs and Dave lay stretched out in the burrow, his nose not even a foot from the pointed badger muzzle that protruded from the rolls of fur-covered fat it had for a body.

Dave lay perfectly still as it sniffed, hoping the little beast wouldn't claw his face off. Even if he weren't tied up he wouldn't have wanted to fight a badger in its own burrow. Its little paws sported claws well over an inch long and that narrow muzzle was full of sharp fangs.

The long chattering growl finally stopped as it blinked at him quizzically, stepping forward to get a better look. Its grayish nosepad touched his forehead and he saw from point-blank range the blotches of black fur and the long yellow-white stripe that stretched back from its nose up past its eyes. That's why the were called badgers, he remembered. That white 'badge'.

The badger sniffed a couple more times, shifted to the side to look past his shoulder as though to make sure he was tied up, then yawned. Dave stared into the toothy little maw even as its nose pushed up over his forehead and its fanged lower jaw slipped down past his chin, worried that it was going to bite him. It wasn't until it stepped forward to press its maw tight to his face and its jaws unhinged that he realized what it was doing.

His face slipped past the fangs into the wet salivating grip of its cheeks and little clawed forepaws gripped into the material of his shirt, tugging him forward with a strength he would never have imagined the animal had. There was a scrape of canines as its pointy muzzle slid over the crown of his head and down his neck and Dave's eyes went wide in the sudden dark as his entire head slipped into the badger's gullet. Flesh backed by thick gray fur bulged and slid around his face as he slid deeper and the badger tugged powerfully as it swallowed. Already it had managed to gulp down his head and neck and the little beast, no larger than a medium-sized dog even considering its fat, was working its toothy jaws over his shoulders. The badger was swallowing him whole.

His head was squeezed by the creaking ribcage, face pressed against the wet slippery throatflesh that gripped and pulled him deeper, and the beast's heart thumped its pulse through his skull. Outside that was the thick layers of fat that turned an already burly little animal into a waddling tank. Fangs scraped over his shoulders as the beast worked its way over him a fraction at a time, already so distended it was stretched like a sock over a foot. Dave kicked and squirmed, trying harder than ever to part the many layers of duct tape that bound his wrists behind his back. It still refused to snap and bit by bit the badger swallowed him down, reaching its long-clawed paws forward to grip his belt and pull with all its might.

It was an impossibly large meal for the fat little beast but the mucus-lubricated walls of its gullet continued to slip forward, its sharp fangs scraping his skin through his shirt as a pointed muzzle crept down to the hollow of his back. He was so much larger than the badger that its stretched cheeks could not make a tight seal around his upper arms and it swallowed almost as much air as it did meat. In the sweltering heat of its stomach Dave gasped it in, his face already burning as the little badger made a start at digesting its outrageously huge meal.
Through the layers of muscle, fat and fur Dave could make out the mumble of conversation outside the burrow. He could understand just enough to not be surprised by the laughter.

"Jesus," the brown-haired man said. He watched in disbelief as the pointed muzzle slowly made its down down Dave's back, the badger's forepaws reaching out to take a new grip as it swallowed with all its might. Its bulging neck rippled as it managed to get another inch of two of its meal down and its distended pelt twitched and rippled as it stretched over its enormous meal.

"I knew it could do it and I still can't believe it," Matt muttered. "Last time it had the guy swallowed by the time we saw it."

"You think it can really digest him?"

Matt shook his head wonderingly. "It looks so impossible but after last time I think so." He didn't have to point at the sight his companion's headlamp illuminated. "No one would have believed us, so we just left the badger alone after it swallowed that car thief. But I put a marker by its burrow and I came by a few days later to get it - after the fact it seemed a bad idea to leave evidence. So I knew what burrow it was, and it had digested him all right. It had moved to another burrow and was so much fatter than before. The old burrow had collapsed. It was probably packed full of shit anyway. Car thief in, badger shit out." The other man laughed.

The badger had reached the midpoint of its meal, its muzzle between the cheeks of Dave's ass as it rested for a moment. It sucked in long gasps through its nostrils before reaching out its claws once more, beginning to cram the rump and kicking legs into its maw. Though thickly padded with fat from its last human meal the shape of a man's head and shoulders bulged through its hide, their sharp outlines muffled by the furry hide. Dave was kicking and squirming but his sneakers just dislodged dirt from the tunnel wall. He didn't want to go where he was going but the badger was determined to get its meal down and with his wrists taped together he was helpless to keep it from swallowing him alive. His struggles made the badger bulge and thrash about but inch by inch it gulped him down.

Under the layers of muscle and fat and fur Dave struggled for his life, but the little beast had him swallowed past the waist now and its strong hide held his arms tightly to his sides. Its jaws popped and creaked as it finally managed to get his rump into its gullet and Dave shuddered in horror as the latest rippling contraction of its gullet pushed his ass down its throat. Gastric juices soaked his T-shirt and were beginning to penetrate his Levis and the burn of stomach acid was spreading by the second. It was so swollen now that its hide pressed against the earthen walls of its den and all his struggles accomplished was to push it against the dirt, and the thick layer of fat under its pelt padded that to nothing.

He couldn't stop it. Even if the duct tape gave way right now he was almost entirely inside the badger. The sucking grip of its throat pulled in his legs surprisingly quickly now that most of him was inside and it stretched out its muzzle, fangs digging into the rubber of his sneakers. It pulled its snout back close to its chest, using its strong little forepaws to stuff his feet in after the rest, and with a last laborious gulp the badger swallowed him down.

Dave slipped and slithered in the slimy belly, not sure which was was up any more. The great contraction of the swallowing muscles that forced him down the badger's throat squeezed him into a fetal position, arms still bound uncomfortably behind him and his knees rammed against his face. A badger no more than a third his weight, half at most with all those rolls of fat, had gulped him down and the slick flesh pressing in from all sides was dripping with digestive fluids. They pooled at the low parts of the stomach and nearly every square inch of his skin burned now. The little badger had begun to digest its meal and all he could do was kick and wriggle, held nearly still by the muscle, thick, strong hide and the walls of a burrow only barely large enough for a badger stretched over a swallowed man.

Even with the layers of fat wrapped around the stomach there was no more than three inches between him and the cool earth of the den. It his hands were free, if he had even a pen-knife... but he didn't. The badger's rapid pulse was slowing even as the sweltering cauldron of its gut grew still hotter and the dripping stomach juices pooled higher and higher. It was so gorged it could not possibly have reached the ground with its short legs but the badger didn't need to. It had its meal and all it needed was time for it stomach to do its work. It'd take days to digest him but safe in its burrow it had all the time in the world.

Dave's hopeless struggle came to an end as the belly contracted, forcing out the air that had gone down with him. Acid flooded into his lungs as he gasped in a desperate breath and the last thing he heard, even over the pulse throbbing through his skull, was the long belch the badger let out. After than was just the hot dark as he sank into unconsciousness and death, the inhaled acid beginning to dissolve him from the inside even as the pooling fluids worked on his body from without.
"Damn." Matt said. "I still can't believe it. Look at that!"

Down the wide badger burrow now was a stretched ball of fur, its little paws and sharply pointed muzzle comically undersized compared to the bulk its swollen body. It burped again, blinking into the light, and squinted its eyes shut. An unnatural creak emerged from its stretched body, the little beastly body that had somehow fit an entire man down its throat. Curled up inside it the shape of legs, knees, even the outline of a face pressed out through the fur, not yet softened by stomach acids.

The struggle had ended, whether the heat, acid or lack of air had gotten to Dave. Even if they'd wanted to retrieve his body now the swollen badger would never fit back up the burrow and by the time they dug their way to it the drug runner would be partially digested. The badger had its meal as far as Matt was concerned it could keep it.

"If I hadn't seen it for myself..." his companion, who went by Rhett when he wasn't using one of his half dozen fake IDs, was gawking too. The drug runner they'd needed to get rid of was neatly packaged in badger fur now. "Now what?"

Matt shrugged. "We phone Bob" - also not their contact's real name - "And tell him Dave showed up with cut cocaine and had an accident. That's all he needs to know. He'll wonder what we did with the body but the last thing he'll suspect is that his guy is badger chow. Wondering about how we hid it, or if we might have him alive and stashed away somewhere, should make him think twice about trying it again."

With a last burp the badger settled down, apparently asleep. Its stretched hide twitched and rippled and a low gurgle emerging from beneath its fur signaled that it had made a start on digesting its enormous meal. The next time they came back, if they did, it would have dug an even larger burrow. Whatever hopes and dreams and aspirations Dave might have had, pretty soon he would be nothing but coughed-up clothing, badger shit and still more fat on its already waddling little frame.

"That can't be healthy for it," Rhett mused, and Matt grinned.

"You should see the other guy," he said, and they were both laughing as they rode the ATV away from the badger hole. A crooked cop has many enemies and there was a good chance he'd help the badger get even fatter soon. Maybe he'd need to get rid of a rival, maybe someone on the force would suspect. Maybe Rhett wasn't as trustworthy as he seemed. Matt had a sure-fire way of getting rid of bodies now, and he'd be using it. It was just a question of who would make the badger burp next.

Just as long as it isn't me, he thought as they rode away.