One day at the beach

By Strega

"Look, Marty, a seal!"

"Sea lion," Marty snapped, barely looking up from his phone. "Seals don't have flippers like those and don't have ears or -"

"Oh, shut up.". His sister elbowed him roughly and skipped over to the seashore rocks where the sea lion lay. Bored, Marty followed. They'd been on the beach for an hour and It was nice to be in the shade for a change, just above the surf and surrounded by barnacle-covered posts that supported the pier overhead.

"Look Marty, he's sleeping!" He, she, it, Marty didn't care. It wasn't a very big sea lion, only a little bigger than both of them together.

"Whatever." He kicked sand at the thing and Cindy gasped as the sea lion started awake. It blinked whiteless eyes at them and backed up against the rocks. Cindy followed after it curiously.

"Don't be mean, Marty." Cindy moved a little closer, torn between her natural inquisitiveness and a nervous awareness that this was a wild animal.

"Oh, don't be chicken, Cindy.". Without thinking Marty gave his sister a shove closer. She stumbled in the deep sand and fell forward, just as the seal yawned.

It was hard to say who was more surprised, the seal wide-eyed in astonishment or Cindy rigid with shock as she went face-first into the gaping maw. There was a wet thump and suddenly there was a great bulge in the seal's dark neck and Cindy was in its jaws almost to the waist.

"Ha! Now you got a look at it!" Marty was laughing so hard he almost dropped his phone, fumbling at the screen as he tried to get the thing recording. He had to get video of the thing spitting out his sister!

He got the thing up and recording just as the seal recovered from its surprise. It lifted its head, Cindy's legs kicking at the air, and blinked at him past her butt.
"Okay, spit her out, I gotta show my friends this."

The seal - darn it, sea lion! - had other ideas. With a serpentine undulation of its neck it slipped its head forward and then upward, and just that fast Cindy's butt disappeared into its jaws. Marty blinked as a visible contraction moved through the stretched hide of the thing's neck, pushing the butt-bulge down toward its body and sucking Cindy's legs into its maw to the knees. It wasn't spitting her out, it was swallowing her!

"Hey!" Marty didn't want to drop his phone but the thing was tensing for another gulp and he only had a second to grab Cindy's ankles. He got hold of them just as they slid into the sea lion's jaws. Cindy was a long bulge in its neck and upper body, the normally streamlined shape of the thing deformed by most of a human stretched out in its gullet. "Leggo! Spit her out, damn it!"

The sea lion grunted at him and tugged, trying to get him to let go so it could finish its meal. That meal was his sister and Marty yanked with all his might, fighting against the sucking grip of its throat and managing to pull a few inches of saliva-slick legs back out. It was that saliva that made his fingers slip and with a grunt of his own Marty tumbled backward.

He got back to his feet, shedding sand, just in time to see the sea lion lift its narrow head. Cindy's feet were sliding back into its jaws and he could see its swollen neck tensing as it readied itself for the last gulp. Cindy's head must already be in its stomach and he couldn't let it swallow. Even if he ran and got help Cindy would suffocate before it arrived, even if it didn't swim off somewhere to digest its meal in peace. Marty leapt forward, hands outstretched to grab the fast disappearing toes.

The sea lion, surprised earlier when Cindy went headfirst into its maw, wasn't surprised this time. It was watching and waiting and as Marty rushed toward it its narrow jaws snapped wide open. It had pulled its neck back into an S as it prepared to swallow Cindy's feet and as it straightened back out Marty's outstretched arms went right down its throat and his face followed after. With a wet slap his face slammed into Cindy's feet and as he lost his balance and fell forward the sea lion hooked its muzzle neatly downward to take in his shoulders.

"What the-" Marty went to his knees in the sand, his face wrapped in slippery gullet that clenched and pulled at his as the sea lion swallowed. Cindy's toes slithered out of sight into the purplish tunnel of wet flesh and he was following after, the hungry sea lion's throat gripping his head and sucking him deeper. He was sitting up in the sand, his arms stretched out ahead of him in the slick tube of gullet. Reflexively he grabbed Cindy's knees as they slipped down the sea lion's throat and that only pulled him in deeper. Before he recovered from his surprise it pushed its distended maw downward over his chest, engulfing him all the way to the hips.

'This can't be happening,' Marty thought, but the sea lion had other ideas. Slick gullet slithered around and over him as it worked its jaws downward over his hips and he felt it tense and strain as it lifted its head. It was his turn to kick at the air, helpless to save himself as the thing readied itself to swallow him whole.

With a toss of its muzzle it allowed him to slip in to the knees, gravity as much as muscular effort pushing him down its throat. Ahead of him in the gullet Cindy's knees and his hands pushed through a tightly gripping sphincter and at once his skin began to tingle as the sea lion's stomach acids began to work. His sister was fully swallowed now but he kept a tight grip on her, hoping against hope that someone would come by and pull him out by the feet just as he'd tried to pull her out. Assuming, that is, that the would-be rescuer didn't follow the two of them down the voracious thing's throat!

But no one grabbed his feet. They'd been alone under the pier and it had taken the sea lion only a couple of minutes to swallow them. No one saw it stretch out its narrow jaws and no one saw it tense and swallow, the double bulge of human feet making its way down the sea lion's long neck to join the grotesque swelling two teenagers made in its normally streamlined body.

With a great effort the sea lion swallowed, its throat gripping down on Marty's legs and feet and squeezing them down toward the stomach. Thick layers of lubricating saliva eased his trip down its gullet but its belly was already outrageously stretched and resisted the entry of even more meat. Only the fact that he and his sister were already slick as eels from their trip down its throat let him slide into its gut, his face bumping up over her ass and sliding along her lower back as the two came to rest side by side in its lengthy stomach.

With a grunt of effort the sea lion arched its neck, struggling with the last of its meal, and then swallowed again. Marty kicked and wriggled but he couldn't stop the thing's muscular throat from pushing his feet into its stomach and when he felt the sphincter seal shut behind his toes he knew he was doomed. He and Cindy were wrapped in sea lion, sweltering in wet body-temperature darkness and dripping with the digestive juices that would soon consume them. There were maybe three inches at most of fat, muscle and hide between them and daylight but that was enough to squeeze them into near helplessness. Marty's best efforts only made the flesh around them flex and drove a half-irritated grunt out of the now very well fed sea lion.

Cindy moved against his belly and he realized she was still alive. "Sis? You okay?"

"No I'm not okay, idiot!" She twisted, trying to slam her elbow into his cheek but held so tightly by the stomach walls she barely nudged him. "You pushed me down a seal's throat!"

"Sea lion," Marty muttered, and got elbowed again for his trouble. "It was an accident and I tried to save you!"

"And a great job you did of it too!"

Marty didn't want to spend his last moments arguing with his sister but that's exactly what he did. Their argument and struggle made the sea lion's swollen middle bulge and shift and it wasn't until its belly tensed down and it let out a great belch that it was finally able to relax. Slowly the struggle in its gut diminished and when the sea lion lay down its head on the damp sand the lumpy bulge was still and there was the beginning of the warm gurgling that would go on until its double meal was digested.

It had never eaten so much in one sitting and the sea lion found a soft spot in the sand to accommodate the bulk of the bulge. As a result when someone happened by a few minutes later all they saw was a sleepy and very fat sea lion, not one with a lumpy middle that alarmingly resembled two entire humans swallowed whole.

With a last long burp the sea lion settled down to sleep, letting its belly do the work of breaking down its pre-meal body weight in food. It would not be until the next day that the disappearance of the teenagers would be noted, and by then the bulk of its prey would be digested and the sea lion would be elsewhere, newly fattened and with little evidence that the remains of two humans were finishing a trip through its digestive tract.

Days later a beachcomber would find Marty's phone where it sat above the tide line. Fortuitously it'd landed facing the sea lion and still recording, and the two siblings would posthumously become minor celebrities as the brother and sister swallowed whole by a sea lion. Stories would be written about it, and people would argue whether the sea lion innocently thought they were voluntarily feeding themselves to it or whether it had yawned on purpose then lured Marty in for a second helping. By this time, of course, the siblings existed only as sea lion fat and couldn't be consulted on the matter. There'd be talk of a film and arguments would arise as to whether to use CGI or practical effects to simulate two people being eaten.

But you didn't need CGI or a puppet. You just needed to find the right sea lion or seal, annoy it (or maybe just stick your head in its mouth) and you'd get to reenact the fate of the pair for yourself. Suicide by seal (or sea lion) became a brief fad and you could soon buy 100% organic (and digestible) clothing at certain beach gift shops.

One result of all this was some new warning signs along the beach, which rather than saying 'Do not feed or annoy the wildlife' now read 'If you are going to annoy the wildlife, please wear digestible clothing' above a picture of a sea lion with a set of flip-flop clad feet protruding from its maw.