The slide by the sea

By Strega

They only installed the slide a week before, but Jerry saw that the local wildlife was already taking advantage. He watched a sea lion inchworm itself up the sand dune, then turn and propel itself onto the slide with a push of its flippers. The smooth metal offered no more resistance than if a human were using the ride and the seal let out a grunt that sounded like a laugh as it rocketed down the slide. No sooner did it flop onto the sand at the bottom than it turned and headed right back up for another slide.

Jerry smiled as the seal shot him a look. It waggled a flipper and looked at the slide, then back at him. It was clearly a mature sea lion, over ten feet long and several times his size, but it was playful. He was almost tempted to follow it down the slide.

The sea lion slid down the slide once more then paused at the bottom, staring at him and grunting. Once again it waggled a flipper.

"Silly seal," Jerry said, but just the same he'd stopped to watch. He glanced at a nearby sign. Do Not Feed Or Annoy The Wildlife, it said. Jerry shrugged. The seal certainly didn't look annoyed and he walked over to the top of the slide.

Down below the sea lion made a sound like a chuckle and slapped its flippers together. There were a couple of ways to tell a sea lion from a seal, such as the former having visible ears and the latter not, but Jerry didn't really care. They were all seals to him and the big sea lion waddled to the side to make room and looked brightly at him as he prepared to slide down.

Jerry tugged as his shorts and straightened his cap. Those, and the beach sandals were his only clothing. His phone and wallet were back in the car and his girlfriend had the keys. She'd be along shortly but for the moment he had the beach to himself. He shot a look up and down the beach to make sure no one was watching - he didn't want to be accused of "annoying the seal" - before leaning forward to slide headfirst down the slide.

He wasn't annoying the sea lion. It watched alertly as he committed himself to the slide, and when it was too late for him to stop it shuffled to the side until it was right at the bottom, directly in his way.

Jerry's eyes went wide as he hurtled down the slide toward the big beach animal. There was no time to do anything but open his mouth to scream and even as he did so the sea lion opened its mouth too. There was a flash of fangs and a glimpse of wide purple gullet in the instant before everything went dark.

With a wet thump Jerry slid headfirst into the seal's jaws, the momentum of the slide sending him into the slippery gullet past the waist. There was scrape of fangs along his back but the sea lion's wide jaws distended easily to let him in and by the time the slide came to a stop the beast's muzzle was wrapped around his thighs.

Stunned by the impact, Jerry blinked in confusion as the sea lion lifted its head. Strong jaws clamped shut around his upper legs as it pulled its head back toward what passes for shoulders on a pinniped and Jerry's eyes went wide as he slid deeper. By pulling its head back and biting down the sea lion pushed him even further into the squelching wetness of its gullet and he suddenly realized that its yawn had not been by chance. The seal lion had lured him into sliding down into its maw and intended from the start to make a meal of him.

Jerry began to struggle, to squirm in the long chute of sea lion throat, but far too late. It stretched out its jaws and took in his sandaled feet, closed its mouth and swallowed.

Jerry kicked as the throat squeezed in from all around him but the great rolling contraction of swallowing muscles could not be resisted. For a moment he stuck in the tightness of the gullet but once he began to slip deeper there was no stopping it. A fleshy valve expanded open around his face and despite his best efforts to grab hold of something - there was simply nothing to grab! - he slid helplessly into the sea lion's lengthy stomach.

Jerry's horror grew as the sloshing digestive fluids spread across his skin. He occupied almost all the available space and the sudden entrance of an entire adult man into the long pocket of flesh squeezed the acid into every crevice of has body. He pushed at the surrounding flesh, trying to open a space to turn around and crawl back up the beast's throat, but the weight of hundreds of pounds of sea lion blubber pressing in from all sides exhausted him. His shorts provided only a moment's protection before soaking through and though they showed no signs of dissolving - they would make their way through the sea lion's guts intact or be coughed up along with his beach sandals and cap - his skin was not so fortunate.

Despite his frantic struggle the sea lion's body squeezed him into submission. There was just too much meat between him and the outside world and when his strength was spent he lay stretched out, hemmed in by thick seal flesh and unable to move.

[i]Oh god, Katie,[/i] Jerry thought. [i]She'll never know what happened. She'll think I ditched her on the beach and ran off with some other girl. [/i]

There was nothing at all to show what happened to Jerry save a long bulge in a previously hungry sea lion. He was struggling his last when the beast let out a mighty belch and then it was just darkness, the heavy thump of its pulse and a wet gurgle as it began to digest him.

For a moment it lay still, feeling the dying struggle as the human kicked his last, and then the sea lion lifted its head once more. With pushes of its flippers and tail it undulated its way along the beach into the shade from a dilapidated pier. There in the shade was a huge sea otter, nearly as large as himself but whiskery and far cuter.

"Say it," the otter said as otters speak. A human would just hear chittering.

"You were right," the sea lion admitted. He spent a minute scooping sand with his foreflippers so the bulge of man sank out of sight. To any eye he was just a sleepy sea lion now, not one with an incriminating man-shaped bulge. "I never thought it would work but it did."

"Told you," the otter chittered smugly. "How do you think I got this?" It scooped sand with a short, clawed foreleg to expose the long bulge in its own body. The largely digested human there made no lumpy bulge like the one in the sea lion's. Rather than a body shape pressing out through the fur it was a soft mass of mostly dissolved meat and softened bone. Both humans were on their way to becoming fat, one farther along than the other.

"I said you were right," the sea lion grunted irritably, but he was too full and sleepy to complain much. He settled down into his dugout trench, as innocent to the eye as the otter. No one would know that each was digesting an entire man as he lay there.

"Look," said the otter, and the sea lion opened his eyes again. Atop the sand dune where the slide started appeared a human woman, young and slender. She was craning her neck as she looked for something. Most likely the thing she looked for was stretched out in the sea lion's gut. The thought made it smile.

He was too full and sleepy to consider another meal but a sea lion's head popped up past the base of the slide. They watched as it speculatively eyed the woman, then the slide, then the woman again. You could practically see the thought forming in its head.

"Well well," grunted the sea lion. "Did you teach him too?"

"No!" exclaimed the otter. "He must just have been watching!"

The young woman backed away as the second sea lion inchwormed its way up the sand dune and then slid down the slide. It grunted amiably at the woman, looked at her, looked at the slide, then moved aside to leave her room at the bottom to slide down.

When it raised a flipper and waved she grinned and stepped up to the slide. The otter, the first sea lion and the second all grinned, but only the second one's grin widened onto a yawn as she slid feetfirst down the slide.