The test

By Strega

"If you want to join our gang," Paulo said, "You have to pass our test."

Jim was a tall, lean whip of a man with surfer's muscles and tattoos on his forearms. He looked around the circle of surfer bums. Some were in their late teens, only a few years older than himself, some were in their 20s or 30s or 40s. One had an abundant gray beard and dark wraparound sunglasses. This was Paulo, a surfer since he could stand on a board. He wasn't as slender as he once was but his arms were thick with muscle from his other job - surfing was of course his primary one - as a bricklayer.

Jim nodded. There was only room on the beach for so many surfers and if you didn't want to pay a toll for each run you had to be in a strong gang. Fights were common and it wasn't unheard-of for rivals to drown under mysterious circumstances or simply disappear.

"All right," he growled. "I bet you want me to fight someone. Someone from another gang who's muscling in on your space."

"Nope.". The bearded man smiled. "You just gotta show us how brave you are and that you can keep your balance."

That made some sense. They didn't want someone who couldn't handle a challenging wave or was afraid of a little riptide. "Fine. Challenge away."

"There." Paulo stepped back as the line of surfers parted in the middle. Past them now Jim could see the long bulk in the shadows of the pier. It was a sleeping sea lion, thick and fat. Damp fur showed where the thousand-pound beast was recently washed by the surf before the retreating tide left it high and dry.

"What," Jim said, but Paulo was already speaking.

"You go do a handstand on his head," the surfer gang leader said. "Won't hurt him none. But not everyone'll do that, right? How badly do you want to be in the gang?"

"Get out of my way," Jim said. No slug of a sea lion was going to stand between him and the beach. Without saying another word he simply walked up, put his hands on the beast's broad skull and did a handstand.

Whiteless feral eyes blinked open below him as the sea lion woke. Jim felt it shift but in an instantaneous decision did not flip away. He could roll easily away onto the sand or even down its well padded back but he wanted to make a good impression on the gang.

"Gotta know when to get off that wave, boy," Paulo said as the sea lion lifted its great head. Jim was as proud of his balance as any surfer and easily maintained the handstand as the thick column of neck lifted the beast's head and him as well. He swayed a bit as its muzzle turned upward to face him but he just managed to keep his grip and his balance.

"Now's the time to get off, "Jim thought, and shifted his weight in preparation for rolling away. He was an instant too late. Just as he readied himself to escape the sea lion's jaws snapped wide open. Its unnatural gape appeared right below his hands and Jim had a good look at yellowed fangs and pink-purple maw in the instant before his weight sent him right down the sea lion's throat.

His arms led the way into a fleshy chute of gullet, followed by his head. Even his shoulders, though cruelly scraped by fangs, were no obstacle and an ample coating of mucus made the walls of the thing's throat almost frictionless. With a wet thump Jim disappeared to the hips in the maw of the big sea lion and even the thick fat in its broad neck didn't keep a great lumpy bulge from swelling out of it.

"What the," Jim said, and felt the dark wet world shift around him as the sea lion shifted its flippers and gathered its strength. "I'm in its mouth!"

In fact he was halfway into its throat and as he drew back his leg to knee it in the neck - the neck currently swollen by a moving bulge of himself, but what do you do but fight? - the beast heaved its maw upward. Inertia held him in place for a moment as wide-open jaws took in his hips. For the first time Jim felt real fear as his weight sent him sliding deeper into the slimy gullet. It wasn't biting him. It was swallowing him!

Thick slippery walls pressed in from all sides and with his arms stretched out in from of him he couldn't get any leverage to fight. His hands squeezed through a muscular valve into a looser space sloshing with hot stinging fluid and leverage or not, Jim began to thrash with all his might. If it got its jaws around his feet -

Then a brush of contact, and Jim felt a moment's hope as fingers gripped his feet. This was all a terrible misunderstanding and one of the surfers had rushed forward to pull him back out of the fleshy trap.

The hands grabbed his Crocs - the foam shoes were popular among beach bums - and tugged them off his feet. Jim's eyes went wide in the slimy dark as the sea lion, rather than lurch forward to attack this interloper, lifted its head. His weight sent the last of him sliding into the slimy depths of its gullet and Jim felt the scrape of fangs as the sea lion's broad jaws clamped shut around his feet.

He felt it tense. He knew what was about to happen, but there was nothing to grab, nothing to push against to hold back the inevitable. He was helpless, stretched out in its throat, at its mercy, and the sea lion showed him no more of that than it would any other meal on the way down its throat.

Paulo and the other surfers watched silently as the sea lion's jaws closed. The bulge in its thick neck changed shape as Jim struggled and for a moment the sea lion's face showed the strain. Then its nose bobbed and a great contraction moved visibly over the long lump of man. It shifted, then moved downward, and the sea lion let out a grunt of relief as Jim slid neatly into its lengthy stomach.

"You got to know when to get off that wave, boy," Paulo said as the sea lion lay down its head. A strong but slender surfer had made quite a bulge in its neck but buried under the inches-thick fat of its thicker body you had to know what to look for to realize there was a man inside it. It was largely the swell of shoulders bulging out down by its hind flippers that told the tale.

Jim was stretched out in its long stomach and struggling for all he was worth but the smothering weight of muscle and fat squeezing in from all sides made movement all but impossible. The watching surfers saw only a vague undulation in the side of the sea lion.

His Crocs were passed around until someone found that they fit. No one rushed forward to help him. It was too late. It'd been too too late when his feet were sticking out and maybe even once the sea lion opened its mouth. Once, when they had a particularly good candidate halfway in, a fellow surfer named Bobby rushed forward and tried to pull him out. The gulp that followed sucked the feet and Bobby's arms down the sea lion's throat and they'd watched in bemused horror as the a double bulge made its way down the beast's neck. Shortly thereafter it let out a monumental belch and that was that.

The struggle beneath the sea lion's hide was weaker now. The sheer weight of inward pressing flesh always exhausted the beast's meals in short order. Maybe that's why it didn't bother to kill them before it swallowed. It knew that once it got you gulped down you were doomed to a trip through its bowels no matter how hard you struggled. They'd seen it swallow a smaller sea lion once and it hadn't killed that either, just gulped it down headfirst and stretched out to digest its meal.

The sea lion let out a long belch and settled its head back down on the sand. A last kick from within made its flank twitch and then all was quiet. All the noise was internal now, the trickle of digestive juices flowing in to fill the space around its meal, the slowly growing gurgle as its stomach began to work. In his last moments of life Jim knew he would not get out the way he got in. He was just a meal now, something for the sea lion's body to process and pass.

If you knew what to look for you could make out the long bulge of a man through the fat. A tourist happening by would miss it, but Paulo saw the slight deformation of shoulders, head, hips and feet. That would last until digestion got far enough along for the connection between the bones to loosen. First the meat would dissolve, then the skeleton would collapse, and ultimately even the bones would break down and get their trip out the back end of the sea lion as it digested and absorbed what used to be Jim.

Paulo shrugged. The other surfers wandered away, some to get their boards, others to the jobs they used to support their surfing habit. They'd meet again at sunrise.

It was at sunrise they met prospective members of the gang and put them through the test. The sea lion, who'd been their mascot and semi-pet for years, knew this. It knew not to attack them when they rushed forward to pull clothing or shoes off its meal and would lie still before swallowing. In its dim animal brain, having laboriously shat out its share of wadded-up clothing and shoes, it knew they were doing it a favor.

It also knew they were a reliable source of meals. The sea lion let out a last burp and settled down sleepily to digest its breakfast. Paulo patted its head as he walked by to collect his board.

"Sometimes you pass the test, boy," Paulo said as he shot a last look at the sea lion. It was twice the size it'd been ten years ago and there was a reason for that. A diet that included the occasional entire human helped. "Sometimes the test passes you."