The fattest dolphin

By Strega

Mark was a big man. Six and a half feet tall, broad shouldered and fat, he still lacked the zeppelin shape - small head, small feet, swelling out from each direction into a broad middle - of the truly obese. Just the same, while he claimed three hundred and fifty pounds, he was more like 400.

At one point he'd played high school football and under the fat of his thick arms and legs and body still lay a lot of muscle. Mark 'accidentally' elbowed an ice cream cone out of a teenager's hand in passing and grinned as he walked away, knowing that his towering frame made him immune to consequences. No way a skinny prick would pick a fight with Mark. He'd beaten up plenty who had, ranging from wanna-be tough guys showing off for their girls to drunks tanked up on liquid courage.

Shouldering his way through the crowd on the pier, ignoring the shrill complaints of smaller people, he made his way toward the sea. There was a restaurant out there at the end and he planned to offer his services as a bouncer. Everyone knew Mark. Fear was all the resume he needed. He knew it'd be a short lived job. His always were.

Every so often along the side of pier a little shop was set up. Bait, fishing gear, souvenirs, sun hats, watercraft rentals. Mark paused as he read a sign.

TALK TO THE DOLPHINS, it said. And apparently the sea lions and otters, judging by the painted images. The shop had been there for a while, renting swim fins and masks and snorkels, but the sign was new.

"Fifty dollars for a one hour rental," he read out loud. There was a printed out picture of a swim mask that covered your whole face. He leaned on the counter an grinned at the thin man behind it.

"Bullshit," he said conversationally. "Nice scam, though."

"It's no scam," Rudolph - Randy? Ronny? - Mark wasn't good with names - snapped. "It's new, but it works. They put a rebreather and a translator in a mask so you can swim around and talk to sea mammals. The ones smart enough to talk anyway. Dolphins, otters, sea lions, seals, orcas if you're brave enough."

"Prove it," Mark countered. "Gimme one, I'll try it out."

"Money up front," Rudolph said. "These things cost money. And they need a special charger, before you decide to swim off with one."

"Tell you what," Mark said. "I don't have fifty bucks. Loan me one of these things and," he looked over his shoulder, "I won't tell everyone who listens you're a scammer."
Rudolph's eyes narrowed. "No one's gonna believe you."

"Maybe locals won't," Mark smirked, "But tourists? How many will skip your shop? I bet that's fifty bucks in business right there."

Mark casually leaned back into the flow of traffic and muttered an insincere apology as a woman bounced off his hip, dropping her soda. He grinned at Rudolph and waited for his answer.

Rudolph glared at a man who was enough of an asshole to do exactly what he threatened. Biting back a curse he grabbed a mask from a row hanging on hooks.
"Not that one," Mark said instantly. "You'd give me a crappy one. I want the best one."

Grimacing, Rudolph slapped the mask back on the wall and grabbed the one next to it. This one had red trim, or rather, it showed more signs of wear than the others and was discolored from exposure to seawater. At a glance you'd think it was a different model, reddish rather than flat black around the faceplate. Still, it looked to be in good repair.

"Fins too," Mark said, and Rudolph sourly handed a pair over. At the back of the shop a cutout in the pier's handrail allowed access to the sea. Protruding sections of the shop wall allowed a bit of privacy, presumably so people could change clothes. All Mark had was shorts, a t shirt, flip flops and a waterproof wallet.

"Battery life is two hours," Rudolph said as Mark pulled on the mask. "If it starts getting hard to breathe, the battery is running down. The translator takes less power but if you aren't breathing you probably aren't talking."

"Got it." Mark looked at the breakwater, where a fat torpedo of a sea lion was beached, then out at the sea. He wanted to talk to dolphins and there were usually some near the beach. Without another word he stepped off the pier.

A moment's shock of cold water and he was swimming. The fins were tight on his feet, one size fits all has its limits and his feet were size 15. The mask kept the water out, though, and he was able to breathe just fine without surfacing.

"Hello, hello," he said experimentally. The surface glittered a few feet overhead and he kicked to overcome his natural buoyancy. Fat is lighter than water. Here in the sea he felt like an astronaut, weightless, and he swam toward the end of the pier.

The pilings of the pier were encrusted with mussels, barnacles and the occasional crab. Starfish stuck tight amongst the mussels, surrounded by more food than they could eat, and the occasional crab picked its way past green sea anemones of various sizes. The ones down at the base of the pilings were surrounded by mussel shells, for any shellfish unfortunate enough to be knocked loose from the pier would find the anemones all too willing to swallow them shell and all, later disgorging the indigestible bits.

Mark often pulled the claws off crabs and shoved them alive into the sphincter mouths of sea anemones, but that wasn't what he was after today. A shape moving through the water ahead resolved into another diver wearing the same sort of mask, but then past the man was a shape too streamlined to be a human. A dolphin!

"Hello," Mark called, and the dolphin turned easily in the water to look at him. He hadn't realized how big they were. This one was ten feet long and must weigh at least twice as much as he did, a long streamlined shape perfectly adapted to the sea.

"Hello," clicked the dolphin, and Mark grinned. The translator worked! It drifted closer with a flick of a foreflipper and looked him over. "You are a very big human."

"Yes, I am," Mark said, and just then another dolphin appeared out of the shadowy water.

"Hey Whistle," chittered the new one. "Another human with a mask?"

"Looks like it Two-Click," chattered the first. "I wonder if this one wants to fuck."

"What? No!" Mark gaped through the mask at the two dolphins, who were leaning in opposite directions in the water like a set of bookends. "Why would you say that?"
"Because people with masks usually want to fuck," the first dolphin said reasonably. "The men, and sometimes the women." He (?) undulated in the water in what passed for a shrug. "I am not picky."

"Being picky just means less chances to fuck," the bigger dolphin said agreeably. "I would fuck a sea lion if I found one willing."

"I have," the first dolphin chittered. "Ask the ones in the shallows. If you lie on your side with your penis toward them -"

"Do you ever talk about anything but sex?" Mark waved to get their attention as they seemed likely to keep right on talking.

"Do not worry," said the bigger dolphin as they looked at him. "We don't want to fuck you."

The other dolphin nodded, which required bobbing its entire body. "No. You are too fat. We like our humans smaller."

"He is the biggest human I have ever seen," the bigger dolphin agreed. "I have seen smaller sea lions. Sexier ones, too."

"I know a friendly one I could introduce you to," the smaller dolphin chittered, but Mark had about enough.

"Fat, am I? What about you?" The bigger dolphin went cross eyed as Mark pointed a (fat) finger at him. "You're twice the size of your friend here. Look how thick you are in the middle." He swam closer, managing to poke the big dolphin in the side before it slipped away. Its skin had a slick, rubbery feel. "You're a fat torpedo."

"There is no need to be rude," the smaller dolphin chittered. "We are dolphins. You are a human. Dolphins don't stay fat, we have to chase our prey. The only thing you chase is the green stuff you use to get food."

"I'll chase something," Mark growled inside the mask, and took a swing at the bigger dolphin, who was rolling his eyes and giggling.

The swing was slow due to the water and the big dolphin stayed easily out of reach. Mark, used to being the bigger, stronger one, forgot for a moment that here he was the little guy.

"That's right, swim away fatso." The smaller dolphin turned side on to eye him but the bigger swam in a tight circle until they faced each other again. It looked him up and down from mask to swim fins.

"You are rude, human. You've never seen a fat dolphin. You wouldn't know one if you saw it."
"I'm looking at one right now," Mark said. "Fat, fat, fat."

The dolphin's eyes narrowed. "If you want to see a fat dolphin, I can show you one."

"Hah, go ahead, fatso," Mark said with a grin, but the grin disappeared as with a flick of its flukes the big dolphin rocketed toward him. He threw up his hands to protect himself from the oncoming bottle nose only for the fast moving dolphin to sudden vanish behind a flash of pink and white peg teeth as it yawned impossibly wide. There was a wet thump and everything went dark.

Mark opened his eyes to dim pinkness. Something scraped across his shoulders and slimy wetness pressed in from all sides, gripping his arms and face and neck. There was just enough light to see the slick wet flesh of the dolphin's gullet. Mark recovered from the stunning impact and realized what had happened. He'd throat up his hands to protect himself and the angry dolphin had swallowed them and him, all the way to his armpits.

The pointed teeth dug painfully into his shoulders, not sharp enough to pierce his skin but holding him in place. Reflexively Mark tried to pull his arms out of the dolphin's throat, but the sucking tightness of the inward-pressing flesh trapped them elbow to elbow and despite his strength he couldn't get any leverage.

"Ow," he complained as the teeth poked his skin. "Stupid dolphin, cut it out already." He kicked, using his swim fins to try to backwater out of the dolphin's beak, but with a flick of its flukes it slid forward in the water to counter.

Mark, used to being the big one, the strong one, to pushing people around at will, felt no real fear. The dolphin had him in a headlock but he'd soon be free.

Then, suddenly, there was fear. As he squirmed in the fleshy trap the dolphin arched in the water and swallowed. Slick flesh squeezed and pulled, rolling over him in waves. Though the dolphin's wide-open beak creaked and popped in protest, and the slippery meat stretched around him groaned, the great contraction of the sea beast's swallowing muscles gripped him and pulled him in. Mark's eyes went wide in the dim pink of a dolphin gullet as with a Herculean effort the thing swallowed him all the way to the belly button.

"Hey!" Mark kicked, suddenly afraid. "Stop it! Spit me out!" Peg teeth dug into his size XXXXL shirt, his hips, his back, and he was conscious of their slight tilt toward the back of the dolphin's beak. Though they weren't sharp enough to pierce his flesh without a harder bite than it could manage with a wide-open maw the slant of the teeth still made it impossible to pull back out. That and the slimy grip of its throat.

Hot wet flesh squeezed in against Mark's mask and he watched in horror as the salivating gullet skin slid past. With a grunt the dolphin swallowed again, thrusting itself forward in the water, and his inertia helped push him still deeper. Slowly, laboriously, one roll of fat at a time, the dolphin was swallowing him whole.

"Stop it!" He could hear the chitter as his mask translated the words into dolphin, but either the sound sank into the gullet to be lost or it simply didn't care. With a groan of effort it arched and straightened, swallowing with all its might, it managed to get its beak around the lower curve of his gut. He felt the ponderous bulge move through its neck as he sank deeper and just like that he was reduced to a pair of thick, kicking legs hanging from a dolphin's jaws.

"Wow," chittered the smaller dolphin, and the enough of the sound made it through the wall of meat that Mark heard the translation. "Look at that bulge! Not something you see every day."

"Stop gawking and do something!" Mark shouted just as the slippery flesh squeezed down again. A great contraction of the dolphin's swallowing muscles rolled over him and he began to slide slowly down its throat. The drum-tight gullet didn't want to let him move, but with his torso entirely inside the natural tendency of its jaws to try to close squeezed the great fat oval of his torso further into its body. An unnatural bulge moved slowly down the length of the dolphin, preceded by a smaller bulge of head and arms, and Mark kicked desperately as peg teeth scraped inch by inch down his thighs. The undulation of its swallowing muscles continued to grip his body and their pull was sucking his legs in after.

A muscular sphincter expanded over his hands and Mark learned something about dolphin anatomy he'd never known, and definitely didn't want to know now. The thing had more than one belly. First his hands, elbows, and finally his face and mask squeezed into a tight muscular pocket of forestomach. This normally held the dolphin's meal and kneaded it, 'chewing' it as the dolphin's peg teeth couldn't. For a moment it held his face in a painful grip but there just wasn't room in the little forestomach for an entire human. The dolphin swallowed once more and another sphincter opened before him, letting his hands and forearms and face into the much larger main stomach.

With a straining gulp the dolphin got his knees into its beak and swallowed. Four hundred pounds of fat man was a huge meal, awkwardly lumpy and lacking the streamlining that let sea creatures make their way easily down a dolphin gullet. Its body creaked and groaned as it stretched tight around the great lump of meat, but the dolphin, irritated at Mark, stubbornly refused to give up. A vast bulge made its way along what should be a perfectly streamlined dolphin body as it struggled to get him down and after a last great effort the sea beast relaxed. All that remained of Mark was a set of swim fins protruding from its beak and a ponderous bulge that deformed it all out of shape.

"My goodness," chittered Whistle.. "I am impressed." The thin-stretched flesh of the predatory dolphin let Mark hear the smaller dolphin's unhelpful comments. "Can you swallow any more? I can still see his feet."

Mark squirmed and swore as the dolphin's peg teeth jabbed into his insteps. There was a tug as something - the other dolphin? - pulled the swim fins off and his size fifteen triple-E feet lay in the narrow beak of the dolphin, scraped by its teeth and pushed by its thin tongue as it tried to swallow this last bit of him. It failed. It just couldn't fit any more into its body cavity. He lay stretched out in its long gullet, only part of him in its stomach. While it could get its beak shut around his feet, they weren't going anywhere.

That was bad enough. The muscular grip of its forestomach was wrapped around his elbows like a vice, but it had managed to swallow his arms and head and shoulders into its main stomach, and that was where it digested its prey. Thick, caustic slime coated the fleshy walls and his T-shirt offered no protection. Already his skin burned as digestive juices began the slow work of consuming an entire human. Only his face was spared. The rebreather mask kept the acid away and let him breathe. Very quickly Mark decided that he wished it didn't.

"Let me go!" Trapped in a long pocket of inward-pressing flesh, squeezed so tightly he could barely move, Mark tried to squirm free. All he managed to do was make the dolphin twitch as though in sympathy. It had required a massive effort to gulp him down and it slid heavily through the water, deformed by an unnatural bulge. Still, it had managed.

"You wanted to see a fat dolphin," the big dolphin chittered, and Mark realized that it could still hear him. "Well here I am." It giggled, arching in the water, and with a laborious gulp managed to push another few inches of him into the main stomach. More and more of the digestive slime was flowing in as its gut reacted the the enormous meal it'd bolted down. The dolphin's effort to get still more of him into the stomach pressed his mask out of alignment for a moment, and though it was soon back in place enough air escaped that the dolphin let out a bubbling, high pitched underwater burp.

"Ha," chittered the dolphin. "I wonder how much air I can squeeze out of you." With a grunt of effort it tensed and squeezed, arching in the water, and a rippling full-body grip crushed in on Mark. It hurt, but flesh is incompressible, and the mask stayed in place. When it relaxed he sucked in another breath.

"You can't squeeze me to death," he said. "Might we well spit me out."

"Oh, silly," giggled the dolphin. "Still thinking you're going to get out the way you got in. It's going to take a while to digest you, big man. But I've got all the time in the world."

Crammed into the gullet of a dolphin, his arms and head and shoulders in a sweltering gut that was already beginning to digest him, Mark swore. People didn't pick on him. He was the big man. He picked on other people. It wasn't fair!

Slowly the rage turned into fear and Marks struggled for his life, trying to make enough room to punch the dolphin. His legs were squeezed together in the gullet, useless. It was a little better farther down, but still so tight he best effort just made the dolphin wince. And slowly, as the stomach grew used to his presence, it formed itself more and more into has shape. There was less and less room to struggle, more and more acid that burnt him wherever it touched.

Up to his armpits in a dolphin's stomach, kept alive by his mask even as it began to digest his head and upper body, Mark struggled and kicked. It didn't save him.

Rudolph turned at a smooth splash of water, sure before he saw it that it wasn't Mark or one of his other customers. It wasn't. A dolphin's head poked out of the waves, a set of swim fins crossways in its beak. Rudolph took them without a word.

"He was very rude," chittered the dolphin. The earpiece Rudolph wore instead of a mask translated. The dolphin had the good grace to sound apologetic.

"Yes, he was," Rudolph said. Another, bigger dolphin poked its nose from the water, and even though the murky waves he could see the massive bulge stretching half the length of its body. Dolphins don't breathe through their mouths else this one would choke on its prey. When it opened its break he could see big, wide, familiar feet. It had only barely managed to swallow Mark and the toes twitched as the still-living man squirmed.

"You could still cough him up," Rudolph said, as the law required in these circumstances. The big dolphin grunted, too full to speak, and waggled its head from side to side.

"He was very rude," the smaller one repeated.

Now Mark was paying for that rudeness, digested bit by bit. His head and shoulders would go, making room for more, and over the next day or two an entire human would make its way through the guts of dolphin, each part of him digested in turn as room was made for it in the stomach. Eventually there'd be nothing left of him at all but fat and dolphin poop that'd dissipate tracelessly in the wide sea. No one but the dolphins and Rudolph would ever know.

Perhaps has shorts and shirt would survive, making their way safely through a dolphin's bowels, but loose bits of clothing washed up on shore all the time. Then there was the matter of the mask.

"When the mask reappears, I want it back," he said firmly. "It's indigestible."

The fat dolphin grunted inquisitively, and the smaller one spoke for him. "How will he know when it comes out?"

"He'll know," said Rudolph with a smirk. "Trust me."

With something like a shrug the fattest dolphin he ever saw sank back into the waves. The smaller one nodded and followed. Rudolph turned back to the counter. He was just in time to slap a hand that was trying for the cash register.

"Hands off," he told the shaven headed, tattooed man on the far side of the counter. "You gonna rent something, or just fuck with me?"

The tattooed man grinned and leaned on the counter. Rudolph knew all the troublemakers who came to the pier. Darrin here was one of the worst. Somehow he kept getting out of jail despite all the fights, petty theft and gang activities.

"'Talk to the dolphins'," Darrin said skeptically. "Bullshit."

"You got fifty bucks, you can see for yourself."

"Got twenty," Darrin said. He scanned the passing crowd, probably deciding who to pickpocket. He wasn't a very good thief, but he tried.

"Hmm." Randolph turned to the row of masks. "Maybe I can do that."

Four of the twelve masks were checked out. One of those was in the stomach of a dolphin. Of the remaining eight, he picked the one with a reddish sheen and turned toward the sea to examine it for flaws.

Two hundred feet away, a big sea lion watched him turn the mask in his hands. It had seen that particular mask before and knew why it was red. Across the water he met the sea lion's gaze and nodded.

As Rudolph turned back toward Darrin he saw the long torpedo of sea lion slide off the rocks into the surf. "Twenty dollars, then. But no swim fins."

The masks were durable. They could survive almost anything. Why, even a trip through the guts of a sea lion or dolphin only changed their color a bit.