It's always too late to ask
"Don't feed the bears" the sign said. Sharon didn't listen, and look where it got her.
The sign on the tree read "Don't feed the bears." Sharon ignored it.
She'd talked to the nice retiree couple working as campground stewards and they said they hardly ever had bear trouble here. Twenty years ago, sure, but then they replaced the dumpsters with bear-proof ones and put in metal food lockers at every campsite. With no easy food to scavenge the bears mostly stopped showing up. The signs were a relic of earlier times.
They were too high in the Sierras for thieving raccoons to be a problem, or skunks or opossums. The campground stewards said there were pine martens and bobcats, foxes and coyotes, but the only animals she saw after setting up her tent were blue jays, bright red cardinals and fluffy-tailed tree squirrels. All of those were happy to run after the bread crumbs she tossed.
It was an hour after sundown and she was tending the small fire she'd built when she looked up and saw green eye shine at the same level as her own eyes. It was indeed a bear. Its pitch black fur made it hard to see but she worked out that it was a young bear, and a very fat one.
Having heard stories about violently protective mother bears she looked around, but it seemed the bear was by itself. Maybe it was just old enough to be on its own, but despite its fat belly it had the big pawed, big faced look of a young animal.
It had found a lot of food somewhere, given the thick layer of fat on its body, but it sniffed around looking for more. Fat people get hungry too and apparently so do far bears. Why tap into the reserves when you can keep the tank full and save them for an emergency?
It looked at her plaintively, sitting up and bringing one paw to its muzzle. Then it repeated the gesture. It was begging for food! It put its forepaws back down, but it wouldn't come into the dirt area around the campsite. It was as though it was trained to stay on the pine needles under the tree, like a child told not to step onto the tile floor of the kitchen.
"Why, aren't you a clever little bear," Sharon said. She looked around to make sure no one saw, then got a ziplock bag of cookies out of the bear locker. It was almost fully dark out and from her campsite she couldn't see the other campfires. It was just her and the little bear.
"You don't look hungry, you fat little thing," she said, but it watched bright-eyed as she brought the cookies. Just in case, she looked around to make sure Mama Bear wasn't nearby.
She wasn't quite ready to hand-feed the bear so she dropped a cookie at its feet. It looked down at the treat, then up at her as though waiting for permission to eat it.
"Oh, you silly thing. Of course you can have it!"
The bear just looked at her. Frustrated, she leaned down to grab the cookie.
It was waiting for her to do that. As she ducked down, the bear suddenly stood up on its hindpaws. By the time she realized what was happening its jaws had already snapped wide open.
There was a flash of fang-studded pink and a wet thump as her descending face met the rising maw. The little bear's jaws gaped loosely wide and before their mutual momentum exhausted itself her face had slipped into the slimy chute of its gullet.
"What the -" it took Sharon a moment to grasp what happened. Slick hot flesh was pressed against her face and her hair stuck tight to the nape of her neck, glued down by a thick layer of slime that coated the flesh. She shifted her feet uncertainly, feeling the grip of jaws stretched around her elbows. She was up to her forearms in the little bear's maw.
The bear managed to creak its jaws a fraction wider still and leaning forward, arm still reached out to grasp the cookie, Sharon lost her balance. She toppled forward into the waiting maw and the bear hooked its muzzle upward, nearly engulfing her hips.
Her outstretched hand squeezed through a rubbery valve into a pocket of flesh. This new space was also coated with a thick layer of slime but the slime was of a different nature. It stung wherever it touched her skin.
Sharon realized what was happening and began to kick. Just as she drew back to boot the little bear it stood up on its hindpaws. Her legs flailed uselessly at the sky as the bear's muzzle bobbed.
"No!" A great contraction of the little bear's swallowing muscles gripped Sharon and she slid face-first down its throat. The rubbery ring wrapped around her forearm slid higher until it expanded to let her face through.
This was impossible! It was hardly bigger than she was! But the little bear thrust its muzzled upward and fangs scraped over her shoes. Only now did Sharon feel the scratches that ran over her from shoulders to hips, then down her legs. Her passage into the bear's maw had dragged her over its canine teeth.
She had much bigger problems than a torn T-shirt and some oozing scratches. The little bear closed its jaws around her shoes, swallowed heavily, and dropped back down to all fours as she slid neatly down its throat.
The little bear's body swelled oddly as more than half its weight in human arrived in its stomach. Bones creaked and popped as its ribcage expanded to let her through and a lumpy bulge grew out of its abdomen.
"This can't be happening!" The undulations of the thing's gullet forced the last of her into the bear's stomach and the rubbery valve sealed itself behind her toes. Here she was, shorts, T-shirt, socks and shoes, all wrapped in a thick layer of bear fat, with coarse black fur on the other side of that.
Squeezed into a ball by the inward pressure of all that fat, Sharon could only whimper and kick. The caustic slime coating the belly was forced into the voids between her limbs and more came trickling in. There was a warm gurgle as the bear's stomach reacted to the sudden presence of so much food.
Sharon squirmed and struggled, but there was no escape. The fleshy pleats of the bear's belly stretched out to make room for its meal and a tight sheath of slimy flesh held her now. The opening through which she arrived had sphinctered shut and even if she found it there was no way she could force her way back up its throat. She had only a few breaths of air swallowed with her, and when that was exhausted the slow hot gurgle of digestion would take her.
"Stupid bear! I thought you were cute!" Sharon felt the little bear move. It shifted its paws, lowered its muzzle, and a moment later something joined her in its stomach.
The cookie! NOW it wanted the cookies! Another arrived, and then with a gulp she heard right down its throat most of the rest arrived, complete with the Zip-Lock bag. It had chewed them up and swallowed bag and all.
The bear paced forward, and she felt how it arched its back to keep its newly swollen belly from dragging. Only now did Sharon realize what had happened.
It hadn't been interested in the cookies at all, or any food she might have at the campsite. All it wanted was her. If she hadn't ventured out of the firelight it would have sought out another campsite, and another, until it found someone who'd volunteer to be eaten. When she leaned down it was ready and waiting to meet her descending face with its maw.
The little bear stepped carefully, staying on the pine needles under the trees and keeping its back arched so no drag mark of swollen belly was left behind. Only when it was crossing the stream that ran past the camp did it pause to let out a long belch. Only here, where the sound of water would drown out the burp.
With the departure of its air the little bear's meal began a short, frantic, and doomed struggle. Acids were flowing in to replace the air and very soon the struggle would be replaced by the slow warm gurgle of digestion. It would take more than a day to digest and pass a meal this size, but the process began while his meal still kicked and squirmed.
As he emerged from the stream, belly dripping, a black muzzle appeared from the brush ahead of him. A much larger adult bear, male from his scent, stepped from the brush and glared at him.
"This is my campground," it huffed. It stepped to one side and eyed his twitching belly suspiciously. "You ate a human!"
"Just one," said the little bear. "There are plenty left for you."
"I don't go to the campground to eat them," growled the older bear.
"Why do you go there, then?"
"You'll figure it out when you are a little older," growled the bear. "Now go. I had better not see you here again. You'll spoil my fun."
The little bear nodded and went on his way. Even had he been the same size as the other bear, he was in no shape to fight. Maybe when he was bigger, and didn't have a belly full of human, but not now.
His first such meal was a human boy who, fascinated by his yawn, practically crawled into his mouth to see it better. He ate the boy's mother just a few hours later. That meal started as an accident but once the woman's head was in his mouth it was spit or swallow. The little bear wasn't the spitting type so mother and son explored his bowels together.
He knew now he's been extremely luckly to score those meals and learned a lot from them. Patience, for one. He'd visited over thirty campsites tonight before he found a human alone and foolish enough to give him his chance.
Also discretion. Behind him was no evidence of the woman's fate. No pawprints in the dust, no raided cooler, no leftover food with bear teeth-marks. Everything the woman brought with her out of the firelight lay in his stomach, including the woman.
The little bear let out a last burp and felt the struggle quiet inside him. The generous and friendly camper was no longer a human. Like the previous four people he'd eaten, she was now just bear food.
His body was turning its energies toward digesting this huge meal, but he couldn't rest yet. He had to be far away when he settled down to sleep her off. The woman's peaceful trip through his guts mustn't be interrupted by a sudden need to run and hide and sometimes the disappearance of a human triggered a search.
Maybe the big bear would catch the blame for the disappearance. At the very least, any pawprints found would hopefully be blamed on that bear. All in all, meeting him near the camp could only be a good thing.
The little bear waddled on, trying his best to leave no tracks. It took extra work to do that, and his efforts to not leave evidence behind also meant he would eventually have to cough up or pass a wad of partially digested clothing and pair of shoes. The cookie bag was insignificant given the volume of used-to-be-human that would push it through his intestines. The clothing and shoes was another matter. He'd had shoes go all the way through before and it was never pleasant.
Maybe it gave his meals some comfort to consider the unpleasant side effects of eating them. As always, though, by the time it occurred to him, it was too late to ask. The only answer he'd get from his bulging belly is a gurgle.