Brief encounter III
Brief Encounter III
By Strega
(Based on a news story)
Behind the glass the lioness gaped, sliding her fangs along the smooth surface. Closer to Alan, but only an inch from a horrible fate, the toddler giggled. The lion just wanted to play, the child must think. And perhaps she was right. There was something playful about the way the lioness leaned her paws against the glass, claws still sheathed, and something less than murder in her eye when she yawned, so close to engulfing the girl. The child stared into wet folds of feline mouth and laughed.
The interplay of laughing child and hungry - or just playful - big cat made him smile, too. Behind the lioness other lions, male and female, paced and watched. They did not approach the barrier; they kept at a distance from the one who played with the girl. Alan folded up his zoo map and set it on the bench so he could concentrate on the action.
Pawpads squeaked along the glass as the child finally lost interest. Her father put away the camera he'd been using to record the fun and picked her up. Husband, wife and giggling child departed the viewing area, and Alan was left alone. Behind the glass the lioness lifted her head and met his eyes.
Alan smiled. Though it was his first time at the zoo, it wasn't the first time he'd seen her play with children. Recently a scene like the one he just watched had made the news, filmed by another amused family. He'd mentioned it to a zoo attendant on the way in and it turned out she was notorious for it. She must know by now that the glass kept them apart, but always it was the same, the other lions hanging back as the lioness snapped and yawned and pawed at the barrier.
What would it be like if there was no barrier, and the cat just wanted to play? Alan rested his head against the cool concrete wall and daydreamed.
He was the child, bundled head to foot in winter clothing. A beanie on top, booties down below, and in between layers of clothing fitting the cold outside. Bare hands and a grinning, giggling face as he reached out to touch the lioness. The glass was gone, and the cat reached gently down with her jaws and nipped onto Alan's collar.
Alan smiled and laughed as he was hoisted up like a cub, the lioness turning to show him off to the others. Amber eyes in half a dozen faces stared back, but the lionesses and great-maned male made no move to approach. In fact, the closest took a step back as though afraid. Afraid of a toddler! Alan giggled.
Suddenly things went dark and damp. The lioness tossed her head upward, and as he ascended the grip on his collar vanished. Instead she gaped wide, and for an instant all he saw was pink, wet flesh. Then the jaws snapped shut and he hung from her lips, head and shoulders inside her mouth. In the dim wetness of her maw the child no longer giggled. Fangs hemmed him in on each side and the crown of his head pressed past the fangs into an enveloping softness.
A salivating tongue slid over his clothing, tasting, feeling, until it finally washed over his face. It lingered there a moment, then with another snap of her jaws he was half swallowed. Just that fast his head and upper body was gulped in, with slick, muscular gullet stretched over his face and shoulders. He felt the swelling in her neck, the impossible distension of her jaws. A lioness might bolt a rat thus, but a human child was far too large to fit intact down its throat.
Yet with an easy toss of her muzzle she dispatched him deeper. Only his kicking, bootied feet protruded from her lips now, and he hung head-down in her throat, gravity helping ease him in. Though all was blackness and wet heat he knew the other lions watched jealously as the feet slipped out of sight. They'd never had the pleasure of such a meal, the joy of reducing a human to a bulge moving through tawny neckfur.
There was a last wash of tongue across his feet as they followed the rest of him past the rearmost fangs, then her head tilted upward. With a push of her tongue and a great contraction of her throat muscles she swallowed him down. All around him was slick, wet flesh, pulsating musculature carrying him along, and the thunderous pulse of the great cat. Impossibly her ribcage expanded to let this infant meal into her torso, and the churn and gurgle of unseen organs passed by on all sides as he slid down her throat. A whimper escaped child-Alan as he felt the press of flesh against the crown of his head.
The sphincter opened and he slid into a wet, yielding place, folds of flesh expanding accordion-like to accommodate him. The stink of bile told him where he was; impossibly, the lioness had swallowed a meal twice the size of her head in one effortless gulp. He didn't doubt that her stomach could contain this much food, but she was a lioness, not a snake. Swallowing a whole child? Ridiculous.
What a peculiar dream! Much as Alan liked animals, and as amusing as he'd found the lioness' antics on the far side of the glass, he'd never wish such a fate on anyone. Maybe he'd watched one too many horror movies. Alan shrugged and opened his eyes.
And found he could see no better than with them shut. He blinked stinging slime from his eyes and reached up to wipe them...or tried. His arms were constrained by a rubbery surface. Alan shook his head and squirmed, only to find the same rubbery - no, fleshy - encasement surrounded him on all sides. He could wiggle and slide his hands along the slick walls, but he could neither force those walls back nor find any purchase to grab. As he became fully aware of his surroundings he realized the great drum-beat of a pulse that'd throbbed through child-Alan reverberated through the walls here, too.
Where the child had gone, he had followed. The stink of digestive juices filled his nose and Alan could feel the massive, drooping bulge he made in the cat's belly. No mere child filled the lioness' stomach now; a whole man almost half her weight distended her gut. The great bulge of Alan swayed ponderously as she turned to look at the viewing area. Somehow Alan perceived it too; beyond the glass the door opened and a family came in to gawk at the cats. Of Alan there was no sign; the bench he'd rested on was empty.
Surely they would see the monstrous bulge in her belly, the wiggling shape of a man swallowed alive. But he saw what they saw: a sleek, lazy lioness no fatter than any other. Gradually the vision faded, replaced by the faintest pink light that made its way through the lioness' thinly stretched skin. Stomach acids stung his eyes and mouth as digestion began, and Alan could only squirm and complain.
"But it was just a dream! This isn't really happening!"
A purring laugh reverberated through the flesh, then a muffled voice. "A dream for one. A nightmare for another. I'd say more, but I think you wouldn't listen."
The lioness let out a long, contented belch, and the man in her stomach gave one last kick and stilled. She spared a glance for the rest of the pride, but as always when she fed they kept a wary distance. They had only needed to see one of their number - the lioness she now mimicked - disappear paws, body and tail into her gullet to know they had good reason to fear her. Even the male, who might lust after the cat she appeared to be, knew better than to approach.
She wasn't a lioness, of course, nor even female. She was a rakshasa, shape-changing evil spirit, and her natural shape was closer to a male tiger than a female lion. In that shape he'd devoured his favored prey, human females, and less commonly the males of the species. There'd been a time he was worshiped almost as a god. These days, discretion was more profitable.
Recently he'd been a circus tiger, and before that a handsome striped cat in another zoo. In both places he'd crept up on women in their dreams, sometimes mounting them, sometimes not, but always at the end of the encounter his jaws would creak wide. Down would go his plaything, some terrified, others confused or even unaware what was really happening. Eventually his muzzle would close once again, lips curled in a smile, and he'd settle down to sleep off his meal. As a demon-spirit he did not need to eat flesh, but doing so replenished his energies. Even his prey's mind was digested and absorbed, memories sorted and filed away until needed.
Dreams were his playground, and in ever-changing shape and surrounded by illusion he lived his eternal life. Lesser, unsatisfying meals like the chilled horseflesh the zookeepers fed him were of little interest, but he devoured it for show, and made such changes as a body makes to food before ultimately returning it to the environment. Periodically he'd treat himself to a more sustaining meal, and in those cases he allowed nothing of it to return to the environment at all. People simply disappeared, wandering into a dream and passing from the world in the cauldron of his stomach.
He'd fed well since assuming this shape. His reputation for playing with children and yawning as though to eat them attracted a particular sort of person, and for some of them he need barely nudge their minds to have a meal. Just a month ago there'd been a man who actually fantasized about being eaten. The man built his own dream and disappeared down the lioness' throat quite voluntarily. Even at the end, as he softened in the rakshasa's stomach, he had not struggled...unless you count the motions of one hand. Amazing.
Still, all roles eventually palled, or became too risky. He knew from peering into the minds of the zoo's staff that questions were beginning to be asked. The disappearances, the abandoned vehicles left in the parking lot, their owners long since digested. There was talk of searching the animal pens for remains or bits of clothing. They would find nothing, of course, but nevertheless it might soon be time to move on.
The child behind the glass smiled and giggled, but the the great cat on the far side of the glass just gave a lazy flick of her tail and lay down. It might not show, but her belly was heavy with meat. The other lions, knowing she was at her least dangerous, became more active. One even came to the barrier and scraped her claws along the glass. It amused the rakshasa to let them see him feed, and though their dim animal minds could not grasp how she did it, they were envious. Perhaps when it was time to leave he would lure one last human into the pen and let the lions have their meal. It would not be as neat or traceless as his feeding, but they would enjoy it greatly.
The parents laughed, cameras clicking, and no one noticed or commented on the zoo map abandoned on the bench behind them. It was not the first time someone had left one, having no further need of it. It would not be the last.