A visit to Toontown
Story by Strega on SoFurry
It was a very reasonable story the cartoon lion told. Shame it was all a lie.
There was a four foot tall cartoon skunk at the corner table of the toon bar, eyeing every woman who came in whether she be human or toon. Across from him sat another, smaller toon skunk who took this in with longsuffering patience. A cartoon wolf so stylized most people assumed he was a weasel smoked under a fan in back, and sat on a barstool was Leo the lion.
Leo was at least three times the size of any human in the room. His tufted tail flicked back and forth like a metronome and his mane was thick and brown. On his three-fingered forepaws what should be a dewclaw toe was instead a fully functional thumb. This let him hoist a cartoon mug of cartoon beer and slug back half of it.
The cartoon ox running the bar slid a plate with a thick red cartoon steak on it down the counter to the lion. The human sitting next to Leo at the bar couldn't contain his curiosity any more.
"Hey," said the man. "Pardon my curiosity, but -"
"Buy me a beer and I'll answer your questions," Leo growled with the tone of someone who dealt with human tourists a lot.
The man watched him stab the steak with a claw and pop the entire thing into his mouth. He lifted a finger for the bartender as Leo chewed and a second cartoon beer soon joined the half empty one in front of the lion. The beer in front of the man was real, as was the bar countertop, but the sign outside and the juke box inside were garish four-color toons.
"Scuze me," said the weaselly wolf as he bumped into the jukebox on the way by.
"S'alright," the jukebox said back. The man next to Leo shook his head.
Leo swallowed, took a drink of beer and licked the cartoon foam off his chops. "So I'm guessing you aren't on a Toontown tour," he growled.
"No," said the man. "Just visiting from college, I took a bus over."
"Not Toontown University then," the lion growled. "You'd know everything if you were."
"No, Cal State Long Beach," the man said.
"Long bus ride," the lion growled.
"So anyway," the man said. "Cartoon lion, cartoon food. But I heard that toons can't digest things."
"Mostly right," the lion growled. "I can digest a cartoon steak because it's just a steak. If it had eyes, then it's a character. Characters are more or less indestructible. I've swallowed a bunch of characters whole and they all got out, even if it was off camera."
"What if you tore one apart?"
"Doesn't happen in cartoons much," Leo growled. "They'd be fine though. Toons last pretty much forever. I was in cartoons in the 1930s, I'm still going strong."
"Really? I used to watch black and white cartoons as a kid, which ones were you in?"
"Who's Who In The Zoo, A Day At The Zoo, a couple of Inki cartoons, those you don't see much these days because they're considered racist." The lion chuckled. "Not because I ate people in them, because they are racist. Couple of Bugs Bunny cartoons, Elmer Fudd rode a unicycle right into my mouth in one and I wanted to eat Bugs too but that 'wasn't funny enough'. He was the star, he got a lot of script control. One Droopy cartoon, swallowed Droopy and a wolf. One Goofy cartoon with my mane shaved so I looked like a mountain lion. A Tom and Jerry cartoon. Few other cartoons."
Leo stared off into the distance. "Some are so obscure even I have trouble remembering. What was that one where I swallowed someone and then got turned inside out?"
"Sounds like you swallowed people a lot."
"It's a big cat thing," the lion growled. "Well, a predator thing. You want the cat or bear or Tasmanian devil or whatnot to seem threatening, you have them swallow someone. Sometimes other critters do too. Chickens, an ostrich in one toon, even a wolverine one time. Ate most of the Tiny Toons cast."
"But the people they eat are fine."
"Yup," Leo growled. "Unless it's a one shot cartoon and you never see the swallowed character again. Then you could assume they were digested. But even then they're fine. Maybe they only had the one role so you don't see them again. That sort of thing."
"What if a toon swallowed a human?"
"Nothing would happen," growled the lion. "Why do you think I'm eating toon food? Look." He gestured at his groin. "No bits. Also no asshole."
The man nodded. "You're a toon, you were drawn, not born. Why would you need naughty bits, or be able to digest people?"
"Just so," growled the lion.
"I'll buy you another beer if you swallow me."
Leo turned his head to stare. "Why? You're not going to do anything weird in there, right?"
"Nothing weird," said the man. "I'm just curious."
"Two beers," Leo growled. "And I'll do it."
The bartender raised an eyebrow at the conversation but set the cartoon beers in front of Leo when the man plopped down the money. Leo drank half a beer in one swig, turned toward the man and yawned.
He was a cartoon lion. It was no surprise he could yawn cartoonishly wide. Leo snapped his muzzle shut and the man was gone to the hips.
There was no struggle. Why would there be? The man knew he was in no danger. Leo braced his hands on the counter and swallowed the man down with three heaving gulps. The man's shoes disappeared into his maw, Leo swallowed one last time and the bulge moved down through his neck into his middle.
Even on a lion the size of Leo the bulge in his middle was substantial. Leo nodded to the bartender, collected his two mugs of beer, and waddled over to the corner table.
The smaller skunk nodded to him as he sat. The bulge in the lion's middle, at first still, was moving vigorously now. From inside the man kicked and squirmed and the bulge changed shape as he struggled to escape.
"Where's Pepe?" growled Leo.
The smaller skunk tilted his head toward a side door. Leo nodded. He could hear bedsprings squeaking rhythmically.
"Found another tourist lady, did he?"
"'Don't worry, ma cherie'," the skunk purred in his well practiced imitation of the larger skunk. "Toons can't get humans pregnant. So what harm is it to try'?"
"And does he ever try," Leo growled. Like Pepe, his genitals, and for that matter his asshole, hid away inside him until needed, to spare shocked mothers from seeing them past their child's head on the TV. it saved animation time, too. Like Pepe, he'd shown them to a curious human or three. Far more than three, in the skunk's case.
"How many is that this year," said the smaller skunk. He gestured toward Leo's swollen middle. The struggle beneath the lion's cartoon fur was weakening.
"Four." Leo grinned, blinked, and belched. "Maybe five."
"How do you keep talking them into it?"
"The usual way," Leo growled. The bulge in his middle gave a last twitch and was still, and from inside the lion arose a long digestive gurgle.
"I lie," the lion growled, and drained the last beer from his mug.