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Bill, Randy and Phillip shared a campsite, but they didn't share tents. It wasn't cold enough to need it, and it was, as Randy put it when they packed for the camping trip, "Way too gay."

"Why did we even come out here, man.". Bill kicked the end of a log protruding from the fire, causing a shower of sparks to shoot skyward. Phil cursed as some of them swirled in his direction.

Randy wasn't paying attention. He was peering into the shadows outside the circle of firelight. "There! Don't you see it!"

Phil, still slapping at sparks, glanced carelessly in that direction and suddenly he, too stiffened where he sat.

"What the hell was that?" He dug through his pack and yanked out a flashlight, but when he lit it there was nothing to see but trees, dirt and the occasional pine cone.

"It's not going to work, guys," Bill, the only Senion classman and by far the largest of the three teens, didn't even bother to look up. "You pulled this last time. It only works once."

"I swear I saw something," Randy stammered. For just an instant he saw the flicker of reflected firelight in feral eyes but once more there was nothing there when the flashlight turned that way.

"Something was there," Philip agreed. "Look at the branches move."

There was cursing from a tent and a long rasp as the zipper was pulled up. "Would you assholes shut up," Tim said from as far into his sleeping bag as he could manage and still talk. "I'm trying to sleep."

"Fuck you," Phil shot back, and outside the firelight, two creatures listened to the resulting argument. The noise the four quarreling teens made gave the two beasts a chance to talk in low, growing tones without alerting their prey.

"Four of them," said the first in a voice like a purr. "Good eating."

"Two for you, two for me," growled the second. "And no guns."

The first nodded. Guns were bad. Why, it could take all day to work your way close to a man with a gun without being seen. Admittedly, after all that work the burps afterward were particularly sweet, but...

"If we wait until they are asleep, maybe we can eat them before they even know what is happening," she purred.

"Oh, that is a fun game," growled the second beast. He'd played it before, slowly sliding his jaws into a sleeping bag and transferring the man inside bit by bit from one warm sleeping place to another. One time the man didn't even wake up until he closed his mouth and swallowed. Then the man woke, only to find himself sliding headfirst into a stomach. What a rude awakening. It made him grin to remember it.

"But the fire is hot and bright," he growled. "If they wake and run we may lose one in the confusion."

The purring beast nodded. None must get away, that was the rule. Humans camped in these woods all the time. If the rumors of disappearances became fact then men with guns would come and they would have to leave. Or the campers would simply stop putting themselves on the menu. That was equally bad, to her way of thinking.

"There is the cave," the huge mountain lion purred.

"Ah, the cave," said the grizzly with a grin. "Your turn to chase?"

The mountain lion glanced toward the fire, making note of the one fat teenager arguing with three thin ones. Had all four been thin, she would suggest another tactic. But one big and three little? The cave. "My turn."

*****

"Jesus Christ," Tim said as he ran. "Why didn't you say something?!"

"I told you!" Randy, the youngest and smallest, was at the head of the pack. Bill, oldest and biggest (he weighed as much as the next two teens put together) was at the back, puffing and panting. Only a very strong motivation kept him running at this speed. That motivation was an enormous mountain lion slinking almost lazily after them.

To the object of its hunt any cougar looks huge and this one sure did. Each boy would swear it was the size of a car. It'd be more accurate to say it was the size of a big motorcycle, but it was still much larger than normal. This forest was called the Lost Woods with cause. Sometimes people went in these woods and didn't come back out. They were looking at one of the reasons.

"This was a mistake," panted Randy. "Stupid camping trip!"

"This was your idea!" That was Bill, who was suddenly reminded of that old joke. His friends didn't need to outrun the mountain lion. They only had to outrun him. "Hey! Look, a cave!"

The lion put on a burst of speed as it too saw the dark opening, Randy and Phil dived in with Tim right behind them. Bill arrived and found a claustrophobically narrow entrance, at least to someone well over 300 pounds, but it was that or the hungry cougar fifty feet away. He jammed himself past the rocks and joined the rest in a deep but narrow shaft.

"It's a dead end!" cried someone, just as the snarling face of the lion appeared at the entry. Only now did they notice the deep scratches at the entrance to the cave, as though the lion or some other predator had tried to pry reluctant meals out of it before. Now it was their turn. The cat reached in a paw bigger than a man's head, its cruel white claws sliding from their sheaths, and only by nearly crushing his friends behind him did Bill barely stay out of reach.

"Shit, shit, shit." Bill ignored the groaning and complaining as the huge cat swiped at him again. If it got even one claw into him it would gig him out of the hole and have lunch.

There was frantic resistance and mutters of "Can't breathe!" behind him which Bill ignored since the alternative was to end up inside a cougar. Suddenly all three of his friends pushed at once and almost threw him headlong into the fanged maw of the cat. Only the fact that it was between swipes saved him from a gruesome fate. As he crawled back into the depths of the cave someone, maybe Tim (the cat was blocking most of the light) kicked him in the butt to keep him away.

"There's a crack!" Someone whispered. "I think the three of us can fit through! Then you'll have room to hide!"

The three of us meaning not him, but it was something. Bill tried to ignore the puff of air as an outstretched paw barely missed his back and peered into the gloom. Sure enough, Randy was already gone to the waist in a hole little wider than a cinderblock, crawling headfirst into the unknown to escape the cave and the cat. The legs kicked and he was gone, somehow managing to pull himself smoothly out of sight. No sooner did his sneakers vanish than Tim hurled himself headlong after, squirming into a gap barely big enough for him and much too small for Bill.

At least the absence of one and a half friends made it easier to back away from the reaching paw. The claws were sharp bone hooks and he didn't want to think about what would happen if they hit him. He also didn't want to think about the fact that the cat could probably fit in here if it tried. It was determined to paw him out and that he could at least dodge.

Tim was gone to the knees when his feet began to kick with desperate energy, as though he were trying to back out of the hole. At the time time his calves disappeared an inch at time as though he were being pulled along. There was an awful finality to the way his sneakers sucked into the gap in the wall and disappeared and Phil was staring too.

"There's something wrong," Phil gasped, still worn out from the run. "That wasn't him crawling in, something pulled him!"

Just then the cougar reached into the cave again and Bill backed into Phil to avoid the claws. "It was Randy pulling him! Get in there!"

"I don't think -"

Phil went down on hands and knees to peer into the hole and Bill shoved his ass with both hands. He needed all the room he could get and he couldn't fit into that little hole. Which meant Phil had to, like it or not. With one shove his friend was gone to the waist. Being twice as big as his friends could be useful. The cougar growled and when Bill looked back down at Phil he saw something horrible.

Phil was clawing at the ground and kicking just as Tim had. He definitely wasn't crawling into that hole and yet he lurched inward, inches at a time. He was trying desperately to pull back out, bruising his hands against the rocky wall around the crack only for his arms to be forced down with inhuman strength. Something far stronger than Randy and Tim together was pulling him in.

The big cat snarled but Bill didn't look up. He grabbed Phil's ankles and pulled with all his might, putting his feet against the rock wall. Bill was strong and knew it. You didn't spend as much time on the football field as he did if you couldn't dish it out and take it, too. The first yank pulled Phil's thighs back into view.

Phil's shorts were stuck to his legs and oozing red lines ran along his legs, showing where he'd scraped over something as he was pulled into the hole. From the knees up he was coated with thick, glistening slime and Bill remembered with awful clarity the Blob movie they'd watched recently. Something on the far side of those rocks had been eating Phil alive and only Bill stood between his friend and the same fate as Tim and Randy.

Bill yanked on Phil's ankles again but this time he met resistance. Whatever was past the rocks clamped down on Phil and yanked with immense strength. The wet legs disappeared in a flash, followed by the ankles, and despite all he could do to stop it Phil's feet went into the hole too.

He wasn't going to give up. Not after he pushed his friend headfirst into whatever predatory maw waited on the far side of that hole. Bill held on even as his knuckles scraped over what could only be teeth. A wash of thick wet tongue curled around his wrist and Bill pulled with all his might just as the thing swallowed.

A great contraction of the thing's throat muscles sucked Phil deeper, and the tongue gave his own hands a push as they too slid into a slimy gullet. Bill's cheek slammed into the rocks as Phil was swallowed alive, shirt, shorts, sneakers and all. He held on even now, trying to pull his friend out of the sucking depths of the throat, even as swallowing muscles threatened to pull him right through the much too small hole and join his friends in the stomach of whatever horror lurked there.

There was nothing he could do. As the jaws closed he realized it would soon get such a grip it would tear his arms off or pull his shattered body through the hole. He had to let go. Just the same he gritted his teeth and tried one last time to pull Phil free, only for his fingers to slip off what he now knew was the the thick drool of some predatory beast. Bill fell back on his ass with jarring force just in time to hear a heavy, wet gulp. Whatever it was swallowed Phil as easily as it had the others. Three teenagers was not too big a meal. They had crawled through the hole and right down its throat.

And it wanted more. Even as it let out a long, gross belch the thing reached through the hole for him. At last he saw what it was. A massive brown bear paw, with thick black claws as long as his fingers. The foreleg was so thick it barely fit through an eight by twenty inch crack.

A bear that size really could pull him through the hole. Bill flung himself back, out of reach of the claws. Right into the waiting paws of the mountain lion.

He'd forgotten about the cat! He threw out his arms, tried to find a rock to bash it with or at least something to grab and pull himself free. Too late. Great padded forepaws nearly as large as the bear's wrapped around him and pulled him toward the cave entrance. And at the entrance was the gaping maw of an unnaturally huge cat.

Facing away, struggling, the first he saw was a flash of whiskers, then long canine fangs, the short sharp teeth in between and a ceiling of wrinkly pink palate. It was so huge it could enclose his entire head in its jaws, kill him with one bite. Instead it forced him in until its lower teeth scraped his neck, gave him a push with its raspy tongue and swallowed.

Damn! It was doing the same thing the bear did, eating him whole! Slimy throatflesh slid hotly over his face, the muscles beneath it squeezing him deeper into its gullet, and he felt the creak and pop as its jaws unhinged around his shoulders. Wasn't anything natural around here? This wasn't right!

Bill wriggled and kicked, helped by the fact that the huge cat retracted its claws for some reason. All it had was huge mitten paws and no stabbing hooks but it was much bigger than he was and very, very strong. It got its paws under his ass the same way he did when he shoved Phil unknowingly into the gullet of a bear and forced him deeper. Hot wet throat slithered over him, coating him with the same thick layer of slime he'd seen on his friend's legs. Now he knew what Phil went through as he was swallowed.

Well, he wasn't going the same way! He was a lot bigger and stronger than his friends. He looked fat, but it was mostly muscle. Bill tensed, jabbing his elbows into the fleshy walls, and did his damndest to knee the cat in the nose. He hit it in the cheekbone instead, hard enough to make it flinch but not hard enough to make it cough him up.

"Get off!" He squirmed and kicked, and felt the cat move as it it fended off his knees. His best effort to hurt it from inside was fruitless, he was strong but the inward-pressing throat squeezed him into immobility from the waist up. It had him half swallowed and though he was sure he'd hurt it, it rammed its nose toward the ground just the same. His broad butt slammed into the dirt and with that anchor it simply pushed itself over him.

Suddenly he was in its maw to the thighs and the cat sat back, heaving its muzzle upward as it swallowed again. Rippling throat walls grabbed him as though in a great soft fist, squeezing him deeper into its gullet, and as the creaking ribcage expanded around him and a feral heart beat only inches away Bill realized he was losing. He was big and he was strong but the cat was bigger and stronger. With another toss of its head it bolted him down all the way to the knees.

He felt the bulge he made in its neck start to slip downward. Sitting down, its gullet was a long smooth slide and he could already hear its belly gurgling close ahead. A few more gulps and he'd be as doomed as his friends. He knew people who had mountain lion pelts from hunts. He'd joked about making a coat out of one but he didn't want to wear cougar fur this way!

Bill cursed, squirmed, and fought, but the big cat was not impressed. With a last toss of its head its jaws closed around his kicking feet, and he was stretched out in a fleshy coffin of gullet for a moment. But only a moment. Its meal nearly done, the huge cat tensed, lifted its nose and swallowed. As helpless to save himself as Phil and the others, Bill slid heavily down its throat.

He did his best to stiffen himself in the gullet. It didn't help. No matter how hard he tried to make himself unswallowable his head slipped into the stinking pocket of stomach, them his shoulders and upper body. Thick, sloshing fluid stung his skin and made the fleshy walls all but frictionless. Half of him slid into the stomach and his head jammed into the lower end, catching in a fold of flesh and threatening to break his neck.

With terrible clarity Bill realized he was doomed. The cat somehow managed to breathe even as it swallowed him which meant it wouldn't suffocate with his legs in its throat. Half his body was already in its stomach and if he somehow stayed stiff as a boat it would just digest his head and upper body to make room for the rest, like a kingfisher with a fish tail sticking out of its beak for a few hours.

His only chance was to get entirely into its gut then make it throw him back up. As his neck creaked under the strain of keeping the cat from swallowing him he went limp. The cougar arched, straightened, and swallowed one last time as he was squeezed out of the throat into the waiting stomach.

So. Here he was. It was utterly dark, stank of acid, and tight. Folds of slimy fleshy pressed in from all sides and he could feel the great drooping lump he made in the cat's middle as he stood back up. It was a huge cat, bigger than a real lion, but 350 pounds of football playing teen made a ponderous bulge. Thick droplets of acid stung his skin and a growing pool of it formed at the bottom as more and more flowed in but he had a little room to move. Now all he had to do was get out looking like Bill and not like cougar shit.

He felt along his belt and found the little Maglite in its leather sheath. It'd been a birthday present. Turning it on was little comfort. It illuminated bright pink, veined walls, the yellow-green bile it would use to digest him, and fragments of crumbling bone stuck in crevices in the walls, the last remnants of some previous meal.

Well, not the last. A partially digested shoe was stuck among the bones, one smaller than his, and other scraps of brightly colored cloth formed a wad in another fold nearby. The predatory cat liked its meals whole and here was evidence it had eaten people before.

What he didn't find on his belt was his Leatherman. Damn it, it kept falling out of its Velcro holster last night, what did he do with it? It had knife blades, two, even. Pockets, check his pockets.

As he fumbled for the tool the belly lurched around him. He felt the cat twitch and the stomach clench around him as it let out a long burp. It'd had its dinner and its belly swayed as it ambled casually to some destination. It was in hurry. Its hunt was done, now it just wanted to settle down and digest him.

The squeeze and ripple as it belched popped the little flashlight out of his hand. It was as coated with throat slime as the rest of him and the drool that slicked him down for easy swallowing was as slippery as oil. The light went dim and pink as it slipped down the fleshy wall and under his hip and he had other worries than retrieving it right now. Bill punched the stomach wall with all the force he could muster, not much given the tight confines, and dug through his pockets for the knife.

"C'mon, C'mon, I gotta have it." He punched the stomach again. "I'm not your dinner cat, I'm getting out of here one way or another!"

If the cat even noticed the struggle in its swaying belly it didn't show. He could actually hear the smug thing purr over the gurgle of slowly accelerating digestion and the thump of its pulse.

He was still searching for the knife, not knowing it had slid out of his pocket and was stuck in a fold of the belly wall not six inches from his hand, when the cougar grunted and burped one more time. As the last of the air fled up its throat the walls squeezed in and Bill found he could hardly move at all. Only a few inches of flesh and fur stood between him and the cool night air. That was enough.

His flashlight stayed lit even as Bill's final struggle began. There was barely room to move but he kicked and wriggled, trying to get the cat to throw him back up. He was a strong boy and actually made the huge cat grunt in discomfort. For a moment it considered that this meal might be more trouble than its worth. But only for a moment.

The bear emerged from the second cave, the one big enough for it to enter, just in time to see the mountain lion bolting down a set of fat teenage legs. The boy went down the cat's throat shoes and all. That wasn't what they preferred, shoes were sometimes a real problem, but it was necessary. You didn't leave evidence lying around where other hikers might find it.

In the bear's own belly were three very unhappy teens, each about half the size of the one the cat just swallowed. They squirmed and struggled but barely made his flanks twitch. Experience had shown that even a big, strong human couldn't make much of an impact in there. Maybe the walls were too slippery or something. The bear didn't know and didn't much care. He just knew that once he swallowed them down it was all over but the gurgling.

He was bigger than the cat and though he'd eaten half again as much his dropping belly weighed him down less. His bulky bear frame was better suited to meals like this than the mountain lion's, whose slender midsection showed a great struggling lump.

The two predators belched almost in unison and grinned at each other as the inner struggles quieted. It had been a good hunt and there was only a little more work to do.

"So," the bear growled as they followed the cat's trail back toward the camp site. Along the way he picked up one teen's backpack in his jaws. The others hadn't time to put theirs own when the mountain lion chased them up the hill to the cave. "You had it all planned out."

"Of course," the big cat said. "The big one couldn't fit through the hole so I'd get him and you'd get the other three."

A last burp percolated up out of the grizzly as he dug a pit in the undergrowth. The backpack went in, along with the wadded-up tents and other gear. As he stomped the dirt down the big cat nosed around for anything they missed. With the exception of a few tracks, there was simply no trace the four teens had been here at all. No gear, no signs of distress, just two gurgling bulges in the midsections of well-fed hunters.

They'd dug over a dozen such pits in the last couple of years, and done other work like prying rocks out of a cliff to enlarge a cave where one would chase the prey while the other waited, jaws agape, on the far side of a crack that seemed a convenient escape.

This time the cat chased, next time it would be the bear. His side of the cave was bigger, naturally. It had to be to accommodate a massive bear instead of a lithe mountain lion. They didn't need to go to such lengths to catch humans, but like the sleeping bag game, it was fun.

"This one was good," purred the cat, and licked her chops. "Very meaty. And only one set of clothes," she said, shooting a look at the bear's bulging middle.

"I have the plumbing for it," the bear growled, and he wasn't exaggerating. Things that cat had to cough up or painfully expel the other way went right through the bear's guts without him even noticing. Well, sometimes he did. A big wad of clothing was still something he'd rather cough up. But a simple shoe? Not a problem.

They'd bury the indigestibles, coughed up or shat out, including the still shining mini flashlight and folded Leatherman when they appeared from the cat's bowels. You didn't get to be the ones who made person after person disappear if you weren't clever about it.

It all started when the cat had eaten a smaller bear sow and he'd eaten a male cougar half the female's size. They sized each other up, deciding that trying for such a formidable meal was more trouble than it was worth, and agreed to coexist. Slowly they'd begun to hunt together and then the mating season rolled around. Neither had a proper mate and one thing led to another. Now they were together almost all the time, hunting, sleeping. Doing other things.

"I have another idea," the bear growled. The cat nodded sleepily. Digesting an entire human took some work, especially one this big. "A while back, there was a human who had a sleeping bag shaped like a bear. Mouth and all."

"I can see where this is going," purred the cat. "We go to that cabin, and dig out some floor boards."

The bear nodded. Then they arrange for some cold and lonely man or woman to find the hunter's cabin and its "sleeping bag". He'd lay there half concealed in a hole, with his mouth open....

It probably wouldn't work. Most people would notice at once that the "sleeping bag" was awfully realistic. And breathing. And slimy on the inside. And hungry.

The cat had an idea. Sprawled out on her side, swollen belly churning and too full for the sort of post-meal play they often enjoyed, she gave the plan some thought. "Alcohol."

The bear, sleepy himself as his body turned its energies to digesting three teenagers, perked up. "Alcohol! We take those bottles we have from campsites and people we ate, put them in the cabin."

The cougar smiled. They made a good living picking off foolish people in the woods. Going to such lengths as making a fake mountain lion or bear sleeping bag and getting a drunk human to crawl quite voluntarily down a throat was a lot of unnecessary effort. But so was the cave.

Sometimes you had to sacrifice practicality for fun, after all. She burped a last time, snuggled up against her lover and dozed.

*****