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It was dark inside the wolf - putrid and grim and squelchy. Not nearly as close as one would have expected, though. Roomy, really. Not that you’d want to stretch out and relax - that wasn’t what you let yourself get eaten for.
Still, there was far more space than seemed probable from the outside, as if the belly, the organs, the musculature, the creaking bones were making room to accommodate - to welcome.
Breathing room.
Not that that was a particularly appealing idea. Again, pretty damn dark and frankly the thought of breathing - of letting in the noxious miasma of rot and gore and blood was in itself a bit stomach turning.
Best not to think of it.
All said, though, sort of relaxing, not having to worry anymore about being eating, having just survived it.
Sort of.
Was it actually still being alive, was the question. Diving head-long into the ravenous, growling maw; carefully avoiding the full chomp of bone-sharpened teeth; sliding down the saliva coated gullet; getting stuck partway and having to squirm and wriggle and claw your way to a sort of gasping rebirth that dumped you like so much lumpy sewage into the sac of the creature’s stomach.
Thank God you’d maintained enough presence of mind to take a lung-filling gulp of air before making contact with the puddle of muck. The atmosphere was already rank, but a bit of that on the tastebuds and there’d have been no keeping the inside… well, inside.
Which would have made things that much worse. Nothing quite so appalling to the ego as being coated in one’s own sick.
Speaking of which, the wolf’s gastric juices were starting to sting a bit, biting ulcers into epidermis - ardent, imprecise pecks of a needy admirer wanting to devour - a kind of forced merging as if proclaiming “We shall become one”.
Aristophanes and his halved souls reuniting. The most aspirational of manipulations resounding You are not alone. You are seen. You are wanted. An idea echoed out through the history of humanity. It was meant to be romantic. To offer hope.
In the dark, a smirk. A careful tilt of the head. Exploratory twitches of the fingers, to make sure of their function. Small breaths - stolen sips of air between abstinence so lengthy, a darkness of the endless variety threatened to overtake - a series of la petite mort, sans release or pleasure.
Heaving a sigh would be quite nice, but too risky. The sharpened point of a dagger and the strength to wield it would be more helpful.
A rumble, a tremble, a minor earthquake as the beast shifts. A drop and a gurgle before the jostling becomes a rhythm, a mellow wave of movement like a rocking chair; a cradle lulling a temperamental babe.
You’d supposed that after such a meal as yourself, the wolf would’ve been so sated as to stay put. Nap near the dwindling embers of the hearth or, after much circling and sniffing and sighing, curl into a cozy lump amidst the now rumpled linens like a house-pet, but you’re on the move.
No time for digestion.
You trace a path in your minds-eye. Towering trees thickening, closing in, aiding and abetting the predator’s escape. Feel the grit and gravel and breaking twigs beneath roughened suede pads, claw tips leveraging forward motion against the soil.
Will it be a long journey? Does the creature lope toward a den or a lake? Deeper into the woods, or high in to the mountains?
Unknown destination was increased danger. Which sounded funny to say, the situation being already as dire as most peoples’ imaginations would allow.
So terribly drowsy. Even the sting of erosion, the salt in the wounds, insufficient to keep awake; to concoct and commit to a plan.
Darkening inside and out. Gently, gently swaying.
The stop is abrupt, ungraceful, like tripping up a step after a long, wearisome day and the sac plummets and lurches all at once, and all the care taken to seal mouth and tastebuds off from the gruesome environs has come to naught, lips forced agape in shock, hands slickly, ferociously digging in, nails collecting strips of viscera as you scrabble to keep your head above the rancid pool. Sputtering, heaving- the acrid burn of retch after retch clogging your windpipe. A waterfall of tears uselessly spilling.
And the beast howls.
Long. Lonely. Piercing. A song of yearning, clear and sharp as ice, wailed into the savage, impatient countryside.
In communion you sob. And claw and writhe and wrestle and kick, until the the conjoined lament is disrupted.
“We might have been friends. Companions,” a voice reflects.
“If I were stronger, you might’ve been a pelt for selling, or for warmth. A cape or a rug.”
“Such violence,” chided the voice.
“You ate my grandmother.”
“Hmm. She’s in there with you, is she? There are two of you down there, filling up my belly, stretching it to an irredeemably misshapen womb? Having a chinwag?”
“Well, no.”
An impossible purr - undulating, smooth, ticklish - vibrates skin and air, goose pimples rising despite the sticky sultriness of your current prison.
“Jumping to conclusions, just as you jumped into my mouth. She was old and tough, dry and brittle. Hardly suitable meat for my palate.”
You feel the creature plant it’s hindquarters, stretch it’s front half forward and low, spine cracking and popping above, the subsequent shaking out of fur.
“You did kill her.”
The impression of a shrug.
“She invited me in. Bade me. Her life had been hard. Fight and struggle and pain and disappointment was what she had always known. She did not want a soft, lonesome death.”
The notion of grandmother, hermited in the woods, fending stoically for years, taking on near the end the mantle of an aged Boudica, fierce and unyielding against a stealthy, bed-ridden passage, feels true.
The beast yawns, a high squeak from the back of it’s throat, a rush of air sneaking through the gloom. A gift of fresh air.
“You’re the only thing I’ve ever swallowed whole.” A weariness in the admission, regret and resignation flavoring the tone.
Confounding to feel foolish and comforted at the same time, yet the membranous walls, pulsing and shifting, thrumming with life, feel like protection.
“Why me?”
“You were kind in the wood. For a moment.”
Absurd that you should be the one left feeling guilty. No words to undo the damage.
The cramped quarters require movement and so a hip bumps and a heel thrusts out. A yelping whine from the wolf. Anything you do seems destined to cause it pain.
But you cannot apologize. You won’t.
“What now?” Not a hypothetical, but an earnest question of yourself and the no longer villain of the piece.
“Let nature take it’s course.”
Laughter, a cynical, hysterical snorting dampened by layers of flesh and tissue and fur thumps within your ears like air deadened after an explosion. “That could take a while.”
“Hmm.”
Movement begins again. Measured, contemplative. The gait of someone taking a stroll to clear the head.
Only, it’s the stomach that needs clearing, isn’t it? The weight of yourself that needs lifted, evacuated, freed.
Elsewise, the remainder of your time will be a torture to you both. Which is, perhaps, what you’d intended, before current knowledge, when a price still needed to be paid. When you’d wanted to punish yourself for your naïveté and tardiness and the beast for it’s autonomy - it’s cunning and lack of doubt.
Covetous, it turns out - not an avenging angel after all.
Look what that’s got you.
Calamity. Disruption. Change assaults again, convulsive tempest tossing body and bile forward violently; spasms of pressure as though the entire universe had settled upon you, baring down to squash form into oblivion. Pressing, pushing, twisting, forcing. Breathless dark.
The abuse is repeated again and again and again, until sputtering, gasping, blind and mucky, dripping and vibrating with rage, you find yourself purged - vomited upon an embankment, the sound of running water, clean and pure, as welcome as air and light and release.
Like a pup on all fours, hands and knees brace against the too solid ground, and yet you tumble over, nudged by a firm muzzle into the rush and wet. To drown in the purity of a river no less terrifying or painful than to succumb in the belly of a beast.
At least a drowning death would not be anonymous. Your body could be found and mourned, even if broken and battered by the rocks, whereas, the other option - digestion, would return you to nature, forever lost; an incorporeal mystery.
The crisp of the water is a refreshing shock, the cold of it a stab that forces your eyes open. Above, jaws - quizzical, fanged, grizzle-bearded - loom and snap. Fishing.
You flail, fighting against the river’s pull to lend an arm to the creature’s attempt; certain, unflinching as the humid mouth with it’s deadly teeth take hold to draw you, bathed, baptized, buoyant, from the unyielding flow back out to dry land. Safe.