Swallowed at the Spa

Liana walked the cold, sterile medical hallway looking for the entrance to the "Natural Physiotherapy" suite. Naturally, it was about as far from the entrance as it could be. Once inside, however, the gray, matted carpet gave way to lush comforts; dark patterned green carpet, a trickling waterfall desk ornament, and soothing music. On her left, a door labeled "Security", and on the right, a hallway adjacent to a welcome desk manned by a young , black-haired, bespectacled man. She announced the existence of her appointment, signed whatever they gave her, and took a surprisingly comfy seat.

Liana was a petite, blonde girl of 19, usually accompanied by a gaggle of giggling girlfriends. Now, she couldn't believe she was actually going to a "natural" spa on her own. Her friends raved about how good the service was and how they were surprised by how different the treatment was compared to "standard" massage. Of course the animal rights activists complained all over the news, as they do whenever animals are involved. A fan of the environment herself, she had reservations about the whole thing, but figured she would shut her friends up by taking the plunge.

The reason was that they made use of a creature, the name of which was not yet anglicized, with a name full of decidedly unphonetic syllables from the dark corners of the uncharted Amazon. She learned about it in school during a lecture on formerly endangered species. It turns out that if nearly everyone wants access to an animal, but not to eat, it makes for the fastest rebound in the history of mammalian population tracking - from numbering in the tens to the tens of thousands.

The first thing anyone is asked when they discover something 'new', is "how do we cash in?" Usually, it's pretty obvious, as the thing you found was an herb or a mineral or an oil deposit. In this case, the physiology of the creature made it popular among spas for its ability to ingest and massage human limbs. Its upkeep was roughly that of a dog, its saliva contained none of the pathogens that humans like to avoid, and it reduces the masseuse's job to the torso and parts of limbs that were unreachable. As a result, the creature was bred and distributed as a "next generation" form of natural massage. The activists, despite claiming to support animals, were not a fan of "enslaving" them despite the population rebound.

Liana had been waiting around twenty minutes. She knew because the infomercial on the TV in the corner (one in every office, it seems) with its cutaways, and happy cartoon creatures, and pastel colors under an upbeat narrator, had cycled at least once already. She watched as a cartoon man extended his arm, and the creature began to swallow it up to the shoulder. They looked like Tapirs - with a larger snout and a wider midsection. Apparently, they made their diet of long ferns and vines. They evolved without incisors, using their molars and weak jaws to grind the thinner leaves, but used an interestingly muscled (and long) esophagus to actually take the vines, wrap them into a compact shape, and finish swallowing it by sucking the ball into its stomach from there. The infomercial compared this to the trouble that humans have when wrapping cables - it's pretty hard even with opposable thumbs.

The pseudo-prehensile esophagus is the trick to the whole treatment - the creature can't ingest a whole human, so once they get hold of the arm, they try to twist it into a coil. Because limbs are much less flexible than vines or ferns, they lack the strength to do so, and the treatment effect is a pleasant massaging of one's extremities. Once done, the patient extracts their limb and moves to the next. Eventually the masseuse comes to finish the torso and any requests, and the handler takes the creature to the next patient.

"Liana Murphy?" a stout, smiling woman asked at the entrance to the hallway.

Liana gave a brief, nervous wave and walked toward the woman and down the hall.

"Is this your first time?" asked the woman.

"Yes, but my friends have told me what to expect."

"That's OK, we have had a lot of new visitors recently. Something about a radio show." They made small talk while the attendant took some measurements, provided a robe, and escorted her into a nearby treatment room.

The lush decoration of the waiting room continued into the hallway, but the staples of medical office equipment were everywhere - a few height/weight stations, a rack of robes, and doors to the treatment rooms. The room was larger than a typical doctor's office, with a mostly-padded floor and a pair of chairs along the wall. A massage table was pushed against the far wall, on which she took a seat. The woman checked a series of boxes, flipped the page, and set the clipboard on a hook near the door.

"Your height is a little under the minimum, but it shouldn't be a problem. I'll be back in around 15 minutes." And so, Liana changed into the robe and waited once again.

* * *

Nothing if not precise, the woman returned on time, trailing a bearded man with one of those creatures on a leash. The creature was massive, but apparently quite docile. It spanned around half the lenght of the wall, around 3 feet wide, with its characteristic long snout and stubby legs. He fed it a leafy snack, hooked the leash to a bed in the room, and explained the rules.

"Now, this is Eliza, your treatment companion for the day. Please do not harass her, berate her, or attempt to injure her in any way. If you need any assistance, I am leaving this fob on the corner of the mat." He set the fob down, and continued.

"I will be back in around one hour, with a masseuse who will assist you for the remaining thirty minutes. Any questions?"

"Nope, sounds good!" Liana replied.

"Well then, I'll let you two get to it." And with that, he and the attendant left the room.

Once the door closed, Liana dis-robed and laid across the mat with her right side toward the creature. She offered her arm, and the creature excitedly began licking the tips of her fingers. Suddenly, it scooped up her hand and walked forward until her entire forearm was in its maw. She was amazed at how fluid the creature moved for its size and apparent ungainliness. Again, the creature moved, and didn't stop until her entire arm was engulfed. With creature's snout at her shoulder, she felt a rhythmic pulsing begin around her wrist, moving to her shoulder and back every few dozen seconds. This was, she had to agree, an amazing experience.

After a few minutes, she scooted away, pulling her arm from the disappointed creature's mouth. She spun around and repeated with her left arm. After this, her left leg.

Massaging the leg was a little different. The creature's throat was around two and a half feet long, which was not quite as long as her leg. Eliza bottomed out just past Liana's knee, but Liana didn't seem to mind. That is, after all, what the masseuse is for. She relaxed for a few minutes as the creature worked on her leg, then switched, and was suddenly out of limbs.

She sat up, approached the creature, and scratched it behind its stubby ears. "I guess you don't get to feel as good as you made me feel very often!" she said. And then, she had an idea.

The creature was around 3 feet wide, and the snout could easily fit the width of both legs, so she gave it a shot. She offered both legs to the creature, and the creature giddily gobbled them up. Again, the creature bottomed out just past her knees, and she relaxed for a bit longer before wiggling backwards on her hands to escape. By this point she was thoroughly soaked, and rubbed the goo from her legs off onto her torso. Still, with around 20 minutes left, she wondered... could she try to get past the knees?

She folded her feet up to her bottom, and again moved toward Eliza. The creature licked her knees, nudged them slightly, and then, again, opened her maw and scooped the knees up. She moved forward slowly, engulfing Liana's feet, legs, calves, and stopping at her bottom. Liana was in heaven! The pulsing rhythm around the lower half of her body was incomparable. She leaned back, relaxed, and let the creature do its thing. Ten minutes later, and she propped herself back up, pulled herself out, and sat down on the pad. She turned to face her robe, knees on the floor, and put her head down to relax. Any muscle she moved felt like heaven. She hugged her knees, feeling the endorphins spread from her massaged limbs throughout her body. And then, Eliza nudged her from behind.

She felt a lick or two on her feet, and kicked them playfully. Eliza responded by sucking her feet into her mouth playfully. She played with them a bit before releasing them. Liana did not realize that her companion was widening her mouth, when suddenly, Liana's entire bottom, feet, and half of her back were in the creature. She moaned with pleasure as more endoprhins were released from everywhere Eliza touched. This continued for a while, before the familiar rhythmic pulsing started again.

Each pulse travelled the entire length of Laina's body. What she didn't notice was that each pulse also brought her an extra inch into Eliza's throat. After a short while, Eliza bottomed out with her snout against Laina's neck, with Laina squirming periodically as the massage worked its magic. Liana's feet pressed against some muscular ring, her back and sides pressed against a smooth throat, and the creature's saliva dripped around her neck like a pendant. With little warning, the situation became more dire.

Eliza's throat stopped massaging suddenly. Liana looked around a little, wondering why she stopped. After a moment, she attempted to extract her arm to get purchase. That didn't work. She wriggled forward to try and get some room, but found that the saliva had made it impossible for her to get any traction. She tried stretching her legs; the throat, while not strong enough to damage a limb, was much stronger than short, thin legs with no room to move.

Eliza's throat tightened again, and the rhythmic pulsing began again. However, instead of travelling the length of Laina's body and back, it started at her back and moved toward her feet - or more accurately, the ring of muscle at the back of the creature's throat. But Laina couldn't know this. All she could feel was the lubricating saliva covering nearly every inch of her body. And then, she started sliding backwards even further.

As the contractions continued, she felt the ring of muscle begin to work over her feet, and then her back. At this point she realized that her face was about level with the creature's tongue. Realizing how this could go poorly, she renewed her efforts to move forward when her entire world went black. Having fully expanded the muscle guarding her stomach, Eliza, in one quick motion, engulfed the poor Laina from head to toe. Laina felt her feet, then legs and back, then face slide against the creature's throat. The stomach muscle passed over her shoulders, neck, and face before quickly tightening again. She let out a muffled cry, not one she expected anyone to hear, but all she could accomplish before Eliza tightened her gut around her new meal.

Inside, Laina felt strange - inside her body, her muscles felt nice and relaxed, but outside, her extremities started tingling in the thick digestive juices. She pushed at the wall, but couldn't stretch her arm far enough to make an impact. She stretched her legs, but couldn't unbend them from her fetal position. The tingling became more intense, especially on her ears and digits. Laina squirmed for a short while longer before Eliza kneeled, laid on her size, and rested. Having expended most of her energy, Laina passed out as she began hearing the sound of muffled voices.

* * *

The supervisor, the attendant, and the handler stood over Eliza, who laid on her side with a *very* full, sometimes twitching stomach.

"So, how did she get through the safety checks? Could you explain how she missed the warning forms she signed, failed to meet the height standard, and nobody thought to mention that she could be in danger?" The supervisor was *not* happy. She had been packing to leave when the attendant, red-faced and out of breath, burst into her office with an "issue."

"Well, she would have been perfectly if she followed the warnings she signed, but she purposefully bent herself in such a way that it triggered the creature's swallowing reflex. She was coiled like a piece of rope!" the handler explained. "This is unprecedented. I have never even seen Eliza open her mouth that wide."

"A vine, more accurately. I warned her about her height, and she chose to proceed." The attendant wasn't *lying*, but she didn't need to make it clear that she brushed off the danger.

"Aren't the damn things herbivores?" asked the supervisor.

"Well," the handler began, "it's not that simple. They are more like "long"-ivores. Their niche is to eat all of the things that other animals can't because they just don't fit. There is some indication that they could just as well eat long animals, like snakes or long lizards or eels."

"Well, get security to watch this room. And whatever the patient's name, strike it from the books. This never happened." The supervisor swung her coat over her shoulders, turned, and left the office.

Meanwhile, Eliza shifted, and the contents of her stomach twitched for a few seconds before becoming still again.