Vodka and a little neglect. That's all it took to get Charlotte in trouble.

"Where is that boy," she muttered. "Can't take my eye off you for a second." Her gait was just a bit unsteady as she approached the pier, but she was hardly the only person on the beach with a drink or two under her belt. It was nine-thirty in the morning, and her mother would say that was pretty early to be slugging down drinks, but Charlotte didn't talk to her mother much these days.

People paid more attention to her for her looks than for her stagger. Charlotte was nearly six feet tall and had blond hair to her waist. Maybe the roots were a bit brunette but plenty of time in the sun kept the rest of it blond, starting at almost auburn at her scalp fading to pale yellow at the tips. Daily beach volleyball kept the rest of her in trim athletic shape that her drinking habit hadn't managed to ruin yet. A sizable bosom, shapely figure and pretty face meant that she rarely had to buy her own drinks. Her cut-off shorts and a skimpy bikini top didn't hurt in the department either.

She worked as a bartender in the evening and that unfortunately put her all too close to alcohol. One of these days her drinking would get her in trouble but she lived a block from the beach in an apartment her mother owned. Drinking and driving isn't an issue when you don't drive and the bar she worked in was right on the pier. She hadn't had a reason to go more than a mile from home in years.

Drinking and walking does become an issue when you let your seven-year-old son run off with a fishing pole so you can score a few drinks. Charlotte blinked into the bright morning sun and looked for Joey.

"Joey! Time to come in!" But there was no sign of the boy. Just the pier pilings and rocks, equally coated with mussels, and the streamlined form of a sleeping sea lion.

Charlotte glanced at the fat torpedo shape, looked away. Her eyes snapped back. There by its whiskery muzzle lay two child-sized flip-flops, one red and one blue.

"Oh god!" Charlotte ran closer, heedless of the potential danger. Sea lions ranged from human-sized to great hulks that might weigh half a ton or more. This was one of the middle sized ones, about nine feet long and four or five times her weight.

Luckily for Charlotte this sea lion was sound asleep and didn't react when she skidded to a halt by the flip-flops. She knew at a glance that they were Joey's. For reasons clear only to her son he wouldn't wear matching colors and he had on a red and a blue this morning.

The odds of one left red and one right blue sandal just happening to be next to each other on the beach were tiny and Charlotte's eyes turned to the snoozing sea lion, dreadfully sure she knew where her son was.

No blood, no scraps of clothing, but she knew that didn't mean anything. It was big enough to swallow Joey whole. Charlotte eyed the long blubbery shape stretched out on the sand. Was that the curve of a shoulder, pressing out through thick layers of fat?

It was, but it wasn't Joey's shoulder. Even a sea lion shows some bone structure under its damp hide but Charlotte was too upset to be objective. In her half-drunken haste she reached out.

One of these days, everyone knew, Charlotte's drinking would get her in trouble. Today was that day. Panicked over the apparently fate of her son she grabbed the sleeping sea lion's jaws and pried them wide open.

"Ort?" The beast blinked awake, unsure what was happening but feeling the fingers hooking its lower jaw down and muzzle up, but it couldn't see the culprit other than a blurry too-close view of Charlotte's wrist. It tried to pull its face away from whatever it was but she leaned in, trying to spot any part of her son that might show in the slimy depths of the sea lion's gullet. If she could reach in -

The sea lion, slow and flabby on land, was much larger than its tormenter and given another moment would simply have twisted itself free of Charlotte's grip. Unfortunately for the woman its jaws were still pried wide open when her foot came down on the red flip-flop. It had ended up atop the blue one sole to sole and fine beach sand lay between them.

The sand between the two removed any possible traction and Charlotte's foot shot out from under her as the red flip-flop went flying. Already leaning forward, her other leg reflexively straightened and hurled Charlotte face-first into the sea lion's gaping maw.

It was hard to say who was more surprised. With a wet thump Charlotte was gone to the hips, one hand slithering ahead of her down the slippery gullet and the other pinned to her side by the sea lion's cheek. Surrounded by sudden slimy darkness she blinked in confusion. Only then did she start to struggle.

For its part the sea lion went wide-eyed at the sudden pressure in its throat. Damp furry skin stretched as a great bulge swelled out of its already thick neck. Even now it wasn't sure what was happening, as its vision was occupied by a close-up view of Charlotte's well-toned ass.

Confused, it coughed and gagged. It could hold its breath for many minutes but only if it had taken one first. With its throat stuffed full of squirming woman it must either hack her back up or swallow. Unfortunately for Charlotte, the sea lion's reflexive need to clear its throat led it to do the latter.

Her eyes went wide in the hot slimy dark as the sea lion's throat gripped down, rippling over her and squeezing her deeper. She felt the bulge she made move down the beast's long neck as the relentless peristalsis of its swallowing muscles carried her along. By the time the frozen shock of her situation passed the only part of her still exposed to the cool beach air was her bare feet. The rest of her had been sucked whole into the sea lion's maw.

It was too late for panic to save Charlotte. She panicked anyway. With all her volleyball-toned strength she squirmed and kicked against the thick slimy flesh pressing in all around her. Some sort of muscular ring was squeezing her boobs against her chest and her face was in an even less hospitable place than the slimy gullet. She was all too aware now of what was happening. The wads of scales and slimy bodies of half-digested fish pressed against her face and shoulders would have told even a drunker woman what was going to happen to her if she didn't escape. There's nothing like the stink of bile and instant burn of digestive acids on skin to clue you in.

All her struggle availed her nothing. As she squirmed in the long chute of gullet the confused sea lion lifted its muzzle to let the last of its mysterious meal slip into its jaws. It tensed, swallowed, and the squirming form of an entire woman slid neatly into its lengthy stomach. Now it could breathe. That it got a meal out of it was just a bonus.

The squirming lasted quite a while. The long bulge in the sea lion's body writhed, making it twitch as though in sympathy. Quite a lot of air went down with its accidental meal and it took several minutes for Charlotte to burn it all in her efforts to escape. It was exhaustion rather than suffocation that finally stilled the twitches communicating themselves through the thick fat and hide. Too tired to fight any more, the woman lay still as the gastric juices came flowing in. Whether the ingestion was an accident or not, Charlotte was still made of meat and bone, and would be treated no differently than any other creature the sea lion swallowed.

As the sea lion lay down its head, relieved that the uncomfortable inner struggle had ended, its little ears pricked up at the sound of familiar footsteps approaching from the tideline. A set of bare feet came into view and Joey slipped his feet back into his flip-flops. He had his little fishing pole in one hand and a fish in the other.

Joey didn't like to get his sandals wet. If Charlotte had been less tipsy, she'd have remembered.

"Hi Mister Sea Lion," he said brightly. He was too young and too excited by his latest catch to notice that the sea lion's long body sported a bulge it didn't have when he left half an hour before. A hundred and twenty pounds of woman made a significant swelling in the sea lion's torpedo shape, but thick fat blunted the contours. Joey didn't realize what had happened and neither would anyone else.

By the time a beachcomber happened by under the pier and saw the beast the lumpy bulge had softened, and it wasn't the first and wouldn't be the last time that oddly stained clothes washed up on shore. Charlotte's hair, as indigestible as her shorts and bikini top, would leave the sea lion's body looking much as it did when it entered. Sadly, the same could not be said for the rest of her. Charlotte would live on primarily as a new layer of fat on a suddenly well-fed sea lion.

It was no surprise to the beach patrol when they found Joey wandering alone later. They'd expected his mother to abandon him long since and had already acquired his grandmother's phone number, just in case. Joey would grow up thinking his mother abandoned him, simply disappearing from the beach that day. He was half right.

"I caught you another fish," Joey said brightly, and held it out. "Want it, Mister Sea Lion?"

"Burp," replied the sea lion, and it paused to consider that the belch tasted different than anything it had eaten before. After a moment, and though it was full of recently squirming prey it couldn't quite identify, it gave a sort of serpentine shrug and opened its mouth for the fish. Food is food, after all.