"And here is your trailer," the ringmaster says. Randolph, the man's name is. Randolph the Magnificent, when on stage. He's the circus magician when he isn't wearing his tall center stage hat. Good magician, too. You saw him practicing when you walked in.

You nod. It's a small circus, like most these days. Family owned. They all are. Even the late, great Ringling Brothers was, before the public distaste for animal acts killed its business. Too many soccer moms, too many pearl-clutching animal rights activists. Somehow this little circus slipped through the cracks.

This despite it being well known for its spectacular big cat act, an act led by a tiger named Shiva.  You turn away from your new home, that 200-square-foot circus trailer, and find him looking back at you through the bars.  He is a huge, magnificent beast, bigger than any other tiger you've seen. Most male Bengal tigers weigh in at roughly five hundred pounds, a big male maybe six hundred.

There's a rule. The farther north you go, the bigger and paler the tiger species get. Comparatively small and dark in Indonesia, huge and tawny in Siberia, and a range of sizes and colors in between.  A really big Siberian tiger, or Amur tiger as they call them now, might top seven hundred pounds.

And there lies Shiva, at least that heavy and a mass of sinewy muscle under his stripey pelt. No fat on this cat. He's beautiful. Terrifying.

"Ah, Shiva," says the ringmaster. "He's been here for a while. Good cat, never mauled a tamer. Never causes much trouble at all but does he ever put on an act in the ring. Smart."

"Part Siberian?" He's too dark for a full. Maybe an Amur/Bengal mix?

"No idea." Randolph shakes his head. "We got him from a little circus that closed. Most of their cats went to zoos, we got Shiva and a lioness. Their tamer left with no warning and that was the end.  Very disruptive, that. Luckily we had your number on file when Jose did the same thing to us."

"Did he get a better job?" Shiva is looking back out of impassive amber eyes. In the other barred trailers are four lionesses, a solitary male lion half Shiva's size and a tigress.

"No idea. He just disappeared on us. It happens, you know. The roustabout life isn't for everyone."

You nod. Your introductory tour of the circus is done and you head into your trailer. Bed, cabinets, dressers. No toilet or shower, those are all communal here. There's a shower trailer and a shitter trailer. The circus life.

Tomorrow you start work, introduce yourself to the cats. All the roustabouts you talked to here says the big cats here are a dream to work with. It's one thing that keeps this little circus going. Even in these politically correct, animal activist days word of mouth keeps the people coming.

You poke around the trailer, familiarizing yourself with your new home. Jose sure left a lot of his stuff here. Someone left a bin by the door helpfully labeled GOODWILL. You deposit most of his clothes there, as he was six inches shorter than you.  Tomorrow morning the circus tailor will let out his tamer uniform to fit you. Circuses keep going by recycling. If a zebra dies they feed it to the cats, if a new roustabout hires on he gets the old one's uniform. Recycling.

By the door hangs the too-small red tamer suit, on a shelf is the whip. You don't actually hit the cats with the whip, but they respect its sound. You sit at the desk. Here, too, someone came by and straightened up a bit. All of Jose's paperwork is in a neat pile. You try the top drawer and your eyes widen.

A revolver. Every tamer carries a pistol. It's for show as much as anything but if need be it will fire very real bullets. You pick it up and check it over.  Functional...and loaded.  You set it back on the desk. Why would he leave the pistol?   Even if he didn't plan to work around big cats -

A chill goes down your spine as the hair on the back of your neck stands up.  A primordial fear grips you as you slowly turn your head. You know what you will see before you see it. Just inside the closed trailer door sits Shiva, seven hundred-plus pounds of cat staring back at you. His forepaws are the size of your head and even sheathed, the tips of cruel white claws poke through the fur.

Shiva could kill you with one bite, one swipe of a paw. Very slowly you close your fingers around the pistol grip.

"Go on then," rasps a voice that can only be described as a purr. Slowly Shiva's black lips draw back, his chops wrinkle and the tips of pointed fangs appear.  "Get it out of your system."

You boggle. It wasn't someone speaking behind the tiger. You saw his mouth move. Shiva talked to you.

You leave the pistol on the table. It's a weapon of last resort. Even if you manage to mortally wound the cat it's a hundred to one odds against killing it before it kills you, too. Even shot full of holes and bleeding out Shiva could kill you with casual effort.

"Good," he purrs as you let go of the gun. "That is a start. We're going to be working together, you and I.  I'll lay out the ground rules."

It's remarkable how clearly he speaks through a mouthful of fangs.  "Working together?"

"Oh yes," Shiva purrs. "I can talk to the other cats. They fear me, or love me, or both. I can talk to you and to them, and between the two of us we set up our big cat act. That is how it works, here. I work with the tamer, and we make a cat act that keeps the circus going."

Shiva looks you over. "You can make a good living here. Work with me, look the other way when certain things happen. You can make a career, retire famous. Others have, over the years."

You realize that without planning to, you rolled your chair back until you hit the far end of the trailer. Your chair moved all of three feet. It's a small trailer and there's no way out but past the talking tiger. The gun is still within reach.

"What...what do you get out of it? And what do you mean, 'Look the other way'?"

"Ahh," Shiva purrs. "I have my lovers among the cats. It is not enough.  Occasionally I see someone in the audience I like. I encourage them with looks, and they know what I want. They sneak in and I have my fun. The roustabouts know to look the other way. Occasionally it's a man. Mostly a woman."

Too many thoughts run through your head, all at once. You pick one at random. "What do you mean, tamers have retired after working with you? Tigers don't live that long."

"I do," he growled.  "I have lived in zoos, of my own choice when I could not find a circus to my liking.  I have gone from one circus to another. One country to another.  I have done this since before you were born, and will go on after you die."

"That's impossible."

Shiva grins. "We will redefine your sense of the possible," the tiger purrs. "Here is your time to choose. Stay and work with me, or leave now."

You think about that. There aren't many big cat tamers left in the US. You could be the most famous of them all. Fame and fortune, maybe move on to Las Vegas like those magicians and their tigers. Before that one ugly incident, anyway.

But one little detail nags at you. "Why doesn't anyone know about you? If you're really fucking women," there was a horrible thought, a seven hundred pound tiger humping some poor woman, "And the other tamers knew about it, someone would talk. The tamer or the woman."

"Make your decision," rumbles Shiva. "Stay or go. You know everything you need to know to decide."

The gun is suddenly in your hand. You don't remember reaching for it and now it's pointed between the tiger's eyes. "What happened to Jose?"

Shiva grins. The purr of his voice drops an octave. You feel the rumble of it in your bones. "Jose worked with me for five years. A good partner. One day his morals caught up with him. He asked the same questions you just did. 'Why don't any of these women talk,' he said."

The tiger tilts his head, looking smug. "There is a woman or two here at the circus who comes to me of her own free well. I won't say who. If you see one with a scratch, that was me. Accident, you know. Passion. But if someone comes to my bed from outside the circus...secrets need to be kept, you know."

Slowly he licks his chops. "And it is difficult to say anything from inside a tiger."

And Shiva yawns, and yawns, until his jaws reach an impossible gape and you're staring past his fangs into a purple chute of gullet as wide as your head. You know where his lovers went, and Jose, and the missing tamer from the other circus. Right down a talking tiger's throat.

Your hand decides for you. Pop, pop. The pistol is shockingly loud in the little trailer. Both bullets go right into Shiva's gullet. You see them hit, see the flash of blood. But the blood is only there for an instant and then it's smooth flesh again. Calmly the big cat closes his mouth and grins.

"It should be clear by now," he purrs.  "I am not a tiger. I just look like one, at present. I've been playing one role or another since I came to this continent from the east."

He pauses. Licks his chops. "Now we each have a role to play. Can you guess what yours is?"

He rises to his feet. Before you can fire again one forepaw swipes blurringly fast and the gun goes flying. As the paw returns to the floor the other one pins you against the back of the trailer. A dresser drawer handle digs cruelly into your back as your chair pops out from under you. Shiva casually pushes it behind him. It's just you and the cat at the end of the trailer now.

Shiva's claws are still sheathed. He doesn't need them to trap you against the dresser. Seven hundred pounds of talking tiger looks you over, amused by your fear.

Past his cheek you see the ringmaster's face. He shakes his head, picks up the revolver, puts it back in the desk drawer.  The door clicks shut behind him and Shiva chuckles.

"Just another tamer who didn't work out," he rumbles.  "We'll get another soon enough. Shame you weren't cut out for the job. Why, I bet you never even showed up for the interview. As they say, no one saw you enter the trailer...."

"Wait," you said as his pink nosepad goes up. "We can still work this out."

"Too late," says the tiger as he yawns. Strings of saliva link his raspy tongue to pink-and-purple palate. Yellowed fangs slide out of view and you're staring into the purple chute of gullet once more. This time from much closer, unfortunately. Then you're in it. Padded paws wrap around you and stuff you in. 

Shiva's fangs scrape over your shoulders and hot slick flesh slides past your face as he swallows your head in one gulp. He could kill you with a twist of his jaws or bite your head off with one snap. Instead he pins you against the dresser and pushes his maw forward. Trapped against the wall there's nowhere to go but down a tiger's throat.

You try to squirm free. Useless. Shiva has decided that you are food and that's that. A paw wraps beneath your rump and pulls. Suddenly you're down his throat to the hips. Hot wet flesh presses in from all sides, coated with a thick layer of saliva that slicks you down for easy swallowing. Shiva sits back on his haunches and engulfs your ass with an easy toss of his muzzle. Nothing but a kicking set of legs, now. His canine fangs jab painfully into your thighs but you have much bigger problems than that.

It should be impossible. Tigers don't swallow people whole! But you're not surprised. You saw the yawn, the vast gape, the wide slimy gullet waiting to take you in. Shiva casually bolts down your thighs with another toss of his head. He's not a normal cat and you're not the first person to disappear whole down his throat. You're probably not even the hundredth. Shiva has been eating people for a long, long time.

A muscular obstruction presses against the top of your head for a moment, then expands to let you past. Your slicked-down hair is the first part of you into the tiger's stomach. The rest follows after soon enough. With a last snap of Shiva's great jaws your feet are in his mouth. It's all so casual. Just another easy meal for the monster cat. You can sense the smugness on his face as Shiva swallows.

A muscular tongue gives your feet a push and a great contraction of his throat muscles squeezes you deeper. You push against the slimy walls but its far too late for escape. Shiva swallows and you slide heavily down his throat. The sphincter that opened over your head briefly grips your cheeks as you slip helplessly into the waiting stomach. Then it squeezes your shoulders. You feel it slide over your hips, then your thighs. Even through your shoes you feel it clench shut again when your toes have followed the rest.

Shiva's stomach expands easily to accommodate you. You feel the bulge you make in his middle but to seven hundred pounds of cat, a man your size isn't exactly a huge meal.

The rule of thumb is that a big cat can eat a quarter its weight in meat in one meal. A quarter of seven hundred is, let's see, 175 pounds? About what you weigh, actually. Plus clothes. Shiva swallowed you clothes, belt, wallet, shoes and all. Waste not, want not.

Slimy stomach wall presses in all around you. It forces you to curl up in a ball and the hot juices are soaking through your clothes. They burn wherever they touch you. Shiva has already begun to digest his meal. Even your clothes are softening. A normal tiger probably couldn't digest a cotton shirt and synthetics, not to mention your plastic-and-rubber shoes. Shiva is not a normal tiger. 

You kick and squirm. It's as useless as your earlier struggles. Inches of strong muscle and fur lie between you and daylight. Shiva doesn't even bother to pin you in place with his forepaws. He lets you squirm and you hear him chuckle. He knows he has nothing to worry about. This slimy pocket of tiger stomach will be your tomb.

Heat soaks into you as you relax. Too tired to fight any more. A strong, calm tiger pulse throbs through you as Shiva sprawls out on his side. Even the small effort of swallowing you down is done. His stomach will do the rest of the work.

How do they cover up so many disappearances?  All the other tamers, even the applicants whose don't work out and get a trip down Shiva's throat. All the women, the occasional men he beds. All gulped down whole and alive. People one minute, tiger food the next.

Then you remember what the tiger said. He's not always a tiger, and he's not always in a circus. When things get too hot, he moves on. You're just the latest victim of an ancient serial killer, an ancient predator.

Rakshasa. The word floats up from somewhere, your high school D&D days, most likely. A shape changing, illusion casting man-eater. Maybe that's what he is.

It doesn't really matter, does it? Shiva belches as still more of the hot juices flow in around you. The burp vents what little air went down with you. Nothing to breathe now but acid. Nothing to do but squirm helplessly as you start a trip through his digestive tract.

Gurgling darkness and heat press in as Shiva settles down to digest his meal. Soon a new trainer will face the same choice you did. Work with the tiger or be tiger food. You hope it works out better for them than it did for you.