The doctor had told Puss that he needed to retire from adventuring and settle down. Puss had no intentions of heeding his advice.
 The orange shorthair had come into this dimly lit bar to drink. He scoffed at the suggestion of no more adventures. He was the legendary Puss in Boots! If he had one life left to live, he sure as hell wasn’t going to waste it with some crazy cat lady. Repeating this assurance in his head every time his tongue touched his drink, Puss drank his way through countless glasses of cream before last call came up. The barkeep went into the back of the bar to fulfill his last order, leaving the feline alone with his thoughts and his cream. But not for long.
 before he could take another sip, he noticed the overhead light dim down, and turned around to see that the sole candle on the wooden chandelier had been blown out. That would have been strange enough, if it weren’t for the whistling. Eight foreboding, almost joyful tones one after the other, apparently not coming from any particular direction. It was unsettling. Then, he turned to his right, and a tall, long-faced wolf in a black hooded poncho with leather wrapped around his forearms seemed to have materialized.
 They conversed briefly. The wolf was odd, his fur a strange, nearly white silver with the exception of a darker grey, mask-like pattern on his face, and his deep red eyes peered into Puss’s very soul. He spoke with a deep, smooth growl and was grinning the entire conversation, making the cat uncomfortable. Then he set down his mug, making a muted clank on the wooden surface of the bar. His large paw reached into his poncho, and out came a slip of paper, a wanted poster emblazoned with Puss’s likeness in ink. “Hey, I never do this, but can I get your autograph? Been following you for a long time.”, he asked. He pointed to the word “Dead” on the poster and tapped it with his paw thrice, and it clicked for Puss. He wasn’t an overbearing fan, or even a talkative patron, he was a bounty hunter out for his head.
 He did what he always did when this occurred. He called the hunter out and told him he had no hope of capturing him, dead or alive. The wolf only chuckled in response. “Everyone thinks they’ll be the one to defeat me,” He grabbed a bottle of beer and poured it into his mug. “but no one’s escaped me yet.” Puss climbed up onto the bar-top, and unsheathed his sword, only for it to be swiped away and into a barrel far across the room. This set the tone for the remainder of their fight, as the canine foe dodged Puss’s successive attacks, and unsheathed his own weapons, a pair of cruelly curved silver sickles. Every move that the outlaw made, the bounty Hunter was prepared for, knowing when to evade and when to attack, taunting him all the while, cracking his bravado and filling him with fear. The very nature of the duel changed, as Puss was now desperately fighting for his life. Something was wrong with this wolf. How could he predict every single move, and slice through hard wooden chairs and tables like butter?
 SLASH!
  The blow of the sickle knocked him backwards, nicking him on his forehead, almost right between his eyes. Eyes that went wide while his feathered hat flew off and time seemed to stand still in a trance only broken by the loud clanging of a sword hitting the stone floor. Hyperventilating, the petrified hero felt something warm trickle down his face. He wiped it off, and observed a telltale red smudge across his paw.
 Puss in Boots had never been touched by a blade. Until now.
 While Puss’s body trembled and his fur bristled, the wolf relished in his newfound terror, sniffing the air around him. “I just love the smell of fear!” He exclaimed, and started slowly walking towards him, blades dragging on the ground and sparking heavily. Puss thought of every hope, aspiration, regret, accomplishment, and failure he’d had over eight previous lives. He knew he should run, he had to run, but he couldn’t move if he tried. The canine’s foot kicked his sword away from him, and it scraped along the floor and out of reach. Before the sickles were once again put away, the cat spotted that one blade had eight symbols carved into it, each of a cat’s head x’ed out. He’d done it before, and this time surely wouldn’t be any different if his catch couldn’t get away from him.
 The wolf picked him up by his middle with both paws, making sure to give it a little squeeze just to wind and torture him. This was it for the feline. He’d finally met a villain who could best him in combat, and he was about to literally die. Looking at his overjoyed furry face and into his cold, glowing red eyes, Puss strained, “Please, I surrender!” in a pathetic bid for mercy that he knew full well he wouldn’t receive. All his captor did was give his chops a lick with his long pink tongue. “What’s the matter? Lives flashing before your eyes?” His growl went back down to a whispering pitch. “They should be, because now I finally have all of them.”
 His black lips parted, and the things that hid behind them were completely horrific, especially to someone of smaller size like the outlaw in his grip. A set of pointy white canid teeth, a beckoning tongue, and smooth, slicked-down sides all inviting Puss to take the digestive plunge. The cat finally found himself able to move again, and started to tug at the muscular wolfish arms holding him and kick his little legs, although it was unfortunately too little, too late to prevent anything. He stared in utmost horror and leaned back and away from the wide, steaming maw he was being taken closer to. “No, por favor!” He cried out, begging for his life. “S-Stop, stoouuummmmffff!!!” He was interrupted by a large mouth clamping down on him, pointy teeth digging into his flesh, but not deep enough to puncture. He wouldn’t be vanquished just yet.
 Puss’s entire upper body was in the wolf’s warm, stinking jaws, saliva dripping into his fur and cape and tongue lapping at his stomach. He tried to writhe, to push his arms out in the cramped space, but his efforts were completely in vain. His wiggling butt and kicking legs only providing amusement to the sadistic predator as they stuck out from between his lips. With a delicate paw, he lightly pushed the rest of the cat in, boots and all, save for the tail, and it became clear to Puss just how much of a nightmare was in store for him. He wasn't going down in pieces, he was going in one, singular, still alive piece.
 “Aah, let me go!” He whimpered while the wolf took his sweet time in savoring him, allowing a generous amount of spittle to soak into his fur. The hunter, eyes half-lidded, slurped up his wiggling noodle of a tail, mercilessly suckling on his bounty as if it were a hard candy and not a sentient being with real fear of digesting alive. Then, he relaxed, let his throat hole widen, and curved his tongue upwards. Puss began to slide in arms first, making one last futile attempt to prevent this, sticking out his hands and trying to push away. “No, no, no, no!!”
 GLLNK!
 “Adiós!” was the smirking, half muffled response as the bounty hunter tilted his head up and swallowed, placing a hand around the front of his neck to feel his catch descend. Said catch was far less chipper about his predicament, Puss desperately kneeing the esophagus walls and bending his body as best he could, which, sadly for him, affected the canine in no significant way. If there was one bright side, he was not stuck in the constrictive tube of flesh for long. In moments, the gulping suction pushed Puss into a lupine stomach chamber, unceremoniously dropping him in with a yowl and a splash.
 It was difficult to describe how terrifying the inside of the stomach of a big bad wolf was, especially for someone as small and edible as Puss had recently been proven to be. Slimy, crushing walls squeezing in on the poor piece of pussycat meat, trying to manage him into a more compact, meltable form for the acids. Everything was gurgling and groaning as a sort of pregame. Puss didn’t have his sword with him, and his claws weren’t sharp enough to penetrate the organ. He looked for some way out of the sweltering darkness, despite his breathing becoming erratic and his heart beating so fast it was at risk of bursting out of his chest. Nothing worked. There was no escape hatch or design flaw in a gut, he was actually, genuinely trapped. There was nothing he could do other than pray his struggles would provoke his captor to spit him up.
 A dizzy, disoriented haze hung over his head while he squirmed around and struggled to bear the aggressive, possessive sting of the gastric acid taking off his fur, and soon his skin and fat. When he tried to yell out, a torrent of strong, alcoholic liquid poured onto his head and into his opened mouth from above, making him choke and sputter, and his skin tingle. This prison was hell on earth. At this point, death would be a mercy.
***
***
***
The wolf sighed contently, and leaned his arm against the bar, facing away from it. He’d come back to his chair to finish his beverage, and drown out his cute little dinner. He’d pulled the front of his poncho back and over to the side, exposing the little silver potbelly his victim had so generously granted him. One that shifted and wiggled an awful lot, and carried the shape of a frightened little kitty in leather boots. Judging only by the strength and feel of those kicks, the boots were durable, and would easily survive the gastrointestinal onslaught in store, while the Kitty certainly would not. Just as intended.
 “So much for the ‘legend’ of Puss in Boots.” Death taunted, taking a second swig to cap off the remainder of his drink. His belly was getting real sloshy, audibly splashing with every movement to compliment the gurgles indicating his body was hard at work. “You just didn’t know when to stop fighting, gato. You’re even still fighting now, when it’s completely pointl-” The end of his sentence was interrupted by rising gas filling up his mouth and bloating out his cheeks.
 BBRRRRUUUUUPPP!!!
 When it couldn’t be contained any longer, it shot out of his snout, putting a very distinct stink of cat meat and bile in the air that Death sniffed at absentmindedly. Truly horrific to any feline and even many non-felines, but a sweet aroma tinged with victory for the big wolf. It made his mind drift to the quality of the outlaw he devoured. Savory, tender, mildly spicy mixed in with some of the intense smell of fear and adrenaline. A little furry for his taste, and the flavor was blocked at parts because he’d forgotten to strip him of his cape, belt and boots in his excitement, but still an A+ meal. Puss had it coming anyway; despite the grim reaper repeatedly attempting to prove a point to him by cursing him with incredibly ignoble and downright idiotic self-inflicted deaths in past lives, his arrogance and recklessness only seemed to increase. He even started saying he laughed in the face of death! After today, it was obvious his machinations to try and humble the cat would never work, so he set out on a personal mission to claim his final life and destroy his legacy.
 A decision that was definitely not in vain. Death blissfully squeezed his gut with his left paw, his fingers grasping at the kitty within him. The legendary Puss in Boots, the so-called dauntless swashbuckler, had been reduced to a kicking, slowly dissolving belly bump, scared face making a nice imprint under all that fur. His sharp ears could easily hear his muffled voice under his system groaning, the “fearless” shorthair broken so thoroughly he was almost sobbing and pleading in Spanish. Pleas that his well-honed senses could barely make out. “Mmmff! Noooo! Déjame ir! Por favor, me duele!”
 The wolf licked and slurped some stray flavor from his muzzle, and tortured Puss further. “What happened to laughing at Death? I don’t hear any laughing.” That comment elicited a frenzied push from a paw, the bulge going a few inches outward before snapping back in, making every inch of his belly flesh ripple and jiggle. Another UUUURRRPP!! Came out, hard fighting from food apparently just as good at loosening up air bubbles as a hearty drink. The reaper’s large hands dug inward, feeling up the chubby lump in his middle, now sloshing more with enzymes than booze. Gato was starting to melt now. Time for one last bit of play.
 “So, enjoying your reminder of the food chain, gato?”
 “P-please… It burns so much, I-I’ll turn myself in… I’ll do a-anything you want if you let me live…”
 Death feigned hesitation. Puss was now pained and distraught, probably nearly hairless and softened up, too. It would be merciful just to keep digesting him without saying another word. But his intense desire for vengeance and satisfaction at seeing him suffer greatly made the wolf deny him mercy, in favor of false hope.
 He slyly growled. “Fair enough. I’m sure I can still get plenty for such a notorious bandit with life still in him. Sit tight while I throw up.”
 Puss sat up in anticipation. He was seriously going to release him? Maybe he’d live to see another day after all, and this would be just another story of death-defying bravery to tell at his next big party. It wasn’t the case. The stomach walls simply pressed inward as much as they could go, squeezing the air out of him and filling much of the remaining space with fluid. When Puss came to the terrifying understanding that the wolf had doomed him, he barely had a millisecond to appropriately react, erupting bubbles from his mouth and then sputtering and drowning, marking the end of Puss in Boots. For Death, appreciating his now rounded out stomach full of meat being broken down, it couldn’t have gone better.
 “Descansa en digestión, gatito. Your lives are mine forever.”
 BUUAARPP!!
 One final belch got rid of the air he had forced out of his gut to kill Puss. Throwing the hood back over his head, Death pushed himself out of the chair, then set a gold coin next to his empty metal mug for the barkeep. The canine found the black, yellow-feathered hat he had knocked off on the floor next to a destroyed table, and quietly pocketed it as a trophy. He pursed his lips and slowly walked towards the exit, whistling the same tune he had when he came in. By the time the barkeep returned with the heavy cream not long after, the Grim Reaper was already long gone, and the only signs Puss was there were the empty glasses he drank from, and his sword, all seemingly discarded.
***
***
DISPOSAL AHEAD
***
***
The canine idly scratched his chest, looking upon the hole he had made. It was the day after he delivered Puss in Boots to his fate; the birds were chirping, the sun was shining, the trees were swaying in the breeze, and the bulge formed by dissolving pussycat was gone and his stomach flat. Death didn’t gain fat, as he had no need for it and it severely decreased his intimidation factor, so there were no remnants of Puss on his body. Every single remaining bit and piece of him was either in the slimy, scratchy hairball that had been coughed up an hour ago, or building up in the wolf’s lower intestine, which was now begging for a massive crap. Thus, this shallow grave in an isolated neck of the woods that no one would find for a good while.
 FFFRRT!
 The reaper pulled down his brown trousers, lifted his poncho and his tail to keep them from soiling, and crouched, hovering his furry ass over the edge of the pit. A tad of gas snuck out already, absolutely reeking, although that was a sneak preview compared to what was coming. Death clenched, and instead of it all smoothly coming out, something was immediately stuck. “I probably should have stripped him.” He mumbled with some regret. He tried pushing with some more force.
 PPFFFFFFRRRRRTTT!!
 A smelly, softened and brown-tinged, but still intact cat-sized boot dropped into the grave with a thud amongst the rumbling fart, as did some of the first big snake. He sighed in relief as he felt multiple bones and a sheet of fabric slide out of his colon and through his sphincter without issue. The turd abruptly stopped, and the wolf took a minute or two to catch his breath. Then he began to grunt hard, and a longer, more difficult log fell out of him on top of the coiling pile, chock full of all the larger bones in the kitty’s body, and his belt and second boot. When he was done and over with, he teased Puss again, even when he couldn’t hear it. “Now you look to be as much shit as you were full of, gato.”
 Getting up while wiping himself with a leaf, he turned around to peer with morbid curiosity into the pit. It was a disgusting mess, a large pile of dark brown wolf shit riddled with the tainted skeletal remains of Puss in Boots and his tattered clothing. Death was able to count a femur, a hand bone, three ribs, and most clearly, the near-pristine skull of the swashbuckler sitting in the top of the pile with a cape gnarled around it, being one of the last things to be shit out. The canine responsible had only a few steps left to complete. He removed the hairball he’d saved from his pocket, and crushed it up, sprinkling orange hairs over the sorry dump. It was only now that the stench had caught up to him, and it floored him how awful a fully-digested pussycat smelled. Death grimaced and his snout wrinkled, and he knew he had to wrap things up.
 “Adiós, for real and forever this time.”
 A big lupine foot pushed the pile of dirt that had been dug up back into the hole from whence it came, pattering on top of the pile and covering it from the world. It was pushed in and patted down until it looked as if there had never been anything dug there at all. The final step was to place a rock on top of the grave. A rock with the initial “P” carved on it by a sickle which was now marked with 9 x’ed out cat heads. His most troublesome victim claimed and his work done, Death vanished from the woods to take care of business elsewhere, leaving Puss in Boots to become fertilizer, his legacy being one of ultimately fatal arrogance and overconfidence.