A long hike in the woods. Always a good way to work off the stress or a long week's work. Drive to the trail head up the hill from Big Pine, grab your hiking stick out of the back. You've done it a hundred times. It's a five mile hike and sometimes you get to see cool wildlife. Today you run into a bear. Unfortunately.
 
You come around a corner on the rocky trail and there it is, coming the other way up the trail. It's only fifty feet away and it's a big, heavy bear, pitch black of fur save for its brown muzzle. Its legs are as thick as a fat man's thighs and its paws are each bigger than your head. It must weigh at least five hundred pounds.
 
You pull up short with a gasp. What to do? It doesn't turn and run the way wildlife usually does at the sight of you. Even bears usually run. Not this one.
 
Your walking stick is no help. You picked it for lightness and the bear would use it as a toothpick after eating you.
 
The bear takes a step forward. With no time to think you jump for the pine tree a few feet away. The bear grunts and pauses before rushing forward and you're just out of reach when it rears up by the tree.
 
The rough bark of the pine scratches your hands as you climb an easy ladder of branches. Five hundred or so pounds of bear stares up at you. Maybe running from it was a bad idea. Running from a predator triggers chasing instincts. You're still glad to be out of reach.
 
The bear growls and peels bark from the trunk with a swipe of its claws. Can it climb? Little bears sure can, you've seen them do it. The pine is little more than a foot thick, though, and the ladder-branches only an inch or two wide. Surely too spindly to support the big bear.
 
It doesn't climb. Instead it rears back and slams both forepaws against the trunk of the tree. The whole tree twangs like a plucked guitar string and you lose your grip on the branches. Only a desperate last minute wrap of your legs around the trunk keeps you from falling. You hang upside do with the bear staring up at you and before you can get a better grip it slams the tree again.
 
You lose what little grip you had and plummet headfirst right toward the bear's upturned muzzle. This is going to hurt both of you. Your skull, its tender nose.
 
The bear has other ideas. As you fall it pricks up its rounded ears and yawns impossibly wide. For an instant all you see is yellowed fangs, a carpet of salivating tongue and a slick purple gape of gullet. There's a thump and everything goes black.
 
It hurt. It hurt a lot. The bear's fangs scraped you top and bottom as you fell into its maw. Long oozing scratches run from your chest to your butt and all the way down your chest, half tearing away your t-shirt. Normally that would be your focus. You have bigger problems. You're upside down in a bear's maw to the hips and it's doing its darndest to swallow you whole.
 
It takes you a moment to recover from the fall but even if you'd recovered instantly it would still have been too late. Slimy throat squeezes in from all sides, pinning your arms to your sides, and your own weight continues to push you deeper. The bear is still standing up, forepaws bracing it against the tree, and with a bob of its muzzle it engulfs your rump. A great contraction of its throat muscles squeezes you even deeper as it swallows and your face pops out of the tight gullet into a place of fleshy folds and sloshing stomach juices.
 
You really, really don't want to go any deeper. The bear very much wants you to. The bear wins the argument. All it does is yawn and swallow and your own weight helps send you down its throat. You feel the bulge move through its thick neck and swell out its middle as it clamps its fangs shut over your hiking shoes. One last gulp sends you slithering helplessly down its throat. You never had a chance, really. Once you lost your grip with the bear's salivating maw wide open below you it was all over but the belching.
 
The bear drops down to all fours as a third its weight in human curls up in its stomach. It grunts and stretches, pushing one paw against its drooping belly to muffle your struggle. Your head spins at the sudden change of orientation and if you weren't inside a bear you'd stagger dizzily away. You have much bigger problems than vertigo.
 
Only now is there a real chance to fight and it's much too late for it to do any good. You squirm and kick but a foot-thick layer of bear muscle, fat and fur squeezes you into a helpless fetal curl. You only succeed in pushing most of the air out of its stomach and the bear belches crassly. Stomach juices have already soaked through your light hiking clothes and burn into the scratches on your chest. It's just the start. First your skin will go, then your flesh and bones will dissolve away. Maybe some of your clothes will make it out of the thing intact. You won't. Kick and struggle all you like, you're still bear chow.
 
The bear doesn't even bother to muffle your struggles with a paw again. It just ambles away from the trail, its newly fat belly swaying. Somewhere in its wake is your walking stick. Maybe someone will find it, find the paw prints and the tracks of shoes that will dissolve along with their owner.
 
Maybe someone will put two and two together and work out what happened to you. Maybe someone will realize that climbing a tree won't help. They better figure it out, because God knows you won't be around to tell them. You only get one chance to run away from a bear. Your approach sent you right down its throat.
 
It's more likely that no one will ever know. The bear burps again and the gurgling darkness closes in. Two minutes ago you were a hiker. Now you're just a meal.