Martin’s arrival at seal island
(soft vore, digestion)
 
It had not been the first time Martin’s digestive tract had been filled with over a quarter ton of shark in one day, but that white shark had been the first instance where this had occurred by the orca swallowing a single, massive prey whole. Even after death and long before the various bites and scrapes Martin had endured during the fight had healed, the shark still gave him trouble. His throat had recovered from the scraping and bruising it had received just fine but now it was his forestomach that was giving him grief.
The thing was, when he gorged on large fish, bony or cartilaginous, he always ended up with anything between five to a few dozen individual animals inside his forestomach, which always made it easy for his digestive organ to break such prey apart. Now he was laden down with a single monster in his belly which was firm and tough enough to impede his swimming and seemed to refuse digestion for an extraordinarily long period. If he had not known he still had to traverse hundreds of kilometers of barren open ocean to reach the seal colony he dreamed of decimating with his appetite soon, Martin would have half a mind to regurgitate the shark for his forestomach was burning non stop. Sure, the huge fish was finally coming apart, but it was mostly due to the large volumes of warm and highly aggressive stomach juices his main stomach pumped back into the forestomach. Something which the unprotected walls of the forestomach could only take so long. Usually they could grind Martin’s prey into paste or at least break them up relatively quickly so the acids had a huge area to coat. But this large shark stayed mostly in shape even though the former predator’s maw and gills offered Martin’s stomach juices a great opportunity to digest him inside out. Sadly the acids were indiscriminate, and seemed to do the same with the forestomach itself since it lacked the slimy layer of the main stomach. In other words, what the orca was feeling now was acid reflux from hell.
 
“This will pass, you will too.” Hummed Martin to the dead prey that was still resisting him somehow. Luckily, time was on his side and since he felt some of the nutrients he had consumed finally making their way into his system, he felt at least reinvigorated and was able to swim a little faster. Eventually he was going to get through the thick skin and then it was going to be much faster, he knew.
In this mindset he carried on, pushing towards his goal and distracting himself with fantasies of fertile orca cows swooning over him when they saw his battle scars and heard the story of this meal. He was surely going to cut out the portion where the shark nearly ended up breaking his digestive tract.
 
One-and-a-half days after consuming his semi-lucky catch, Martin finally felt something shift and crumble inside of him. “Victory!” he chirped into the empty space of the wide ocean, as his meal had finally fallen apart. He now enjoyed the sensation of large amounts of nutritious food clumps getting forced through the narrow but stretchy valve into his main stomach. He imagined that, for the love of irony, the shark’s digestive organs would be among the first items to pass, before the rest of him would finally be broken down into manageable chunks. In any case he felt the constant burning finally abade. Previously the trickle of digested skin and tissue had sustained his swimming and body temperature, but now came the time of rebuilding a healthy layer of blubber.
 
 
The rest of his journey passed uneventfully, just like his meal did. Neither the huge jaws nor the inch long serrated teeth of his prey gave him any issues, apparently melting quite nicely since he felt less firm objects floating in his belly than with mammalian prey after the initial troubles. Instead, Martin only noticed his flanks growing thicker, and then thinner again once his body had absorbed everything and returned to burning fat reserves in order to heat and propel him. And now he was close; only one more day or so and he would reach the remote little seal colony and embark on a divine feast for a week straight. At least that is how it had played outlast year.
 
Eventually the sea floor started to rise up as Martin closed in on a small nearby island. It was a little oasis of shallow and therefore warmer water and more importantly, one of many small fish which in turn allowed a small seal colony to live on the jagged rocky land there. These seals were the highlight of his annual feeding calendar. This spot was not really of much interest for travelling orca pods but for one lone predator, even if it was a ten ton bull, it was an all-you-can-eat buffet that takes a week or more to run out. At that point, he will have eaten every seal that is convenient enough to catch, and only the ones who already escaped him in previous years already will remain.
 
With three empty stomachs to fill and a lot of energy to expend, Martin arrived at the island, hearing the seals bark, play and hunt undisturbed... until now. The sounds made him want to sing out his joy over the impending feast, however he knew he needed to stay silent in order to get what he wanted.
He knew the place well and was aware of the ring of kelp around the island which was a popular playground for younger seals that fooled around with their buddies or practiced hunting fish or squid. This was going to be his first stop, since the adults would continue entering the water to get food for the smaller ones once they realised he was there to eat them. Martin avoided using his sonar at all, simply relying on his vision and hearing to slowly sneak up on his unsuspecting prey. The seals were playing right above him, appearing as delicious looking little shadows against the bright noon sun. He approached them vertically and took up some speed commencing his attack. His belly was right up against the kelp, his fluke hitting the wobbly stems on occasion as he went for his first catch.
An isolated adolescent seal was going after some small morsel, minding its own business when Martin approached. Wanting to stay hidden, he went right for the sea mammal’s neck, catching it in the side of his jaws and biting down sharply. He heard the beginning of a panicked call and then a solid crack as his blunt teeth crumbled the prey’s spine while he angled his tail to sink back down. The delicious blubbery snack shuddered sharply, once, and then fell still in his grip. Martin tasted the seal’s warm blood as he pulled it into his maw with his flexible tongue. This was likely going to excite a shark somewhere. But there were enough seals to go around and he was more in a sharing mood than up for losing another fluke tip. Besides, any shark smart enough to reach the size necessary to go after seals won’t go anywhere near him on their own anyway and with plenty, safer and tastier food around, Martin was alright with that.
One lined up with his stretchy gullet, the first seal went down like butter. Sure lifeless prey was a little boring but that did not change how satisfying it was to feel a whole bunch of oval shaped meat and blubber shift through his gullet and plop into his empty forestomach. While this seal was getting a bath in some of the fresh digestive juices his main stomach pumped into the forestomach, Martin looked for another easy meal. Going off the weight he barely felt in his midsection he could go for at least three more of these before he was full.
 
It seemed however that the missing seal was noticed soon, as some of its friends came looking. Hovering above the rocky ground, Martin made the best of his air reserves and stayed as still as he could, watching the tasty pinnipeds swim, squirm and dance around, looking where their buddy was hiding. They thought it was a game or something and the orca could not be more smug about himself as he slotted in behind the trio and gave chase.
He made sure not to cause too much turbulence in his wake to avoid any noise, even though the barking young seals and breaking waves above did a good job masking any sound he made. Slowly he took up speed, closing the gap far enough until the rearmost snack felt his bow wave and turned around. The last thing it ever saw was the possibly biggest orca near and far lunging at it with his wide jaws agape and tongue flattened out at the bottom of his maw. This whole assembly of soft pink and black flesh was approaching fast but this time Martin’s prey managed to squeal in terror before his maw simply pushed over it and closed. Now seconds were of the essence and he focussed on accelerating rather than swallowing at first. He needed to be on course for the next one if he wanted to get a good meal out of the trio.
Only when his melon was pointed at the next seal which looked back in annoyance to see what the cry was all about, did he gulp. Seal No.2 only made it halfway into his gullet before Martin’s maw was all over the third morsel. He could only imagine the terror the creature was feeling at the view of a half swallowed friend’s rear sticking from an orca gullet and the same predator’s jaws cutting out the sunlight for it. With some leisure to philosophise about life, the orca might have been able to sympathise with his food but at this second it only tickled his predatory instincts and filled him with a mix of greed and amusement when he felt the two calorie rich youngsters crash at the back of his maw. Now he really had to pause and swallow, letting the third seal of the group escape into the kelp while a fairly substantial bulge was moving down his mucus lined gullet as he reunited three out of four seals from that particular group in his belly.
 
Martin sank back down to the ocean floor, enjoying the sensations of two thirds of his stomach’s occupants struggling and squirming in vain. If anything they helped his rough and fairly rigid forestomach to grind them into paste and a manageable shape to slip into his main stomach for full chemical digestion.
A steady mix of begs like “Help us! We were eaten!” and “Please let us out.” were amusing the orca, tickling him to the brink of breaking his silence and to tease his prey. Luckily he was clever enough to listen around first and beyond the muffled cries for help that would only get eaten too, coming from his belly, he heard the usual busy noise. Apparently a lone seal crying about an orca attack was not easily believed by the rest of the snacks, if there was no orca to be seen and no one else was afraid. This was going to be good.
 
With the last of his air, Martin swam out nice and far before he dared to surface. He needed to be smart about this and try to eat as many as he could before being noticed. Afterwards the hunts always turned into a game of patience. It was easy to win those against seals of course but still, having them dance halfway into his maw was way more convenient and entertaining.
 
While he went for a stealthy surface break behind a rock formation, the trio inside his forestomach was getting another acid shower from the narrow but stretchy valve to his main stomach. That second chamber was clearly eager to get some proper filling for it was producing a lot of potent digestive juices to help the forestomach make hurry, and paste out of its occupants. The thick oily pelt of the seals protected them only for so long against the burning liquids pouring over them. The harsh creatine lined stomach walls roughing them up did not help their cause either. Once the fairly concentrated hydrochloric acids soaked into their skin, the seals that still could changed their tune to a pained whine as they started to digest alive. Lucky for them the stress of such an ordeal was wearing out their own oxygen supplies rapidly and they would fall unconscious before the churning orca gut was even a quarter done peeling off their quickly softening skin. With around a third of space left in his forestomach, Martin was keen on getting another meal in, before calling it a day.
 
With his air supply replenished, the orca dived back down into the darkness, loving the added inertia from his meal, which made itself known with each stroke of his thick tail. He was just in time too because he already heard a familiar shaky voice nearby.
“I swear, mom. The orca went this way after eating them. I saw him leave before I surfaced.”
“Oceans deep, we have been swimming around for a quarter of an hour now and have nothing to show for. You are in trouble as it is, young man, but if I find one of your friends nibbling my flipper to scare me, I’ll leave you all for the sharks.”
“There won’t be any sharks around, mom.” sighed the defeated youngster and he was right.
Same as before only with an already busy forestomach, Martin let the seals pass above him before he sneakily made his move. He went for the much more nutritious adult obviously, aiming to deprive the unhealthily solidary youngster of his mother’s wisdom and support because he very much desired her body for its caloric value. Slowly the orca approached, allowing himself the small prank of only nibbling softly on the female’s flipper, igniting her already strained temper.
“That’s it! You silly, annoying…..” Her tirade was cut short when her entire body seized up in petrifying terror as she tried to face her prankster and found no giggling seals, but instead a black and white face as wide as she was long.
“Flee!” she gasped at her son while Martin happily commenced feeding on her. But as it turned out, the boy had no capacity left to listen to her or his own instincts when the sight of all his friends becoming snacks to an orca was followed up by his own mother taking the same trip. It was a behaviour Martin had observed among dolphins and some birds as well. Sometimes when the leading adult gets eaten in front of their offspring, they simply seize up in shock and conveniently stay for and as dessert.
 
As if to thank that particular family, Martin went slow and soft with them, taking his time to pull her back into his maw and cup the female’s body in his hot wide tongue and then gently inserting her into his throat. Untrained and particularly smaller orcas could never fit something her girth in one piece, but Martin was experienced in devouring larger prey than her whole and it seemed the recent shark encounter only enabled him to feed in such a fashion with greater ease. Now he chirped happily. Far enough away to feel safe from curious ears, besides those he was going to consume anyway.
“Thank you for bringing her along. This is exactly what I needed.” he praised the petrified youngster, turning towards him to give him a nice clear view at his opening maw, his tongue pushing up and his throat audily closing. When Martin lowered his tongue again and showed off his maw some more, it was entirely empty. The shocked mother seal from five seconds ago had disappeared but everyone concerned knew where she was.
 
 “You… ate my mother!” cried the seal at last, staring at the empty maw and then Martin’s wide belly in disbelief. Most of the seals he cared about were inside there now. He tried to speak again, something which Martin had awaited with curious eyes while he swam in a circle around the young male, showing off the expanse of predatory body his friends and family were about to fuel and become a part of. Then the silence was broken by a muffled cry from deep within his belly.
“What are you still doing here?! Swim for your life!”
Much to Martin’s amusement the female still only cared about her adolescent offspring and who could blame her. It took some strength to worry about others while being oneself stuck inside a stomach busy grinding up you and three of your conspecifics. Still the orca simply HAD to play with them.
“He is just making a stand for family values.” he snickered and nudged the motionless male. “He and I won’t let you force him away from where he belongs: With his friends and family.”
That finally made her go wild and the orca found himself simply hovering before his dessert with a blissful expression as his tough busy forestomach was being massaged by the desperate kicks and struggles of an adult seal who was not looking forward to meeting her son again.
Once that moment had passed and the morsel before him still did not bother making him work for his calories, Martin simply whistled happily and gave a lazy push with his fluke and opened his maw. Out of all his prey consumed in the last three weeks, this one was the easiest. He was able to simply swim over the hovering snack, jaws agape and keep them that was even as the morsel’s snout pushed at his throat entrance.
“Take a good look, once in there you won’t be seeing anything anymore. Thank your mother for me for raising such a convenient prey.”
With that said, his tongue pushed up once more, guiding the motionless seal down into his eager throat. In there he registered as a smooth streamlined lump of fat juicy meat and as such was quickly pulled down the slimy chute.
As the fifth seal to enter his forestomach, the youngster had to be forced inside a bit since Martin’s forestomach was now properly filled. He was now holding even more meat in his belly as when he had eaten the white shark on his way here and with how energy dense seals were, he was going to get a nice layer of blubber out of this for himself.
“Thanks for being so accommodating.” said Martin, not even sure himself if he meant the melting seals or his own forestomach which was causing his flanks to bulge out ever so slightly with all the prey it was holding.
 
The orca then swam further away from the island, looking to simply let the sun warm his back, staying just below the surface for convenient breathing as his body focussed on breaking all those seals down.
Just an hour after the last one had been consumed, his forestomach had broken down some of them to the point where ground up fleshy paste and some mangled pieces of broken up seal corpses managed to slip into his mains stomach at last. At this pace his forestomach would be ready for another load of maybe two or three little ones or one really big one before the sun went down. And he was definitely cheering for his gut to enable him to hunt again. This little patch of rocks in the middle of nowhere simply keeps getting better every year.