The world was wet and thick. Willard had been thrown down the esophagus of the alien predator. He'd bounced off throat walls like a racquetball and had been repeatedly poked by sharp talons designed to shred prey as they slid to the creature's first stomach.  Only the impenetrable skin of his PMS suit kept him from being filleted. Upon awaking, he found himself afloat in a viscous white liquid that reminded him vanilla pudding.

Swimming through the digestive juices wasn't like dogpaddling in water. Moving was slow, tedious and muscle burning work. It took fifteen minutes of pumping away to reach the stomach wall, churned with motion, circulating the stomach fluids. The ribbed stomach wall, which he could see thanks to his still functional headlamp, was covered in splotches of pink and brown. He placed his hand against the stomach wall and felt the bumpy lines across his finger tips.

A surge of motion caused his hand to slide across the ribbed wall. He was being pushed along through the stomach like a piece of food, towards the stomach's exit and into the bowels beyond. Willard closed his eyes, ignoring the images conjured by his imagination. When the surge pulled him forward again, he didn't resist. He knew it would lead him to the exit, which he would never find on his own.

His theory proved correct five minutes later. With a quick surge he felt the floor beneath him open in a pulse. He was yanked down, sucked into another chamber of the beast's intestinal tract. Blinded by the quick movement and entrance into a tight tube, Willard became disoriented. He felt the thick ooze pulled away from his body as he slid, head first, through the conduit. The walls around him rolled with muscle, pushing him forward.

Then he slid into open air and dropped. He fell for several feet and saw a sloshing world of clear liquid below. Within the liquid rested an assortment of partially decayed alien corpses—previous meals that had yet to be fully digested.

Willard crashed into the liquid and thrashed about, panicking, searching for the surface even though all the air he needed to breath was provided by the PMS. He reached the surface and sucked air into his lungs. Twisting his body violently, he searched the chamber for any danger and found only the lonely dead eyes of alien sea creatures. Loose flesh hung from bones. Decaying muscles dripped into the liquid.

This must be where the real digestion takes place, Willard thought as he began to calm himself. Several deep breaths later, Willard became aware of something…a noise.

Splashing.

Beyond the fear of being eaten and digested inside the giant, he now had a sense that he wasn't alone, that the beast's digestion was aided by smaller creatures that lived within the bowels of the larger. Maybe parasitic.