Shark Tank

Bruce blinked blearily as he rose from his bed, hands blindly fumbling around to his side, he hit the off button on his alarm clock, and then proceeded to sit there, staring into nothing for just a few more seconds, before waking fully and ripping the covers off.

Every time he woke was like a nightmare, he’d always hallucinate that he was back in his own bed, in his room, in his apartment, in Birmingham, Alabama, HIS city, but no, the dream would quickly fade and the reality of his surroundings would come back into focus, the room was larger than his own, but the furnishings were all alien.

This was NOT his world.

Instead of a simple circular ceiling lamp, the walls bore brass candle holders cast in intricate designs that had been roughly converted to hold bulbs, the dresser and bed frame were both wood, and not the composite balsa wood planks covered with the smooth resin sheets he was used to, but real, solid, pine, and once again, the carpenter had clearly put work into making them look nice.

All in all, it lacked the modern appearance he’d grown accustomed to, reminding him more of early 20th century design, especially when factoring in the drab, olive wallpaper.

He silently cursed the crazy bitch who’d sent him here by stuffing him into her pussy, a daily ritual for him at this point, he just wanted to go home, but as everyone kept telling him, there was no way back, this was his home now.

As Bruce walked across the old fashioned room, over the creaky floorboards and towards the door, he briefly wondered to himself why he hadn’t decided to go to The Initiative when he was at the Bureau of Arrivals, sure they’d banned fun stuff like magic, but hey, at least they were actually trying to get out of this world.

As he opened the door though and began to head towards the basement for his usual routine however, his thoughts turned to his new house-mate and ‘caretaker’ Megan, and he remembered the real reason he decided not to go to The Initiative, they weren’t offering him a muscular shark girl as a room-mate.

They probably had shark beastmen in The Initiative, of course, but none of the potential ‘caretakers’ they’d submitted to the bureau had been sharks, and if he was being completely honest with himself, the existence of actual, real shark-girls in this world was probably the best thing going for it, hell, it even almost made up for all the vore.

Almost.

Bruce wasn’t really into furry stuff, but something about shark girls had always flipped that little switch in him, he just couldn’t resist them, so when he’d seen Megan’s photo in the case file his heart had skipped a beat.

She long black hair with neon green highlights, great curves, she was tall, REALLY tall, like 7’8”, apparently she was part amazon or something, but that didn’t really matter, what did matter was that she was a tall shark girl, and a muscular one at that, the file had said she was a professional bodybuilder, and Bruce had needed to do a triple take when he’d read that, tall, shark and fit!?

It was his dream come true, and when she’d actually accepted to take him in it was even more than he could have hoped for.

Over the following weeks he’d found that, while she had a hard edge to her personality, she was actually really kind to him, willing to listen to his rants about being stranded in another world against his will, comforting him when the reality of the situation had finally set in and he’d had a mental breakdown, that had been a particularly bad day, and she didn’t even charge him rent, saying that the stipend given to her by the government for looking after an Arrival was enough.

She had asked for him to help out of course, mostly with cleaning, and she did make sure to remind him that the stipend was only for a few years to help Arrival’s to get on their feet, and he’d have to find a job before then, but she was never pushy about it, and never overworked him.

The only job he was expected to do that didn’t fall under the cleaning category was also fairly simple, and only had to be done once a week, though it did require that he wake up early.

That job, the one he was heading off to do now, was to refill her protein tank.

Despite what he’d been expecting when he found out she was a bodybuilder, Megan didn’t use tubs of protein powder, but instead, she ate copious amounts of fish, she’d have multiple boxes delivered to her home in the early morning every week, each box full of frozen fish, and it was Bruce’s job to collect the delivery and fill up her feeding tank.

The tank, which took up most of the space in the basement, was a huge, two-story metal drum, approximately 9 feet in diameter and hooked up to a generator that kept the whole thing refrigerated 24/7.

On the top of the tank was a large, sealable hatch that could be opened in order to refill the drum, and on the underside was a spigot like device that Megan could wrap her jaw around before releasing a flood of chilled fish directly down her throat, Bruce had witnessed this display a few times, and he was always impressed by just how much her belly ballooned outwards, though considering all the vore of this world, he supposed it wasn’t, comparatively, an all that impressive feat.

Thankfully, despite its immense size, refilling the tank itself wasn’t a difficult task, as the basement had been dug extra deep in order to fit it, with the concrete steps of the above house giving way to a corrugated metal scaffolding like structure, from here he could easily reach the hatch that lead outside, where the delivery was always dropped off, bring it in to the basement, and refill the tank.

Slipping on his shoes, Bruce cracked the old wooden door to the basement and began to descend the concrete stairs to the landing below, Megan didn’t like him wearing shoes in the house, but agreed to let him wear shoes in the basement after he explained to her that while her feet may have a coating of rough skin to protect them from the corrugated metal, he was a squishy human, and didn’t have that luxury.

Walking over to the hatch that opened to the outside, he undid the lock and pushed the wooden doors upwards and outwards, as always, ten boxes of frozen fish were left just by the doorway, with a shipment manifest taped to one of the boxes.

Grabbing two boxes, including the one with the manifest taped to it, he brought the goods inside, making sure to tear the manifest off of the box and pin it to the nearby cork-board Megan used for book keeping, before heading back out to fetch the rest of the shipment.

Once he’d gotten them all in, Bruce shut the large wooden cellar hatch, before heading over to the tank to open the smaller, but just as heavy, metal hatch on top, he had to climb up a small set of wooden stair blocks Megan had installed because the top of the tank was at the same level as his shoulders, and leaning over to open the lid or empty the boxes was just too awkward, when he popped the seal on the airtight hatch, the smell of all the fish hit him like a wall.

It wasn’t that the fish had gone bad, they were frozen the same day they were caught, and were still kept chilled once in the tank, but there was just a certain smell that raw fish had, and when you collected this many in one place, you were sure to amplify it.

Stepping back down, Bruce, now pinching his nose, headed back over to where he’d left the boxes and picked a stack up, walking them over to the tank and dropping them next to the wooden steps.

Grabbing at a chain dangling from the platforms metal railing, he pulled the long line upwards to reveal a box cutter tied to the end, which he promptly used to slice open the topmost box, before wedging the cutter between two of the lower boxes so that he wouldn’t be forced to pull up the whole chain again.

Grabbing the freshly sliced box, Bruce stepped up the wooden stairs and emptied the frozen contents into the tank, making sure to give the back of the box a few hard whacks just in case some of the fish had gotten stuck, before throwing the box over the side of the railing, the heater was down there and cardboard was a good material for lighting fires.

Stepping back down and grabbing the second box from the pile, he repeated the process with the box cutter and headed back up the steps again.

Pouring the box out, he didn’t hear a cascade of frozen fish falling as much as a large thunk, confused, he checked the box and, sure enough there were no fish still in it, had the fish been frozen in an actual block of ice?

He’d never seen that happen before, dropping the box off the edge, he leaned forwards and peered into the tank, hoping to catch a sight of the chunk that had come loose, but as he braced his palms against the edges of the port-hole, his hands slipped against the slick fish fluids that had built up on the edges over the years, and he slid straight forwards into the hole!

Impacting against the pool of chilled piscine corpses with a wet thunk, Bruce immediately began yelling and thrashing about, the smell in here was far worse that it had been out there, and he was gagging as he desperately scrambled about, looking for a way out.

Unfortunately for the human, his struggles only disturbed the otherwise motionless vat of fish, and he began to slip deeper beneath the surface as lifeless eyes stared at him from all around, he was struggling so much, that he hardly even noticed when one of his shoes came off.

When Bruce finally realised that he was sinking deeper beneath the surface, he began to struggle even harder, not ever realising that it was his violent thrashing about which was causing him to sink in the first place, and soon enough, with nothing solid to grab hold of, his head slipped below the surface as well, which only served to increase the mans panicked struggles even more.

Bruce’s struggles only ceased when his energy reserves had run their course, leaving him lying upside down, curled up under a mountain of fish, breathing heavily of the fish scented air all around him.

He must have laid there motionless for what felt like hours, panicking inwardly too much to make so much as an attempt at another struggling fit, though in the back of his mind, he knew that his prior panic had used up all of his energy, and he was running on fumes now.

He was snapped out of his cold contemplation by the distant sounding noise of a creaky wooden door opening, followed by the slapping sound of thick skinned feet on concrete, and he breathed a sigh of relief, Megan had woken up, and had come down for her morning shot of protein, she’d help him out of here.

He wanted to yell out for Megan to help him, but stopped himself, he wasn’t even sure if she’d be able to hear him under all these fish, in fact, now that he thought about it, he didn’t even know how deep he was, pressing his limbs outwards, Bruce tried to get a feel for any signs of the metal exterior of the tank, and was surprised to find that all four of his limbs made contact.

He realised he was in a compact tube of some kind, and quickly went over the exterior shape of the tank in his mind, in order to figure out where exactly he might be.

He suddenly went pale as he realised where he was, he’d struggled his way right to the bottom of the tank, into the feeding tube that Megan used to access her ‘protein supply’.

Suddenly he heard a wet slurping sound echo around him, and he realised that she must have wrapped her maw around the spigot, just as he’d seen her do before, he tried to yell out, to bang at the walls, but it was too late, the sluice gate just below his head opened up, and the force of the tonnes of fish above him sent the man hurtling downwards, out of the tight, cold metal tube, and into an even tighter, warm fleshy one, as he was quickly swallowed whole by the shark-girl in one powerful gulp.

As soon as Bruce’s head splashed into the mushy mixture of acids and yesterdays ‘protein boost’ he began thrashing about, but as he quickly found, it was no use, Megan’s abdomen was rock hard, even when inflated by fish, and speaking of which, she hadn’t stopped swallowing after him, and the weight of the chilled fish pressing down on him was hampering his movements even more.

Still, he couldn’t give up, maybe if he struggled some more she’d realise her was in her belly, dead fish didn’t normally struggle after all!

Megan sighed and patted her belly as she popped her mouth off of the feeding spigot, “Aah!” she yawned, as she began picking her teeth with her nails, “Nothing beats a good meal to start the day, ain’t that right!” she said, giving her belly a good hard thwack, and despite the sheer enormity of her gut, her hit had little effect, no jiggling, no wobbling, it didn’t even bounce side to side, the taught muscles on her belly were far too strong for that.

Her belly was huge, the size of a beach ball at least, but that was fairly normal for the shark athlete first thing in the morning, besides, it would all burn off quickly enough once she started her exercises up, stepping away from the tank, she began to make her way towards the corrugated iron stairs, rubbing her large, gurgling gut as she went.

As she ascended she began to dwell on the meal she’d just had, the fist swallow had been a bit more challenging than normal, comprising mostly of one solid object, still, it wasn’t the first time a whole tuna or some other large fish had slipped its way into her shipment, and seeing as Bruce was handling the refilling job now, that explained why she hadn’t realised another big fish had snuck its way into her tank.

On the subject of Bruce, when she reached the top of the staircase, she suddenly realised that he’d left most of the boxes by the delivery hatch, grumbling slightly to herself in annoyance, she made her way over to the tank, where he’d apparently left another load of boxes untouched.

With some difficulty, Megan bent down around her gut and hoisted up one of the boxes, she’d have to have a word with Bruce about shirking his duties when she found him later, regardless of that however, these boxes weren’t going to empty themselves.

She nudged the wooden stair blocks aside with one foot and hoisted the box up to the already open hatch, “Oh he is definitely in for it when I find him now.” she muttered as she realised Bruce hadn’t even bothered shutting the hatch.

She was REALLY going to have some things to say when she got her hands on him.

Peering down into the tank briefly, she used the rough skin of her hand to slice open the tape holding the box closed, and began to tilt it up and into the tank, before suddenly freezing in place.

A few fish tumbled out of the box and into the tank, but Megan didn’t pay them any mind, her eyes were locked firmly on a single object deep below, resting atop the pool of fish, a single, black shape that stood out amongst the sea of silvery scales.

A shoe.

Not just any shoe, but the same brand as the ones Bruce wore when he took the delivery and restocked the tank, but what was it doing inside that tank, and for that matter, where was Bruce?

Just then, Megan was broken out of her musings when she felt a faint, almost imperceptible movement from inside her stomach, but that couldn’t be right, the fish were all dead, they shouldn’t be able to move…

Suddenly, the realisation hit her.