Liana walked the cold, sterile medical hallway looking for the entrance to the "Natural Physiotherapy" suite. Naturally, it was about as far from the entrance as it could be. Once inside, however, the gray, matted carpet gave way to lush comforts; dark patterned green carpet, a trickling waterfall desk ornament, and soothing music. On her left, a door labeled "Security", and on the right, a hallway adjacent to a welcome desk manned by a young , black-haired, bespectacled man. She announced the existence of her appointment, signed whatever they gave her, and took a surprisingly comfy seat.
Liana was a petite, blonde girl of 19, usually accompanied by a gaggle of giggling girlfriends. Now, she couldn't believe she was actually going to a "natural" spa on her own. Her friends raved about how good the service was and how they were surprised by how different the treatment was compared to "standard" massage. Of course the animal rights activists complained all over the news, as they do whenever animals are involved. A fan of the environment herself, she had reservations about the whole thing, but figured she would shut her friends up by taking the plunge.
The reason was that they made use of a creature, the name of which was not yet anglicized, with a name full of decidedly unphonetic syllables from the dark corners of the uncharted Amazon. She learned about it in school during a lecture on formerly endangered species. It turns out that if nearly everyone wants access to an animal, but not to eat, it makes for the fastest rebound in the history of mammalian population tracking - from numbering in the tens to the tens of thousands.
The first thing anyone is asked when they discover something 'new', is "how do we cash in?" Usually, it's pretty obvious, as the thing you found was an herb or a mineral or an oil deposit. In this case, the physiology of the creature made it popular among spas for its ability to ingest and massage human limbs. Its upkeep was roughly that of a dog, its saliva contained none of the pathogens that humans like to avoid, and it reduces the masseuse's job to the torso and parts of limbs that were unreachable. As a result, the creature was bred and distributed as a "next generation" form of natural massage. The activists, despite claiming to support animals, were not a fan of "enslaving" them despite the population rebound.
Liana had been waiting around twenty minutes. She knew because the infomercial on the TV in the corner (one in every office, it seems) with its cutaways, and happy cartoon creatures, and pastel colors under an upbeat narrator, had cycled at least once already. She watched as a cartoon man extended his arm, and the creature began to swallow it up to the shoulder. They looked like Tapirs - with a larger snout and a wider midsection. Apparently, they made their diet of long ferns and vines. They evolved without incisors, using their molars and weak jaws to grind the thinner leaves, but used an interestingly muscled (and long) esophagus to actually take the vines, wrap them into a compact shape, and finish swallowing it by sucking the ball into its stomach from there. The infomercial compared this to the trouble that humans have when wrapping cables - it's pretty hard even with opposable thumbs.
The pseudo-prehensile esophagus is the trick to the whole treatment - the creature can't ingest a whole human, so once they get hold of the arm, they try to twist it into a coil. Because limbs are much less flexible than vines or ferns, they lack the strength to do so, and the treatment effect is a pleasant massaging of one's extremities. Once done, the patient extracts their limb and moves to the next. Eventually the masseuse comes to finish the torso and any requests, and the handler takes the creature to the next patient.
"Liana Murphy?" a stout, smiling woman asked at the entrance to the hallway.
Liana gave a brief, nervous wave and walked toward the woman and down the hall.
"Is this your first time?" asked the woman.
"Yes, but my friends have told me what to expect."
"That's OK, we have had a lot of new visitors recently. Something about a radio show." They made small talk while the attendant took some measurements, provided a robe, and escorted her into a nearby treatment room.
The lush decoration of the waiting room continued into the hallway, but the staples of medical office equipment were everywhere - a few height/weight stations, a rack of robes, and doors to the treatment rooms. The room was larger than a typical doctor's office, with a mostly-padded floor and a pair of chairs along the wall. A massage table was pushed against the far wall, on which she took a seat. The woman checked a series of boxes, flipped the page, and set the clipboard on a hook near the door.
"Your height is a little under the minimum, but it shouldn't be a problem. I'll be back in around 15 minutes." And so, Liana changed into the robe and waited once again.
