Hollow

The door to the small apartment opens, revealing a form, barely recognizable as feminine beneath layers and layers of warm clothing.  With a flick of the switch the lines of stress and exhaustion are revealed on her normally cute face.  Thin lips, slightly blued by the Michigan winter, let loose a sigh of depression.  A small, rounded nose beneath brown irises wrinkles at the smell of her neighbor's illicit refuge in mind-altering smoke.

She takes off her hat and lets loose a shoulder-length bob of sandy hair, matted by hours under a protective plastic cap.  Coat after coat comes off, until all that is left is an oil-stained white blouse beneath an orange vest most clashing, and a pair of equally greasy jeans.  Her boots, safety-soled and steel-toed, already lie by the door, waiting for her next shift.

A low-energy shuffle takes her towards the bathroom.  With the door shut and locked, a habit born of having 3 privacy-smashing siblings, she removes the last of her workwear.  Satisfied with the adjustments to the shower's water, she climbs in, the heat returning her color and some of her vigor.  Around the drain circles the dirt and grime, the bodily and unnatural smells of hard work.  If only unwanted emotion was as easily washed off.

She exits the bathroom, now clad in her comfortable clothes.  Blue cotton sweats wrap her lower form, while an oversized green blouse covers her top. She plods her way to the couch and sits down, regarding the many items strewn about the coffee table before her.

Letters and notes cover the cheap particle-board top.  Many of them are from schools, some local, some remote, some universities, some high schools.  A glance takes her eyes above the television set, a BA in Art History from a decent school standing watch over the room's contents.  Not that it has any other use, she thinks sourly, as she turns her attention once again to the stack of letters, this time focusing on the loans attached to that degree.  Still more letters, this time pay slips from the factory.  It wasn't that she was being paid very little.  It was simply the fact that it wasn't something she wanted to do, and it wasn't something she wanted to work herself to the bone over.  More letters still, only these in her hand writing.  Poison letters, dripping in venom, after she learned of her boyfriend's infidelity.  Number 3 was a charmer, she thought to herself.  Too bad he just could not stop charming.

A fresh smell of weed as her neighbor continues to lose himself in smoke permeates the room.  Smells like Dustin is making full use of his Friday evening, she thinks.  The thinnest of smiles reached her lips.  I suppose I should do the same.

She reaches below the couch and pulls up a grey lockbox.  She had found it in the cafeteria trash, its feeble lock having given way to a thief's awl and hammer.  The thief had taken all the money, of course, but she had something of more personal value she wished to stash.  She opens the lid and reveals a number of bottles, pink and grey capsules rattling within white plastic.  She takes one bottle, unlabeled, safety seal breached, and places the box amongst the detritus of her coffee table as she makes her way to the kitchen.

A glass of water is drawn from the sink, tiny bubbles breaking the surface.  She smiles knowingly.  Too small for my needs, in regards to the bubbles.  I need something bigger.  She pops off the safety cap, tips out one pill into her cool palm, reseals the container, and regards the capsule in her hand.

Do I really need it?  Every time she has gone through this ritual she has thought the same thing.  Every time she has weighed the pros and the cons, the feelings of joy and the feelings of dread.  Every time she has wondered if someone walked in on her most private of time.  Just as many times before, the pros win out.  She puts her hand over her mouth and tips back her head, chasing the pink and grey delight with a glass of water.

Calm, she thinks, you need to be calm.  Enjoy this.  She walks back to the living room and stands behind the couch, the only light seeping in through the blinds to her right, and waits.

As always, she feels it first rather than hears it.  The lightest of pressures on her insides.  There was no way to accurately describe it, part filling meal, part deep breath, part something squirming within her, seeking release.  The changes within her had yet to manifest themselves visibly, but they were just beginning to assert themselves audibly.  Light gurgles begin to fill the room as see feels the feeling of pressure spread beyond her lower trunk.  The pressure spreads, pushed along beneath her skin by its incessant, forceful nature.  The skin of her breasts flush with her cheeks as the force builds up there.  An electric thrill races up her spine as the pressure seeks out her womanhood.  Her thighs join in the pneumatic embrace, as does her hindquarters, and her arms feel the lightest of airs build within them.

Primed, she thought.  There was no more room to spread.  It was time for the bubbles.

Today, the bubbles start within her calves.  The fizzing and gurgling become louder, more assertive, within the still confines of her apartment.  The internal tickle fills her legs, stretching her creamy flesh most deliciously.  Larger and larger bubbles form, shifting, swelling, breaking new ground as she feels one monstrous bubble shift from her right thigh into the cheek above.

It was different every single time she had done this before. Sometimes it started up in her belly, sometimes in her chest.  Sometimes the swelling was even, symmetrical, sometimes random, making her Picasso-like in her transformation.  She didn't care.  Every time was a thrill, a pleasure unlike any other, for her and her alone to enjoy.

Her effervescent nature continues to assert itself, as her left cheek plays catch-up with its sibling.  Her breasts begin their steady rise, perking and swelling as one, lifting the fabric of her blouse.  That won't be the only thing they'll be lifting, she thinks, as she gives the bottom of her shirt an experimental tug.  Her feminine balloons, becoming more so by the minute, are restrained, pulled down by her actions.  That, however, is not in their nature anymore, and as soon as she releases the cloth, her swelling chest pulls upward, hanging away from her body, devoid of gravity.

She closes her eyes as her hands shoot to her belly.  The bubbles continue their campaign of tickling and filling.  The swelling and stretching of her curves affects her feelings, her perception of the world.  Gone are the bills, the heartache, the stress of work.  Gone is the poorly-maintained apartment, its brickwork crumbling.  Gone are the incessant calls from family, calls to find a better job, as if she had not been trying, calls to start a family, as if she could control her last boyfriend's wandering eye.  All that is left is the stretching, the swelling, the hug of her lightly constricting clothing.  Her body sings an electric tune, audible in swelling and creaking flesh, but only appreciated by those who swell with it.

Almost there, she thinks.  She gives an experimental push off with her toes.  That lightest of bounces nearly takes her to the ceiling.  Drifting down, she opens her eyes to take sight of her new form.  Breasts light and round dominate her vision, stretched out from teardrop shapes into swollen, tall domes by the swelling of her now continuous chest cavity behind them and belly beneath them.  Her entire trunk a spheroid dominated by her basketball sized chest and watermelon sized rear.  Swollen, cone-like thighs connect beneath her weightless girth, barely contained by her stretched-out sweatpants, the elastic band cutting pleasurably into her swollen middle beneath her out-turned bellybutton.  Gently swollen biceps and forearms she drapes across her gaseous bosom.  "One last place," she gasps, as she awaits for her feet to reach terra firma.

She never reaches the ground.  A massive bubble forms within her belly and drops down to the last patch of uninflated flesh.  The forbidden vault between her legs fills with lifting gas.  One last electric thrill shoots through her body, a lightning storm of feelings, of ecstasy, as the walls of her most intimate orifice swell with passion, pressure, and the purest of all cardinal pleasures.  A muffled scream escapes her lips, heard only within the thick walls of her home, as she hangs, weightlessly, before her buoyant nature finally asserts itself and carries her up on a sea of gas, caressing her inflated form, until she finally takes refuge upon the ceiling.  Her energy spent, her stress released, her clenched eyes relax as dreamless sleep takes her.

...

I am hollow, she thinks to herself.  Awoken by the flash of a police car's lights behind the blinds, she finds herself resting atop her swollen belly.  Buoyant still, but no longer sky bound, a swollen mound making only the smallest of influences upon the gravity-bound world.  I have nothing to look forward to, no pleasant past to reminisce.  I work a dead-end job where nobody takes notice of me.  My family does not understand, nor do they try to.  My friends are distant, my choice of potential companions, disastrous.  The world sees me as having no substance, no weight, a hollow shell of a woman.  All I have to look forward to on the weekend is to revel in my hollowness.

Idly, she traces a line around a breast, a tingle of swollen delight and buoyant promise received in return.  A moment's pleasure in a sea of pain.