How Gabriel missed an important physics lesson, and how Elisha gave him a pop quiz.
Gabe's dreams seldom followed a linear story line. His dreams were random, disconnected images but occasionally took on breathtaking detail and realism. Sleep did not always come easy while he shared a home with a witch stepsister who had blown him up like a human balloon until he nearly burst. Since then, the incident manifested itself in his unconscious mind, as was the case this particular time...
Balloons were everywhere. They covered the floors and the walls, some floated to the ceiling, others floated through the room with abandon. It was not a room he recognized but one that was built with the power of his unconscious imagination, spacious and classically elegant, and very, very white, though mostly obscured by the balloons, pink, purple, blue, red, orange, green, and various other shades. Some were big and pear-shaped, others round and globular, some tied to a string, others free-floating. Where did they all come from?
As soon as the question entered his mind, he saw Emily, the cute blonde friend of his stepsister Elisha, wearing her glasses and her hair in a ponytail as usual. She sat on the floor, surrounded by balloons, as she puffed into a smooth, round, pink balloon. Gabe approached her, and the balloon seemed to double in size. Emily ignored him as she lifted the balloon into the air, and Gabe became mesmerized by its gigantic size. She blew it bigger, puffing with sexual ferocity. It doubled in size again, until it was bigger than Emily herself.
"Please don't pop it," Gabe found himself saying, but she continued to blow. "Please," he repeated, inexplicably begging for the balloon's continued existence.
"Why not?" said a voice, and Gabe turned to see Allison, the cute redhead, holding a big red balloon to her breasts as she blew into it. She giggled at some unknown joke. Smiling, she held the mouth of the balloon with her teeth as she rubbed her hands over its taut rubber.
Gabe turned back to Emily, who lay on her back, puffing up the giant balloon. But the balloon was different now: it had hands and feet, and a head. Atop of the balloon was the face of Michelle, a former friend of Elisha. Gabe had watched Elisha inflate the helpless Michelle until she burst. But there was Michelle, part of a huge pink balloon that Emily blew into.
"Pop her, Gabe," said Allison, standing next to him.
"I don't want to pop," Gabe said, seeming to speak for Michelle. Or was he speaking for himself, afraid that he'd be next?
"If she pops, you'll like it," Allison assured him.
Gabe looked again at Michelle's big, round, pink body, and in the next instant, she was gone. There was no noise, no fragments, but Gabe somehow knew Emily had caused her to burst. Or had he caused it? He felt guilty for not helping her.
"You popped her," said a voice from somewhere.
Gabe turned again, and this time he faced a darkened room, one that was again giant and spacious but was lit only by moonlight through a large window high above him. In the middle, inflated and gigantic, was Elisha's dark-skinned, dark-haired friend, Talia. She was giant but not completely round: Her stubby arms stuck straight out from her sides, too puffy to bend, and her large bloated frame was inexplicably supported by two stubby legs, covered by the shadow cast by her belly, which was inflated into a perfect semi-circle. Yet she was giant, easily reaching two stories, her small head appearing almost comically on top. She wore some kind of blue jumpsuit that glistened in the moonlight and stretched tightly over her entire body.
"You're a balloon-woman," Gabe might have said. Or maybe he just thought it.
Balloons flew into his face, obscuring his vision. He knocked them desperately out of the way, as if coming into contact with them might cause him to inflate like Talia or Michelle. The next thing he knew, the landscape had changed again: He was now in the back yard of a house he visited as a child. Balloons covered the lawn, and he saw one floating by that particularly grabbed his attention. It was Emily, inflated into a giant yellow balloon. She giggled as she floated past him. "I'm a balloon-woman," she told him.
"I can be bigger than that, you know," said Allison, and Gabe looked to see that Allison stood next to him again, but this time, she had inflated into a giant red balloon. She giggled as she bounced into him, floating with the breeze. Gabe watched them float around, and he had to admit he felt jealous. They looked like they were having fun, flying in the air.
At that moment, he looked down and realized that he was high above the ground. How was that possible, unless...? He looked again, and sure enough, it was true: He had inflated now, too. He was a giant, floating balloon-boy. Emily and Allison floated his way again, colliding with him and pinning him between their inflated bodies, giggling all the while. They bounced and floated for too brief a period, rubbing their round, rubber bodies together in some kind of bizarre balloon orgy.
"Play with us, Balloon Boy," Gabe thought Allison had said.
Emily giggled. "Balloon Boy," she repeated.
Gabe wished he still had arms, so he could reach toward those round, full balloons with the pretty faces on top. He wished he could watch them get bigger. And as soon as the thought entered his mind, Emily and Allison began to grow. Their heads seemed to float backwards as their bodies expanded, pushing them farther and farther from Gabe. As their faces faded from view, the inevitable thought crept into his mind.
How big would they get before...?
And then Allison soundlessly, quietly burst.
Gabe turned to look toward Emily, but she wasn't in sight for long. A second later, she too silently popped.
And then Gabe felt himself falling, falling for a long time. The balloons were gone, Emily and Allison were gone, and he looked down to find his stepsister Elisha, holding a string that was tied to his foot. Gabe realized later that there was no logical way he could have seen the string, but he knew it: He was Elisha's toy balloon, dangling helplessly on a string, being pulled in ways he didn't want to go.
"Please don't pop me," Gabe called down to her. "I don't want to pop."
"Why not?" Allison said, standing below him. She was now her regular self, as if she had never inflated, much less burst.
"I don't want to pop," he said.
"If she popped you, you'd like it," said Emily, also deflated and standing there looking up at him. Elisha tugged on the string, bringing him closer to the ground.
"Please," Gabe repeated. He was soon in Elisha's arms. (Was he smaller now? He must have been, as she could not have otherwise held him so easily.)
He saw Talia, a deflated Talia, watching him. "You want to pop."
"No," he said feebly, as he saw Elisha holding a pin to his taut skin.
Elisha smiled. "If I popped you, you'd like it. You'd fall in love with me."
Gabe looked up at her. God, she was beautiful. He said, "I want to pop."
And the pin came closer.
"Gabriel!"
"I want to pop!" Gabe blurted out, his head shooting up from his desk.
The classmates in his physics class burst out laughing. Mrs. Caldwell looked bemusedly at him. Gabe felt his face turning red. The lack of sleep had caught up with him, and he must have fallen asleep sometime during the lecture on kinetic energy. Now his personal gravitational field was a superconductor of unwanted attention and teasing. Even Marjorie, the class hottie, found Gabe's outburst to be an induction of comical energy.
After the laughter subsided somewhat, Mrs. Caldwell tried to assume control. "Thank you for sharing that information with the class, Gabriel. Now do you care to define the phrase ‘elastic collision'?"
Gabe passed, wanting nothing more to do with the subject of elasticity for quite some time.
It became apparent to Gabriel that he could no longer stay in the same house with his tormentor and stepsister Elisha. But getting a place of his own proved difficult: His wages earned from his part-time job simply disappeared—literally disappeared—from his possession, while Elisha began sporting a new wardrobe. He would be stuck with her for some time yet.
And he wasn't sure he had much time left. Some day, he knew, Elisha and her friends would go too far. If he couldn't get out, he would have to find help. He concluded that, Elisha's threats notwithstanding, his only hope was his stepmother Rachel.
But the issue of explaining to his stepmom that her daughter was a witch was touchy at best. Explaining that Elisha bordered on psychotic was an even more delicate subject. And explaining to Rachel that her daughter had blown him like a balloon—well, he could see how that might put a question mark around his sanity.
Still, the slender, athletic, 36-year-old Rachel Dickensen was always quite personable and approachable. She was also fair when it came to family disputes. He would have to make her listen, because the alternative was to allow himself to be Elisha's slave and hope that she doesn't one day accidentally, or not so accidentally, inflate him so much that he bursts.
She was washing dishes as he entered the kitchen. She stood with her back to him, and his eyes drifted down to the tight white shorts that clung snugly around her hips, the cloth riding up her rear, clutching to her skin and exposing the bottom of her shapely glutes. Her long black hair was tied in a pony tail, and when Rachel turned to face him, Gabe was pleasantly greeted by her breasts, her ample cleavage threatening to leap from the gossamer pink halter top she wore.
"How was school, Gabe?" she asked, drying her hands on a nearby dishtowel.
Gabe realized that he didn't know where to begin and suddenly became nervous. He avoided eye contact, and his eyes drifted downward again, this time to Rachel's tanned, sculptured legs. He inhaled sharply. As if he didn't have enough issues about wanting to boff his stepsister…
"Um, okay," he mumbled.
"Are you sure? Something on your mind?"
Actually, a lot was on his mind. Rachel was easily as hot, if not more so, than Elisha's friends. His mind drifted to the vivid balloon dream he had in physics class. God, those girls were hot, blowing up balloons. And they were hot AS balloons. He couldn't help but wonder what Rachel would look like if…
And as soon as the thought entered his head, Rachel's belly bloated outwards.
"Oh, God! What the hell?!" Rachel gaped at her enlarged belly, feeling it with both hands to determine what was filling her up. It felt like air.
Gabe was equally amazed, and for a moment, he thought he might be dreaming again. He shook his head as if to shake this vision from his mind. But no, he was awake and gaping at his stepmother, who looked as if she had become nine months pregnant in a second.
She looked up pleadingly at Gabe. He wondered if she would get any bigger.
And just like that, she did.
Her breasts lifted up like helium balloons, tearing free of her top. The sudden inflation startled Gabe for just a second—but when he looked at those giant globes on her chest, so huge, golden, and inflated, he wanted to see her get bigger.
In conjunction with his wish, Rachel grew larger. At first, she tried to cover her exposed giant breasts, but soon she had other problems. Her sides and back blew out, making her midsection into a large ball. Her arms were thrown to the sides, and they puffed up along with her legs.
"Gabe! Help me! Make it stop!"
Gabe wasn't sure how—he figured this had to be Elisha's work, and he didn't claim to understand sorcery. Why would she cause her own mother to inflate? He looked over Rachel's round balloon body. She looked...she looked...
...She looked absolutely beautiful!
"Gaaaaaaaabe!" said Rachel, her inflation shooting forward again, doubling her size in seconds. She inflated like the pony-tailed balloon that she was, and it finally dawned on Gabe.
Elisha wasn't causing Rachel to inflate.
He was.
He didn't know how it happened—maybe the witchcraft rubbed off on him, maybe he stumbled onto its secret, who knew?—but he realized that the more he became attracted to Rachel as a balloon, the more she inflated. He didn't know how to stop it. She was so beautiful—
"Ohhhhh!" Her inflation increased again. "Stop it, Gabe! What are you doing to me?!"
"I—I don't know!" he said. He didn't want her to get any bigger. At the same time, he couldn't help himself but become aroused at this beautiful balloon woman!
"Helllllp meeeee!" She inflated more, knocking over the kitchen furniture as she filled up the room, becoming more snug in the confined space.
He wanted desperately to help her, even attempting to close his eyes. But he couldn't! He had to look at this beautiful, round, inflated balloon-woman, so large and full, growing tighter as she grew and grew...!
"Please!" she called out to him. "Don't do this to me, Gabe! Stop it! Please!"
Her body squeaked as it tried to withhold all the air building up inside her. Her head was now to the ceiling, her sides pressed against the walls. Still her body hissed and squeaked, straining to be even larger when it didn't seem possible...
Gabe didn't want to think it.
But it's hard to force oneself not to think of something.
So he did.
SHE'S GOING TO POP!
And with a sudden BANG!, she did just that.
In the next instant, Gabe stood alone in the kitchen, his heart pounding. And so was his pants. There was no sign of Rachel, no scraps or anything to indicate that she had ever existed.
And there he stood, incredibly, powerfully, physically aroused at having popped her.
"I knew it!" said a familiar voice.
Gabe spun around to see Elisha in the doorway to the kitchen. She stood with her arms folded across her healthy chest, the torn T-shirt she wore exposing her midriff. Her blue jeans, as usual, looked painted on, all the way from her hourglass hips to her dainty, slender ankles.
"I didn't mean to—I don't know how I—" Gabe began.
Elisha raised a hand. "Oh, relax! You think I'd actually let you pop my mom? That was just an intricate illusion I created. Mom's actually out with her boyfriend right now."
"W—what the hell?!" Gabe tried to wrap his head around all this.
"I read your mind," she explained. "I saw how you dreamed about inflating my friends, and how you were getting off on it! So I set up this experiment to see if you'd get off on inflating my mom, and you did!"
"I didn't!" Gabe feebly protested.
She pointed to the bulge in his pocket. "Then what's that?!"
He couldn't answer.
"You sick disgusting pervert! You got hot popping my mom, you psycho! It's bad enough you get boners from me, but now you want to inflate my mom? And my friends?" Gabe still couldn't talk, and he swallowed although his mouth was dry. She stepped forward and thrust a finger into his chest. "You're the balloon-boy around, here, get it? You're the balloon!"
And Gabe looked down to see his body plumping up. "No, please! Elisha, I'm sorry!"
But Elisha's rage was irrepressible. Gabe's body became a round balloon ball in just seconds, and he gently floated upward. He floated on his back, looking up at the ceiling, when he noticed the ceiling fan. Ceiling fan?! Had that always been there?
He drifted inexorably toward the swinging blades of the fan that threatened to turn his balloon body into shreds.
And then Elisha allowed him to stop, just about a foot from the fan.
"You're going to stay up there for a while and think about what you've done," Elisha told him. She turned to leave, but stopped and spoke over her lovely shoulder. "Oh, and if I were you, I wouldn't spend this time thinking about my mom or my friends as balloons. Everytime you do, you'll get bigger. So don't think about it!" She giggled and left the kitchen.
It was of course impossible not to think about it when Elisha put the thought into his head, so his mind was immediately filled with the images of a balloon Rachel, a balloon-Emily, a balloon Allison, a balloon Talia...!
And with each thought, his spherical shape expanded, growing ever closer to the blades.
Gabe would spend the next hour running songs through his head, anything to keep himself from thinking of inflated women.
He wasn't always successful.