Warning: This is a very silly piece of inflation fiction: so you can only read it if you are properly grown up, a bit naughty, and can understand the appropriate tingles and giggles!
In the darkness, it could have been anyone, and I had to be sure. So I endured the aching tension until the car stopped completely and a figure got out. Standing by the phonebox I could see his face, and only then did I leave the hedgerow and run over. The night air was now cold against my body and the hard tarmac smacked against the soles of my feet. The fear hadn't left me, and I experienced each stride as a heart-stopping moment before the ground's percussion caught me again. It still felt wrong.
For a long moment we clung beneath the headlamps glare; his open gaze of relief and assurance holding me. I relented to the shaking, not all driven by cold, washing over me with a half-sob. "Won't let go this time" he whispered. I just nodded.
He guided me around to the passenger's side, hovering close enough to grab as climbed in; unneeded, but necessary. The car interior was warm, and the dashboard lights reflected against my dimpled skin. The thrum of the engine seemed so natural and real; an anchor from the vast whorling silence I had experienced. I found myself pressing an arm up against the roof, reflexively. My thoughts had caught me out again. I forced myself to believe things might ok. He rummaged behind for a blanket. The coarse woolen fibres nestled with the scent of thin oils as he enfolded me in the tartan throw. I pushed the rough folds down between my legs, covering bare thighs and the lingering flush.
He settled into his seat, one hand on the wheel, uncertain. "I, um, would have brought your clothes, but there wasn't much..." His voice tailed off.
"I remember that much".. The pressing confinement, the sharp twang of elastic release. God, I'd barely noticed at time, but the memory snapped through my voice.
"Hey". A steadying hand, a look of hurt, and his sympathy edged on my guilt. It had been rough on him too. "Sure you're alright?"
"I think...I think so.... Oh God..."
"You're bleeding". His hand followed his words to my forearm.
"Scratched. I got to holding onto a tree. A damn Hawthorn tree, I think". I half-laughed, letting the cracks show. At the time, it hadn't seemed so funny; I mean thorns; things that might pop. But I wasn't going to let go.
"We'll go my place. It's nearer; and, umm, can fit you up with some jeans; got a t-shirt for you"
"Yeah. Can't go home like this. Shit, If Claire is back from her shift," Again the laugh. I didn't want to be left alone anyway. "Can we just drive?"
He nodded. The car reversed, turned about, and headed back towards the main road. The high-banked growth tunneled the headlights,and we plunged through the ring of night. Down here, the stars no longer shone. I was glad. In their utterly cold presence, I had been an impossible trespasser.
The car picked up speed and with the intensity of motion I needed him to tell me things were alright. That he was alright. "Sorry. It's just been,well, a lot. And I'm not making much sense. I mean, where were you?". It sounded like an accusation. But he hadn't abandoned me. He'd done all he could, right up to the moment his hand slipped from mine.
He was silent for awhile. "I watched for as long as I could. I mean, you just went.... I couldn't see. I got to the car and thought of following. But the clouds. I just drove around. Just a complete fucking blank. I was so worried. I was thinking what I was going to tell your folks. Until I got your call. I didn't recognise the number. For some reason I thought it was the police; that they knew everything. That I'd be under arrest for either manslaughter or, or...an air traffic violation for all I knew."
I was aware now of how much I was shivering. Strange I hadn't really felt it before. I choked out my frustration, letting it rupture in the recollection of events "Hell, I could barely remember your number. I had to repeat it half a dozen times to the operator before I got it right. I was such a mess. She must have thought I was drunk, calling reverse charges at 2am. I was afraid she'd think I'd had an accident and send an ambulance. Or the police."
"That might have been a problem."
"You're telling me. 'How did you get here, Miss?' ' 'Oh, that's easy, officer, you see I've been flo...". An edge of hysteria. God, I don't want to lose it now.
"Hey". Again the look of concern. "I came as quickly as I could. There was quite a breeze."
I shuddered. After the start, I hadn't felt any wind. Just the caress of the night air, the cling of fog vapour condensing against me. I'd been lucky there too; if it had been winter, I might have frozen.
"I know". I tried to show a smile. That I forgave him. That there was nothing to forgive. It couldn't have been more than 3 hours since we were drinking on the patio together. Though it seemed a lot longer. How far in 3 hours? 20 miles? 30? I knew I'd been panicking about how close I was to the sea, though it had been never more than a silver sliver askance on the horizon. I'd kept trying to roll over for a good look, which was harder than it seemed because some bits of me had developed ideas about which direction they should be pointing in. With a stronger wind...
"Its alright." He reached over to squeeze my shoulder "I mean...you're...back to normal, right?"
I clenched the blanket about myself, trying to deny the echoes of memory and sensation. "Kinda. I mean I think so...not in any danger of....like before" I gestured upwards, leaving the thought unfinished. "Just don't feel quite.... heavy again."
"Maybe it takes a little while for the residue to work its way out. This...stuff must be like helium ,right? When I got your call I thought you'd still be... well, you know."
I shook my head "Hsssh, Hon, it can't have been helium. Listen; you see that balloon-seller in the high street who has a bunch bigger than ...and she never look as if.... you know. Whatever it was; it was a lot more powerful than helium. In a lot of ways."
I gave myself an experimental squeeze, pressing against my residual fears (still a bit too perky just there?). Half wary (or was I hoping?) for the reedy hissing that first alerted me something was amiss back then. He was probably right. I did feel more settled than I did half an hour ago. And definitely better then than half an hour before that; clinging to a tree branch with my legs whipping in the air. And before that... but it was a different kind of feeling, with the fear jumbled into sensuality, the soft kiss of the sky...
"But how did you get...? " He paused. "I'm sorry, dumb question"
"No, s'ok." I was amazed. "I need to...understand this. Feel my way through it. God, initially, I thought, I really thought that I could burp it out. I got that genius idea from a kid's book, for chrissakes. But I couldn't. Like having a huge bubble in me that never quite... well, then I tried to squeeze it out...while I could still move."
"Squeezing didn't work? I know we tried to..."
"On the patio yes," (I remember. The pressure. Undulating exertions, my rising panic at what was happening, the pneumatic lift forcing him astride, as I slipped out from under). "Oh hon, its not your fault, there was nothing you could do. And I had to let go. I had to."
"I tried to keep hold, but when you... " He didn't conclude. His eyes mirrored the receding forlornness of memory. The empty grasp. The lights of the decking becoming dimmer and dimmer as the night swallowed me. Cries lost on the wind. Everything gone with the wind.
"Oh hon, I didn't want to hurt you. How long could you have held on? What if you fell? This way, it was just me..."
"I'd have found a way" He muttered, aware of the inadequacy. Gratitude and guilt. I knew I loved him for it.
"I found.... a way, too. A way back. But squeezing didn't work, hon, Not like you imagine, anyway", I blushed, smothering the intimate memory of excitement. "But it did do something". I'd put too much of an unintentional tease in my explanation. He looked across. He knew me that well.
"I was...distracted". I continued. "The gas made everything...its kinda hard to say, but it made me taut. More sensitive."
"You almost sound like you enjoyed it."
There it was. The guilty secret. I couldn't hide this between us.
I whispered my confession. "Oh God, yes. You can't imagine."
He blinked, but said nothing.
The memories returned, and I felt myself gulping over their clarity. I imagined myself back on the patio. The initial moment of realisation; the puzzled look on his face as the wine glass fell; gravity's poor slave. My high-pitched shriek (I had screamed, hadn't I?). Then, so quickly, that feeling. Inside me. Indescribable. But the sounds; the rip-stretching of fabric. The comical escape of the buttons on my blouse. Now that was undignified... I found myself laughing....
"S'ok..." My words were wrought with acceptance, relief. "It's all ok...."
The recollections cascade after each other. The sudden perking to the mounting hiss of pitch. The rising arc of my breasts, plumped and already waving before me. He'd been saying something, possibly anything but the obvious. Inflating. I'd felt myself stiffen, arms unable to restrain the swelling pink domes before me. I don't remember losing the skirt, but I must have been naked by this stage. I remember the table-candle casting a perfect crescent on my roundness, but I was already coming adrift from such concerns. Slowly, an overwhelming feeling of up-ness begun. Now when I was a little girl I used to fantasise about playing with too many balloons (who didn't?), but this was utterly unlike that. It was more push than pull. Like the air was a tangible mesh of insistent bubbles around me.
From seated, I'd been lifted to my feet. And then to tiptoe. He'd grabbed hold by about that point, instinctively aware of the danger that I had barely comprehended, his arms a bracelet about my expanding tummy. For a while he pushed me backwards, and I felt his firmness grind through the bulging pressure against me. The flush of recall made me squirm slightly in the car seat. Christ, what had that gas been doing to me? (I guess the mind can't hold terror and arousal together) That was late, with the vertigo. Then I just wanted him to push deeper and deeper (did he really need those pants? Couldn't he see mine were off already?). I was gasping something, some supplication. But what did I want? Just the awareness of tension merging with illicit moisture, blossoming tingles between my thighs. I'd been so scented. And he'd tried to hold me down; the presence of him spreadeagled against my swelling.
I think that's when I came for the first time. Oh God. I really did. The ripples chasing across the tautened surface of my ballooning body, concentric rings of pleasure as they converged across my labia, my nipples. I would have flopped backwards...if I'd been able.
Overwhelmed by the sense of being bigger, buoyant (don't balloons know better than to fight their fate?), I felt myself surrendering to the penetrating hiss as it reverberated within me. He was slipping, grunting; the smooth wooden boards no longer pressed against my back by his weight. I rolled out from under him, the flush of rhapsody broken by a sharp bounce, then rolling up. Face pressed against the patio awning, widening eyes caught the chasm of the sky. Realisation. Omygod. Up. The cry failed in my throat, but here I went...
An arresting tug. And he was holding my hand. For a long moment I was tethered between earth and void. An errant bubble (in-trouble bubble!). Then his ruggedness was failing against my earnest, feminine, buoyancy; he was already being lifted into the air. His eyes were silver as he held me, the tears forlornly drowning his exclamation. I knew what I had to do. I let go.
I saw him fall back. I half-wept my desperation to him, hoping he could hold it between us, but the water forming in my eyes rose with me (Such a naughty girl! Even my tears were denied communion with earth).
Up. Beyond any flailing human reach. Up. The dark line of trees swept below, swaying wordlessly to the breeze the bore me aloft. Up. Then yellow lights of houses picked out in sleeping lines as they tumbled below. Up. The darkened umber course of fields along the river, deep in its flow. Up.
I tried kicking futilely, having the idea that it might be like swimming. But it wasn't; the gas shifted within me, sending me rotating under the pull of my buoyant belly. Lighter than air, my gaze following my floaty breasts towards the clouds. I couldn't stop myself rising. The clouds lapped at me, their banks of grey mist first enfolding, then relenting to moonlit white as I rose through them. Then their grip was loosed entire, receding away in silence, as I rose into a new landscape of candy-floss swirls, contrasting silver and sepia tones.
I panted broken breaths into the expanse as a sheen of fear gripped me (now I worried about falling - jeez!). Perhaps I would never come down. Or that I'd rise until I burst. Or drift out to sea. Then, high in the sky, an unlooked-for serenity. My tension unknotted under the admixture of strangeness and wonder. I felt secure, as if a huge glove was tightening about every inch of me, but evenly and gently to support me. All my senses were stretched astride a magical bubble of lift; unable to comprehend, merely experience, and accept (why fear the air, when I was a native of it?). Anyhow, trying to move just made stuff going 'boing!'. And that caused the tingles to re-appear.... The memory ignited more giggles. Going 'boing' had helped, in the end. The waves of tingles had released me from helpless buoyancy with the gentlest of hisses. Then down through white-misted dream to landscape, solidity, the grip of the tempora mundi.
Memories tethered, I came back to myself, to the present rolling motion of the car. The sable-passage of our journey was still ours to share, if I wanted it. I looked at him again, my eyes now anointed with madness and delight.
"Hon... I was floating. Really, really floating. I was terrified, yes, but, but...it was exhilarating. Like nothing I've experienced before. Exhilarating and sensuous." I leaned forward, taking the kiss to him, lips tangling to let the confidence slip between us with ease. "I actually blossomed up there. Several times."
The wash of memories, settling into pools of acceptance, became part of me now. Shorn of the terror, I could only recall the sensation of freedom; the wideness of the world curving away below me. A lesser, untethered moon adrift in an ocean of stars, drawing passing envy from the constancy above (who is this girl to wander barefoot, trackless through our dreamscape, unchaperoned and buoyant?). I remembered it all, shiningly.
"I turned into a balloon." I breathed. "A real, honest-to-goodness, lighter-than-helium-in-air balloon!"
"But I loved it". I whispered. And I wanted to share it. Again.