Liquid L.E.A.D.
Written By: Edward Viera
Story is a complete fiction!
I am a Scientist; My Name is Dr. Johannes Dielberg. I live alone on this, or rather in this uninhabited island. It is rather quite a large island, perhaps thirteen miles in length and ten in width. I am guesstimating due to the fact that I jog about ten miles a day to keep fit and various other exercises.
Han, Han where are you? I’m in here! Oh, did I forget to mention David. Well, he is my now life companion. He is the reason I am writing this story, or one of the reasons why I am writing it.
Let me start from the beginning. I was a young lad, about ten. There was a party that I was going to with my family, two brothers and two sisters, making us five children. I was the second born, of the five of us. Goulda was the first-born, then I, then my other sister and then the twin brothers. We were not a poor family by any means; rather we were a semi-wealthy family. There was never a day when we had to do without.
We were on our way to a party and I was giddy. I have always been this way, I love balloons, and there were always balloons at these parties. We arrived at the party and as I guessed there were balloons, lots of them. It was almost magical to see all these balloons, especially now I see these extraordinarily large one, bigger than I was tall.
Socializing with others was not one of my greater strengths. I liked being alone. My mind was always elsewhere, Doctors said I was mentally challenged, and others still said I was socially dysfunctional. At that age I never understood any of it yet, so I never cared.
I went off to be among these wonderfully inflated toys. When no one was watching I would always take and hide in a room where no one was and play with the balloon. Eventually I would find a way to untie it and inhale the gas inside and pretend I was a balloon. This night was different though; these giant balloons were just so awe inspiring that I had to take one. The chance came and I saw one barely tied down and almost ready to escape, it happened to be tied to the banister leading up stairs. I did a quick maneuver and slipped up the stairs into one of the bedrooms. What luck this looked to be a spare room that no one ever used. I didn’t know what to do now, untie it, squeeze it, or what. So I lay there admiring this giant that wanted nothing more than to float away. I don’t know how much time passed by I enjoyed every second of watching this balloon. I figured I was away long enough and I didn’t want them to come looking for me and find me with it. This one proved a challenge to untie but I did it. The gas was escaping fast and I put my mouth over the hole and inhaled. I was in heaven, suddenly I felt my stomach ache as if I was full, and the escaping gas was so strong it inflated my stomach. I stopped it from escaping by twisting the end. I was light headed but happy, at that point I decided to look in the mirror that was there, and I noticed my shirt looked puffed out. I looked down and noticed my abdomen was sticking out, as if I had eaten more than normal. I was scared, and didn’t know what to do. I lost my grip on the wonderful giant and chased it around the room until it stopped and fully deflated. Suddenly I felt this urge to burp, and I did, rather loudly and strong. I felt myself and felt I shrank, then it hit me, the gas filled my stomach. So I forced myself to continue burping while I carefully folded my prize and put it away in my pocket. Suddenly the door swung open and I saw a couple hugging and kissing walking in, they almost stumbled over me until the heard a loud “BURP”. Startled they stopped, looked at me, called me a pig and shoved me out the door.
The party was over early, we left, me with a special prize in my pocket. On the way home my mind was still on what happened to me, with the gas inflating my stomach and that full feeling. But something was different, I was not thinking about my prize but rather that inflated feeling and how I looked. All the way home this confused me. Even going to bed that evening I could not forget it.
The next few weeks were of great thought and wonderment. I just couldn’t figure it out, I loved the large prize and how big it always got, but it wasn’t enough for me, I needed to be the one inflated, not the balloon.
It turns out in my teen years growing up and going to school, it was the school counselors that discovered I had an extremely high IQ. I was tested and retested and placed in advanced classes. At sixteen, I was already in my second year of University. I found that chemistry and physics were my great strengths, I excelled at both. At age twenty I was going for my PHD. By the time I was twenty-four, I could go no further with my education, I was considered to be one of the best in the world.
I was now thirty, working for the top chemical producing company in the world and bored because they wanted only the purest of chemicals produced, and I was the one designing the filters they used for distillation. In my spare time I was kept busy with my thoughts of giant balloons inflating and never popping, but of course not in real life. It wasn’t until one night we closed down the factory for the holidays and I stayed late to borrow some chemicals for my lab at home. I could buy all the chemicals I wanted, but there were legal channels to go thru to purchase some of them, even the facility had to sign a Federal release form. Some of the chemicals were extremely volatile and could be used to make bombs.
I went home with the chemicals I needed. I lived, in a two-bedroom home, with vaulted ceilings painted to look like the sky. I like to dream of floating up to the clouds on my ceiling. On tired evenings I would sit on my recliner and stare up and dream, while the big balloons danced about me, that I always kept inflated. It wasn’t until one of these evenings, that the idea, of making the skin stretchable came to me, to stretch and inflate like a balloon. It wasn’t until that night that my obsession began. I would take the latex, in it’s raw sap state, and study it. Night after night, I diluted it further and further, trying to find, how I can make it safe for the human body to ingest, and have the body take and absorb it’s molecular composition and literally become “latex like”. I was able to discern that there were a few compounds in the raw latex that were essential to it, but they weren’t feasible without becoming toxic to the body.
I was at the lab one night and suddenly saw that we extruded chemicals to get them pure enough to make the filters, but we also put them thru a type of aeration. Armed with this knowledge, I went home that evening and worked and figured if I used edible compounds that were essential to the body, it could detoxify the latex chemicals. Two fires, three smoke outs, all in a years time, and suddenly I discovered what I was looking for, but it had a problem…………..the chemicals were too harsh for consumption. It was as if they were dead, no life to them. I refused to test on animals so therefore I was my own Guinea Pig.
I decided to electrocute the roach walking across my lab counter at home, for my close but unfortunately still failed experiment. Upon turning on the current, I noticed the beaker with my new compound was in the way and got zapped instead, lucky roach, took off like a bat out of hell. I turned off the current and carefully grabbed the beaker and took it to the lab fridge. It was now Saturday morning and I decided to got to my lab and make sure I didn’t fry anything important. Everything looked good, so off I went to shower and get my morning workout in. I was done, showered again, ate breakfast did some cleaning since I had no maid, didn’t need anyone poking around or asking questions. It was now noon, I ate a quick lunch, and back down to the lab I went.
I cleaned around in the lab and then went to the fridge and pulled out my experiment. There was something strange with it, it had a sweet smell to it, very inviting smell. I refrained from tasting it; instead I put some on a slide and examined it under the microscope. My jaw dropped in amazement, the compound had life to it, and it was now energized. The electrical discharge, must have given it life, (Frankenstein?), NAW! I couldn’t help myself, I was too excited, not to want to try it. I took a small teaspoonful and tried it…………….DELICIOUS! I decided, I didn’t want to risk it, so I drank about four ounces, or so I thought, the taste was so good, I drank it all. My taste buds craved that wonderful flavor, but there was no more. It wasn’t until then that I realized I drank the whole thing. Panic came over me, what do I do? What kind of side affects would there be? Will I survive this, or will I not live long enough to regret it? After an hour of racking my brain, I felt mentally exhausted and had a fuzzy feeling going thru my entire body, so I went upstairs, sat on the recliner, and stared up at the ceiling and dozed off.
I awoke later that evening and felt fine. In the freezer I went, grabbed a frozen dinner, heated it up and ate. After dinner I went down in the lab, looked at the empty beaker and set out to the arduous process of making more. At one point I took a deep breath and suddenly felt something strange, my chest jutted out as I filled my lungs, I was……………..inflating?! I quickly exhaled and ran to the nearest mirror, everything seemed okay with me. No unusual blemishes, spots, rashes, or anything. Could I have............possibly succeeded, did I finally make a complete breakthrough, or was it merely a freak, my mind playing tricks with me? I calmed down and again took a deep breath, my eyes grew wide, I was finally inflating. I held it, forced it to stay in, I took in more air and still more. I was inflating with ease and having no trouble with breathing while doing so. I was so excited that I yelled with excitement and all the air escaped out of me instantly. I quickly ran up stairs and began running into the balloons and jumping for joy. All the jumping and excitement got me breathing heavy that I started to inflate, bigger, bigger, bigger, and bigger still. I was about to hit the ceiling with my head when I decided to stop. All I did for the next few hours was to enjoy being inflated, just like a Balloon.