The doctor broke him the news as plainly as possible: "You've got to relax and stay away from stress. If you don't—boom! You'll blow up."
Frank looked over at his girlfriend Taylor, who merely shrugged. "What are you talking about?"
"It's stress," the doctor repeated. "And it's not helped by the fact that you have anger management issues. You've got to learn to control your temper or it'll manifest itself physically."
"How, exactly? You mean, like a heart attack?"
"Nope. I mean: Boom."
"Boom, what?"
The doctor mimicked an explosion with his hands. "Just…boom!"
Frank scowled. He hated it when doctors spoke in medical jargon. It pissed him off. He looked over again at Taylor, who gave him a placating smile. She patted Frank's hand and told the doctor, "Thank you, Doctor. I'll make sure he's taken care of."
The couple headed for the door, but the doctor called out after him: "Remember!"
"Yeah, I know," said Frank. "Boom. Gotcha."
They drove away from the clinic, Frank barely surpressing his rage. "Man, what a quack! For that he's billing my health insurance! I oughta sue!"
"Now, honey," Taylor began.
Frank pulled up close behind a car that was merely driving the speed limit, and not the ten miles over that he prefered. "Damn it! Get out of my way!"
"Honey, the doctor told you to relax."
Frank ignored her, still screaming at the car in front of them. "Pull over and let someone who drive who knows how!" He continued screaming until Taylor noticed his skin turning red.
"Easy, honey! Your temper!"
Frank opened his mouth to tell her to shut up, but at that moment, he felt his clothes getting tighter. He looked down to see his body plumping up, puffing up all over as if he were filling up with air. "What the hell?" he asked, angry that his doctor didn't warn him about this.
"Honey! Pull over!"
Frank did so, barely managing to move his inflated limbs to turn the steering wheel. He looked over his puffy body, looking as if he had gained weight suddenly in every nook and cranny. His stuffed legs filled the front seat, and his midsection had become his own airbag. And he was slowly getting bigger in every direction, his skin getting redder as it stretched further and further.
"Your temper, Frank! Control your temper!" Taylor patted him on his shoulder, and Frank looked over at the hot brunette beside him and relaxed a little. He took a deep breath and exhaled. As he did so, his body seemed to deflate a little. "That's it, Frank," Taylor encouraged him. "Relax."
He continued to calm himself, and in a few moments, he had shrunk down to nearly his normal size. "My God," Frank said, clutching his chest in relief. "The doc was right. I gotta learn to calm down or…or…"
"Boom," Taylor finished.
"Yeah, right. Boom. Thank God you're here, Taylor."
Taylor smiled back at him, and Frank didn't even notice that it was not a particularly friendly smile.
"Honey! Come quick! Hurry!" The urgency in Taylor's voice made Frank leap up from his chair, only to stub his toe on the table. "Son of a—!" He clutched his injured toe (man, that bastard hurt!) but still rushed to his darling Taylor, who was obviously in some kind of distress. He limped upstairs to their living room, tripping over a rug and slamming into the floor. "God damn it!" he screamed. He felt his body turning warmer, and he immediately suppressed his next outburst. He tried to calm himself as he picked up and made his way to the couch where Taylor lay. "What's the matter? Are you sick?!"
Taylor looked up at him. "Could you hand me the remote? It's over there," she said, pointing to a coffee table not two feet from her arm's reach.
"That's what you called me up here for?! To get the damn remote?! Do you know what I went through to—!" Just then, his body plumped up, making a slight hissing sound. His legs and feet pumped up, making him marginally taller as his midsection grew wider. His eyes also widened as he looked at his puffy arms, now twice as chubby and growing as his skin took on a familiar red tint.
"Fra-ank!" said Taylor in a sing-song voice. "Remember your nerves! You'll blow up!"
Frank closed his eyes, chanting, "Happy thoughts! Happy thoughts! Happy thoughts!" He continued to expand all over, still resembling a pumped-up tire; but in a few moments, the exapansion slowed, the hissing eased, and his body slowly, ever so slowly, resumed its normal shape and color.
"You've just got to control that temper, honey," Taylor reminded him.
"Then don't do that to me!" he said. "You can't just treat me like—" He heard a faint hissing sound and shut his mouth. The hissing stopped.
"Now: Hand me the remote."
Frank just nodded, handing Taylor the remote.
"Bring me some doughnuts. Chop-chop, now."
Frank complied, as he would do very often in the upcoming weeks.
Taylor put on a few pounds as Frank lost weight, having worked his ass off for the last couple of weeks, doing every chore imaginable while tending to Taylor's every need. Even when Taylor went out shopping—putting way more on her husband's credit card than he would have liked—Frank couldn't rest. He had to catch up with every chore he hadn't done while he was waiting on Taylor like a slave. He had just finished doing the laundry and took a rare break, collapsing in a chair just as Taylor pulled up into the driveway.
She walked into the house, a little heavier than she was two weeks ago, but definitely still eye candy in her halter top and black stretch pants. She wore her glasses and her hair was put in a pony tail. She carried several bags that Frank correctly predicted he could not afford.
"Frank!" she yelled, and he jumped up from the chair that he desperately needed. "Promise me you won't get angry."
Frank frowned. "How can I promise you that? What happened?"
"Now, honey, you know what'll happen if you get angry," Taylor said, as if explaining something to a small (and really stupid) child.
"Damn it, Taylor, what happened?!" As soon as the words left his mouth, Frank slapped a hand over it and took several deep breaths till his natural color returned.
"I took your car shopping—"
"My Lincoln? The one I told you never to take out of the garage?"
"Don't interrupt, dear. I took it shopping and there was a little accident."
"A little—!" He bit his lip. Then he sighed. "Well, that's okay, dear. I'm sure it wasn't your fault."
"I ran a stop sign and slammed into a cop car."
"Oh, God!"
"The car's been deemed a total loss."
"Jesus!"
"So I bought another one."
"You what?! You bought another car?!" His skin turned red. His cheeks puffed out slightly.
"Yeah, I had to write a check, though, cuz I maxed out all the credit cards."
"Taylor, for Christ's sake!" Frank's body plumped up all over. "Why are you doing this? We can't afford the way you're blowing through our money!"
"That's why you need to get another job," Taylor said simply. "And the sooner the better, cuz I called your boss today and told him you were quitting."
"What?!" His sides blimped out, his gut billowed forward, his body trembled as it swelled like an inflatable doll. His arms and legs kept filling up, but they became shorter as they receded into his ballooning midsection.
"Oh, I did you a favor," Taylor assured him. "Just like when I threw out your baseball cards."
"My baseball cards?" He swelled farther, blew up bigger.
"And your favorite shirt. I don't think it suited you."
"Taylor!" Frank's growth surged, plumping up so much that his arms and legs were now just puffy stubs sticking out of the reddening orb that was now his figure. He shook with rage and helplessness as he continued to get bigger and bigger and bigger.
"Fra-ank!" Taylor teased. "You're losing your temper! Naughty, naughty! You're going to explode!"
Frank tried to control his temper, but his rage spurned him on to greater heights and widths. He grew and grew, and the room became smaller and smaller. His inflating body began to knock over furniture and shelves. Taylor, still grinning slightly, backed away and let Frank expand until his head touched the ceiling and his sides were pressed against the walls. His eyes opened wide, struggling in vain to supress the rage that consumed him and inflated him. His indignant trembling continued, rocking the walls until the house was shaking. "Nnnng! Nnnnggg! Nnnnggg!!" he grunted, feeling himself stretch farther than he had thought possible, the tautness of skin warning him of his imminent bursting.
He closed his eyes. Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, happy thoughts...!
There were some ominous squeaks from his stretched skin, but the trembling finally stopped. And so did his inflation. For now.
Taylor smiled and patted his wide, bloated belly. "There, there, Frank. Feel better? You don't want to burst, now, do you?"
"N-n-no."
"And you're not going to be angry with me, are you?"
"No."
"Good boy. Bring me my supper when you've deflated, will you?"
Taylor left for the living room, leaving her blimp of a husband to think about happy thoughts until he was no longer in danger of popping like an overinflated balloon.
It was a week later when a car pulled into the driveway, and Taylor rushed out the door to meet it. "Brad!" she shouted.
Frank turned off the vacuum cleaner and scowled. "Who's that?" Welcoming an excuse to get away from housework, he followed her outside, where Taylor had her arms around a man who had just exited a Cadillac Seville.
Frank looked the man over. "Old friend?"
Taylor turned to face Frank, still having one arm looped around Brad's shoulder. And Brad had one hand on Taylor's bounteous ass. "Oh, no!" she told him. "This is the man I've been sleeping with for the past couple of weeks!"
"You WHAT?" Barely aware of it, Frank's body turned red. "You said you were too tired for sex this past month!"
"I was!" she said. "I was tired from all the sex I was getting from Brad!"
"You--!" Frank's body took only seconds to inflate into a giant ball.
Brad burst out laughing at Taylor's husband. "Hey, you're right! He looks just like a balloon!"
Taylor smiled and whispered in Brad's ear. "Just watch this."
Frank was so enraged that he allowed himself to expand just a bit—he knew he wasn't in danger of exploding, having had so many episodes. But Taylor wasn't through.
She stepped up closer to Frank, running her fingernail ominously down his bloated chest. "Oh, yeah, Brad's much better in the sack," she told Frank.
Frank grew uncontrollably bigger, his circumference expanding a few feet. He tried to calm himself, but having to suppress his rage just frustrated him, and he swelled even larger.
Taylor continued. "Oh, and you know your old college buddy, Lenny? Had him."
Frank groaned as he blew up bigger.
"And he was better in the sack, too."
Frank winced as his body reached dangerous proportions. He had only once been this big before, and he felt then, as he did now, that he would soon burst. "You b-bitch!"
"Frank! Your temper!"
"You bitch!" he repeated, swelling a little larger, despite himself. "You're a slutty, evil bitch! You've been doing this to me on purpose, trying to make me explode!!" He inflated so large that Taylor had to take several steps back, craning her neck to address him.
"Well, duh!" shouted Taylor. "I can't claim all your money if I divorced you after all this sleeping around I've been doing. But if you were to, you know, ‘accidentally' pop yourself…then I'd get every…single…penny!" With each word, she thrust her fingernail into his belly for emphasis.
Frank couldn't think of any happy thoughts other than Taylor's head on a plate. He groaned and he strained, his body slowly reaching greater heights. He looked at Taylor's smirking, victorious face and heard the laughter of her new boyfriend, and he finally snapped.
"You bitch! I hate you! Hate you! Hate you!" He shouted out several more obscenities and threats, inflating higher and higher into the air, growing as big as the garage, and was soon as big as the house. Taylor just watched expectantly as he grew larger and larger, approaching the inevitable result.
"I hope you die, bitch!" Frank shouted. "I'm gonna—!"
It lasted only a brief moment, so short it happened in an eyeblink. In that fraction of a second, Frank's voice cut out, his eyes widened sharply, and a thought flashed through his head.
Oh no.
And then he exploded like an overinflated balloon.
Taylor removed her hands from her ears. "Whoooo!" she cheered, having more fun than the last July 4th celebration.
"Cool," said Brad. "So where were we?" He put his arms around Taylor again.
She pushed him away. "Oh, please! You were just here to upset Frank. I wouldn't date you if I were desperate!" She strode quickly toward the house.
"You were just using me?" Brad asked.
"Looks like it," she said over her shoulder.
"You can't just use me like that, you little prick-teaser! Why, I oughta—"
Taylor turned when she heard a slight hissing sound. A red-skinned Brad suddenly became awfully quiet…and slightly bigger.
"On second thought, I can use you," Taylor told him. "After all, Frank's gone and the lawn still needs mowing…"