This wasn't like Alice at all. She always thought things through, always planned for the worst. Her condition had defied her every effort to control it, and after far too many near-debacles and almost-disasters, she'd learned to be constantly vigilant for the first signs of a "gas attack". And when all her forethought and preparation inevitably came to naught, Alice made a point of learning from her mistakes. No longer did she keep her pills in a purse that she might misplace, like the last time, for example. Now she kept them in her pants pocket, where they'd always be within arm's reach.
And in arm's reach they were, in a pocket that, thanks to her ballooning butt, she could no more access than shuck a clam with her bare hands.
Panic always brought out the worst in Alice's brain. At the first gentle flutter of abdominal pressure, she'd fled the crowd and run as deep into the woods as she could before her tightening pants locked her legs, thus guaranteeing that no one would be around to help her, no matter how loudly she might scream. And in her haste she'd once again abandoned her purse, with her phone and radio beacon safely and uselessly inside. Two more mental notes Alice made as she fought in vain to open her fly, the overstressed zipper not even budging.
How could gas, something so light and free, possibly move so slowly? It would eventually reach her mouth and she could belch it out, at great length and with even greater effort -- but first it had to work its way through seemingly every cubic millimeter of her torso, widening her trunk and swelling her belly as it passed. Alice had taken off her bra, remembering how it had pinched her so during her last incident. This meant that her breasts, freed from confinement, had become miniature hot-air balloons, places where rising gas could collect and become trapped. She groaned as their slow but relentless rise made room for ever more gas. One more lesson learned.
Alice gasped as the seat of her pants gave way with a BANG! Her hand flew to her pocket, which was still too tight to get into, but she felt the seam slowly tearing across her crotch, and soon she'd finally be able to take her pills. But they took minutes just to halt the production of new gas in her body, and ridding herself of what was already there was entirely on her. The buoyancy of her chest bent her back so far that most of the gas was settling in her boobs; what had been a torrent of eructations had tapered off into only the occasional gentle puff. Wrapping her arms around her now basketball-sized bosom, Alice tried to rein it in, fighting a losing battle against their inexorable lift.
And her pants chose that moment to give up the ghost, splitting down the middle with no warning. Too late did she yank her arms down to her sides, two hollow THOPs reverberating through the trees as her hands spanked her bare ass, as the torn fabric pooled around her ankles.
Prioritize, Alice made a chagrined mental note to herself. Don't try to treat a symptom if it means abandoning the cure. She squatted down to reach her pills, and was immediately presented with yet another lesson. After busting through countless panties, she had at considerable expense custom-ordered the sturdiest pair she could imagine. And sturdy they were, holding together even when wrapped around enough hips for two women with extra to spare. But squatting put them at their absolute limit, and with most of her body weight negated, Alice simply couldn't force herself down any farther against them. Desperately she tried to shove them down her hips, only managing to get them to the halfway point, but it was enough, and her hands blindly groped at the shreds of denim at her feet.
And then her feet left the ground.
She wasted precious seconds screaming to no one and flailing at nothing. She wasted several more craning her neck to try to see the ground behind her. At the last possible moment, she made two hail-mary backwards grabs, one hand clutching only at bare dirt, but the other miraculously grasped a generous tuft of grass. Alice's knuckles turned white as she held on for dear life, her breasts now hanging pendulously to her navel, her legs dangling over blue sky as the remains of her jeans hung upward from her feet, tufts of ripped denim tickling her backside.
Alice wasted no time reaching for her pocket with her free hand, but the loose, dangly fabric conspired against her efforts, as her gas attack entered a new phase. With her personal gravity inverted, the gas had to retrace its path through her body, so her ability to vent was temporarily suspended -- but her production was as steady as ever. And what did make it to her rear exit found no escape, thanks to two bulbous buttocks cinched by a maddeningly obstinate strip of cloth. Instead it was entrapped in her legs, swelling her thighs, knees, and calves. Alice felt her shoes grow tight around her feet until one simply popped off, briefly kicking her pants out of reach, and slid down through the leg to land near her head; the other soon followed.
She finally got her hand on the envelope just as her handhold gave way. Alice's stomach plummeted, her heart leapt in her throat, and an eternity seemed to pass in four seconds before the world lurched around her. The crotch of her jeans had snagged on a passing branch, and she suddenly found herself right-side up again, her swollen feet snagged in her pants legs the only anchors she had left. Her underwear chose this moment to give way with a thunderous CRACK echoing through the distance, a wasted sacrifice as the gas was once again marching to her mouth. Alice had mere moments until her last ties to the earth failed her, but at last her salvation was at hand.
Opening the envelope, she saw that the pressure of her growing ass had crushed the pills into powder, but they should still be potent. She shook the packet into her mouth, but something, static cling or moisture or just the sheer cussedness of the universe conspiring against her, held the powder stuck to the plastic. In desperation, she stuck the packet into her mouth, intending to lick the medicine out --
Alice would always wonder how such a huge belch could come unbidden, when she normally had to move heaven and earth to summon them even when her condition was at its worst. The cause was an academic point, at any rate, since the effect was that the packet and its precious powder were launched from her hand to land somewhere off in the distance. "NOOOOOOO!" she screamed, but this last miscalculation had sealed her fate. With the gas departing her lower extremities, her feet shrank down until they slipped free, and Alice's body was borne swiftly upward, her wails going unheard as she vanished into the sky.
This was a learning experience, she reflected to herself, as she emerged glistening and shivering from the cloud bank. Alice had made one bad decision, one wasted effort, one self-sabotage after another. Any one of the choices she'd made, if she'd chosen differently, could have kept her grounded. But she'd let panic rule her, and in her panic had squandered every chance she had.
Alice let loose a thunderous eructation into the chasm of cleavage dangling in front of her. The pressure in her body briefly abated, only to slowly mount again as her relentless condition continued to inflate her. She spent every waking moment of the past... however many days... trying to pass out as much gas as she could, but the best she could manage was to stay below the stratosphere. And she could burp for a solid month, but she still had these mini-weather balloons stuck to her chest, and that gas wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.
But still she burped, and still she hoped. She'd get back down eventually, right? This attack couldn't last forever, could it? And even if it did, someone would look in her lost purse and see the note inside, wouldn't they? And even without her beacon, the weather bureau could extrapolate where the currents had taken her and send a rescue mission. All she had to do was wait for that, and in the meantime, all she had to do with herself was replay that day in her mind, going over everything she did wrong and everything she'd do right next time.
Alice had learned all the lessons she needed to keep herself grounded, if only she got the chance.