Warning; Inflation fiction follows. But you probably knew that already, didn't you, you naughty thing? Yes I think you did!
You probably think I should tell you about myself. But what would there be to tell? I'm a photographer. Not fashion. Everyone always asks me that, but do I look like I'd make it in a world full of stupidly pretty people? I'm not declaring myself unattractive, but my face is too oval, my nose too pointed. I've got that slightly lanky, almost tomboy frame which de-emphasises my femininity. Plus, at just shy of 5"5, 135lbs, I'm neither "tall and graceful" nor "petite and buxom" (Hah! I wish!). If there's one thing that stands out about me its my eyes, peering out from a fringe of chestnut trimmed to shoulder-length. They're inviting, curious; and that's how I engage the world. Visually.
But I'm not going to tell you any more. I'm uncomfortable being exposed, which seems like a strange thing to say given what's just happened. Maybe its the arrogant disconnection that comes with being behind the lens rather than in front of it. I am always object rather than subject, floating between scenes, unseen. I never thought I'd be the focus of the story.
Right now you're probably thinking that a girl like me got what she deserved. I wouldn't blame you. But there's a code of ethics I follow; leave only footprints, take only pictures. I broke it this one time, and I'm regretting it.
Anyhow there was little enough to steal; the whole area was run down too graceless dereliction. To one side of the canal the skeletal husk of gas storage tanks groaned silent in the sun. It resembled some monstrous kraken; crawled onto the land to die. Apart from the factory, there was only a tire plant that looked neither open nor shut and a long strip of barren land.
Ah yes, the factory.
At first glance-and-ever a polylithic jumble of industrial blocks. The ground floor presented a series of crimson brick casemates where black-slitted windows peered suspiciously at the sun. Standing sentry, the main gates were a 20-foot iron spears; fronting a bare open yard and day shift entrance whose last day was 1994. Surveying it from the street the enamel green double-doors there were clearly locked and anyway I'm not in in the business of breaking and entering in plain view. Don't get me wrong; I might have got away with it. But there's the principle of the thing.
The real way in was through the steam tunnels and simple enough if you knew how. Cut across the railway line and through half a fence before a scramble down a concealed ditch drops you into the 4-foot pipes. Even if like me you're in good shape there's a heart-stopping moment when you're in mid-air and flailing before feet find ground again. Afterwards it was just a long damp walk to the boiler room. The giant pressure tanks were long gone, but the brick-lined furnace remained in a cool, coal black. Sunlight edged from its broken roof, showing the path to a rusted iron stair and the way into the factory proper.
I'd tell you where all this is but I don't want idiots coming here and repeating my mistake. Still, if you really dig, there's stuff out there. You can even find a few blogs from people who worked here. The council has a audio history section too, but it's thin stuff; old men and flat pressed caps holding to a gravelled accent.
Here's the real story; honest. The original owner was an Edwardian nutcase and pretty much a total recluse before the end. He knew his stuff though, and the business prospered after a fashion. But eventually ownership passed to a local family under some kind of competitive tender.
Anyhow, the local bloke wasn't up to the spec of the old man; too young and perhaps inexperienced (they said). There was a scandal about immigrant labour; this was back in the day when taking British jobs invited cheerful racist disdain. Then a number of long-running lawsuits stemming from earlier industrial accidents hit. Plus demand was dropping as people went for upmarket rather than novelty. Ultimately, the factory lingered through the 80's; probably insolvent before the early 90's recession killed it off. Nestle brought it out, but then decided the plant was too old and closed it down for good. The end.
So that's why I was here, squatting in the dust to adjust my focus and trying to select a filter. I chase the photography of dereliction; recording ruin as it slips away. I just love it. And good at it too (not an inflated opinion); I've got awards and everything. Might get an award for this one too. I hope it's not posthumous.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me tell you about exploring . You won't believe what I found. Not sure I believe it even now.
Once out of the boiler room the first big space you come too is this huge, cavernous brick hall. It was perhaps a 100 foot in height, and twice that in length. At one stage the canal must have run through here from outside, possibly for unloading. Now it was empty; concrete embankments held chocolate-coloured sludge congealed in a corner. Giant pipes ran up one wall before retching into the dry canal. Underneath them a carpet of brown discoloured astroturf crunched strangely underfoot, bleached by the sun. Looking upwards I could see the corrugated glass-and-iron of the ceiling had long since given way and now it shone blankly between slits of the sky. Faintly visibly a steel skeleton on the roof beyond held the remains of the company logo in what would have been tarnished bronze. The giant "W" was still in place, but the other letters had fallen. Anyway, to work.
The high sun pushed the shadows into the verticals and crevices, denying me the hand-holds of composition as my lens scaled the walls. I took few pictures, frustrated. I felt like an archaeologist in some lost temple, a trespass for artefacts of unfathomable purpose. But I told myself it was not the same really. As I said, I don't take, I preserve. Photography helps tether things in time. Before they drift away.
I gave up on the hall for the present and headed down the canal, my sensible boots kicking up sweet-dust from its base. The loading canal led into a tunnel set in one wall yet I pushed into darkness, fumbling the torch out of my bag. I could almost hear the factory breath in the closeness of echoes. You don't get into this job if you spook easily, but it's impossible to be drawn so far into the strange without being affected by it.
After about twenty yards my flashlight pooled on the remains of some barge tilted crazily on its side. Opposite the wreck, a small iron jetty jutted from the wall. A series of steel doors lay beyond, flush into the curved concrete arch of the tunnel.
I slung the flashlight and clambered onto the jetty, feeling the rust flake beneath my hands and onto my khaki trousers. I'm wearing those because you'd be mad to do this sort of thing in a skirt and the inevitable smudges don't show so bad.
The painted labels on the door had faded. The first one declared "venting room" or something similar, and was open. A vile smell came from within; vagrants or dogs. But peering inside I could see it was empty. Brighter patches were etched on a concrete floor where heavy machinery must have rested. I could tell at once I wasn't interested.
The second door was rusted shut. But the third door and last caught my attention. Like the other two this was made of flush steel but was cracked ajar. Scratch marks on the iron jetty gave the impression it had parted only recently. I traced my fingers over worn lettering which declared "..... Lift.. D" and glanced inside.
I half-expected to see winding gear or cages but was instead confronted by a poorly-lit circular room. Through a blinking gaze it gave the appearance of a dusky silo, cylindrical and tall. I could see the centre of the room was empty, with the same bare patch of displaced machinery, yet to one side the remains of giant metal fan lay twisted crazily. Rusted and discoloured, its blades were bent as if dropped from height. Interesting enough perhaps, but yet more curious was a circular shelf that ringed the room at head height. Stacked neatly upon it, as if in a candy store, lay several dozen glass bottles.
I readied my flashlight again and pushed in, leveraging myself through the half-jammed door frame. Tight. Very tight. But once within I could see that the room lay at the base of a large octagonal steel chimney which channelled the light downwards. At its zenith, the sky pooled in bright silver. Almost at the top I could make out the scrawl of graffiti, painted impossibly high and faded, but I'd no idea how it got up there or what it said.
Exploring, my torch swung through faint dust underfoot; finding one set of tracks that paced my own. They didn't lead out again, but I couldn't see another exit. In one corner of the room, hidden from the entrance, lay a set of torn clothes. Possibly discarded by some hobo, but the room didn't have the smell of dereliction. Rather the air seemed dry, evaporated, thin.
I turned my attention to the bottles, letting the torch-beam tangle in the glinted prisms of their past. Tantalised but deceiving; upon edging closer, even the colourful scrawl on the label was faded. Now few words were unsunk in time; "FLD - batch 160. Approx 120kg net....". It probably meant something once. Whatever. I picked one up, and nearly dropped it in the same instant. The bottle was heavy, as if filled with unseen ballast. I tipped it up, curiously, watching the viscous flow within. It looked liked cola. It looked like mystery.
And I was thirsty.
As I said, I don't steal things. So perhaps it was the dust. Or the plain mystery of the thing. Or just that I'd forgotten to pack my soda earlier. Anyway, fifteen-year old cola wasn't going to kill me. Right? Not if I was careful. The worst that could happen was I'd gain some weight from all that sugar.
So without really thinking about it I popped the lid off the bottle and took a drink. Just a little one. It tasted of lemons. And cola. And something else entirely. Not great, but not stale. Still fizzy though; effervescence trickling over my tongue. Nice. Waited a moment. No problems.
I drained the bottle, suddenly feeling its weight sag in my arm. Devoid of its contents it seemed almost heavier somehow. Leaded glass, perhaps. I put it on top of the fallen fan and snapped it twice with long exposure, taking a few upward shots of the skylight too. Some sense of unease drifted in me as I gazed up that vertical; the pale white-blue sky seeming to swell and beckon. Enough. Time to leave.
The first warning sign was obvious, in retrospect. I moved back to the partially opened door and squeezed through to the jetty. Or at least I tried to. For some reason I couldn't get the leverage to haul myself through the crack, it was too tight. I hitched my torch and camera to try again, reaching around the doorframe to pull myself through. Nada. The press of metal seemed to close about me like jaws. I strained for a moment and then fell back into the room, flushed.
I didn't remember it being so tight. The door must have shifted when I came in. Well, I could have tried again and probably done myself an injury, but in this job you learn not to take stupid risks. I sat down on the bare concrete, placed my camera and torch besides me and pulled out my mobile. Play it safe, girl. I would have had to call Sam; figuring he was probably the most suited to busting doors and rescuing damsels in distress. But of course, this damsel in distress couldn't get a signal from her captive tower. Typical. I still wasn't worried though. I don't panic easily and I'd told at least 2 other reliable people where I was going and to come and look for me if I didn't check in. I guess it's my own fault for working alone, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
That's when the symptoms started.
It was discomfiture at first, like a sudden tightening of my stomach muscles. A thin sheen of perspiration washed over me, and I paused with sudden weakness. If I hadn't already been sat cross-legged I might have fainted. As it was I put out one hand as a cool wetness seemed to evaporate from me; lifting like dew. My skin felt sudden strange and tight. But before I could focus there came an odd, distinct tickling; like a feather drifting across my midriff.
"Oh...." I said.
The nausea passed, and I realised I was breathing deeply with my hand pressed to my side. The tickling was resolving into a soft, distinct sense of percolation, like small bubbles forming in my stomach. I sat still for a moment, breathing deeply. OK. That was weird. But I was OK. No problem. I stood up, slowly. But the slight bubbly sensation followed my rise. Now it came as a distinct patter tapping like insistent fingers.
By this stage I'd figured out I shouldn't have drunk the old cola. If I was going to be sick or poisoned this really wasn't the place. I blinked, seeking to clear my head. I moved back over to the door, and made another attempt to squeeze back through again. This time I didn't even get half-way, my hips resolutely refused the gap. The only result of my efforts seemed to be to excite the contents of my stomach a bit more. I dropped back into the room, put my hands on my waist uncertainly, and noticed something was very wrong.
Now as I said earlier I'm only slim-ish, but I look after myself and have a fairly good idea of where things are normally. But this time I felt my hands stop short of where they should have fallen, and my eyes drew down to the immediacy of unexpected touch. There, rather than my familiar "pinchable inch", I saw my hands were spread over a swollen potbelly, smooth and firm. Before I could fully register what was happening, my insides seemed to respond to the contact with a bubbly flux. A hidden pressure rose instantly between my fingers, pushed them apart. I could feel my belly expanding.
I made some kind of noise, agog with disbelief. I think I took a few half steps backwards, glaring down. My camo tee was riding up and over a bulging belly, exposing a shiny expanse of bare tummy which looked like I had swallowed a basketball. Gasping, my hands slid smoothly back and forth across a midriff now bridging my breasts to my vulva. As they did so, the bubbling sensation settled to an affirming gurgle within me. I felt positively gassy. Gaseous. Christ. I don't know what I felt. My mind reeled. Was I pregnant, or suffering from the worse indigestion ever? I prodded myself curiously, not having the sense to be frightened. My probing fingers winced against skin now sensitive with internal pressure. My belly was swelling before my eyes, no doubt about it. I was getting bigger.
"No" I gasped, at last. I think it was the first sensible thing I'd said for a minute. All at once I was consumed by the idea that I had to push it back in. And quickly, before it got any worse. Without thinking I put both hands firmly on my expanded tummy and pushed.
The effects were immediate. There was a sense of displacement and a wave of pressure rippled through me. My basketball-sized belly seemed to contract and for a moment I thought I'd succeeded. Then a trembling flush of heat caught me in its wake. The gurgling hiss seemed to deepen, widen, and the sense of bubblinesss which had formally seemed trapped in my stomach burst through my body. I sagged to my knees, my legs folding as my eyes watered. The feeling was indescribable, but like thousands of tiny bubbles blossoming within me, seeking release but not finding it.
I sat there, gasping; my chest rising and falling in time with my ragged breaths. Now the steady effervescence within me was plainly audible, manifest as a constant sibilant hiss. It seemed to push up and down, pooling between my thighs and breasts. My green-brown tee felt tight, constrained. I worried about hyperventilating, the straps of my bra digging in. The discomfort shortened across my breasts, now seeming to bulge and stretch in time to my rhythm. I blinked and shook, uncomprehending. Slowly, but undeniably their curves grew wider and more pronounced. A patch of freckles caught my eye, spreading and rising as my skin stretched to accommodate the hidden pressure. Within scant seconds my mammaries were straining against their cotton bonds. Bigger .
Oh God. It couldn't be.
My hands flew to my rounding breasts, pinching their growing form as they threatened to overwhelm my top. My skin felt cool to the touch, like an ice cube drizzled on a summer day. My tongue felt thick in my mouth, senses swimming with the plumpness that now infused their texture, a certain smoothness that encouraged my palms to slide under them. I could feel them growing by the moment as they pressed the painful bounds of a bra two or three cups too small. Yet even the growing sensitivity could not disguise the strangeness; my support was ghost-like, their weight barely pressed upon me. A strange symmetry overcame them as the tightness grew, teardrop shape redacting to hemispheres, lifting my nipples clear of the bra. As I watched, they flared out like rising suns, drawn by some secret whisper of breath.
I had just enough presence of mind to realise I'd have to get out my underwear before I suffocated. Whimpering, I reached behind and under, feeling a strap already drawn tense as piano wire. My nails dug against skin and plastic, seeking release. For a long moment I struggled. Even now I'm not sure whether clasp or the elastic failed first. Only that my lingerie parted with an elastic twang and was pushed away. Free from their constraints, my breasts ballooned clear, bobbing now as if only weakly sensed by gravity.
Balloons . The word came slowly to me, as my burgeoning assets waved dreamlike before me. Like a pair of frickin' balloons. I looked over at the bottle discarded in the gloom. My thoughts were cascaded one after another. The expansion. The lightness. The hissing. It couldn't be. Could it? Whatever I'd drunk was evaporating within me. Turning from liquid into gas.
Inflating me.
I shook myself, wide-eyed, trying to deny it. But my thoughts were interrupted another concern. Even as the fibres of my tee-shirt strained, I became dimly aware of a parallel tightness formed astride my groin. The gassiness pushed itself along my thighs, tracing whorls of sensation like a promise, like a finger. I felt my trousers draw tight about my hips, hitching up as backside joined breasts in errant expansion.
"Noooooo" I cried, slapping my hands to my behind. The only response was the reverberating hiss of gas, finding echo within my growing form. The fabric was already stretched tight against the skin, the brown twill shifting like silk against my sudden smoothness.
Pushing down, my palms made gentle indentations in the resistance of inflating curves. Slowly, I could feel my cheeks widening, escaping my grasp. My knickers dug sharply across my underside as they conformed about a swelling lower body. In a frantic mess of fumbling I plucked away the buttons on my trousers. They parted almost at once, a brass dam blown before the wave of my swelling abdomen. With my breasts now obstructing the view I felt rather than saw the cotton of my knickers thin against ballooning booty. My exertions drew hidden heat from me, the lush scents of excitement rising unbidden with inflating flesh. I moaned, caught between embarrassment and arousal, the public intimacy of my experience. Perhaps part of me was seduced by the unrealness. My actions were those of a stranger. This couldn't be happening.
You know, way back, I'd heard of early lemonade being referred to as "balloon juice". But this was ridiculous. A fizzy drink didn't - couldn't - make someone blow up like a balloon. Distractedly, I told myself I was dreaming. But pinching didn't work. My nails slipped over a skin grown elastic, whilst my perspiration merged dreamily with fear and strange excitement. Unmistakably caught beneath my tongue came the alien tang not unlike latex; Horrified, I realised I even smeltthe part.
I climbed - staggered - to my feet. My legs flexed out with an almost audible pfop, driven by the gas that now barrelled my thighs. They rubbed against each other with absurd squeakiness as I lunged towards the door, clasping it like a drowning woman. All balance was treacherous, distorted as I felt my body billowing with inner gas. My weight seemed to be misplaced, escaping my stride. I must have looked like some ridiculous caricature of femininity, breasts and butt expanded into globes concaved about a narrow waist. To be honest part of me might have been absurdly proud at my exaggerated curves in other circumstances. But for the moment I was too hysterical to consider it.
"Help" I shrieked, hammering at my iron prison futilely "Heeeeeelp me!".
My voice seemed thin and unnervingly squeaky. The bulking factory swallowed my cries, returned only silence, and the drink filled it with hissing.
My breasts were over a foot wide when the cotton pleat of my tee puckered horizontal and started to rip with a soft purr. As the strands parted they revealed soft peach balloons, a canyon of cleavage beyond anything I had imagined. My knickers unknit themselves around the same time, snapping aside the bouncy watermelons of my butt. The sudden coolness of the silo air against my secret flesh gave me gasping pause. But the flux of the gas penetrated me more deeply than any lover. I felt engorged, as if the press of my legs encompassed a fairground cylinder, hard and forceful. I wanted to grind down even as a strange sense of levity began pervading my body.
Relentless, the pneumatic force spread down along my calves and arms, the hiss now pitching higher as it explored my body. It's insistent urgings were widening me, drawing me out and up from myself. My legs were drifting akimbo, my trousers spreading along with them, splitting apart into thralls of cloth. I barely noticed. The pressure cradled me like an errant child, stroking my body in waves, lulling me into acceptance. Tears were stale in my eyes, mixing my shame and desperation, my sense and excitement. My breasts and ass were inflating spheres, escaping the span of my arms. Their tenderness and tightness resisted even embrace; defining me like a blow-up doll, growing more ridiculously proportioned by the moment.
With what little sense I had left I made an effort for the mobile again. But it had fallen to the floor somewhere with the remains of my trousers. I staggered about, seeking it in the gloom and dust. Hapless, my breasts floated upwards to block my sight, pushing up as much as out. I struggled to restrain them, my touch now electric against the tautening skin. Through a mush of buoyant feeling came a dim awareness of how uneven my footing was getting. The balls of my feet were skidding on the floor, as if unable to find purchase. Some secret, undreamt promise seemed to kindle at the back of my mind. Too many balloons. I thought. Too many balloons, and then....what?
Interruption came as my feet scuffed against something hard and plastic. Damn, the phone.
I tried to kneel, but the pressure in kneeling was more than uncomfortable. The gas force-fluxed along my calves pushed me upright, my whole body growing tight with pneumatic force. Straining desperately for the slim metal device, I felt balance shifting treacherously under a surge of lifting bubbles, their invisible hands tipping and supporting in the same motion. In comic motion, I toppled gently forward on my face, even as my butt seemed to seesaw upwards.
The ground came to me so slowly. An unnatural thrill coursed through me, falling as if through treacle. Momentarily I caught a glimpse of brown socks and ankle boots, the last dignity on my otherwise naked body, Someone other than me was kicking them futilely, trying to reach solid footing. Then my ballooned tits, the size of small beachballs, boinged up to obscure all vision, cushioning my impact to feather-lightness. The air itself seemed thick, gently but insistently pushing up through the sensitive bulk of my inflated assets. I tried to deny the implications, even as realisation seeped like a thousand floating bubbles down my spine. My weight was diminishing rapidly, and in a few moments....
"No, nooooo", I gasped, disbelieving to the last. It couldn't be true. Could it? I was saying stuff like I don't know what. That I'd be a good girl. That I'd never steal anything again.
Groping blindly, I felt the fingers of my right hand connect with my camera strap. I clenched it tightly like a rosary, a last totem of normality before my sin plunged me into the unreal.
I was panting with exhaustion whilst the gas was licking each intimate secret of my body, taking me for its own. The sweat on my skin carried the scent of stressed rubber; glisten-sheened like a balloon. Lying supine on the ground, I was teetering towards buoyancy, I felt my feet rise to tiptoe and scrape along the ground before drifting off. Then the cool press of concrete along my bulbous stomach faded as my wildly inflated ass rose into the air, tilting me inverted with lazy motion. A moment later and my ballooning breasts floated clear too, pulling me up and up. Frantically, I pressed my palms flat against the rough concrete before me, clawing for a connection as it too started to slip away. I wanted to laugh and weep together. But the gas admonished with upness, leaving me to mutely wriggle as I slipped over the edge. For a moment I was connected only by fingertips. And then I wasn't. Floating.
The first few inches were the worst. The gas defined me, took me, lifted me. I was an hourglass, ballooned, without the sand of ballast. Both empty and full together. I couldn't, wouldn't, suppress the feelings that pumped through me. I felt sick, then ashamed then exhilarated.
I'm a girl-balloon. I thought, with pointless clarity. That drink filled me with some kind of helium. And now I'm going to float away. Shit.
Then the camera strap around my right wrist pulled tight, arresting my ascent and twisting me upside down in the same moment. Briefly, I hung there, suspended and naked between the fates. A tethered balloon with the camera above my head, whilst in the other direction, past the buoyant spheres of my breasts, the steel flume reached up like a tunnel. My feet loitered over a pool of sky. Cool as water; it lay, inviting me to plunge up and up into its depths.
Then my growing lift overcame my recalcitrant ballast, and I rose clear, trailing the camera with me. One foot. Two foot. A yard. I tried catching the shelving. But I rebounded gently off the wall. I tried waving my arms as if swimming. But the tide of levity was too strong and I was drifting higher with it. The steel walls of the room slid down past me. The distant graffiti, barely visible from below, slipped into view. It was sprayed scarlet with desperation and held a handprint smeared against the burnished steel. Oh God; what happened to them? I tried to read the words, but my body was rotating in the air, pulling me up and away.
".....or never come down" It proclaimed. That wasn't very reassuring.
My body felt tight as a drum, pumped into a bloated parody of the female form. As if content with my predicament, the omnipresent hiss of gas seemed to slow even as my ascent quickened. Helpless, I rose to the lip of the room, my fingers grazing the exterior brickwork of the stack. Then the rush of noise and sunlight caught me blinking; the world around was so real and heavy, elusive of handholds. Wide and wonderful, the factory spat me into the air, where eddies of wind caught me, swept me upward. A sense of unlikely vertigo swelled within my inflated form as I passed fifty foot. A hundred. The city and canal swung lazily into view beneath my spreading legs, washed in afternoon haze that collected in the bowl of surrounding hills. Distantly, lonely cars and people picked their way across this desolate theatre. But I was far from the stage of earth, a balloon caught in the rafters of the world, they couldn't see me.
I shouted anyway, as I drifted higher. Was it fear or exaltation? I don't know. I was sundered from the land. Balloon-bound. But somehow I didn't care. I was naked but not ashamed. Buoyant but bountiful. Terrified but excited. Turbulence licked anew at my inflated body, stirring sensation and sustaining the secret moisture. A host of tingling bubbles now shuddered within my breasts, my butt, holding me swollen with gaseous promise. I clenched against myself, eyes tight, wanting to ride the feeling higher even as it rode me .
Gone with the wind.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Coda:
I'm quite high now. Cool, detached, and swaying through thin cloud. Distant patches of green and yellow suggest fields below, but it could be anywhere. There's quite a breeze and I've been up here for ages. You see, after the initial rush I kinda lost track of time, and I've been asleep for a bit. I didn't think I could but I did. Nearly wet myself when I woke up though.
Eventually. the sense of bubbling subsided, quiescent; it's job done. I think I've stopped rising, but I can't be certain. Not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I mean, I worry I might burst, or float so high I'll suffocate. But perhaps its better that way; with the release of rupture, rather than lingering like an escaped blimp, never to coming down.
From the way the camera is beeping at me I guess the video memory is nearly done, so I'm gonna have to stop this narrating. I've still not decided whether to drop it in the hope that the chip survives to be found, or keep hold for the ballast. It's my last work of art, really, and I want it to survive even if I don't. Am I making an artistic statement here? Christ, what would it be? "I've blown up like a balloon and floated away". Just to say it makes it sound like some pretentious installation piece, but it's more real than anything I've done in my life.
And you know the worse thing, on top of it all? I feel the indignity of a huge burp coming on as well. Typical.