Interview with the Inflatee

I

She'd had some success as a novelty, and like all people with even the smallest cachets of fame, she attracted a certain curiosity from the people she catered to. It is never enough for an audience to be content with a trickle of entertainment; it's always a case of either having not enough content or a distressingly large glut to choose from. In her case, she'd chosen the former, occasionally releasing bits and pieces of work, and a great deal of her notoriety stemmed, ironically enough, from her anonymity.

The reporter had done his research well, but with a great deal of respect. Website logs were obtained perfectly legally. Addresses and phone numbers were easily available through public record. Other facts and telltale clues combined with simple deduction to form ideas, then hypotheses, then informed opinions. He performed his patient detective work on quiet nights, connecting dots and making notes until the leads narrowed to a single point.

When he found her and first made contact, her response was not like the standoffish recluse he had been expecting, but a warm acceptance, as if she was amused that he had found her. Conversations through emails let to instant messaging, to one or two brief phone calls, and finally, after months of steadily building a friendship, to the night when the two of them planned to meet face to face.

He'd rung the bell to the front door, she'd welcomed him in like the friend he was, and the two of them had retired to the living room. Their conversation would be professional, yet low-key, and both of them knew why he had come to talk.

 “I'm just going to put the camera over here and turn it on. It's recording, but don't worry about it. You can say whatever you want, stop if you want to start something over, anything. Treat this as a normal conversation.”

 “Okay,” she said. She was young and pretty in a Midwestern way, with shoulder-length blonde hair and a modest smile. Some of her viewers might have considered her a little too broad in the hips, waist and shoulders to fit the current standard of beauty, but others took pleasure in her body's gentle curves. “Are you just going to ask questions, or are we having a chat?”

 “Whatever you like. I'll start off with some questions to get the conversation going, and we'll see where it goes from there. Is that okay?”

 “Sure.”

 “All right. Don't worry, I'm mostly recording this for the audio, but a full camera's so cheap that there's really no point in not going for video while I'm at it. Why don't you start off by telling us who you are and why I've come to talk with you?”

 She folded her hands and smiled. “My name is Casey, and I suppose people are interested in me because I'm Oblympia.”

II

 The reporter cleared his throat and said, “Just for completion's sake, let me clarify that: You appear under the pseudonym of 'Oblympia' in a series of pictures and videos on the internet?”

 “Yes.”

 “And in these images, what happens?”

 She smiled again, this time with a slight blush. “I'm a balloon.”

 “What do you do?”

 “I let myself fill with... air, I guess is the best word, and I just take pictures of it.”

 “All right. Do you know what kind of people make up your audience?”

 “Males, mostly. Some females. And, yes, I'm aware that it's something of a fetish, and some people actually find it sexually stimulating. 'Inflationists,' they call themselves.”

 “Do you count yourself as one of these fetishists?”

 “Well...” She looked away briefly and twirled a lock of hair on her finger, before answering with a wry look. “I don't deny taking some pleasure from being that way.”

 “Fair enough,” he said with a laugh. “Tell me about the skills you use. What kind of picture and video editing software do you use in your work?”

 “Oh! I don't use anything.”

 “Now wait a second,” he protested. “The sheer size of you in those pictures is beyond all possible reason. You'd be dead a dozen times over if you actually tried that in real life.”

 “No, really! I actually do get that big on my own.” This was what she was afraid of: that in his pursuit of the truth he would deny what was really true, no matter how unbelievable.

 “There aren't any hoses, or air tanks, or pumps, or anything that could do that to you in your videos. You often stand up and do a full spin to show yourself off in them! How can you say that there's anything happening here besides a masterful morph job?”

 “Listen to me! I know it's difficult to understand, but the honest truth is... it's a kind of magic. Please, that's why I even agreed to do this interview. Because I wanted people to hear it from me and accept that there's more to the world than what's in front of them.”

 “Fine.” It was clear that he didn't believe her, but he wanted the interview to continue. “Why don't you tell me about the first time you used this magic power of yours.”

 “Oh, I don't 'use' it,” she said, “but I found out what the trigger is. And I remember exactly how it happened, too...”

III

It was summer a couple of years ago, and the season's sales were hotter than the temperatures outside the air-conditioned shopping malls. It was the last day of the clearance sale at Shmendrick's of Hollywood, and I was hoping that I would be able to find something for myself. I wasn't in a relationship at the time, but I had lost a bit of weight in the previous months and I wanted to treat myself to something nice that made me look sexy.

The store had been picked pretty much clean by the time I got to it, and as I was giving up hope of finding something I liked in my size, I came upon this amazing little red number. Unfortunately, another woman had seen it at the same instant and the two of us almost got into a real fight over it! There was name-calling and threat making, but suddenly the other woman stopped and backed off with a really nasty look in her eye.

“Fine, you can have it,” she said. “I hope you enjoy it, because it'll be the last pair of panties you ever wear.”

I was halfway to calling Security about this threat, but the store manager talked me down, pointing out that I wasn't exactly being the nicest person in the world myself. I was happier about finding something I liked that would fit among such slim pickings, anyway. But I wasn't expecting the woman to be waiting for me outside the store. As I came out the door, something wet hit my arm and I turned to see her standing there with a wicked smile on her smug face.

I was angry, and began to shout, but she looked at me in a certain way and my voice suddenly stopped working. I'm not sure if I she did something to keep me from rushing at her or if I was so angry I couldn't move, but I was rooted to the spot. I stood there speechless while she walked up next to me, stroked my cheek, and whispered in my ear: “Bigger.” With that, she turned and walked away.

My sudden paralysis only broke once she turned the corner, and when I ran to catch her, she seemed to have vanished. There was nothing more I could do, so I went home to enjoy my new purchase.

I went up to my bedroom and shut all the blinds, then turned the lights down. I shrugged out of my clothes and put on my new underwear. They were a pair of lacy red panties in boyshorts style, and they made my ass look amazing. I ran my hands up and down the soft material, feeling the pattern in the material with my fingertips, when I suddenly felt a warm tingle race from my stomach down my legs.

It was very odd, and I pressed against my skin with my hands to see if I felt any pain. There wasn't, but something about my body felt strange. The panties began to feel constrictive, as if the elastic in the waist and around the thighs had decided to shrink slightly. I looked at myself in the mirror and turned to the side, and gasped in surprise as I saw my derriere swelling.

My rear was slowly but visibly expanding! At first, I was convinced that I was seeing some kind of strange hallucination, but I placed my hands over my ass and clenched my fingers. The way the resistance against them steadily built up told me that this was really happening. I held them tightly for a moment longer, then cupped my hands to let myself feel how quickly my cheeks we growing.

At that point, I noticed that my butt wasn't alone in whatever was happening. My thighs were expanding, slowly growing larger until they touched each other the way they had months ago, when I was heavier... but not exactly like that. This wasn't fat, it was some kind of gas, or so I felt. I prodded myself once or twice, and my body didn't jiggle or bounce; it was like poking into a thick balloon that was only partially filled.

My hips swelled outwards to match my expanding rear. I tried to pull the panties down, but by that point they were so tight around my hips that I couldn't get my fingers under the elastic. My buttocks were larger than my head now, and with every passing moment more and more of my flesh was showing as they escaped from the high cut in the back. I think this is the first time that I had the thought, “I'm blowing up!” Yes... it wasn't just bloating or sudden weight game. I was filling from the inside with something as light as air, and it seemed intent in making me as bottom-”heavy” as possible.

Still, it wasn't painful, and I couldn't hear any kind of rubbery noises that the media associates with this kind of thing. I ran my hands along myself again, as I had before this had started, and gasped. My skin felt so sensitive, and my exploratory touch was like a lover's caress across my newly enhanced curves.

My pelvis and crotch were expanding as well. As I continued to grow larger, the lace stretched out to contain me, but I knew (or at least, I hoped) that it couldn't last much longer. My thighs were each as big around as my waist, but I wasn't standing with my legs spread. My hips flared out to an outrageous size, meeting the new curve of my pelvis, before narrowing to my waist, which still about the same size as before. While my lower body grew, the waistband of my panties rode higher and higher, being pushed by the forces below it. The lace was now a suggestion of mesh with a flowery embroidery, and I was still blowing up inside it.

The pressure inside me was building, and each time I patted myself I felt more and more of an electric thrill run through me. My ass was enormous, my thighs massive, my hips more curvaceous than those of any woman dreamed up by R. Crumb. But whatever was within me wasn't stopping.

I felt a sudden shuddering running along my bottom, and I turned to look at myself in the mirror once more. The lace was finally giving way against the onslaught I was giving it, and the seat neatly ripped from the middle downwards. I felt physical relief as the panties tore and stopped holding my flesh back, but I worried: without the fabric containing and constraining me, how much bigger was I going to get before this stopped?

Having split vertically, the lace began to tear in the other direction as the legs separated from the waistband. The leg elastic was absurdly stretched around my truly massive thighs, giving them the look of incredibly tight garters. The waistband, now freed from the bottom half of the underwear, began to creep up my torso as my lower body continued to swell.

Once the waistband reached my belly button, something new began to happen, and I clasped my hands around myself in wonder. My stomach, normally a soft curve to begin with, began rounding out as the pressure within me continued blowing me up in this new area. It was tightening all me: my belly slowly reached out to meet my bulging pelvis to form a single, unending roundness, the small of my back filling our to make my gigantic ass less protruding, my sides expanding until my hips were now part of a new globe-shaped body. The elastic was now up near my breasts, and could no longer climb my body to escape the pressure below. I felt it growing tighter as I continued to expand, but I was helpless to do anything about it.

The increasing pressure in my pelvis forced my legs apart, and I sat on my bed to keep from falling to the floor. The feeling of resting my weight on my inflated butt ran tingles up and down my spine. It was like... one of those plasma balls you see in electronics stores, and I began to slowly rub myself all over, imagining arcs of lightning inside me grounding against my fingertips as I caressed my smooth, pressurized skin. I closed my eyes and bit my lip with the pleasure of it, then leaned/rolled back to lay on the bed.

The elastic around my thighs finally snapped with a surprisingly loud “crack!” I tried to touch my legs, but I could no longer bend at the waist and my rounded body kept me from reaching them. Instead, I rubbed my legs together, and the tingling feelings grew where my legs touched and built up to an insanely tantalizing fire where they met my crotch. I could no longer see my knees rising and falling, as my body had swollen to block my view, but I could feel my skin touching itself, causing tantalizing tickles everywhere.

Faster, faster now... I rubbed my legs like a caffeinated cricket while running my hands over my belly and sides, feeling the tickling, teasing pleasure building up within me even as the pressure continued to make every movement harder and harder...

For and endless moment I hung in a paroxysm of ecstasy, and in a sudden burst I climaxed at the exact same instant that the waistband exploded off of me. For several minutes I lay in bed, taking small, gasping breaths, when I suddenly realized that I had stopped swelling. The feeling of pressure was still there, but it was no longer growing. I felt peaceful and dozed slightly; certainly I was losing whatever it was that had been inflating me, as I was small enough to sit up after what must have been a couple of hours. A few hours after that, and I was back to the size I had been when I first tried the panties on.

IV

The reporter leaned forward. “So, you're telling me that you can blow up because...?”

She nodded. “I don't know what you'd call it. I'd say 'Gypsy curse,' but I don't know if that woman was Romani or not.”

“But it's happened many times afterwards. And you can do it on command, apparently.”

“Like I said before, I figured out the trigger. I know how to make it start.” She smiled and brushed her hair back with a slight blush.

“Well, don't hold me in suspense! What is it?”

“That woman was right. That was the last pair of panties I'd ever wear.”

“Wait, are you telling me that you swell up like that--?”

“Right. Whenever I wear underwear. When I do, I begin to grow bigger and bigger until all of it pops right off. That's why it didn't stop that first time until the waistband was gone, and it was being pushed up and up by my inflating body.”

The reporter touched his forehead and closed his eyes, seemingly in annoyance. “Okay, but what about daily life? What do you do?”

She laughed. “Well, it took a lot of trial and error, I can tell you! I lost a lot of clothing the first couple of days. Luckily, I started to recognize the signs and could strip off a pair of undies the moment I noticed it happening. It works on panties, stockings, bikinis... but for some reason it doesn't recognize bike shorts, so a lot of my wardrobe is made up of those now.”

“And, having finally deduced that you blow up because of your clothing choice, what did you do?”

“Well, I tried doing a little research online, and I came across the, uh, fetishists. That was when I thought that this 'curse' might not be such a bad thing after all.”

“And 'Oblympia' was born?”

She grinned. “Right. A pay site, some high-quality videos, some free photos, and suddenly I'm making twice as much a month as I used to and can save up for retirement. A niche audience can be great business, if you're providing what they really want.”

“Well, great. I'm sure this interview will be incredibly illuminating. I'll be in touch.”

V

A few weeks later, a package arrived at the woman's house. When she opened it, she thought it contained a curtain or bedsheet, but found elastic around the edge. Amused, she shook it out to reveal a pair of black panties that she could hold with her arms spread wide without even stretching the waistband. The delivery note had the reporter's name and read:

“Care for a second round of questioning?”