Day in the Life of a Popper, A

A Day In The Life of a Popper

 

Before I tell you what I do for a living, I want to say two things about my job.  One is that I'm probably effectively a mass murderer according to most of you.  That's obviously not how I see it and I don't know anyone else in this line of work who does. 

People with that motive would be weeded out during the recruitment process anyway and they won't let it develop later since our tasks are allocated in strict rotation.  They give us different duties out of the "field" every few months.  Also, look at it from my angle.  Most of the injury to my clients has already happened by the time I'm called in, when it happens - that's another thing, but I'll come to that in a bit.  My role is to provide them with a merciful release.  

 

The other thing I wish I'd heard the last of is the idea that my job could be done by just anyone with a knitting needle.  I've lost count of the number of jokes I've heard about how my three years of training must have been spent learning how best to hold one and so on.  That's not how it is at all.  We don't even get to use "knitting needles" until the second year and there are at least four other main ways of doing it which are more common.  Our training, among other things, includes the development of empathy, meaning that we have to go through some of the experience ourselves, and obviously that can't involve undergoing the surprisingly rare "knitting needle" phase.  We get to know a whole load of medical stuff, the physics involved, how the machines work and so on. 

 

Coming back to what I said earlier, another stereotype I'd like to demolish is the idea that we spend all our time killing people.  Much of our work is aimed at ensuring that people survive the procedure, not that their lives end. 

 

So anyway, walk a mile in my shoes.  I'm going to describe a random day so you get to understand our work. 

 

In case you haven't already guessed, I'll just say it outright in words you'll understand.  I'm what most people call a "popper".  It's only fair to spell it out.  Now I've told you that, you may not want to read on, and that's understandable, but if you  make that decision it does mean you're closing the door on understanding us.  If you don't want graphic descriptions, stop reading now.  Don't say I didn't warn you. 

 

This is how it works.  We have eight-hour shifts and spend some of the rest of our time on call.  There's a depot like a fire or ambulance station, but most of the time I'm parked up somewhere and my calls appear on a dashboard display.  I'm given an estimate of how long I have before they need me to perform the task in hand and the method of release requested.  Sometimes we have to use a helicopter to get there in time, but it's usually easier just to drive because helipadsa are not very common. 

 

So anyway, here we go with a typical day. 

 

I got into work at 8 am that Tuesday and had four deflations booked in.  We sometimes get impromptu releases but on the whole they're scheduled for place and time and they get optimised for travel time, meaning you might not get the exact slot you want, but we do try.  That scheduling is one of the things I do when I'm on an out of field cycle. 

 

We're not supposed to because it shows disrespect, and it's one of the things we'd be reprimanded about if it made its way onto an official form, but we talk about the "Four E's":  Execution, Euthanasia, Experimentation and Ecstasy.  Not everyone falls into those categories neatly and "Experimentation" is a dustbin we throw everything that doesn't fit elsewhere into.  Today, I had a 9 am appointment with “Ecstasy”. 

                    

 Dressed in waterproof, wipe-clean overalls, I reviewed the form for my first client.    Her name was Erica.In waterproof wipe-clean overalls, I reviewed the onscreen form for my first client.  Her name was Erica Mole, method of inflation subcutaneous, air medium at body temperature, and the method of deflation what we in the trade call “juicing”:  compression with suction..  I loaded the devices into the back of the van:  the suction pump and the squeezer - the official name is the “expulsion accessory”, but nobody ever calls it that after basic training.  It’s really bulky and heavy, incidentally - much of its work is done by the weight rather than motive power.  This work keeps you fit.

 

I drove through the streets towards the address on the other side of Grimesworth.  I always find myself looking at pedestrians with a professional eye when I’m working.  That bloke in the jeans and T-shirt wouldn’t do very well.  The pressure in his pelvic cavity would blow him up in a top-heavy way which his loose top wouldn't compensate for.  He was a ruptured sigmoid waiting to happen.  As for that pregnant woman in the hippy dress, well, I didn't have to use my imagination much there but my practiced eye could tell that she was full of baby rather than gas or liquid, and that it was her womb which was full rather than anything else, though the weight was pulling down her abdomen in a way only a liquid could.  Just before I  reached the towerblock, an overweight couple crossed the road in front of me.  Obese people inflate strangely.  Gas tends to outline their fat deposits and they go lumpy at first, but I rarely see them in that state.  Their upholstery also means they need quite a bit of skill to puncture as I have to find a spot where I'm not just jabbing the puncturing instrument into a cushion of fat. 

 

I parked outside the address and wheeled the equipment cart to the entrance and pressed the entryphone button.  After quite some delay, the buzzer went and I got inside the building.  8:58 am.  Erica would be almost fully inflated. 

 

Luckily, the lift worked.  I went up to the eighteenth floor, then dashed out with about a minute to go.  A discreet knock on the flat door elicited a young man in a dressing gown. 

 

“Steve” he said.  “Adrian”, I replied.

 

"We're new to this". he whispered.  "How does it work?" 

"I just come in and wait where you want me to until you tell me you're ready." 

"OK, come in." 

I sneaked in and quietly closed the door.  Female moans of pleasure against a loud hiss issued from behind the bedroom door, building to a muffled crescendo. 

 

It was a little surprising that novices should opt for subcutaneous inflation.  Most people who do this for fun are quite squeamish about that method and won't even think about getting the surgery needed for years after they start inflation.  It's addictive though, so those who start off with an aquarium pump will often, sooner or later, find themselves opting for the op if they can afford it.  They would also, however, usually prefer to deflate themselves and their equipment took this into consideration on the whole.  

I couldn't help wondering about this Erica.  Her screams reached a climax and ended, then a switch clunked and the hissing died.  

 

Steve opened the door. 

"Can you, er, come in now please?" 

 

I hefted the machinery into the room.  Erica was lying on the bed, hardly recognisable as human.  Her egg-shaped torso filled and stretching her grey pullover hoodie and jogging bottoms and her apparently breastless chest was emblazoned with the words "AIR MAX".  She was a bottle blonde and and her pierced, fair-skinned but flushed face bore a blissful look.  A hose went into the kangaroo pocket of her hoodie, next to the hands she was resting on her ballooning flanks. 

"I'm so huge.  Look at me" she cried.  As it happened, she was nowhere near as inflated as quite a lot of other people I'd seen, but if you're new to it, being the shape and size of a Pilates ball probably is a bit of a novelty.  Steve also seemed new to this. 

 

This was a bit of a judgement call really.  Was I supposed to play along or would that be seen as intrusive?  I chose to be non-commital as I feigned engrossment in the position of the massive piston-like plunger over her midriff and positioned the suction pump beside her bed.  I paused. 

 

No specialist clothes, low-rent flat, novice. 

 

"Do you mind me asking where you had your valve fitted, Ms Mole?" 

She was returning from some distant plane of consciousness and took a while to answer. 

"Oh, Switzerland, at the Geneva facility." 

"May I?" 

"Go right ahead." 

So that's where the money had gone:  they'd skimped on other stuff to afford the operation.  Not on the pump though:  a rich blue and scarlet Pneumoflate 9000 sat purring away in the corner of the bedroom, still plumbed into Ms Mole.  I unscrewed the hose and inspected the valve where her navel used to be through her pocket before smothering it in rubbing alcohol.  Pulling my own hose closer, I pushed it home and was rewarded by an echoing clunk. 

 

One of the rookie mistakes, luckily only generally made on the practice dummies, is to activate the squeezer before the suction pump.  This can have messy consequences.  I did it myself once, and was torn off a strip in no uncertain terms.  With a single practiced movement, I turned the suction pump on followed immediately by the squeezing piston.  The plate began to lower itself onto Erica's stomach as a hiss could be heard again behind the din of the motor.  Nowhere near as quiet as that Rolls Royce of inflation they'd splashed out on.  Shame they hadn't read the manual. 

 

"How long will it take?  I have to be at work by ten," she shouted above the noise. 

"About five minutes.  Don't worry, you'll have plenty of time.  Here's a little bedtime read for you."  I handed her a leaflet. 

"OK to leave you for a few minutes?" 

"Fine." 

I turned to Steve.  "Would you mind coming with me for a moment?" 

"OK then." He led the way through the door into the kitchen, mercifully closing it on the roar of the motor.  Newbies often wanted to hang around with their partners and I wondered if I'd made assumptions about the nature of their relationship.  None of my business of course. 

 

"Would you like a coffee?" 

"Not while I'm on duty thanks.  I thought I should have a word with you about your pump.  Have you read the documentation that comes with it?" 

He smiled nervously. 

"I have to admit I've not.  I just - well - couldn't wait any longer after the first few pages." 

I handed him a copy of the leaflet. 

"Read this and the manual.  I don't normally need to attend such intimate sessions.  If you're going to invest in a Pneumoflate 9000, you may as well use its features.  It's not a bike pump you know." 

He looked blank.  It always amazes me how, in any situation, people don't read instructions before they try out new bits of kit. 

The roar from the bedroom dwindled to silence. 

"You won't need to call us out again if you let me demonstrate something on the pump."  I took him back into the bedroom. 

"'Morning again, Ms Mole.  Now Steve, look here." 

I pointed out the lever on the 9000 model.  A red light was blinking next to it. 

"If you just push the lever the other way, it'll just deflate Erica by the same volume as it inflated her before, and quite quickly too.  By the way, you need to engage the sterilisation cycle on it now.  Shall I do that for you?" 

"Nope."  Erica pulled out the hose and slid out from under the piston.  Her grey sweats were now baggy on her much diminished form. 

"I dunno, men!  Never reads a manual, you know!"  She took a quick glance at the machine and pressed a button marked "SELF-CLEAN". 

"Well, if we're done I need to change for work now.  See yourself out, will you?  Oh, and thanks."  I shook her offered hand. 

Steve helped me out with my equipment and I returned to the van.  On the dashboard, an extra booking flashed redly. 

 

0945 ANONYMOUS MALE, LIQUID, ERUCTIVE DELIVERY. 

 

It was on the other side of town but in the same Therapy Centre as my 10:30.  The rush hour had finished, so by 9:30, there I was at the familiar clinic for my next two. 

"Grimesworth Therapy Centre" read the plaque outside what looked like an ordinary Victorian terrace, whose original residents would've had an attack of the vapours if they'd known what it would eventually be used for.  I pushed through the door into the reception area. 

"Hello Sue, how are you doing?" 

The besuited woman behind the desk smiled back. 

"Fine thanks Adrian, and you?" 

"Busy morning all of a sudden." 

"Oh yes, of course.  Well, I have a funny feeling your 9:45 will be early." 

I sat down on their padded built-in sofa and passed my eye over the familiar notices on workplace bullying, the Samaritans and contraception yet again.  Just as I considered picking up a copy of "Model Village Monthly", a couple blustered in.  She was clearly heavily pregnant and, as it happened, as apparently was he.  He waddled forcibly up to the receptionist and equally forcefully said "We want to see her now". 

"YOU want to see her now," added his partner.  "I personally am perfectly happy to wait." 

Sue managed to maintain her composure. 

"Hold on sir, I'll just check." 

She peered at her monitor. 

"I'm afraid your appointment is in ten minutes." 

He let out a strangled cry. 

"Ten minutes!  TEN - minutes." 

His companion shot him a look of contempt as he dashed to the loo.  She sat down and looked me over. 

"Are you the bloke who's doing 'im then?" 

"Yeah.  All in a day's work." 

"You don't know you're born, you lot.  Five minutes of pumping, then your job's done." 

I couldn't get what she meant. 

"Got kids?" 

"Oh!  Sorry, I see what you mean.  Yes, two." 

"Did you have this done?" 

"No, they're in their teens.  It was years before this started." 

The man staggered out of the toilet.  He struggled to do up his flies, then plonked himself down next to his wife. 

"Are you feeling better now, Bill?", she asked sarcastically. 

"'Struth Dawn, I swear I'll never take women for granted again.  You," he corrected himself quickly, "I'll never take you for granted again." 

 

"Let me introduce you to our friend, what was your name again?" 

"Adrian.  But you have to see Helga first." 

With that, the woman herself turned up in poloneck and slacks. 

"I'm ready for you now, William.  Walk this way please." 

I swear Dawn thought about saying it. 

 

I'd be on in about fifteen minutes.  That meant I needed to be done by about twenty past, I reckoned.  I went to the Gents and pulled a waterproof apron from the dispenser. 

 

Sure enough, with Prussian punctuality, Helga called me in.  The room was brightly lit and Bill was lying on his back, legs in stirrups, naked from the waist down.  He looked over at me. 

 

"Bit of privacy please!" 

"We are trying to make this authentic, William," said Helga. 

He rolled his eyes. 

"You do know she's having a home birth?" 

Dawn shushed him and I set about my work, scrubbing and gloving my hands. 

"Right Bill, this'll take a little while.  You know what to do:  just bear down when I say, breathe in and push, and it'll pop out."  Bill flinched at the word "pop". 

 

Helga handed me the scissors.  I took care not to make their sharpness audible and kept my back to him.  It's not always a good idea to let the dog see the rabbit.  I'm amazed at what some men do for their partners but quietly felt this was a passing fad. Still, it had been several years now.  I couldn't help thinking they'd be more use fetching and carrying but it's not my place to judge. 

 

I looked over my shoulder.  Bill's eyes were fixed on the ceiling so I could probably risk it.  I went over with the scissors and a plastic sheet. 

"Just lift your bum up a second please." 

He complied and I spread the plastic under him and draped it down onto the floor before placing a bucket on top.  Had to consider the cleaners. 

 

"Women never give birth on their backs nowadays, you know." 

"Sorry mate, just doing my job.  Now breathe in and push down hard please." 

"OK."  He took a deep breath and let out a long, tense whine.  I focussed my attention between his cheeks and glimpsed the flourescent green of the saline-filled balloon inside him, but couldn't be sure of not injuring him.  There were cases on record of the balloons bursting inside men before they came out, hence the saline.  Otherwise there was a risk of water intoxication.  It slipped back inside. 

 

"And again please." 

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me!"  He gave another straining noise and once again I caught sight of the gaudy synthetic rubber.  Once again it vanished inside him. 

"Third time's the charm, eh?" 

"I'm really giving it my fucking best!" he shouted, red-faced and sweating, on the edge of tears.  "Isn't there another way?" 

 

Whereas there was of course, we weren't supposed to mention it unless there was a medical emergency. 

"Come on Bill, you can do it!" shouted Dawn, who seemed to be enjoying herself a little too much. 

"They're not joking, this really is like trying to shit a watermelon.  I can't, I just can't!" 

"Yes you can!  Come on!" 

"Why did I agree to this, you bitch?" 

Helga chimed in. 

"That language is inappropriate William.  This is mild compared to giving birth.  The balloon is much more compressible than a child's body." 

His withering look bounced straight off.  "You're not helping." 

"Empathy is the object of this exercise.  The frustration you are now experiencing will be of value to you as a birth partner." 

"But us men, we're not supposed to do this.  We're not designed for it.  The bus is too big for the road." 

"This is your current task, William.  You have a large object within you which you must now expel." 

"OK, OK."  He took a deep breath.  He pulled in the air, completely filling his lungs.  His upper body was full of air, his lower of water. I crossed my fingers.  It was amazingly easy to be taken in by all this.  I looked at Dawn and wondered what was going on between her ears. 

 

Another straining sound.  The veins throbbed on his temples.  Flicking my pupils back to where I was supposed to be looking, I saw they were also bulging elsewhere.  He bore down again and I knelt, scissors poised out of his view.  I was honestly rooting for him. 

 

He managed to push the balloon clearly into view.  I heard myself say "I can see the balloon's head", and Dawn burst out laughing.  Before it could disappear inside again, I reached up and snipped the end.  Warm salty water gushed out all over my face, almost completely missing the bucket. 

Bill let out a long groan of relief as fluid continued to dribble and the tight roundness of his belly mound began to sag visibly and return to its former size, which turned out not to be that small in the first place. 

 

“Youve done tremendous Bill.  Now just give us a couple of minutes while I retrieve the balloon.”  I took the extraction skewer from my breast pocket and started winding the flaccid stretchy bladder round it, grateful for the protection of the latex gloves and thinking that I really was going to have to change now before the next client turned up.  After what seemed an age, the other end of the balloon emerged, by which time Dawn and Bill were hugging and kissing, talking in lowered tones to each other. 

 

Another success story.  Shall we leave these two to themselves for a while? whispered Helga, and we left the room, bagging and binning the balloon.  Its a dirty job, but - well, you know. 

 

In reception, an apparently fat young purple-haired women awaited us.  Wrinkles in the fabric of her blouse pointed away from her grossly distended belly.  Her limbs were oddly slender, like they were stuck on.  Something seemed not to be really hers.  She caught Helga’s eye immediately. 

 

“Please Helga, it really hurts being blown up like this.  I feel like youve stuffed me with cushions of air and pumped them all up.  I cant even eat.  Ive really learned my lesson, please let the air out.  I feel like Im gonna pop!  Im really, really sorry."

“You owe me no apology, Simone.” 

“Yeah, but I cant apologise to Tina, can I?  Because of the injunction?"

“Here is not the place, Simone.  Shall we go to another room?  Adrian, the receptionist will call you when I am ready."

Simone groaned as they passed Dawns room. 

It seemed cruel, but Simone was clearly old enough to know better.  I judged her to be in her early twenties.  It was becoming a standard penalty for bullying the obese and apparently it was very successful. 

I visited the bathroom, showered and discarded my old clothes into the laundry basket.  Feeling refreshed, I retrieved a clean uniform from my holdall.  No sooner had I emerged from the bathroom than Sue called me in, so in I went.  I passed the open door to Dawn and Bills room, which was now empty - takes all sorts I suppose - then knocked on the next door, bag over my shoulder. 

“Come in”, called Helga, and I opened the door to a clone of the other room. 

Simone smiled desperately at me.

“I am SO glad to see you!” 

“Are you ready?”

“Am I?! “

I took out the speculum. 

“Lie down and open your mouth please."

Grunting, she struggled into a supine position, her abdomen obscuring her head completely from where I stood.  As I approached her, I was able to see her face again.  

“It will be over soon”, said Helga. 

“You know, I had people threatening to pop me with pins.  They thought it was funny.  Poor Tina."

“Open wide please.”  I fiddled with the overhead light.  They really should give us headlamps for this kind of thing.  I shifted a convenient stool next to her head.  She was screwing up her eyes in the glare. 

“Aaah!"

I placed the speculum carefully into her mouth, manoeuvring it through a curve until I could see her glottis, then back a bit.  The plug was easy to see, being the same hue as her hair. 

“Now hold absolutely still while I unplug you."

It was like a finger trap.  Pulling it in the middle with tweezers would stretch it front to back while narrowing it sideways.  The trick was to do this without triggering choking as the air started to rush out of her.  Tightening my grip on the handle and bracing myself, I edged the device down just slightly, slipped in the tweezers and carefully slotted them into the top slits before giving them a quick pull.  The air pressure from Simones stomach pushed the plug up into the speculum, which was now acting as a cork. 

 

“Now sit up carefully and slowly.”

 

Simone eased herself painfully up on her elbows, pushing against the gas inside her as she bulged out under her own weight.  The handle jumped in my hand as Id expected. 

 

“I’ll remove the speculum on the count of three.  One...two..Three!"

I flipped the speculum over and out of her mouth and was rewarded with another faceful, this time of air.  She held open her mouth and raised her knees as she emitted a loud burp which mustve lasted a whole minute.  Then she rocked herself to and fro, squeezing more air out with her legs and producing a series of smaller burps separated by lengthening intervals.  After a couple of minutes, she lowered her knees again.  She was still quite bloated, but my practiced view showed it was now her colon which was filling her up. 

“Urgh, why am I still a blimp?  And it hurts even more!” 

“This has only been the first stage of your deflation.  Your intestines have blown up with the air inside them because theres less pressure on them from your stomach,” I replied.  “You need to take off the containment suit to finish, to get rid of the air from the other end.  Until you do that, itll stay trapped inside you.”

 

Too quick for me to stop her, she shed her blouse and long skirt, revealing a peach-coloured catsuit with a straining zip running down her front.  She hesitantly took hold of the zip pull with her right hand. 

“You mean I have to get undressed and fart in front of you? “

I held up my hand, “Whoah, hold on a second.  No, you do it in the bathroom.  Finish getting undressed and do your business in there. “

“Oh.” She looked relieved.  “OK.”  She staggered off, rubbing her sides and groaning.  I sat in the waiting room while she thundered away in the Ladies.  Helga bunged Simones clothes through the door.  It didnt sound like Id need to call my colleague Carol in, which would be necessary should she run into trouble while naked.  A skeletal young man jumped nervously with each trump before being called in. 

 

Shortly after, a much slimmer and more proportionate Simone came out of the toilet, sighing with relief and rubbing her front.  She handed me the catsuit for laundering. 

 

“I’m just so grateful to you.  I’ll never pick on anyone overweight again."

“All part of the service,” I answered, then added, “Incidentally, I think I should warn you that they double the volume after a second offence."

She stared for a second, then smiled and shook her head. 

“Well that’s never going to happen, believe me.” 

I left to the sound of pumping from Helgas room.  Presumably I’d be closing that case next week. 

 

I sat in the park eating my sandwiches.  You may have noticed that so far, nobody had died or been literally popped that morning.  Maybe you can see it’s not the only thing we do, and in fact it had been a typical day for me so far.  Having said that, I’ve chosen a slightly unusual day just to give you an impression of the full range of what I do.  It’s only fair of me to describe a day when some popping and death did happen.  Don’t run away with the impression that the afternoon I’m about to recount is typical, but it does happen, so I’ve chosen a day when there happened to be two poppings.  Usually, there isnt even one. 

 

What I’m saying is, if you don’t like popping don’t read on, because if you do that’s what you’re going to get.  Don’t say I didnt warn you. 

 

1pm and back to work.  The dashboard flashed the familiar-looking name SHARON MCQUEEN, followed by the word OVERINFLATION.  Yes, that Sharon McQueen, well-known performance artist.  Unless youve been living under a rock on the other side of the Moon for the past six months, you know what’s coming next.  I made my way over to the art gallery where she was performing. 

 

I pride myself on my professionalism, but I’m not going to lie to you even if it means speaking ill of the dead.  Not only did I not get what McQueen’s art was about, but I found her annoying and attention-seeking.  For instance, her Electric Barbarella piece involved a studio floor with concealed plates activated by visitors walking over them and electrocuted her as she sat in an Excessive Machine in the middle of the room.  Bad taste and derivativeness is what I’d call that. 

 

Over the past few months, McQueen had been pushing at her limits.  I drove the very short distance to the gallery wondering what exactly she had in store for me, and parked down a side street, then checked my wallet for the swipe card. 

 

Another flashing sign, multicoloured and much larger, hung over the gallery entrance. 

 

SHARON MCQUEEN’S INFLATED EGO 

 

I made my way into the lobby and was approached by the expected police officer. 

“Are you Mr Adrian Francis Dodd of 39, Royal Gardens, GW3 9PF? “

“Yes. “

“Sign here please sir. “

There’s a load of paperwork in this job but I can see the point on these occasions.  I gave the form its usual cursory read.  I hereby certify that I am... blah, blah.  Yes, all in order.  I scrawled my name at the bottom. 

 

The officer then accompanied me into the main gallery.  A stage had been erected in the centre along with terraces of seats, now audience-filled.  A doctor greeted me at the corner of the stage. 

 

“I have to get Ms McQueen to sign a consent form before we proceed.”

 

She walked over to the stage centre with a clipboard.  Lying there flat on her back - the only bit of her which was flat by then - was Sharon McQueen herself, dressed in a black PVC catsuit.  You know how celebrities are always supposed to look smaller in real life?  Well, that wasn’t true on this occasion, and nor was black a slimming colour. 

 

Sharon McQueen was a white woman in her thirties with short-cropped black hair and blue eyes.  At the moment, she was also giving a pretty good impression of being heavily pregnant.  Her breathing was laboured under the respirator strapped over her face, a plastic tube between her lips.  It was thinner and more flexible than usual and she could easily have bitten down on it if she’d wanted to interrupt the air flow.  The hose led to the familiar Pneumoflate 9000, currently autolocked in standby mode, having registered the maximum gas throughput for oral inflation, which I knew by heart - sixty litres, or around thirteen gallons.  She was gently stroking her front with an air of languid wonder.  Its amazing how many people do this given the opportunity - I suppose its a novelty to them to be so hugely blown out and stretched.  The doctor tapped her on one of her still bony shoulders and presented her with the consent form with a pen, which she dreamily took in her left hand.  I hoped she was in a fit state to remember her name.  Many people enter a fugue state during inflation, so she might not even remember her name at this point.  Nevertheless, she appeared to sign legibly.  There’s legal debate over informed consent during inflation, with some people arguing that lucidity can only be guaranteed before it starts and others maintaining that it cannot be informed unless the person is currently experiencing being inflated at the time.  A joke among us poppers is that it should probably be given after they’ve burst. 

 

She was starting to pant shallowly.  The doctor gave me the thumbs up and I went over to the pump.  I stuck in the swipe card, then my key, operated both simultaneously and entered the twelve-digit PIN which would finally override the security.  A dialogue box appeared on the display panel accompanied by an urgent beeping. 

 

“URGENT WARNING:  ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO CONTINUE?  Safety cannot be guaranteed beyond this point and unauthorised operation of this device by a third party will result in criminal prosecution for murder.”

 

I tapped on OK. 

“Please enter quantity of air at NTP required in litres."

I paused, then walked over to Ms McQueen.  The audience watched in rapt silence.  I shook her hand.  She beamed back at me and waved to her public.  I unrolled a tape measure and wrapped it round her waist, where it went easily under the small of her back.  Her abdomen felt tight and tense as it twitched spasmodically to my touch under the taut PVC of her containment suit and my nails scraped against her zip fastener teeth.  140 cm.  I stretched the tape beside her from hips to shoulders.  60 cm.  So she’d been tall and thin before this, as I recalled.  I’d better use the torso height as a guide - her muscle tone wasnt too good, apparently. 

 

Some quick mental arithmetic enabled me to enter an appropriate figure as soon as I reached the keypad.  Her panting had got faster and louder, but like her, I work well under pressure. 

 

2,2,4, ENTER. 

3,0, SECS, ENTER. 

 

That combination of figures guarantees bystander safety and in this case also guaranteed that she would retain consciousness all the way to bursting.  It’s better not to think too much about what you’re doing when this sort of situation arises.  I took a look at her.  I knew exactly how she felt right now. Sixty litres was the maximum inflation we were permitted to experience as trainees, and I myself had only been there for a split second, but I would never forget the disorienting feeling of my insides blowing up to the size of a beachball, the curiously numbing pressure pushing me out in all directions and the intense feelings of crowding and stuffedness from the air.  I was about to put her beyond even that.  As soon as I threw the lever, she would enter a terra incognita of grotesque but somehow beautiful blooming ballooning whence no-one had returned to tell the tale. 

 

 I gave the lever the requisite shove and the hose shuddered.  She gave a whoop and a gasp.  They were familiar noises, involuntary, the result of turbulence and friction as the air forced its way into her body against the resistance of her organ walls.  She wouldn’t be able to sustain the integrity of her viscera for more than a couple of seconds, I knew.  Sure enough, a muffled squelching pop was accompanied by a sudden limb flinch and her belly billowed upwards.  The precise timbre of the sound told me the rupture had been somewhere in her stomach.  The audience gasped in chorus, ironically drawing more air into their collective bodies than Ms McQueen currently contained. 

 

I never forget it’s a living, though of course sometimes not actually breathing, human being.  In this case, she chose her fate herself for some obscure purpose.  She might be regretting it now, but that was all the more reason to ensure she’d get a quick and merciful release at the end.  Lets face it, being blown up like a balloon is about as far as you can get from a natural state as possible.  It isn’t supposed to happen, and in fact back in the days before it was a common occurrence, most people would have said it was impossible. 

 

There was another bang.  This would be the sound of the muscles in her body wall snapping and letting through the air under her skin.  The second subcutaneous inflation that day, but this one would end differently.  Just as I’d seen many times before, for a second or two her front went floppy and puffy as the air found more room inside her.  The next bit varied and I became part of the audience as I looked closely at her chest. 

 

I must maintain detachment.  I repeated that mentally like a mantra as I saw that she was turning out to be what we in the trade call a boob ballooner.  We find that of women who are subcutaneously inflated, about two thirds just blow up round all over like simple balloons, but the other third undergo a different kind of transformation.  Their breasts really do inflate separately like two balloons too.  This was happening to Ms McQueen right now.  For some reason nobody has yet been able to determine - the research continues - for a minority of women the air tracks into the potential space between their mammary tissue and their skin.  It even happens to a few men.  And that would probably mean...yes. 

 

It was pulling her containment suit down.  You had to watch that sometimes because no only could it be undignified but the teeth could rake against the skin and cause a slow deflation in a fatally injured subject.  This caused a lot more suffering than a sudden pop. However, I noticed that in her case she seemed to have done her research or got lucky, since she was wearing a stretchy red top underneath. 

 

Her cheeks were puffed out and her eyes bulged.  Amazingly, her ears hadn't blown, and even more  amazingly, her lips were still turned up at the corners.  Nor was it the vacant smile I sometimes saw in overinflated subjects, apparently caused by brain damage, but a fully aware, intelligent-looking grin.  She had made no attempt to stop off the flow by biting down on the tube - she had control over her fate and this was a conscious decision.  She wouldn't be in pain according to experiments which had been conducted on people in this state.  Brain scans and blood flow monitoring indicated no sensation of pain and non-functional pain receptors due to an interrupted blood supply, once the gas pressure inside exceeded about 1000 torr.  You had at least to admire her dedication to her art. 

 

Twenty seconds had passed.  Her rounding torso was starting to swallow up her limbs now.  That was another variation.  Some people's limbs puffed up like sausages while others' were overtaken by the rest of the body - the pressure inside the torso would squeeze shut any subcutaneous access.  Now she was starting to ride up as her back and buttocks became cushions of air.  When people were orally inflated, this was sometimes the point of no return because their buttocks would close up the only natural exit. 

 

She was totally round and would burst any second.  I was often tempted to use a puncturing implement at these stages due to the tension of waiting for the explosion.  Finally, a seam running up the side of her containment suit split just slightly.  Had she not been inflating so fast, that would've needed addressing, but in fact it wasn't a problem as at that very moment she popped with an almighty bang, still grinning ecstatically.  It was almost completely clean too, apart from a tiny needle-like spurt of blood from the tear, yet again in my direction, when it happened.  Her suit sagged and shrank back and the doctor went over, felt her carotid pulse and looked in her eyes. 

 

"Pupils fixed and dilated, no palpable pulse.  Time of death 2:45 pm."  The police officer and I signed the witness form and I left.  It was her containment suit, so it wasn't my responsibility. 

 

It's not that I don't care.  I do a necessary job and I seriously think Ms McQueen was very happy with her performance, whatever it meant.  Maybe its absurdity was the point.  Don't ask me, I'm a popper, not a postmodernist. 

 

Presumably her people would be cleaning up the mess, such as it was.  There would be some blood in the oral tube and a small smudge on the floor but aside from that, in practical terms it would be a very straightforward job. 

 

I was pleasantly surprised to find I'd managed to stay clean through all that.  I wouldn't be needing the fresh overalls I'd laid out in the back of the van earlier.  It's important to turn up to inflations clean, not just because of hygiene but also to preserve client confidentiality and because fresh clients are almost always in a heightened emotional state of some kind.  It won't help if I turn up looking like I've just come out of an abattoir. 

 

On getting behind the steering wheel, my heart sank.  The dashboard indicated that I was about to have to do the one duty everyone in this line of work hates.  It's the worst part of the job for all of us.  Regardless of our political views, you'd be hard pressed to find a single individual who sees this kind of thing as anything other than a grim duty executed with a heavy heart.  In fact, anyone who did take any kind of pleasure in it would certainly have been weeded out early in the selection process and would be more likely to find themselves as a client in this particular part of the job description than a practitioner. 

 

There in front of me flashed the euphemism: 

 

1500:  MARTIN FIORE CAPITAL PUNCTURE. 

 

Well, I wouldn't be needing an address for that one.  I drove round to the prison, which again was situated nearby.  There had been a brief period during which it had been open to the public, which was why these facilities were in city centre prisons. 

Thankfully, that was all over now thanks to the UN, but the actual executions still went on. 

 

The reasoning behind it was as follows.  A prisoner serving a life sentence would suffer more by being thrown into jail in their youth for the rest of their natural life, and never make any contribution to society, so they were sentenced to death. 

However, in a typical political kludge resulting from the usual desire to have things both ways even if they don't work, it was also considered important that they should not become martyrs, so they were executed humiliatingly, by inflation. 

 

You want to know what I think?  It's just wrong.  Very wrong.  No excuses, regardless of what they've done.  But again, I'm doing my job and by the time I get to them they've reached the point of no return.  My task at that point is to bring about a mercy killing.  I end their suffering when I do this, giving them a "happy" release.  Someone else would do it if I didn't, and if no-one did it, they'd just slowly expire and it'd be even crueller.  However, that doesn't mean I don't always wish I never had to do it or that I don't lie awake at night sometimes totting up the number of people I've popped and feeling disgusted at what I do. 

 

Anyway, I'd reached the prison.  The condemned would already be inflating by the time I'd worked my way through security.  A lift took me down to the soundproofed basement and one of the many white rooms I visit in the course of a working day.  There were three other people there apart from the prisoner. 

 

I'm not going to say exactly what happened then out of respect for him and his next of kin.  Suffice it to say that the mandatory method of deflation for execution by inflation is puncture, so I chose a number 1 puncturing implement and found a point on the torso by percussion where the skin was thinnest, then lanced it over the remains of the stomach by puncturing my client to a depth of ten centimetres and removing the needle after two seconds, whereupon he popped. 

 

A rather depressing end to the day.  I would also say, though, that I felt I had done my duty to him by providing him with a swift end, and as I say I don't agree with the death penalty.  There are people out there working in factories which make these needles, governmental inflation machines, others who drive the lorries which deliver them, and people who maintain them.  Are any of them less responsible than I am? 

 

Whenever we have to participate in an execution, we theoretically get the rest of the day off, but since my wife is aware of that I prefer not to go home early and just work unpaid for the rest of the day.  I may do what I'm obliged to, but I have no wish to advertise the fact that I've effectively just killed someone to my partner.  In fact, we don't even mention that bit.  I drove back to the depot, stuck the soiled uniforms and containment suits into the washing machine and filled in the execution report.  I don't keep count of the number of those I've done officially:  ending a human life is equivalent to destroying an entire world anyway, so killing any number of people doesn't make it worse. 

 

I spent the rest of the day sterilising the equipment and revising.  I looked at rupture volumes for different body sizes and leafed through a suit catalogue.  There was an interesting research paper in the Journal of Inflationary Studies on male pregnancy simulation which described a new balloon which released female hormonal analogues while inside the body and some thermographs of blood flow during visceral helium inflation which the authors of the paper said demonstrated that although the body as a whole could not become lighter than air, certain organs could, particularly the stomach, and were effectively floating inside the abdominal cavity.  The dispassionate tone always helped me deal with these downers.  Also, for every execution out there, there were probably a thousand inflation-related orgasms too, not to mention the positive outcomes of medical and psychotherapeutic inflations. 

 

Just before leaving, I looked over Wednesday's schedule.  Five appointments again.  The first was possibly this day's skinny bloke, but probably someone else from the previous week - EATING DISORDER - FORCEPS-ASSISTED ERUCTATION.  Then I was supposed to give a presentation to the local inflation fetishists club on precautions in deflation.  The next one was a male inflation by unzipping - I didn't get one of those today.  He seemed to be a suit safety tester.  Brave guy - he'd have a bloated pension when he retired early, always assuming he wouldn't die in the line of duty.  An hour on hand in A&E to relieve any emergency inflations followed:  as you may have been unlucky enough to experience, oxygen inflation can be used as an emergency measure in situations such as near-drownings and carbon monoxide poisoning.  It's like an internal version of a hyperbaric oxygen tent.  Finally, there was an evening one which was quite remarkable:  a genuine juicing.  The local theatre was putting on a production of 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' where the woman playing Violet, a dedicated method actor, would be filled with an isotonic fluid rich in blueberry juice.  I certainly looked forward to that one, but wondered about immune system issues. 

 

5 pm, safe to come out.  I walked the half hour home to my house in the suburbs.  Real balloons hung on the gate and a banner over the door reading "HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD". 

 

I opened the door to a shower of party poppers. 

 

"SURPRISE!" shouted everyone.  I kissed Carole, who handed me a glass of sparkling wine.  We did like our in-jokes. 

 

"Nice day at work dear?" 

I grimaced.  She knew what that meant.  "How about you?" 

"A quiet day today, only three.  A habitual balloon boober, an empathiser who got stuck in a shop doorway - thought I was going to have to call you with that one - and a stunt inflatee in an advert.  Anyway, happy birthday!"  CHINK! 

I looked at the children playing with the balloons.  As of yet, they had no idea what we did for a living.  I wondered if they'd follow in our footsteps. 

 

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