Minimum Wage, part 2: "French" Maid

When Karen was about 10, a fortune-teller at a state fair had told her that one day she would be a "big girl" and change the course of history. Right now, she would be satisfied with just paying off her student loans and getting control of her life. Like most French History majors, her career prospects were rather dim. She had been somewhat lucky, therefore, to find a relatively well-paying job cleaning house for a rich Senator's wife.

Most of Karen's classmates thought Sen. Ludlow (R-IA) was just a right-wing gasbag. He was, after all, the sponsor of an anti-abortion constitutional amendment that Karen herself had protested against. But Karen didn't get that impression of him in the year she had been in his wife's employ. In fact, his only contribution during her interview with his wife had been to insist that most of her pay went directly to the student loan company, leaving her only minimum wage to live on.

Then, a few months after she started work, he presented her with a French maid's outfit to wear when she was cleaning. Even without the benefit of her education, it was obvious to Karen that the outfit was fetish gear. Mrs. Ludlow didn't seem to realize this, but she did notice the low-cut front and short skirt. When she objected, Mr. Ludlow explained that the uniform was representative of what a French maid of the 18th century would wear, and would add sophistication to their home. Although Karen was certainly in a position to know otherwise, she backed Mr. Ludlow up, not wanting to have her employer's husband mad at her.

Intrigued by this episode, Karen did some research on Senator Ludlow, and found that he had been a wealthy businessman, but socially introverted and almost totally apolitical. It wasn't until a Christian activist had thrust herself into his life (and his pocket) that he had entered the political arena as a conservative. Most pundits believed that she had turned him to her way of thinking, but the outfit incident had shown Karen that Mrs. Ludlow was just pulling his strings as she spent his money. Nevertheless, he was letting this fundamentalist bitch use him to attack women's rights, and for that reason alone she had nothing but contempt for him.

The outfit was half a size too small for Karen, so she didn't wear it when the Ludlows weren't watching. Today, they wouldn't be home for several hours, and all she had left to do was dust the living room. She was even wearing a purple vinyl tube top and tight black leather pants (and nothing else), just to spite that old hag.

As a senator, Mr. Ludlow often had to entertain diplomats and executives, and the living room dominated the Ludlows' home. At one end, a marble staircase led up to the double front doors; from there, two side staircases led up to the second floor landings which held the doors to the master and guest bedrooms. Another identical set of staircases were at the other end, only they had a window instead of doors. The window provided ventilation and a little light, but mostly the living room was lit by skylights. Doors off the living room led to the kitchen and servants' quarters.

The living room itself was littered with objets d'Art which Mrs. Ludlow had bought with her husband's money in an attempt to make them look cultured. Their guests had certainly seemed impressed, but Karen had taken enough Art History classes to see that they were just a mishmash of cultures and periods with no theme or continuity whatsoever. Still, whatever she thought of them, she still had to dust them.

She wasn't allowed to touch the pricey artifacts, of course. Instead, she was given a portable air compressor, with a wand attached to the hose, to simply blow the dust off. The device was barely larger than Karen's purse, and when she had first seen it, she had tested it by aiming the wand at her face and turning the flow to high. The resulting blast of air was so strong that it had actually unravelled her pigtail. Now she treated it with more respect, keeping it on low all the time. Even at the lower of its two settings, she had to admit it was formidably powerful. She had taken to using it for dusting everywhere in the house.

This power came at the expense of battery life, however, and she was almost on the last statue when it suddenly shuddered to a halt. This happened at least once a day; in fact, there was a cradle on the side of the compressor to hold a spare battery. She had been in the habit of placing the spent battery in the charger before retrieving a fresh one, but she was almost done for the day, so she decided to just swap in the attached spare. She rested the wand on the statue's pedestal and turned toward the device.

Considering how often it was necessary to replace the battery, the engineers certainly could have made it easier. Karen had to brace the device with one hand to pull the old one out the top, and then hammer the new one home with repeated strikes of the heel of her palm. As she worked at it, she heard clattering behind her, but ignored it; all these decorations were attached to their pedestals, which were in turn bolted to the floor, so there was nothing to worry about.

With one last thwack, the battery settled in, and the compressor roared to life. At that moment, Karen felt something touch the top of her butt. As her brain processed this unexpected sensation, she leapt forward. Well, not as a conscious action per se, but nevertheless, her legs suddenly extended and she sailed through the air for a moment before landing several feet away.

Somewhat stunned by this turn of events, and a strange new sensation she was experiencing, it took Karen several seconds to try to get up, at which point she found that something was holding her legs straight. She reached behind her to try to determine what this was, and felt drum-tight leather, thicker thighs, rounder hips, a substantially enlarged ass -- and the compressor wand down the back of her pants.

Recognizing that she was in real danger, she grabbed the wand with both hands and pulled, but this was a really awkward angle, and she couldn't exert enough force to extract it from her compressed rear. Next her hands dove to the front of her pants, trying to unfasten them and relieve the pressure. The only thing this accomplished was to trap her thumbs between her waistband and her expanding body. Now Karen realized what a pickle she was in: with her legs, arms and hands immobilized, she would have to turn herself around and then crawl to the compressor and shut it off before she burst!

Wasting no time, she alternated pushing left with her face and right with her feet until her head was pointed towards the compressor. She then use them to inch herself along the carpet. Her progress was agonizingly slow, and all the while, the inflation proceeded apace. Her thighs widened and began to touch. Her backside continued to mushroom, making the leather (and Karen) groan from the strain. The waistband cutting into her flesh insulated her upper body from the growth for a time, but eventually the pressure found its way into her torso. Her bosom swelled into her tube top, testing its strength, and even her arms starting trying to pull her hands out of her pants of their own accord.

Finally, her face bumped into the compressor. As she was feeling around its surface for the off switch with her tongue, her left arm succeeded in extracting a thumb from its leather-and-flesh prison. It sprang straight outward, and the sudden motion pulled the horrified Karen's face forward and left, away from the controls. Her right arm followed suit, knocking into the device and sending it flying away several yards in front of her.

Karen screamed in frustration, but the worst was yet to come. Her tube top finally lost the fight with her swelling torso and burgeoning breasts, and snapped open. Her bosom immediately fulfilled its inflationary potential, and the instantaneous expansion lauched the terrified girl nearly to her feet. Had she landed on her back, she would have been helpless and doomed to explode, but luck was with her for once. After a brief moment, she fell forward again, only for her pneumatic boobs to bounce her back again almost as high. It took over a dozen bounces for her body to settle down, inflating all the while. To her horror, Karen found that her breasts were now propping her face up too high to help her move, or shut off the compressor!

She realized she had only one option now. With her face out of action, she would have to use one of her hands to turn off the device. With her breasts as the fulcrum and her feet as the sole agent of motion, she would have to line herself up carefully so that her right hand would meet with the buttons. If her alignment was off, she doubted she'd have time to back away and correct it. She stole one last look at the device before her expanding neck forced her head back down. She twisted around to what she thought was the right direction. And Karen started pushing.

At first it was relatively easy, since her body was now touching the ground in only two places, although her protruding nipples, already sore from being bounced on, were chafing against the carpet. Soon, though, her ankles swelled up, and she was reduced to pushing with her big toes, which was even slower than before. It was a good thing Karen couldn't see her body right now, because she wouldn't like what she saw. Her legs were slightly spread, but her thighs were still touching almost to her knees. Her hips had ballooned to over two feet wide, and her ass stuck out nearly a foot. Her leather pants were stretched out so far that they were almost see-through, and their groans, squeaks, and creaks were a symphony of noise. Her breasts had reached the size of volleyballs, and even her torso and arms had swelled considerably.

As Karen approached where she believed (hoped) the device to be, she realized she had one more hurdle to overcome. The three settings for the compressor -- off, low, and high -- were controlled by three buttons. All three were identical except for tiny labeling in paint, and the housing was symmetrical. The low button was currently depressed, but as this was the middle one, it didn't reveal any information to the touch. She would just have to mash whichever one she reached first and hope it was the off switch. If she guessed wrong, she doubted she'd get a chance to fix her mistake. She had been wiggling her fingers to make sure she'd have use of them when the time came, and they were starting to rub together and stiffen.

At long last, Karen's right fingers brushed the controls. Pausing only to say a brief mental prayer to the Goddess, Karen angled her hand as best she could and brought her swollen middle finger down on the nearest button...

...and choked back tears of relief as the motor wound down to a halt.

Now that the threat of explosive death was over, Karen could focus on longer-term planning. Heck, she might even be able to keep her job if she could manage to deflate herself before the Ludlows found her half-naked and in a compromising position with an air compressor. The first thing to do was to crawl to her quarters (she had fortuitously left the door open), so she could try to work out how to deal with her condition in private. If absolutely necessary, she could call one of her school friends on her voice-activated cell phone to come over and cut her pants off.

The next few events happened almost in an instant. Karen barely had time to notice an ominous groaning noise before she heard a deafening explosion, felt a strange floating sensation, and saw a bright light ahead of her. Her first though was, "I never even had a chance to pay off my student loan!". But a draft she felt in a very draft-sensitive place gave her pause, and a yanking sensation and sudden change in momentum confirmed her suspicions. She hadn't ruptured, but her pants had, down the back, and the momentum of her sudden rearward expansion had sent her spiraling upward towards a skylight.

Alas, her inflated buttocks pressed so firmly together that no gas escaped. They even gripped the wand so tightly that the hose pulled her down as quickly as she had ascended. She was not damaged on impact (indeed, in her current state, she could probably have "bounced back" from a fall from the Empire State Building), but she landed on her back, in which position she was completely immobile, and her head cracked against the compressor. Her wince of pain was interrupted by the realization that she had landed on a button, and the roar of the motor kicking into high gear.

She never popped (although she would have for sure if her pants were still pinching her), but the next half-hour was no picnic for Karen. Already too inflated to move, she could only wait helplessly as her body ballooned to a spherical shape, then continued to expand. Using her knowledge of art, she did a mental tally of the value of all the statues and vases being crushed beneath her, then grimly added a rough estimate of construction costs as she felt the second floor landings give way against her sides. Scanning a mental list of jobs she qualified for, she briefly wondered if Goodyear was hiring.

By the time she finally felt that stupid overpowered compressor crumble under her bulk, Karen filled the entire living romm almost to the corners. Fortunately for her, the window opposite the front doors was open, and her head slid through -- breaking through it would have been painful, to say the least, and crushing her head against the walls would probably have broken her neck. Beyond said neck was a solid wall of flesh that resisted the pressure's efforts to force it through the window. The bricks near the corners of the windowframe were developing ominous diagonal cracks. Karen didn't see this, however, as some inflation had pushed all the way to her face; her swollen cheeks scrunched her eyes and mouth shut. Her ears worked just fine, though, and she quailed with terror as she heard the Ludlows' car pull into the driveway.

Mr. Ludlow was enduring yet another rant from his wife about the "immorality" of his fellow Iowan Senator, when he found that for some reason he could not seem to open his front door. Bracing his shoulder against it, he pushed and pushed, but it simply would not give. The pressure did not go un-noticed by Karen, who suddenly realized to her chagrin exactly what part of her body was pressed against the door.

Mr. Ludlow was trying to figure out what the Sam Hill was going on when he heard cracking sounds coming from the door. Thinking quickly, he stepped back and pulled his inanely babbling wife off the porch, just before the double doors exploded off their hinges. What was beyond them defied description. A wall of some beige-pink substance swelled out of the doorway. It was vertically bisected by a slit which concealed fleshy folds. It emanated a smell which was completely unfamiliar to Mr. Ludlow, yet strangely enticing.

Mrs. Ludlow, who had become VERY familiar with that particular sight and smell during her teenage years, was livid. "What is this... this... FILTH?! Ohh, that slattern of a maid you hired! Is this her idea of a prank?! I am going to FIRE her, and we are going to SUE her for everything she's --"

But Senator Ludlow ignored her. He said nothing, but his facial expression was one of pure, uncomprehending gratitude. For he had finally deduced what he was looking at, and it was something his wife had always withheld from him, and which, despite his money and power, he had never had the nerve to seek out himself. And now it was here, right in front of him, in quantity greater that he had imagined could exist.

He climbed the steps to the patio. He wiped his feet on the doormat. And John Ludlow came home.

Karen tried not to think about how they had deflated her. She considered herself very open about and unashamed of her body, but what those men had done... yikes. Still, she accepted that it had to be done, and she wished that one worker a speedy recovery. Besides, Karen had more important things to think about.

She had, of course, been fired, there not being enough house left for her to clean. After some deliberation, Mrs. Ludlow had reluctantly decided not to sue. Although Mr. Ludlow's connections had procured a team of specialists who would be discreet, and had fed the media a story about Karen causing an explosion by carelessly mixing cleaning chemicals, a civil trial would bring the truth to light, and Mrs. Ludlow couldn't bear the thought of having her name attached to such a depraved tale.

Still, she was making sure that no employer concerned about "family values" would want anything to do with Karen. She had considered modeling, and had attracted some interest from various agencies while working for the Ludlows. Unfortunately, after her "accident", her entire body below the neck was crisscrossed with stretch marks, so that was out.

Karen woke in the cramped apartment she had been able to find, and turned on her tiny portable TV. As her umpteenth ramen breakfast cooked in the microwave, she called the student loan agency to plead for another extension. To her surprise, the agent she talked to thanked her for paying off her loan ahead of time. Confused, she made a call to her bank, and found that she was now the owner of a trust fund whose interest could support her for life.

Hanging up the phone, Karen slowly sat down. One particular event from that day recurred to her. Following a relief of pressure on her undercarriage, she could have sworn she had felt something... "enter" her. Whatever it was worked its way in pretty deep, and seemed to resist being dragged out until her "lubrication" had robbed it of purchase. She also remembered that as Mrs. Ludlow was bawling her out, Mr. Ludlow couldn't seem to meet Karen's gaze. As she was sorting through her memories, the news came on.

Senator Ludlow (I-IA), after changing party affiliation from Republican to Libertarian (Karen recognized the local College Libertarian party, even though the reporter just called them "Independents"), had withdrawn his support for the Defense of Life Amendment. Without its chief sponsor, the amendment, once certain of passing, was considered "dead on arrival" to a Senate vote. He had already divorced his wife, who had inherited few of his assets, but ALL of the destroyed objets d'Art, most of which had not yet been paid for.

Once again, Karen remembered the fortune-teller's prophecy, and assumed that it had come true in a very strange fashion. Little did she realize that the fortune had not yet truly come to pass -- but a curse on one of the statues she had crushed would ensure that it did...