Medallion, The

(or, “Four Cheers for Deviltry!”)

The four young, nubile cheerleaders spilled out onto the empty football field for their weekly practice, and once again their every move was watched by a young man seated alone in the stands. He was dressed in dark gothic leather and wearing a silver medallion, and had curiously silverish-gray hair, which everyone assumed was dyed.

The gorgeous female clan converged into a small circle and spoke in auricular tones.

“There’s that creepy kid again,” said Irma, a foxy, sculptured blonde bombshell, whose flawless skin gleamed in the late-afternoon sun.

“Oh, just ignore him,” said Sheena, the short-haired brunette and squad leader with a future in modeling. But her advice was ignored.

“I say we tell him to fuck off,” said Nettie, the tall, tan-skinned beauty, whose cascading black hair cradled her dexterous shoulders.

“No need to provoke him,” said Sheena, who abhorred confrontation.

“Oh, I think there is,” said Tammy, the short, cute, but pug-nosed blonde. “I wasn’t put here on this earth to be some creep’s masturbation material! I’m a real human being!”

“He’s not hurting anyone,” Sheena insisted. “Let’s just do our practice.”

But Nettie couldn’t resist. She spun around and flipped the young Goth her middle finger while sticking her tongue out in a “you-gross-me-out” message.

Tammy and Nettie laughed, while Sheena rolled her pretty brown eyes.

“Well, someone had to let him know he’s not wanted,” Nettie said, turning back to her three hot friends.

She didn’t see the silver-haired young man gently, slowly turning his finger around on his medallion while staring unblinkingly at Nettie’s back.

“Nettie,” Sheena asked, “are you putting on weight?”

All the others turned their gaze to Nettie’s belly. Nettie looked down to see her belly bulging out of her uniform. Her exposed midriff became even more exposed as more and more of her belly edged out from under her top.

“Whoa!” said Irma, adequately summarizing the situation.

“What’s happening?” Nettie asked, but the only answer she got was a growth spurt. The other girls backed away instinctively as Nettie’s midsection resembled a balloon, blowing up like a rapid, grotesque pregnancy.

“Ohmigod!” said Tammy. “She’s, like, a balloon!”

This became even clearer as Nettie’s expansion reached other parts of her body, starting with her sides, which bloated her out into an oval shape, causing stitches in her blue-and-white cheerleader outfit to groan and pop. Her arms and legs filled up too, spreading out in opposite directions as they became fuller.

“I think we need to get her to a hospital!” Sheena observed.

“I think we’d better hold her down!” said Irma, as Nettie began to float slowly upwards from the ground.

The other girls responded, holding Nettie to the ground, even as Nettie forced them backwards with her continued inflation. “Make it stop!” she cried. “Help me!”

“I don’t know what to do!” Sheena admitted. “Why are you blowing up like this?”

In the commotion, none paid any attention to the smiling silver-haired Goth.

Nettie continued to blow up into a rounder shape, screaming occasionally as she became more and more of a balloon ball. The other girls held her tight, but Nettie seemed determined to float. “Hold on to me! I keep feeling like I’m going to float away!”

“We’re trying!” said Sheena, but it was like some magnet was pulling Nettie off the ground. And as she got bigger...and bigger...and bigger, the force became ever greater. Her round body made it difficult for the other girls to maintain their grip, and she kept increasing her girth, making her friends appear smaller and smaller. Her body began to squeak, and her cheerleader outfit, already stretched thin, tore into shreds.

“Oh, God!” said Tammy. “She’s gonna pop!!” Instinctively, Tammy covered her ears, releasing her section of Nettie.

“Don’t let go!” Sheena ordered, but it was too late. Nettie bobbed up into the air, and the other girls lost their grip on her. With a squeak, Nettie slipped from their arms and shot into the sky. Sheena almost made another attempt to clutch an area of Nettie’s skin, but she hesitated for a just a moment, realizing that, as big as Nettie was, Sheena’s fingernails might very well cause her to burst. That hesitation was all it took to allow Nettie to shoot into the sky like a toy helium balloon that was cast to the winds.

Too stunned to speak, the three gaping cheerleaders watched as the Nettie balloon soared into the sky, getting increasingly bigger as she flew towards the clouds. They craned their necks, watching helplessly as Nettie drifted farther and farther from earth, until she was just a blue and white dot in the sky.

And then Nettie burst. They heard a popping noise and saw scattered fragments of cheerleader outfit raining down like a bizarre fireworks display.

Dumbstruck, Tammy and Irma continued to gaze unbelievingly at the sky. Sheena turned her eyes downward, and the first thing her gaze settled on was the calm, unfazed form of the medallion boy, seated placidly in the bleachers.

“Look,” was all Sheena said.

The other girls looked instinctively at their observer. And all knew from his demeanor that he had somehow been responsible.

“Tammy, get your cellphone and call the cops,” Sheena said softly, keeping her eyes on the spectator.

Tammy didn’t respond immediately. “And tell them what?”

“Just do it.”

Tammy made her way to her backpack, often glancing askance at the medallion boy, as if she were watching a potentially rabid dog. She pulled out her cellphone and opened it up.

And then her breasts blew up to twice their size. Stunned, Tammy staggered backwards, dropping her phone and vainly holding her breasts in place. But they continued to inflate, now three times their size. Then four times.

“Tammy!” said Sheena, as she and Irma raced to her to attempt some kind of rescue. Sheena looked at the Goth boy, who ran his index fingers in two small circles around his medallion. “What are you doing to her?”

But it was pretty obvious. Tammy’s breasts inflated so large that she could no longer see over them. Her top ripped, exposing two massive, growing breasts, barely held in check by a transparent bra. An instant later, that too snapped off her chest as her breasts unabatedly ballooned larger and larger. Each breast was now as large as her entire body, and she too gradually began to drift upwards.

“Hold on to her!” said Sheena. She and Irma each grabbed one of Tammy’s legs before she got too high, but it wasn’t enough. Tammy floated higher and higher off the ground, carried away by the still-increasing helium blimps on her chest. Sheena looked down and saw that she too was being lifted up into the sky. She and Irma had to let go or be carried off with Tammy. Irma let go, but Sheena held on for a few more seconds before she too accepted the inevitable. She dropped several feet to the ground, laying there as she watched Tammy fly higher into the air.

Sheena turned her gaze briefly to the medallion boy. “Let her go!” she yelled at him, but she got no response. She looked up again to see Tammy disappear into the clouds. Not a trace of her could be seen. Then she addressed the silver-haired Goth again. “Why are you doing this?” she demanded. “Just because Nettie flipped you off?”

Finally, he seemed to react, leaning forward in seat. “No,” he said softly, yet somehow his voice sounded as if amplified. “You cheerleaders have such swelled heads.” He traced a small gesture at the top of his medallion.

Irma found she couldn’t speak when her head inflated into a toy balloon, her features spread out comically like a funhouse mirror. She held on to her head as it grew, blowing up until it dwarfed her body.

“Stop it!” Sheena pleaded. “We haven’t done anything to you!”

Meanwhile, Irma’s head expanded into the size of a weather balloon, and she lifted off the ground. But instead of floating away, she drifted easily toward the medallion boy. He grabbed her by her neck, looking as if he were holding a giant balloon with a cheerleader body sticking out of the bottom. “Oh, this’ll never do,” he said, and gave her head a squeeze.

All the air left her head and went down into her body, which was now blown up as big as her head had been. Sheena could only watch in morbid fascination as the young man held Irma’s balloon body in front of him, considering other ways he could play with her.

“Let her go,” Sheena ordered him.

He glanced upward to the sky. “You really want me to?”

“Just leave her alone!”

“Okay,” he said, and when he released Irma, she didn’t float away. She just hovered in the air expectantly in front of him.

Sheena sighed in a brief moment’s relief.

Then the young man reached into his pocket and withdrew a switchblade. Irma’s eyes shot open.

“Don’t!” Sheena said.

He held the blade just in front of Irma’s taut balloon skin. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t, please.”

He seemed to think it over.

“Please?” Sheena repeated.

“No,” he said, and with a quick thrust, Irma burst into nothingness, her empty, torn cheerleader outfit falling to the grass.

Sheena just stood there for a while, waiting for his next move, knowing she could do little else. He pocketed the knife and stood watching her. After a long, tense pause, he said, “You, Sheena, you’re a good kid. I realize that you would have preferred to leave me alone.”

“Does that mean you’re not going to inflate me?”

“No, it just means I’m going to keep you around and play with you first.” His hand went up to his medallion.

Sheena took off running down the field. He watched her go for several moments, letting her have some hope. And then he twirled his fingers on his medallion.

Sheena was picked off her feet when her inflation began, but surprisingly, she went crashing down to earth, her bloated body cushioning her fall. She didn’t float away as her friends had done. She just lay there as her head was lifted up and up, being lifted by her ballooning form. It took only moments for her to swell up into the size of an SUV. Her outfit tore apart as ballooning body freed it from any restriction.

“No, that won’t do,” said the Goth. Sheena couldn’t turn her head anymore, still lying on her bloated stomach and facing the ground, but she could sense him near her. He came into view and ran his hands along her torn uniform, and the stitches melded together, reforming to fit Sheena’s enlarged size.

And then he gave her a swift kick. Despite her mammoth appearance, Sheena was quite light, and she bounced across the field like a beachball. She bounced farther and farther away from her tormentor, so much so that she believed for a moment that she would keep bouncing until she was far into another county.

But just like that, he suddenly appeared on the other side of the field, arriving just in time to give her another swift boot, sending her to another far corner of the field.

And so it continued, Sheena bouncing from place to place, always at the whim of the strange silver-haired young man. She made no protest, knowing it was pointless. He held all the power.

Finally, a gentler kick nudged her dead center in the middle of the football field. Sheena landed at a slight tilt, looking down at the Goth boy. And he looked up admiringly at her.

“Please,” she said. “Don’t pop me.”

He just smiled and twirled his fingers on his medallion. He did it harder and faster than he ever had.

Sheena grew rapidly bigger. “Please! I don’t want to explode!” She doubled in size and kept growing, growing, growing, until the medallion boy was forced to retreat. She called out to him as her body filled more and more of the field. “Don’t make me burst! I don’t want to pop like a balloon! Please don’t pop me!” But her inflation increased exponentially, and she surged in size, growing higher than the bleachers, taking up more and more of the football field. She could now be seen for miles like some advertising blimp. And she still inflated bigger and bigger, her cries getting farther and farther away, as her bloating stomach lifted her higher into the air. She blew out wider and higher, becoming the most gigantic blimp ever seen. Still her faint voice pleaded, “Don’t pop me! Don’t let me burst! Please! Please! PLEASE!!”

The thunderous boom could heard all across the city.

The silver-haired boy released his medallion, which was smoking from the friction and lightly burned his fingers. Fortunately, he was immune to intense heat.