Pumpin' Head

I've told you about Alexa Pittman, Door Woman. I've told you about Alexa Pittman, Bowling Alley Queen. I've even told you about Alexa Pittman, college student in the desert. 

But before all that, I've got one last Alexa Pittman -- Alexa Pittman the scared, frightened little girl. 

She was about 18 at the time. She had just started college. 

She was driving from Longview to Shreveport. A meeting with her parents had transitioned into her going back to Centenary College. It wasn't long before someone behind her started following her. 

He was driving a black car. It was that obsessive guy. He had done this before, at school. But on the highway? She wouldn't be able to get away from him! 

She had spoken to him -- his name was Chad Rivers -- at Centenary, and he had never left her alone since. Or it had felt like he had never left her alone. He had stroked her chin, come up to her, told her she was cute, all those things. All unwarranted things. A personal space invasion.

His plan was to get her. 

Her plan was to get away. 

The guy started following really close behind. What was he thinking? That maybe she would pull over if he got really close? That if she got scared enough, perhaps she would go to him out of fear?  That he would intimidate her with his muscle and his car?

The car was just like him. It's engine made a constant motoring blaring noise, it was big but it was sneaky, and able to get very close without knowing. She could see his face in her rearview mirror. It was enough for her. She was terrified.

Alexa saw the sign -- EXIT 13 

Monkhouse Drive

 

She swerved off. 

Chad followed behind her.

And she wasn't going to let this guy drive behind her any more. He was getting way too close. She could see his car bonnet juddering in the rearview mirror. 

She decided to step on it. She'd go anywhere. The college was too far away. Longview was too far away. She had to lose him. If a policeman saw her, she could explain it. 

When he sped up to catch up with her she just about lost her head. She put her foot on the pedal-- high heel and all -- and the car sped up. It wasn't a great vehicle, but it could go fast enough. She wasn't sure about Chad's car. For about 5 minutes she drove 80 on a 30 road, which turned into a 50 road. Louisiana was empty enough for nothing much to happen, and "Monkhouse Drive" was in the middle of nowhere, Chad in his black car still following. 

She turned to the right again. She didn't know where she was. Apparently some kind of forest. This guy still hadn't given up on her. She was getting sick to the pit of her stomach and got a bad taste in her mouth. Maybe she should drive to a police station or something. Though she didn't know where one was. She couldn't confront Chad, as she remembered what had happened last time. He had argued over her and hadn't given her any ground. He had gotten physically close to her thinking he knew everything. The boy just wouldn't leave her alone!

Somewhere the road turned into a foresty/dirt road backwoods. She didn't know where at all she was anymore. She just had to get out of here. He was a little farther away now, she having sped up to 110 on the highway, and still not being caught by police. She took the dirt road "exit" when she found it , slowing as much as she could (about 45) to make the turn without accident. The guy struggled to catch up to her, the element of surprise making him slow down and get on the dirt road somewhat clumsily.

Alexa's car hit the dirt road and jolted a little bit, but she kept it steady, breathing heavily, and sped a constant 45 while getting into the tree-covered road. Maybe she was in Texas now. It wouldn't be a surprise to her.

She looked in the sideview to see if the guy was still there. It looked like he was having trouble getting onto the road. Maybe if there was another turn she could lose him. Great, ahead there was a two-way fork. Either straight or a right-hand turn. It was 5:45 now, she glanced at the clock,  and getting dark. She could see the faint glow of Chad's headlights. He was a while behind her now, she guessed a mile to half a mile. She turned straight onto the right-hand road. More dirt, more unpredictability. Maybe if she could take more turns, he would lose her. Maybe he would get it into his thick head that she was trying to get away from him and leave her alone! 

She pushed on the pedal, glanced around even more, looked for turns. There was another one, on the left. She saw the glow of his headlights sweeping into her vision as he turned onto the road she was on, and she went left. 

Next it went left or right. Left. The guy was getting farther away, she could hardly see his front lights. She wasn't sure if she could see his vehicle anymore now. This was too much like "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride!"

After another turn or two, one right, one left, she couldn't see his headlights. She just went as fast as she safely could and got as lost as she could. Eventually she came to a dead end. There she braked hard and hoped and prayed the guy wouldn't catch up to her. She had had enough of Chad Rivers. Enough of Chad Rivers for a lifetime. She would call the police, call the campus police, a friend, somebody. She had taken what seemed like infinite turns and by some divine humor, she thought, had probably come full circle. 

She turned her engine and car lights off so she couldn't be seen, parked in as much shade as possible. She breathed heavy and looked around. This was creepy. All of a sudden everything had become very still. It was just her and the surroundings.

She waited, and waited... 10 minutes. She hadn't seen him. She half-expected him to burst on the front of her car window, like something out of a horror movie, but nothing happened. Just some rustling in the distance, branches being brushed. It was getting dark. 6:10. 6:20.

She breathed a sigh of relief. Then she thought about Chad. And burst into tears. Why wouldn't he leave her alone?

6:30. She called a friend. She would tell the campus police abut Chad when she got back to campus. At this time, she was almost convinced that she was safe. 

She told her friend about where she was ("in the middle of nowhere"), about the chase, about Chad ("God you should have told me!" -- her friend). Alexa laughed through dry tears and said she looked forward to seeing her. ("Come stay the night, it's safe!") the friend offered. Alexa laughed in gratitude and decided to hang up (she had to go, she was running out of batteries and needed to be aware if the guy was there - "okay", the friend said), and hung up. She took a deep breath. She had to turn around.

She turned the car on... No.

She turned it off. She would wait another 15 minutes. She could just imagine that Chad waiting for her at the exit, ready to chase her. The thought made her shiver in her seat. She would wait 30 minutes. Maybe he would feel sorry for her, then feel sorry for himself, and then leave.

It seemed like he had given up already but... she wasn't sure.

She got a book out ("The Vampire Diaries") and read it in the light of her car, with her phone light. It really was running out of batteries, but she wouldn't need it. 30 minutes, she was squinting to see the words: 7:00. Time to put the book down. She gulped and started the car. Left the dead end. Reversed, straightened up, drove forward...

After 20 minutes, Alexa realized she was lost. She gulped. Maybe she really was driving around in circles. She could call someone, but where was she? That was the problem.  She didn't have a GPS. She thought it would be easy to find the road, but she had to get lost just to get here!

At 7:20, she had just about given up. 20 minutes and no way out of these woods? Maybe there was someone she could ask... She had seen buildings/structures on the sides of the road... maybe she could drive a little bit more and ask for help. 

She slowed down when she saw a light in a building on the side of the road. The sun was setting behind it. "End of the Line," the sign said: 

"Drugstore."

It looked like a pleasant scene inside. A light was on, an old woman was fixing plants suspended from the ceiling, and an old man was asleep on an armchair. A dog was asleep at his feet.

Tinkle Tinkle! The doorbell.

"Excuse me," Alexa said. 

"Hi!" 

"Could you tell me how to get back to the highway? I got lost out here." 

"Oh sure!" The old woman saw how worried the young girl was. She would be sure to help her out. "You want directions!" the old woman said.

"Yes, to the I-20, please?"

The old man, from his armchair, stirred a bit, smiled a bit, lifted up his pipe at the girl. Alexa smiled.

The woman, in her gardening hat, wrote down directions. "It's a little wind-y out here, as you can see," 

Alexa giggled, 

"But you can make it. Just follow these directions. You'll be fine." The old woman squeezed her arm. 

"Have a good night, young girl!" The old man said to her. Leaving through the door, Alexa turned to him and laughed. 

She got into her car, feeling a little more relaxed. This would be easy. She would just follow the directions on the paper. She thanked the people in the drugstore from her heart. 

It was as they said... chicken coop here, big tree there... but mostly no landmarks, no distinguishing features, all dirt road. Alexa followed the directions perfectly. 

But, at one point, she got to a big tree. 

"This seems right," She said, inspecting the paper. Everything on the directions seemed right... But there didn't seem to be a way past the tree. 

The path should have gone straight through. And there was no way. It shouldn't have been there. 

Alexa looked around. There was no other path. She sighed. Maybe she made a wrong turn? But she had followed the directions perfectly... She looked behind her and started to reverse... but she saw that there was another big tree behind her! 

"How did that happen?" Alexa said. There was no turn to get to where she was. A tree behind her? An optical illusion... But when she reversed, it got too close and she didn't want to test that illusion. Now that she was here, it would be really difficult to get out. 

That's when the white mist overcame everything. It filled her senses, filled her nose. It filled the forest, as if some god had poured it in. 

And she heard, through the milky mist, a voice in her brain: 

You'd Best Beware of Pumpin' Head,

He'll blow you up until you're dead.

It sounds almost funny, when heard at first,

But wait 'til you hear the second verse! 

 

Her eyes widened, looked around, wildly:

Because when Pumpin' visits you,

It's true, it's rare, but still, it's true,

He'll blow you up, collect your bits,

have you popping in inflating fits 

 

Alexa's breathing shallowed and she looked around again:

And when you think his work is done,

he'll pop you when you're 31.

The curse holds still while you're alive,

and only 'til you're  35. 

 

Alexa couldn't guess what was going on. Her eyes twisted and whirled:

Just when you think that's it's the end,

Pumpin' Head gets you on the mend,

you he'll find, this part is true,

in Louisiana... Texas...? HE WILL FIND YOU!! 

 

Then a hand slapped her window, shocking Alexa out of her reverie: it was the author, Oliver Mears. He was running by and tossed something by the side of her car.

"Huh?" he said, looking in at Alexa's face, and then kept running. He seemed to be running away from something. 

Then, wide-eyed, Alexa kept looking forward. A face filled her vision as it stalked towards her car. A purple face, and it was walking slowly. Or Stalking, slowly. It's wide, long fingers swept pendulum-like arcs through the air as its string body drifted over the ground. Suspended above it's neck-line -- shaped like a straw -- was a giant head which looked like a balloon. It was Pumpin' Head!

The sight of it was so unexpected, so frightening, that a synapse in her brain broke. The thing came right up to the left driver's side window, and Pumpin' Head smiled. It had big hollowed-out amber eyes, and the head of a Balloon. It bent its head toward her menacingly.

Who are you? It said, in Milky White telepathy. Hm... It touched a hand to her window. Alexa P... It bent over. She couldn't see the Pumpin' head. A moment later Pumpin' Head resurfaced and she saw the balloon man come up, holding a doll. A voodoo doll! Alexa came back to her senses for a moment: Did Oliver do Voodoo? That question would be answered later. 

Pumpin' Head seemed to investigate the doll. 

Alexa P., it scratched into the doll, with raggedy fingers. They were orange, and puffy, shaped like balloon tips. 

All she could do was sit still. Strapped into her seat, she watched Pumpin' Head. 

It carved into the wood -- "35". 

Then he and the mist vanished. 

It completely disappeared. Alexa Pittman wondered where she was. Then she remembered: the car. And she started inflating. She didn't notice. Little did she know that Oliver had unwittingly passed his problem onto her. He didn't know there would be a person in the woods, and didn't know that that person of all people would be Alexa, but he passed it right on to her anyway. 

Little did she know that this was a pact that would be fulfilled until the age of 35. From the moment Pumpin' Head scratched that number into her doll, every sin she would commit would accumulate, accumulate and BOOM! An inflation situation would occurred and she would pop to repeat the process over and over again until she reached 35 or had no more sins left. 

(That territory is covered in "Final Burrito," which is another story.) 

In the meantime, Alexa's fingers started puffing up. It was the first time she had inflated. She didn't really notice it at the time. She wondered where she was. The tree wasn't there any more. She should drive. She put the car into D., noticed a weird sensation in her fingers when she did it. The tree behind her wasn't there anymore. She felt sort of a puffy sensation in her fingers. Wait a minute... what tree? 

Alexa's shoulders then blew up. She was still strapped in to the seat, still a tiny girl, but inflated. 

She looked in front of her and behind her again. The trees which had been there were both gone.

"It must have been an optical illusion," she said. But her cheeks had swelled up a bit, gotten a bit puffier, causing her to chew on her words. 

Then her stomach puffed up under her red dress, bloating underneath it, inflating her white capris underneath it as well. She noticed a tugging sensation on her seat belt. Focusing on driving, she said "It must have been an optical illusion" again, chewing on the words. Her fingers were swelling up, and feeling a little bit slick on the steering wheel. 

Her feet began feeling a little puffy too, filling out her shoes, and they started to feel airy on the pedal. Her foot slipped to the left. 

"No," she said, and nudged it back. 

The car was going 35 on a dirt road. Unpredictable, full of potholes, it was a dangerous place to be when inflating while driving. 

"Here," Alexa said, "then here," pointing marks on the map, not noticing that her cheeks were puffing up again, squinting her eyesight, making it harder for her to see. Her hands were making it hard to steer. "And here," Alexa gestured, at the map. Her lips lisped.

And then that was it. Her hand blew up suddenly. It looked like an inflated white lab glove. It slapped the steering wheel after its sudden inflation and the car veered left. 

"What?!" Alexa said as the car turned. She grabbed the other side of the steering wheel with her right hand, but it was too late!

The car hit a tree. Steam soon came out of the front bonnet as Alexa staggered out of it.  Or should I say tip-toed, as her toes and feet were swelling. She looked a bit wobbly.

Leaving the door, her boobs surged up into her face and she looked down at her bosom in surprise. Nothing like this had ever happened to her before! What... she thought, looking at her inflated hand as it had blown up, what was going on?  

Her butt swelled up. Her legs filled her capris. Her back straightened out to accomodate her new body.

Now her eyes were squinty from her inflated face, and she saw out of them barely the shady figure of the running man.

"Hey!" She said, or tried to, and stuck her hand out to it. She thought she must have looked ridiculous. A bit of balloon air squeaked out of her mouth. The running man stopped. 

"Oliver!" she said. The man paused, then kept running.

Her butt inflated, swelled. Her legs straightened to re-posture. She walked forward, or waddled forward, because her thighs had made walking difficult. She looked like a giant woman trying balancing on a tightrope. She was too surprised at the moment to be frightened.

"WAIT!" She exploded at him.

And then her body blew itself up. It ripped itself apart, a fascinating expansion of light, which blew itself out into the forest. Then the light faded away. A shred of red fabric flew away.

And then Alexa was suddenly in her car. She had "woken up."  But the event had happened. To Alexa, she had forgotten. But the event had happened. And it wouldn't be the last time it would happen. "Waking up," she drove forward, towards Centenary.

The End.

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