Currency: Heist
Anna locked the front door to the bank and sighed. “God, I thought today would never end,” she said, exhausted.
Jasmine logged out of her computer and stashed the encrypted mouthpieces in a desk drawer behind the teller’s counter. “From now on, I’m asking off from counter duty on the Fridays before a holiday weekend.”
“Tell me about it,” Anna said, turning off most of the lights throughout the bank’s customer service area. “At least the weekend will be pretty quiet.”
Jasmine closed the blinds on the drive-thru windows. “Three day weekend, no customers, plus a day of holiday pay. It almost makes up for days like today.”
“Almost,” Anna said, walking around the counter. “But not quite. Ready?”
Jasmine checked the last computer that was logged in, scribbled a number on a piece of paper, and then logged off. “Let’s see if their streak continues.”
Anna swiped her badge at the entrance to the vault and turned sideways to step through the narrow doorway. It opened into the large bank vault, about two-thirds the size of a high school gymnasium. Jasmine followed behind her. The women walked between the two tall globes at either end of the vault.
“Lot of deposits today,” Rich, one of the globes, said.
Jasmine patted his smooth round underside. “Lot of withdrawals too,” she said teasingly.
“But more deposits,” April, the other globe, said. “I could definitely feel more deposits today.”
“Well, y’all have both been within 1% six straight vault days,” Anna said, tapping playfully on April’s pale, tightly inflated flesh. “Seven would tie me and Jasmine’s branch record.”
“Are you ready to make a guess?” Jasmine asked.
Rich and April, both resting on their stomachs, looked at each other - not that they could do much else with their heads immobilized by bulging skin on all sides. They shared a few seconds of silent communication before April spoke up. “I’m going to guess… one million, four ninety--no, five…” April closed her eyes in concentration for a moment. “One million, five hundred forty-three thousand. Each.”
Anna watched Jasmine scrawl “April: GT1,543,000” on her note. “Rich?”
Rich made his guess with confident bravado. “My lovely colleague and I are each holding one million, five hundred fifty-one thousand.”
Jasmine wrote Rich’s guess. “Drum roll, please!”
Anna began drumming her hands against April’s rounded body, her skin making a low reverberant sound that filled the room.
Jasmine spoke up. “Today’s closing balance was GT3,141,412, which means you’re each holding GT1,570,706. Ninety-nine percent of that is… one million, five hundred… fifty-four thousand nine ninety-eight!”
“Fuck yeah!” Anna pumped her fist and did a little dance.
“Dammit,” Rich said sighing. “I was so close.”
“Well, we all have our off days,” April said. “I’m looking forward to relaxing this weekend. This baby has been kicking like crazy.”
Jasmine approached April and placed both hands on her massive stomach. “Is he kicking right now?”
“Oh yeah, he’s beating me up big time.”
Jasmine and Anna both pressed their bodies against April’s, trying to feel what April was feeling. But her womb must have been too deep inside; all they could feel through April’s spandex suit was the ever-so-slight stretching and retracting of April’s skin and suit as she breathed. “April, I don’t know how you keep this up while nine months pregnant.”
“I’d be lying if I said it was easy,” April sighed. “Just two more weeks and then I get maternity leave.”
“Yeah,” Rich spoke up, “and then we’ll happily pick up the slack while you’re out.”
“Sarah said that she might even hire some temp help in the vault,” Jasmine said. “College students are always looking for work like this.”
“Well, that’s all fine and good,” April said a little impatiently, “but I’d really love to get home and see my husband for the first time in two days.”
“And I really have to pee,” Rich chimed in.
April laughed. “That too.”
“Sorry,” Anna apologized. “We won’t make you wait any longer.”
Anna and Jasmine began removing their business attire: coats, blouses, slacks, heels, pantyhose. Underneath each was wearing a skin-tight white spandex suit with “QUAD CITIES BANK” printed across the midriff, with a small cutout revealing their navels. Jasmine took off her watch and rings while Anna put up her hair. Taking their places next to April and Rich, they took the hoses and affixed the encrypted valves to their belly buttons. “Here goes,” Anna called out, and she pressed the “Intra-vault Transfer” button on the nearby touchscreen panel.
All four valves in the vault chimed in unison, and Anna and Jasmine got on the floor on all fours. A few seconds later a hissing sound arose in the vault as the transfer began ramping up. Anna’s and Jasmine’s breasts swelled first, then their butts, and then their stomachs. As the pressure kept rising their breasts and bellies pressed against the floor, tipping them backward slightly before their arms and legs began plumping up and stiffening.
As the hiss grew into more of a whoosh, the two were propped up onto their bellies as their torsos bulged all over, arms and legs growing shorter and wider, distinct features like waistlines and buttocks smoothing out across the simpler curves of their bodies. Soon they had lost their arms and legs to the constant expansion of their bodies, growing uniformly outward and upward with the exception of their sweeping breasts, Jasmine’s even more prodigious than Anna’s.
Meanwhile, the same transformation was starting to play out in reverse with the fifteen-foot human balloons of Rich and April, only in slow motion. Anna and Jasmine had to reach double digits in diameter before Rich and April could shrink by just a foot. But gradually some features started to reform on their tight surfaces. Hands and feet became distinctly visible, if distorted; April’s breasts stood out more; the dome of skin between Rich’s feet began to elongate, then two new domes descended from nothingness below it.
When they had all reached equal volume - a little north of GT750,000 - Anna’s breasts had completely flattened against her broad chest, while Jasmine’s refused to shrink even a little. Only when Jasmine crept over GT1mm did her assets start to change their shape, spreading both horizontally and vertically across her front side.
Down under GT250,000, Rich could now wiggle his fingers and toes and his comically long penis, resembling a balloon animal balloon, rubbed against the floor. April had regained her neck and could turn her head. Wide mounds of arms and legs arose from the nothingness surrounding their hands and feet. Buttocks began to take shape ever so slightly. When April could bend her arms again she prepared to “land” on all fours as soon as she could reach the floor. Rich would have to wait a little while longer before his third leg receded enough.
While Rich and April’s shift was nearing an end, Anna and Jasmine felt what had been their neck and shoulder flesh bulging around their face, the telltale final stage for holding this much money. Anna looked across at her shiftmate and wondered, as always, how she could still look so feminine after all this. Once he got back down to normal, the 6’4” Rich could have laid down straight across one of Jasmine’s boobs and not be able to reach both sides. Her butt was equally as prominent behind her. Some women were just cut out for bank work while still looking good; Jasmine was born for it.
In the final few seconds of the transfer, April and Rich managed to get their hands and feet on the floor as the last of the money escaped through their navel valves. April sat up on her knees, detaching the hose and rubbing her pregnant belly through her jumpsuit. “Oof,” she said while arching her back, “I know the pumps are super accurate but I swear this thing gets a little bigger every time.”
Rich was flexing his arms and stretching. “Don’t worry, soon enough you won’t have to carry anything besides money.” He reached his hand out to help April to her feet.
“I can’t wait,” she said, smiling as she rubbed her belly. “Just like I can’t wait to get out of this damned suit.”
“You guys go on,” Anna said, trying to blow a single stray lock of hair out of her face.
April noticed and waddled over to Anna. “Here, let me help you with that,” rolling her forward until she could reach Anna’s hair, redoing her messy bun so that she wouldn’t be bothered by it the next three days. Then April put another hand on her belly and gasped. “He’s kicking again. Want to feel?”
“Oh my God, yes!” Anna exclaimed.
April pressed her belly against Anna’s chest. The first kick Anna felt looked like she was about to melt. “Aww!”
“I wanna feel too, April!” Jasmine called out.
April waddled over to Jasmine, rolled her forward just like Anna, and leaned her belly into Jasmine right between her breasts. Jasmine giggled as she felt the kick against her tight skin. “So cute!”
“Well, ladies,” Rich said, “I’m going to go home and read to the kiddos. See y’all on Tuesday.”
“Yes, I’d better be going too,” April said, patting her belly as she pulled away from Jasmine.
“Aww, you should stay,” Jasmine said. “I could feel those kicks all night.”
April grinned. “My husband would be jealous.” She arched her back again and began waddling toward the vault door.
“Oh, April,” Anna called out, “you didn’t disconnect our hoses.” It was typical to disconnect the hoses when the bank was closed as a security measure.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” April said. “The state inspector is coming by tomorrow to inspect the drive-thru GT pumps. Sarah is busy tomorrow morning, so she said to leave the hoses connected and she’ll stop by tomorrow afternoon to disconnect you guys.”
“Alright,” Jasmine said. “Have a great weekend, April.”
“Y’all too,” April said, waving bye. She could just barely fit her belly through the narrow doorway, but when she did she closed the door. Anna and Jasmine heard the electronic lock beep, and that was that. Just the two of them for the next 84 hours.
“So,” Jasmine said, “last week I asked Sarah if I could bring Erick here with me tonight.”
Anna made a pouty face. “What, I’m not interesting enough?”
Jasmine laughed. “No, you’re not male enough.”
Anna gasped. “Are you serious? You asked Sarah if she’d be okay with Erick boning you in here, like this?? And you’ve only known him for two weeks!”
Jasmine grinned naughtily. “When I told him how big these babies get—“ She directed her eyes at each boob. “—he may have become a little obsessed with the thought.”
“I mean, I’m as straight a girl as there is and I can think of some ways to have fun with you like that.”
“Too bad we’re on the same shift then, huh?” Jasmine teased sarcastically.
“Shut up.” Anna said. Then, a few moments later: “Too bad Sarah said no. That would’ve been hot as hell to watch.
“I know, right?”
They both sighed dreamily.
-
The parking lot lights turned off at 3am.
At 3:01am, the beat-up Ford truck - headlights off - pulled into the lot and parked. Max climbed out of the driver’s side and quickly opened the rear door to the cab, pulling out his laptop and turning the screen brightness down to the bare minimum that he could tolerate. He began rifling through his laptop bag for a USB cable.
Steph got out of the passenger side and walked around to Max, the tails of her trench coat trailing behind her. She adjusted the black skullcap she was wearing; in the twilight, it blended in with her jet black hair. “You’re sure no one is going to see us?”
“Please,” Max scoffed, pushing his glasses higher up on his nose. “I’ve been casing this bank for months. The latest I’ve ever seen any cars in this lot is precisely 2:41am, and the high lux coming from the highway road lights is more than enough to make us practically invisible from there. Plus, it’s cloudy so no moonlight. Just as I planned.”
Steph rolled her eyeliner-lined eyes. “You could’ve just said ‘yes.’”
Max ignored his girlfriend. “Also, this bank is due for an inspection in the morning, so there is high confidence that the GT pumps are still connected to the vault.” He connected a small pump to his laptop and banged out a few keyboard commands. “There. The pump is hacked. The bank shouldn’t detect it as anything other than one of its own.”
Steph shrugged off the trench coat, revealing a black tank top and black bicycle shorts underneath what looked like a climbing harness. “And you’re sure the getaway part of the plan will work too?” she asked as she tossed the coat into the cab.
“Yes, one hundred percent,” Max assured her impatiently, disconnecting the pump from the laptop. “I’ll clip you to the tie-down points in the truck bed and off we go.”
“Your dad is going to be pissed if we get pulled over in his truck.”
Max ignored her again, making sure that the pump was connected to his laptop via Bluetooth. “Here, let’s go.”
Steph sighed and took the pump from his hand. Max grabbed his laptop and they snuck over to the drive-thru. Once there, he grabbed one of the hoses and handed it to Steph, who attached it to her belly button just below the hem of her tank top. A few seconds later, the small LCD screen on the pump turned green. “A-ha! Connection established!” Max cheered quietly. “I’m the best hacker in the world!”
“Just start the fucking transfer,” Steph hissed at him.
Max relented, tapping one command on his keyboard. Within seconds money began flowing through the pump and into Steph, filling her in her stomach first, then her breasts once she looked pregnant with twins. “Holy shit,” she said grinning, feeling her expanding curves. “It really is working!”
“I told you I’m the best hacker in the world,” Max replied, crossing his arms.
“Maybe I believe you now,” Steph said, holding his cheek with one hand while keeping her other hand on a belly that was larger than the largest beach ball she had ever seen. The tank top pulled tightly across her breasts. Her skinny butt swelled up into bowling balls. Her arms and legs puffed up stiffly, forcing her into a jumping jack pose. “God, this works so quickly.”
“It has to. Banks have a lot of customers, so it has to be fast.”
Steph hummed in agreement, her back beginning to stick out as much as her front. Her breasts ruptured the tank top while the bike shorts and harness stretched accordingly. Her arms and legs had become mere mounds smaller than her mammaries. “How much did you say we were going to take?”
“We’re going to milk them dry,” Max said. “By my estimates, they should have about GT300k in the bank heading into a holiday weekend like this.”
Steph turned her head, watching in the blackness as the curves of her arms were absorbed by the growing sphere of her body. In less than a minute, her waif figure had blown up to over six feet wide. “This is so damn weird,” she marveled.
“You’re doing great,” Max said, reaching out to pat her shoulder, then realizing she had no shoulder to pat. He pulled his hand back and looked back at his laptop. “GT100k. You’re about a third of the way there.”
Steph purred, for the first time in her life feeling what it was like to be rich. Money was power, and even though he had given up her physical faculties, she felt powerful: powerful enough to run away from her trash parents, powerful enough to move somewhere and start over. She just needed to get through this and make it work.
”GT200k,” Max called out. Steph’s body loomed over him, her breasts blocking his view of her face. The straps of the harness dug into her breasts and stomach, but it still continued stretching with her. He rolled her forward slightly, making sure not to disturb the pump at her navel. “You’re doing great.”
She looked down at him with a nervous smile. “I just want to hurry up and get out of here.”
“Don’t worry, the pump should begin ramping down soon.”
Except it didn’t. The number on his laptop screen - the number representing how much money with which he had blown Steph up - continued to climb faster. Less than a minute after Steph had surpassed GT200k, she crossed GT300k, then GT325k seconds after that. “Whoa,” Dave said, dumbstruck.
Steph furrowed her brow. “Is that a good ‘whoa’ or a bad ‘whoa?’”
“No, no, it’s good,” Dave said excitedly. He watched the number flirt with, then pass GT400k. “You’re already at GT400k. They have way more money than I thought.”
“Awesome, but how does that affect the second half of our plan?” Steph winced at the pressure the harness was exerting on her.
Dave scratched his head, wide-eyed, watching Steph surpass their predetermined size. “It’ll be a tighter fit for sure, but I can still get you in the truck.” The number continued to climb: GT450k, GT475k. “I wonder how much money they have.”
Steph’s bike shorts decided that they had had enough, their seams splitting and the fabric tearing away, held in place only by the harness. “Well, maybe we should just leave,” she said nervously, her head tilting back as her neck began to be absorbed. Her palms were next. “This is getting a bit too weird.”
“No, we have to stay!” Dave exclaimed. The number actually began increasing more quickly; the pump was still ramping up! In less than five minutes they had stolen almost GT600k, and Steph was still growing. “We’ve got double what we came here for. We have to get more!”
“No, Max!” Steph said forcefully. Her body had absorbed her fingers up to the second knuckle. “Shut it off and let’s get out of here. We’ve already succeeded! We don’t need more!”
“No!” Max said. The rate of growth seemed to level off to a more constant flow. “We’re over GT700k now! They could have millions! We have to stay!”
Steph grunted as she lost the last of her fingers. “This is going to take too long! We’re going to get caught!”
“No, we’re fine! I promise!”
Steph felt the harness straining to stay on her, but she could tell that it had stopped stretching and that more of her was bulging through it. “Max, I think the harness is about to burst!”
Max rubbed his scalp with a shaky hand. “Steph… we’re millionaires.”
“Great! Fine! Now let’s go!”
Max looked at all fourteen feet of his girlfriend, pinched into a ridiculous shape by the harness that was indeed looking a little iffy. Then he looked back at the computer screen.
Steph felt one of the harness straps start to pull apart somewhere on her left boob. “Max!”
Surely it has to stop soon, Max thought. Surely they don’t have GT1.5 million. And yet, the climbing number on his screen blew right past it. “My spreadsheet must have been off by a decimal point,” he wondered out loud.
“Max! It’s going to--”
And that’s when their getaway plan experienced a major setback. One of the harness’s shoulder straps failed first, releasing Steph’s tortured left breast. Then the one around her equator failed, and that was the ballgame. Steph’s helpless form twitched and bounced as the harness flew off of her in all directions, wobbling in place before teetering to a halt on her side.
“Great, now what are we gonna do??” Steph wailed.
“We’re gonna keep going,” Max said determinedly. He walked over to his girl and ran his hands along her immense surface. “You always said you wanted enough money to get out of your shitty life. Now look at you! You’ve got enough money and then some!”
“Max, please,” Steph said, her voice revealing more fright than anger now. Her skullcap had slipped off her head and her body was beginning to fill in the cramped space between it and her head. With her on her side, her hair dangled messily across her face. “I’m worried that something bad is going to happen. Can we please go?”
Max rolled her onto her stomach and rubbed what little of her boobs he could reach. It took some effort to maneuver her huge form, but he rolled her down until he could lean in and kiss her cheek. “No.”
-
Anna had thought that the talking she’d heard was in her dream, so she ignored it at first and tried to slip back into sleep. But then it sounded like Jasmine was talking. No, not talking… yelling at her.
“Anna!” Jasmine shouted across the vault. “We have a big problem!”
Anna opened her eyes and turned her head to stretch her neck.
Wait a minute. She shouldn’t be able to do that.
And that’s when she realized that she had breasts again. Jasmine had something resembling arms and legs. “What’s going on?” Anna asked, her heart rate increasing.
“I think we’re getting robbed!”
“Shit,” Anna cursed. Of course: the GT pumps were attached. “You’re sure this isn’t the state inspector?”
“It’s three-something in the morning and the inspector is only supposed to withdraw a few GTs. Not millions!”
“Right. Why hasn’t the alarm gone off?”
“It must have been hacked. Or April and Rich must have forgotten to set it. Or we forgot. Oh shit oh fuck…”
“Hey, just relax,” Anna said, watching her arms steadily regain a vaguely arm-like shape. “We just need to be able to reach our pumps and press the emergency button. Whoever that is out there isn’t going to be in any shape to do much of anything.”
”You’re right,” Jasmine said, trying to calm down. “They must have drained over GT2 million from us. Not really any inconspicuous modes of transportation for that much money.”
”Yeah, we’re dealing with amateurs here,” Anna said, watching her arm deflate frustratingly slow and waiting impatiently to regain any mobility in it.
-
“GT2.7 million!“ Dave exclaimed. ”You must be taller than my parents’ house!”
Steph had given up on reasoning with Max. She was terrified of getting in trouble, but mostly she was heartbroken that Max had violated her trust. Being completely and totally helpless to stop him fueled a fury that boiled deep within her. Next chance she’d get she’d slap him so hard he’d start aging backwards.
But then the constant whooshing sound that resonated within Steph’s body kicked up a couple of notches. “Ahh!” she wailed. “It’s going faster! I’m blowing up faster!”
This comment, and not anything Steph had said the last few minutes, was enough to break the spell of greed that had distracted Max. “Huh? That shouldn’t happen.”
“It’s faster, it’s—oh my God…” The edges of Steph’s face began to stretch out and flatten ever so slightly. “You have to stop! Please!”
Max ran back to his laptop, but no sooner had he gotten there than the flow stopped completely. The screen reported the final talley: GT3,141,412. “There was no ramp down,” he said to himself. “There should have been a ramp down. Unless…”
“Unless what?” Steph had three million in cold, hard cash inside of her and it was the last thing on her mind. Her cheeks and chin only barely stood out from the dominant curve of her surface. “Unless what??”
“...oh shit. They dumped the vault.” A moment later he heard distant sirens. And only then did he realize all of the ways he had painted them into a corner: the failed harness, Steph’s unexpectedly huge size. “I’m so fucking stupid.”
An air of panic arose in Steph’s voice. “C’mon, you gotta get me out of here!”
Max closed his laptop and ran back to Steph, violently tipping her backward. Through her helpless wail of protest, he yanked the valve from her stomach and pushed her away.
Steph rolled to a stop about ten feet away, bumping into the side of the bank and rolling upside down. “Hey, roll me the other way! Put me in front of the truck and just drive behind me! Something!”
“Sorry, hun, no time.” Max quickly gathered up the remnants of the harness, Steph’s clothes, anything that he could grab quickly. The sirens were getting louder.
“You asshole!” Steph screamed at the top of her lungs, her tight skin vibrating with her vocalizations. “I’m going to give you up, you hear me?? I’m going to tell them everything! I’m going to ruin you!”
Max slammed the doors to the truck, started it, and sped away.
Steph was panting with rage and angry tears in her eyes when Anna and Jasmine, in their spandex suits, ran around the corner of the building and nearly bumped into the twenty-foot planet of a woman. “I think we found our money,” Jasmine said, patting Steph’s tight surface.
“I had an accomplice,” Steph said, still furious, “and when the cops get here I’ll tell everything you want to know.”
-
Steph had visions of some massive manhunt for Max, much like one might see in the movies with posters and tons of cops and German shepherds. In reality, the manhunt ended on the other side of the parking lot where Max, having not turned his headlights on, jumped a curb and wrapped the front end of his dad’s truck around a telephone pole. Such meticulous detail he had paid attention to with this bank, and he hadn’t even thought to memorize the layout of the parking lot. He was unconscious in the driver’s seat, a sliver of forehead skin split open.
Max was in cuffs when he came to, propped against the wheel of a squad car. The parking lot lights were on. There was an armada of police cruisers and bank employees’ cars, and headlights and flashlights were trained on Steph as she was having the last of the money transferred out of her and back into the vault, whose employees had no doubt returned to their places. One of the cops was inspecting the hacked GT pump he’d used. Another was placing his laptop in an evidence bag.
Steph was, at the very least, an accessory to some of Max’s crimes. But he was the mastermind: he had stolen and hacked the GT pump, he had hacked the bank’s security system, he had committed the illegal transfer of funds. If Steph rolled on him then she’d probably get a slightly lighter punishment. Not quite the new life she had been looking for, but better than what he was likely facing.
It would’ve all worked if he’d just stuck to the plan.
Steph’s wrists were cuffed as soon as the cuffs would fit, and then she was draped in a robe and led toward the squad car where Max sat. As he looked up at her, she planted a swift knee to his forehead. The parking lot lights went out again, but only in Max’s mind.