Investigative Reporting

It was called ‘Body Inflation’, and it was a kink that Tiffany had stumbled across while freelancing with another writer on a larger piece. They had been working on a comprehensive exposé on fringe sexual practices in the city; that piece was done and due to be published soon, and Tiffany had sold the idea of a smaller side story to the editors as a follow up. But they said she needed to be original, and she had to give them something that appealed to a much wider audience.

But Tiffany came prepared. The two factors working in her favor were: the larger piece wasn’t going to print immediately (since it wasn’t time sensitive in nature, it was being held to post in the best possible position); and, she had actually begun her side story some time before the main piece was actually complete, before she even sold her pitch to the magazine.

She had already been a part of the online message boards for weeks, trying to ingratiate herself into the closed-knit kink community. When she first joined the chat groups, she started off too pushy and had to back off, using subtler means to fish for info and leads, all the while building background material to add color to her article.

She spent nights reading through the countless stories posted online. A large portion of these were crudely written, obviously one-offs designed to feed some very specific sexual needs; but quite a few were different. They were well written, with coherent story lines and solid writing styles that would have been considered talented by wider audiences were they based on more mainstream subject matter.

Tiffany also watched all the videos she could find and downloaded countless pictures to her computer to examine in detail. She kept the ones she found most intriguing in a folder, along with copies of the stories she most enjoyed.

To gain a better understanding of the subject matter, she looked at the pictures and read the stories late in the evening in her apartment after drinking a few glasses of wine to relax, all the while cultivating her own tastes and interests. She couldn’t understand what initially brought people to fantasize about blowing up like balloons, but at the very least she could see where such a fantasy could heighten arousal and feed a person’s needs: the elements of dominance and submission, a growing sense of impending peril, or even just as punishment for bad behavior. All carried with them elements of heightening sexual tension. The scenarios themselves were definitely outside the range of the norm, but the underlying emotions made complete sense to the writer.

At first, she felt oddly guilty that she was starting to find the stuff alluring. She told herself it was only harmless reading that might yield good filler material for her story. Soon, however, it became a ritual for her to read stories or watch videos late into the night after a stressful day of work. Tiffany couldn’t explain it, but by allowing her imagination wander in this manner, it let her disengage from everything else that was weighing on her, and she began to associate the fantasy of being inflated with a sense of comfort. She wouldn’t admit it, even to herself, but delving into the world of inflation somehow became her happy place.

One night, after a particularly rough day at work and one too many glasses of wine, curiosity got the better of her and she stuffed one of the pillows from her bed under her t-shirt. Once she got past the hesitation surrounding how silly she must appear, she turned and looked at herself sideways in the mirror. The pillow made her look huge. She giggled and ran her hands up and down her body, feeling the roundness of her belly against her palms.

“I look like a blimp!” she chuckled out loud to the otherwise empty apartment. She smoothed out her shirt to get a better view of herself. She was amazed to see that her whole stomach and sides were swollen and bulging, as if she had gained fifty pounds in a single evening. The effect was even more pronounced when she leaned back. The soft pillow made her entire body look as if she were an inflated balloon.

Suddenly, Tiffany’s brain clicked. This was how she was going to insinuate herself into the community! She pulled out her phone and snapped some pictures of herself in the mirror. As she went through several different poses and angles, she got a good sense for what type of shots would show off her inflated stomach best.

Tiffany chose four or five pictures that showed off her bulging belly well enough yet still left her face obscured. She uploaded them to one of the private kink websites and posted a short but detailed story. The post was titled: “Inflation by Request - A Personal Experience”. Her description of being blown up garnered her immediate attention on the boards. The fact she was an actual real-live girl, with photos to prove it, went far to help her cause. Her skills as a writer, as was demonstrated by her accompanying piece of creative fiction, secured her a solid standing in the inflation community.

All she had to do now was figure out how to best use this to her advantage.

***

The next several days passed quickly as she kept busy trying to figure out her angle for the piece she would write. She read the forums daily, watching for any insight into inflation that might give her a fresh perspective. She also wrote and posted a few quick creative pieces entitled “The Perils of ...”, using her pseudonym as the titled main character; in each story, her alter ego found herself trapped in a precarious situation where she ended up being slowly inflated against her will. Each story found her titular heroine in the grips of a progressively perilous position, and she ended each segment with a cliffhanger, leaving her budding audience asking for more. Often Tiffany relied on the plot device of Deus Ex Machina, suddenly saving her heroine from imminent doom at the last possible second, only to have her fall into another wayward trap later on.

The truth was, Tiffany was secretly enjoying the growing attention she was receiving within the community; she also found herself increasingly captivated by the notion of inexorably inflating to massive proportions. As she developed each “Perils...” story line, Tiffany would lie in bed at night and imagine her lead character (or herself, as happened more often than not) being blown up against her will, facing her own growing helplessness as well as her impending doom.

Tiffany hadn’t realized at first but, the more she thought about it each night, the more aroused she became as a result. It didn’t take long before she found herself masturbating under the covers while she fantasized about being inflated. Night after night, her already-imaginative nature ran wild, making her moan and tremble as she envisioned even more elaborate scenarios until, finally, she climaxed and then fell fast asleep.

***

The first draft of the article she submitted to the magazine got rejected out of hand. She had described the fringe kink in detail and elaborated on its many draws and appeals, portraying it as an obscure but harmless interest. Her editor said her story lacked an angle that would hook a larger audience, and a dismayed Tiffany went back to work at her keyboard. Her second draft was likewise sent back to her asking for more. Her editor said her material was good, and that her writing was balanced and tasteful, but she was still missing the critical component needed to make the story sellable.

Now Tiffany was starting to get worried, and for good cause. If she didn’t give the magazine something good, and soon, they would run the main piece and cut her article altogether. Suddenly, she felt like the female protagonist in her stories, swelling up more and more, becoming increasingly inert through indecision, and quickly running out of time. She could almost picture herself so big that she could hardly move, so close to bursting it left the surface of her body trembling against the pressure. That was when inspiration hit.

Tiffany dug through the back of her closet into a box of her summer stuff. After a few minutes she pulled out the deflated jumble of an oversized beachball she had taken to the beach a couple of years back. Next came a disused aquarium pump that was left over from the brief and tragic time she tried her hand at having fish in her apartment.

She selected a tight-fitting but stretchy one-piece outfit from her wardrobe and donned it. Before zipping it up entirely, Tiffany shoved the deflated beachball into a relatively flat pillow off of her bed, and stuffed the entire affair into her outfit. She smoothed out the edges of the pillow and assessed herself in the mirror. She looked well-rounded and full, but not massively so. She was just able to see her toes past the curve of her waist if she bent over slightly. She sat at her desk, plugged in the tube running from the beachball into the already-running aquarium pump, and booted up her laptop. She could hear the humming of the pump as it forced air into the flaccid beachball, and could feel her midsection fill out by the smallest of increments. Her heart beat faster as she felt herself slowly expand. And she began typing. Fast.

***

Somewhere around the time that Tiffany’s belly obscured the top half of her thighs, she recalled learning about Friedrich Nietzsche in her college philosophy class. She vaguely remembered the quote: “…and if you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back at you.” Suddenly, the truth dawned on Tiffany. That was her situation in a nutshell.

She had sought to unravel the mysteries surrounding this specific interest and found herself embracing it as her own. She realized, even after her article was completed, that she would likely keep active in the community…she found something in it that captivated her attention. True, she didn’t have the same background that others in this interest had, but she’d found it fascinating and had been drawn in nonetheless.

By the time her rounding midsection obscured three-quarters of thighs, and her belly had closed the gap between Tiffany and the desk, she wrote about how she had gradually transitioned from an outside observer to one of the small group of people deeply invested in the fantasy of inflation. She tastefully used the kink itself as background color for the story, and as a nod to the obscurity of the interest, but kept her main focus of the article on how the human psyche is malleable and able to open itself to almost anything, no matter how bizarre it might sound in the beginning.

Tiffany typed faster as her belly pressed against the edge of the desk and her waist widened, pushing her arms outward at an odd angle as her girth forced her to stretch to access the keyboard. She planted her feet firmly on the ground to keep herself from rolling backward; even now, she could feel her torso becoming increasingly wedged between the arms of her desk chair. With it growing progressively difficult to type, Tiffany risked a quick look down at herself, her eyes widening as she realized she could no longer see her knees over the curve of her stomach. She was quickly running out of time.

Just about the time she had swelled so big she could no longer reach the keyboard, she had fleshed out enough of a story to submit to her editor for approval. Tiffany attempted to stand up from her chair but found herself stuck fast. Worse still, she couldn’t even come close to the aquarium pump on the floor next to her desk. All she could do was look down as the fabric stretched tight and shiny across the sphere of her torso, a sense of panic building in her mind as she sought to free herself.

Tiffany’s efforts to disengage herself from the seat proved fruitless but eventually her own swelling body did her work for her. Once her expanding belly grew too full, she popped free of the chair, pulled forward from the restrictive arms by her own growing circumference, releasing her from her confinement. True, she was still inflated to immense proportions, but now she could awkwardly waddle and move about the room. She got down on her hands and knees with her belly pressed firmly against the carpeting; she finally succeeded in unplugging the aquarium pump, ceasing any further inflation. The overinflated writer clumsily got back to her feet with all the grace of a pregnant hippo, using the edge of the desk as leverage, and wrapped her hands around her belly as she considered her situation. She leaned forward against the desk, reaching the keyboard after some effort. She hit send, dispatching her rough draft to the editorial department for initial approval.

Her story was all but finished. In the aftermath, Tiffany found herself more than just a little turned on by her current state so she made her way to the bedroom, straining to squeeze herself through the too-narrow doorframe. She fell back onto the bed, then flopped gracelessly like a fish, occasionally rolling side to side, to maneuver herself into the middle of the bed. Her clothes were now so tight that even the slightest movements rubbed her in such a way that it sent shivers through her body; this was fortuitous because by this point, she couldn’t circumvent her own burgeoning waistline to do much about her own arousal.

Tiffany placed her palms firmly on her midsection as she writhed about, letting her inflated body do the work and feeling the pleasure building up inside of her like a fire. It took some time but when she was finally able to climax, the ecstasy crashed through her like waves slamming hard against a beach. Gradually the feeling receded, leaving her spent and serene.

As Tiffany drifted off to sleep, she let her mind wander. Her boyfriend had been out of town on business for the past month or so, but was due back any day now. Tiffany smiled as she thought, the next time he came over to visit, she was going to have quite the surprise for him.