Only One Still Sane, The

Shelly had never thought herself to be a good shrink. She was nervous, narrow-minded, lacking in people skills. Often she was afraid of the patients she treated. Yet all of her colleagues commended her skills, sometimes jealously, sometimes grudgingly, but always sincerely.

Thus it was little surprise to them, though a great deal more to her, when she was offered a job at the Laney-Emerson Mental Hospital, a pretty innocent sounding name for such a shady place. It was here where the most serious whack-jobs in the state got sent, where you’d find mass-murderers, serial rapists, cult leaders, heck, even kids show hosts gone bad. Jobs were hard to get, and no one was ever offered a position. At least until Shelly, that is.

It was her first day on the job, and she’d received encouragement from her colleagues at the hospital. Most of the patients she had seen were fairly run-of-the-mill. Most had very basic psychoses, infatuations, child abuse, religious callings. None of them especially impressed Shelly.

But then there was Flint.

Flint Erickson, age 34, two accounts of first degree murder. All previous shrinks gave the same diagnosis: completely insane. He had killed his girlfriend and another woman he ran into on the street. Their bodies were never found. But Erickson insisted that that was because they were still alive.

“Alright, Flint,” said Shelley as the dark-haired man sat down on the couch across from her. He had long hair that hung down over his face, sharp features and black eyes. His overall appearance was similar to the ones Shelly had been seeing all day. “Do you want to talk about the women?”

“Well, sure, Dr. Langston,” he replied, pleasantly enough. Shelly remembered that the other shrinks had remarked on his personable demeanor. None of them thought it was a façade. “What do you want to know?”

“I already know everything,” she quipped, perhaps a tad too harshly. “Your girlfriend left you for another man, so you killed her for abandoning you. A woman passing by saw you do it, so you killed her as well.”

“I didn’t kill them,” he said calmly.

“Then where are they, Flint?”

“Oh, they’re up there, somewhere,” he said, gesturing upward vaguely.

“Up there? In Heaven?”

“No, don’t be silly. I told you, I didn’t kill them,” Flint replied calmly. “There up in the sky. Drifting around.”

“And how did they get up there, Flint?”

“I made them go up there. It wasn’t hard.”

“Really?” Shelly asked, smirking. This was the same crap he’d given the other shrinks.

Flint looked at her, silent. Just when she was starting to think he was done talking he spoke.

“I see why everyone thinks you’re a good shrink. Your dubiousness, your narrow-minded sentiments make patients question their beliefs, while other doctors always go along with it, give them confidence. You implant doubt in their minds, to make them better.”

Shelly was slightly taken aback, but showed no sign of it to her patient. He was still staring at her, smiling softly. “Would you like to talk about your girlfriend some more, Flint?”

“No, I think I’m ready to go back to my room, Dr. Langston, if it’s alright with you.”

The rest of Shelly’s day passed normally after that. Well, normally for someone in her line of work. It was eight o’clock by the time she left her office and started walking to her car. She rubbed her stomach, groaning slightly. She felt bloated. Damn hospital food. She was feeling quite uncomfortable by the time she walked out into the hospital courtyard and someone stepped out of the shadows.

She jumped. “God, Flint, you startled me.”

“Sorry, Dr. Langston,” he said, the poor light making it difficult for Shelley to tell whether or not that was a smirk on his face. Her stomach gave another gurgle, and she rubbed it absently.

“Stomach trouble, Doctor?” Flint asked, still—maybe—smirking.

“No, I’m, I’m fine,” she replied, while at the same time feeling the bloating intensify. “What, um, what are you doing out here, Flint?”

“Oh, I just wanted to talk with you about something. I wanted to do it in a slightly more… private setting.”

“Really?” said Shelley, rubbing her stomach again. Did it actually feel swollen?

“You see, I’ve always told the truth about what happened to my girlfriend. To Allison. And to that other woman. But I wanted to show you firsthand.”

Shelly felt the bloating intensify again as he spoke. Looking down, she saw a noticeable bulge sticking out against her shirt. “Wha… Wha…“

“I don’t know when it first started,” said Flint. “I first became aware of it when I got tired of my neighbor’s dog barking. I was ten. I didn’t do it very often after that. I didn’t want anyone to find out.”

Disbelieving, Shelly watched as her midsection swelled outward, pushing down the waistline of her pants and un-tucking her shirt. She looked pregnant.

“When I did do it,” he continued, “I tested it to its fullest. I got very good at it too.”

Shelly ran her hands over her growing belly, pushing in with her hands. It felt… springy. Lightweight. She put two and two together as a soft hissing became audible from within her.

“I’m… I’m…”

“Inflating?” said Flint. “Yes. Rather like a beach ball. Or a balloon.”

She yelped as her breasts began to strain the confines of her bra. Lower down, her pants stretched as her hips swelled outward.

“I gave up trying to figure out how I do it,” continued Flint, casually. “I’ve come to simply think of it as magic. I can place gas inside other living things, filling them up. As far as I have tested, there is little or no limit to how much I can blow you up.”

Shelly whimpered as she tried desperately to unhook her bra, but her burgeoning bustline was proving impossible to release from its confines. However, she had the opportunity to get off her belt before it got too tight. Just as the belt hit the concrete with a loud clatter, the button on her pants broke, the zipper buzzing down gratefully. “So I’m… I’m filling with gas?”

“Correct. Helium actually.” His dark eyes caught the look of shock on her face. “Yes, Dr. Langston, you’re filling up with a lighter than air gas.”

Her tortured bra finally gave out, and the release it provided caused Shelly’s shirt to rip open in a shower of buttons. “You see now what happened to Allison.”

“Your girlfriend?” gasped Shelly as her pants continued to constrict her legs. “You did this to her?”

Flint looked regretful. “I… I didn’t want to do it to her. She left me. I was worried about her. I thought she might meet another man, someone who would hurt her. But I didn’t want to force her to stay with me. So… I just… put her where she couldn’t get hurt.”

Seams popped down the length of Shelly’s pants as her legs puffed out. The knee was swelling, making it difficult to bend. Her mobility was about to be compromised. She had to get away while there was still time.

Flint continued talking. “The other girl was an accident. She saw what happened to Allison. I couldn’t let her get away—Hey!”

Shelly had started jolting towards the other end of the courtyard, towards the parking lot. She had made it about halfway when her legs suddenly stopped moving. “No!” she sobbed.

Flint’s hand was raised, holding the empty air like one held a puppet. “I’m sorry, Doctor. I’m not finished.” He walked toward her, and suddenly her arms were limp, puffing slightly with the helium that still filled her.

“I can change your body in other ways, too,” explained Flint. “The human body’s heavy. It would require more helium than I would think necessary to lift you. I found on my third try that I could get rid of… shall we call it ‘ballast’?”

Shelly gulped as her arms rose up of their own accord buoyed by pressure and lift.

“By now, you lack muscles and bones in your arms and legs, and have lost your digestive system, along with your liver and kidneys.”

Shelly’s torso rounded out on the sides and filled her back, merging with her buttocks on the bottom and her breasts on top. Her arms and legs thickened even more, growing cone-shaped.

“I’ve also been making your skin stronger,” he continued. “Human skin doesn’t stretch as much as I need it too, so, I make it stretchier, more elastic. Far stronger than a balloon in fact. Strong enough to withstand the pressure drop higher up.”

Shelley’s torso formed into a sphere, her breasts stretching across it and then flattening out. Her buttocks disappeared, and her ever thickening limbs began to sink into her swelling body.

“You need not worry, Dr. Langston. You shouldn’t burst. In fact, with your insides hollowed out, you won’t need to eat, or breathe, or sleep. You shouldn’t even age. I’ve made you practically immortal.”

As her shins and forearms were absorbed into the flesh-colored sphere her body had become, Shelly felt a pang of guilt at not treating Flint more kindly during their session. Indeed, as her neck disappeared and her shoulders pressed against her jaw, Shelly felt bad about all the other patients she had treated so harshly over the years.

“You should be up there for a while,” added Flint, as if checking of a final list of things before sending her off to school. “I don’t know what happens after I die. You may change back when that day comes. Maybe it’ll wear off slowly. You could drift back down in three or four hundred years. I’m afraid I simply don’t know.”

Shelly felt herself begin to lift off the ground, a six-foot-wide sphere with hands and feet. However, she was only a couple feet off the ground when Flint pulled her back down.

“I want you to know that I harbor no ill will for you,” he said, his eyes kind, serene. In spite of herself, Shelley felt calmed by them. “This is merely something I needed to tell you. I hope you find solace among the clouds.”

Gently rolling her backwards, Flint pulled off the shiny black heels that still clung to her feet. He turned her back, holding onto her hands reassuringly.

“Is there anything you want to say to me before I let you go, Dr. Langston?”

She smiled through swollen cheeks, and without skipping a beat, said, “Please call me Shelley.”

“If you like, Shelly,” he replied, smiling back, before letting her hands slip through his. As she floated gently upwards, Shelly’s lips puffed, and she could speak no more. Flint called from down below as she watch him shrink away with the ground.

“If you see Allison, tell her I love her.”

And then she watched him walk out of the courtyard, back to his cell. And Shelley turned her attention to the stars glowing beckoningly through the breaks in the clouds above her.