Sucking It In
On a cool morning just a few days after her twenty-fourth birthday, Rachel Hershley stood before the tall mirror in her bedroom, about to try on a new pair of black jeans. They had been gifted by Jessie Wright, a friend who lived the floor below in that same apartment complex. She appreciated the gesture, she honestly did, but when she looked on them on that day, she wasn’t quite sure if they were actually her size. They had been sitting in her closet ever since, but Rachel had grown a bit weary of her usual get-up. In this present moment, she had decided to find the answer to that question which had been sitting at the back of her mind.
“Alright, moment of truth,” she muttered to herself as she took hold of the waistband.
Bending down slightly, Rachel pulled the jeans up to her waist, and to her displeasure, felt a sense of tightness. She yanked both sides of the fly in a desperate attempt to get it buttoned, to no avail. The pressure around her waist just spiked with the attempt.
“Welp,” she quietly began, “guess I gotta suck in.”
Rachel let out a small huff before pulling in her stomach and inhaling deeply, breasts rising. She pulled the buttons on her fly together once again while keeping the stance, but they simply refused to connect. Tightness gripped her waist, and she exhaled sharply, feeling the seeds of irritation planted in her mind. Her lips pressed firmly as these seeds sprouted into saplings of annoyance.
She brought the buttons close and took a deeper breath, sucking her stomach in once more. Feeling the harshness of the sheer force of the breath rushing down the throat, her impressive chest expanded with air, pulling her black top taut. She didn’t pay this much mind, all gears focused on getting those godforsaken buttons closed. Still, she failed to get them done up, her fingers beginning to get rather sore from gripping her fly so tightly. All the air rushed out in an agitated puff, bosoms receding. Rachel’s teeth gritted as her irritation only grew.
“Goddamn you! Alright,” she began, taking a couple deep breaths and a few steps back to prepare herself, “I’m going all in.”
Rachel assumed a formidable posture, rolled her shoulders, held the sides of her fly with immense firmness, and inhaled sharply through an O-shaped mouth. Her waist drew in to a borderline ridiculous degree that would make the average supermodel do a double take. A draft began to blow through the room as her makeshift vacuum intensified. The hung shirts, jackets and pants in her wide-open closet began to ruffle, as did stray garments on the floor. The pages of her green notebook, sat on the mahogany desk next to her bed, fluttered noticeably. All that air filled up her chest, her breasts expanding like balloons and making the threads of her shirt wish they had never been stitched.
Rachel held her breath, cheeked flaring out, looking like a comically voluptuous caricature of herself. Her brows were deeply furrowed, her fingers pressing down on her fly so tightly that the tips were now pale white, but alas, those buttons simply wouldn’t cooperate. Her grip eased, and the simultaneous, exasperated exhale produced a whirlwind that kicked up dust and caused clothes, papers and curtains alike to billow and flutter.
Panting, Rachel eyed her fly with a blaze in her eyes. The saplings of annoyance had rapidly shot up into towering trees of anger. A bone-chilling growl escaped her through fiercely clenched teeth; one who wasn’t looking would probably assume a rabid dog was in the room. These jeans were a gift from her friend, and she was going to make damn sure they didn’t go to waste.
“That. Is. IT!” she harshly exclaimed.
Shifting to her right to give herself more space, her fingers took a fierce, unrelenting hold on her fly one last time. Closing her eyes, she took a huge breath in. No, scratch that, she took an inconceivably astronomical breath in. Winds rushed through her apartment as she inhaled with the sucking power of three hundred Dysons. Any loose object either shifted or flew right towards her. Her curtains billowed high, and the some of the clothes in her closet were all but sucked off their hangers, hitting Rachel in her face. Her bedsheets fluttered, as did the flowers and shrubs outside as a blustery wave of fresh air was drawn through the open window.
As the unfathomable quantities of air filled up her shapely figure, her boobs inflated to such a degree that you’d think she was about to float. Those orbs surged up to four times their normal size as they filled with seemingly all the air in the neighbourhood. One might have heard the ripping of several black threads if it wasn’t for all the howling and rustling. By contrast, her waist shrank so much it looked painful, as she desperately tried to get a single button on her fly closed around it. The ajar door had flung open, allowing more unfortunate items—combs, brushes, towels, cups, papers, and yes, even more clothes—to get swept up in the gale. It well and truly seemed as if the room itself was shrinking, but it all came to an abrupt halt with one sound.
*SNAP*
All that which had been suspended by the powerful gusts suddenly fell, a sharp chorus of clattering, banging and thumping ringing around Rachel. At, last, the taste of victory. The top button had finally been done up, and as she reached around her engorged, comically large bust, she managed to do the same with the rest. A sense of pride flowed through her at her accomplishment, all but ignoring how ridiculous she looked.
Jessie Wright, the friend who had so generously donated the troublesome jeans, was seated on her beige couch in her own flat downstairs, eating shortbread. The great clatter from upstairs that followed the end of Rachel’s monumental inspiration broke the serenity, though she had no idea that it was this which had caused it.
“The hell was that?”
The short brunette put her shortbread aside and elected to investigate. She made her way out the door and upstairs, her mind filled with several scenarios of what she would see when she knocked on Rachel’s door and it was opened. Nothing, however, could have prepared her.
Rachel was still in front of the mirror, holding in the lorry’s worth of air in her bosoms just to keep her jeans secure, not wishing to so quickly undo her hard work. Beads of sweat had started to form by now, her face reddening as the pressure only built and built. Her cheeks had swollen to the size of volleyballs, ripe to burst, as she strained to contain. By the time the knocking from Jessie came, Rachel’s face had turned crimson—no, carmine—and she swore she could hear an internal rumbling.
*Knock, knock, knock!*
After trudging over to the door, Rachel slowly opened the door, allowing her friend to gaze upon her woefully expanded form. Jessie’s jaw dropped with such force that it seemed to dent the floor. Rachel stood before her, her bust quadrupled in girth and volume, her fists clenched, cheeks bloated, and face now magenta as she struggled to keep in her breath and maintain her suitably slim waist. Through the visible strain in her expression, Jessie could make out a glint of pride in Rachel’s eyes, though surely she must have known how absolutely nonsensical her current proportions looked. Jessie picked her jaw back off the ground, backing up as her inflated companion just narrowly managed to squeeze out the door and into the hallway.
“Rach, what the fuck?!”
“I tried on the jeans you gave me,” Rachel began, barely intelligible, her voice egregiously muffled by the effort of holding her breath, “it took a little squeezing, but I managed to fit in them!”
Jessie’s eyes narrowed in utter disbelief, both at Rachel’s measurements and her explanation, “They don’t fit, Rachel. If you have to suck in so much that you bloat up and are literally about to explode, then they don’t. Fucking. Fit. Let me take them back.”
“No, no, I’m…” Rachel was about to say “fine”, but the rumble she heard within herself grew to a painful level, pressure rising. Her face turned purple, then indigo, as sweat now poured down it in several streams, dampening her severely stretched shirt. Her fists were clenched so tight that veins now bulged on the back of her hands, similar to those on her forehead. Jessie’s eyes flashed with annoyance and concern.
“Exhale. Now.” she commanded, expecting her friend to obey.
Rachel shook her head.
“NOW!” Jessie sounded genuinely angry now, purely out of sheer fear.
Now cobalt blue in the face, Rachel’s entire being vibrated with the excruciating pressure. She felt like a time bomb with less than ten seconds left. Her eyes squeezed shut, the rumbling swelling into almost a roar as the point of no return speeded closer, and then…
“PUUUUAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!”
All the air stored up in her outrageously swollen and curvy frame came shooting out of her mouth, catapulting her backwards from the sheer force and pressure while her form almost immediately deflated. As for poor old Jessie, she was caught in a whirlwind the likes of which she hadn’t witnessed since Rachel’s twenty-third birthday blowout. She stumbled across the floor as the gale hit her, before falling over and going into a roll. Fortunately for her, the rolling slowed down she could slam into the wall on the far end; Rachel wasn’t so lucky. A small table situated against the beige wall was completely swept off its standing, the small boxes atop it flung asunder and scattered. The release caused a noticeable tremor on the floor, with neighbours snapping their heads towards their own doors to find the source of the howling, shaking and clattering. Three stepped outside to find two dishevelled women on opposite ends of the hallway, slowly standing and brushing themselves off.
“The hell happened here??” cried one resident, a Northerner woman who had moved in only two days ago.
Rachel’s face was red, this time from embarrassment and not from the strain of holding in scientifically unacceptable amounts of air. As she stood up, an ache gripping her back and arms, her eyes shifted between the bewildered woman and Jessie. She was, by now, approaching Rachel, her brown hair a verified disaster area.
“Oh, we were just, uh-”
“Rachel,” Jessie interrupted in a pseudo-sweet manner, clearly trying to mask her annoyance.
Rachel regarded her with a visible sheepishness.
“Next time something doesn’t fit, tell me,” continued her irate friend, “I swear to God if you pull something like this again…”
The woman that had peeked out to observe the aftermath decided it was best to slink back into her flat. After a few seconds of staring at Rachel with her lips pressed in a tight, irritated line, Jessie turned on her heel. As she began downstairs on the other end, Rachel swore she could hear her chuckle. This was going to be quite the story to share with the friend group, that was for certain.
“I need new jeans…”