Workplace Pressure

Kevin stepped out of the cubicle door, adjusting his belt as he made his way over to the sinks. He sighed as he lathered the soap onto his hands and rinsed them under the warm water. Today had been a real pain: his manager Steve had been on him for the past week for all manner of reasons, but now he was being especially spiky with him. The pressure between the two had been building and it seemed like anything could cause it to explode. Kevin placed his soaking hands under the automatic hand-dryer, the noise of the machine drowning out the sound of the door opening behind him.

Steve stepped inside and stopped in his tracks. He hadn't expected to see Kevin here and was slightly hesitant to make himself known. Part of him wanted to dash into one of the cubicles and avoid a confrontation, or just rush back out of the bathroom and wait for him to leave first. But the more adult part of him decided to take advantage of the situation and try to hash things out instead, away from the rest of the team on the floor outside. While he had been pretty rough with Kevin for a while now, with back-handed comments and condemnations under his breath, he was determined to be the bigger man.

"Hey, Kevin," Steve said. Kevin turned and stared back blankly.

"I'm sorry things have gotten a little heated recently. We just really need everyone here to be pulling their weight, know what I mean? If there's anything we can do to help, then..."

An incredulous snort interrupted Steve. Kevin shook his head and turned away, continuing to dry his hands.

"'Pulling their weight', huh?" Kevin said, "You're so full of hot air, Steve. You're one to talk about people not pulling their weight around here."

The temptation to turn this altercation into an outright shouting match was hard to ignore, but Steve swallowed his pride and pressed on.

"Dude, don't make this any more awkward than it needs to be," he said, gently placing his hand on Kevin's shoulder.

"Hey, 'dude', don't fucking touch me!" Kevin blurted out, spinning around and shoving Steve away, almost making him lose his balance. A wet handprint was left on the front of his crisp white shirt and a pen slipped free of his breast pocket. By now, Steve's patience had been stretched thin; he responded with a shove of his own and before long the two men were taking turns pushing one another with incrementally increasing force. After a few more damp patches had been pressed into his shirt, Steve's patience finally snapped and he grabbed Kevin by the shoulders, pinning him against the wall.

"Hot air?" he growled, "I'll give you hot air!"

Gripping Kevin by the hair with one hand, he reached out and grabbed the vent on the hand-dryer with the other and twisted it to the side. A gust of warm wind began blowing out of it when it detected Kevin's face next to it. Steve tightened his grip on Kevin's hair, causing him to yell in pain, then dragged him face-first towards dryer. His shouting went silent when the vent lodged into his mouth and the air filled his cheeks. He flailed his arms to try and get Steve off of him, but he already had too firm a grip on the back of his head, holding it in place.

Kevin's chest heaved as his lungs rapidly filled to capacity, necessitating that the air find somewhere else to migrate to. Before long his stomach began bulging outwards, pressing against his belt. His cheeks had puffed up dramatically and were steadily turning pink, his eyes watering as heat and pressure built up inside him. His clothes were already becoming distressingly tight as his warm burgeoning skin swelled out in all directions. At first he wasn't sure what was happening to him, but now it was clear: Steve was literally inflating him like a giant balloon.

Still holding Kevin's head firmly in place, Steve stepped back as far as he could and surveyed what was happening. Kevin's belly had already swelled to the size of a basketball, the leather of his belt loudly creaking before giving way with a loud snap. That basketball swiftly became a beachball as his waistline expanded in all directions and popped the zipper on his trousers. Pale skin pushed its way through the increasingly large gaps between the buttons on his shirt. Even his limbs were starting to fill up, stitches up his sleeves stretching tight and eventually bursting from the pressure.

"Mm-mmph-mmphh!!!" Kevin mumbled, the best he could vocalize with his lips still wrapped tightly around the air vent.

"What's that?" Steve asked mockingly, "Feeling a little full? Don't worry, there's plenty more where that came from!"

Kevin's entire torso was inflating into a giant sphere, several shirt buttons pinging off one by one and clattering against the tile floor. His trousers were torn to shreds by his ballooning thighs, his legs filling out from top to bottom like overstuffed sausages. His arms weren't far behind, ripping through his sleeves as the air was pumped into his hands, causing them to bulge like inflated rubber gloves. All the while the heat inside him was growing; his remaining shirt was drenched in sweat, clinging tightly to his bloated body until it looked like it had been painted on.

"Sorry about the clothes," Steve said, "You'll have to get something tailormade for you now. I doubt they make shirts in your size off the rack, gasbag!"

Kevin could only respond with a pathetic whimper, sweat and tears pouring down his red face from the intense pressure of the hot air growing inside him. The final button on his dress shirt broke free, sending the majority of it falling to the floor. Some rags still stuck to Kevin's pink flesh, glued on by the perspiration. His shoes likewise fell to pieces as his feet outgrew them. Slick with sweat, his soles slipped off the tiles yet he did not collapse onto the floor; instead he hovered in place a few feet off the floor, as buoyant as the hot air balloon he had essentially become.

Suddenly the door to the bathroom was pushed ajar. The janitor poked his head inside, having become slightly perturbed by the constant whirring of the hand-dryer. He expected to find it broken and wasting electricity, but instead he was greeted with a more unusual sight: an enormous, glistening, pink inflatable, expanding to even greater proportions while the floor manager held it in place. While it certainly looked like an inflatable of some kind, not to mention that it was making a cacophany of rubbery noises that you'd expect to hear from overstretched latex, the janitor was not certain that was what he was seeing. It's "limbs", if you could call those swollen appendages such, seemed to be moving ever so slightly under their own power. Not to mention, beyond the whoosh of air and squeaking of rubber, he was certain he could hear some kind of mumbling whine.

Whatever the case, the janitor decided against interjecting. It didn't appear to be any of his business, so he carefully closed the door behind him. Just before getting back to his duties, he quickly placed a "no entry" sign next to the bathroom. It seemed like the right thing to do.

Meanwhile, Kevin was swiftly reaching critical mass. What little movement he was capable of with his bloated arms and legs was no longer possible, leaving him to float in place with only the ambient air pressure to move him around. His face was swollen nearly beyond recognition, his bright red cheeks the size of bowling-balls and his watering eyes about ready to pop out of their sockets. They stared blankly in two opposite directions, leaving it questionable if he even knew what was happening to him anymore. Even his neck was puffing out like a frog's as the dryer's hot air struggled to find room within his overstuffed skin. His gargantuan belly creaked and shuddered before, with a loud pop, his navel went inside out and became a small bump along the surface of the globe.

"Stick a fork in him," Steve chuckled, "I think he's done!"

With a quick yank, he unplugged Kevin from the dryer's vent. Instantly his swollen cheeks pressed together against his lips, forcing them shut. The air inside him was thus contained, except for a slow stream of it puffing out his mouth like steam from a kettle. His blimp of a body lazily rose upwards until it nestled against the ceiling. The whirr of the hand-dryer finally died down.

"Hey," Steve called up to him, "You still in there, big guy?"

No response, other than the low rasp of the gas slowly escaping from his lips like an improperly tied balloon. His eyes stared blankly. If Kevin was still in there, he had no way of showing it now that he had been turned into a literal living balloon.

"Shame," Steve said, slowly walking around Kevin to inspect the damage, "I'd like to say sorry, I maybe got a little carried away there. It's been a rough week, y'know? Sometimes you gotta let off a little steam..."

Steve couldn't help but chuckle at his own obvious pun.

"I'm sure you'd appreciate that yourself!"

For a minute Steve wondered what he ought to do now. As funny as it would be to leave Kevin in this pathetic state for someone else to find, he didn't want to risk the chance that someone would deflate the guy and he'd rat him out. He didn't much fancy the idea of trying to deflate him himself either, since he didn't want to be around for some kind of potential payback. Then he spotted the pen that had fell from his pocket earlier on lying on the tile floor.

"Here," he said, bending down and grabbing the pen, "Let me help you with that."

Steve clicked the pen and tossed it like a dart, aiming right for Kevin's mid-section (not that it would be hard to hit) and covered his ears. The pointed end stuck into him, piercing him as easily as a pin would pierce a balloon. And speaking of pins and balloons...

KABOOOOM!!!

In an instant, Kevin was gone. His remains were blown across the four corners of the bathroom, tatters of pink skin sticking to the floor, walls and ceiling like wet rubber. Steve winced; he made a much bigger bang than he had expected. At least what was left was unrecognizable as a person, so explaining it away as a simple mishap with an inflatable would make a fair enough (albeit bizarre) alibi.

Any other day, Steve might have been a little more cautious; but after getting a chance to vent he was a lot more willing to look on the bright side.