Five Stages

All I did was shoplift a lipstick. I should’ve remembered about the new laws they’d brought in - "one strike and you vanish". I can’t stop myself, it’s a compulsion. I used to be on pills for it but I can’t afford them any more, so here I am. Of course, if I had enough money, I could’ve bribed my way out. Well, I suppose I wouldn’t be here in the first place because I could’ve bought the tablets and it would’ve stopped me from needing to steal things. I didn’t remember it had gotten this bad. I don’t really follow the news or anything and I try to keep out of trouble. People disappear on the flimsiest of pretexts, I do know that. I even knew someone vaguely that happened to. They have no trials any more either. People are just arrested and they vanish. Nobody ever knows what happens to them.

I'm in a large, hexagonal cell-like room about the size of a normal living room. It has a tiled floor and is brightly lit with white walls, and generally looks very antiseptic, like an operating room. I have a mattress to sit or lie on along one wall, on the floor, and two of the walls are in fact sliding doors. One’s locked, the other opens and closes when you press a panel on it.

I haven’t eaten since they threw me in here but I have drunk, because the door on the right hides a toilet, a drinking fountain and a shower with a hot air mode, and even some soap. They gave me an injection and some laxatives, then suggested I had a shower. When I stepped out, my clothes and the people were gone. It's quite warm everywhere. I've spent a long time on the toilet and now I'm completely empty. It’s weirdly both caring and uncaring.

The locked door opens briefly and a pile of clothes is thrown in. There's a long-sleeved black leotard on top. Not sure I really want to put that on. Underneath, it’s even worse! There's a horribly clashing dark blue lycra tracksuit with pink side panels and a high neck. I've never worn anything like either garment before - too trashy and just not me. I hate tracksuits. They look like you've just got out of bed and you're still wearing pajamas, and they should only be worn for exercise, and even then taken off as soon as possible. Then again, maybe They, whoever "they" are, do have something like exercise in mind, or maybe this is just their version of a prison uniform. A brief image of tracksuited prisoners clanking along mesh walkways flits through my mind. Also, so disposable! Once the zippers jam, they just have to be thrown away.

Ah well, at least it's not velour. Any port in a storm I suppose. I grab the leggings-like bottoms and pull them up. They reach up to my navel. Now the jacket. I leave it open and just drape it over my shoulders. It'd be skintight if I put it on, like the leggings, probably hard to zip up, and is also a little long, reaching past my hips. If I don't go any further, it's like I haven't really got it on.

I sit there for a while like that. Then I realise I’m starting to get really cold. I look hatefully at the leotard. Now the room's like a refrigerator. Reluctantly, I shrug off the tracksuit and roll off the leggings, reluctant to expose my nakedness to the cold, and grab the leotard, pulling it up quickly. Then I realise it has a butt plug in it, and I basically have no choice but to let it go up there in spite of attempts to wriggle it out of the way. Not my favourite discovery of the day, though it has to be said the whole twenty-four hours haven’t gone exactly according to plan. I climb into it and decide I'm just going to have to put up with the discomfort. Clearly some kind of joke. I put the suit back on and zip it up with a grimace. My hair gets tangled in it and I have to yank it out, before zipping it up all the way to my chin. Now my hair’s stuck inside the turtleneck and I have to lift it out again. The fabric's really stretchy and tight, and I feel stifled and self-conscious in it: little is left to the imagination either. It starts to get warmer again anyway and I wonder if I'm being watched. With a gasp, it dawns on me that they must have seen me naked. Then I'm annoyed with myself as I remember how many times I've seen people wear leggings inside leotards and I make to pull them off when I hear the door slide open and quickly hoist them up to my navel again.

A man enters. He’s in a black suit and tie with dark glasses, making him effectively a man in black. I must say he's making me feel rather underdressed. I reckon I'd look better in his outfit. He's wheeling a trolley and something shrouded in a cloth with a sort of shrouded peak at one end.

His demeanour is at odds with his attire.

"Ah, good afternoon Siobhan! You get everything brought to you here. All part of the service."

He has an air of someone who really enjoys his work, which considering what it must involve, is rather unfortunate.

When did I give him permission to call me by my first name? This is somewhat bemusing.

"You should consider yourself honoured."

I look dubiously putting my hands on my hips.

"Oh? Why would that be then?"

"Well Siobhan, you're going to be a guinea pig. This is a pilot program which, if this works out, will be made public in due course. But in the meantime, I'm going to have to ask you to lie down on this."

He whips the cloth off a wheeled padded trolley with restraints, but like a massage couch. I practically jump to the other side of the room.

"Absolutely no way!" I shout. He's backing me into the corner now with the trolley.

"You know, you're not really in a position to bargain here Ms Nesbitt. You have no idea of the things we could do to you if you don't cooperate."

His voice has taken on a note of firm authority which no-one in their right mind would resist.

"So, so, what have I got to do?"

"Well, let's take this one step at a time, shall we? Do you think you could maybe lie on the couch?"

"OK then."

I slide my plugged bottom onto the cushion and swing round my legs before lying on my back. Again, the butt plug digs in uncomfortably. Ew.

"Thank you, much appreciated. I'm sure you're open to new experiences, and this will be a new one to you."

He shackles my ankles with the restraints, then reaches over to my wrists. I pull them up and crossed my chest with them, conscious of the zippered spandex over my breasts, practically inviting someone to take the pull at the top and just gradually slide...

He gestures at my arms.

"Do you not remember what I just said?"

I place my arms back by my sides. He lifts them up and moves them outwards a little and I realise that all my limbs are to be splayed out.

He reaches under the trolley and fishes out a ribbed hose with two thinner tubes coming out of the end, along with a clip. He places the latter on my nose, forcing me to open my mouth. Oh great: now I'm a mouth-breather in a trashy get-up. This is going well. Not.

"What are you daargh..."

"Now Siobhan, I'm sure you don't want me to have to force this down your throat, so I seriously advise you just to swallow this tube until it's properly in place and then we can get on with explaining what's happening and intubating you properly so you can breathe again."

He's just crammed the thick, black hose into my mouth and is passing the tube through it into my throat! Yuck! I gag, then realise I haven't got much choice, so I do swallow.

Hose, throat, zipper.

Now he's looking through an eyepiece screwed into a small fibreoptic cable and pressing down on the other tube, then feeds it in. It feels like a string of pearls is passing down my throat and there's an odd fullness there. Then he whips out a stethoscope and listens to various parts of my chest, nods, goes "mm-hm!" and steps back. Now I can breathe again. What on Earth is going on?

"Right then - oh, just a second, I almost forgot."

He takes a bulb hanging off the tube and squeezes it a few times. I feel the tube in my throat plump up slightly and a vague fluttering just below my breastbone.

"Wouldn't want either of them coming out of position now, would we? Why the frown?"

I realise I've furrowed my brow. He's wrapping cloth tape round and sticking it to my cheeks now. What the heck is he doing all this for? Am I supposed to be having an operation? A sudden clench of fear grabs my chest and I feel hot and cold. No, hold on, that doesn't make sense either. Why would someone be dressed in a leotard and tracksuit and then be cut open? There's no sign of anything like scalpels or anything else either.

My tongue is between the hose and my lower lip, and is the one part of my body I can move. I lick the ridges on the hose, then lower it to toy with the zipper pull which is lying pointing "upwards", that is, towards my nose, on my chin. This little bit of freedom's all I have left.

"OK, I can see this is puzzling you. You see, the situation is this. We have hit a few snags recently. You know how we make people disappear, as it were? Well, obviously we don't but that's what you lot call it."

Us lot? Since when was I part of a "lot"?

"Well, you might recall that before that, we used to shoot people publicly, then we stopped."

Yes I did, and come to think of it I have wondered what happened to that. Wait a minute - shooting? Oh my God, they’ve got me. The people who do the shooting and there’s nobody able to stop them. They themselves are the people who stop people. I can't believe I'm in this situation.

"That was because the people we shot were getting too much sympathy. So we thought about this and gave up on public executions. Then we realised there was a way of doing it which would undermine that sympathy. We could find the most embarrassing possible way of executing someone. Something which nobody could be seen as a hero after. Well, we're trying out different things, including what's going to happen to you. Not quite ready for the public yet though, not until we've worked out all the details and assessed it."

So this is it, I'm going to die? This is a dream, or a prank or something, surely? I won’t allow this to be real!

"Probably should explain the exercise gear. Don't worry, you're not going to be doing any exercising. All you have to do is lie there and I’ll do the rest, with the help of my little toy. Oh, hold on a sec."

He plucked off the noseclip. I still can't breathe through my nose but it's OK. He starts to screw the other end of the hose into a metal seal on another one hanging out of the cloth. I still don't know what's under there. Do I want to? Rotating steel knives? A gun? Everything in the room has taken on a threatening air and makes me jump. Even the squeaking of the hose as he screws it in has a sinister tone. I shake my head in disbelief. Why me? Why now? What's going to happen and will it be over quickly? Now he's finished, I'm able to breathe, but the air's cold and rather uncomfortable to breathe, like being splashed with cold water.

"As you know, tracksuits and leotards provide comfort and freedom of movement. The spandex you're wearing will have to stretch easily. You need to be wearing something which will contain your body. Our experiments have shown that different clothes make a big difference to the details of the process."

Which is? He's taunting me with his powerful knowledge and my weak ignorance. Typical of a man. Maybe this is a rack? He's going to pull me apart with it and my clothes need to stretch because of that? I notice my jaws are clenching and realise I want to grind my teeth but can't because of the hose, which I gnaw at instead. I consciously relax my shoulders and arms.

"Let me explain a few facts about the body Siobhan. When you breathe in, your lungs expand as they fill with air. When you eat, sorry, ate, a meal, your stomach fills with food and in fact increased in size to accommodate that food, and as it passed through your system, it fills different organs quite well. Must remember the past tense. And then there's pregnancy and obesity. In other words, much of the human body is elastic."

Why the anatomy lesson? It's not like I'm ever going to apply it now. Things this guy is into:

1. Gloating.
2. The sound of his own voice.

I could make a list. He thinks he's some big man with all the power, doesn't he? Why do I have to be in this situation with this individual? I'm better than this. It's so ANNOYING!

"Fact number two."

List item number two: Arrogant. Number three: Pompous. Shame I can't write this down with my tongue. I glare at him but he seems not to notice.

"You eat, whoops sorry, ate, breathed and so forth. Substances can pass from the outside of your body inwards through the holes."

"So, Ms Nesbitt, imagine what would happen if I were to close off all the exits from your body but one - that's why you've got that plug you see - and start pumping air in through the one that was left. For a while, you would just fill up with gas, but after that, you would start to inflate, blow up like a balloon, and this could be made to continue until you popped. This is exactly what is about to happen. Death by not being able to fart of burp, effectively. I can see that would appeal to a lady."

No! That can't happen. This has got to be a wind-up of some kind. He's just trying to scare me or something. Surely it’s impossible to do that to a real person?

He pulls the cloth off the apparatus on the trolley. It's a bit complicated, but seems to consist of a control panel and various other things. He plugs it in and switches it on at the panel. I take a closer look. The ribbed hose is screwed into another hose, as I'd noticed, which itself projects from a piston about the size of a tea urn with a plunger at the top and a lever connected to it like a giant pair of pincers. The air seems to be heated to body temperature somehow because since he plugged it in, the hose has warmed up and the air I'm breathing is no longer a shock to my lungs. Another tube emerges from it on the other side to a little clear plastic bottle like a water bottle and in fact it does contain water and a couple of thin tubes. At the other end is a large cylinder with a bright green top, about my height and quite slender. It's all very vivid now, like everything else. I notice tiny details.

"Here we go then, Siobhan. This'll take about twenty minutes."

He flips the tap on the cylinder and bubbles stream through the bottle as the piston gradually rises on the "tea urn". Eventually, it reaches its maximum height and stops.

"You ready for this?"

He presses a button on the control panel. After that, the hose gives a convulsive jerk and a hiss starts as the lever gradually presses the piston down again. A sort of twitch passes down the hose and the hiss gets louder and louder. Then the twitch gets to my mouth. i feel a vibration as the air gushes through the tube and it passes my lungs, "ignoring" them because of the separate tube, and finally, with a sort of “gloop” feeling, enters my stomach. There's a loud gurgle and a feeling of bubbling and vibration.

Surely this is impossible? Even if not, it’s too ridiculous for it to happen in real life. It’s just not going to work. It’s like a cartoon, a comedy or something. Probably I’ll just end up farting and burping a bit and that'll be it. And maybe get a little nauseous. See? Nothing’s changed. The machine’s been on for a while now and I can’t see or feel anything different. That hiss is just a sound effect. The gurgling from my stomach is just from a loudspeaker at the end of the tube. No, it’s not going to happen. This is one big fake! It’s a setup to get me to own up to something or teach me a lesson, that’s all. Since when have people been inflatable? I mean, come on!

As it happens, I am feeling a little bloated and gassy now. I suppose it makes sense to introduce a little puff of air just to convince me it’s real. Then he’ll turn it off before it gets to the other end.

Hmm, looking down at my stomach there does seem to be a bit of a bulge there. Maybe my leotard’s got a hidden bladder inside it which pumps up to make the illusion more convincing. There’s a bubbling feeling moving through my belly - just the air moving about inside the bladder, equalising the pressure I think. Doesn’t explain why I feel a bit nauseous though. All right, it really is air and it really is being pumped into me. It’s really quite unpleasant as it happens. I wonder when I’ll start farting.

I wait.

It’s taking quite some time to come, especially considering the pressure that’s building up. Odd how I’m still not farting. Then I realise the butt plug is being pushed in by the leotard as its front swells forward, pushing it deeper into me and strengthening the seal.

Ouch! A colicky spasm of pain passes through me. My sides ache too. My abdomen’s got quite tight and is embarrassingly curvy. It’s making me look thick round the middle. Another twinge makes me wince. Lots of gurgling air bubbles inside me now and I find myself fighting an urge to vomit, or rather to belch the considerable air in me out. I don’t seem to be able to do it though. Something’s blocking it. Oh yes, the tube in my stomach.

He unstraps me, then dashes back too quickly for me to grab him.

Hold on a minute. This isn’t fake at all, is it? He’s really doing it! I really am being pumped up with air! Better fight this. I reach up to the hose in my mouth and yank on it, but it won’t budge. Each time I do it, I just feel a sort of sick lunge. He speaks.

“Ah, no, I’m afraid you can’t do that. It’s anchored in place with balloons inside your stomach.”

Well, in that case I’ll just bite it off, squeeze it shut or something. I really am getting quite bloated now. I feel quite tightly stretched and can’t stop myself from retching any longer. It’s making my mouth water unpleasantly, my jaw’s opening in a reflex I can’t stop as my throat tries to eject the tube and I’m breaking out in a cold sweat. There’s an odd metallic taste in my mouth. I’m losing control over my own body. I reach round into the running tights and manage to slip a hand inside the tightening waistband, hoping to unplug my butt, but I can’t reach into the leghole of the leotard because it’s getting pulled up like a wedgie by my bulging belly. The process of bloating is making it hard to think clearly about what to do. I try to slide my hand over to the small of my back, hoping to pull out the plug but my belly’s getting so blown out now - it’s spilling over the sides of my hips - that I can’t reach that far. I’m becoming immobilised by the air inside me. Now I’m really desperate for a fart and there are horrible spasms wracking my guts.

The urge to vomit is now constant but the air is corked up inside my belly by the end of the hose. Struggling to concentrate, I pull out my hand with difficulty, which triggers shooting pains through my flanks as I struggle to move. It’s horrible and getting worse all the time. My abdominal muscles are bunching around an unsqueezable collection of ballooning insides accompanied by sharp, stabbing pains. I just want to die. Is this all I’m going to experience from now on? This is my life now, to be turned into a balloon?

Glancing down, being unable to lift my head due to the spasms it provokes, it looks like a beachball’s blowing up inside me, which apart from the pain is a bit like how it feels too, but unlike a beachball, my insides aren’t actually meant to be filled with gas and their protests are all too clear to me with spasms, cramps and an intolerable feeling of being stretched well out of shape. I’m losing the intuition of where bits of me are because they’re all being forced apart. What’s My intestines, which are meant to be a fairly narrow folded tube inside me neatly packed in a small space, are being squeezed by the air pressure into shapes much rounder and a size much bigger than they’re ever supposed to be like balloon animals. I’m stuffed with rapidly distending organs, each trying to squeeze its contents out into its neighbours. It’s so tight and cramped. Meanwhile, my chest is riding high on the insistently swelling cushion of air beneath it, ramming my heart and lungs upwards into the increasingly crowded compartment of my ribcage. What’s worse, in a way, is that this is pushing my ribs outwards and forcing me to gasp even more air into myself. There’s precious little room for a person inside this rapidly ballooning body and I’m becoming an unwelcome guest inside my own quickly inflating torso. My heart thumps insistently, throbs vibrating through my body in the fear, fighting to force the blood through my arteries to keep the rest of me alive, but judging by the growing sensations of puffiness and tingling in my limbs, it’s not having much luck. My head’s roaring and congested like I’ve got a heavy cold and there are weird glittering patterns in front of my eyes. Legs, arms and head all feel puffy and bunged up with fluid forced into them by the air.

More spasms, more waves of nausea, but weaker this time, and there are gaps between them again, which is worrying because the life’s being squeezed out of me. They give me an idea though. I struggle to roll over but can’t because my middle is so round my now - my muscles can’t get a purchase. Maybe I can force the air out if I can bend my legs up. No, they’re sluggish and immovable like I’ve been kneeling on them for too long. The blood’s not getting through to them any more. I manage to put my hands on my belly, which is weird because they “land” much earlier than I’m expecting, so big and round I’ve become now. I can just about feel them but my flanks sort of shudder and twinge as I touch them. I can feel the fabric of the jacket and skin stretching underneath my fingers. I can see them again because I need no longer lift my head. My stomach has risen up so much now. The hands are mottled and bruised looking, my fingers like sausages, suffused with fluid. It’s a bit like trying to do something with numb, frozen hands, except that they’re burning hot. I try to push down on myself like a whoopee cushion but even with my full strength I wouldn’t have been able to, and what with the numb, swollen, shiny and bruised lumps which used to be my hands, it’s hopeless. But they rest there because I’ve simply lost the ability to move them.

And he switches off the pump! Does this mean hope? I lie here with a constant urge to vomit, pain shooting through my torso and particularly down my middle, where I can feel a slow ripping sensation, resting my hands on an abdomen which looks like I’ve swallowed a watermelon whole. I can only pant shallowly to breathe at all because I just haven’t got the strength to breathe out and I’m so stuffed with air that I’m scared of bursting if I breathe in. At the level of my abdomen, only my zip holds me together because my muscles are split down my middle. He speaks.

“Feels nice, doesn’t it? You know, I could just deflate you and you’d be back to normal in a few seconds. Well, not quite. You’d have to have an operation to remove your intestines and it’d take some time to recover, but you’d get there in one piece. Hmm, now should I do that, I wonder? I’m sure you can feel how quickly you’d deflate if I let the air out of you. Now let me see...”

A tiny glimmer of hope dawns in my head. Maybe this was just a way to get me to change my ways. I’d do anything if he’d only let the air out now. I’ve learnt my lesson. I’ll never do it again, honest! Whatever it was! I wish I could speak.

“You know what? I think you’ve been punished enough.” He smiles at me.

“What do you take me for? You think I’d really go through with making you balloon up until you pop? Am I really that kind of guy?”

He starts to unscrew the hose attachment.

“Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. Back to normal in no time.”

If I could have breathed a sigh of relief, I would’ve done. It was all just a ploy to get me to acquiesce. I’m so relieved! So grateful that things are going to work out and be OK, that I’ll get some relief from this horrible bloated agony I’m in, and not least, that I’ll live! How long will it be before I’m up and about again? A few hours maybe. I expect I’ll just have a few days of burping and farting and a bit of a stomach ache, then I’ll be fine. Phew! He’s nearly unscrewed the hose now. Any second all this horrible gassiness will start to go like someone letting down a balloon. And I’ll be able to breathe normally again too. Amazing what one takes for granted.

Finally, he’s finished unscrewing it and pulls it out of the apparatus. A big “GULP” of air bubbles up from my stomach and left the end of the tube and I finally felt some release.

Hold on. He’s clamped his hand back over the end of the tube.

I look at him pleadingly, willing him to move his hand away again.

“As it happens, I really am that kind of guy. Now what? Oh, I know. I’ll use the one way valve.”

He moves a small lever and the silver ring moves firmly back into place.

Can I get over there? I faintly and ineffectually flail my numbing and useless limbs, but nothing much happens.

“I’ll just give you a lungful of my air, hold on.”

He takes a deep breath and blows hard into the tube. My stomach’s slight slack is rapidly taken up again by his breath and I’m right back where I was before he unscrewed the valve. By now I’m so big that just one lungful makes little difference to me.

“Sorry, the only way that air’s coming out of you is when you finally explode! Let’s get cracking again.”

He’s screwing the hose back in again, leering at me. I’m desperate. How can he dangle that hope in front of me and then snatch it away so cruelly? Can’t he imagine what it’s like to suffer this way?

“OK, now I’m going to do one of my special treatments. Have you heard of crush syndrome?”

I make no response. I’m so depressed right now I just want it to end. Maybe he’ll just prick me with a pin now and I’ll burst. That would at least be a release of some kind. Why would I want another lecture?

“Never mind. Let me explain what’s happening.”

He reaches over to the equipment and turns the knob which I presume controls the airflow. I go very slightly slack again. Air starts to flow in again, but slowly, just enough to make my belly tight again before it fades and a little more comes in, which keeps going. The nausea and pain are fading, to be replaced by tingling and numbness.

“Right. What’s happening is that the blood is being cut off to your limbs and vital organs. This means that they go sort of floppy, and the stretch also means they have some give in them and they relax slightly. When this happens, a little more air comes in to pump you up slightly bigger and the cycle repeats. You probably feel sort of numb now, and maybe a bit tingly.”

This is true, exactly that sensation in fact.

“There’s a lot of pressure inside you now, which I don’t think you realise.”

Yeah, right!

“The blood’s been cut off to your limbs and abdominal organs. Many of your tissues have started to die now and if I let you deflate now the toxins will go into your bloodstream and kill you. So from now on you have to stay inflated or die. Is that OK?”

Is that really true? So there’s no way out now? I have to stay pumped up tightly with air until the end?

“But don’t worry, I’m going to make sure you just keep ballooning up more and more now. That’s why I’m keeping the gas coming in.”

“OK, next pump coming up. Looking forward to being blown up even bigger? This is where your insides get blown up to bursting point.”

He turns the knob up. My ears are filled with hissing, louder and stronger than before as it forces even more air into me, brutally insisting on pushing me out still further in all directions and savagely stretching me ever tighter. How could he do this to me? How would he like it if he was plumbed in to this machine instead? I imagine myself at the controls inflating him, making him the parade float that he’s making me, extinguishing his own spark of being, making it dwindle under the relentlessness of vast quantities of gas until he finally explodes. He must have done this many times before too. He must have stood here over and over again, seen human beings walk in through the door, living, breathing people and looked them in the eyes as he deliberately and systematically blew them up into obscenely bloated caricatures of their former selves while they went through indescribable agony and humiliation right in front of him. Here he is, doing the same to me. How can he sleep?

I lose my train of thought. It’s getting hard to think straight now. Looking at my rounded Pilates ball of a belly, the way I feel starts to change. My abdominal muscles have completely ripped apart directly under the zipper, straining to contain me with wrinkles along either side. The nausea and cramping is fading but the tension across my front is huge. It feels like I might split down the middle at any moment and I daren’t move. The most intriguing thing, though, is that just as the blood has been pushed into my limbs, it’s also been forced into my labia and they’re getting hot, wet and swollen and are starting to tingle intensely. What’s more, my leotard and leggings have gotten really taut down there, pulled up by my beyond pregnant front, and are being forced against them, and the throbbing of my arteries and heart is steadily stroking them back and forth. I’ve been pretending this hasn’t been happening until now, but it’s getting really intense. Of all things that should happen now, how could I actually be turned on by this ultimately embarrassing and sadistic way of gradually destroying my very being? And still I'm getting bigger. There seems to be no end to this. I'm now well beyond the biggest pregnancy I've ever seen, and I can't stop it turning me on!

He's looking between my legs.

"Hmm, what's that dark patch? You do seem to be getting rather wet down there, don't you? Good to know I'm giving you such pleasure."

Once again, he turns off the pump and I lie here, twice as round and fat with air as before, twice as stuffed, much closer to the end. When would I finally pop?

"Your organs are now on the very brink of bursting. I always leave people in this state for a full minute so that they get to appreciate the divine ecstasy of having been turned into a vast, inflated joke. The tension! The pressure! The roundness! Divine, isn't it?"

I have one last idea about saving myself. He seems as excited about my state as I am, but it's hard to think straight in my condition. Not only is my state doing strange things to my brain directly, but I'm also really aroused, so it all seems a particular way. What if I try to come on to him? I try to make eyes at him. Then I realise my hands have been resting on what have become my sides all this time. Maybe I can just rub them up and down a little bit. I struggle and struggle to get the numb appendages to do what I'm telling them to, and at last, they shift slightly. Like a bad 'phone signal from the other side of the globe that is me, I'm just faintly aware of the feeling of my sausage-like bloated fingers raking against my abdominal wall and the spandex between it and my hands. I try to make a smouldering expression, hooding my eyes. Come on! See me! Yes! He's looking and coming over!

"Oh, so you'd like me to get busy with this?" He gestures at my almost spherical belly, then places his own hands on it and strokes, then pats it, which makes it quietly clang and echo like a bell. It's working. My right hand has shifted up a bit now, so that it's resting on the slope just past my ribs, on top of the cleft after my breast. I manage to give a little jerk and it falls between my breasts. I can just about walk my fingers along the railtrack of the zipper up to my chin, and now I force my thumb and forefinger together around the zipper pull. If I can just pull this down...

I manage to get it started. It's easy to unzip the neck, then a bit more of a struggle to get much further because my breasts are now lifted up by my expanded ribcage and my back is arched under the push of my rounding insides. In any case, he grabs my hand.

"Wouldn't try that if I were you. Look what happens." He unzips me slowly until he gets past my cleavage and has almost reached the bigger mound of my stomach. The top suddenly protrudes out of the gap and I feel the teeth rake against my skin. Then there's a horrible ripping feeling as if all my innards are trying to escape through the gap. He struggles to zip me right up to the chin again with eventual success. The tip of my tongue brushes against the pull on one side and the ribs of the hose on the other.

"You see, not only can you not be deflated without killing you, but you can't be unzipped without bursting. That zipper is holding your middle together now. You see, another reason tracksuits are ideal for this is that as your guts and stomach blow up, your muscles separate down the middle and without them, they'd all burst out along your middle and you'd just rupture and die a lot sooner. So this is your situation now. Deflation would kill you and unzipping your tracksuit would too. It's also skintight, stretchy and compresses you. You’re nothing but a balloon in a tracksuit now. You have no other options. Also, do you not realise that if I'd wanted to have my wicked way with you, I could've done that ages ago? I'm not into having sex with blow-up dolls, thank you very much. Now for more inflaty fun. Well, in a bit anyway. I'll just leave you in this state for a while, then pop your insides with gas."

Clearly he knows how to hurt people emotionally as well. I forlornly add that to my mental list. What were the other points? I can’t remember.

A big problem is still that I am struggling to breathe. Panting shallowly is the only option. Though I can't feel any actual pain or nausea now, there's still the tension, the labouring heart and the congestion in my head, but it's somehow got a different perspective with the sexual tension mixed in there, though it's really unwelcome in a different way. Have I just been a colossal pervert all my life without knowing this? Am I actually enjoying this on some level?

What's going to happen when my organs burst? Maybe I'll leak. Maybe all that will happen is that my abdomen will spring a leak and there'll be a gentle stream of air and I'll gradually be let down, and he's lying about it killing me. It might all be a bluff. I'd give anything to be deflated right now even if it does kill me. Some kind of miracle? Maybe the machine will break. It must be under a lot of strain after all. It can't be 100% reliable, surely? Nothing is. Maybe I can will my tormentor into stopping. This isn't supposed to happen to me. All I did was nick - er, something, what was it again? - and it's not like I could even stop myself. I mean, you've got to be kidding me! Any time now, someone will come through the door with a reprieve, won't they? Won't they?

Through a dazed mist, I swivel my eyes down at my enormous, roundedness, the straining zipper disappearing out of sight beyond the curve. It's weird being so huge. I just manage to twitch my tired, stuffed-feeling arms and hands. They feel like they're in the wrong place. I'm a stranger in my own transforming body. This can't all be me. Hey, hang on a second, it isn't is it? Most of this is air. There's more air inside me than blood, than water, than all of me added together. Everything's sort of fuzzy. I can't see straight, hear straight or even work out where all of me is. I feel sort of faint and dreamy, like I'm floating on a giant air cushion. Like I am a giant air cushion. I am a giant air cushion. Big, huge, upholstered zip-up cushion with a tracksuit cover.

I'm rambling. Can't think straight. This is doing something to my brain.

I'm not totally round at all. My chest slopes upward and my breasts are sort of leaning downwards as a result, though the spandex of my jacket and leotard is also squishing them down a bit, and the slope's exaggerated further by the forced arching of my back by the bulk and roundness above it.. The fabrics are powerfully pulled by the expansion further down. There's another flattish slope on the right hand side where my liver is cramped up against my abdominal wall. Most of the rest of me is burstingly with air but that's a solid object. There are bulges beyond my ribs at the sides and my hips and another lump of flesh sticking out just beyond my breastbone. I can feel it brushing against my breasts. The bit beyond my navel curves down to face my feet and is sort of gathering up my thigh flesh.

He speaks again.

"You must be fed up with being out of breath. Ha! FED UP! Been eating too much air lately, haven't you?"

Ha ha.

As it happens I am out of breath. The constant panting hasn't helped the dizziness and tingling, but I'm having to struggle against an unbudgable diaphragm. Can't breathe "downwards", just have to use my shoulder muscles and so on and it's really tiring.

"Well, don't worry, that'll get easier in a few seconds. I'm going to turn the pump back on and air will fill your lungs and other organs at the same time. You'll be forced to take the deepest breath of your life and that, along with the rest of your insides being put under even more strain, will burst them, but you won't burst yourself. What will happen is that one or more of your organs will be punctured and air will start bubbling out of it, spreading under your skin, so you'll start to puff up all over. Also, you'll start bleeding inside and bubbles will get into your bloodstream. From then on, not only will you have to stay inflated, you'll even have to stay on your back, or you'd either have a stroke or a heart attack. As it is, the bubbles will track upwards and get stuck at the tops of what's left of your organs."

I'm appalled that he's just casually describing this horrible process like that, in a perfectly calm voice. What an outrageous excuse for a human being! This balloon he's turning me into is more human than he is! Why can't he at least relieve me by pricking me with a pin or something?

"You're about to get your breath back. Here goes."

He switches what I presume is the lung control on and simultaneously turns the gas flow knob on full. The deep breath I've been having to avoid all this time is finally forced on me and at the same time the hiss of the stomach hose restarts, louder than ever before. A sort of whirring, vibrating feeling starts around my middle with a sharp stab, and all of a sudden it's easy to breathe, which is just as well since he's making me take the biggest breath ever. Finally my lungs are full, then uncomfortably full, and I can feel bubbles coming out of what feels like a horrible tear somewhere inside, with jagged and flapping edges. The tongue of flesh starts to advance up my chest between my cleavage and the whole of my torso is getting puffy. The rate of the air entry is incredibly fast.

There's nothing I can do. I just have to lie here and take the air in, and that's it until the end. Tears fill my eyes at my ruined condition. Something breaks inside me and lots of crackling bubbles shoot out sideways under my skin, then along my cleavage and towards my pubis too.

"This is where you finally, really, blow up like a balloon."

He turns the pump up higher than ever before and air starts to gush in. The bubbles under my skin all join together and all of my front puffs up. There is a feeling like cobwebs ripping under my skin, my breasts are getting lifted up by the air underneath them while the air fills up the cleavage. Then the air finally pushes straight into them and even they blow up, before they finally join together and my cleavage vanishes forever. I'm helpless and hopeless. I just want to be dead now. I want this to be over. I might as well not exist anyway and it's all pointless now. I'm just this tiny glimmer of consciousness inside a body which doesn't want me, and he wants me to be dead too, and he's right, I don't deserve to live. I've just wasted my life over something stupid like stealing a lipstick, and this is exactly what should have happened to me. I'm evil and it's a good thing he's blown me up and is going to make me pop.

I feel weirdly quiet inside. I'm totally round now and my skin's stretched all over. The sleeves and leggings are compressing my limbs but even they're getting a bit "sausagy". I'm starting to feel like any part of me could split open. I haven't got a separate chest and a belly any more, just a huge round ball from just under my chin to my legs, and I'm splayed out and immovable. He looks at me and laughs uproariously.

"If only you could see how funny you look! A big parade float which used to be a person. Right."

He turns off the air again.

"OK, you get four choices now. Blink the number of the choice after I'm done."

"Number 1: I deflate you and you die immediately afterwards, but get to leave a normal-looking corpse. Number 2: I prick you with a pin and you burst. Number 3: I unzip you and you explode. Number 4: I just carry on pumping you up until you go bang!"

I think about the options. I'm not worthy for most of those things. I can see that he was right to do this now, in fact I deserve worse than even this. Number one would leave my body in existence looking normal and wouldn't show anyone how evil I was for stealing the lipstick, which I really shouldn't have done. Number two and three would mean I get relief from the suffering before the end, and that's too good for me too. So it has to be four.

I blink four times.

"OK then, time to put the ear protectors on!"

He rummages in a drawer and pulls out what looks like a pair of headphones. Then he cranks up the gas supply again.

I just balloon up like anything now. It's like it's happening to someone else. I can't believe this is possible. Finally, I can feel everything sort of getting pressed together, my skin into the almost untearable fabric, and the zipper is grooving my front. My tongue and eyes are bulging and even my cheeks are puffed up. All I can hear is the hiss of the air relentlessly pouring into me. When will it end?

I suppose this is just how things are. I am being inflated until I pop and that's just what happens. I should just accept it really. Never mind all that crybaby, self-punishing stuff. I don't care whether that's true or not any more. What have I experienced? It's a huge, all-over body orgasm really, and I get to wear a nice tracksuit and be all big and round, and then to go out in a really spectacular manner. It'll be the biggest climax of my life. This is just ecstasy!

Any moment now. He's lowered a sort of bell-jar over the couch now. He knows when it's going to happen, more or less.

Getting ready-

Any-

Moment-

N-

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