Poppin' in the Apopalypse

(Disclaimer: Any acts of transformation, expansion, or mental altercation have been consented to by the owners of the characters affected. Any acts depicted are meant as explorations of the fetishistic psyche, hold artistic merit, and are compliant with the TOS of Patreon).

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Speedwrite Stream Commission for Xillkah.
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[CW: This story takes place in a zombie apocalypse. While campy at times, it does deal with some darker themes than you usually see in my work. Mentions of demise, permanent-popping, and ego death are frequent. Read with caution!]

“Swell... Expand... Encompass...”

A wall of pressurized muscle under a suit like venom-green skin, the liquid which gave it strength pulsed through clear tubes that led from a huge tank of the same green substance strapped to its back. The attachment points for the hoses were symmetrical, placed for optimal distribution. Two leading into the top of the breasts. Two into the side of its torso. Two into its thighs, and a final two into its calves.

It squatted and clenched its muscles, if it even had anything fleshy and human enough to be ‘called’ muscles under that suit. To Harold, the only thing beneath the hazmat grade rubber which caged the monster, was perversion, and hate.

“It’s trying to expand again, we need to run before it catches up!”

Harold was an out of shape office worker in his mid twenties. With cropped ginger hair, freckles, and a dark purple bruise around one of his blue eyes. His office shirt was partly torn and splattered with paint. He pretended it was paint, at least. If he stopped to remember the technicolour messes strewn about the city used to be people, he might throw up.

Oliver, Harold’s more muscular, fitness enthused friend didn’t need much of an invitation to start sprinting. The two of them ran into one another on the subway home. They took the 6pm train. It was 10pm now. It took 4 fucking hours for the city to fall apart after the initial infection.

Harold remembered the man turning blue in the subway car in front of him. Him and Oliver were standing, the car was crowded, and were looking through the door window into the next one over. An overweight man, middle aged, with white hair complained loudly about feeling bloated. Then his skin turned blue. The discolouration raced up his neck, it was like someone had just shifted his hue in Photoshop. He became shiny, the lights bounced off of him, and then.

He blew up like a balloon.

By the time Harold had time to process what had happened, an idiot tried to prod the guy with his keys to ‘let the pressure out.’ The man popped, and left behind nothing but his shoes, what remained of his suit and tie, and scraps of his shiny skin. The scraps turned into a liquid when they touched other passengers. Children were fine, some of the other adults were fine, but not everyone was so lucky.

The skater dude who popped the guy turned pink. He was thin as a rail one moment, then exploded out into an almost perfect sphere with tiny arms and legs. He moaned, something between the roughest climax Harold had ever heard, and a call for help, then popped.

Four hours later, Harold had become desensitized to the sight of a person going to literal pieces after contracting whatever hellish infection made it possible. He was lucky enough to be in the immune camp. His hairy wrists were covered in liquefied Boomer scraps. But he wasn’t splattered across an alleyway. So, he counted that as a win.

The problem was the constantly expanding monster which chased them from the subway station. It was the size of a man, a tall man, but just an ordinary man in what Harold had mistaken as cyber-goth-gimp-attire. It watched him pop a Boomer with a pencil from his briefcase, and after Harold’s genes refused to rearrange themselves into a Macy’s float, its goggled eyes lit up and it chased him.

“Theta... burst... everything!”

Theta, it apparently had a name, was now in the process of forcing the liquid from its back-mounted tank into his muscles and using that to pump itself up like the worlds freakiest balloon. The symmetry of the hoses delivering its juice didn’t help its body stay even however, as its right shoulder and arm overloaded to the size of a fucking bus. That didn’t stop it. It apparently liked the way its limb was cartoonish and impractical, and strained to make it even bigger. It ran after Harold and Oliver, by pounding the ground and vaulting by using the arm like pole, like a one-armed gorilla.

“Shit, it’s catching up!” Oliver grabbed Harold by the wrist and led him down an alley.

Theta mashed its body against the opening, further distorting its form as hazardous green goo and hot air rearranged itself under its skin. It yelled “BOOOOOOOOOM!” And, you guessed it, went kaboom. A wave of green gas vented through the alley, Harold and Oliver breathed it in, and were pushed out the other end by the pressure.

“Fuckin’ shit...” Oliver coughed, his long blonde hair covered in powdery debris.

Harold got to his feet and tried to keep running. He collapsed and felt light headed. When he looked at his hand he saw it had begun to turn a shade of purple. “Shit,” he cursed his luck. He was immune to the Boomer’s scraps making contact with his skin, but whatever Theta had been filled with must have been more potent. He thought it was nice that his skin was turning his favourite shade of purple, there was a sick irony in that. Maybe when he was a shambling balloon man, attempting to rope another survivor into being like him, they’d compliment him on how lovely his purple latex was before he ripped his seams.

“Harold?” Oliver asked gently.

“You’d better get out of here,” Harold said, and hid his hand. “I’m done for,” his face was darkening to an eggplant hue. He had minutes left as a human.

Oliver looked through the alleyway. The scraps of Theta were moving, recombining. The suit liquefying and stitching itself back together. Metal collars, links, and armour plates moving according to the creature’s ghostly magnetism.

“It’s never going to stop chasing us, huh?” Oliver hoisted Harold to his feet, and dragged him into a sprint. They were steps away from the entrance to the old shopping arcade. Oliver kicked the door open, and kept moving.

“Olly, fuck, hold on!” Harold could feel it. He could feel his pores closing up, and his skin turning into whatever latexy ‘stuff’ the Boomers were made of. He winced, his crotch felt weird, like someone was pulling inward. With a sudden jerking motion he knew his genitals were gone, rendering him a null soon-to-be inflatable zombie. The worst part is, he was kind of enjoying imagining the destruction he might cause when he went bang. He hoped the thoughts were just the infection reworking his brain, but deep down, he ‘did’ always hate the city.

“Olly I said STOP!” Harold stopped Oliver from pulling him any further. He didn’t normally have the strength, but the infection made him strong. It also made him fatter, as fat as a balloon was, anyway. His stomach bulged through his torn shirt, and his hips made quick work of his work trousers. “Dude I’m... I’m gonna fuckin’ blow, you need to get away from me. Or I’m gonna turn you into one of those things too!”

Oliver shrugged. “Alright.”

Harold just stood there. Silent. His body’s hissing as he slowly inflated into a monster, was the only thing he could hear besides Oliver’s heavy breathing.

“Sorry, have you lost your fucking mind?”

Oliver shrugged again, then pressed himself to Harold. His body made Harold squish, he was a balloon after all, and they were soft before they maxed out. He could feel a budding erection beneath Oliver’s sweatpants. “I always had a thing for balloons y’know, go figure, I feel like this whole damn nightmare’s like. Monkeys paw. Like, I wanted to see cute guys puff up, and now it’s happening.”

Harold smiled awkwardly in response. He backed against the wall and then, just, laughed. “Wow, you’re really messed up in the head. I’m maybe seconds away from flying in every direction, and you take the initiative to come on to me.”

Oliver leaned in. He wrapped his arms around Harold, and felt him lose his softness. His body began to outsize Oliver, in both height and width. His chubby face growing grapefruit sized cheeks, which Oliver parted to kiss the lips between them.

Oliver’s transformation was almost instantaneous. He turned a shade of orange which Harold felt complimented his purple. He could feel his human thoughts going away, but he made sure to keep hold of one as he and Oliver started their final swell.

Theta, at the same time, crashed through the entrance of the shopping arcade like a wrecking ball.

Harold creaked, almost big enough for his head to reach the second row of shops above him. Oliver not far behind, though he had swelled up like a muscle-bound parade float. Lucky bastard, Harold thought.

The two of them had one, shared thought, as they creaked. They lifted their middle fingers to Theta, as it stomped forward, and as they exploded with enough force to blow the brute to pieces. They said in their minds: “We’ll go out with a bang!”

Kaboom!