House Party Blues

(CW: Alcohol, Blueberry Inflation, Popping)

Commission for TurboBorb69

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Gage’s idea of a house party involved worn sofas, middling to bad EDM, and those red cups everyone apparently just ‘had’ in case a crowd gathered to drink cheap beer in your house. They were surprised to find out that the party they had been dragged to this time was at a rich dude’s house, with plenty of clean, undamaged sofas to sit on once you got too drunk to stand; high quality, surround sound music played out by a live DJ; and not a single red solo cup in sight, everyone was drinking from actual glasses, cups, though one drunk lizard by the stairs was glugging her vodka-lemonade from an emptied out see-through plant pot. Gage sipped some light, fruity tasting beer and hummed to themselves.

“Whose house is this anyway?” Gage asked, taking another sip to keep the good old fashioned social anxiety at bay. They were sociable enough of a person, but like most non-binaries who grew up online, and got their weird kinks from cartoons in the early 00s and late 90s, they wrestled with that familiar urge to run out of a house party screaming. Alcohol helped with that; enough liquid courage made house parties bearable - too much made them hellish - Gage was working on drinking themselves to that sweet spot where it would become fun.

“Eh, I dunno, some rich guy whose dad struck it lucky with investing ‘their’ dads money way back, I hear they’re a dick,” the wolf who answered Gage was the only person at the party even shorter than they were, and stood out in his blue farmers overalls, backwards facing cap, and brown hair which covered only one eye on their fat freckled face. Basically, a scene kid, who had kept the aesthetic into his twenties. His name was Rory, and he was a newer friend to Gage, but he seemed decent enough. His get-rich-quick schemes and habitual brokenness aside, he was the only one from the group who brought Gage to the party who hadn’t dissolved into the crowd.

Gage peaked at five foot six inches of purple bird. They lacked the stereotypical thin, ominous silhouette of a raven, but was one, albeit fat and pear shaped with a wide, prominent ass that stressed their cargo shorts. They wore a black t-shirt with the logo of an old gaming console that kept riding up over their stomach, and a worn black hat with a red capped mushroom stitched into the side, speaking to their love of mycology. They took another sip of their drink, grimacing.

“Think there’s anything on offer besides beer?” Gage downed the dregs from their glass, and raised a brow at Rory who was peeking into a drawer. “I meant drinks, by the way, not things for you to ‘borrow.’”

Rory huffed and shut the drawer. “I heard there’s a bar on the roof. Why? Fancy beer not doing it for you?”

Gage shook their head. “Too sweet, and it’s a bit flat,” they gave Rory a raised brow. “Think the cocktails are on the house like the beer?” They thought for a moment, then smirked. “... not like you would ever suggest we do something which, god forbid, costs money,” Gage chuckled, eliciting a look of mild upset from the wolf.

The two cut a path through the throng, sweaty bodies, fur and flesh, seemed to bar their egress in all directions. It took both of them what felt like an age to reach the glass stairwell which led to the other floors, each just as packed as the main living space; except for one. Rory took the lead, ascending the stairs with the laboured pace of a short, fat wolf. Gage followed with a slightly less encumbered, but un-athletic gait.

“Alright, there’s the bar,” Rory motioned to a pillar in the middle of the room, the room itself was stark white and minimalistic in the same bougie less-is-more but everything still costs thousands of dollars aesthetic as the rest of the house. A circular bar top caged the pillar, keeping the bartender on the inside but protecting them from the drunken guests.

“Whose house -is- this?” Gage asked, scratching their head. “They have no taste, but they throw a decent party I guess.”

The vast room was still dense with people, but it wasn’t suffocating like the rest of the house.

Rory was the first person to approach. They picked up a plastic pop-up from the bar which read: “Drink Roulette Only.”

“Well that’s cheap,” Rory huffed. “The cocktails ‘are’ free, but you don’t get to pick your poison. We can have as many as we want but that’s not the best idea unless you’re willing to risk a hangover from hell or the worst belly-ache of the decade at a chance for a rum and coke.”

Gage shrugged and called the bartender over with a wave. He was a stout pink sheep in a striped, yellow shirt, with a soft face and sleepy eyes. He finished serving two lurid green drinks to a pair of guests on the other side of the circular bar top before approaching. “I would normally ask what you’re having,” he smiled apologetically. “But I’m only allowed to hand out libations according to a randomiser, as per the home-owner’s request. Will it just be yourself having a drink?”

Gage looked over to Rory. “Want one?”

Rory shrugged. “Nah, not going to risk it. I’ll stick to the hipster beer downstairs.”

Gage turned back to the sheep. “Just me, then.”

The sheep turned around and tapped a finger to a tablet set up behind the counter. He hummed, read the recipe, and moved to grab a trinity of bottles. Gage was impressed by how quickly he grabbed the heavy glass containers, opened, and flipped them to empty their contents in exact amounts into a glass. The bartender looked half asleep if Gage went by his expression alone, but the speed of his mixology said otherwise.

“Here you are,” he said with a gentle smile. “Afraid I can’t tell you what it is, I don’t want to get fired, but I hope you enjoy it.” He paused, then said “and if you don’t, it’s no worry.”

Gage brought their beak to the rim of the glass and waited until the sheep walked off to serve another customer before taking a sniff.

“Well, what is it?” Rory edged closer.

“It just smells... sweet,” Gage took a tentative sip. Tart and sugary flavours coated their tongue. It was thicker than they expected, a bit syrupy, but not too bad. It wasn’t the cloying oversaturated type of sweetness that Gage disliked, so they took another sip, and then another. Without meaning to they drank the whole thing, and stared emptily at the glass licking their beak.

“Haha, it turned your tongue blue,” Rory said.

“Blue...?” Gage replied.

“Yeah, blue as a blueberry bush!”

The two stood in stunned silence before uttering in unison. “Oh.”

Gage had a volatile allergy to blueberries, and any flavouring agent related to them. Rory shared that allergy, and because of his first-hand experience with its consequences, he was already backing away towards the doorway.

“Wait!” Gage reached out and called after him. “You can’t just leave me he--..ooooooh.”

A vicious rumbling erupted from Gage’s stomach. It exploded in size, stressing the fabric of their shirt and ironing out the creases. They wobbled, trying to keep their balance, but this wasn’t their first inflation. They knew how inevitable loss of mobility was, and how pointless it was to fight it.

“Got to be somewhere, sorry, uh, see you after the party. I’ll bring you a hangover cure!”

Rory was gone. A crowd gathered around Gage, watching the bird’s stomach grow, and the swell that expanded the heft of their chest, and travelled down to widen their hips. They held an exaggerated pear shape, wobbling as a deep shade of blue spread out from their core, dyeing their feathers and the increasingly rubbery skin beneath.

“S-someone help me!” Gage called out, but no one responded favourably. The most they did was take out their phone and set it to record the spectacle. The tart sweetness of blueberry juice welled up at the back of Gage’s mouth, they tried to swallow it down, but it gushed and dribbled out from the sides of their beak. One of the party goers in the crowd said something about how gross it was, while another asked how they could breathe with the juice leaking out of them like that. Gage had no answers for them, they could only call out for help, even as their vocalizations were becoming more gurgled and dampened by the blue liquid in their throat.

“Whoa, they’re getting big.”

“Should we be worried, what if it’s contagious?”

“I have a cousin with the same allergy. It’s going to get messy, but I don’t think it’ll spread.”

“Do we need to call an ambulance?”

“Nah, people pop all the time. They’ll be alright, maybe.”

The drunk guests talked about Gage like they were an object. They lost their footing and rolled forward on to a sloshing bed of sticky, juice-stained feathers. It used to be Gage’s stomach, but now, it was just part of the increasingly loud sphere that the raven had become. Juice leaked from their nipples, beneath the remains of a t-shirt that was in the process of tearing like wet paper under the stress of the balloon it was failing to contain.

“What’s that noise? It sounds like hissing.”

Gage could feel the second, and penultimate stage, begin. They began hissing. A long, bubbly whine, like so many shaken bottles of soda being opened at once. The juice inside of Gage has undergone rapid carbonation, and increased their swell speed twofold. They had only grown to the size of a small car, despite feeling so much more stretched out, and now they were rapidly approaching the size of a pickup truck.

Their vantage point shifted with the added height from their inflating form. They could see the crowd growing denser and denser, every pair of eyes on them, making them cringe with embarrassment. Save for their hat, they were fully naked, the last vestiges of their clothing landing in a sopping pile amid the pool of juice they had leaked over the floor.

“Is it safe to stand so close?”

“Hah, first time watching a blueberry explode? You can go to the back if you’re scared.”

“Hey, look at the bird’s face, it’s getting all fat and stuff!”

Gage tried to clench their beak shut. They felt the gas from deep within try to erupt from their face, but they were determined not to embarrass themselves any further. Even if they were a ticking time bomb, they could at least explode with some kind of dignity. Was that a thing? Exploding with dignity? They had never managed it before, and by the way they could feel wisps of gas leak out of their face despite their best efforts, they suspected they wouldn’t manage it tonight either.

“Whoa dude, that bird’s cheeks are huuuuuuuge, they might pop!”

Gage’s eyes crossed; their vision went unfocussed. They did their utmost best to hold the gas in, but all it had accomplished was the inflation of their cheeks. They felt the pressure of the two balloons attached to the sides of their face, compressing them, wobbling like water balloons on a bass speaker. It was too much, if they didn’t let it out, they felt like their head was going to burst. So with an admission of gaseous defeat, they opened their mouth to the tune of one, explosive, unending.

BWUUUOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARP!!!

Their belch released a cloud of blueberry glass that glittered under the ceiling lights. Pressure had lessened, they still felt full, but better. Maybe they were going to be okay this time. Maybe they weren’t going to--

SPLASH!

The crowd were covered in a deluge of sticky, syrupy blue juice. All that remained of the bird was a wet hat in a pool of juice with a mushroom stitched into the side.