First Draft: Change of Career

 Hafeez took the pills with a bottle of soda which could have been colder. He gulped, and took a second swig, making sure the medication cleared his throat properly. He had been unable to sleep properly because of his stomach and its constant rumbling. He must have eaten something over the weekend which refused to play nice with his digestive system, and he was now paying the price for it on his first day back to work in two weeks. All in all, it wasn’t a great way to start off a Monday morning.

“Are you alright?” A passing construction worker asked out of idle concern, demolition materials hoisted over one shoulder. “You’re looking a bit bloated there, supervisor.” 

Ordinarily that might have been grounds for harassment, a joke at the expense of Hafeez and his large girth, only today he really did seem bloated. His hi-vis vest was taut around his stomach and chest, the creases ironed out because of how tightly it clung to his body. He considered using his discomfort as an excuse to leave work and return to his home comforts, but his principles wouldn’t allow it. He was proud of his work ethic, and he would just have to suck it up, and keep going.

“I’m fine,” Hafeez replied, forcing a courteous smile. “Have you seen the boss? I’ve got a few things to clear with him before we start getting everyone clear for the demolition.”

“Sure, he’s just below us, I think? Uh... is he a really tall, fat guy, speaks with a weird accent?” the worker asked.

“... no? He’s wearing a vest like mine, but he isn’t tall, or fat, and what do you mean a weird accent?” Hafeez inquired.

“Sounded like he was from overseas, somewhere near England maybe?” the construction worker’s description threw Hafeez. They were in a demolition site in the middle of Singapore, and the on-site boss had lived in the city his entire life. Unless he had a change of vocal cords overnight, there was no way he spoke with an English accent or anything close to it.

Hafeez made his way down a level of the scaffolding via a nearby ladder. He had an easy time descending the rungs, and that... wasn’t right. He was very short, but also very fat. He struggled with uphill walks, climbing stairs, and most of all, the ladders at work. They often gave him such terrible pains in his hands and feet that he booked monthly massages to alleviate the discomfort, but today he practically floated down as if he had lost a hundred pounds overnight.

He touched down on the temporary flooring put up to aid the demolition workers and surveyed the site for this mysterious western-accented boss which he had never met before. Like a neon sign in a dark alley, the man stood out from the others. His pale skin and features marked him as foreign to the area, and his height and width were both far greater than the construction worker had communicated to Hafeez. He was nearly eight feet tall, nearly three heads taller than Hafeez himself. His hips were so wide, they demanded at least three average people’s width of room for him to navigate the site comfortably. He also had the thickest, strongest looking arms Hafeez had ever seen in his life. If you ignored his enormously fat belly the man was like a powerlifter’s ideal. Lifted straight from someone’s weight-lifting fantasy, only further exaggerated by blowing his proportions up with a powerful air pump.

“Excuse me,” Hafeez asked. His voice was quieter. The man’s enormity was breath-taking, and intimidating.

“Ah, Hafeez! Just the man I wanted to talk to,” Scottish, his accent was Scottish. Hafeez had friends from the UK and he identified it right away. He wasn’t learned enough to know which part of Scotland he was from, but that wasn’t important. He somehow knew Hafeez’s name despite never having met, and unless the company had fired and hired a foreign overseer in the space of a week without telling him; there’s no way he should have known that.

“Who are you?” Hafeez found some courage and raised his voice. He thought it was strange that no one else was surprised by this man’s presence. He took a quick look around and noticed something odd. A wisp of purple gas was following everyone, as if attached to them somehow, leading into their open mouth and nostrils. No one seemed to mind; no one seemed to care.

“Noticed the gas, have you?” the man emitted a low rumbling laughter, deep enough to reverberate through Hafeez’s bones. “Afraid no one but you will be able to question my being here, that’s just how the gas works. Distribute it through the ventilation system during a hot day, and suddenly everyone on-site is breathing it in. Everyone except for you, my bloated friend.”

“Wh--... you’re controlling them?” Hafeez struggled to believe that anyone could have that sort of power.

“All so we could meet face to face. I always like to greet my tools of destruction personally before they’re too busy to hold a conversation with.” The man locked eyes with Hafeez, his words held a sinister undercurrent.

“What are you talking abou--...” Hafeez doubled over. He clutched his stomach and began wheezing. His hi-vis vest was too tight, it was impeding his ability to breathe properly. He hyperventilated and tried to reach across his shoulders to pull it off, but he couldn’t reach. In a single moment, a horror dawned on him. His body had ballooned, and the newly inflated width of his moobs and belly were preventing his fat arms from reaching across them. He worried he was going to asphyxiate, but the vest snapped off with a tension-relieving explosion of glow-in-the-dark fabrics. He struggled to control his breathing. It was making his situation worse. He was inhaling more than he was exhaling, he was still inflating!

“Ah, cut short by the main event. I didn’t even get to properly introduce myself.” the man grinned, squatted down to each eye level with Hafeez, and gave his round belly a playful smack. He watched it undulate and wobble like an exercise ball before continuing, “I’m Biohazard Ben, supervillain supreme, advocate for the beauty of big, yada yada... and you’re going to be the first of my Asian tour demonstrations.”

Hafeez was too preoccupied trying to keep himself from over-inhaling, and only caught some of what the man said. “Biohazard Ben... you’re... real!?” he had heard the stories, seen the videos online, but had assumed they were a work of fiction. Someone’s strange idea for an attempted viral marketing campaign to advertise a new product, or movie, but it turns out it was all real? Human balloons, an inflatable supervillain!? 

Hafeez had conflicting feelings. He bit his lip and shifted his legs.

“Real as the pills which contained a soluble variant of my purple gas which you took earlier for your stomach. It was a BIT tedious taking control of so many stores to make sure the medicine made its way to you, but oh, so worth it” Biohazard Ben seemed to have a permanent grin, a vicious smile of mockery which declared his self-spoken superiority to the world. 

Hafeez could hear a hissing noise. It came from below, and it was muffled. Like something thick and heavy was obstructing it. He focused on it and looked down. It was him... it was coming from him, no, wait, that wasn’t it, it was coming from INSIDE of him. The tension he had felt in his stomach, the painful cramped sensation he always felt whenever he had trapped gas, or an upset belly, was dissipating. It was being replaced by a drawn-out stretching sensation. Like the limbering of your limbs when you did your morning stretches, or when you completed a set of light exercise at the gym. It was spreading out from his belly, and it felt like his entire body had been simplified into a single muscle that was under a sequence of gentle workouts.

“Why me...?” Hafeez could breathe normally again, but it didn’t fix anything. Even inhaling normally seemed to add to his girth. A single, short breath, and Hafeez could feel his throat stretch and his moobs fill up with the humid afternoon air. It was like his body had become hollow, and that his features were swelling up because of the air trying to find areas to fill.

“Oh, I think you know why,” while Hafeez struggled to maintain his balance, Biohazard Ben navigated the touchscreen of the tablet he was holding. When he seemingly found what he was looking for, he turned it around.

Hafeez was speechless.

Displayed on the screen was an art site. Underneath the image of a cartoon bear and a username, was over a hundred colourful renditions of people, anthropomorphic and human, blowing up like balloons. The methods were diverse, the art was painstakingly rendered, the images themselves made Hafeez shift his feet and feel a twinge of arousal. He recognized the gallery, because it was his. This man, this supervillain, had unearthed his secret online alter ego as a commission artist - primarily one that dealt in expansion fetish art - and was now enacting an inflation scenario in real life on Hafeez.

“Consider this... a recruitment offer,” Ben put his hands to either side of Hafeez’ belly. It was fast approaching the size of a van, and soon even the supervillain’s gorilla like arms wouldn’t be strong or long enough to hold it firmly. “Even supervillain organizations need the fundamental things any other business needs.” Ben caressed the tanned olive skin of Hafeez’ inflated girth. It sent ripples through him; the slightest touch seemed to be magnified ten-fold while he was in this state. “Financial strategy, a payroll, advertisement, and... of course, that necessitates artwork and graphic design.”

Hafeez was trying to maintain composure through the barrage of sensations. The stretching, the rubbing, the tingling warmth which was now building up from the depths of his pneumatically charged form. “Are you trying to offer me... a job...?”

“Do you want to work here for the rest of your life, or...” Ben’s immutable grin deepened. “Do you want to quit your job as a demolition manager, go out with a bang, and start your career as one of my artists.” Ben leaned into the tight divot on Hafeez’ shiny orb-belly which used to be his belly button and blew.

Hafeez was inundated by an arousing rush of hot air that entered through his navel and swam through his hollowed balloon-body to reach his head. It was like a sudden shot of happiness and mirth and he desperately craved more.

“All you have to do is repeat after me,” Ben had to raise his voice to reach Hafeez now. The Singapore balloon-man’s face was obscured by his moobs, both now the size of a weather balloon - each - and creaking loudly. His newly formed cleavage a chasm of rubbery noises, as his breasts fought for space above his stomach. His inflation was accelerating. Shiny olive flesh deformed around support rods and pieces of scaffolding, his taut jeans fraying and disintegrating under the inhuman pressure of a once-human balloon.

Hafeez snapped out of his stupor long enough to muster a reply, “what do I have to say?”

Ben blew another tantalizing breath into Hafeez’ stomach. It was enough to make him surge. His puffy hands suddenly rounded out, his individual fingers losing form and becoming unbendable sausage-balloons at the end of a larger ball. His feet forcing the laces of his shoes to become taut, tauter, and then snap as the footwear gave up and exploded to reveal his shiny pumped-up feet and toes. Standing on them was a balancing act, one that Hafeez had begun to lose.

Hafeez teetered but didn’t fall over. He rose, gently. His half-closed eyes stared up at the scaffolding floor above. It approached faster and faster, as he inflated bigger, and bigger.

“Repeat after me,” Ben spoke in a low, seductive tone. “I am a big balloon...”

“I am a big balloon...” Hafeez repeated, entranced.

“I exist to be pumped up...”

“I exist to be pumped... up...” Hafeez’s body pushed against metal, wood, he was sandwiched between the temporary flooring below him and above him. Like a balloon half-trapped in a wooden drawer, squealing violently from the lack of room it needed for its immense volume.

“I will grow, bigger, and bigger, like the beautiful balloon I am...”

“I will grow bigger, and bigger, like the beautiful balloon I am...!” Hafeez was becoming revitalized. He was awake, and as his bare-naked skin pressed against the demolition site, he was consumed by a hunger to grow even bigger.

“Until...”

“Until...” Hafeez hung on every word, he strained to hear Ben over his own creaking body.

“I reach my apex, I have all eyes on me, and with satisfaction, I go boom!”

Hafeez tensed his elastic body. He began to dislodge wooden panels, he began to warp metal, he was breaking free. Of the site, of his job, of his old life, of being a boring, flat, passionless creature. He knew the inflation was changing his thinking, it was a high, an elevated state, but he didn’t care. He was going to loom above, bust out, and fulfil one of his deepest fantasies and go BOOM like the BIG BALLOON he was born to be! He laughed maniacally as the scaffolding finally began to topple around him, he said farewell to it by smashing it to bits with his blimp of a body! 

Ben was gone, Hafeez couldn’t hear him, see him over his enormous shape, or feel him pressing into his body. So, he made sure to shout loudly, as he ascended over the demolition site, catching the attention of everyone at street level. A man had just been pumped full of air and transformed into a living balloon, damned right it should attract a crowd. Hafeez wanted more fuss to be made over him; more attention; more mental fuel for the fire of his impending boom.

“I’ll reach my apex...!”

Hafeez cleared the rubble, his curves reflecting the dying afternoon light as the world transitioned slowly to evening. Skyscrapers nearby, jumbotron screens, TVs, they all switched to a news report showing him. He managed to shift his fat face enough in the tyre-like ring and divot his neck had inflated to become to view himself as depicted by the news crew on the ground. He looked good, he looked amazing, but much too small.

“I’ll have all eyes on me...!”

He opened his mouth wide like a cartoon. Hafeez inhaled with the force of an industrial pump in reverse, vacuuming in the same unbearably warm Southeast Asian air that he used to curse and condemn as he toiled underneath it every day. His human proportions, which had remained - albeit exaggerated and air-filled to a fantastical degree - were now becoming lost in the stretch and growing curvature of Hafeez’s inflation. His arms and legs were unable to bend, unable to articulate, and were now being consumed by his main body; his belly; his balloon-body. His prodigious moobs remained plump and distinct from the rest of his circumference and acted as a cushion for the frog-like double-chin he had grown while voraciously supping on air.

“... and when I’m satisfied.”

The crowds below became agitated. They scrambled, unwillingly to stay and watch the conclusion of Hafeez’s transformation. “It’s shaking, I think it’s going to come apart,” one woman said, already taking tentative steps backwards. “Is that a man’s face... it’s so fat, it can’t be real?” A man asked, bewildered. “Look, it’s springing leaks!” Someone with keen eyesight pointed out, as the din of a whistling kettle dominated the city. Hafeez’s ears and nostrils were releasing jets of super-heated air, venting the pressure in vain. The release was unable to compete with the intake. “He’s gonna blow!”

“... and I... go...!”

Sweat poured from his forehead, his eyebrows knit in concentration. He was overwhelmed by an arousing force deep within him, fire and gunpowder, an intense orgasmic heat he couldn’t hope to contain for long. His stubby fingers and toes tried to curl, but only managed to wobble and vibrate in anticipation. He stopped inhaling and bit his lip on impulse as his thoughts scrambled. He went cross-eyed, he forgot how to do everything except be in the moment. It took every inch of willpower for Hafeez to say the final word.

“... boom.”

KA-BLAM!

High above Singapore there was a shiny tan olive balloon half the size of a skyscraper looming over a demolition site, with people running in fear, taking videos, or cheering for what they thought was a bizarre celebration. Dripping sweat from its drum-tight skin like a steamy drizzle and playing out a melody of air hose susurration and rubbery, creaking staccato. Then, as it reached its climax, it burst. It ruptured all at once, sending featureless scraps of whatever latex or rubber it had been made from across the skyline like so much confetti. People who found the fragments of the balloon said it wasn’t unusual. Just pieces of a large, strangely moist, but otherwise normal balloon. The only unique quality of the scrap-rubber was that it seemingly disintegrated hours after falling to the concrete. There was no trace of the demolition site, or the short, overweight man who was rumoured to be at the heart of the incident.

Months later, Hafeez had finished another drawing. He finished his upload and set his tablet down. Across the expensively furnished room, the television began playing a programme in Malay. It was an investigative documentary on the infamous “Singapore Balloon Explosion.” Hafeez turned up the volume, and grinned. He had the entire fiasco on tape, but there was an ego-boosting revelry in watching a documentary all about ‘you.’

Someone entered the room, footsteps booming on the wooden floor. “Enjoying your new office?”

Hafeez wheeled around in his chair to face Ben. “It’s alright, big enough... for now.”

Ben noticed the documentary, and his signature smile dimpled his cheeks. “Oh, watching one of these again?”

“It’s nice to have people be interested in your work, isn’t it?” Hafeez replied.

“Just imagine how much fuss you’ll drum up next time.” Ben put a hand on the back of Hafeez’ chair and dropped a box of stomach medicine in his lap identical to the brand he used to take back home. “Make sure you go big.”

Hafeez looked Ben in the eye, and with a definitive tone, stated.

“The biggest.”