She Had That Dream Again (1?)

The first thing she remembers is always the rickety old elevator. From no later than the 80's, given the garish mix of wood & brownish steel paneling. Slowly lowering, its fluorescents seem to flicker a little as she realizes she's in nothing but a starchy, light blue hospital gown, with matching slippers. She has absolutely no idea why. Her anxiety makes her wonder if something is wrong with her. Is she sick? Is she urt? But upon honestly assessing herself, she feels perfectly fine. Other than having absolutely no flippin' idea how she got here.

The elevator comes to an abrupt stop & dings.

As the doors slide open, the sight she's greeted to isn't all that reassuring. Things are dimly lit, in what looks like a hospital. Or maybe a lab, of some sort? Some place with that sort of institutional green, & automatic buzzers on the sets of double doors. Only it's eerily empty. And dark. But given she's in nothing but a gown, maybe that's almost for the best?

Having only taken a few shuffling steps out to look down along the corridors, the doors suddenly shut behind her to the tone of another elevator ding. She panics a little but is too late. She's stranded on this desolate floor.

Alone, with her uneasiness at an all time high, she feels a bit like she has no choice to investigate the slight bit of reflective light coming from down around one of the corners. Without the fluorescents of the elevator, it's the brightest thing on the whole floor. She timidly approaches it. The only sound, other than a faint ambient buzz are the rubber soles of her slippers shuffling against the polished floor. Just then, she notices a small sign on the wall that reads "Observation" along with a small triangle pointing in the same direction already she's headed. “Observation?” There’s no one here. What could anyone be observing here?

She turns the corner, to find this perpendicular hallway awash in white light. It seems to all be leaking out from what looks like a large window a few steps ahead to her right. Upon approach, she hears a faint guttural hum. Almost like a short whalesong. Something she couldn’t quite imagine coming from a human. And yet…

As her eyes adjust, she can finally get a glimpse at whatever they are trying to “observe.” Whoever “they” even are.

The bright room appears quite large, with vaulted ceilings, but in the foreground, something blocks her view. It’s round, but also quite large. A peachy, flesh toned color, but also… is that a hospital gown draped over part of it? It does little to cove- wait… is that a hand?

Past the first shape, there are others. Similar in size. And overall roundness. All of varying degrees of fleshtone. With gowns like hers partially or barely draped over their forms. That’s when she notices one has bright red hair, framing a what looks like the puffy face of a girl not too far from her in age.

Just before her brain can hit the realization “Oh god! That’s a person! The round things are people!” the girl with the puffy face & red hair locks eyes with her. Her expression goes from one of listless ennui to immediate, urgent excitement. She flaps the useless hands a mile out to either side of her, & attempts to shift her weight, causing her round form to rock in place. But just a little. She’s far too big & round to go very far on her own.

“Ohh... oh!” she thinks she can hear the girl coo. Excitedly. The way the young woman’s face has almost swollen into a pucker makes it slightly difficult to tell for sure. 

From outside the room, she presses against the glass for a better look. Unable to believe her own eyes, she can’t even imagine how somebody could become such a shape. So huge! So round! So… helpless! And there were at least two dozen or so, haphazardly left tilted at very angles, lining each wall of the room. And they were beginning to notice her too!

“Someone... there?” She hears another “patient” whimper. In what becomes something of a chain reaction, the spherical shapes begin to come alive. Rocking in place. Vestigial appendages flapping & flailing.

“Run!” She can just barely make out between their distorted features & muffling through the glass, it’s hard to be certain.

“Bring help!”  Follows after that. Louder, from the wall closer to her. 

“Hurry!” Another seemed to plead, even less discernible, as if they were facing another direction.

She begins to think the round people are on to something. They were like that for a reason. And given her own hospital gown, she suddenly worried she might be next. Slowly, she inched away from the window, taking a tentative step backwards.

"And just what are you doing out of your room?" A voice from behind her sounded. It's tone sounds like a woman. But older. Almost a bit matronly. More compassionately concerned than perturbed. But seemingly, still slightly perturbed, softly chiding her as if being here, witnessing this room was somehow disobedient.

"What… I…?!" She's too confused by everything going on to not stammer, slowly attempting to turn. She doesn’t see much. Just outside the light cast by the window, she doesn’t see a face, just the faint glint off a pair of round eyeglasses, & a face completely obscured by shadow. She doesn’t turn around all the way before a shiver hits her spine, & she’s frozen in fear. She can only turn to face front again, quivering slightly.

"Guess the cat's out the bag, I suppose." The voice resigns with a sigh. The door lets out a loud buzzing alert of a sound. The sound to let her know the lock was disengaging. To allow the double doors to the room to swing freely. “It’s not like you weren’t going to end up here yourself. Guess it’ll just have to be a bit sooner, rather than later.”

A sudden, sharp forceful shove hits her square in the shoulders, past the doors. Light floods her eyes. The whimpers & cooes of the room are no longer muffled. But they also suddenly seem to have all slowly start to peeter out. As if the air is let out of the room. Figuratively, anyway. 

She staggers to catch her footing. But not before bumping into one of the round forms. A girl with darker complexion that winces on contact before teetering backwards from the collision a bit. It’s a weird sensation. Flesh, soft & warm at the surface, but a firm, wide bubble of it. And while not gossamer, still quite a bit lighter than she anticipated.

“Sorry,” she winces. But more concerningly, she swears she hears the girl say it too. Like she was sorry for her. The buzzing stops before she can turn back to the double doors. With the lock re-engaged, they’re shut & steadfast once again. She pounds the undersides of her fists against them but they won’t budge. She presses past one of the wide forms, giving it a wide berth. She realizes it was the first shape she saw on approach, from the hall. She sees now that it was an Asian woman with flowing tan hair cascading down the other side of her. The look on her face towards her was sympathetic, but also somewhat disappointed.

“Too... late.” the girl propped near the window strains to sigh, looking away as the room’s new admission makes her way around her to look back out at her captor. The old, sinister nurse saunters away nonchalantly, back towards the direction she had come from. All the while the woman’s face was still obscured in shadow.

“Just make yourself comfortable,” she tells her. It’s muffled through the thick, reinforced glass. “After all, you’re in very good hands here.”

She pounds the window like she did the door. More out of frustration than anything.

“We tried…” someone sighs disappointedly from deeper in the room.

“It always happens… like this.” someone else pessimistically responds.

She slumps against the window, watching the “nurse” without a face disappear from view. Just as she starts to notice a strange, worrying tingling, deep within her abdomen. Her hand immediately moves to her middle.

“It’s… not so bad…” The redhead empathetically attempts across from her. She looks to see her plump lips trying to curl into an understanding smile as suddenly, overwhelming pressure pulls her other hand to meet the other, clenching at her own abdomen. Which is seemingly distending a little. 

“Scary at first.” She hears in the direction of the Asian girl.

“But you’ll be… surprised… how easy you get… used to it.” Someone from the other side of her manages. 

“And we always have… each others’ backs.” The redhead winced, still trying to be comforting. “Best we can.”

The pressure slowly becomes unbearable. She fights the urge to howl, instead, sucking in the air through her teeth sharply. The others around her quiver & jostle sympathetically.

“Have you ever done yoga?” another girl tried to help, unintentionally sounding a bit ironic, given she presumably had nothing left to bend. “It helps if you… try to breathe like that.”

“You’re going to be okay!” a slightly muffled voice bellows from her corner. She peers in its direction, but given the orientation of the hands & feet, they're spun towards the far wall. Puckering her lips, she turns back to look at the redhead back across from.

"We don't have a choice," her smile's still kind, but there's something sullen about it. "Other than... to be in this together." Between her panicked breathing, she wants to try & thank her, but she can't. Instead? Her entire middle suddenly surges forward in a giant, slightly violent bulge of sudden growth. 

The sudden rush of pressure being the very thing that caused her to jolt upright in bed. Her own bed. And the ominous sensation of her body having a mind of its own is slow to fade as she catches her breath.

Luckily, it was all just a dream.

But having said that, it's a dream she keeps on having. She’s had it for weeks now. Months at this point. Repeatedly. And every night she seems to have it? She wakes up swearing she feels just the slightest bit… well… puffier the next day. To the point now where she woke up with her panties digging into her uncomfortably. These days, there was a paunch of belly forming, every time she sprung from her sleep in the cold sweat brought on by this nightmare. Just like when she was first pushed into the room!

She desperately hopes it’s nothing more than just a dream. And not a sign of things to come.

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Haven't had the best luck writing recently. I'm stuck with Bellflower & in the middle of a lot of stop & starts. And I had another, slightly more traditional inflation thing going that started off great but peetered off for me a little. Like I like what I have, but worried about retreading old ground in certain ways.

This was a quick little thing I wanted to try just to help knock me out of the wedge a little. Very loosely based on a certain old Nintendo commercial from the 90's. Sorry if it's a little dark, but I kind of like keeping things vague. A little like the "Where Am I?" story I did way back when.

I should also mention though, I have a couple of other sort of similar little blurbs just like this. They all start with the same "She had that dream again," before launching into a similar sort of one-off short vignette. They aren't connected, they're more like sort of an anthology. Some are inflation, others are fats. Some forceful, others very willing. They're not all intended to be the same girl, just a framing device to bring about the expansion in sort of a different, surreal sort of way. Will we see more of what happens to this particular girl? Probably not. Will we get different girls, with different dreams? Likely, at some point.

Either way, I hope you enjoy! And hope this is enough to get me going on the other stuff again soon!