Joey Swollen

[6 Word "You Call It" Request: Experimental helium accidentally inflates jock’s muscles]

[Inflation, balloonification]

Joey smiled at the way the young lab assistant’s hand shook as the stethoscope approached Joey’s massive pecs. When the cold metal circle touched his chest, he made it bounce a few times to tease the little guy.

“What’s your name?” Joey asked as he surveyed the young feminine man’s clenched posture.

“I’m Danick,” he said, moving the stethoscope around the thick pec a few times as he listened to the powerful heart pumping behind it.

“Joey,” he introduced, extending a thick hand. “Some people call me Joey Swoll. No idea why though.” He winked and flexed both of his arms, making his biceps jump. Danick still wouldn’t make eye contact with him.

The young assistant retreated to a drawer in the corner of the room, returning with a tape measure.

“I still don’t get why this observation stuff is even necessary,” Joey said. Danick wrapped the tape measure around Joey’s arm. “Flexed or unflexed?” Joey asked.

“We’ll record both,” Danick said, focused only on the tape measure and not on the pile of smooth, tan muscles before him.

“I was thinking,” Joey said, “I know your company… what’s it called again?”

“AmonTech,” Danick said. He wrapped the tape measure around Joey’s chest and recorded the number.

“Well, they said I was only entitled to the ‘settlement’ or whatever if I submitted to these observational sessions, but… I mean, I’m fine. Really. I feel great after the little incident or whatever. I don’t even need a settlement.”

Danick motioned for Joey to stand up. The big bodybuilder, clad only in a pair of compression shorts, did as he was told. Danick measured Joey’s legs while the bodybuilder alternately flexed and wobbled his quads to tease the assistant.

“Can you tell me again how it all happened?”

Joey chuckled. It was a stupid story: he had agreed to a photoshoot with a circus theme for some supplement company. There were clowns at the shoot, inflating balloons with little guns (AmonTech brand guns, Joey learned later) that blew them up with helium instantly. A clown on a unicycle crashed into a clown inflating a balloon. Joey, nearby, jumped in to help cushion the fall. In the tumble, the barrel of one of the AmonTech brand helium guns ended up in Joey’s mouth. Joey remembered swallowing something like a hard marble that the gun had jettisoned into him. He remembered it tasting like rotten eggs.

“We never even got the photoshoot done,” Joey finished. “They rushed me into the hospital and whatever I swallowed was already gone. That was two weeks ago, mind you.”

Danick smirked, his first sign of emotion all day. “That’s a ridiculous story,” he explained.

Joey shrugged, flexing his plump veiny delts and traps. “Yeah, I guess. Very on brand for me though. Goofy stuff just sort of--” Before he knew what was happening, Joey suddenly let out a massive belch. For four seconds long the deep guttural burp ripped from him. When it was over he slapped a hand over his mouth, shocked. How could he have had to burp so bad without even knowing?

Danick walked to the wall and lifted a phone as Joey swallowed, trying to figure out what was going on in his belly. His diet was so rigid and consistent, he never had gastrointestinal events like that.

“Sorry,” he said as Danick came back. “Won’t happen again.”

Danick smiled held up his clipboard. “So what you swallowed was an experimental device. It may have seemed like a spherical mass but it was actually a collection of thousands of tiny conversion devices. Nanotechnology if you will. Do you follow?”

Joey raised an eyebrow. He rubbed his abs lightly. Giant burp notwithstanding, everything felt fine down there.

“So each of those devices was set to transfer tiny amounts of air into helium. It’s how the device works. A single AmonTech inflation device could put a whole blimp in the air with ease, no need to recharge the device. What you swallowed, you’ve mostly digested, but a large amount of it was circulated around your body.”

“Meaning what exactly?” Joey said, looking down at himself. He saw himself every day. He was meticulous about his body. He would have noticed if something changed.

“Meaning that throughout your body, tiny devices are converting stored air into helium. It’s taken some time for them to get fully functional in their new environment--you--but they’re mostly online now and taking effect.”

“What does any of that mean?” Joey asked.

Danick pointed at the clipboard. “Your measurements. Everything is up at least half an inch. Expect more size to come.”

Joey flexed his arm, trying to see the extra half inch. It looked the same to him.

“So what now? Am I going to blow up? Am I going to gain more than this half an inch?”

“We’ll see,” Danick said. He scribbled on a piece of paper. “Come back on this date. We’ll check again. And please sign this non-disclosure agreement. Until our next meeting, you should go about things as if they were all the same. 

Joey signed the paper as Danick patted him on the shoulder and left the room.

*

When Joey returned, he had to turn sideways to fit in the door. The t-shirt he wore looked like a tent, and while it hung loosely around his midsection, it was stretched tightly over his arms and shoulders. He walked with a pronounced waddle, like each step was an effort. Gone was the jovial attitude of his previous visit.

Danick’s eyes went wide when he came in the room. “Wow! Your face! I almost didn’t recognize you.”

Joey grimaced. The “extra size” in his body had distributed evenly throughout his body, including in his head, which had bloated out like the rest of him, giving him massive cheeks and an overall square-looking skull. His high-cheekbones and pretty facial features were smoothed out now.

“I’ve called this place like thirty times,” Joey said, holding up his girthy limbs as evidence. “Look at me! I’m a fucking freak! I’m a social media personality you know. I have to be on camera! I make money because of my body! Your settlement better be fucking huge! And you better get me back to normal soon!”

“Calm down, calm down,” Danick said in a patronizing tone. “Just hop off the table, take off your shoes and pants and shirt and we’ll get started on some measurements first.”

Joey curled his puffy hands into the closest thing to fists that his swollen fingers could manage. “I can’t,” he grumbled.

“Can’t what? Take the shirt off?” Danick looked at Joey’s arms, which sat on lats so thick he couldn’t hope to put them down. “Of course! I bet with all that mass between them you can’t even clap your hands. Let me help--”

“No,” Joey said in an even more stern tone. “The shoes. I can’t take them off.”

Danick looked down at Joey’s shoes. Joey explained: “There’s weights in them. I can’t… stay down… if I take them off.”

For a week, the slow growth in his body had been a welcome addition as his muscles filled out in pleasing ways that made him look even more massive. He couldn’t figure out why he seemed to be gaining mass while the scale actually said he weighed less. Then one morning he hopped out of bed and it took several seconds for his feet to touch the ground.

“Ah,” Danick said. “Well, let’s see. There’s no ceiling fans in here. Let me just turn off the air conditioning so you don’t get blown around the room.” He clicked a panel on the wall and Joey heard the vents slowly shut. “How about if I lock the door so you don’t accidentally float off into the building?”

Joey hated this talk--like he was a thing and not a MAN--but if he had any hopes of getting back to normal, it was with this little lab assistant.

“Fine,” Joey said. He needed Danick’s help to get his shirt off. Underneath, his torso had lost all definition, just big shiny round muscles. “It’s like my skin’s different,” he said, pressing his hand into his chest. It squeaked as he ran his fingers along the surface. He didn’t have the courage to say out loud what he feared.

“Okay, now the pants,” Danick said. “We can leave the shoes until last if you feel better.” Joey’s elastic-waistband pants had to be inched around his unbelievably thick legs. Joey demanded the shoes come off last; even without the weight of his bulky, oversized clothes, he had already started to rise off the table. He had to grip it to make sure his huge ass stayed down on it.

“Your… manhood…” Danick said, gesturing to Joey’s crotch. “It’s grown as well, I can see!”

His junk had swollen like the rest of him, now a foot long and as thick as an arm. That it stood at attention had less to do with his being aroused and more to the fact that the gases inside were causing it to rise to the ceiling. Joey put one paunchy hand over it to keep from looking like he had a permanent hard-on.

“Yeah, whatever. You want to get those measurements now?”

Danick marveled at the numbers on his tape measure. Joey’s arms were 32 inches around now, his legs were over 50 each, and Danick was unable to measure the width of Joey’s chest.

“I would take a blood sample but…”

Joey anticipated the last half of Danick’s statement. It was something he’d feared for the last few days. “But what?”

Danick shrugged. “It appears that… the nanoconverters in you may be starting to do more than convert air to helium. From the blood tests we took last time, we noticed that they’re starting to produce a new organic helium, and also the surrounding cells are converted to an organic rubber…”

Joey shook his head. “You’re saying I’ll pop if you stick me with a needle?”

Danick shrugged.

Joey couldn’t believe this little pissant--who he couldn’t even see over his massive pec shelf unless he leaned forward--was being so cavalier about this. He was about to demand to speak to someone else when Danick suddenly reached down and yanked off his shoes.

“Dammit--no!” Joey lifted into the air, kicking and swiping at the air to get back down to the table as he started to uncontrollably rise. Danick just looked at him as if he were surveying a science experiment. “Get me down!” Joey said, his confidence fully gone as he found nothing to grab hold of as the ceiling got closer and closer.

“Your body is so… smooth and shiny. Your muscles more full and round than any human’s,” Danick observed. “It’s almost like you’re less of a man and more of a balloon now!”

“Fuck you!” Joey said. He managed to flip himself over so he was face down. He flinched when he felt his back softly come in contact with the ceiling. He glared down at Danick, ten feet below him.

“So, we have two options,” Danick said as he made some notes on a clipboard. “The good news is, this situation doesn’t seem permanent. At some point, the nanoconverters will exhaust themselves and your cells should return to their usual state. You will, however, have to be pumped to release all of that gas. There may be some… permanent… side effects. But it may be some time before this all completes. You could be stuck, inflating slowly, for a whole year.”

“Or what?” Joey said. “What other option do I have?”

“We could expose you to a radiation that would be harmless to you, but would kick the converters into overdrive. They’ll expire rapidly, but you will experience some significant inflation before they do.”

Joey blinked. He couldn’t believe he was stuck to the ceiling, having a conversation with a guy ⅕ his size from twenty feet above him.

“Obviously the second one. You think I want to spend a year getting bigger?”

Danick started walking away without a word.

“Wait!” Joey called. “Come back! Don’t leave me!”

Opening the door caused some air currents that made Joey bounce around on the ceiling. He was greatful the air conditioning wasn’t on. “Fuck,” he said. His chest and abdomen were so blimped out that he couldn’t see his big floppy cock but he could feel it wobbling around every time he bounced against the ceiling.

Danick returned with a few other men in white lab coats. Joey, naked, enormously overswollen and helpless against the ceiling, felt he might drown in humiliation. One of them formed a crude lasso with a rope and tried to snag one of Joey’s limbs. To his credit, Joey tried to just grab the robe but his thick limbs weren’t nearly dexterous enough to manage.

Finally, the loop ensnared Joey’s big hand and the man pulled it taut. Hand over hand, he reeled Joey in until the big bodybuilder was in the center of the room.

“Careful getting him out the door,” Danick said as the men surrounded Joey and guided him toward the exit. “I’m uncertain how much his body has been transmuted. He may be very fragile.”

Fuck! Don’t pop me! Joey thought. He didn’t have the guts to say it out loud.

Getting Joey out the door was like maneuvering a couch into an apartment. Joey felt utterly dehumanized, most of all when one of the lab technicians had to grab his cock and hold it aside so he could clear the doorway.

Once he was in the hallway, the men just dragged him along by the rope around his wrist. The men maneuvered Joey so that he was facing the ceiling. He tried to turn but it had been over a week since his bulging neck and traps would have allowed that. He kept bopping his face against the ceiling as he bounced around. The men seemed entirely unconcerned with his well-being as they transported him until they got him to another doorway, through which they had to corral him while shimmying his bulk to the left and right.

Finally they arrived in a room lit with red light. A loud humming drowned out the men’s whispering. Joey wanted to ask what would happen but he was too afraid of the answer.

He heard a sealed door opening with a rush of air. Then the men dragged him down to their level, removed his tether and lightly pushed him through the door. It closed behind him and Joey found himself floating in a massive white room. It looked like a giant microwave.

Danick’s voice outside was muffled. Joey had to struggle to hear what would happen: “So we’re going to excite the nanoconverters with radiation. You will experience some size change but don’t worry. Your body should convert from… well, balloon, back to heavy flesh. Understood?”

Joey nodded, although the movement was so slight he doubted anyone could see it.

Suddenly the walls started to glow with a painful light. Joey shut his eyes, unable to shield his face. Fans in the ceiling and floor sprang to life and Joey found himself blowing around the room, crashing face-first into each wall.

Then he felt it--a tingling in his body like preworkout was kicking in. He watched, horrified as everything started to swell even more. He could hear the sound of stretching rubber as he blew up. The pressure inside his body was murderous--could he pop? He wondered--but then he suddenly felt cold.

In seconds his body was more or less spherical. He knew he had hands and feet but he could barely wiggle his fingers and toes. His limbs had disappeared into his bloating mass. But he felt heavy! For the first time in days, he felt like he had some sort of mass--gravity had reasserted itself on him. He was slowly sinking down from the ceiling, the only thing that gave him relief. He actually fell the last few feet, thudding heavily to the ground.

The lights and sounds started to die as the machine slowly shut down. When it was over, the door opened. Joey couldn’t see past his spherical bulk, but he could hear the footsteps of the men coming in. 

“Mmmph!” Joey had meant to say words but there was so much mass on his face he couldn’t open his jaw enough to form them. He felt hands poking and prodding at him, rubbing along his perfectly round body, but he could do nothing to prevent them from doing so. He flapped his hands, wiggled his feet, hoping he could slap or kick someone away from him, at least to express his displeasure, but the men easily avoided them.

“Roll him so his head is near mine.” It was Danick’s voice. The men did as instructed, and Joey moaned as he felt his perspective shift. He could be rolled like a big ball now, and there was nothing he could do to stop them. His head was upside down when Danick’s came into view. “Well, Joey, it appears this is the best we can do for you. You’ll be receiving a sizable settlement, but we’ll gladly pay after all we’ve learned from your accident. It seems AmonTech will be forming a new weapons division. Just imagine: why chase a criminal when you can turn him into a balloon and easily guide him into a floatiing jail? Imagine taking over a country by making all of its citizens into blimps so they all float into space. We’ve learned more from you than you could imagine, and all it cost was your career and your beautiful body.”

Joey just groaned through his squeezed-shut lips while Danick gently caressed his round cheeks.