A speedwrite commission for  cynicalgage!

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Tom stirred, groggy and barely aware of his surroundings. He tried to recall what he had been doing before his apparent blackout. Flashes of places, people, and events, but nothing concrete enough to form a narrative. He was relieved from his pondering when a bassoon voice called out to him from an overhead speaker, addressing him in a clinical fashion. “Thomas Avila. Subject 582, adult human male. 25 years old, approximately one hundred and fifty pounds.” Tom immediately began to panic and tried to move, but he couldn’t. His vision cleared, and he looked up to find his arms constricted by metal restraints, he looked down, the same was true for his ankles.

“Who’s there!?” Tom yelled. With his consciousness fully returned to him, he scanned his surroundings. The restraints which held him in bondage forced his limbs into a starfish like shape, an x. He was almost fully naked barring a pair of briefs that shone curiously, judging by the feel, they were latex or a similarly stretchy material. In shame, Tom blushed. Though his fear outweighed his embarrassment. He noticed the restraints were connected to suspension chain that fed up to the ceiling, and in all directions – some fifty, perhaps sixty feet away – were curved glass walls. He felt like an ant under a microscope, or worse, an experiment in a petri dish.

“Your benefactor slash captor for the evening, Mr. Avila.” The voice from the speaker returned. “If you want to know what lies beyond the disembodied voice, look directly in front of you.” A platform lay beyond the glass enclosure. A man clad in reflective latex, a shade of purple so dark it could be confused for black, stood at its centre. He was enormous, easily the biggest human Tom had ever seen in a while. So ridiculously fat that he was nearly as wide as he was tall, sporting a barrel chest and tree-trunk limbs.

“You’re…” with a sinking realization, Tom recognised his captor.

“Biohazard Ben. Master of all things pressurized, brilliant scientific mind of the century, and meteoric plus-sized men’s fashion model?” He finished Tom’s sentence, grinning madly. “Why yes! And you’re my latest guinea pig.” Ben pressed a button to his right, bringing a transparent oxygen mask down from the ceiling of Tom’s enclosure. It fixed itself to his face. The attached hose became turgid with pressure, a cacophony of hissing filled the chamber. “I’ve always wanted to see how my lovely purple gas affects a toon, you know.”

Tom struggled to get loose in vain. Gas pumped through the mask and into his body, he was forced to inhale it if he wanted to avoid suffocation. It had a strangely sweet scent. He could feel it trying to alter him, trying to make him capitulate to his fate as an inflatable science experiment. True to Ben’s words, Tom was a ‘toon,’ a living cartoon. Compared to the weighty Ben, Tom was rendered like an illustration in 3D motion, smooth and in technicolour. This lack of adherence to the natural order meant that his body could be pulled apart, crushed, or maimed and spring back into shape. This also meant he could stretch with enough pressure forced into him… like a balloon.
“Subject 582 shows some resistance to psychotropic gas. Increasing PSI.” Ben wrapped his latex gloved hand around a lever, and unceremoniously pulled it to its furthest point.

Tom felt his throat and cheeks bulge. His cheeks grew to the size of basketballs, while his neck began to round out like a car tyre. His formerly trim stomach blew up and out in moments, a cartoony BWOOMP sound resonated throughout the chamber as the swelling spread to his back until his entire torso rounded out. It kept spreading, the gas kept pumping, his lower body losing its definition with his hips and waist joining the rest of his middle until it was nearly spherical. Tom tried to speak, but the mask meant that all he could so was let out muffled exclamations.
“Ooh, you really ‘can’ stretch.” Ben said over the speakers.

Tom felt his willpower draining away. He reluctantly began to experience the tense stretching sensation rapturing his body as something to be welcomed. It was becoming more appealing by the second, like the constant intermittent pressure of a massage meant to loosen out tense muscles. He stopped trying to protest and willingly let his jaw go slack, giving the gas a much easier passage into his body. His arms and legs blew up like tubular balloons terminating in orbs with small nubs like air-filled rubber gloves, that ultimate began receding into the grand sphere Tom had become.

“Mm, looks like its finally taken effect. Heat buildup within normal parameters…” Ben noted down Tom’s progress.
Meanwhile, Tom had gone from simply accepting his circumstances to wilfully inhaling the sweet gas. It was his oxygen now, his ambrosia. He invited it into his body, his balloon – he was a balloon – yes, just a balloon. All thoughts, anxieties or obligations he had prior to the present moment were trivial. Tom the toon no longer existed, just Tom the balloon. He grew beyond the size of a van, inhaled, stretched, swelled; beyond the size of a small home, starting to sweat, his facial features obscured by monumental facial cheeks threatening to eclipse his face; beyond the size of a blimp. No, he was the blimp! THE blimp!

“Mmmmmmoooooore.” Tom moaned through the oxygen mask.

“Oh, here we go.”

Tom grew until he was unrecognisable as a human. His eyes wide open, bulging cartoonishly, the whites of his sclera tinged purple. Red hot gas whistled out of his ears, nose, and navel like a train whistle. He was now big enough to press against the glass of the enclosure, his creaking latex-tight silhouette conforming to fit its confines, peach coloured rubberflesh lightening as it pressed tightly to the walls. A deep, angry red, pulsated from within him. He felt wonderful, better than he ever had. A tingling started in his toes and then spread across his entire circumference. He began laughing, insanely. Bigger, bigger, he was going to break out of the glass cage and—

KABOOM!

In an instant, pinprick leaks of gas sprung from his overtaxed body and seconds later there was an almighty detonation. Scraps rained in the glass chamber, and Ben sighed. “They always go crazy at the fifty meter mark… bring in the next one!”