Chapter 1: Pump Me Up!
The bass line hit first, a distorted thump that vibrated through the soles of Sally’s socks and up into her bones. She collapsed onto the bed, a fortress of mismatched pillows and thrift-store quilts, and exhaled a week’s worth of academic tension. Her dorm room was a shrine to controlled chaos. Fairy lights flickered like trapped fireflies in the perpetual twilight she preferred, and the walls were a peeling collage of The Blow Up Dolls posters, their smeared ink lyrics feeling more like home than the suburban house she’d fled.
“God, yes,” she muttered to the empty room, scrolling through her phone. She tapped the screen.
The opening synth of Pump Me Up! sliced through the quiet, tinny at first from the phone speaker, then deepening as she connected it to the cheap Bluetooth speaker squatting on her bookshelf. It was her anthem, a three-minute blast of garage-goth energy. She sang along under her breath, “‘Static cling, plastic skin, gotta find a way to begin…’”
She closed her eyes, letting the noise fill the space. The chorus was coming. It always did something to her, a physical pull in her gut. She braced for it.
The room seemed to hold its breath. Then it hit.
PUMP ME UP!
The command was metallic, hungry. The singer’s voice layered over itself, echoing, multiplying. Sally’s eyes fluttered open. Something felt… different. The air was thicker, sweeter, like ozone after a storm. The fairy lights seemed to pulse in time, not with the beat, but with the words.
She shook her head, a faint smile playing on her lips. “Weird.”
She stood up, intending to grab the half-empty energy drink from her nightstand. As she moved, the chorus looped back.
PUMP ME UP!
A peculiar fullness bloomed in her chest. Not uncomfortable, just… present. She looked down, pulling at the fabric of her black band t-shirt. It seemed tauter across her front. Her breathing shallowed. Okay. That’s new.
The song rolled into the second verse, but the instrumentation felt distorted, slower, like it was stretching. All she could hear was the promise of that chorus. Her skin tingled, a low-grade buzz humming from the inside out. She paced the small square of free floor, her lean frame usually so familiar, now feeling like a too-tight jacket.
“It’s just the bass,” she told the poster of the band’s bassist, who glared back with kohl-rimmed eyes. “You’re messing with my head.”
But her hands, when she held them up, looked… plump. The bones of her knuckles were less pronounced. She pressed a fingertip into the back of her hand. The flesh yielded with a strange, firm springiness and bounced back slowly, leaving a faint, pale dimple that lingered for a second before fading.
A laugh bubbled out of her, high and edged with nerves. “What the actual hell?”
PUMP ME UP!
The third chorus was a wave. It crashed over her, through her. The fullness wasn’t just in her chest now. It was in her arms, her thighs, her face. A hot, airy sensation flooded her limbs, not painful but intensely alien. She stumbled back, her balance shifting as her center of gravity rolled forward. She caught herself on the edge of her desk, her grip clumsy. Her fingers felt like inflated rubber gloves.
She looked in the smudged mirror propped against the wall. Her vibrant green hair framed a face that was rounder, smoother. Her cheeks were apple-full, pushing her eyes into amused, startled crescents. The sharp line of her jaw was softening, blending into her neck. She touched her cheek. It was smooth, cool, and incredibly tight.
“No way,” she whispered, her voice sounding muffled to her own ears. “This is not happening. This is a stress dream. I fell asleep studying.”
She tried to wrestle the shirt off, a sudden panic cutting through the daze. It was a struggle. The fabric, stretched drum-skin tight over her expanding torso, resisted. She finally got it over her head, gasping. Her reflection held her captive.
Her lean, athletic frame was gone. In its place was a curvaceous, bloated parody. Her stomach was a smooth, taut dome. Her breasts were round, polished-looking balloons. Her legs, still standing, were sturdy, columnar, gleaming in the fairy light glow. Her skin had a uniform, matte sheen to it, like fresh latex.
The song reached its final, frenzied breakdown. The chorus was the only thing left, looping, a stuck record of demand.
PUMP ME UP! PUMP ME UP! PUMP ME—
With each electronic shout, she felt a jolt. A palpable inflate. Her body rounded further, becoming simpler, more geometric. The feeling of weightlessness was sudden and dizzying. Her feet, now wide and padded, lost their purchase on the threadbare carpet.
“Whoa—!”
The exclamation was a squeak. She tipped forward, arms cartwheeling slowly, uselessly. They were too round, too light to steer with. She didn’t crash. She floated down, a gentle, bouncing descent that ended with her rolling onto her back in the middle of the floor.
She was a balloon. A large, woman-shaped, rubbery balloon. She tried to move an arm. It bobbed, resisted, then swung with a will of its own. She tried to sit up. Her torso was a single, seamless curve with no leverage. All she could do was rock gently, the motion making her bobble on the spot.
The song ended. The sudden silence was roaring.
She lay there, perfectly helpless, staring up at the glowing webs of light on her ceiling. The initial shock ebbed, replaced by a numb, analytical wonder. She flexed her mind, trying to command a finger to twitch. A faint wobble traveled through her form.
This was impossible. Objectively, scientifically impossible. Yet the pressure inside her was real. The cool, smooth touch of her own surface was real. The way every tiny breath made her sway was real.
A slow, incredulous smile stretched her now-wide mouth. It felt enormous on her face.
“Well,” she said to the quiet, her voice a hollow, resonant version of itself, echoing slightly inside her own head. “This is different.”
She breathed in experimentally. The air felt delicious going in, cool and filling. She grew a little rounder, a little lighter. Her shoulder lifted an inch off the floor.
A knock at the door. Three sharp raps.
“Sally? You in there? I heard music.” It was Maya from down the hall.
Sally’s smooth, inflated chest hitched. She held her breath. The rocking stopped. She was a beached, rubbery island in a sea of her own discarded clothes and clutter.
“Sally?”
She floated, utterly still, waiting. The doorknob began to turn.