Chapter 1: The First Pump: A Solo Performance
The bare bulb flickered, throwing jumpy shadows across the riot of her bedroom. A half-eaten plate of glittery Jell-O shots sat on a pile of vinyl records, sweating onto a sleeve for The Cramps. Sally kicked a stray fishnet stocking under the bed, the distorted opening riff of Pump Me Up already warping from her laptop speakers.
She sank onto the mattress, the springs groaning. Her thumb traced the sealed edge of the plain black vinyl sleeve she’d found shoved in the back of a bin at the weird record fair. No band name. No tracklist. Just a smudged barcode. The guy selling it had winked, his teeth yellow. “Life-changing,” he’d said. She’d bought it for the aesthetic, mostly. It looked cool and mysterious.
The needle hissed, then caught.
A deep, pulsating bassline rattled the dust on the speakers. Not punk. Something slower, thicker, synthetic. It crawled into her bones. She closed her eyes, bobbing her head, the green tips of her hair brushing her shoulders. It was good. Weird, but good.
Then the chorus hit.
A seismic wave of sound, a distorted vocal she couldn’t quite place as male or female, chanting something that felt more like pressure than language. Her breath caught in her throat. A peculiar warmth bloomed deep in her stomach, not unpleasant, spreading outwards in a lazy, tingling wave.
She opened her eyes and looked down.
The familiar, comfortable softness of her belly was… firming. Rounding. It pushed against the fabric of her ripped band t-shirt, stretching it smooth. She froze, the music thrumming inside her ribcage. A faint, airy sensation whispered under her skin.
“What the actual hell?”
Her voice sounded thin. She pressed a hand to her stomach. It was taut, resilient, like a beach ball half-inflated. A sharp, involuntary gasp escaped her as she felt the expansion continue, a relentless, gentle inflation. The seams of her leather shorts bit into her hips. Her thighs, pressed together on the bed, began to push apart, their inner surfaces growing fuller, rounder.
Panic, sharp and bright, cut through the haze. She scrambled to her feet, the room tilting. The music swelled, that chanting pulse now the only thing she could hear. She fumbled for the tonearm, her fingers slick and clumsy.
She couldn’t lift it. It was stuck, or she was too weak.
In the cracked mirror across the room, her reflection warped. Her chest heaved, her breasts swelling against the fishnet top she wore beneath the t-shirt. The hexagonal patterns of the netting distended, widening into large, geometric shapes against the burgeoning flesh. The shirt itself was now strainfully tight across her bust and midriff.
A low moan built in her throat, part terror, part something else entirely. A shocking, inappropriate thrill. This was impossible. This was happening.
She grabbed handfuls of her t-shirt, pulling it away from her skin as if giving herself room, but there was no room. The material was a second skin. Her hips widened, the shorts protesting with a sickening creak of stressed leather. She stumbled, her new center of gravity unfamiliar and heavy.
The mirror showed a woman bloating, inflating like a figure in a cartoon, but the feeling was horrifically real. The pressure was everywhere, a constant, insistent push. She watched her own face, her wide eyes, her mouth open in a silent cry as her cheeks rounded, softening her jawline.
The chorus looped back.
A fresh, more intense wave of expansion hit her. This time, it hurt. A dull, aching stretch. Her back arched as her rear pressed against the tight leather, her silhouette curving into an exaggerated, bottom-heavy hourglass. She was a puppet to the rhythm, her body bending and swelling with each thudding bass note.
She clutched at her sides, fingers scrambling for purchase on the taut, warm surface of herself. She was losing the shape she knew. The green-haired woman in the concert posters seemed like a different person.
“Stop,” she whimpered, to the room, to the record, to no one. “Please, stop.”
A knock at the door. Sharp. Impatient.
“Sally? You blasting that garbage again? Keep it down!” Her mom’s voice, muffled by the wood.
Sally’s blood ran cold. She stared at the doorknob, then down at the vast, straining curve of her body. The leather shorts, heroically holding on, let out a long, central sigh—a zip giving way, not all the way, but enough. She couldn’t be seen. Not like this.
“Yeah! Sorry!” she called out, her voice strangled. “Just… turning it off!”
She lunged for the laptop, her movement clumsy and slow, and slammed it shut.
The silence was immediate, ringing, and awful.
The physical pressure ceased its increase, but it didn’t recede. She was marooned in this new, overwhelming form, every sensation magnified. The feel of her own arms against her swollen sides, the heavy drag of her chest, the tight, angry ring of the shorts and shirt biting into her flesh. She was a prisoner inside herself.
She stood there, in the center of her neon chaos, panting, listening to her mother’s footsteps retreat down the hall. The panic solidified into a cold, hard knot in her gut—which was now a solid, prominent dome beneath her ribs.
She was stuck. And the record, on the turntable, had only just reached the end of Side A.
With a trembling hand, she reached for the sleeve it came in, turning it over. There, in tiny, embossed letters she hadn’t noticed before along the bottom edge, was a line of text.
For the empty ones.
She let out a shaky breath that strained her tight lungs. Empty? She felt like she was going to burst.
From the hallway, her mom yelled, “Phone for you! It’s that shop, Perfect Image! About your interview tomorrow!”
Sally stared at her reflection, at the stranger made of stretched fishnets and threatening seams. A hysterical laugh bubbled up, thick and desperate. Tomorrow. The interview for the clean, sleek, mainstream tattoo parlor. The one where she was supposed to look professional.
She looked at the turntable. The silence now felt like a taunt. This wasn't over. She knew it in the deep, singing tension of her skin. Side B was still there, waiting.
The needle was just sitting in the run-out groove, waiting to be lifted, waiting to be flipped.
Her interview was tomorrow.
She had to get out of this. She had to find a way back. But the only clue she had was the record itself, and the terrible, silent certainty that playing it was the only thing that might reverse the process.
Or make it worse.