Post 165: Balloon Girl

What the fuck…?

My heart stopped and my skin went cold as I turned the corner in the upstairs hallway and saw what was waiting for me outside the door to my miserable little apartment. I had already frozen in my tracks when fear gripped me and I thought immediately that it was a person, a giant person. But...no...

What the fuck is that?

It was...it was huge. It was huge, taller than the doorframe, more than seven feet tall, but it wasn’t moving. It was not alive, I realized. Slowly, warily, I approached, and my mouth gaped as I gradually came to grips with what I was seeing. Holy shit. There was...late that Friday afternoon, after a terribly trying day that had left me edgy and feeling insecure...oh my god… a...a...a figure, a sculpture...a monstrous effigy of a...woman?? Standing outside my door. Who had done this? W-who had put this here?? And, was I seeing this right? It was made of…of...

...balloons?!?

Frozen already, my skin crawled. The height, the proportions. A huge mass of balloons sculpted into an imposing, impossibly curvy woman, breasts huge, legs mighty, hips wide. And she was holding something in her arms, some terrible...oh good god...baby. This was not good, I knew, as I began to get a grip on the situation, what this could mean.

But then I was hit with more. There was also, permeating the air, the smell of perfume, and it came from her. Someone must have drenched this thing in a perfume, a gripping, familiar one, and it unconsciously drew me in. So strong, hypnotic. Stepping closer, and closer still, to the, oh fuck, no, the breasts of this thing...I stared at them, and started to see...details...

The world, my mind, began reeling as I saw she was wearing, on her over-inflated right breast, a nametag. I knew, even before I read it to myself, what it would say-

“Melissa - Far Horizons”

Melissa. Of course. This outrageously bosomy balloon woman was supposed to be her, grown to even larger proportions. And the baby? The baby she was holding? Not...not just a baby…

...me. This was supposed to be me, a shrunken, infantile me. Naked, in a diaper, held in the arms of my huge, buxom Office Manager. I groaned, humiliated beyond belief and confused still as to who could have done this...and I remembered immediately the doodled sketch that had appeared, anonymously, taped to Melissa’s computer weeks ago-

Someone was an artist, and I was shocked, amazed at the lengths to which they’d go to humiliate me. This was somehow the work of a girl - or girls - in the office, of course meant to shame me, emasculate me, diminish me even further than they all had already. Is this how they all see me? Have I lost all their respect? And...what can I do??  I can’t fix it, I can’t fix anything. I can’t even fire them. Sheryl wouldn’t have it, she’d laugh at me if I tried. And, in fact, come Monday, there’ll be more of them.  I felt something like a panic attack coming on. It was as if all the walls were closing in on me. I was trapped, becoming surrounded.

The perfume hit me again; I drew in a deep breath of it.

I immediately needed to get this thing out of here, away from - well, though all the other upstairs tenants had vacated - any other sets of eyes that might wander in. I knew I should destroy it; all it would take is one push-pin and the thing would crumble. But, no. Instead, I found myself shifting it out of the way, unlocking my door, breathing in another lungful of the powerful perfume and lifting the creation gingerly by its base. Then, pausing, I furtively looked this way and that, to see if I was being watched.

I would bring it inside.

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My god, right? Huge appreciation to reader, supporter and friend ARColt67 for his balloon sculpture tribute to our little couple. He has some amazing work at his DeviantArt; please check it out.