Here We Go Again...

Jay sat in his house, his black talons in a V-shape out in front of him, the blue bird holding an air tank between his wings. He looked a bit nervously at the thing, and at the hose snaking from the valve at the top of the metal cylinder itself. His last attempt at inflating himself had gone a bit awry, yet here he found himself with a new tank and the intent to fill himself up another time.

With one wing, he brought the open end of the black, rubber hose to his grey beak and put it into his mouth. He then swallowed some of its length so it went down into his belly, leaving both of his wings free to work with the wheel that controlled the tank’s airflow. After a bit of struggling, Jay heard the wheel let out a small creak as it turned, the noise followed by a soft hiss while a cool feeling entered his stomach.

Jay took a deep breath around the hose, calming his nerves a bit. He hoped things didn’t go wrong like they did last time, where he had dropped the tank and left himself to the whims of however much air was left in the tank at the time. Thankfully, this tank wasn’t completely full, so there was less of a popping risk if it happened again. He held the tank firmly between his wings as he watched his middle expand below him, chest and stomach beginning to push forwards inch by inch as they were filled up with air.

He held his air tank with one wing and moved the other to his middle, rubbing his middle as it grew. A few pats resulted in a sound close to that of a drum, indicating the current hollowness of his midsection. As a whole, it stuck almost a foot in front of him, making it able to serve as something to push his air tank against and better secure it in his other wing.

He slowly moved to stand up, making sure to keep his air tank in his wing as he got up on his two talons. He could feel the air rushing into his middle as it grew in front of him as a blue dome that slowly took up more of his view. He couldn’t see his talons below him anymore when he stood fully, the bird normally being somewhat slim in figure.

As his middle bulged to its second feet in front of Jay, he could feel a growing tightness in the skin below his feathers. He knew his skin could stretch a decent amount to hold the air filling his body, so he was in no danger as of now. He found himself squeezing his middle between his wings, feeling the growing dome bulge out up and down as its sides were squished inwards. It felt rather soft, even bouncy to a large extent, and thoughts of using it as a bed started to enter his mind as he found himself using both wings to rub both sides of his middle.

A sudden metallic thud brought Jay back to reality as he looked at his wing that was previously holding the air tank. A pang of fear went through his heart as he found the tank to be out of sight, although he let out a sigh of relief when further investigation revealed the tank to be next to one of his talons on the floor. He bent down to pick it up, but his fear quickly returned to him when he realized that his middle had become too large for him to bend down and pick up the tank at his feet.

With at least three feet of inflated bird in front of him, Jay tried his best to keep calm, taking deep breaths around the hose in his beak and wondering what he could do. He tried to pull the rubber hose out of his mouth, but it seemed to be stuck in his belly at that moment. Another attempt at picking up the tank itself, even reaching its valve, was fruitless, doing even less than before to help solve this predicament since it had grown further out in front of Jay, maybe even gained another foot or more in size.

Growing more desperate with time, Jay tried getting on his knees to reach the tank. He could feel the tips of his feathers brushing against the cold metal, but it still wasn’t enough to get a grip on the tank itself. He leaned forward on his middle, lying atop it to see if that would help. His ballooning body bulged out to Jay’s left and right as his weight pushed down on it from above, causing the tank to roll a bit away from him as his body pushed against it. Yet again, Jay was just barely unable to reach the tank, although now the tank was perfectly within his view, making the situation all the more annoying for the blue bird.

Jay sighed atop his belly, feeling himself rise atop his middle and slowly become beached on it, the tips of his talons being the only things to touch the ground as Jay officially became more belly than bird. The hissing had grown louder with time, echoing against the hollow walls of his middle and making Jay sound almost identical to an inflating balloon.

His talons achieved liftoff from the ground, finally leaving the floor as his belly pushed him higher off the ground. Perhaps it was six feet in diameter now? It was hard to tell since he could barely see the ground in front of him. The soft creaks and groans of protest from his stretched skin hinted towards the potential pop that could end this whole fiasco if the tank didn’t run out of air before too much longer. The growing orb below Jay had stopped bulging to the sides by now, too taut to have enough give to support such bulges. Any attempts to squeeze the creaking orb further confirmed this lack of give, the surface of the near sphere practically refusing to be pushed down under Jay’s wings.

The creaks and groans kept growing louder and louder, while the hiss from Jay’s air tank remained at a constant volume. His skin was approaching its limit steadily beneath him, and he was struggling to keep his thoughts straight as the pressure built in his stomach.

He was resting the side of his head against his own midsection, eyelids heavy as he sat in the slight daze he had found himself in. He could hear the constant echo of air flowing into him, unable to be stopped by any of his efforts at this point. The creaks and groans filled his ears, reminding him of what was soon to come as he rubbed his overstretched skin. It wouldn’t be much longer before his body couldn’t hold together any more...

Suddenly, a loud bang rang throughout Jay’s home as his body passed its limit and then some. Feathers flew all throughout the room, a considerable amount of them even making it all the way to neighboring rooms. Scraps of thinly stretched skin lay scattered near the air tank, their weight having forced them to settle sooner than the feathers. In the middle of it all, next to the still-hissing air tank, lay Jay, now on the verge of unconsciousness as he groaned, this time through his beak, as he shakily reached up and turned off the air tank before quickly falling asleep amidst the huge mess of feathers nearby.