Minimum Wage, part 6: Wedding Caterer

Patricia was used to people looking down at her -- literally. Puberty and growth spurts had passed her by with barely a glance, leaving her 4'10" and just shy of 90 lbs. "Trixie the Pixie", they called her in high school. Boys treated her like a disposable sex toy. Girls saw her as an object of pity and scorn, when they weren't just stuffing her into lockers. Her intellect, talents, and assertive personality went unnoticed, wrapped up in such a tiny package. But Patricia was determined not to let her body's failings define her destiny. She put her mind to work, applied herself, and got a job with an internationally-renowned catering company right out of school. She had to start at the bottom, of course, but she knew she could expand her skillset, impress her supervisors, and rise up quickly.

Just on her first day, she'd already learned a few things. First, obscenely wealthy families holding multi-million-dollar weddings would invite people they didn't know or care about for social purposes, then corral them in a tent hidden on the outskirts of their property, full of cheap snacks and booze. Second, they'd specify a certain bottom-shelf wine for their little Siberia, then blow up at the caterers on the morning of because the brand they very specifically requested wasn't sparkling. Third, when you have to carbonate a lot of beverage in a hurry, hydrogen gets the job done much more quickly than carbon dioxide. Patricia just hoped no one would be smoking over their drink.

This is where she found herself working her first assignment, wielding a carbonation gun, sticking the needle through the cork, gassing up bottle after bottle. The uniform her employers had custom-ordered for her hadn't arrived yet, so Patricia was wearing one made for an adult-sized woman. She was practically swimming in it -- she'd even had to take in some waistband with a binder clip to keep her pants up. This was probably why she was exiled to this remote corner, where no one would see her. Her pants legs kept falling down over her ankles, tripping her up as she raced to complete her task on time.

Patricia had only a few bottles left to go when the gun ran out of gas. She'd been hoping this wouldn't happen; the receptacle had a pin which was supposed to puncture the end of the gas capsule, but it was blunt and difficult to poke through the metal. For the umpteenth time, Patricia wished she had a little upper-body strength, as she struggled to force the slender tube into its socket. So focused was she on her task that she didn't realize she'd forgotten to lock it in place first.

The instant the pin pierced the capsule, the slick metal slipped from her grasp. Patricia barely had time to blink as it rocketed into her mouth and down her throat, coming to rest in her stomach.

As she stood there, stunned by the events of that split second, a gurgling from her midsection drew her attention. She grasped her abdomen, feeling its softness give way to firm resilience. To her astonishment, it then starting pushing out, inflating right under her hands. Seconds later, Patricia felt a sensation she hadn't experienced since she was ten: wearing clothes too small for her. Her belly had blown up as far as her shirt could accommodate it, and she grunted softly as the stiff fabric gripped her in an unfriendly embrace that grew tighter by the second.

A sudden sound made Patricia's heart leap in her throat. Relief washed over her as she realized she hadn't popped, only popped a button off her shirt. Several more followed in quick succession, and her stomach sprang forth from its confinement. Patricia was stupefied to see such an enormous protrusion projecting from her body. She'd worn a fake pregnancy belly (much too big for her) for sex-ed class, but it was another thing entirely to have one made of your own flesh and skin. The way it tugged upward instead of downward was especially disconcerting.

Patricia's brain finally snapped out of its paralysis, and she realized that her pneumatic problem was only going to get worse unless she did something about it. She squeezed her midsection, trying to deflate it. The gas shifted under her grasp, but always settled back where it started, no matter which way she pushed it. And as her swelling tummy grew into its newfound freedom, it firmed up and presented increasing resistance to her attempts. Patricia pulled hard on her underbelly, and felt a gas bubble begin to well up inside her. Gritting her teeth, she redoubled her efforts, fighting with all the force her pipestem arms could muster. If only she could make herself burp, she might not burst...

There was a soft gurgle, a gentle hiss, and the strange sensation of the pressure pushing its way up her torso. Before she knew what was happening, her small, pert breasts blew up, advancing through cup sizes faster than Patricia could have pronounced them. Her flimsy bra, more an affectation than a necessity, yielded to their expansion with only a token protest. But her shirt was made of sterner stuff; its top half held on tenaciously as it filled to capacity. She let out a strangled squeak as the pressure on her chest crushed her windpipe.

The bubble in her belly finally broke loose and worked its way up her throat, only to find the exit closed. It seemed to hesitate for a moment, then took the only path available to it. Patricia's eyes bugged as her bosom ballooned further, stretching her shirt, which in turn further compressed her chest. She cast about frantically for help. Nothing. She was all alone in the tent, out of sight of the other staff, and over a minute's walk from anywhere. With her oxygen rapidly running out, she pawed desperately at her breasts, but their expansive curves under taut fabric slipped from her grasp. Just as her consciousness began to fade, her chest exploded out in a shower of buttons, thankfully without causing Patricia to explode as well.

Sucking in lungfuls of precious air, she shrugged off the tattered remains of her shirt and bra as she surveyed these latest developments. Her mother was a spectacularly busty woman, and Patricia had often wondered what it would be like to be as well-endowed as her. Now that she finally had a rack to put Mom's to shame, though, she would have gladly traded it back for the cute little set she'd had less than a minute ago.

But the capsule wasn't finished wreaking changes on her figure. It had worked its way down her system and found a new part of her body to pump gas into. Patricia blanched, her mouth forming a silent O of horror, as she felt the pressure mounting in her pelvis. Her flaring hips and rounding rear rapidly took back the bound-up slack in her waistband. In no time, her once-baggy pants had drawn as tight as spandex disco jeans against her crotch and backside. Her questing hands felt the hem of her panties standing out in sharp relief against the thin, taut fabric.

Patricia had never been jealous of her mother's lower body. She'd never wanted childbearing hips or a big ol' butt, and even with no one to witness it, this obscene distortion of her body shape was deeply humiliating. "Patty the Fatty" would have been her new nickname, if her classmates could see her now. Her embarrassment compounded itself when she personally and involuntarily made a major contribution to global warming. Rather than deep and low as she would have expected, it was piercingly shrill, and almost deafening even through two drum-tight layers of cloth. She could have sworn she saw the tower of wine glasses tremble slightly under the sonic onslaught. Maybe "Patulent the Flatulent" would be more appropriate.

As their legs grew tight around her thickening thighs, Patricia realized her pants weren't going to give up the ghost as easily as her shirt had. Her hands flew to her fly, which she found was already under heavy tension. Undeterred, she worked her thumbs under the waistband and grasped it tightly, fighting to push it together. She managed to get the hook three-quarters of the way unhooked before the mounting pressure forced it back out again. When she couldn't even budge it anymore, Patricia was forced to admit defeat. Only then did she realize her bulging belly had wrapped around her thumbs -- she couldn't pull them out!

Struggling against her entrapment, Patricia once again tripped on the pants legs pooling around her ankles. Without her arms free to catch her balance, she found herself falling backwards... and falling... still falling...

It took her a while to wrap her mind around the reason she hadn't hit the ground yet. It couldn't be that -- there was no way the capsule had enough gas -- she knew she was a lightweight, but she couldn't possibly be light enough to... but when she saw the ground tilt into view from the top of her vision, she was forced to accept the fact that her condition had progressed to this absurd extent.

Patricia was lighter than air!

For a few seconds, she simply rotated in place, but her body was still inflating, and hovering soon gave way to slow rising. Her fear finally won out over her unwillingness to be seen in this state, and she screamed for help. But the hydrogen on her breath made her voice come out as a barely-audible squeak; the sound wouldn't carry beyond the tent, let alone to the nearest person. Patricia let out a high-pitched burp -- too little, too late to arrest her ascent, it merely set her drifting towards the central table. As the centerpiece floated into view, she desperately snapped at it with her teeth, but succeeded only in snagging a single leaf. Her hands were still uselessly bound to her waist, and her buoyancy built until her leafy lifeline broke, and she floated up, writhing in vain against the forces controlling her body, until she came to rest face-down against the top of the tent.

Minute after minute passed, her boobs and belly blew up bigger and bigger, her butt, hips and thighs redoubled their assault again their fabric prison, the canvas pressed against her back with increasing insistence, and Patricia was beginning to resign herself to becoming a human Hindenburg, when something shifted in her bowels. The capsule that had inflicted this confounding condition upon her was completing its journey and coming up on the exit. She felt it beginning to poke out of her, propelled by the pneumatic pressure it was responsible for. It stalled just as it was almost out, and for a heart-stopping moment Patricia was afraid her swollen cheeks would hold it in place -- but all of a sudden it took off like a rocket, launching right through the seat of her pants and the tent, off into the sky.

Tears welled in Patricia's eyes as she sobbed in relief that she wasn't going to burst. She was pretty sure she'd be okay now; all she had to do was wait to deflate and get back to the ground. Her pants were starting to tear apart, and once they were done for, she'd have the use of her arms again and could pull herself down a tentpole. But when she felt a draft on her exposed backside, Patricia's blood ran cold as she realized the hole in the tent was also ripping open from her upward pressure on it; if it gave way, she'd join that stupid capsule in the wild blue yonder!

The battle lasted for what felt like hours, even though it must have been only a couple minutes. She would gain some ground, twisting and bending her legs to accelerate the destruction of her last item of clothing; then the tent would counter, widening the hole she was inescapably falling (or rising) into. In the end, Patricia lost by a nose, slipping out before she could stop herself. Her pants fell apart a split-second too late, her thrusting hands falling a quarter-inch short of the canvas, and Trixie floated up like a pixie past the point of no return. All she could do was cry for help in a voice that only a dog could hear, as she rose into the clear blue sky.

Without constricting clothing to contain its growth, her lower body made up for the expansion it had been denied for so long. A torrent of gas from her upper half flooded into it, swelling her thighs into zaftig cones, blowing her butt up beyond all reason, and making her hips spread wider, wider, and wider, until Patricia thought they'd emancipate themselves from her and become independent citizens. Her newly pear-shaped body reoriented itself, and she ended up face-down with her ass in the air, giving her a nice view of the ground as it swiftly fell away. Why had something like this happened to her? She was just trying to do her job. If only she'd been stronger, so she could have deflated herself. If only she'd been heavier, so she wouldn't have floated away. If only she hadn't been working alone, so someone could have helped --

No. For years Patricia had thought of herself as small and weak. She'd let boys use her and girls push her around. And now she'd let a handful of hydrogen humiliate her and put her in this peril. She had only herself, no one else, to blame for her current situation. And she could get out of it all by herself. She'd already disposed of the source of her condition, so all she had to do was relieve herself of some of this gas and she could get back down to Earth. And Patricia was going to do that if it killed her.

She tried squeezing her breasts, one at a time, then both at once, then her stomach, then her hips and ass. In every case, the gas just moved over to other regions, then flowed right back as soon as she let up. She needed to make an exit for it, and only one way came to mind. She tried pulling her legs up to her chest, but her belly got in the way, and she couldn't deflate it without forcing gas into her thighs, which just made them uncurl again. Swinging her right leg to the side, she leaned over and grabbed it under her knee. This tilted her broadened hips at a severe angle, and her left leg dangled just out of reach. But she heaved, and huffed, and through dint of persistent effort managed to tilt far enough the other way to grab her left knee too. With all the strength her slender arms could muster, she pulled her thighs inward, squeezing them against her tummy. Her breasts swelled in protest, welling right up to her chin, but she knew they couldn't blow up big enough to hold ALL the gas she was displacing, and there was only one way for the rest to go...

When her wind finally broke, Patricia almost thought it would break her in the process. Her body vibrated from the sheer force of the sound, and it took her a while for her vision to unblur and her inner ears to stabilize. When she came to her senses, Patricia was relieved to find herself descending; not as fast as she'd been rising, but that meant she could make a soft landing. Lower and lower she dropped, until she guessed she had only a minute of air time left, and --

She barely noticed the approaching hiss. The sudden penetration of her rear entrance, though was impossible to overlook. At first Patricia was indignant at the violation and the interruption of her train of thought. What in the world could have -- no. Oh no. There was just no way. Even on a windless day like today, how in the world could that stupid freaking hunk of metal have POSSIBLY come down EXACTLY where it took off from?! But the now-familiar sensation of pressure building in her body told her in no uncertain terms that that was, in fact, what had just happened. The force of impact, and the additional ballast, had given her a little extra downward impetus. But the buoyancy she was building back up would soon take that away, along with all the rest of her body weight and all her hopes and dreams for the future. There was no time to try to force out another fart, so with no other options coming to mind, Patricia desperately started swimming through the air. She had no idea if this was actually helping, or even if it made aerodynamic sense, but she couldn't just drift helplessly like she'd done all her life. Slowly the tent crept up as she thrashed toward it, until she stopped short just feet away from the hole she'd torn in it. With a desperate swing of an arm, Patricia just barely got one finger around the edge, and just barely managed to pull herself down and get a grip with her other hand before the first slipped free. She gasped with relief, having overcome yet another wrinkle in what had become a very long day.

Her struggle against her situation, or more likely the thunderous announcement of her triumph over it, had finally drawn some attention to her, and a small crowd soon gathered around the tent. Patricia yelled in her comically squeaky voice at the people taking camera photos of her; she had no desire to have her naked, bloated body put on display, but regardless of her wishes she was probably going to be blowing up Instagram within the hour. As long as that was the only thing she was blowing up. Her supervisor came running over, apparently caught in the middle of his break.

Of course, he hadn't bothered to put his cigarette out.

"*BRAAAAAAAAAAP*" *KABOOOOOOOOOM*

For a while, Patricia wondered if she was dead. After all, she felt like she was floating, and she could see nothing but bright whiteness. Then her vision cleared, and her ears stopped ringing, and she found herself very much alive, very much aloft, and with very little chance of ever touching land again.

Fighting her inflation was an unwinnable battle. She'd grunt, and groan, and strain, and finally pass some gas, maybe even descend a little, but the capsule would just fill her right back up again. After countless cycles of no real progress, her thighs got too thick and turgid for her to reach her knees anymore; then her arms swelled up, sparing her from even being able to try. Burping became her only outlet, but the gas wanted to go up, not down, so her eructations weren't nearly strong enough to manage her buoyancy. All they really accomplished was to propel her even higher in the air.

As she blew up, and flew up, and tried not to give up, Patricia found one last ray of hope. The capsule was almost finished with its second trip through her body. If she could manage to cough it up, she might, might, be able to belch her way back down within, what, three weeks? Assuming she wasn't struck by lightning, or sucked into a jet engine, or popped by a passing bird that got too fresh with its beak. She'd take those odds right now. Slowly the tube made its way down her throat, propelled by the gas it was still leaking out. Just another minute, and... wait. What was happening? With horror, Patricia realized that her body had filled almost to capacity, and the gas was forcing its way into the only place left -- her face! First her neck swelled up, merging into the curves of her shoulders. Then her chin and cheeks filled out, puckering her lips. Finally, her lips themselves swelled firmly shut. And so, when the capsule reached her mouth, it found no exit, but lodged in place, continuing to pump gas into a body that, at this point, simply had no room for any more.

"I should have taken the sign-twirler job", Patricia ruefully thought to herself, as her skin began to creak.