Predator

Caitlyn was impressed by the attention her activities had been receiving. The press caught hold of the story early. People floating over the city had a tendency to get excellent press. The police had been following the story closely at the urging of the civil aviation authority because of the air traffic hazard posed by human balloons drifting at the whim of the wind.

Most pleasing, members of the inflation community seemed to be choosing the past two weeks to take their holidays, several announcing plans to visit London and likely many more keeping similar plans quiet. Certainly, the Friday morning 5:50 train to Edgeware had been getting busier.

Caitlyn thought back over the past two months of Friday morning mischief. Three incidents stood out as favourites. The first. He couldn’t have known what hit him. No press presaged the incident. She’d just gotten lucky that day. Such a surprising subject too. Skin-heads were hardly her type but the reaction was unmistakable. How had he blushed under so many tattoos? She’d seen to it he knew the connection and he followed her home like a lost puppy. Giving him the slip was easy, stupid thug, and his cursing and threats made his growing predicament all the funnier.

Caitlyn felt pretty safe that none of her victims would ever reveal the key to their humiliation to the general media. Who wants all the world to know they were excited by inflating body parts? No-one. That’s who. Skin-head told a tale of being overpowered and tortured by a rival gang to explain away his distended, naked form when he finally landed. Pity his flight was so short. Would have been funny to have him land somewhere his tattoos might have raised eyebrows and pitchforks.

Next on the hit parade came the nurse from three weeks ago. Sweet faced, a little jaded after night shift. Her tired, bored slump against the window transformed to instant alertness when she felt her breasts shift and swell beneath that cute uniform. Caitlyn had kept track of the media response to her actions but it still seemed the victims just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Perhaps the community was larger than she ever considered possible.

Nursey also blushed, but there was more a sense of pleasure at the change than in any earlier incident. The girl had preened and thrust her chest forward at other passengers, feigning surprise that her pnuematic boobs were getting in other people’s personal space. Perhaps she thought she was lucid dreaming, perhaps she was an extrovert trapped in an introvert’s stereotypes, but she looked like she was having fun, particularly when the second breath went into the balloon. The breasts bloomed fit to put the uniform under severe strain and there was a noticeable change in height as her buttocks accepted their share of dress filling attention.

The girl beamed and bounced, exaggerating the motion of the train through her tautly inflated cheeks, causing her excessive chest to flail about, held in check only by heavily starched cotton. Caitlyn didn’t mess around revealing herself to her new friend. She carried the balloon over, sat before the girl and made a big show of preparing to give it another breath, only to release the neck and grin as her traveling companion shrank back into her seat, chest receding. The disappointment, the promise of better things to come, the shared confidences about desires and fantastic ambitions made the young nurse’s decision to alter her morning routine inevitable.

Caitlyn never hid her destination as she led her new friend home, inflating and deflating the balloon with every few steps, enjoying the squeals and squeaks she evoked. Nursey was welcome anytime she chose to come visiting, but Caitlyn worried the floating had spooked her new friend, who seemed to be focused more on the inflation side of things. Ah well, each to their own.

Floating wasn’t the big ticket item for everyone. However, it was the big ticket item for some of the newly familiar faces she’d noticed on the train and this led her to the third favourite memory. The first time she’d realised her victim was there specifically in the hope they would be inflated and allowed to float away. Word had gotten around, someone on the web had put the pieces together a few jumps ahead of the press and suddenly there was a passenger obviously there for one reason only.

The balloons were a bit too obvious. Caitlyn waited ‘til the last minute before revealing her hand to the new punter and only gave the merest breath into the balloon she carried before stepping off the train. There was a frantic, helium filled rush through the closing doors and some popping was incurred. She and the voluptuous woman stood dead still as the train left, the clutch of balloons swaying in the departing breeze. Caitlyn, balloon hanging limp from her lips, smiled and blew gently, finding her smile returned as the woman allowed her trench coat to fall open, revealing a latex catsuit below which her breasts began to blossom.

That walk home had involved many extra breaths in the balloon and the pair arrived at Caitlyn’s house walking slowly, the waddling if the distended, ponderous female and the balloons she mimicked. The clothing proved remarkably resilient and held the bloated curves despite Caitlyn’s best efforts to burst it off her victim before the lift exceeded the breaking strain of the make shift tether.

Marcie caught the train each week for the rest of her holiday and made several passes down Caitlyn’s street. Caitlyn kept a low profile. Marcie caught her eye as she collected the mail once, but clearly the number of people casually walking dogs, reading news papers while leaning on lamp posts and meandering around the block made a second encounter impossible.

Marcie42 wrote up the experience at Floatsyourboat on returning home to the states and several artists had tried to capture the story in pictures. Caitlyn was quite pleased at one portrayal of her character, but some images found their way into the papers (though no journo would admit to holding membership to the closed community of the website) and that was the dam buster.

The train was crowded when Caitlyn joined it. Every fifth person held a balloon. Too plain plain clothes police made themselves obvious with their carefully studied nonchalance. Cameras sat, barely concealed on the laps of hacks in pursuit of a scoop. She stepped down the aisle, slinky red dress speaking of last night’s party girl on her way home, belied by the confident striding despite the train’s swaying.

At the end of the carriage she turned and reached a hand into her cleavage and pulled out a balloon. Every eye had followed her progress and this new development drew audible gasps. She took a seat and waited a few stops, enjoying having such rapt, silent attention. Her stop approached and she was faced with the choice of revealing her hand or pretending she was a hoaxer. One would involve a life of difficult police questions, constant media attention and endless stalking from the dysfunctional members of the inflation community. The other would mean walking away from her hobby, perhaps forever. She imagined having twenty, thirty, maybe even forty people follow her home, watch her enter her house, see her arrange the helium cylinder and watch her inflate the balloon through her front window, inflating and floating off in a confused, happy, multi-coloured cloud.

Could she pull it off before there was police door break downing and question asking? She raised the balloon to her lips and the entire train drew in a breath with her. She smiled as the train pulled into her station and loosed her breath. The frantic covering of crotches, fondling of breasts, and flashing of cameras sealed her fate and she set about getting as many human balloons airborne as the next half hour would allow.