Just a little surprise I whipped up for  bodbloat the other day, and an excuse to try writing something far more condensed than usual.

Bod wakes up from a nap at work in a very familiar predicament...

---

Cramped Cubicle by IndigoRho

Bod jolted awake, his office chair creaking and swaying in the process. The dragon stared at the ceiling tiles as his eyes readjusted to the light, letting out a large yawn as he sluggishly regained his senses. He remembered leaning back to rest his eyes for a bit—AutoCAD had practically been burned into them during the first few hours of work—and letting himself daydream about the new air compressor waiting for him at home...then falling asleep. Muttering a quiet “reh” of annoyance, Bod looked down to check on how much time he'd managed to waste away snoozing—only to be greeted with the unexpected site of his generously inflated belly. His confusion lasted just long enough for him to realize his middle was still expanding, when a pair of yellow belly plates pulled apart from each other with a nice “pop”.

The dragon immediately attempted to stand up, but discovered his swollen middle had become wedged in between the arms of his chair, their coarse hard plastic rubbing into the sensitive hide between his separated plates. Every attempt to pry himself free ended in failure, and the inflation wasn't showing any signs of slowing down. There was a faint hissing noise coming from within his stomach, though it was often masked by the pops of his chest plates and the creaks of his increasingly strained chair. As his belly began to expand against the desk of his corner cubicle he finally decided he was desperate enough to call for help, no matter how embarrassing the situation was.

“Uh, hey, can anyone lend me a paw real quick,” Bod asked, somewhat quietly. Silence. He tried again, louder. “Hey, I need some help over here, kind of urgent!”
The lack of responses didn't make any sense. Then again, the entire office seemed a lot quieter than usual. Bod looked at the clock, and his eyes went wide: 12:45. He'd managed to sleep straight into the lunch hour, and no one would be back for another fifteen minutes at the earliest. Before he could even begin to panic, the arms of his chair snapped from the pressure, his round middle shaking as it obtained more growing space. Again the dragon tried to stand up, but now the sheer size of his bloated belly blocked his efforts, and all he could do was rock back and forth comically.

More and more air flowed into Bod, his gut spreading across the cubicle and pressing into the long edge of his corner desk. His hide was taut and—rather than flow over the obstacle—his ballooning belly actually gradually pushed him back, chair and all. Eventually he rolled far enough that his back was just poking out of the cubicle entrance, though by now he was far too large to exit completely. Bod could feel more and more of his once-roomy cubicle digging into his hide. The walls, the desk, his keyboard, a phone, even the warm desktop tower on the floor—he felt every edge and angle of them.

Amidst the chorus of creaks from his overstretched body, Bod bemoaned his predicament. He wasn't anywhere near his limit—plenty of inflation experience told him that—but there was a definite possibility he might collapse the walls of the cubicle before he popped, and he couldn't imagine having to explain that to his co-workers. Oh no. Lunch's end was approaching, and the one thing Bod hadn't worried about yet was being seen like this by others, let alone exploding in front of them. His despair was interrupted by the unlikeliest of sources, though: a tiny, pricking sensation on a thing spot of his stretched hide. Henry! Bod had completely forgotten about the small cactus on his desk, but Henry had obviously not forgotten about him. As long as those wonderful needles continued to dig into him, Bod knew he'd have a chance of popping without wrecking the office in the process.

The pressure within him was building as Bod's massively inflated middle finally engulfed the cubicle, pushing deep into the many needles of the cactus. Bod had a huge grin on his face when the needles finally pierced his hide, his body tearing apart in an instance. The sudden release of air shook the walls and scattered Bod's belongings, chest plates ricocheted around the cubicle, and a burst of red confetti-like dragon scraps scattered across the surrounding workstations. Bod's co-workers would be rather confused by the mysterious, long air hose running into his cubicle—along with the strange mess within—but most simply cleaned up the red scraps littering their own cubicles and shook their heads. After all, this wasn't the first time the dragon had left the office in such an explosive manner.