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Owen and Jamie have been friends since their teenage years, but now that they're adults, Owen finds himself frustrated by how little Jamie seems to have matured. After a particularly embarrassing blunder, Jamie decides to take Owen to the local pool to show him something really important to him.
Download pdf for good formatting! I'm pretty avid in my use of italics.
This is my first story on here. Hope you enjoy! Not to sound like a beggar, but if you enjoyed, please leave a comment. They make me happy, and it costs you nothing! Other than your time. Which I suppose is actually a cost.
-
Fucking Jamie. Jamie. More like… fucking bastard. Honestly. Honestly!
Why l did he even come here, anyway? Owen couldn’t stand being at Jamie’s house. Like, this place was cool. Jamie’s parents kinda went all out with their house. They didn’t keep things modest — and like, Owen couldn’t live in that sort of place. Way too lavish. He didn’t need canvases covered in pastoral landscapes of Arcadian bullshit or whatever. He didn’t need the ornate pottery or the massive curved TV. Admittedly, the giant couches would be pretty cool. He didn’t mind the couches. He’d be willing to have those in his own house. But the rest was garish. Garish, but, like, in that sort of way where it was nice to spend a little bit of time there.
Owen was thankful he hadn’t grown up in this sort of environment though; Jamie had everything and though Owen had met some fairly spoiled folks who’d ended up perfectly decent, Jamie wasn’t like that. Jamie was irresponsible and helpless. Owen gained this new appreciation for modesty around Jamie, like this guy was such a prick that Owen no longer had any desire to want the same things as Jamie, which Owen supposed was just about anything.
Maybe it was a bit unwarranted, but this was his first time seeing Jamie since he’d headed off for college, and now that Jamie was back for the break, he’d invited Owen over. They were longtime friends. At least, Jamie thought of Owen as a friend, and admittedly, Owen thought of Jamie as a friend sometimes too. But the problem was that despite being polite and generally likeable, Jamie just did not give a flying fuck about being considerate.
Like, right now. Ten minutes ago. Who orders pizza for themselves while their friend is in the restroom, doesn’t tell them, and then eats it in front of them without offering any? Jamie does! He was literally just chowing down on his expensive-ass pizza with like all the toppings, and he somehow didn’t notice Owen glowering. Owen would have paid for his own pizza! He wasn’t trying to mooch off of Jamie! The guy had just… Owen didn’t even have any dinner! He was hungry!
“I’m hungry,” Owen said pointedly.
Jamie turned to Owen, smiling innocently. Jamie had a hard time reading expressions, and was somehow oblivious to Owen’s scathing glare. “Help yourself to anything in the fridge!”
He took another bite of the pizza.
Owen rolled his eyes and stood up to go to the fridge.
“Oh,” said Jamie, as it finally clicked.
Owen turned back towards Jamie, who had frozen with a pizza slice near his mouth. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” Jamie said, looking down at his pizza with a sullen expression. “When I’m home alone, I always order pizza for myself and I was just thinking—”
He cut himself off and put down the pizza. They both knew that Owen couldn’t have gluten, and while the restaurant had a cauliflower based crust that was quite good, Jamie hadn’t gotten that, so he couldn’t even offer a slice as an afterthought.
“I guess I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry. Are you mad at me?” Jamie asked. He was frozen, not looking at anything in particular, his mouth twitching a little bit.
“No,” Owen lied. He was glad that Jamie had at least noticed eventually, and with the fact that Jamie seemed genuinely remorseful, Owen felt bad for being angry. That didn’t mean he wasn’t angry, but he certainly felt bad. But it wasn’t like this sort of behavior was new. It wasn’t like Jamie wasn’t holding a slice of pizza up to his mouth right now.
“Well I… I’m sorry.”
Owen sighed. “You have any jerky or potato chips or anything?”
“No, we just have a bunch of fruit and juice and stuff. I guess nothing that’s really a full meal if you can’t have gluten.” Jamie scratched the back of his scalp. He couldn’t even have any Owen-friendly food around the house either. Owen should have just brought his own.
“I guess I’ll just…” Owen wasn’t sure what he was going to do, so he trailed off. He was going to say leave, but even though he definitely wanted to leave, he couldn’t do that to Jamie. Was he letting Jamie walk all over him? Well, okay. Jamie wasn’t actively malicious or anything. He was apologetic when he realized his wrongdoing. But Owen was sure this sorta thing would just keep happening throughout the night if he stayed.
Jamie spoke up. “Hey, I mean, I’ve got my car. We could hit up a restaurant. Wherever you wanna go. I’ll pay.”
With your rich-ass parents’ money. I know for a fact they’re paying your school like 15 grand outta pocket per semester even with scholarships, and you don’t even have a job. Meanwhile, I’ve gotta work my tail off to help pay my ‘rents rent now. Owen wanted to say this, but he didn’t, ‘cause jealousy was an ugly look.
“Sure,” said Owen. He tried to look at Jamie, but his neck didn’t feel like turning for some reason.
“I have a place I want to show you after,” said Jamie. “So, uh, yeah let’s hop on outta here.”
–
Owen crumpled up his McDonalds bag and threw it into a trash bin next to the locker room door. “This was fucking stupid.”
“I told you to hear me out on this,” said Jamie.
“Jamie, I’m not keen on breaking into a pool after hours to do some swimming when there isn’t even a lifeguard watching over us.”
“You could have said that before we jumped over the fence,” Jamie said.
“I mean, I started, but then you were like, okay now jump over the fence.”
“Well, yeah. Cause I was trying to get you to jump over the fence.”
“I don’t know why I agreed to do this,” said Owen.
“There wasn’t a verbal agreement, so you have plausible deniability. I dragged you out here against your will at gunpoint.”
“You don’t have a gun.”
“As far as you know!”
“Please tell me you don’t have a gun.”
“It’s a water gun.”
“I suppose that makes a certain degree of sense,” Owen admitted. He stopped bickering with Jamie, not because he was actually okay with what was going on, but because he wasn’t going to let Jamie do this sorta thing alone. Jamie was fragile. If he was caught by security or something, he’d probably piss himself and die of embarrassment.
“I come here all the time. It’s fine,” Jamie insisted.
“You’ve been out of town for months.”
“Well, I used to come here all the time. I miss this place a lot. So I really had to go here sometime during my break and I guess I really want to show you this.”
“It’s a pool. I don’t even like swimming. Can't hold my breath underwater…”
Jamie shrugged. “Ain’t just a pool. Come on, we’ve gotta get something out of the storage shed with all the floaties and toys and stuff.”
The community pool was a fairly small establishment, but it had a few amenities; a building with locker rooms and showers for men and women, a tennis court, and a publicly accessible shed full of all sorts of toys, floaties, and exercise equipment for anyone who might be in need.
“Why are we going towards the shed?” Owen asked, tentatively following Jamie. There was a padlock on the door, but it wasn’t closed or locked at all, and honestly, the thing was so rusty it was probably useless anyway. Jamie pulled it open and walked in. It wasn’t super large, but big enough to have several racks of equipment. Jamie turned his phone flashlight on and pointed at something in the corner.
It was a big padlocked treasure chest looking thing. This lock actually seemed functional, and there was a laminated sheet of paper taped onto the chest reading ‘Do Not Open’ in comic sans.
“Huh, that’s interesting,” Owen admitted. “Why have it in here if it’s not meant to be opened?”
“I dunno,” said Jamie. “I guess one day when I was fifteen or so, I was at the pool, and I just saw a key on the floor of the pool in the 8 foot deep section, so I dived down and grabbed it. I don’t really know how I saw it, I guess I just had my goggles on right and the glint hit my eye just right. But the point is, I found this key. And there was a tag on it that said ‘Hillside Community Pool – Unusual and Mildly Dangerous Toy Storage.’ So, that’s pretty weird, right? And I decided I wanted to find out where the key went. But the pool was closing, so I had to leave. And I guess I was like… I don’t know why, but I had to go back and figure out what was going on. So I did. I snuck in, and I went snooping. And eventually, I found this box, which was actually hidden behind a bunch of pool noodles at first. And I opened it, and, well…”
Jamie bent down and put down his phone so he could insert the key into the lock. It clicked, and the chest popped open. The smell of chlorine inside the box was strong enough to be noticeable even at a community pool, and Jamie reached in with a glove (which he had apparently put on at some point) and pulled out two white, shiny balls. They could be mistaken for hard-boiled eggs were they not completely spherical and decorated with a black insignia of a little cartoon mouse. Owen regarded it with curiosity and confusion.
“It’s… a ball.”
“That’s what I thought too,” said Jamie. “And I was pretty disappointed by that. I mean, finding this had been a pretty fascinating process. So, I went to pick one up, and something crazy happened.”
“What?”
Jamie held out the balls to Owen with his gloved hand. “Take one and see for yourself.”
Owen narrowed his eyebrows. “Oh-okay then. Clearly you survived touching these, I guess.”
“Yeah,” said Jamie. “C’mon!”
Owen nodded and grabbed the ball out of Jamie’s hand. Nothing happened for about four seconds. Then, the ball turned bright orange. A bit reddish-orange; a little redder than a Cheeto but not as red as a picture perfect Red Delicious apple. The mouse disappeared.
“Wow, okay,” said Owen, unsure how to react. “Balls don’t usually do that.”
“Haha, just wait.”
But Owen didn’t really have to wait as the ball seemed to start melting in his hand. At first, he felt like the sudden feeling of sticky wetness was merely imagined, but then, taking a closer look at the ball, it was starting to lose its perfectly spherical shape. Orange started to ooze out onto his hand, and that was when he realized he definitely wasn’t imagining it.
“Is it like putty or something?” Owen asked, grabbing it with his other hand and mushing it around a bit, drawing out a little string between two parts as he split it in half like cheese on a hot pizza.
“Not quite,” said Jamie. His eyebrows were slightly lowered, lips folded a bit inwards expectantly.
“It’s not coming off my hands,” Owen observed as he attempted to start rubbing it off of him. Most of it did splatter onto the ground, but his hands remained coated in the stuff and as he dropped it, string like melted cheese kept the mass all connected. Owen tried to cut one of these strings off with his other hand, but no matter how hard he worked at it, it wouldn’t quite break. In fact, it almost seemed like it was starting to defy gravity. Owen could swear that it was starting to crawl up to his wrists.
“Man, this stuff is weird,” Owen said, chuckling nervously. “What is it?”
“Honestly, I don’t know,” Jamie admitted. “But whatever it’s called, it’s seriously cool. Just you wait, you haven’t gotten to the good part.”
“Jamie,” said Owen, his voice dropping a few notes. “It’s crawling up my sleeves.”
“Yep,” said Jamie.
“Oh, it’s crawling over them actually. That’s worse.”
“Shouldn’ta worn long sleeves”
“How are you so casual right now?” asked Owen, starting to hyperventilate a little, cause, yeah, each second that passed seemed to confirm that he was not imagining this. This weird orange goop was actually creeping up his hands, and what’s more, his fingers felt numb and rubbery, and extremely weak. The strings of goop connecting to the puddle on the floor seemed to simultaneously pump upwards against gravity, spreading more to his hands, while also growing larger on the ground, oozing onto and over his shoes.
“This is going exactly according to plan. Don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt.”
Owen gasped. “What doesn’t hurt? Jamie, is this stuff, like, a parasite or something?”
“I already said I don’t know what it is, but it’s pretty cool,” Jamie said, mostly matter of factly.
“Yeah, I’d also find this interesting if it was happening to someone else but THEN I would try to HELP THEM!”
“Well, I can’t really help you,” said Jamie, walking over to and sitting down on one of the pool chairs nearby.
“Why is it always like this? Why don’t you tell me stuff or care about how I feel, huh? Why are you doing this to me,” Owen shouted, panicking.
“I’ve never done anything like this before,” Jamie said, but he sounded a lot less carefree all of the sudden.
“But you said you had!” Owen shouted.
“Well I mean, I’ve never done it to someone else! I mean, with. With someone else.”
“I don’t know, man, you’re always disregarding me. But, shit, you’re like…” Owen growled. “This is psychopathic. What on Earth. Are you really this mad at me because I was upset you didn’t get me pizza?”
“No, no, that’s not what’s going on at all!”
“I don’t want to do the whole ‘you didn’t get to explain yourself cliché,’ so just explain yourself dude! Please tell me you’re not tricking me.”
“I mean, I am,” Jamie said, hushed and sullen.
“Are you just trying to get rid of me?” Owen asked, continuing to hyperventilate.
“I’m really sorry, Owen,” Jamie said. He was staring at the ground. He rarely made eye contact, but now he was actively avoiding looking in Owen’s direction.
“I try so fucking hard to put up with you, but you never think anything through, you never stop to consider how I feel. Like, do you even want me around? It feels like you're always trying to drive me away—” Owen tried to hold up his hands, but they were stuck— “or just mess with me and it's dumb. Gah!”
The orange stuff all over Owen’s hands continued to spread up his arms. It felt like he’d lost all sensation in his fingertips, and he rubbed at his T-shirt with them, as if trying to get it off of him. It just got all over his shirt and started seeping into that too. It seemed hopeless. The… stuff. Whatever it was. It was like, fusing with Owen’s skin.
“I do like having you around!” Jamie protested.
“You don’t act like it!”
“It’s not easy for me. I don’t… I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Owen, but I just can’t. I don’t want to hurt anyone, I just…” Jamie’s voice broke. Owen felt bad for him, but he was going to stand his ground anyway. As soon as he got this gunk off his hands. Owen was still occupied with that, but kept listening as Jamie kept talking. “Nobody else even wants to be around me. I like you so much, Owen. The entire time I was at school, I was just waiting to come home to see you. And, and, and, and I’m sorry if I don’t show it, I don’t mean anything by it. Really! It just didn’t occur to me to ask about the pizza, and I wasn’t trying to make you jealous about me being in college. Really! Really! I, well, I just get excited sometimes, you know?” Jamie waved his hands around, as if trying to grab something. Whatever it was, he didn’t seem to be finding any purchase.
Owen was still trying to get the stuff off his arms, but it kept spreading. His fingers seemed to be vanishing too. This was actually some kind of paranormal shit. Or mutant shit. Or fingers-being-dissolved-by-acidic-sludge shit. Whatever it was, Owen was starting to tune out of what Jamie was saying.
“Owen, you’re the most, most, most important person in the world, and I really want to make you feel that way, but I fail, and I fail miserably,” Jamie said. “And I know that. I know it and I want to get better about it and it’s like I can’t; I just can’t. I don’t know how, when everything I do is so... I swear I’m trying to listen to what you say when you’re talking, you know! I really want to!”
Owen looked back up at Jamie. His eyes were wide and almost terrified. “Jamie, what the fuck is happening?”
“I, Owen I… Can’t explain it. Just trust me, it’s fun. It’s okay. You’ll be fine; we’ll be fine!”
Owen teared up. “Why can’t you just tell me?”
Jamie started flapping his hands a bit. “I don’t know, I can’t! I can’t. It’s fine, though! It’s okay, Owen!”
Owen looked down at his own hands, which didn’t resemble hands anymore. Actually, he didn’t seem to have much of anything left past his elbows… Just some limp, rubbery substance, which dangled from his arms now, with a little plastic nozzle for inflating something with air on his shoulder and…
For a moment, Owen’s fear subsided as he just looked up at Jamie. “Am I turning into a pooltoy?”
“Y– yeah,” said Jamie.
Beat.
“Deadass?”
“Sorry I couldn’t tell you… It sounded stupid.”
Owen’s confusion turned to fury. “It IS stupid,” he spat. “I don’t know how the fuck this is happening or how you thought this would be okay, but either way you led me into some weird-ass situation where — okay I don’t even know how to finish this sentence! I’m at a loss for words!”
“I’m sorry,” Jamie whimpered. “I just wanted to show you this…”
“Am I going to die?” Owen paled, watching as the transformation started to claim his shoulders. It was creeping up his legs too, and he could feel his feet starting to turn to deflated plastic. He wouldn’t be able to stand much longer.
“No!” said Jamie. “No! What? No!”
Owen fell to his knees, landing right in the pool of orange stuff. It began to move more rapidly, covering almost his full body. He could feel it on his neck. Creeping up to his head where his brain was and HEY WOULDN’T IT BE GREAT IF THAT DIDN’T VANISH?
He tried to scream, but nothing. He didn’t seem to have lungs anymore. Oh.
“I…” Jamie removed his hands from his face and placed them on his knees, squatting down over Owen.
Owen was shocked to find himself Not Dying as his head vanished too, leaving him a fully deflated pool-toy thing. He couldn’t see what he looked like, or even what Jamie was doing anymore, or anything for that matter. As he’d transformed, the place where his ‘eyes’ were, now lacking any sort of eyelids for him to blink, had folded in on themselves. It was a sort of existential horror to be completely unable to move, in a shape he didn’t recognize, unable to see anything. He could only hear and feel, and everything felt very strange. As if he was touching it with rubber gloves on. That did make a degree of sense, honestly. It was hard to describe the feeling of a concrete floor through that rubbery filter, but it didn’t seem so rough anymore. Of course, the fact that he felt the floor meant the puddle had apparently vanished. He supposed all of the goop had been incorporated into… him. As weird of a thought as that was.
“I…” Jamie trailed off. That was the only thing Owen heard for quite some time. That and the gentle lapping of the nearby pool. He found that sound immensely calming; something to latch onto while everything else in his world seemed to have completely vanished. Then, the sound of fabric slightly rustling as Jamie presumably stood up.
“Owen, I really do mean it. You’re the best person I know and I always want to be with you like actually all the time. I’m really sorry I hurt you so much and I just wanted to make it up to you. And sometimes I really can’t communicate what I want to say, or, or, there’s just too much going on. Too much light, noise, uhhhh, things, things on my fingers. Like grease from pizza. Or the buttons on the remote don’t all press in the same amount. Or there’s just too many things for me to respond to so I just wanted to show you cause I couldn’t explain and if I explained you would say no and…
“And I’m in my own world a lot of the time. I really really didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. And I know this is weird, but when I need to relax, I come here. And I wanted to show you this place. This experience. It’s special. It’s safe. And you’ll be back to normal at 10:00 AM sharp. I don’t know why it wears off then, but I guess it’s like 30 minutes before the pool opens, so like, um, I guess it’s either to stop anyone from using you as an actual pool toy or maybe like to cover up for the company a bit so that it doesn’t happen while it’s…
“Ugh, sorry. That’s not the point. I’m rambling again. I’m really rambling, I know, I know. It’s easier for me to get going when it’s quiet. I just had a lot I needed to say and I didn’t want any distractions or interruptions or I don’t know. I’m such a dick. I didn’t even want to let you talk… I just…
“You know, cause you’re always here for me, or you have been in the past. I never really said thank you, but when you helped me apply for colleges and figure out what I wanted to do, well, you set me on a path that I would never have been brave enough to go down on my own. And you invited me to your DND games even when the others all said I sucked to play with and gave me advice for getting along with people. I just felt like I couldn’t say anything because maybe it would be obvious that you just help me so much, and I’m just, well, I’m just me and I suck. When I went away it was like I left the best thing in the world behind. And it’s awful, but I was hoping you missed me just as much. But I know you didn’t, cause, well, your life is probably better without me.”
Owen just sat in silence and absorbed all of this. It wasn’t like there was anything else to do.
“I don’t think I can really make it up to you, Owen,” said Jamie. “I just… Sometimes I don’t really notice when people are upset or when I do something bad. It’s really hard to tell. And you usually told me when I upset other people. But you didn’t tell me when I upset you, and I always realize too late. Sometimes I catch myself, but sometimes I only realize after you leave as I’m trying to fall asleep at night. It hurts to admit my faults, but I want to be a better friend for you. And when I hurt you, I need you to say something. And I know that’s horrible to say after you protested against this so hard and… Well, I guess you did actually say something this time so I'm a hypocrite. I don't know. The circumstances here were different! This was one time where I just needed to talk. You can leave me forever in the morning if you want.
“But… if you don’t, once we turn back, I’ll order us breakfast and — I actually have a gift for you waiting at home! I forgot to mention that and I forgot to give it to you! Ugh, see, Owen? I’m just like this I guess. I bought you a bunch of books from your amazon wishlist and I got a bunch of your pals who’ve gone across the country for college to send photos of themselves. And I made you a little scrapbook. It was a lot of fun. I used all the different artsy craftsy stuff I have left over from grade school, like the glitter glue and little heart stickers and stuff. And it’s big, too. It made me smile a lot and I don’t really know half the people even, so, uh, I really hope you like it.”
Jamie went quiet. Owen wasn’t sure he’d ever heard Jamie talk that much all at once, and honestly, after all of that, he found he wasn’t as angry anymore. It was as though Jamie had given Owen a small peek inside his brain. And, well, the scrapbook idea was just so sweet. Like actually saccharine. Owen would have to tell Jamie that that was a bit sweet-old-lady coded.
“I would have given more warning,” Jamie said. “I, well, I guess I wanted you to discover the way I did. Except my first time, I didn’t really know what was happening, and I just kinda sat there all deflated until morning. But… I didn’t mind that, either. Everything is always so much, and that was just the waves. Even my thoughts started to dull down after a while. I think that’s something the transformation does. It mellows you out. You sorta start to just exist. You know? And it’s not painful or hard or… it’s like floating.”
Jamie was quiet again, and yeah, he was right. Owen was definitely feeling a bit of that floating sensation. Everything that Jamie had done, well, did any of it really matter? Did anything other than his nervous voice and the gentle waves even need to exist right now? Did the concrete need to be uncomfortable? Well, really, it wasn’t.
Owen heard Jamie mess with something sort of heavy and thunk-y. He couldn’t really figure out what it was, and he certainly wasn’t trying. He was sure whatever Jamie was doing wasn’t really all that weird.
“This is gonna sound ridiculous, but you can buy an electric air pump off Amazon for like 20 bucks,” Jamie said.
Owen didn’t think it sounded ridiculous at all. He wasn’t really thinking, mind you. Honestly, he hadn’t absorbed that information at all.
“When you come in contact with the substance, it transforms you starting from wherever you touch it. And essentially, you have one of those little plastic things you can use to inflate an actual real pool toy. Not that you’re a faker, haha. But, yeah, yours looks like it’s on your shoulder, which is a weird place. Mine’s sort of on my forearm, so I just start by putting the goop there…”
Silence for a second as Jamie presumably did just that.
“And then as the thing sort of forms, you hook it up to the pump, and wait a second to turn it on. Then it sort of inflates you as you transform. It makes the whole thing smoother and faster. I probably should’ve just done this with you to begin with. But you live and learn.”
The sound of a switch being flicked and air flowing came next. It lasted a while. Owen occasionally heard the sound of something rubbing against the plastic of the inflated object, and a rubbery squeak or two. Like someone was caressing a balloon. Owen didn’t hear Jamie’s voice again. In fact, nothing really happened for a while. Just a bunch of repetitive sounds.
Then, he felt something attempt to grab him. It was a little amusing, really. The inflated toy had very little in the way of weight, and definitely didn’t have any fingers. Perhaps not the most well-rounded plan in existence. Still, it did eventually manage to find purchase, and Owen was dragged amicably along towards the pump. Then, fumbling for a while, until the little plastic thing Jamie had mentioned was opened. Owen could feel that. More fumbling. The pump was hooked up.
And then, it was like Owen was breathing. Only, it was through his shoulder, and there was no exhaling. It was maybe even a little bit like eating. He was getting fuller, after all. His flat body had been sorta crumpled on the ground in a pile, but as it began to inflate, it first started to spread out more evenly as air pushed through the creases. The crease blocking Owen’s eyes unfolded, allowing him to take in light once more. He couldn’t see Jamie, though. He must have been behind Owen. And Owen hadn’t figured out how to move yet.
Owen watched curiously as his new snout pushed out of his face in front of him, a little black nose popping into view and rising up in the center of his view. He stared cross-eyed, wide-eyed, at it. The snout itself was orange with a lighter cream color around the nose, little black dots dotting it to resemble whisker follicles. A little white patch sat a bit below his eyes. He felt like that was pretty cute.
Owen also began to feel his arms and legs stretch out from the pile, reaching out as if lying on his stomach. His new paws slowly came into view out of the corners of his eyes. They were white with a little black pawprint design on the bottom, made of a somewhat different rippled rubber texture. The little nubs for the paws bulged out just a little bit, making it so that his arms weren’t just tubes.
He continued to inflate, with new attributes he didn’t know he had continuing to pop into existence. First, ears which rested atop his head. They seemed pointy and triangular, with no holes to fill with water the way human ears would. The bottom of his snout then filled out, and he could feel a grin printed onto the plastic. Though he could tell it had no depth and was merely a print, he still felt the smile, wide and permanent with a bit of a bean-esque shape. Despite being unable to move his mouth at all, the grin perfectly captured how he felt. Maybe even who he was, beneath all the worries and doubts that plagued his usual life.
He grew larger still, his tail inflating out; it was the last part to do so. Despite being the last part to inflate, it was the first part to start moving. It started to wag in excitement, slapping and bouncing off the ground beside it at a rapid speed.
Owen kept inflating, his skin, or rather, plastic, still feeling loose and wrinkly, but he grew larger and larger, feeling as if he was becoming a giant. He was indeed much larger as a toy, almost 8 and a half feet from head to hind paw. He was reaching his full size, but the pressure was still quite low. It was taking a while, though Owen had time. All the time in the world. Nothing else mattered; really, there was only one thing he was really waiting for.
He start to feel more solid as he reached full capacity. Despite this, he’d never felt lighter in his life. He’d never realized the pains of every moment as a human, slight twinges of neck muscles or tendons or little discomforts from unevenly distributed weight. But now, there was none of that. There was only air. He was the air.
It was with that realization that he figured out how to move. It wasn’t like controlling his human body, where one could just send an electrical impulse without thinking. There was no unintentional twitching or unsteadiness. Instead, Owen ‘thought’ of the air, as much as he could without a brain, and the air moved with his whims.
He reached out, fully inflated, and turned off the pump. His body squeaked against the smoother surfaces he came in contact with; these being the only sounds he was able or desired to make. Slowly, he lifted himself up, though this took very little effort. He found his balance, not that it would have hurt or fazed him if he were to have fallen. And he turned towards the pool.
Jamie, now a five foot tall cat-looking toy of some kind, was staring out into the water. Owen seemed to resurface for a moment to wonder how Jamie was feeling. Maybe a little pensive. Moonlight shone off the smooth plastic of the toy, giving it an almost uncanny chromatic glint as he gazed at the similarly shining water of the pool. The inflatable tail behind Jamie flicked back and forth a little in an approximation of the way a cat moved, though it was a little strange looking, like a sideways, slow motion Wacky Waving Inflatable Tube Man. It was with that whimsy that Owen felt himself floating again, light as a feather, and completely unconcerned with anything. He grinned, not that he had ever stopped.
There was a splash as Owen careened into his much smaller friend and wrapped himself around Jamie. They of course both immediately bobbed up, and without a moment’s hesitation, they began splashing each other, squeaking furiously as they wrestled atop the water. Owen wasn’t letting go of his friend, of course, wrapping around Jamie with as much force as his weightless body could muster. Even with how slippery their plastic bodies were, Owen managed to keep him in place, and both settled down, and began to just float.
Owen wasn’t sure how he produced the sound, as it did not seem to originate from inside him or from any other source, but he squeaked happily, almost sounding like a dog’s squeaky toy, but a little less annoying and more appreciative, if you were the type to anthropomorphize such noises.
Jamie in return produced a squeak that lowered in pitch, some kind of admission of, ‘you caught me.’ Not that either of them needed words anymore.
Owen looked upon his pool toy friend to see what he looked like more closely. Jamie had a permanent nervous smile and a faint pink tint around his mouth. Awwww. He was blushing. Owen squeaked again at this. Jamie was mostly light gray, but with white paws and dark gray stripes running down his back. His pointy ears were colored in bright pink, as was his nose, which Owen felt the compulsion to poke with his own in a playful gesture. This once again made Jamie struggle, while Owen squeaked several times in a row, emulating laughter. After Jamie once again tired out, Owen started to pet him like a cat, the rubbery noise it produced seeming strangely pleasant to his ears.
Jamie’s eyes were cartoony and printed onto his face, but unlike the smile, they could move a little bit. The solid pupils could change shape and size and move around within the little white ovals they inhabited. When Jamie blinked, they quickly morphed into a bit of an upside down ‘V’ shape. That combined with the awkward, wobbly smile made Jamie look like something of a cutesy disaster, in the best possible way.
Owen couldn’t see himself right now, but if he could, he’d have been amazed and strangely euphoric about what he saw. A giant red fox toy, he had a bright orange ‘pelt’ with a cute white tummy, comically large for maximum huggability. All four of his limbs expanded out near their base, so that he had very large, playful paws, if a bit clumsy. Though with so little weight, that was hardly an issue. His tail was large and dipstick shaped, with a white tip. It was constantly in motion, so that Owen gave the impression of always being excited. In fact, when he got out of the pool later, he found himself dancing around, jumping back in, rolling around, and generally enjoying the way his clumsy, weightless body moved through the world.
Jamie was strung along some, being carried around piggyback by Owen or being caught up in splash wars, but as the sun started to rise over the horizon, Jamie stopped and turned towards it, and Owen knew it was time to be a little more quiet. Owen stayed in the water, floating on his back but keeping an eye on Jamie, who lay on his belly right on the edge of the pool, gazing up at the sky. It was quiet, but calm. Owen once again tuned into the gentle lapping of the water, only this time, as he floated on the surface, it was like he was a part of it.
And as the sun peeked over the roof of the locker-room building, Owen understood what Jamie was looking at.
Without retinas or nerve endings or whatever it was, they could stare directly at the sun. And though it was bright, it was beautiful. The white light of course contained all of the color spectrum, and as Owen floated through perception, it seemed as if a kaleidoscope of oranges and yellows and warm violets began to paint the sky in a form of beauty Owen had never considered possible.
Had he any lungs, this is where he would have finally exhaled.
–
It was 4 minutes till 10:00, and two pool toys floated on the water, the smaller resting on the belly of the other. Neither of them moved, and for a little bit longer, they didn’t need to.
Download pdf for good formatting! I'm pretty avid in my use of italics.
This is my first story on here. Hope you enjoy! Not to sound like a beggar, but if you enjoyed, please leave a comment. They make me happy, and it costs you nothing! Other than your time. Which I suppose is actually a cost.
-
Fucking Jamie. Jamie. More like… fucking bastard. Honestly. Honestly!
Why l did he even come here, anyway? Owen couldn’t stand being at Jamie’s house. Like, this place was cool. Jamie’s parents kinda went all out with their house. They didn’t keep things modest — and like, Owen couldn’t live in that sort of place. Way too lavish. He didn’t need canvases covered in pastoral landscapes of Arcadian bullshit or whatever. He didn’t need the ornate pottery or the massive curved TV. Admittedly, the giant couches would be pretty cool. He didn’t mind the couches. He’d be willing to have those in his own house. But the rest was garish. Garish, but, like, in that sort of way where it was nice to spend a little bit of time there.
Owen was thankful he hadn’t grown up in this sort of environment though; Jamie had everything and though Owen had met some fairly spoiled folks who’d ended up perfectly decent, Jamie wasn’t like that. Jamie was irresponsible and helpless. Owen gained this new appreciation for modesty around Jamie, like this guy was such a prick that Owen no longer had any desire to want the same things as Jamie, which Owen supposed was just about anything.
Maybe it was a bit unwarranted, but this was his first time seeing Jamie since he’d headed off for college, and now that Jamie was back for the break, he’d invited Owen over. They were longtime friends. At least, Jamie thought of Owen as a friend, and admittedly, Owen thought of Jamie as a friend sometimes too. But the problem was that despite being polite and generally likeable, Jamie just did not give a flying fuck about being considerate.
Like, right now. Ten minutes ago. Who orders pizza for themselves while their friend is in the restroom, doesn’t tell them, and then eats it in front of them without offering any? Jamie does! He was literally just chowing down on his expensive-ass pizza with like all the toppings, and he somehow didn’t notice Owen glowering. Owen would have paid for his own pizza! He wasn’t trying to mooch off of Jamie! The guy had just… Owen didn’t even have any dinner! He was hungry!
“I’m hungry,” Owen said pointedly.
Jamie turned to Owen, smiling innocently. Jamie had a hard time reading expressions, and was somehow oblivious to Owen’s scathing glare. “Help yourself to anything in the fridge!”
He took another bite of the pizza.
Owen rolled his eyes and stood up to go to the fridge.
“Oh,” said Jamie, as it finally clicked.
Owen turned back towards Jamie, who had frozen with a pizza slice near his mouth. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” Jamie said, looking down at his pizza with a sullen expression. “When I’m home alone, I always order pizza for myself and I was just thinking—”
He cut himself off and put down the pizza. They both knew that Owen couldn’t have gluten, and while the restaurant had a cauliflower based crust that was quite good, Jamie hadn’t gotten that, so he couldn’t even offer a slice as an afterthought.
“I guess I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry. Are you mad at me?” Jamie asked. He was frozen, not looking at anything in particular, his mouth twitching a little bit.
“No,” Owen lied. He was glad that Jamie had at least noticed eventually, and with the fact that Jamie seemed genuinely remorseful, Owen felt bad for being angry. That didn’t mean he wasn’t angry, but he certainly felt bad. But it wasn’t like this sort of behavior was new. It wasn’t like Jamie wasn’t holding a slice of pizza up to his mouth right now.
“Well I… I’m sorry.”
Owen sighed. “You have any jerky or potato chips or anything?”
“No, we just have a bunch of fruit and juice and stuff. I guess nothing that’s really a full meal if you can’t have gluten.” Jamie scratched the back of his scalp. He couldn’t even have any Owen-friendly food around the house either. Owen should have just brought his own.
“I guess I’ll just…” Owen wasn’t sure what he was going to do, so he trailed off. He was going to say leave, but even though he definitely wanted to leave, he couldn’t do that to Jamie. Was he letting Jamie walk all over him? Well, okay. Jamie wasn’t actively malicious or anything. He was apologetic when he realized his wrongdoing. But Owen was sure this sorta thing would just keep happening throughout the night if he stayed.
Jamie spoke up. “Hey, I mean, I’ve got my car. We could hit up a restaurant. Wherever you wanna go. I’ll pay.”
With your rich-ass parents’ money. I know for a fact they’re paying your school like 15 grand outta pocket per semester even with scholarships, and you don’t even have a job. Meanwhile, I’ve gotta work my tail off to help pay my ‘rents rent now. Owen wanted to say this, but he didn’t, ‘cause jealousy was an ugly look.
“Sure,” said Owen. He tried to look at Jamie, but his neck didn’t feel like turning for some reason.
“I have a place I want to show you after,” said Jamie. “So, uh, yeah let’s hop on outta here.”
–
Owen crumpled up his McDonalds bag and threw it into a trash bin next to the locker room door. “This was fucking stupid.”
“I told you to hear me out on this,” said Jamie.
“Jamie, I’m not keen on breaking into a pool after hours to do some swimming when there isn’t even a lifeguard watching over us.”
“You could have said that before we jumped over the fence,” Jamie said.
“I mean, I started, but then you were like, okay now jump over the fence.”
“Well, yeah. Cause I was trying to get you to jump over the fence.”
“I don’t know why I agreed to do this,” said Owen.
“There wasn’t a verbal agreement, so you have plausible deniability. I dragged you out here against your will at gunpoint.”
“You don’t have a gun.”
“As far as you know!”
“Please tell me you don’t have a gun.”
“It’s a water gun.”
“I suppose that makes a certain degree of sense,” Owen admitted. He stopped bickering with Jamie, not because he was actually okay with what was going on, but because he wasn’t going to let Jamie do this sorta thing alone. Jamie was fragile. If he was caught by security or something, he’d probably piss himself and die of embarrassment.
“I come here all the time. It’s fine,” Jamie insisted.
“You’ve been out of town for months.”
“Well, I used to come here all the time. I miss this place a lot. So I really had to go here sometime during my break and I guess I really want to show you this.”
“It’s a pool. I don’t even like swimming. Can't hold my breath underwater…”
Jamie shrugged. “Ain’t just a pool. Come on, we’ve gotta get something out of the storage shed with all the floaties and toys and stuff.”
The community pool was a fairly small establishment, but it had a few amenities; a building with locker rooms and showers for men and women, a tennis court, and a publicly accessible shed full of all sorts of toys, floaties, and exercise equipment for anyone who might be in need.
“Why are we going towards the shed?” Owen asked, tentatively following Jamie. There was a padlock on the door, but it wasn’t closed or locked at all, and honestly, the thing was so rusty it was probably useless anyway. Jamie pulled it open and walked in. It wasn’t super large, but big enough to have several racks of equipment. Jamie turned his phone flashlight on and pointed at something in the corner.
It was a big padlocked treasure chest looking thing. This lock actually seemed functional, and there was a laminated sheet of paper taped onto the chest reading ‘Do Not Open’ in comic sans.
“Huh, that’s interesting,” Owen admitted. “Why have it in here if it’s not meant to be opened?”
“I dunno,” said Jamie. “I guess one day when I was fifteen or so, I was at the pool, and I just saw a key on the floor of the pool in the 8 foot deep section, so I dived down and grabbed it. I don’t really know how I saw it, I guess I just had my goggles on right and the glint hit my eye just right. But the point is, I found this key. And there was a tag on it that said ‘Hillside Community Pool – Unusual and Mildly Dangerous Toy Storage.’ So, that’s pretty weird, right? And I decided I wanted to find out where the key went. But the pool was closing, so I had to leave. And I guess I was like… I don’t know why, but I had to go back and figure out what was going on. So I did. I snuck in, and I went snooping. And eventually, I found this box, which was actually hidden behind a bunch of pool noodles at first. And I opened it, and, well…”
Jamie bent down and put down his phone so he could insert the key into the lock. It clicked, and the chest popped open. The smell of chlorine inside the box was strong enough to be noticeable even at a community pool, and Jamie reached in with a glove (which he had apparently put on at some point) and pulled out two white, shiny balls. They could be mistaken for hard-boiled eggs were they not completely spherical and decorated with a black insignia of a little cartoon mouse. Owen regarded it with curiosity and confusion.
“It’s… a ball.”
“That’s what I thought too,” said Jamie. “And I was pretty disappointed by that. I mean, finding this had been a pretty fascinating process. So, I went to pick one up, and something crazy happened.”
“What?”
Jamie held out the balls to Owen with his gloved hand. “Take one and see for yourself.”
Owen narrowed his eyebrows. “Oh-okay then. Clearly you survived touching these, I guess.”
“Yeah,” said Jamie. “C’mon!”
Owen nodded and grabbed the ball out of Jamie’s hand. Nothing happened for about four seconds. Then, the ball turned bright orange. A bit reddish-orange; a little redder than a Cheeto but not as red as a picture perfect Red Delicious apple. The mouse disappeared.
“Wow, okay,” said Owen, unsure how to react. “Balls don’t usually do that.”
“Haha, just wait.”
But Owen didn’t really have to wait as the ball seemed to start melting in his hand. At first, he felt like the sudden feeling of sticky wetness was merely imagined, but then, taking a closer look at the ball, it was starting to lose its perfectly spherical shape. Orange started to ooze out onto his hand, and that was when he realized he definitely wasn’t imagining it.
“Is it like putty or something?” Owen asked, grabbing it with his other hand and mushing it around a bit, drawing out a little string between two parts as he split it in half like cheese on a hot pizza.
“Not quite,” said Jamie. His eyebrows were slightly lowered, lips folded a bit inwards expectantly.
“It’s not coming off my hands,” Owen observed as he attempted to start rubbing it off of him. Most of it did splatter onto the ground, but his hands remained coated in the stuff and as he dropped it, string like melted cheese kept the mass all connected. Owen tried to cut one of these strings off with his other hand, but no matter how hard he worked at it, it wouldn’t quite break. In fact, it almost seemed like it was starting to defy gravity. Owen could swear that it was starting to crawl up to his wrists.
“Man, this stuff is weird,” Owen said, chuckling nervously. “What is it?”
“Honestly, I don’t know,” Jamie admitted. “But whatever it’s called, it’s seriously cool. Just you wait, you haven’t gotten to the good part.”
“Jamie,” said Owen, his voice dropping a few notes. “It’s crawling up my sleeves.”
“Yep,” said Jamie.
“Oh, it’s crawling over them actually. That’s worse.”
“Shouldn’ta worn long sleeves”
“How are you so casual right now?” asked Owen, starting to hyperventilate a little, cause, yeah, each second that passed seemed to confirm that he was not imagining this. This weird orange goop was actually creeping up his hands, and what’s more, his fingers felt numb and rubbery, and extremely weak. The strings of goop connecting to the puddle on the floor seemed to simultaneously pump upwards against gravity, spreading more to his hands, while also growing larger on the ground, oozing onto and over his shoes.
“This is going exactly according to plan. Don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt.”
Owen gasped. “What doesn’t hurt? Jamie, is this stuff, like, a parasite or something?”
“I already said I don’t know what it is, but it’s pretty cool,” Jamie said, mostly matter of factly.
“Yeah, I’d also find this interesting if it was happening to someone else but THEN I would try to HELP THEM!”
“Well, I can’t really help you,” said Jamie, walking over to and sitting down on one of the pool chairs nearby.
“Why is it always like this? Why don’t you tell me stuff or care about how I feel, huh? Why are you doing this to me,” Owen shouted, panicking.
“I’ve never done anything like this before,” Jamie said, but he sounded a lot less carefree all of the sudden.
“But you said you had!” Owen shouted.
“Well I mean, I’ve never done it to someone else! I mean, with. With someone else.”
“I don’t know, man, you’re always disregarding me. But, shit, you’re like…” Owen growled. “This is psychopathic. What on Earth. Are you really this mad at me because I was upset you didn’t get me pizza?”
“No, no, that’s not what’s going on at all!”
“I don’t want to do the whole ‘you didn’t get to explain yourself cliché,’ so just explain yourself dude! Please tell me you’re not tricking me.”
“I mean, I am,” Jamie said, hushed and sullen.
“Are you just trying to get rid of me?” Owen asked, continuing to hyperventilate.
“I’m really sorry, Owen,” Jamie said. He was staring at the ground. He rarely made eye contact, but now he was actively avoiding looking in Owen’s direction.
“I try so fucking hard to put up with you, but you never think anything through, you never stop to consider how I feel. Like, do you even want me around? It feels like you're always trying to drive me away—” Owen tried to hold up his hands, but they were stuck— “or just mess with me and it's dumb. Gah!”
The orange stuff all over Owen’s hands continued to spread up his arms. It felt like he’d lost all sensation in his fingertips, and he rubbed at his T-shirt with them, as if trying to get it off of him. It just got all over his shirt and started seeping into that too. It seemed hopeless. The… stuff. Whatever it was. It was like, fusing with Owen’s skin.
“I do like having you around!” Jamie protested.
“You don’t act like it!”
“It’s not easy for me. I don’t… I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Owen, but I just can’t. I don’t want to hurt anyone, I just…” Jamie’s voice broke. Owen felt bad for him, but he was going to stand his ground anyway. As soon as he got this gunk off his hands. Owen was still occupied with that, but kept listening as Jamie kept talking. “Nobody else even wants to be around me. I like you so much, Owen. The entire time I was at school, I was just waiting to come home to see you. And, and, and, and I’m sorry if I don’t show it, I don’t mean anything by it. Really! It just didn’t occur to me to ask about the pizza, and I wasn’t trying to make you jealous about me being in college. Really! Really! I, well, I just get excited sometimes, you know?” Jamie waved his hands around, as if trying to grab something. Whatever it was, he didn’t seem to be finding any purchase.
Owen was still trying to get the stuff off his arms, but it kept spreading. His fingers seemed to be vanishing too. This was actually some kind of paranormal shit. Or mutant shit. Or fingers-being-dissolved-by-acidic-sludge shit. Whatever it was, Owen was starting to tune out of what Jamie was saying.
“Owen, you’re the most, most, most important person in the world, and I really want to make you feel that way, but I fail, and I fail miserably,” Jamie said. “And I know that. I know it and I want to get better about it and it’s like I can’t; I just can’t. I don’t know how, when everything I do is so... I swear I’m trying to listen to what you say when you’re talking, you know! I really want to!”
Owen looked back up at Jamie. His eyes were wide and almost terrified. “Jamie, what the fuck is happening?”
“I, Owen I… Can’t explain it. Just trust me, it’s fun. It’s okay. You’ll be fine; we’ll be fine!”
Owen teared up. “Why can’t you just tell me?”
Jamie started flapping his hands a bit. “I don’t know, I can’t! I can’t. It’s fine, though! It’s okay, Owen!”
Owen looked down at his own hands, which didn’t resemble hands anymore. Actually, he didn’t seem to have much of anything left past his elbows… Just some limp, rubbery substance, which dangled from his arms now, with a little plastic nozzle for inflating something with air on his shoulder and…
For a moment, Owen’s fear subsided as he just looked up at Jamie. “Am I turning into a pooltoy?”
“Y– yeah,” said Jamie.
Beat.
“Deadass?”
“Sorry I couldn’t tell you… It sounded stupid.”
Owen’s confusion turned to fury. “It IS stupid,” he spat. “I don’t know how the fuck this is happening or how you thought this would be okay, but either way you led me into some weird-ass situation where — okay I don’t even know how to finish this sentence! I’m at a loss for words!”
“I’m sorry,” Jamie whimpered. “I just wanted to show you this…”
“Am I going to die?” Owen paled, watching as the transformation started to claim his shoulders. It was creeping up his legs too, and he could feel his feet starting to turn to deflated plastic. He wouldn’t be able to stand much longer.
“No!” said Jamie. “No! What? No!”
Owen fell to his knees, landing right in the pool of orange stuff. It began to move more rapidly, covering almost his full body. He could feel it on his neck. Creeping up to his head where his brain was and HEY WOULDN’T IT BE GREAT IF THAT DIDN’T VANISH?
He tried to scream, but nothing. He didn’t seem to have lungs anymore. Oh.
“I…” Jamie removed his hands from his face and placed them on his knees, squatting down over Owen.
Owen was shocked to find himself Not Dying as his head vanished too, leaving him a fully deflated pool-toy thing. He couldn’t see what he looked like, or even what Jamie was doing anymore, or anything for that matter. As he’d transformed, the place where his ‘eyes’ were, now lacking any sort of eyelids for him to blink, had folded in on themselves. It was a sort of existential horror to be completely unable to move, in a shape he didn’t recognize, unable to see anything. He could only hear and feel, and everything felt very strange. As if he was touching it with rubber gloves on. That did make a degree of sense, honestly. It was hard to describe the feeling of a concrete floor through that rubbery filter, but it didn’t seem so rough anymore. Of course, the fact that he felt the floor meant the puddle had apparently vanished. He supposed all of the goop had been incorporated into… him. As weird of a thought as that was.
“I…” Jamie trailed off. That was the only thing Owen heard for quite some time. That and the gentle lapping of the nearby pool. He found that sound immensely calming; something to latch onto while everything else in his world seemed to have completely vanished. Then, the sound of fabric slightly rustling as Jamie presumably stood up.
“Owen, I really do mean it. You’re the best person I know and I always want to be with you like actually all the time. I’m really sorry I hurt you so much and I just wanted to make it up to you. And sometimes I really can’t communicate what I want to say, or, or, there’s just too much going on. Too much light, noise, uhhhh, things, things on my fingers. Like grease from pizza. Or the buttons on the remote don’t all press in the same amount. Or there’s just too many things for me to respond to so I just wanted to show you cause I couldn’t explain and if I explained you would say no and…
“And I’m in my own world a lot of the time. I really really didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. And I know this is weird, but when I need to relax, I come here. And I wanted to show you this place. This experience. It’s special. It’s safe. And you’ll be back to normal at 10:00 AM sharp. I don’t know why it wears off then, but I guess it’s like 30 minutes before the pool opens, so like, um, I guess it’s either to stop anyone from using you as an actual pool toy or maybe like to cover up for the company a bit so that it doesn’t happen while it’s…
“Ugh, sorry. That’s not the point. I’m rambling again. I’m really rambling, I know, I know. It’s easier for me to get going when it’s quiet. I just had a lot I needed to say and I didn’t want any distractions or interruptions or I don’t know. I’m such a dick. I didn’t even want to let you talk… I just…
“You know, cause you’re always here for me, or you have been in the past. I never really said thank you, but when you helped me apply for colleges and figure out what I wanted to do, well, you set me on a path that I would never have been brave enough to go down on my own. And you invited me to your DND games even when the others all said I sucked to play with and gave me advice for getting along with people. I just felt like I couldn’t say anything because maybe it would be obvious that you just help me so much, and I’m just, well, I’m just me and I suck. When I went away it was like I left the best thing in the world behind. And it’s awful, but I was hoping you missed me just as much. But I know you didn’t, cause, well, your life is probably better without me.”
Owen just sat in silence and absorbed all of this. It wasn’t like there was anything else to do.
“I don’t think I can really make it up to you, Owen,” said Jamie. “I just… Sometimes I don’t really notice when people are upset or when I do something bad. It’s really hard to tell. And you usually told me when I upset other people. But you didn’t tell me when I upset you, and I always realize too late. Sometimes I catch myself, but sometimes I only realize after you leave as I’m trying to fall asleep at night. It hurts to admit my faults, but I want to be a better friend for you. And when I hurt you, I need you to say something. And I know that’s horrible to say after you protested against this so hard and… Well, I guess you did actually say something this time so I'm a hypocrite. I don't know. The circumstances here were different! This was one time where I just needed to talk. You can leave me forever in the morning if you want.
“But… if you don’t, once we turn back, I’ll order us breakfast and — I actually have a gift for you waiting at home! I forgot to mention that and I forgot to give it to you! Ugh, see, Owen? I’m just like this I guess. I bought you a bunch of books from your amazon wishlist and I got a bunch of your pals who’ve gone across the country for college to send photos of themselves. And I made you a little scrapbook. It was a lot of fun. I used all the different artsy craftsy stuff I have left over from grade school, like the glitter glue and little heart stickers and stuff. And it’s big, too. It made me smile a lot and I don’t really know half the people even, so, uh, I really hope you like it.”
Jamie went quiet. Owen wasn’t sure he’d ever heard Jamie talk that much all at once, and honestly, after all of that, he found he wasn’t as angry anymore. It was as though Jamie had given Owen a small peek inside his brain. And, well, the scrapbook idea was just so sweet. Like actually saccharine. Owen would have to tell Jamie that that was a bit sweet-old-lady coded.
“I would have given more warning,” Jamie said. “I, well, I guess I wanted you to discover the way I did. Except my first time, I didn’t really know what was happening, and I just kinda sat there all deflated until morning. But… I didn’t mind that, either. Everything is always so much, and that was just the waves. Even my thoughts started to dull down after a while. I think that’s something the transformation does. It mellows you out. You sorta start to just exist. You know? And it’s not painful or hard or… it’s like floating.”
Jamie was quiet again, and yeah, he was right. Owen was definitely feeling a bit of that floating sensation. Everything that Jamie had done, well, did any of it really matter? Did anything other than his nervous voice and the gentle waves even need to exist right now? Did the concrete need to be uncomfortable? Well, really, it wasn’t.
Owen heard Jamie mess with something sort of heavy and thunk-y. He couldn’t really figure out what it was, and he certainly wasn’t trying. He was sure whatever Jamie was doing wasn’t really all that weird.
“This is gonna sound ridiculous, but you can buy an electric air pump off Amazon for like 20 bucks,” Jamie said.
Owen didn’t think it sounded ridiculous at all. He wasn’t really thinking, mind you. Honestly, he hadn’t absorbed that information at all.
“When you come in contact with the substance, it transforms you starting from wherever you touch it. And essentially, you have one of those little plastic things you can use to inflate an actual real pool toy. Not that you’re a faker, haha. But, yeah, yours looks like it’s on your shoulder, which is a weird place. Mine’s sort of on my forearm, so I just start by putting the goop there…”
Silence for a second as Jamie presumably did just that.
“And then as the thing sort of forms, you hook it up to the pump, and wait a second to turn it on. Then it sort of inflates you as you transform. It makes the whole thing smoother and faster. I probably should’ve just done this with you to begin with. But you live and learn.”
The sound of a switch being flicked and air flowing came next. It lasted a while. Owen occasionally heard the sound of something rubbing against the plastic of the inflated object, and a rubbery squeak or two. Like someone was caressing a balloon. Owen didn’t hear Jamie’s voice again. In fact, nothing really happened for a while. Just a bunch of repetitive sounds.
Then, he felt something attempt to grab him. It was a little amusing, really. The inflated toy had very little in the way of weight, and definitely didn’t have any fingers. Perhaps not the most well-rounded plan in existence. Still, it did eventually manage to find purchase, and Owen was dragged amicably along towards the pump. Then, fumbling for a while, until the little plastic thing Jamie had mentioned was opened. Owen could feel that. More fumbling. The pump was hooked up.
And then, it was like Owen was breathing. Only, it was through his shoulder, and there was no exhaling. It was maybe even a little bit like eating. He was getting fuller, after all. His flat body had been sorta crumpled on the ground in a pile, but as it began to inflate, it first started to spread out more evenly as air pushed through the creases. The crease blocking Owen’s eyes unfolded, allowing him to take in light once more. He couldn’t see Jamie, though. He must have been behind Owen. And Owen hadn’t figured out how to move yet.
Owen watched curiously as his new snout pushed out of his face in front of him, a little black nose popping into view and rising up in the center of his view. He stared cross-eyed, wide-eyed, at it. The snout itself was orange with a lighter cream color around the nose, little black dots dotting it to resemble whisker follicles. A little white patch sat a bit below his eyes. He felt like that was pretty cute.
Owen also began to feel his arms and legs stretch out from the pile, reaching out as if lying on his stomach. His new paws slowly came into view out of the corners of his eyes. They were white with a little black pawprint design on the bottom, made of a somewhat different rippled rubber texture. The little nubs for the paws bulged out just a little bit, making it so that his arms weren’t just tubes.
He continued to inflate, with new attributes he didn’t know he had continuing to pop into existence. First, ears which rested atop his head. They seemed pointy and triangular, with no holes to fill with water the way human ears would. The bottom of his snout then filled out, and he could feel a grin printed onto the plastic. Though he could tell it had no depth and was merely a print, he still felt the smile, wide and permanent with a bit of a bean-esque shape. Despite being unable to move his mouth at all, the grin perfectly captured how he felt. Maybe even who he was, beneath all the worries and doubts that plagued his usual life.
He grew larger still, his tail inflating out; it was the last part to do so. Despite being the last part to inflate, it was the first part to start moving. It started to wag in excitement, slapping and bouncing off the ground beside it at a rapid speed.
Owen kept inflating, his skin, or rather, plastic, still feeling loose and wrinkly, but he grew larger and larger, feeling as if he was becoming a giant. He was indeed much larger as a toy, almost 8 and a half feet from head to hind paw. He was reaching his full size, but the pressure was still quite low. It was taking a while, though Owen had time. All the time in the world. Nothing else mattered; really, there was only one thing he was really waiting for.
He start to feel more solid as he reached full capacity. Despite this, he’d never felt lighter in his life. He’d never realized the pains of every moment as a human, slight twinges of neck muscles or tendons or little discomforts from unevenly distributed weight. But now, there was none of that. There was only air. He was the air.
It was with that realization that he figured out how to move. It wasn’t like controlling his human body, where one could just send an electrical impulse without thinking. There was no unintentional twitching or unsteadiness. Instead, Owen ‘thought’ of the air, as much as he could without a brain, and the air moved with his whims.
He reached out, fully inflated, and turned off the pump. His body squeaked against the smoother surfaces he came in contact with; these being the only sounds he was able or desired to make. Slowly, he lifted himself up, though this took very little effort. He found his balance, not that it would have hurt or fazed him if he were to have fallen. And he turned towards the pool.
Jamie, now a five foot tall cat-looking toy of some kind, was staring out into the water. Owen seemed to resurface for a moment to wonder how Jamie was feeling. Maybe a little pensive. Moonlight shone off the smooth plastic of the toy, giving it an almost uncanny chromatic glint as he gazed at the similarly shining water of the pool. The inflatable tail behind Jamie flicked back and forth a little in an approximation of the way a cat moved, though it was a little strange looking, like a sideways, slow motion Wacky Waving Inflatable Tube Man. It was with that whimsy that Owen felt himself floating again, light as a feather, and completely unconcerned with anything. He grinned, not that he had ever stopped.
There was a splash as Owen careened into his much smaller friend and wrapped himself around Jamie. They of course both immediately bobbed up, and without a moment’s hesitation, they began splashing each other, squeaking furiously as they wrestled atop the water. Owen wasn’t letting go of his friend, of course, wrapping around Jamie with as much force as his weightless body could muster. Even with how slippery their plastic bodies were, Owen managed to keep him in place, and both settled down, and began to just float.
Owen wasn’t sure how he produced the sound, as it did not seem to originate from inside him or from any other source, but he squeaked happily, almost sounding like a dog’s squeaky toy, but a little less annoying and more appreciative, if you were the type to anthropomorphize such noises.
Jamie in return produced a squeak that lowered in pitch, some kind of admission of, ‘you caught me.’ Not that either of them needed words anymore.
Owen looked upon his pool toy friend to see what he looked like more closely. Jamie had a permanent nervous smile and a faint pink tint around his mouth. Awwww. He was blushing. Owen squeaked again at this. Jamie was mostly light gray, but with white paws and dark gray stripes running down his back. His pointy ears were colored in bright pink, as was his nose, which Owen felt the compulsion to poke with his own in a playful gesture. This once again made Jamie struggle, while Owen squeaked several times in a row, emulating laughter. After Jamie once again tired out, Owen started to pet him like a cat, the rubbery noise it produced seeming strangely pleasant to his ears.
Jamie’s eyes were cartoony and printed onto his face, but unlike the smile, they could move a little bit. The solid pupils could change shape and size and move around within the little white ovals they inhabited. When Jamie blinked, they quickly morphed into a bit of an upside down ‘V’ shape. That combined with the awkward, wobbly smile made Jamie look like something of a cutesy disaster, in the best possible way.
Owen couldn’t see himself right now, but if he could, he’d have been amazed and strangely euphoric about what he saw. A giant red fox toy, he had a bright orange ‘pelt’ with a cute white tummy, comically large for maximum huggability. All four of his limbs expanded out near their base, so that he had very large, playful paws, if a bit clumsy. Though with so little weight, that was hardly an issue. His tail was large and dipstick shaped, with a white tip. It was constantly in motion, so that Owen gave the impression of always being excited. In fact, when he got out of the pool later, he found himself dancing around, jumping back in, rolling around, and generally enjoying the way his clumsy, weightless body moved through the world.
Jamie was strung along some, being carried around piggyback by Owen or being caught up in splash wars, but as the sun started to rise over the horizon, Jamie stopped and turned towards it, and Owen knew it was time to be a little more quiet. Owen stayed in the water, floating on his back but keeping an eye on Jamie, who lay on his belly right on the edge of the pool, gazing up at the sky. It was quiet, but calm. Owen once again tuned into the gentle lapping of the water, only this time, as he floated on the surface, it was like he was a part of it.
And as the sun peeked over the roof of the locker-room building, Owen understood what Jamie was looking at.
Without retinas or nerve endings or whatever it was, they could stare directly at the sun. And though it was bright, it was beautiful. The white light of course contained all of the color spectrum, and as Owen floated through perception, it seemed as if a kaleidoscope of oranges and yellows and warm violets began to paint the sky in a form of beauty Owen had never considered possible.
Had he any lungs, this is where he would have finally exhaled.
–
It was 4 minutes till 10:00, and two pool toys floated on the water, the smaller resting on the belly of the other. Neither of them moved, and for a little bit longer, they didn’t need to.
Category Story / Transformation
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 120 x 115px
File Size 172.3 kB
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