Balloon Factory Pt 01 Linda

Linda checked off a couple of boxes on the form clipped to her clipboard, then reached deep into the plastic bin and pulled out a balloon. She adjusted her safety glasses, took a deep breath, put the balloon to her lips, and blew. Another deep breath, another big blow, and as the balloon grew in front of her eyes (it was purple, she noticed), her mind began to wander.

All of the workers in Fun Time Balloons's quality assurance department (all of whom were female, though it never occurred to Linda to wonder why) used the compressed air hoses, except for Linda, who always blew up her balloons by mouth. Why Linda did this was considered one of the great mysteries at Fun Time Balloons. Did it give her a better feel for the latex? Was she some sort of Balloon Whisperer? Was she just showing off? The other girls in Quality Assurance (and compared to Linda, they really were just girls) wondered, but only a couple had asked, and Linda just shrugged and smiled. Linda did not think of herself as anything out of the ordinary, and as shy as she was, she liked the attention.

The purple balloon was rapidly approaching its rated size. The ink on the polka-dots didn't appear to be uniform, which was an ongoing problem. She made a note on the form with one hand, the other holding the balloon to her lips, as she continued to blow.

Nowadays, with most of the old-timers having retired, only Linda knew the real reason she blew her balloons by lungpower alone. The week she had come to work here, the air compressor had been broken, and all of the inspectors had to blow up their balloons by mouth. Celine, the tremendously fat woman who was training her, tossed her a balloon and said, "Now blow this like you blow that husband of yours!", then shrieked with laughter that quickly devolved into a tobacco-fueled coughing fit.

Three days later the compressor was fixed, but as she was the only inspector working the night shift, there was no one to tell her. In fact, no one had told her there was a compressor at all. She just assumed that the only way to blow up the balloons was, well, to blow up the balloons. At first the blowing made her dizzy, to the point where she had to sit in the parking lot for a spell before driving home. She had just about gotten the hang of it when she was sent a batch of the biggest balloons she had ever seen in her life (36", she later learned). When she first picked up one of the uninflated balloons, she couldn't believe it - it was as big as the cups on her bra! She had no idea how anyone could blow up such a big balloon, let alone blow it until it popped, and tears actually started to well up in her eyes. But she couldn't risk losing the income she and Lester so desperately needed. Her first breath didn't even stretch the balloon. The big and round nozzle between her lips felt like... well, no need to think about that. Just think about the paycheck, she thought, and she started to blow, and blow, and blow, and blow, and blow. She blew the balloon to what seemed and impossibly big size, and yet it kept on taking air. Could she possibly... no, don't ask that; you have to do it! And eventually, after what felt like hours, she blew it to bursting. She almost fainted twice, but she did it. And when she blew that last exhausted breath, the one that finally reduced the balloon to shreds, she was too tired to cry.

It wasn't until nearly four months later, when Linda moved to the day shift, that she realized she had an alternative available to her. She had taken her first balloon of the day from a batch of printed 17" balloons ("HAPPY BIRTHDAY, YOU'RE GETTING SO BIG!") and was huffing and puffing away.

"Wow, look at the new girl go!" said Dorothy, who, according to company scuttlebutt, had given a handjob to every single shift manager except the current one (only because he was a devout Mormon). She then pulled the air hose out from its holder under the desk, put an orange 12" on the nozzle, and squeezed, the balloon filling almost instantly to its rated size. Realization hit Linda hard, but she was too embarrassed to admit the truth. So she just kept blowing her balloons by mouth. The habit formed, and the legend wasn't far behind.

The purple balloon was now its full size, at least the size to which consumers were expected to inflate it before the CHOKING HAZARD warning came into effect. Linda pinched the end of the balloon and held it up to the bright fluorescent inspection light, twirling it around and checking for light spots or other signs of weakness. This balloon, like nearly all of the countless balloons she would blow up today, and tomorrow, and the next day, and next week, and on and on until blissful retirement, looked perfectly sound. She put the balloon under her arm, stretched her neck, then put it to her lips and began to blow again.

"I don't know how you do this every day," a pretty new employee named Ellen had once said. The compressor was broken that day, and Linda and Ellen were inspecting a batch of Fun Time Balloons's new Play-Tyme 24" rounds. "The way you puff out your cheeks, aren't you afraid they'll get all saggy and ruin your looks?" The 24s were made of very thick latex, and Ellen, a pretty young blonde who took community college classes at night, was struggling to keep her cheeks in as she blew. She was failing miserably.

"I never really thought about it," Linda said between breaths. "I don't think it makes much of a difference, really."

"Oh," Ellen said, "Well, in that case..." She took a deep breath and blew a big puffy-cheeked blast into her blue balloon. They started to giggle, then they started to laugh, and when Linda accidentally let go of her nearly-full balloon, they started to howl.

But Linda did think about it, and decided she didn't care. If her husband Lester and every other man on the planet found her unattractive, all the better. She had long since grown tired of his constant romantic attention, which in Lester's case meant thirty frantic seconds of sweaty pounding from the his three-inch wiener. Four times a week, regular as clockwork, from the day she lost her virginity on her wedding night until the day he finally left.

When Linda first got the job, Lester complained about the taste of latex on her lips and decided he didn't like kissing her. Kissing was Lester's idea of foreplay, so their less-than-satisfying sex life grew even less satisfying. Thank goodness for lube and the memories of Hank, the football captain who secretly preferred Linda's curvy body to his rail-thin prom queen girlfriend. When Lester finished and went to sleep, Linda would remember those warm summer nights in the woods behind Smith's Sunoco, Hank's hand on her big, soft breasts, his warm, thick cock sliding in and out her mouth, and his hands in her panties, and she would try to recreate the magic he had in his fingers with his own.

Saggy cheeks? Ruined looks? Perfect. From that day forward she tried to blow harder and puff her cheeks even bigger. Her cheeks did seem to puff out bigger than they did when she started at Fun Time Balloons eleven years ago, but when relaxed they did not stretch or sag.

Now Linda had blown the purple balloon big and full, and leaving just enough uninflated to pinch it closed, she inspected the inflated neck. She never understood why Mr. Globos insisted the balloons be blown so big; she'd never seen anyone blow up balloons this way for parties. Sometimes Mr. Globos would watch her blow up the balloons. "Just want to make sure my girls are doing a thorough job," he'd say with a laugh, and it's possible this would have creeped Linda out had she not spent so many years married to a man who creeped her out on a daily basis. Yes, the neck on this one looked just fine, like most of them. If a balloon was defective, it almost always popped long before it got this full.

And now Lester was someone else's problem. Specifically, that bubblehead dancer at Mike's Topless Emporium that he got pregnant. Linda already felt like she had revenge: The little slut had a lifetime of sex with Lester ahead of her.

Linda put what little part of the balloon remained uninflated to her lips, and blew a slow, measured breath. The balloon was now completely full, right to the rolled ring at the end of the nozzle. She put her hands around the bulging neck, pressed the balloon hard against her face, drew in a deep breath through her nose, and blew. This was the part the new girls always had trouble with, but squeezing more air into the tight balloon was no problem for Linda and her well-practiced lungs.

She took another breath and blew again, the neck bending to one side as the latex hit the limits of its elasticity. "One more," she thought. The balloon struggled to leap away, but Linda held it in a tight grip against her face, inhaling again, closing her eyes, puffing out her cheeks and blowing again.

And just as she forced the last of the air in her lungs into her balloon, almost as if on cue - BLAM!! The balloon burst into a million latex shards, but Linda felt the tremendous explosion more than she heard it; her heavy industrial earmuffs, specially designed for the job, reduced the ear-splitting bang to a dull snap. Linda didn't so much as flinch. She hadn't flinched since her third day on the job.

As the purple shards floated softly to the ground, joining the multi-colored remains of the rest of the balloons she had blown to bits that day. Linda picked up her clipboard and checked off the box next to "TESTED TO DESTRUCTION".

She looked at her watch, then at the bins piled up on her desk. She figured she'd have time to blow another ten or eleven to their untimely demise before she could go home.

She put a yellow balloon to her lips and began to blow.

To be continued...