You find yourself in front of a large department store building. You just need to retrieve a couple small things for a trip you had planned to take over the next few days. Staring life into a monitor had somehow gotten a little dull recently, so perhaps a break for a day or two would do some good. 

You walk in and look around for a bit, but you can’t seem to find anything you were looking for, although you have been tempted by a lot of stuff you did not come for. Not pressed for time, but a little exasperated, you refuse to ask the local staff for help. You can find it yourself.

Nearby in the store, a group of three ‘rebellious’ teenage sharks of differing heights were pushing the limits of store policy, practicing their shoplifting technique with some metallic canister, and being quite loud. You thought you notice one point towards you, but you really don’t feel like giving them any of your time and continue to focus on your search. 

You suddenly feel someone step on your tail, not harshly but enough to startle you into turning around, mouth agape to say some choice words. But instead of words coming out, you feel a metal object painlessly jammed in your maw by one shark and swiftly taped by the others. The coordination would’ve seemed almost artistic, were it not for their loud sprint towards the exits.

You can hear a slight hissing noise coming from the can. For a split second you worry that they may have attempted to poison you, but you quickly realize that they would have been unable to get away. You try to undo the tape, but the store sells some high quality stuff and it’s quite stuck. Very fast and you feel an odd sensation in your stomach, similar to the feeling after taking a swig of a carbonated drink except stronger. 

Looking downwards as best you can with a canister in view, you see your shirt moving up so slightly, and your belly soon pokes out from underneath. You can feel it expanding, whatever substance intruding oddly feeling like it’s filling your belly itself more than your stomach, as if it ignores the boundaries of the inner body. As your belly begins to protrude a foot in the front, you start to swear you’re feeling it in your back as well.

It seems that nobody is coming to help, and you know that it would probably be the best thing to run and get somebody to take this metal tank out of your mouth. But it’s an embarrassing situation, and you don’t really want to involve the staff in something so absurd. Instead, you simply continue to tug at the tape and the can by yourself.

As your middle reaches a two-feet diameter, you can also fill the substance traveling to other parts of your body- noticeably your upper legs and forearms, and especially your tail. It’s not much, but you already feel the gas tension work on your joints as it becomes harder to exert the force to remove the tape. The tank has shown no sign of slowing down, and you are worried that this will soon lose all ability to even fight to remove it. Fear becomes reality as the gas in your joints forces your arms to lock down below any good grip.

With no other choice and a rapidly puffing figure, you finally decide to receive assistance. But no less than one leg lifted and you find yourself off balance, considerably lighter than you were before. You fall backwards onto your tail, a surprisingly painless landing but which also redistributed the excess gas in your tail to your center.	

The effect was astonishing, as you suddenly feel your swollen middle to overtake your shoulders, themselves becoming as round as what your thighs ought to be. Your thighs twice that. You try to get back up, but now the gaseous substance has your legs and arms too locked to bend any more than 20 degrees. Still laying on your tail, preventing it’s own blimping, the speed of your middles expansion has risen and with it that of your limbs.

 You felt like a balloon more than anything else. The gas inside not paying attention to lungs or stomachs, chambers or ventricles. It traveled through, and pressed out against the skin, rounding out even your back, beginning to creep into your neck. And just as these thoughts of comparison rise in your head, you feel a very curious feeling beneath you. A feeling that seems as if it wants to make you move upwards. And extremely slowly, you feel yourself rise.

Between aisles, it’s only a matter of seconds before your round body is exposed to the rest of the store, but you count it by the rows of the aisle. Row two, you finally notice the toiletries you were going to buy when you first came in. Your thighs feel like tree trunks. Row three, you can’t make it out very well with the canister in your view. Even your hands feel puffy at the ends of arms the size of small tires. Row four, ziplock bags advocating small portions. It almost feels like a direct tease at you, with your tail and belly rivalling even the biggest bean bags.

Row five, the last row. You are too tense to pay it much attention. The canister stopped hissing. You at least don’t feel yourself getting any larger, but you have no mobility anyway. You know that even if you are spotted, they won’t be able to reach you before you float out of the reach of their ladders. Your body blimped at every point, no mobility, probably no dignity, you can only hope nobody recognizes you...