HOME | DD

Description
body div#devskin0 hr { }

Previous: The Valve - Part 2

As the saying goes, you learn something new every day. Today's "something new", apparently, was that turning yourself into a living inflatable pool toy is pretty weird all around.
The most obvious thing, right from the start, was how much lighter I was all of a sudden... and how much heavier that made everything else seem. That didn't really sink in until Marcus made me prove I could turn back to normal - with a little concentration, I was able to make my right hand go from thin rubber to skin and bone, and promptly fell over because of it. Just a regular human hand, the exact same as it was every other day of my life, but attached to my balloon body it felt like a two-ton brick. I couldn't lift that hand off the floor until I let it go back to being inflatable like the rest of me, but after that I was back to feeling normal. Or at least, kind of normal.
I could tell that movement was different, for one thing. The air felt as thick as water, only without any buoyancy to hold me up. If I fully relaxed, my body settled into a video-game-style A-pose. Bending out of that made crinkles in my rubber skin, which felt weird if I focused on it but was easy enough to ignore. I was also squishy, at least until I got Marcus to help get a little more air into me. Without enough air, any force I tried to exert - or he exerted on me - made whatever spot was being pushed on collapse; too much air, and I couldn't bend easily enough to move around. With a little experimentation, we settled on a pressure that kept me firm but not stiff.

The next big weird bit came after we left the attic - me by dropping through the opening and bouncing painlessly off the floor below, Marcus by climbing down the ladder like a normal person. I started carefully walking down the hallway to the top of the stairs, wanting to see how my new body behaved in the pool, when I caught a glimpse of my reflection through the open bathroom door. It took a lot of effort simply to flick the light on, but when I did, I got my first good look at myself since the mysterious valve stuck itself to me.
My rubbery surface gleamed brightly under the bright light. The top of my head was a hair-colored cartoony approximation of my haircut. My clothes seemed like mere printed textures; as did my eyes, though they still moved to track what I looked at. Only my pupils were completely opaque, too - other than that, my whole body was slightly translucent. When Marcus stepped in behind me, I could see his reflection through my own. Somehow, that seemed almost weirder than my lack of strength.
"Man, this is so cool," I half whispered, peering closer at the details of my eyes. It looked like I even had little printed-on eyelashes!
Marcus, for his part, seemed to be warming up to recent events. Now that I'd shown I was still myself, and could go back to normal when I wanted to, his concern was giving way to some of the same feelings I was having. A change of heart that became clear when he picked me up one-handed and started carrying me downstairs over his head.
"Put me down, you manhandler!" I yelled in fake outrage, doing my best to swat at his face. It wasn't very effective.
"Hey, like you said, we won't have the house to ourselves for much longer. That doesn't leave a lot of time for admiring yourself." He grinned up at me. "But if you insist..."
He pulled back his arm... and a moment later, I was flying headfirst down the stairs.

Somehow we managed to get to the back yard without further shenanigans. Marcus hadn't brought a swimsuit, but we were about the same size and I'd told him to grab one of mine from my room. While he was changing, I'd played around trying (and mostly failing) to pick up random things in the kitchen.
The day was warm and still, without much wind. Which was a good thing, I quickly realized, as a light breeze almost knocked me over. Marcus easily climbed the barely chest-high ladder to the rim of the pool and dropped in with a splash. It took me a bit more effort than normal to get a good grip and lift myself up, but I managed it without too much trouble. Which led to the third weird (but not entirely unexpected) bit.
I couldn't reach underwater.
At all.
Even holding onto the ladder with one hand and bracing my feet against the bottom rung, I couldn't push a hand under the surface. It was like trying to reach through solid glass, except the glass was sloshing around. All the force I could muster only made my arm crumple into itself.
Marcus was as fascinated with my struggle as I was. At my prompting, he grabbed one of my hands and, with almost no effort at all, dragged my entire arm underwater. The water pressure felt like a vice squeezing my arm from all sides, without being painful at all. When he let go, my arm shot back to the surface with enough force to almost send me toppling from the ladder.
"That's so weird!" I laughed.
"No kidding! You really are just like a pool toy." He shook his head in bemusement. "I still can't get over this. You turned yourself into a pool toy."
"Hey, you helped too!"
Marcus splashed water at me, a spray of droplets that made a drumming sound as they hit. "You know what I mean. Just get in here." With that, he grabbed my arm and pulled me into - or onto - the pool.
Little waves passed beneath me, barely dented by my presence. I could actually get on my hands and knees, though it was like trying to maneuver on the slipperiest ice imaginable. The slightest breeze sent me drifting across the surface, and I found that I didn't have enough traction on the water to steer myself around.
Marcus lazily sculled in place, watching me flopping and sliding on my front, both of us laughing at my antics. After a minute of me trying to do things like sit or stand on top of the water while he shouted suggestions and quips, he kicked over to me and flopped onto my back. His weight dragged my chest underwater, bending my shoulders and hips at an angle that probably would have been painful if I still had bones. My chest was squeezed almost flat between Marcus and the water, the displaced air forcing my arms and legs to stiffen and making my face feel all puffy.
"You're moving an awful lot for a pool toy," Marcus laughed. "Shouldn't you spend some time just floating around? Get the authentic pool-toy experience, and all that?"
"All right, all right. Flip me over so I'm not just staring at the bottom of the pool, at least."
Marcus slid off my back, and I immediately went back to floating atop the water's surface. He flipped me over and flopped back on top of me, his back against my stomach and arms hooked under my legs and back. Once again I was bent at a humanly-impossible angle as the air in me tried to get as far out of the water as it could.
"You know," Marcus said with an exaggeratedly thoughtful expression, "you're a lot comfier as a floaty than as a human. Maybe we should leave you like this."
"Well! I'm insulted!" I laughed. "My own friend, mocking me! Anyway, if we did that you won't be able to have a turn. Trust me, it's super cool. Plus I want to see how it feels on your end."
"Oh well," Marcus sighed dramatically, "it was worth suggesting."
He grinned and closed his eyes, relaxing under the afternoon sun. Drops of water sparkled in his hair, on his face, on my rubbery skin. A slight breeze nudged me ever so gently, a moment later rustling the leaves of a nearby tree.
You know, I thought to myself, it probably would be nice to stay like this for a while. Not that I'd tell Marcus that, of course. At least until I got the chance to see what he felt like as a pool toy.