Tum Note (Patreon)

CW: Tums of all kinds and sizes, first person yet impersonal, cringe death note spoof.

There was national panic. At first, there were just rumors. A woman would be out in public, minding her own business, and then it would happen. Her stomach would swell up out of nowhere. The rumors were never consistent. Some say that she would look nine months pregnant. Others insisted that the woman would be so bloated that she would be rendered immobile, helpless to move under the weight of her suddenly supersized midriff.

Then they stopped being rumors. A news anchor blew up like a balloon live on air, her dress ripping to shreds from the sudden expansion. The broadcast didn’t end until after the anchor’s chair had cracked under the newfound pressure and the anchor had fallen behind the table, though her belly was still visible as it towered above her.

Now the entire nation was in a frenzy trying to discover what was causing these spontaneous expansions. At first, women were advised to stay inside, but that didn’t save them from becoming too bloated to stand. Now, instead of preventionary measures, the government is advising precautionary measures. Women are advised to wear loose clothing, avoid enclosed spaces, and stay away from sharp objects. While fear still lingers in the air, once it was concluded that every woman who undergoes the sudden expansion is otherwise unharmed, daily life began to resume.

Of course, I was never afraid. I was the one doing it, after all.

I found the book in my university’s library. It seemed strange to have a notebook slotted in with the religious section, especially one named ‘Tum Note’. Someone had clearly slotted their own random low-brow work in with the actual literature. Still… Curious, I opened it. All the pages were blank save for the inside front cover, which had several instructions. 

The first was that whatever woman’s full name that was written in the note will expand. The woman’s face had to be in the writer’s mind, avoiding problems with the same name. The second was that the expansion would occur exactly forty seconds after the woman’s name was written. The third was that a cause of expansion could be specified. After writing the cause, the writer would have six minutes and forty seconds to elaborate on the details. If a cause was not specified, then it would be from a sudden influx of air filling their stomach.

I didn’t believe the instructions at first. Why would I? A strange book in a random university library can create sudden, magical phenomena? Still, I just couldn’t get the idea out of my head. I’d always had a fascination with large, bloated stomachs. Maybe that was why the book found me. Maybe that was why I stopped at a buffet on the way home. Maybe that was why, when I saw a classmate who’s name I knew eating there with her friends, I decided to write her name in the notebook, specifying that she ate far too much.

It wasn’t until she went back for her fourth overfull plate that I was sure the book had worked. Her friends had all finished eating, content with their small food babies, but my classmate was ravenous. She would pick chicken bones clean, wipe up every bit of gravy with baguettes, put spare salad on her sliders, and drink every last drop of melted ice cream.

I didn’t eat much myself that day. I was too distracted watching my work. My classmate ate for over an hour, glutting herself to the absolute extreme. The only reason she stopped was because she could no longer get up. Her most recent helping of greasy buffet fare had wedged her into her booth. She tried to stand up, but her noisy, bloated stomach, which had long since stopped being concealed by her blouse, was pressed so tightly into the edge of the table that she couldn’t manage to free herself on her own. It was at this moment that she seemed to awaken from whatever trance that had caused her to overindulge. She had nearly fallen into a food coma on the spot, and had to be supported by two of her friends in order to walk. I could hear her belly gurgling so clearly as she walked by that it echoed in my dreams that night.

From then on, I harbored no doubts about the Tum Note. I tried it again the next day on a grocery clerk, not specifying the method but instead the size. Shortly after, while watching from the cereal aisle, I began to see her grow uncomfortable. She couldn’t leave her lane since she was dealing with customers, but it was plain to see just how much discomfort she was in. I finished my shopping and went to her lane to check out. From there, I could see that she was indeed the size I’d specified; roughly the size of an American football. It wasn’t so large that it caused a wardrobe malfunction, but it was still clearly visible beneath the tightly-tied apron of her uniform. She noticed that I noticed as well. The deep blush that arose on her face while she stammered out my total was what set my path in stone. I had to keep going. I had to see more. I had to do more.

I began experimenting. Nicknames didn’t count, nor did abbreviations. However, middle names weren’t needed. With this in mind, social media became my best friend. I could find hundreds of thousands of faces and names online.

I limit-tested. The Tum Note can’t make matter out of nothing. If I wrote that someone filled with a specific substance, they would enter a haze as they sought out that substance. If they couldn’t reach that substance within six minutes and forty seconds, they would default back to inflating with air instead.

It also wouldn’t allow me to deliberately harm anyone. I had no desire to anyways, but I did once try to make a particularly vile politician ingest her own weight in muddy water while on a live nature walk. Instead of drinking the nearby filthy water, she began to explode out of her clothes by filling with air.

The more fun experiments had significantly more successes. The Tum Note, while it can’t create matter, can bend the rules a great deal. A human stomach shouldn’t be able to store an entire aisle’s worth of soda, yet the manager of the bargain store I used to work at certainly managed to guzzle every last drop. She filled more of the aisle than the soda had on its own thanks to all the carbonation constantly building inside of her.

The limit for how long I could control someone was also quite generous. I was usually more limited by a woman’s mobility than by time or quantity. This made filling them with food rather difficult, but gasses and liquids were easy. I prefer liquids over air, so my favorite pastime became finding houses with garden hoses and ‘encouraging’ the occupants to enjoy themselves with it. They would lie there in their backyard in blissful ignorance as their stomach slowly crept across the grass, smothering gardens and filling pools with their sheer mass. It was also interesting to see differences emerge there. Unless I specified, the woman would subconsciously choose to either guzzle all of that water or they would slide down their panties and use the other entrance. I prefer drinking, but it was fun to see each woman’s ‘preference’.

The longest I can have someone inflate seems to be around six hours, though it might have been size that was the limiting factor. There was an office worker that a friend of mine was being harassed by, so I decided to try to truly test the boundaries of the Tum Note by ‘filling her with air for as long as possible’. Her growth was unbelievable. She was allowed to leave early thanks to an ordinance put into place for expanding women, but she didn’t make it home. She got stuck on the train after her belly grew too big to fit through the doors. Over the six hours, her malleable gut filled three train cars and took a further eight to deflate enough to be able to finally leave the train.

Size isn’t my favorite aspect to play with, though. Anything larger than the person themselves felt excessive to me, save for those blissfully peaceful garden hose inflations. I also don’t want to ruin people’s lives. It would be cruel of me to have the corner bakery’s owner devour her entire stock when I know she’s already having some problems paying rent, even if she is absolutely gorgeous. Instead, I simply had her eat a few baskets full of bagels. That ashamed scarlet blush once she’d regained control, the way she tried and failed to pull her t-shirt down to cover her engorged belly, the hasty apologies she gave between belches and small moans - that was far more enticing to me than a store-filling and finance-ruining gut.

I did mention that I had become a national terror, though. I was scared that if I only blimped the bellies of the women in my own city, then I’d be discovered. So I made liberal use of the internet. I would strike at random, writing names from women all over the country. I felt bad  about this, but not enough to risk exposing myself. Besides, some of the news stories I would find online had some very… ‘entertaining’ pictures and stories.

So far, my plan has been perfect. The authorities have no idea if what’s occurring is a disease, if it's some new mutation in the gene pool, or if they’re deliberate, targeted attacks. Apparently they’re putting together some task force to try and figure everything out, but I’m not too worried. If I’m bloating women all over the country, then how could I ever get tracked down? If it comes down to it, I can even use the book on myself to avoid suspicions. It’s too perfect.

There’s a news broadcast about the task force on right now, in fact - and the fools are having a female officer make the broadcast. I think I could go for a little fun right now. After all, if I can target the authorities themselves, then there’s no way they’ll catch me…

Right?

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Yeah, I dunno. My brain goes to weird places sometimes. Have fun!