The Pink Lion Suit (Patreon)

You waited impatiently on the day of delivery. It was next-day guaranteed. So what if you bought it at 10pm the night before. You couldn’t wait any longer, not for your package to arrive; not for your muscles to grow on their own. You had tried everything under the sun to make yourself buff. You guzzled protein shakes until your stomach was fit to burst; you chowed down on meat so raw it could practically moo; you tried so many supplements from so many places, you haven’t been able to clear your email folder for weeks because of all the offers they keep sending you. All with promises of ‘get big quick,’ or ‘one little pill to get swole.’ You got up and paced to the hallway of your apartment, and stared at yourself in the long mirror near the front door. You weren’t the muscular beast you were destined to be, and you were running low on hope. The modest gains from your painstaking efforts were frustrating, but you had one last hurrah in you; and to your delight, the doorbell rang to announce its arrival.

The delivery man was given a signature and relieved of the brown box in his hands so quickly you left a dust cloud behind you. Door slammed, locked, and sealed. You cut open the box and pulled out a bright pink rubber suit. You shook it out, laid it over the arm of your sofa, and disrobed before pulling yourself inside. It was so snug, and unlike your previous experiences with latex, it slid on with such velvety smoothness that you couldn’t believe it was actually rubber. Some people might have called you insane for thinking a shiny bodysuit could fix your need to be meatier, but the proof was in the pudding. A friend of yours recently posted their gains online, and attributed them to this very brand of suit. As luck would have it, you bought the last one!

You were positively bursting with excitement. You prepared the air compressor you had bought in advance and hooked it up to the nozzle located at the crotch. It was a bit odd for the intake valve to be down there of all places, considering the emphasis was meant to be on the inflatability of the upper body, but you decided not to care.

You zipped up the suit. It appeared to be lion themed. Your friend had forgotten to mention that. It was a bit late to be feeling silly now, but the paw gloves and integrated socks in the outfit did look ridiculous. You also realized you had to wear the hood to let the suit take effect. You pulled it on and noticed it was in the shape of a cartoon lion with a big smiling grin, bright eyes, and a mane made of uninflated segments ending in little bells. Like a jester hat. You shrugged, and let the air flow.

Vrrrrrrrm… Hiss… Crrrrrrrrrrrkk… Crrrrrkkk…

You immediately felt your body tense. The wrinkles and folds in the suit ironed out in an instant. The seams became prominent, and dug in against the limbs and horizontal lines of the suit as the pressure mounted. You could smell something like ozone, mixed with a subtle sweetness. You told yourself it was just the smell of the latex, it was fresh off the factory line apparently. Most new products had that sort of chemical sugaryness to it. You were just too impressed by the craftsmanship of the suit to consider it might be odd.

And most of all, as you padded at your chest beneath the candy pink veneer, you could feel it… your body was growing in tandem with the suit. It was almost one to one. Your warm skin against the coolness of the polymer. It was working, you were pumping yourself up like a big, muscular balloon. Your pecs were the size of an average person’s head, and your abs were like evenly spaced balloons of their own vying for space. Things were a little out of proportion, your arms were admittedly a tad too huge compared to your legs, but you didn’t care. Why would you care? You were getting big!

‘So keep going.’

Somewhere in your thoughts was the notion that you should turn the compressor off. You wondered if something bad was about to happen, but you brushed it aside. You flexed your freakish arms. Steel girders seemed like toothpicks compared to these guns. Tensing again your shoulders seemed to blow up, and framed your head, making it look tiny by comparison. You kept playing with yourself by tensing different parts of your body, watching them inflate and deflate. You weren’t sure if it was still just air traveling through the suit, or if it was your body.

That’s a strange notion.

The lion’s face in the mirror moved. It blinked with its bright, cartoon eyes, and you laughed. “If” it was your body? Of course it was your body. You were always destined to be this big, you always had pink, light-reflecting skin. You turned to the side and watched as your legs thickened up to provide a counterbalance to your top half. It wasn’t enough to offset the sheer stupidity of your disproportionate upside triangle of a shape, but that’s fine. Balloons were meant to be a little silly.

The inflatable triangles which made up your mane finally inflated, and you could feel your seams starting to tingle. You turned off the compressor and removed the hose from your nozzle. Why were you in someone’s house? You looked around, seeing an unfamiliar pile of clothes on the floor. Man, who would ever be so tiny that they could wear an outfit THAT small.

The door rang, and you answered it promptly despite it not being your house. Another lion, identical to you, stood there. He was even more inflated than you were, practically ready to burst on collision with a sharp object. He clapped you on the shoulder, and you both intrinsically knew you had to return home. The circus was waiting, and it was past curfew for inflatable lions. You followed him out of the door, and joined a dozen more pink, muscular, silly balloon lions all bound for the circus.

The ringmaster was calling you home.