Claim to Fame

-Claim to Fame-
or -Rhapsody of the Rising Star-


Brenda Baker was striving to become an actress. With her long fluffy blonde hair, gorgeous blue eyes, and soft gentle skin, she certainly had the look for it, and an excellent figure to match. She may’ve even had the makings of a supermodel.

After having graduated from one of the finest acting schools in the country, she set off to find work in show business. It wasn’t easy however. Even with her experience and good looks, finding work was no simple feat. Without a good agent to help her out, she was turned down time and time again each time she sought after a role. At least that’s how it was until that one fateful day when she tried to audition for a role at Faxx Studios. Little did she know she was about to get an unbelievable offer.

“You want me to host your new show?”, Brenda asked in delight.

“That’s right“, answered Mr. Edward Faxx from across the desk, “I think you’ll be perfect to star in the upcoming children’s show I plan on airing soon.” The man opened up his desk drawer and pulled out a piece of official-looking parchment. Then he proceeded to lay it across his desk in front of her along with his pen.

Mr. Edward Faxx was the producer of the studio. He was a stout man, with a thick mustache and apparently a lot of money to spend. Stepping into his office, Brenda immediately found plenty of pricey décor in his work quarters. It must’ve cost thousands of dollars in the least, but then again, it only made sense. He had been in charge of the last several TV programs that had gone on the air from over the years and they had all been quite popular with the masses. The Rabbit Woods cartoon that had aired only last year had pulled in millions of viewers.

“If I can get your signature on the dotted line here“, he urged as he pointed to bottom of the contract, “then we can get your career started“. Brenda felt her heart flutter as she took his pen and began to sign. She had hoped for a minor role for one of his earlier shows at the most, but the chance to host a show right at the start of her career? This seemed too good to be true. She couldn’t believe it.

“Excellent“, replied Mr. Faxx as he took back the signed contract and rolled it up in his hands. “You’ll be starting tomorrow at noon. We’ll have your dressing room ready for you. Don’t be late now.”

“Um… Mr Faxx?”, she questioned timidly, “may I ask what kind of children’s show this is?”

Mr. Faxx merely chuckled at first. “Let’s just say if all goes well, it will be the biggest one ever in history.”

Brenda was confused but smiled anyway and decided not to ask any more questions. After all, it didn’t matter to her what she was doing really. This was her big break to become a star.


The next day, Brenda entered her dressing room around noon. The instructions she got eariler from Mr. Faxx were quite simple. Put on the costume hanging on the rack in her dressing room and meet up on the set at 1:00 PM. She made sure there was plenty of ample time to ready.

Her dressing room was larger than she had expected. When Mr. Faxx gave her a tour of the studio the other day, she thought she remembered these dressing rooms being smaller. Was she mistaken or had she simply been treated to a bigger room? Overtaking one end of the room was a vanity and makeup table. On the other side of the room was a bed, table, television set, and a clothing rack where there hung the suit Mr. Faxx had spoke of.

Her costume was unusual to say the least. A vibrant, soft pink bodysuit with sleeves that ended at the wrists and ankles with a big, matching bow for her to put in her hair. It had quite a cutesy look to it. At first glance, the material the suit was made of seemed like it was made of spandex but when she was tempted to give it an experimental tug, it found it to be even stretcher than that. Clenching the side of the suit and withdrawing her hand, she discovered that the suit could be pulled inches out of it’s original shape. While playing around with her funny new ensemble, she found wrapped around the waist of the bodysuit was a strange device, a belt of some sort. It appeared to be mechanical.

“What was it for?”, she wondered as she examined it closer. It’s gray plastic exterior stuck out like a sore thumb next to cotton candy pink fabric of the suit.

“Would she really be wearing something like this on TV?”, she pondered doubtfully. But she quickly dismissed such a complaint as soon as she brought it up. In the long run, she knew it didn’t really matter. She had received the chance of a lifetime and she wasn’t going to waste it arguing with the bigwigs over something as silly as a fashion flaw. Starting with her shoes and socks, she began to undress. She placed her casual ware in the corner of the room before taking hold of the suit once more. She ventured one foot into the strange garb, forcing it though to the sleeve at the opposite end before placing the other with it. With the suit around her ankles, she then proceeded to pull it up to her chest and finally, filled the remaining two sleeves with her arms With it’s flexible material, she had no trouble putting it on.

“An elephant could probably fit in this thing“, she jokingly thought to herself as she turned towards the mirror. She took the bow and placed it in the back of her hair, providing the finishing touch. Goodness, did she look silly, especially with that clunky belt hugging her waist.
“What kind of role was this for, anyway?”, she wondered as she looked at the garb again.

Having the urge to make a good impression on her first day, she had decided to get to the set early. She had gotten to the door and tried to open it but something was wrong.

Her door refused to open. Somehow it had been locked from the outside. She was stuck inside her dressing room.

“Somebody let me out“, she shouted. She waited for somebody to hear her but nobody came. She spent minutes yelling and banging on the door but there was nobody on the other side who came to assist her. There was nothing more she could do except to wait for the film crew to notice she wasn’t there and help her out later. Until then, she was cooped up in her dressing room. She stepped away from the door and sighed. What a first day of show business this has turned out to be.

But just she went to sit down, something strange began to happen. Out of nowhere, she felt the gray belt began to rumble, shaking against her waist. The belt had been turned on somehow, the machinery within clanking and huffing away but what was it doing? Feeling uncomfortable, she decided to try and take the belt off but as she reached for it, she was caught be surprise. Immediately, the strap of the device suddenly tightened and clung to her waist like a magnet, causing her to moan from the belt’s immediate squeeze. She pulled at it but it wouldn’t budge. To worsen matters, the huffing of the belt was getting louder, acting as though it were kicking into overdrive. She tried to pull it off but it refused to budge. Was this strange belt supposed to be doing this or had it started to go haywire. Either way, she found only one option.

“Help!”, she screamed at her utmost loudest. Help! But just like before, she heard nobody coming to her aid, at least not over the frantic rumbling of the noisy device strapped to her. She shouted again for some form of assistance but there was nothing. Her efforts were futile. Everybody else was probably waiting at the set while she was trapped inside, something weird happening to her.

Brenda was starting to feel strange. She felt a gentle, gaseous pressure stirring in her body and she was experiencing an odd bloating sensation. What was this belt doing to her? The pressure was getting stronger and stronger. It felt like air, building under her skin, stacking at a swift pace. She felt so full, her whole body being confronted by this immense building force but when she looked down, she couldn‘t believe it. Her belly was expanding, right before her eyes. She was plumping up.

She took focus off her growing belly when she noticed a pink ridge blocking her view. It turned out to be her chest, her breasts swiftly outgrowing their humble size.

“I’m inflating like a balloon“, she gasped as she began to place her hands on her growing breasts. She looked down as she witnessed the rest of her body start to swell.

Her belly was not longer flat but instead bulging forward and growing with no signs of stopping, becoming rounder and it wasn’t just her tummy and breasts but her entire body, all swelling to greater proportions. Her rear had begun to take a life of it’s own, cheeks and thighs expanding to a wider degree. She let out a gentle coo of disbelief, stricken by surprise by her impossible new figure. She offered her protruding right hip a firm push and heard a slight squeak from under her palm. Expanding at a monstrous rate, it appeared to be taking her entire backside with it, as it ballooned in harmony with her front, rounding her further with every passing moment she blew bigger.  

But soon she was distracted, once again by the top of her suit traversing forward ever so swiftly. Her breasts within were being blown to outrageous sizes that began to rival her own head making it quite difficult to watch the rest of her inflate.

Her vast bosom let out a squeak of protest as she attempted to press it down out of view. From the horizon of her breasts, she could spot the surface of her distending stomach stuck with the very belt that was inflating her.

The device was as frantic as ever, continuing to whir and hiss and yet leaving a slight impression around her middle. Her body began to bulge over the strap at the top and bottom as she continued to inflate. Every several seconds or so, the belt buckle would click as it’s strap would  somehow extend and slacken to fit around the inflating woman.

She was soon becoming just as wide, her hips and waist swelling out with no restraint, slowly turning her into a fuller sphere over time. The air building in her arms had become quite a burden, her hefty limbs breaking away from her body as they continued to fill, leaving her expanded chest to return to it‘s lofty position. Any remnants of her thin stomach or her slender hips were gone, all stretched into a bellowing orb that now made up her body.

Brenda didn’t know what to do. Moving about was now only a former luxury for her now. Her thighs were shrinking under her massive waist and her shoulders were now one with her round body, and at the rate she was growing, her elbows and knees were soon to follow. Her neck had disappeared, her chin brushing along the top of her expanding frame and for Brenda, it made watching herself inflate all the more harder. Her breasts, large and round only a minute ago, were quickly disappearing into the upper half of her body as they were pulled flat.

The last of her limbs had shrunken into her body. Her wrists and ankles had become no more.

She could feel a conflicting pinch into her skin. The belt had reached it’s limits. The strap wouldn’t extend anymore but she continued to expand despite it’s resistance.

“Ohhh“, Brenda groaned painfully as she felt the deep impression of the gray strap blocking her inflation. She couldn’t take it any more. The device was suffering as well. It’s thick strip being challenged by a gargantuan, growing woman. Slowly the edges began to tear apart from the expansion. With a loud bang, the durable electric strap shattered down the middle, and the belt shot into the wall, the mechanical buckle having busted upon impact. No longer confined, the inflated Brenda was hurled onto her gargantuan backside as she was immediately rocketed to greater dimensions, the crease at her middle filling out and allowing her to assume the form of a nearly ten foot wide sphere. She would’ve been entirely round had it not been for hands, feet, and head sticking out, the only features of her once proud body that hadn’t bloated out of shape.

Released from the troublesome device, she has finally stopped inflating but what was she to do now. She was huge and hardly able to move. “What did this mean?”, she wondered. Did this mean her dream of being a star was already over? Tears rolled down her cheeks at her looked at herself.

Her new size had taken up most of the room. She was so big, she couldn’t even see her feet. Her pink suit hadn’t suffered even in the least. It seamlessly handled the task of cradling the blimpish Brenda, leaving only her head, hands, and feet bare. Could it had been designed for this?

Suddenly, she heard the door click. At last, somebody was coming in.

“Please help“, she begged of the guest.

“Didn’t I say I’d help you make it big“, she heard. She knew right away that it was Mr. Faxx’s voice.

“Mr. Faxx?”, she asked. “What’s going on? Why am I so huge?”

“Well not to sound rude or anything, but that is the purpose of the BM5 belt after all.”

“The BM5 belt?”

“Yes. BM5, short for balloon maker, successor of it’s four pervious prototypes. The latest in non-computerized special effects.”

“This belt?”

“That’s right. We used something like this a while back when we were shooting our romance movie “My Inflatable Date”, which unfortunately never made it to the box office. Anyway, it generates an elastic-fiber gas and pumps it into whoever wears it in such high quantities that it actually causes them to inflate like a balloon. At least, that’s how I think it works. Leave it to the entertainment business to come up with stuff that can turn people into something they’re not, am I right?”

“I don’t understand. Why did you do this?”

“You’re starring in my upcoming show, remember? You, Miss Brenda Baker have been honored to host what I now like to call “The Bouncy Brenda Hour”. Pretty catchy, don‘t you think?”

“The Bouncy Brenda Hour?”

“Yes, that’s right. You’ll be starring in this show as Bouncy Brenda, the giant balloon woman. Who better to host a children’s show, may I ask?”

Brenda couldn’t believe any of this.

“I can picture it now. Move over, Mr. Purple Dinosaur. We’ve got somebody bigger.”

“You’re insane“, she yelled. “I refuse to go though with this.”

“Sorry dear“, replied the producer. “You signed up for the first season. Remember the contract? Like it or not, in this little studio of mine, what I say goes.”

“We’ve got twenty minutes until rehearsal. I’ll send for some people to get you out of this tiny, little room. I’ll be back in five.” And with that he left.

Brenda sat in her dressing room, tears lining down her cheeks. When she had dreamed of making it big, this wasn’t what she had in mind.


And so Brenda had gotten her first taste of the stardom, even though it hadn‘t turned out as she had expected. The Bouncy Brenda Hour had become a success right from day one. Each episode, she would be rolled onto the set where she would greet the audience through the TV screen and then proceed to the activities.

During Exercise time, Brenda would encourage the people at home to engage in “Balloon Aerobics” in which Brenda would bounce, bop, roll and waddle about and then ask her viewers to do the same.

During Learning Time, Brenda would be taken to a classroom set where she would put on a pair of fake oversized reading glasses and ask the children at home questions regarding every textbook subject from basic lessons like colors and shapes to elementary school topics like algebra and Spanish.

Near the show’s ending, Brenda would be rolled into a little bed and squeezed into a pair of blue woolen pajamas over the commercial break so that she could bid her audience farewell with story time before having to go.

During the credits, the names of the crew and cast would scroll past while the background would consist of Brenda filled to the brim with helium, floating in front of dreamy scenery, videotaped long before the show had kicked off when the screenwriters were tempted to experiment with their inflated host.

Brenda couldn’t stand it at first but then a few months later when she caught glimpse of her sudden success on an early news program, even she couldn’t find the logic to argue.

There she was on the news, Bouncy Brenda taking the world by storm. The news people had mentioned of millions of dollars worth of merchandise with the balloon woman’s name on it having been sold from DVDs and backpacks to breakfast cereals and toys.

She was rendered speechless when she saw the news video of the female news reporter interviewing a four year old girl who just joyously strolled out of a toy store with her mother. In her little hands, she was carrying a bulbous, pink plush doll of Brenda’s likeness in her hands.

What do you think of Bouncy Brenda, the Newswoman asked to the little girl.

She’s really big and fat, oh and she looks so puffy. She’s so cool.

Really? Would you say she’s cooler than a certain purple dinosaur?

What dinosaur?, the four year old asked in a confused manner. Her mother and the newswoman couldn’t help but laugh at her response. Then she turned to face the camera.

There you have it folks, the newswoman said towards the screen. It’s hard to imagine to what could’ve possibly convinced celebrity newcomer, Brenda Baker to agree to such an unusual and absurd TV role but apparently, it was a smart decision on her part. If her success continues like this, she may well become literally one of the biggest influences to ever grace our television screens.

Brenda couldn’t believe it. Being blown up like a balloon had made her into a household name.

It was hard for the Brenda not to take the instant success so well. Despite her blimpish new figure, for her, the fame and benefits almost seemed worth it. Recently, she had moved into a cozy deluxe condo in the hills, and it was quite roomy despite her immense size. Unknown to her, there was a part in the contract she signed that stated Mr. Faxx would provide a small group of servants to help her ease into her “bigger” lifestyle. She had to admit, it was nice to have people do things for her. When Mr. Faxx came to her new house one day to discuss a second season of the Bouncy Brenda Hour, she could hardly imagine turning him down.

“Well“, Brenda debated to herself, “even though I am enormous and I can‘t fit into my old clothes, I’m a star and people really like me. On the other hand, I can’t really picture myself walking down the street like this, but then again, with this deluxe condo and group of butlers, maybe I wouldn’t need to go outside much. But I may wind up never dating another man ever again, but really, I’d hate to let down all my fans.”

“Miss Baker?”, Mr. Faxx interrupted. “Have you decided?”

“Well, I… um… I would… uh,” Brenda stammered as she urged herself to search for an answer.

Minutes later, Mr Faxx smiled as he walked out of Brenda’s house carrying with him another signed contract.


Later that night. Mr. Faxx sat in his office discussing the entertainment lineup with the CEO.

“I’m glad we’ll have our Brenda for another year“, Mr. Faxx said to the CEO as he took his drink, “but we must continue thinking outside the box. This TV series might be a winner but I don’t want it getting stale.”

“What are you suggesting?”, asked the CEO.

“I was thinking… somebody new for the show, a couple of partners for Bouncy Brenda, if you will.”

“Are you saying we should fix that infernal belt and use it again?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. I’d like to hold auditions once more.” The CEO stared at him for a few seconds but then only shrugged in agreement.

“Very well then. I can’t argue with results“, he admitted.

The two of them clanked glasses to celebrate. The auditions for “The Bouncy Brenda and Friends Hour” would be only months away.


-End-
-Pakona-