The Carrier: New App Chapter I

<Author’s note: this is a work of fiction- any resemblance of any character, business, or intellectual idea to any person living or dead, real or prior business, or actual intellectual idea is purely coincidental and is not meant as a challenge to that name/work/idea/whatever.  Also, I apologize.  Ed’s Auto Shop closed down a few years ago- now it’s a Starbüchs.  Spelling and grammar errors that occur within dialogue are not errors- they are color. If you find lame sequels to tame, juvenile-minded adult stories offensive, you probably got this story by mistake.  Delete it quietly and move on with your life.  If you actually want to read this despite this warning, you are sicker than I thought. 
Enjoy.>

  CHAPTER I

         Ten years.  She hadn’t seen it in a decade.  Not since she made good on her word to destroy it.  It had nearly cost her her Junior year of high school.  It had nearly cost her her life, to be honest.  Ten years ago, an inconspicuous package had come for her in the mail that turned her life upside-down for months afterward.  The memory belched up from her mind like, well, a bad pastrami-and-mustard belch.  Dry but wet, light but thick, with a mild acidic taste and slightly disturbing smell.
No wait, that was the shredded beef next to her.

         ‘Dracheballonbauch’, the screen of her yPhone said.  Sandy knew what that meant, though she had never taken German, or Russian, or whatever language that was.  She’d seen this thing before.  Ten years ago she had taken a big plastic pendant- the ‘Dragon Balloon Belly’- out of its box, put it around her neck, and became one of the few people in the world to experience a quasi-temporal, sub-dimensional incursion.  Ten years ago, she’d been on a whirlwind adventure: an overprotective policewoman stalking her; a new boyfriend literally getting into her pants; getting kidnapped by a gun-toting drug mule named ‘the Carrier’; her best friend losing her virginity- getting pregnant- giving birth; all in the course of a single weekend!
         A quasi-temporal, sub-dimensional incursion, the Carrier had called it.  Sandy called it ‘a frigging big pregnant belly’- say the magic word, and whatever she touched was whisked away into a sphere-like balloon in her belly, bigger on the inside than out, but which actually swelled her actual belly the more she put in it.  By the end of that fateful weekend, she had Julia- her best friend-, Julia’s daughter, and the stupid pendant all stuck in her nine-month-pregnant-looking belly with no way of getting them out.
         It had taken a whole crapload of money and six weeks of waiting for another of the devices to come in the mail so she could get them out.  Six weeks of missed school- she told everyone she had Mono, ‘the kissing disease’.  Julia used the same excuse, which led to rumors that the two of them had become lesbians.  When she’d destroyed the pendant afterward, she vowed never to touch it, or anything like it, again.

         She sighed, then bent over and picked up her yPhone.

         The screen showed a perfect likeness of the pendant as she remembered it, down to and including the obvious plastic-mold lines and holes for the screws.  Green scales tinged with blue and little flecks of orange dotted right at the edges.  And those fiercely glowing red eyes!  Those eyes she remembered- they were the indicator of its power.  They stared at her now like two miniature suns from the screen.  Hesitantly, she put a finger down across her yPhone and dragged it across the surface.
         The dragon rotated beneath her finger in the same direction, spinning on its axis until she touched it again.  She swallowed hard, knowing that despite the mild disgust in her gut and her mind telling her to stop right now, her curiosity would win out in the end.  Eventually, she would have to at least check it out once.
         “Might as well be now,” she mused, then reached out and grabbed a large unopened bag of cheese.  She put her finger back on the effigy of the corpulent dragon, then hesitated again.  After another moment of contemplation, she squeezed her eyes shut and finished, “Screw it.  Transport!”

         Her phone made a little squeaky noise; she felt a long-forgotten-but-all-too-familiar pressure, like a tennis ball pressed hard against her skin… from the inside.  The pressure moved from her shoulders down her spine, then caused an electric sensation that localized low in her hips.  A ‘stretching’ feeling against her slacks and tightly-bound apron came next, along with the feeling of air gurgling away in her intestines.
         And then she burped, loud and clean!  When she opened her eyes, she sighed again and inspected her surroundings.  Everything looked more or less normal except for a missing bag of cheese and a slight but noticeable bulge beneath her apron.  She inhaled sharply, noticing the slight difficulty caused by the ball-shaped… what was it that was pressing against her diaphragm?  “A quasi-temporal, sub-dimensional incursion,” she thought out loud, then added, “a frigging cursed balloon-belly, more like it.”

         The sensations brought back a flood of memories- ‘sneaking into the movie theatre pretending to be a pregnant woman, actually carrying Julia and Kevin.  The kegger later that night, where me and Mike had our first kiss.  Julia and Kevin doing the wild thing- in my belly!  And that crazy cop who kept following me around- and good thing too, when the whacko drug mule ‘The Carrier’ showed up!  The incident in the theatre- I could have died!  I had to get rid of it before it did any more damage!’

         And yes, it had done damage.  Her grades, which had never been very good before anyway, fell sharply in those six weeks after her adventure; she never really recovered.  Her boyfriend Mike- probably gained because of the pendant in the first place- dumped her at the end of that school year. He was a college-bound Senior, after all, and couldn’t afford to be tied-down to a mere high-schooler.  He had gone on to be a champion wrestler in college, until he had completely obliterated a groin muscle, leaving him unable to do much more than stand for years thereafter.  He now ran his uncle’s movie theatre, back here in town.  Right back where he started.
         Even her friendship with Julia had suffered, as Julia had become a new mom and had to give up all the crazy things Sandy still wanted to do.  After they’d graduated, Julia went off to college, married her high school sweetheart Kevin ‘Joseph’ Miller, graduated with a BA in K-12 Education a year early, and started popping out more kids.  Five of ’em total- no wait, she had just had another one earlier this year- six little Millers living in Seattle somewhere.  Kevin worked for some software developer there, and made more money last year than Sandy had in ten.  Things turned out good for the Millers.
         But not for Sandy.  The trust her father had in her had suffered when she used his credit card without his permission to buy another of the blasted dragon pendant thingies.  That she was unable to explain: why she needed it; why she looked pregnant but wasn’t really; and why, after the thing finally arrived, she felt the need to destroy a $1200 piece of equipment she would only use once- put further strain on their relationship.
         Finally, when he had a heart attack late the following summer (from a completely different and unrelated set of circumstances), she had taken a job at the Hacienda Taquito to help make ends meet.  Ten years ago, she had locked herself into this dead-end job.  Her adult life failed to thrive.  Yes, the ‘Dragon Balloon Belly’ had done plenty of damage. 

         Now she was steaming mad.  “How dare that stupid frigging old man…” she reached over and grabbed a stack of tortillas, then shouted “Transport!”  And burped!  “How dare he drop this,” she hissed, holding up her yPhone, “into my life again?  Frigging dragon-balloon frigging pendant frigging grreaAGH!  How dare you come back, you little piece of shit!”  She shouted at her cell, all the while reaching for a box of onions, then grabbing hold of the mesh bag inside it.  “Transport!”  She burped again, loud and obnoxious, then stood there breathing heavily- even in the walk-in, she was working up a sweat, and her breath hung in fat clouds after each exhale.
         Then she looked down at her belly.  What had been a cute little pooch low in her hips beneath her apron was now jutting out from her frame like a woman 6-months pregnant.  Furious, she slapped at her own stomach, just as there came a knock at the door.  The sound surprised her, and she yelped loudly.

         “Sandy? Are you alright in there?”  It was Jimmy, and before she could move to block him, he was coming in!  Thinking quickly, Sandy grabbed the empty box that once held the onions, turned it open-side towards her, and thrust her belly into it.
         “What, Jimmy?!” she barked angrily, still a little winded but soaring from the endorphin rush she was experiencing.
         The pimply young man gave pause- something looked different in here, in her.  He gulped, “I… I heard you screaming, I thought you were hurt or somethin’.”
         Sandy bit her lower lip in frustration.  “I… I’m just mad because someone left this empty onion box in the cooler.”
         Jimmy gulped again- someone usually meant Jimmy when Sandy Parker said it.  “I didn’t do it,” he answered reflexively, “Probably Hunter did it.  He’s not here, by the way.  S’posed to be, but he’s not.  I checked the schedule.”
         “What, again?  I’m gonna fire that…” she fumed, waving her cell phone about and nearly dropping her box.  Composing herself, she added, “I’m having a ‘grr’ moment, Jimmy.  Anger issue.  I’ll be out in a minute, a’ight?”
         Jimmy responded with, “Well, the Delivery truck just got here, and it’s Hunter that’s s’posed to help you out. Not me.  Him.  But he’s not, like, here.  Like I said.”
         Sandy nodded slowly, “Riiight.  Go back to the make-table, I’ll take care…” she paused, as something suddenly perked up in Sandy’s mind.  “Delivery is here already?  He doesn’t normally come in until around four o’clock.”
         Jimmy nodded emphatically, “Oh yeah, it’s 4:18.  The transport guy-”
         There was a clatter as Sandy dropped her cell, a look of fright on her face.  “DON’T SAY THAT WORD!” she shouted.
         The young worker stared at his boss for a moment, slack-jawed, not quite sure what to say.  Finally, he reasoned, “Oh-kay.  I’m gonna go back to the make.  Lemme know if you need help, alright?”

         Sandy put a hand on her head- she felt a little light-headed, and definitely a little confused. After steadying herself a moment, she stumbled, still clutching her onion-box like a disguise (which it was), to the back door and opened it a crack to peek outside.
         As expected, the delivery guy had already unloaded her order by the back door.  It was common practice for him to unload, and then let her know he was there- because once removed from the truck, she couldn’t reject any of the order.  It was sneaky, low, and probably illegal.  Sometimes, however, he unloaded stuff she really liked that Hacienda Taquito didn’t carry- stuff she didn’t have to pay for but she could still use.  The company’s famous ‘Razzleberry Cheesecake Chimichanga’, one of her creations, was an example.
         Today wasn’t one of those good days.  She could tell just by looking that he’d unloaded too many corn tortillas, not enough flour tortillas, and wa-aay too much blend cheese.  And the kosher meat was sitting under the shredded pork.  And the local ants had already made their initial discovery of the fresh produce, which meant that a swarm of little black bugs was eminent.
         And she had no help.  She could ask Jimmy, except that he was hopeless when it came to anything except the make-table.  ‘And,’ she thought, ‘he’d see my fat ass pregnant belly and wonder what was going on.’  She stared at the pile a moment, thinking, ‘If only I had some way of picking this stuff up fast and moving it to the walk-in…’

         She looked over her shoulder to the walk-in cooler, then down to her yPhone on the floor in front of the door.  Then she rolled her eyes, and let the corner of her mouth curl into a mischievous grin.  “Wow.  Context sensitive!” she exclaimed, grinning like a school-girl.
         Waddling back over to her cell, she bent down to pick it up only to find her vision obscured. She turned a little to the left, trying to lean over her belly to see it.  When she finally could, she bent over again, only to have it fall out of her sight again. After a few more feeble attempts at this she dropped the onion-box, turned herself fully sideways, and knelt almost all the way to the floor and nabbed the small plastic phone.  Triumphantly, she stood and walked back to the back door and stepped outside.

         The delivery guy was waiting for her, leaning against the side of the building with a smoke hanging out of his mouth.  He looked every bit the slimeball she thought he was; greasy hair, food-stained work shirt, hat on backwards, beady little eyes.  His face was so forgettable, she found she could never remember his name.  Not that she’d ever really wanted to remember his name.  He’d tried hitting on her a few times, only to find that Sandy was married to her work- no time for ‘boys’. Still, she was female, mildly attractive, and he did not, as usual, have anything better to do.
         He looked like he was getting up the nerve to try another pathetic pick-up line on her again tonight, right up until his little eyeballs glanced down beneath her apron.  This caused his mouth to drop, sending his lit cigarette onto the clipboard he had in hand.  A panicked curse and twitchy dance later, he handed her a slightly scorched inventory sheet for her approval (as if she could refuse?).  Sandy noticed his awkwardness, and decided on the spot, ‘You know what?  Why not flaunt it while you can, Sandy? Nobody would ever believe him if he told on me, anyway!’  This was immediately followed with, ‘Told on me?! What, am I in Second Grade again all of a sudden?’
         So she thrust her belly out proudly, reaching out with both hands to grab the clipboard, then making a point to rest it on her belly as she made the redundant, ridiculous check-marks after each item before initialing each section, then signing the bottom of the form.  And while doing all these spectacular feats of mediocre bureaucracy, she kept glancing over at him, wondering what he thought of her little ‘growth’.
What she got out of him was confusion, mild disgust, and a look of betrayal- in his eyes, this object of lust he saw in her had either let herself go since last he’d seen her, or went against her principles and found some other guy.  Who had knocked her up.  Either way, he no longer felt interested in her, despite a weird stirring in his guts that suggested that in her current state she was more beautiful rather than less.  A ridiculous concept for him to comprehend.
         Seeing this bewildering mix of emotions before her, she slashed the last half of her signature and thrust the clipboard back into his hands.  “I need another box of queso cheese, two boxes of yellow peppers, and as many of those little Habañero packets you can find,” stealing a glance at his name tag, she finished with, “Bob.”  One word.  A thousand unspoken ways to pick on him.  He felt them all.  She promptly forgot his name.
         “R-right,” was all he could reply, as he realized with some embarrassment that he had been staring at her belly.  He dashed back over to his truck and clambered inside to pull out the requested items.  Less than two seconds into the truck, he heard her say something behind him followed by a very robust belch.  Chuckling, he returned with rest of her order; he found her standing exactly as she was before, next to an empty lot where piles of boxes once lay.  He looked around quizzedly for a moment before his eyes settled back on her belly.  Where she once looked like a small six-months pregnant, she was now, for his eyes to wonder, an overripe-mother-to-be.  With her apron pulled up and tied the way it was, her belly looked stretched absolutely taut, her chest resting directly on the shelf of apron before her.  She seemed absolutely glowing with motherhood, smiling like he’d never seen her smile before.
         And despite the stirring he was getting in his loins, he thought, 'Disgusting!' and turned his head away.  He hopped up into his truck and left without looking back, leaving her standing in the lot, slowly swaying this way and that, swinging herself around, her oversized belly moving like a pendulum as she held it with both hands.
         She felt… full.  But it was an exciting full- she felt exhilarated to have played this harmless prank on Whatsizname.  She felt a twinge of excitement over this whole ordeal- it was dirty fun without being ‘dirty’.  And though she knew the cheese alone weighed over 400 pounds- never mind the meats and produce- she felt only a fraction of that heavier.  She could probably run around the building without too much effort.  It was a bizarre feeling she thought she’d never feel again.
         She felt… tight.  Certainly, had she not pulled down her slacks before, the button would have popped clean off.  She had neglected to loosen her apron-strings- when her belly had inflated so quickly, it had pushed her slender waist right up under her boobs- everything seemed pushed up towards her neck, inside and out.
         She waddled back into the building, careful to look and be sure nobody was watching her from the front of the restaurant.  Bob she could fool; her employees were another matter entirely.  However, she found her employees diligently doing their work, which was a testament to her Managerial skills.  She snuck back to her sanctuary, a little full of herself.  Once safely inside the walk-in, she lifted up her yPhone and re-launched ‘Zu Dracheballonbauch’.  When the glowing eyes stared up at her, she touched the little dragon’s head and said in a firm voice, “Outside!”

What happened next surprised her…