Not bad...but I would have loved to read how the rest of the girls enjoyed an experience with the helium.

I've read tons of fetish stories in an attempt to see if i can get in on this underground culture, and I think Tina knows what's up. She nailed it with this story and I'm scouring the Kindle market to find more like this. Many forget to include actual details such as what happens to the body, or how the 'victim' feels as it happens, they focus too much on describing what is happening to this (Insert human here). Not Tina, she knows to describe the characters emotions and feelings.

We've all had that desire at some point. No, I'm not talking about the one where you want to grab a balloon, breath in all of the helium and talk like Alvin and the Chipmunks. I'm talking about transformation...something to come along and completely change our world...something that allows us to transcend what we once were and become what we desire to be. The process can be exciting, soothing, terrifying, gratifying, unexpected, pleasurable, or sometimes even painful. No matter how the transformation occurs, the result is always the same: something new for us to discover. Tina's well-written work here captures transformation and all of its nuances beautifully.

The story opens by throwing us right into the middle of Amy's life, efficiently giving enough detail to empathize with her character and hope for her situation to TRANSFORM into something better. Just when life seems to be at an all time low, a mysterious stranger that has a somewhat magical quality about him, being compared to "Santa Claus", and having knowledge beyond the ordinary, happens to appear, offering exactly the one thing she needs to turn it all around: a helium tank. Excuse me, cylinder.

I would like to note Tina's clever choice of words here and throughout this story. Amy refers to it as a "tank" with connotations such as utility, brutish, loud, heavy. However, the stranger lovingly calls it a "cylinder". The word itself invoking feelings of smoothness, gracefulness, I would even say sensuality. It's easy to miss, in fact it didn't really hit me until my second read through, but I love when something like this happens. One of my signs of quality entertainment that lasts is when I can revisit it later and find new things smartly and subtly placed that I didn't pick up on originally, perhaps because I wasn't old enough, wise enough, or just didn't have the mindset at the time. It gives me a new respect for the creators that add that level of complexity and not simplifying it for a general audience because when I do finally see it and appreciate it, I feel like I've grown as person. Well done!

Once Amy is back at home with helium cylinder, that's when the magic happens. It starts out innocently enough, fumbling with the equipment, just trying things out, filling one balloon and letting it go, until something begins to awaken in Amy, a desire to know the life of a balloon. For those worried that this book would be too "out there" for a sexual experience, I am happy to let you know that the way Tina writes these events reminded me so much of foreplay. Truthfully, the whole "encounter" had a fascinating sexual imagery to it. I found Amy's interaction with the nozzle to have a VERY arousing effect. Then, once the transformation begins, Tina goes into wonderful, explicit detail of every part of Amy's body, every sensation..."Imagine every inch of your body being touched, manipulated - fondled - at the same time..". I couldn't believe it, but I was actually being turned on along with Amy during her metamorphosis. With lascivious language like that, though, can you blame me? An interesting takeaway was that I was inspired with thoughts of how sex in itself can be a transformation, but that's another discussion for another time.

Tina uses some more clever word selection to describe the newly born Amy as being both full while simultaneously empty. While the full is obviously helium, the empty is the disappearance of all responsibilities, worries, needs, even the identity of her previous life. The old Amy is no more, magically transformed into the balloon she so envied. The ending was one of my favorite types. It provides a satisfying conclusion while also inspiring the reader to come up with what happens next, and maybe even writing the sequel themselves. The only thing better than a fantasy fulfilled is a fantasy shared.

I never had a fetish for body inflation before, but with Tina's expert wordsmithing, I don't have to have it to enjoy this erotic masterpiece. I rate this as a HOT for all sexually mature readers and lovers of quality erotica. However, if you do happen to enjoy this specific flavor, I think you will find she has given you everything you desire because she isn't afraid to really dive into the deepest desires of the fantasy. You may even have naughty thoughts if she experiments with each to make sure she knows how the fetish is supposed to "feel" firsthand. Oh my! Gotta go...a, uh, PRESSING issue has just RISEN up that I need to attend to before it INFLATES beyond my control! BUY THIS NOW!

Our heroine, "Amy", thirty-ish or forty-ish, doesn't seem like a happy person in the first pages of Tina Tirrell's fascinating new story. The minutiae of life seems to have gotten Amy down, soured her personality. She's the type of person who dreads doing the tedious but necessary things like preparing for a party she's hosting -- hence the last-second scramble to secure a helium tank -- and then internally gripes at the unfairness of a world that duly rewards her lack of planning. Turned down by one party-supply store, she imagines a helium tank she *could* have had loaned out at a party for an infant with a "fat head" and "huge dump in his diaper". All this, while wistfully envisioning herself as being "forever regaled as the one who pulled it all together and on time -- for once." Meanwhile, defeated, she ends up at an ice cream parlor stuffing herself just an hour before the party she's hosting for a friend's birthday is about to begin.

Amy is, in other words, a woman due for a transformation. A translation. Heck, a downright inflation. And a strange old man who happens to have a spare cylinder of helium provides just the ticket.

Ms. Tirrell's prose grows sharper and sharper with each published story. The quality is at literary-magazine level: "The empty balloon was like a caterpillar destined to be a butterfly, flying high above the earth, escaping it, granted an incredible, rare ability, fulfilling its absolute potential." The fetish du jour is a strange one -- body inflation -- but, as I described above, the author has a lot more on her mind than fulfilling the requirements of the fetish. The story implies a sort of blend between the sensual and spiritual, as the transformation allows Amy to feel something different, new, pleasurable, while leaving behind the annoyances and petty disappointments, both with the world and with herself, far above the dirty ground.

Fetishists will be delighted with Ms. Tirrell's faithfulness to their kink ... while literary readers will experience a delight of a different sort: the continuing development of a major talent.

5 out of 5.