Beans

(PARENTHESES) indicate verbal cues
*ASTERISKS* indicate emphasis. more asterisks = more emphasis
[BRACKETS] indicate nonverbal cues and only serve to provide context for the sound design
More than one space between lines indicates a longer beat than usual, usually around an additional half-second per empty line.

X = Narrator
1 = some guy
2 = some other guy
3 = Kayla

[birds chirping outside]

X: "Well, today's the big day." I told myself.

As cliche as that may sound, this scuba trip had me shaking before I had even gotten on the bus going there. I really was excited.

Well, *was*. But I'll get to that in a moment.

Anyway, a big city bus sat somewhere around a mile away from my house, ready to take off in the next *30 minutes*. Figures... I make all my preparations the night before, ensuring in any way I can that I'm there with time to spare... only to completely forget about setting my alarm clock! I got an extra few hours of sleep in, but at what cost?

Whatever. I scramble to get myself ready, the preparations making things at least a *little* easier. [clothing sfx incoming] Shirt on, bra snapped together, shoes and then pants... and... I realize that I've hastily put on all my clothes in the wrong order...

Bra on, shirt, pants, shoes, and out the door. You'll notice that I neglected to mention panties. It seemed lightning struck twice. This had only come across my mind *long af-ter* I had rushed out the door, and I figured it wasn't too important anyway.

I make a quick stop at the local taco joint and grab a burrito, jam-packed with meat and beans. No drink, that would take more time and probably splatter all over my clothes. Even so, the pizza-faced teen standing at the register if I'd like "fries with that". With only 10 minutes remaining, I think my answer goes without saying. What kind of gentrified-ass Mexican food restaurant serves *fries*, anyway?

I scoff down the burrito between my lips, only a few drops of whatever-grease daring to spill out, thankfully hitting the ground instead of me. Now, I was hardly *faaat*, so to speak... (gets quieter) only 180...

[both are "muffed" from being in the distance]
1: That's a load of bollocks!
2: She's gotta be 230 at least! A real porker!

X: Huh?

HEY, WHO SAID THAT?!

[both run off]

Buncha losers...

(resume regular volume) But... yeah. I wasn't exactly the most in-shape. I was beginning to chafe, cramp, wheeze and all that other fun stuff by the time I got to the bus stop. Instead of one *hour*, I managed to show up within one *minute* of our departure.

The bus was packed full of people, but thankfully there was a sole seat remaining.

[bus revs up, before taking off. motor sounds for approx 5 seconds]

[intermittant "ba-dump"s as it hits some speed bumps]

I don't know if it was the sprint I made here or the bus ride itself, but a queasy sensation came over me about halfway through the trip. Must've shaken *something* up in that hastily-cooked el cheapo burrito, because something deep inside me was acting up...

[quiet belly groan]

Regrettably, this was a "gut" feeling that I chose to ignore for the time being. And no, I'm not apologizing for that pun.

(beat)

[more bus noises, slight increase in volume as they approach the destination]

[bus door opening, mild city ambiance in the distance]

The wheels finally screeching to a stop was a breath of fresh air to me. The salty scent of the nearby ocean had also breathed some life into my uneasy digestive system, granting me some much-needed, albeit temporary, relief. I still had this meat-bean trainwreck sitting inside of me like a rotten log, but at least I didn't feel *as* bloated.

So everyone's unloading off the bus, and there's a bunch of instructors waiting for everyone to get ready. Of course, the changing halls are absolutely *flooded* with people in a frenzy to find a suit for themselves. It takes me a little while, about 5 or 10 minutes browsing through S, M, L, aaand there we were. XL, just my size. Mostly a bright orange, with two black stripes going down each side of my chest. I begin sliding it on behind the privacy of a sliding curtain, when I hear a little sound, that I swore on my life did not come from the suit.

[toot] Toot.

Just that, a tiny little toot. I think my gut even creeped back a little bit in response. But again, despite all the warning signs, I latched on my airtight suit and headed outside.

[ambiance shifts to a beach with seagulls]

We were all split up into pairs afterward, but through what I can only assume to be some sort of *divine intervention*, I get this one girl. Let's call her Kayla. She looks all sweet- with her long black hair, hime cut in the front, lighter and untanned skin... she was about 2 or 3 inches shorter than I am, probably a few pounds lighter, too...

(yelling in distance)
1: You got that right!

X: (fuckin PISSED) SHUT THE HELL UP ALREADY! Don't you have anything better to do?!

(return to normal) Sweet and innocent on the outside, ice-cold bitch on the inside. Her convincing outward appearance was the worm-on-a-hook, and I was the voracious fish willing to take a bite of anything that came my way.

Up until then, my entire day had consisted of:

1. Rushing to make a razor-thin bus schedule
2. dealing with abdominal pains for hours straight
3. Trying not to rip ass, and in turn, make myself look like one too.

A visibly-friendly partner was just what I needed. She had a smirk of confidence on her face, as if she knew something I didn't... and boy, how true that was. Before I had the chance to really question her on it, though, she opened that mouth of hers and told me some sweet little lies. You know, generic small talk like "We're gonna have a lot of fun!" and "Let's make sure to stay close together so we don't get lost, alright?" Uh huh. *real* close.

Then we're off into the ocean. Big yellow canisters slapped onto our backs. The plan was to get out at around 2 PM- each suit was equipped with a waterproof LCD watch to let us know when that time would be- collectively have lunch at a nearby restaurant, then ship everyone home before taking on the next wave of the day's diving enthusiasts.

There was enough air in the tanks to last 4 hours.

My diving trip lasted a whole 40 minutes.

Remember that little "toot" I had decided to mistakenly ignore? Not even a half-hour in, I feel another one creeping down my system. Well, maybe a toot is a bit of an understatement for this, more along the lines of a mach 5 tornado ravaging through me. And ravage through me it did, filling every inch of my gut that it could. I had never felt more engorged in my life. Whereas the time spent tensing up on the bus was a mild bloat, this really pushed my innards to their limits and beyond.

I would have been a goner, a victim of my own negligence and ending up as nothing more than a misty cloud of miscellaneous viscera, had it not been for a certain form of... release.

[loud fart sound] bbbbbbBBBBRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIPPPPPPPPPPP

A mighty gust left my... alright, I'm just gonna shoot straight here. It was the loudest, longest fart I had *EVER* heard. EV-ER. Jetplanes had nothing on this, step aside Apollo 13. Seriously, how did I *not* launch across the sea floor like a
military-grade missile then and there? I'm sure there's some fancy mathematical formula explaining exactly why, involving friction and drag and equalization of forces or something, but you couldn't convince me a propulsion of that magnitude wouldn't have *some* sort of effect.

That said... it DID have an effect.

On my scuba suit.

My *skintight* scuba suit.

My skintight scuba suit with my ass-gas flowing in, and no valves or openings to escape from.

You can see the problem here.

I sure did, as the suit quickly billowed out to an enormous size. [toots after "fart"] Fart after fart, toot after toot, the rubbery material that had once clinged to my body like there was no tomorrow had become nothing more than a ball for me to X-pose in. All of my limbs were stretched outward in an effort to keep my hands and feet sticking out of their respective sleeves, which had turned into bloated goddamn sausages. This latex must have been top-shelf, since it stretched and grew to a massive... God, was it really possible to put into words? If I had to guess, probably something in the range of... hmm... 50 feet across? I bet Kayla would have that figure memorized.

But yeah... at this point I was kind of doggy-paddling downward in order to keep myself from floating back to surface-level. Someone who was *actually* my friend would have swam over to help out. This is where Kayla's true colors began to shine.

Kayla swims over, showing what seems to be a look of concern on her face. Reaches out with her hands, and begins (slow and emphasized) *feeling my suit up*. I kid you not, she actually gave my growing suit a flat-palmed patdown. I figured that she was just trying to push me away from any sharks or pointed coral, but there was also a shadow of a doubt in my mind as to what her *real* intentions were.

...

So here I was, 20 thousand leagues under the sea or whatever, a figure that would only decrease from there, my partner being completely useless, swimming had quickly become a non-option...

Just like the steady climb up the first incline of a roller-coaster, this girl's demeanor had rised my expectations for the rest of the day, only for them to plummet once *this shit* started going on. None of us were able to say a word to each other underwater, but I could tell that Kayla wasn't entirely invested in her efforts to "help" me. But, not like I had any say in the matter anyhow, so I let her guide me safely up to the surface.

Then, she opens her mouth.

She takes her diving mask off to open her prissy, thin-lipped mouth, and says this:

3: (stating the obvious) Gee, you're not looking too hot.

WELL *WOOOOW*, you THINK so?

Of course, I didn't say that out loud. Really wish I had, in retrospect. I offer a half-joking remark about that being an understatement or whatever "polite" thing I had to say. I don't even remember, I was just baffled at this girl's nerve. We exchange quips, when she says:

3: I have a way to help you deflate.

I raise a single eyebrow in interest. Maybe she *wasn't* so useless after all...

...then she whips out the pocket knife.

It's not like she's planning on actually stabbing me with that thing, especially not through a 5 meter radius of gas protecting me on all sides. But... there had to be some sort of consequence to what she was about to do... right? Maybe the suit would explode off my body and leave me bare-naked? Or maybe it'd just slowly let all the gas ou-

[knife stabbing through rubber]

Of course I don't get to finish.

[balloon rapidly releasing air]

Surprisingly- or not, my round mass began skipping and hopping all across the surface of the water like someone had replaced my air tank with a rocket engine. Not unlike a flat-faced rock travelling across a small pond. But instead of a small pond, it's a nearly-mile-long stretch of the Pacific.

When it was all said and done, I thanks my lucky stars that no cruiseliners were passing by. An entire party of people seeing me like... *this*, was the *last* thing I needed. Ended up landing on a small patch of sand below a forest area. This was definitely no beach, thing was only something like... 20? 30 feet wide? At one end was a pile of rocks preceding the forest, and on the other was nothing but blue ocean.

I laid there as time passed me by, my vision starry and dazed as all hell, when I see an oh-so-familiar figure looming above me.

3: So? How'd your first flight go?