Swimming Lessons--Pool Toy TF

Swimming Lessons—TF Story


“You want me to do, what?!” Monica shrieked.

“I already told you once, just get into the deeper half of the pool. You only have to go an inch, and we will gradually creep in that direction until you get used to the depth,” Tammy replied.

Monica gulped. She was completely afraid of the water, swimming and anything of the sort. She stared unwillingly into the bright blue color of the chlorinated pool, and grimaced at the bad memories it had brought back.

Monica stood at the top of the ladder of the water slide, shaking with fear and confidence. She knew that her parents were counting on her to conquer her fear of the seven-foot tall water slide and go down unharmed. She would make it down, and turn out to enjoy it after all. She imagined it, the splash of the pool against her near-naked body, the cool rush of the air that followed her in, and the bounce off the bottom to come back up to the surface with her mother and father both smiling and cheering. She summoned up the last few ounces of courage she had left in her, and let go of the guard rails. The water on the slide was too slippery for her, and she tripped off the side of the slide, face-first off of a six foot drop into shallow water.

The last thing Monica remembered from that event, eleven years ago, was that she saw the bottom of the pool coming fast. Later, at the hospital, she was comforted by her father and mother as they told her what had happened. She could hardly believe what she heard. She smacked into the bottom of the pool, avoiding deadly and paralyzing injury by an inch. After being out cold, she nearly drowned from the lack of oxygen covered by the water. She traumatized her parents after that living hell of an accident, and she vowed that she would reconvince herself that it was just a simple accident that wouldn’t happen again, and conquer her fear of the water. But that wasn’t looking like it would happen very soon.

Tammy was going to teach her how to swim this summer. It was eleven whole years since Monica’s tragic accident, and certainly by now she wouldn’t have to worry anymore. But worry seemed to be the only thing that existed in Monica. Any swimming trips, beach trips, and pool parties, would not need to be missed because she was scared of what would happen if she completely drowned. Tammy was here to prevent that as her best friend.

Monica, still creeped out by bad memories about what had happened years ago, was not ready to learn how to swim in any water that she couldn’t poke her head at least over the top of it. She asked Tammy, “Do I have to?”

Tammy rolled her eyes and said, “Of course you do! Do you really want to have to miss another fun beach trip or pool party with the rest of your friends? I would think that you wouldn’t.”

“Well, I do… But—“

“Listen, if you ever want to have some decent fun with your friends, you have to eventually conquer your fear of water. This is your life, and only you can conquer your own fear.”

Monica sighed. It was not a sigh like from relief, a poor day, or something similar. It was simply one of those sighs that you used when you didn’t like what was going to happen, or happening now. Monica turned back away from Tammy, and looked at the water, closing her eyes as if she was going to fall down and drown again.

Tammy, who now seemed very disgruntled, told Monica to “hurry up.”

Monica, closing her eyes, put one hand on the side of the pool, the other on her forehead. She took one slow, long dragged step into the deeper water and started grunting as if being pushed on all sides. She tried to take another one and the pain was getting harder and harder to bear. She stopped in her tracks with her head just above the water, scared to go on. She peeked out of one of her eyes, and closed them quickly again. She didn’t want to go further, and she told Tammy, “I can’t do it.”

Tammy, who was not amused, shrugged her shoulders, then waved an arm in front of Monica’s closed eyes to make sure that she wasn’t seeing it. Then she reached over to her hand, and in a rapid blur of motion, removed it from the edge, then pushed Monica further a few more inches.

Monica now was upset, and she rapidly started flailing her limbs around in order to escape from the darkness that was Tammy’s pool. She managed to force Tammy out of the way to move over and get in the shallower end of the pool. She shivered. Being in the pool where she didn’t know what was going on was plain scary. She didn’t want to continue her swimming lessons today, and she simply got out of the pool to dry off.

“We haven’t even been at it for an hour! Don’t tell me you’re ready to quit today already!” Tammy shouted to her.

Monica gave Tammy the look that said, “You know perfectly well what I’m going to do now.” And with that, she went inside.

Tammy, frustrated, got out of the pool as well, and dried off. She didn’t know what she was going to do about her friend, aquaphobic as she was. Tammy went in and tried to find Monica, but after realizing that she couldn’t find her, assumed she had already left.

She believed that she had tried everything. All the methods that got her less and less afraid of the deep end of the pool had failed her, and Monica was seventeen years old. How well this was going to end up was nearly impossible to tell. Tammy had to come up with some way of helping her fear the pool less. But how? How?  Indecisive on an option, she turned on the television.

Interestingly enough, the commercials seemed to answer her prayers. The man’s voice on the TV was advertising a nearby water park aptly named “Water World.” She would’ve thought twice about what the man said if she hadn’t been watching the commercial. For a short brief moment, the cameraman captured a few images of people going down a few of the bigger water slides on inntertubes.

Innertubes. That’s it! That’s how I’ll teach Monica how to swim! Tammy thought. If she went to the store and bought one for Monica, she could let her get used to floating in the eight-foot-deep spot of the pool. She felt like an accomplished scientist, coming up with an idea because of the television’s blare. So, she picked up the keys to her little convertible, and got in her car to drive to the supermarket down the road.

Tammy pulled into the supermarket parking lot near the back to get some exercise. Halfway to the front of the store, she realized that if she wanted to find the innertubes, she would have to go to the gardening entrance and go in through the side. That way she could just get there, pick one up, and leave quickly before the day was over. It would at least give Monica another chance at a swimming lesson.

She walked all the way to the home and garden entrance to the supermarket, and went to the sprinklers and pool toys section. There it was, all alone. One single innertube left on the aisle, and it was hers. Well, it was actually Monica’s, but she had it ripe for the taking. She started down the aisle when a man, about fifty, ran to the aisle and skidded to a hault. He was breathing heavily, having just run from another end of the store to this one, complete with a cart and a blank expression. Just like that, he ran into the aisle, apparently not noticing Tammy standing there, grabbed the last innertube, dropped it into his cart, then rushed off elsewhere.

It all happened a little too fast for her, but when she returned to her senses, she realized that her hope was now lost. She failed as a friend, and she could not do anything about it. She was about to leave, when there was something else on the aisle that caught her eye.

In a big aqua-colored box, big words gave life to the smiling dolphin pool toy picture on the front. “’Floating Free’ dolphin floatie. Uses new technology to create a nozzle with maximum air efficiency, guaranteeing the floating of your pool toy for years without deflation!” Tammy read. It was perfect, she thought. This would be what helped conquer the fear of water that Monica had developed that fateful day. She decided, half because there was no danger of deflation, and half because she knew Monica liked dolphins, that this was the best choice. She took it to a register and paid for it with her own money, asking the cashier if she could get it giftwrapped.

Box all wrapped up and ready for action, Tammy drove back to her neighborhood to give it one last try.

She pulled her car up in the street in front of her house, then walked a block down the road to give her best friend the gift that might change her life forever. She rung the doorbell, expecting to be greeted by Monica. Instead, her mother was standing there, looking concerned.

“Oh hi, Tammy. Monica is in her room, resting. She said that the swim made her feel tired,” Monica’s mom said to her.

“I see,” Tammy said. “Well, when you get the chance, could you give this to her? It’s a bit of a gift, from me.”

Monica’s mom glared at Tammy as if she had done something wrong. Then she nodded, taking the gift. “I’ll be seeing you later, Tammy. Have a good day.”

Tammy walked away from her house knowing that this was definitely a set-up by Monica. Monica knew that Tammy would be coming by again, and she was embarrassed to show herself. As Tammy was about to turn back down the sidewalk and walk to her house, Monica came up from behind, holding the giftwrapped box in her hand with a puzzled expression on her face.

“What’s this?” She asked Tammy with a slight smile.

“Why don’t you just open it and find out?” Tammy said with a friendly grin.

Monica just glared at her for a second, then tore open the paper on the heavy box. Then she looked back at Tammy with a frown. “A floatie? What do I need this for?”

Tammy told her, “I’m concerned. I think that this is the last and only chance that we have to get you swimming again like anyone else our age.”

Monica grimaced the same way she had earler, and cleared her throat twice before finally saying feebly, “…Okay.”

Tammy, shocked, thought to herself, Well that was more than I expected of her answer. She then smiled at Monica a friend to friend smile hoping that her sacredness would dissipate quickly.

They arrived at Tammy’s pool a few minutes later, Monica still shivering with the fear of the depth. “Relax,” Tammy said, “it’ll be okay. You’ll be safe, and if something happens, I’ll be there for your safety.”

“Okay…”

“Well, aren’t you gonna open the box and get your dolphin floatie out?”

Monica was obviously scared and upset. Tammy knew that she didn’t want to have to try to get in the deep end of the pool, but this was a thing that only the two of them together as friends would truly understand.

For a second time that day, Monica felt she needed extra coaching to do something quite simple. But she was going to give her fear yet another try that day. She pulled the tape off and opened the lid of the floatie’s box. She stared at it for a few moments, examining its shiny, folded proportions. With a sharp look from tammy, Monica shuddered and removed the pool toy from the box.

“Let’s see here,” she began to mutter to herself, looking for the plug to inflate her dolphin helper. She unfolded it, examining each of the tile-folded areas to make sure that there was a nozzle or plug of some sort. After she unrolled the tail, between its tips was an oddly shaped nozzle. It still had a manufacturing tag on it that sad “Pull to inflate.”

She wasn’t quite sure how pulling the plug would work, and yet she tried anyway. After a few minutes of senseless yanking at the plug, she saw a little smaller text on the tag that said it was the tag she needed to pull. She felt nervous and embarrassed because she did it wrong, and finally just pulled the tag with a facepalm.

In a loud rush of air, the floatie began to inflate. It startled her for a second, so she stepped back while she watched. At first, the inflation process created nothing more than a little pillow of air inside the limp dolphin toy, but then  the inflation grew quicker. The hiss of the air rushing into the toy was much louder now, and the pool toy was beginning to take shape. The tail was half-full of air, the chest was rising, and the fins had already filled close to full. Quickening even more, the air rushed louder, and louder still, making her want to cover her ears from the increasing volume. In a flash the floatie reached a fully formed, bloated inflatable dolphin state.

It seemed to sit there, alone, expressionless eyes staring at Monica. She was going to at least try. The swimming was made to be easy when you had a giant inflatable pillow of sorts underneath you. For some reason, the courage in her was greater than usual. So she gripped the dolphin by the handles on the sides of its body and carried it into the pool, shallow side first.

Tammy, who was watching all this quietly from the sidelines, seemed proud that she didn’t have to get in with her to make Monica try and swim.

Monica was nearing the deep end of the pool, toy still in hand. Finally, she dropped it into the water, still holding onto the handles. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and said, “okay, here goes nothing!”

Tammy watched as the girl hopped on top of the floatie, riding it like the boy does in Free Willy. Using her legs to propel herself, Monica was actually in the deep half of the pool. Maybe Tammy was hallucinating? No, she couldn’t be. Monica was actually doing it on her own after several years of returned trauma of reliving her tragic accident.

But Monica’s cries of joy and surprise wouldn’t last much longer.

When she got to one end of the deep end of the pool, Tammy yelled, “Okay, turn around and come back!” Monica pushed off the wall of the pool, floatie’s face stretched into an evil grin. Tammy watched in horror as she saw what was going on. Monica was about to ask, when she noticed what Tammy was staring at. The pool toy was no longer moving. It was like Monica tried to kick and push, but the floating dolphin just held her there, motionless.

Tammy cursed in her mind and yelled out to Monica, “Monica, just wait where you are, and don’t panic! I’m coming!” She threw her towel to the side, ran along and jumped off the diving board to rescue her friend from the stopped motion in her side of the pool. Yet, Monica, who must not have heard Tammy shout, went right on kicking, and went right on being stationary.

And somehow through all this, Monica, or the Dolphin, was creating a current in the water, so once Tammy jumped into the deep end, she floated to the shallow end again, as if her rapid stroking was only propelling her in the wrong direction.

Tammy felt the illusion of movement as she stroked to Monica, faster and faster, not stopping any time soon, and she didn’t realize that Monica was sinking in the water and Tammy was not going anywhere. Suddenly, an odd sound, combined with an odd feeling in her pelvis stopped Monica’s kicking.

Monica ignored the fact that she was in the deep end to observe what was causing this feeling, and she squealed. She saw her stomach and groin were halfway pushing the skin of the dolphin floatie down. She looked a little closer to notice that it was not compressing as if an air loss was going on, but the big pool toy had opened a hole on its back, which was being corked closed by Monica’s body. She was falling into the toy, or it was pulling her in. Either way, Monica was absolutely horrified, and she screamed for help again, deep water becoming increasingly obvious.

As Monica’s helpless body began to gravitate closer to the surface of the water, she started to cry, in the middle of her screams. She turned and looked at Tammy, but Tammy was not where she was before. She was furious now, and so she tried to turn around and see if Tammy was swimming to her and rescue her from her impending doom, but Monica felt it harder and harder to move. She believed that she was just sinking into the depth of the unswimmable waters, but the pool toy beneath her was doing something else entirely.

Monica began to feel a little funny, like her legs were entirely and completely numb. With her legs, she could hardly notice that she was on the surface of the water, but the feeling was definitely there. Did she dare turn around? Did she dare look to the deep water to see if her legs were okay? Or would she just keep staring. Carefully, she turned her head to the back, eyes clamped shut. When she figured that she would be looking directly at her legs, she opened one eye slowly. What she saw was scaring her worse than her fear of water.

From about Monica’s thighs down, she could not see her legs at all. She screamed at the thought that she had no legs, and believed it was all a horrible illusion. She tried to calm herself down, but fear forced her eyes to remain open and she followed from where the tips of her feet would be up to her thighs, and realized that, just where her thighs were, her legs were inside the oversized pool toy. She screamed, “TAMMY! Get me out of the water!” and cried a bit more. Holding onto the grips of the floatie, she tried to pull her legs out, getting no response or movement whatsoever.

Was she becoming a part of the floatie, or was her fear taking over her conscious thoughts? Whatever was going on, she was unaware of, and she began to pull at her legs and get them out of the dolphin’s squishy, air-filled tail, but as she yanked and pulled, the pool toy’s slick surface slid up her legs even further, until she was forced into an upright position, waist down inside the pool toy.

She tried to press on the outside of the floatie and feel her legs, but it seemed that they weren’t there. She felt them again, and only the squeaky sound of the air inside the toy was there; her legs were nowhere inside to be found. By this time, she was too frightened to scream, too scared to cry, and to horrified to try and escape from her fate. The pool toy was eating her, and she had to do something about it.

She wanted to get Tammy to let her out of the water, but she was nowhere to be found. She tried to kick her way back to the shallow end of the pool, but she was reminded of the hollow numbness that she felt of her legs and was rendered unable to move. She then did something she never would have done otherwise, and she pulled her hands off of the handles to paddle her way back to the edge and pull herself out of the water.

The floatie, apparently had a mind of its own, and while she swam towards the wall, she could barely feel her hips and stomach sinking into the feelingless abyss of air that was the inside of the floatie. She neared the wall, rubbery toy taking over her breast and torso, leaving nothing there but her arms, shoulders, and head outside of the toy. She took a quick, flashing glance at the rest of her body, and suddenly felt really tired and scared again when she looked back at herself. She was almost a hundred percent taken over by the pool toy, and she felt it difficult to move, whole body practically numb. As she stared at the wall of the pool, she felt as if it were moving farther and farther away from her.

By this time, her fascination in what was going on, (horrified, anxious feelings of fascination) was taking over the memory she had of trying to escape from the water. She was floating now, and she didn’t feel like she was going to sink into the depth. Her entire body felt very light, very hollow, very full of air. Her insides felt as if they were going to cause her to burst, and yet, she felt nothing but the rocking motion of the water inside the pool. She reached down to the pool toy’s belly and squeezed it, partly hoping that her body would be inside, solid, and feeling. But to her surprise, there was nothing there. The only thing in the squeaking floatie was air, and the painted glossy surface of the perpetually happy dolphin. She squeaked it again, and felt a little like she belched, but was very entertained by the feelings it gave her.

Each time she gave her belly a squeak, her arms felt they were getting shorter, and being held in place by her airy insides. But the strange sensations of her body being squeaked and squozen were too much in place of her realization of her situation. Before too long, her hands seemed like they were the only things there, and her fingers had merged together to form a single, triangular, flipper-hand. She returned to her senses briefly when she realized she was no longer able to squeak herself, and began to cry again, hands completely motionless now as the numbed and hollowed while being sucked into the dolphin pool toy.

In no time at all, the only thing left was her head, still sanely sitting above her toy’s head, and she realized that it would be too difficult, or near completely impossible, for her to propel herself further with her head only. But she almost didn’t care anymore, and she didn’t hardly think much more about what she had left to go through. She just kinda sat there, staring forward at the wall of the pool, thinking partly how she wanted to get out, and partly how she wanted to stay in. The mix of emotions made her feel like she really couldn’t cry or scream any more, and she simply waited, even as her line of vision appeared to sink lower and lower, and her head feel lighter and lighter as it happened.

Monica felt less and less able to think straight, as her light head moved downwards, until she could no longer see with her eyes as they were, and her scalp was the only thing above the top of the floatie’s head. In no time at all, that feeling of the wind blowing through her hair, was completely gone, as she, was indeed gone. She searched for a way out of her empty environment, only finding total darkness and the odd sensation of her insides pushing strongly against the inside of her skin. Suddenly, the feelings began to change again, and she was confused even further.

It felt almost as if she was being filled with air, even more than was inside her now. Her skin and body began to feel more apparent, numbness leaving. Could this be it? Could she be leaving her floating dark environment? Her body inflated further, and at first she felt her legs suck together before getting larger and expanding to fill the dolphin’s tail. The air outside she could feel, but it was different. The way the wind and air outside of her was blowing against her skin made her feel odd again. The wind almost avoided her completely, even though it seemed to go against her skin. But why? She felt frictionless, floating there in the water, and she didn’t seem to be leaving the pool toy, but somehow, she felt the outside, barely, but everything had a slick, frictionless, rubbery feel to it, even the water beneath her merged legs.

As her legs finished filling the hollow inside of the pool toy, her belly, breasts, and stubby hands appeared to come next. They, too, felt as though the feeling was coming back, just before inflating to fill the inside of the floatie. And sure enough, her upper body felt much like her legs did, rubbery, slick, and cold. But in a rapid moment of sanity, Monica felt two things that definitely not present on her body before. On her upper back, just behind her breasts, was a big spike-like thing jutting upwards out of her body. It had a triangular feel, like her stubs of arms did, and it sat motionless, a part of her, but not like an appendage she was used to. Of course, she really couldn’t move any of her body, but this was different.

The vision of the dolphin flashed through her head, and she imagined the fin on the top of her back, just like the one that the floatie had before she swam out into the deep end of the pool. She didn’t know why, but she felt very calm at the thought. She couldn’t think of the way that it was exactly working out, and she let it seem like her mind was playing tricks on her.

There were two more spots on her back that she didn’t know were there before her unfortunate event. On her back, to the left and right of her big fin were two things that felt a lot like a tube leaving and reentering her body again. Like the fin on top of her, she couldn’t move these appendages either, but they were there all the same. She tried to call back the image of the dolphin toy, but it took much more effort this time. When it came by, she briefly recalled that the dolphin had handles, which she had held onto to get into the deep water. This must have been what she was feeling, unsure as she was. Her body appeared to feel through the shiny skin of the handles as well, just like any other part of her body.

The last thing left to expand within the floatie was her head. And no sooner did she remember that then it came upon her head and neck. Just like the rest of her body, the feeling of air filling her inside was going on in her head, and she realized it was happening for just a brief second. Her head got larger, her eyes moved onto her forehead, and her mouth and nose expanded outwards together, forcing themselves together while they expanded to fill the toy dolphin’s snout. She now hardly realized it when she couldn’t breathe anymore, but she didn’t really need it, her body was filled with the air from outside, and always would be. As the last of her head forced its way against the walls of the floatie’s head, she began to feel the slickness of her dark environment take over what little skin she had left at all.

Now, the inflation feeling she was getting was completely robbed of her body. She was completely motionless, and floating above the water, wind and air of the outside an afterthought of the feeling of her slick skin. She sat still, unthinking and unseeing. It didn’t take long before her sight returned, taking place on her forehead, eyes locked into a forward stare, unblinking. She could see her environment now, and she still felt light as a feather. What was she looking at? She couldn’t remember. She searched deep in her head, with all the effort she thought she needed to find out where she was. Staring at the table beside the pool, and the walls of the pool, she couldn’t remember where, who, or why she was where she was. She just stared blankly, and calmly floated along in the water, body filled with air, frictionless against the pool water and air.

Though she couldn’t remember really anything, that wouldn’t stop her from trying desperately to remember. And as she tried, the memories appeared to be gone—for good. Was she hearing something just now, or was she simply imagining? She focused what was left of her to think about what she heard. A faint voice in the distance: “Monica?”

“Monica?” Tammy’s voice asked.

Monica sat in silence, and eventually came upon her old name. Suddenly, everything in her head came back, for a short time. She remembered who she was, where she was, and why she was there, but how she had came upon her current predicament was what puzzled her. Tammy was giving her swimming lessons, even though she was swimming there in the deep water alone with no help. The floatie had done the trick, and she was able to swim in the depth without fear. She tried to cry out to Tammy, announcing her success.

Tammy thought she heard something. Was it a voice? She couldn’t say. She heard it again, a quiet, squeaky sound. Just like the one that the pool toy made as it hissed to a full position with air. She looked at it, floating there in the deep half of the pool, lonely. She must’ve heard the sound again, but at this point, anything could be Monica’s voice. “Monica, is that you?” She asked, and she went around to the front of the house.

Monica tried to answer her, “Yes, yes! I am here, in the pool!” But with Tammy’s leave, Monica’s memory of the situation went away almost completely, and she was but a floating toy in the water of the pool. She felt the frictionlessness of the outside world, and stared blankly at the wall, a permanent smile frozen on her shiny face. The water of the pool splashed against her, and she floated.