Chris heads off to play with Jack, all of his balloons gone. Unfortunately for Jay and his friend, they are now permanently two small inanimate latex balloon animals about one foot each in size.
Jay, the purple dragon balloon, floats lazily against the ceiling bobbing occasionally as his helium filled body catches the breeze from outside the hall of mirrors. Matt, the orca balloon, is not far away from his friend and can only do the same thing. Both of their minds, held inside their latex bodies, are rapidly dumbing down the longer they stay balloons and in a week or so they’ll lose themselves completely and forever, if they even last that long. For the moment, though, both are at least aware of their conditions but can’t do anything about it.
Time passes and several young boys entering the hall of mirrors pass the two ex-boys turned transparent latex animal shapes. Some of the guys are turning into donkeys and some have other strange transformations taking place. All of them completely ignore poor Matt and Jay. After all, who cares about a balloon when you’re having so much carefree fun on Pleasure Island?
The helium inside of both boys starts to weaken as the hours go by in a slow haze, and by the middle of the afternoon both of them are no longer touching the ceiling, a little wrinkled and smaller from deflating, and can only reach halfway towards the roof. Their strings are touching the ground near some broken glass where earlier they were smashing the mirrors. To both Matt and Jay’s horror they realize that when they eventually lose their helium and fall to the ground, they’ll probably be punctured and popped. Both of them wonder separately if they’ll die if they burst. Time passes and they deflate a little more, small, wrinkly, and sagging sadly.
About that time an attractive young redhead enters the hall of mirrors and spies the two balloons and stares in wonderment. “Somebody lost their balloons!” she says excitedly, picking up both Matt and Jay in her hands and looking at them. “Wow!” the girl gasps, “they’re so cute!” She grins and cuddles the two latex creatures close to her chest and gathers up their strings to carry them off. Once they are out of the hall of mirrors and back in the sunlight Jay and Matt both grow warm and the gas inside of them expands again, pulling their bodies tight and firm and making them inflate. The girl watches this with delight and happily carries her two new friends with her, strings tied around her wrist, as she plays carnival games and eats junk food on the midway. She is oddly untouched by transformation this whole time, and eventually runs into a man selling balloons at the exit of the park.
“Hey!” he says there, “Those are some fine balloons, miss!”
“Oh, thank you!” She grins, “I found them and they’re just so cute!”
The balloon seller starts to talk to her and Matt and Jay catch her name as Megan. Megan confesses to the balloon seller she loves the things and has a whole collection of blow-up animals at home. The balloon seller, ever shrewd, sells Megan a box of special aerosol sprays for balloon maintenance. Whatever that means. Megan excitedly pays the balloon seller and walks out of the park still gleefully carrying Matt and Jay along with her as she reaches a hotel and goes up to her room, exhausted from a day of carefree fun.