Sissy Room

The Bug By RogueDratini (A Diaper Dimension story)   Pink flower petals dancing to the ground, fluttering down like butterflies. Adolescent Amazons in their identical school uniforms, the girls in their sailor outfits and the boys in their dark blue clothes that made them look like blocks. Tweeners made to look like preschoolers led by the hands by their Amazon parents, though where they were going ‘school’ wasn’t the right term, ‘reeducation’ was more apt.   Yamatoa, one of the most beautiful and progressive counties on the planet, for Amazons. For the Tweeners, it was a promise, subjugate yourself willingly and quietly, or go through traumatic brainwashing that left them less than a shadow of their former selves. And they were the lucky ones, for Littles like Hana Lee, there was no option. Worse off than the Tweeners who were told to put on their Pull-Ons, silly bucket hats, and uniforms in pastel primary colors or we’ll do it for you.   For Littles, like Hana Lee swinging her legs in her comfortable stroller as her ‘Mommy’ pushed her down the picturesque street, there was no option. For Littles, like Hana Lee naked save for her diaper, a faux pacifier gag, and the little blue bow that was wrapped around her head to signify to all passerby that she was a girl (as if her chest, albeit modest, or girlish face wouldn’t convey that fact), the only road led to a life of permanent babyhood.   All according to plan.   In a society as polite and noninvasive as the Yamatoans (as long as both parties were Amazon), rarely would Amazons go up to another Amazon’s Little and grab their cheeks or check their diaper. It was a social faux pa. A custom to keep hands to yourself in a country that was mostly city and large town based, an unspoken contract everyone held to keep the spread of germs to a minimum. In keeping contact low, this had transferred to keeping one’s eyes to their self as well. Which meant: a Little, like Hana Lee, was for all intents and purposes, invisible.   For others, it might be dehumanizing, being treated as an accessory. No more a person than a little yappy dog in a purse or the purse itself, an accessory to be admired, so long as ‘Mommy’ wasn’t holding her up to the world in an open invitation to invade Hana Lee’s personal space by the elderly or small Amazons. Any feeling like being dehumanized or invisible was just another tool to be used.   ‘Mommy’ pulled the stroller down a narrow alleyway, a few garbage cans with yowling cats that ran off as soon as the pair entered it, a handful of overgrown bushes, and a single empty can that rolled from side to side on the carpet of pink flower petals that fell from behind the large concrete wall.   “Does baby want her baba?” Hana Lee’s handler said aloud in a stage whisper, a cover up for what was about to happen if anyone nearby happened to see the Amazon pulling into rhe strange alleyway. Not that many would pay too much mind, they would most likely assume that a new mother was bashful about changing her messy Little’s diaper in public, even if the country itself encouraged the lack of privacy for Little bodies, no one in the public would consider it their business.   The handler unstrapped Hana Lee, she slipped out to the ground between the Amazon and the stroller, freed herself from the loose diaper and spat out the fake pacifier gag. Hana Lee wasn’t nude, however, her skin tone body suit kept the cool air from her. The Amazon snapped a fanny pack and a watch with a countdown for 15 minutes on to Hana Lee, tapped the comm link that was hidden inside the bow.   Handler hid her mouth and whispered, “Testing…” Hana Lee popped a thumb up in confirmation, Pulling away a loose bush, Hana Lee crawled under the perimeter fence into the property of the Yamatoan Prime Minister. She surveyed the scene in front of her, the yard was beautiful, a koi pond with enormous gold fish swimming, several classic Yamatoan style buildings with wrap around porches, sliding screen doors with intricate paintings adorning them, and the large sakura trees with their petals covering the grass and tasteful stone paths. An amateur might have found herself in such a location and pretended she was in an old black and white samurai movie, a shadow warrior of yore about to sneak into a rival warlord’s home for an assassination. However, unlike many other Littles, Hana Lee was a professional.   A spy.   The watch on her wrist ticked down from 14:57, the time it took her to crawl under the wall and get a feel for the lay of the land, down to 14:56. A pale blur zipped around the compound.   A run and jump on to the porch, Hana Lee slipped inside one of the sliding doors. The first room was a simple tea room, the only furniture a table with a few pillows around it. Hanging above, a lantern from a chain. Hana Lee hopped from one side of the corner, to the adjacent wall then flew to the lantern. Off hand gripping the chain, Hana Lee pulled a tiny drill with little ramps running down the grove into a compartment to catch the flying dust it would make, and created a small hole soundlessly, withdrew the drill and placed a powerful camera that was the size of a gnat and covered it with a special putty that would make it unsearchable from the outside.   14:46   1 room down, 37 to go.   She skittered in and out of rooms, dining areas, waiting rooms, bedrooms. Cameras were set up strategically, from other operatives Hana Lee already knew their location and danced around them, sliding into vents, climbing in and out of windows. A shadow that barely registered. A consummate professional like Hana Lee, the Little fly, had broken into military facilities with none the wiser, boarded planes with security around every corner, evaded the sight of entire teams of enemy operatives that were actively searching for her. This laizie faire secured compound was child’s play to Hana Lee. Little’s play.   9:25.   The most important room. The prime minster’s office. Hana Lee slid across the floor, under the desk where a PC tower the size of her waited. The cords were neat and organized, and she easily found three empty USB ports for her to use. Whipping out three compact flash drives, one between her fore and middle finger, between the middle and index, between the index and pinky, she plugged them in, then glanced at the watch. It would take 45 seconds to upload the virus that would give her employers access to the minister’s network, and download a copy of all files on the computer.   Sliding out from under the desk, she used the down time efficiently, installing two cameras in the room, before retreating under the desk, 25 agonizing seconds. The watch was silent, but she could hear the tick of a clock as the numbers went down. Tick-tock tick-tock.   A whir of static coming from her comm bead. “Baby done with her baba?” Shit! The code phrase for a premature arrival.   5...4...3...2...1…   Ripping the flash drives out, Hana Lee burst out of the room, and into the next door, just enough time to bug one more.   She wished it was literally anywhere else.   Rooms like this were the worst for Hana Lee. A long time ago, she had wrapped herself in an image of cool, collected, an unrivaled professional, rooms like this sent that image crashing down.   Standing in nursery that would be perfect for someone Hana Lee’s size, she felt a shiver go down her spine. Her quick feet slowed to a snail’s pace. Gulping, she stepped over a toy truck the size of her forearm. Tried to ignore the onesies and adorable sailor suits for Little boys that Hana Lee hated to admit would be too big for her, too small for many infantile garments made for Little men.   Torture, that’s what it was for Hana Lee to go over every detail in this over sized playroom that did its best to remind her what she really was to the world. Just a Little girl.   A mobile hung over the crib, catching her eye. Nodding to herself, that was the spot. She climbed on top of the changing table, trying to ignore the fact she was climbing over stacks of diapers, hoisted herself on to the padded mat, and jumped over the crib, grabbing a hold of the mobile and wrapping herself around it like a snake, her toned legs pressing against the thick bar underneath her. In her rushed movement, a toe had tapped on to the spinning wheel, a little lullaby played.   For a second, just a second, the music caught her off guard, she could see herself fall into the crib below, the wide white bars too slick for her to climb out if she wanted to. A happy little accident for her new ‘parents’ to find, drooling and soaked through her bodysuit, trying to grab the spinning mobile until she would squeal with delight on seeing her new Mommy and Daddy.   That fear ran through her as she drilled into the ceiling and placed the last bug she would have time for. Another team would have to come in and get the rest of the rooms. It would be shorter work, easier.   Hana Lee prepared to vault over the crib, as she jumped, her belly flopped into the top bar of the crib, she fell on to the mattress below, crying and pissing herself waiting for her new family to find her and comfort their new baby girl.   Just a daydream. Hana Lee jumped over the crib easily, having made numerous other, more difficult jumps, rolling into a landing and jumping out the window, sprinting through the garden that was straight out of a film.   7 minutes, 36 seconds to spare. Hana Lee cursed, she could’ve made better time. Should have.   Crawling under the hole, Hana Lee was abruptly grabbed by two large hands. The fanny pack and the watch were taken off, her bodysuit stripped away, the diaper she wore before fastened, only tighter. Hana Lee understood the precautions, the bodysuit was on her as a convenience before, save them precious seconds, the looseness of the diaper the same. They needed no such niceties now. A quick lie could cover up the real reason behind such things on the way to the op, but leaving them that way now was only asking to rouse suspicion for no reason other than Hana Lee’s comfort.   Strapping the Little back into the stroller, Handler leaned in and whispered. “How many remain?” Two hands, each finger extended, then flashing just one digit up. In a louder voice, ‘Mommy’ said in a loud, patronizing tone, “Good baby!” Before shoving the pacifier gag back into Hana Lee’s mouth.   Sucking in a quick breath, the spy prepared herself for the public once again. Adopting a dopey expression, swinging her legs back and forth. Like an idiot. Like a Little.     A trip to the convenience store and returning the rental stroller, Hana Lee, carried on the hip by her handler, entered their hotel room, decorated minimally, a small closet to the left and a bathroom on the other side as soon as they entered the door, a little kitchenette just past this with a small table low to the ground, one lone TV in front of a tiny sofa, a desk that was empty this morning when the two had first entered the room earlier in the day now had all of the handler’s equipment, sturdy headphones attached to a top of the line laptop.   Handler dropped Hana Lee and the bag of groceries off at the front and bee lined to her computer. Tip-tap- “All set.” She said to her partner as grainy images of inside the Prime Minister’s homestead filtered on the screen, her headphones tucked on one ear.   Hana Lee nodded and dragged the groceries into the kitchenette, then headed towards her luggage, pulling out a sports bra, dolphin shorts, and panties. Getting dressed, feeling unburdened as she untaped the diaper, having to dig her nails to rip off the tabs, she winced at the sight of what was in the corner. A folding changing mat in the wall, next to a complimentary pack of diapers and changing supplies.   It was a grim reminder to Hana Lee. The most popular reason for visitors to places like this in Yamatoa was how easily it was to adopt a Little. No where else in the world did they have such lax regulations. It was barely more than a single piece of paper, just sign your name, sign your Little’s ‘new’ name, a quick examination, and ‘Who’s your Daddy’?   Trying to ignore the elephant in the room, Hana Lee finished dressing and wandered over to the fridge, putting away the groceries, flinching at the sight of more complimentary items, two bottles of premade baby formula and a few jars of baby food. Unpacking the bags, Hana Lee wondered what they did with the left overs, was it all disposed or donated to charity, or was it so uncommon it almost never came up?   A pop of a can, Hana Lee cursing as suds spilled over the lip of the can of beer. Loudly, she slurped up as much of the foam as she could while grabbing a towel, throwing it to the ground and wiping away the mess with a foot.   Taking a spot at the table, Hana Lee noticed the handler staring at her, the Amazon’s full bodied blond hair swept away to one shoulder, one delicate eye brow raised, long lashes fluttering with either disbelief or disapproval.   “Yes?” Hana Lee sipped her beer, both hands gripping the Amazon sized can.   The Amazon entwined her fingers together, hiding her mouth before saying, “It’s a little early for drinks, isn’t it Baby?” Hana Lee shuddered at her code name, no matter how appropriate it was. Hana Lee and her handler didn’t need to know each other’s real identities, after this mission, they would never see each other again. It was safer if they only knew each other as ‘Mommy’ and ‘Baby’, no matter how much she wished the woman would call her by her real name, she would never know it.   Another sip from the can, and Hana Lee set it down. Getting up, she walked towards the window, the Amazon swiveling the office chair around to keep the operative in the corner of her eye. Hana Lee climbed on top of the inert economic air conditioner that sat just below the window and looked down. She could see the Prime Minister’s home just a few blocks away, the exact reason why they had rented out this particular room.   Lying, Hana Lee told the Amazon, “It’s good for nerves. Drinking calms me down.”   While the alcohol certainly did calm down anxiety, that wasn’t the real reason Hana Lee drank after missions like this. It wasn’t the first time she had to act like an innocent Little, there were even occasions when she would have to parade herself in frilly dresses and even frillier diaper covers for months at a time, just to have clear course to infiltrate one location for less than 5 minutes. For times like that and this, having a shot or a double pint of brew was more than cutting loose, it was an anchor, a reassurance that her brief stint as a baby was just an act, playing pretend, this was the real Hana Lee. The professional, mature spy.   “Save it for later.” The Amazon commanded with airs. “Don’t want any surprise visitors wondering why my Little reeks like a brewery.” Hana Lee rolled her eyes. It was always like this when working with Amazons, they think just because they can pick her up without breaking a sweat and were used as the public face that meant they were in charge. There was never any equal footing with an Amazon agent.   She took a rebellious swig of beer, in spite of knowing the Amazon was right and the glare it earned her. “Shouldn’t you be looking at the footage instead of watching your ‘Little girl’?” Wordlessly, the Amazon went back to the surveillance.   Taking her drink to the sofa, Hana Lee climbed on to the cushions with the grace of a cat, balancing her can with one hand while lifting herself up with the other. “If you spill a drop on there, you’re drinking from a nipple for the rest of the trip.” A mean spirited snap came from the Amazon without looking away from the screen.   Not entertaining the remark with another word, Hana Lee grabbed the remote and flipped on the TV, immediately flipping the channel when she saw magical girls wearing diapers. Hana Lee had heard about the Kawaii Chibi Sailor Babies, a show about Tweeners who used their magic rattles to turn into super hero Littles to fight off evil villains who want to make Tweeners and Littles more like Amazons, more than sheer propaganda she knew it was one of those shows that was rife with hypnotic messages and subliminal programming.   Many of the channels Hana Lee surfed past had shows like that, a minefield designed to make Littles and Tweeners conform to their role in society. Hana Lee wondered how much of the programming worked on foreign Littles who didn’t understand the language, though she did know Yamatoa so no matter what, she didn’t press her luck on anything that featured anyone with babyish clothing. She settled on the news, conforming to her own standards instead of theirs.   The handler took off her headphones and rubbed her temple, groaning. Hana Lee set her half finished beer down and asked, “Everything ok?”   “Hmm? Yeah, just have a headache…” The Amazon leaned back in the chair, grimacing.   Hana Lee thought back to their first meeting, the two had been introduced just before hopping on the plane to Yamatoa, She couldn’t remember a single thing the Amazon had ate or drank on the whole trip. Usually, Hana Lee gorges herself right before a mission, getting all the calories she would need and then barely eats if it only for a few days, she had assumed the same for the Amazon, but now she can see it was something else.   “This is your first assignment, isn’t it?” Hana Lee inquired nonchalantly.   The Amazon’s face went beat red. “N-no! I’ve been on plenty of missions!”   That made Hana Lee burst out laughing. “Hahaha! You sound like someone lying about being a virgin! ‘My spymaster is in another country you wouldn’t know him’! Hahaha!” The handler the Little a look that could kill, but didn’t deny it. Hoping off the sofa, Hana Lee grabbed the huge woman’s hand and started pulling her away. “Come on.” There a was touch of kindness in her words, an olive brach.   Glancing over at the computer, the Amazon let out an uncertain, “But we have to watch the cameras…”   Shaking her head, Hana Lee kept pulling. “I’ve seen it all before, you got too jittery to even think about eating or drinking, and now your body is ready to shut down. Happens to a lot of newbies, well, unless they have a vice, then they’re smoking like a chimney, drinking like its going out of style, or messing with some hot little honeypot in the next room and keeping me up all night. Nothing to be ashamed of.”   The handler insisted, “But the cameras!”   “Will still be there when we’re done eating,” Hana Lee finished, “It’s all going to get sent to someone who’s more qualified to parse through every second, anyway, so calm down. Eat, drink, or you’re just going to fall face first on the keyboard and delete everything while drooling on the keyboard.”   Face going pale at that, she asked, “T-that couldn’t really happen… could it?”   Rolling her eyes, Hana Lee pointed out, “We have a direct feed going straight to HQ, see this is why you need a break, your common sense is showing.”   Sitting the Amazon down at the small table, Hana Lee started spreading out some food for her, premade rolls of sushi that had gotten a bit messed up in the trip to the hotel, a bottle of water, and a can of beer. “Drink this,” Hana Lee tapped the lid on the beer, “Then drink this.” She flipped the top of the water.   “I don’t drink,” The Amazon said sulking.   Popping a bowl of udon into the microwave, Hana Lee shot her a coy look, “Oh good, another thing I can show you how to do.”   When she looked back, everything in front of the Amazon was still untouched. Bashfully, the Amazon admitted, “I don’t know how to use chow sticks…”   Hana Lee let out her exasperation. “I really didn’t think I’d have to show you everything. Why wouldn’t you learn how to use chow sticks before coming to Yamatoa?”   She looked like a schoolgirl caught in a lie, “I didn’t- I just thought there was more important things to learn…”   Once again, Hana Lee walked over, picked up the sticks and ripped them away from each other, delicately arranged them into the handler’s hand. “There, now keep the one on your thumb steady… The stick between your fingers move, kind of like you’re pointing at… Yeah, there you go…” The Amazon looked at the piece of sushi coming towards her mouth, then at Hana Lee in confirmation that she was doing it right, before feeling silly for looking at a Little like that.   “Mmm!” The woman covered her rice speckled smile. “That’s really good!”   A steaming plastic bowl was placed in front of the Amazon. “Good? You should try it fresh, it’s to die for.”   As Hana Lee retrieved her beer from next to the sofa, “Have you been to Yamatoa before?” The handler asked conversationally, eyeing the bowl carefully. “How are you supposed to eat soup with chow sticks?”   “Just eat the noodles and the stuff around the soup. At the end you can slurp it up.”   The handler popped a questioning look at her. “’Slurp’ it? Haha, kinda sounds like a Little dish. Do you want Mommy to feed you some and when its nice and cool?” She teased, holding out a noodle in front of her.   “Don’t do that.” Hana Lee didn’t shoot the opposing woman with a dirty look, just a frigid reply. She took a long drink from the can, set it aside and grabbed another beer from the fridge. “I’ve never been to Yamatoa.” She admitted. “Back state side, there’s a little sushi place off the coast that I go to, they serve portions that aren’t massive to me, and they don’t make me use a booster seat. Some times, the chef there will chat with me awhile. His wife will too if she’s not busy, always trying to set me up with their son, it’s cute…”   She didn’t mention that they stopped trying to set them up awhile ago. The son had gotten picked up a few months ago, some black market adoption racket that zonked all intelligence out of a Little’s mind in a marathon of hypno cartoons and recordings. Hana Lee had gone to the son’s ‘wake’, a remembrance of who he was. Hana Lee hated admitting to herself, when she saw the Little man’s picture, that he was handsome, her type, hated staying up at night, wondering ‘what if’. What if she had taken the chance to go on that date. Would the son have gotten picked up, would she have gotten grabbed with him?   Air rapidly escaped the next can of beer when Hana Lee opened the tab, as if in solidarity, the Amazon across from her did the same, the cans hissing in a chorus. “It sounds nice.” The handler said. Hana Lee nodded, drinking her beer, the Amazon copied her, then spat out her drink. “Ugh! That’s vile!”   Letting out a hearty chuckle. “It’s that way at first with drinking. Try eating a piece of sushi then washing it down. The flavors accentuate each other.” The Amazon did as she was told. “Better?”   She rapidly shook her head. “Nope! Pure cope.” But still she kept the beer in her hand and drank a little more, grimacing with each sip. “So… You’re pretty good with the rookies, huh? Do you work with a lot of them?”   “A few…”   “Do they like… set you up with all the newbies to weed them out?”   She shook her head again. “Don’t give me that much credit, they wouldn’t do that with a Little.” There was just a tiny drop of venom in the comment, enough that the Amazon would drop the subject. “You get put with who they think will work well for the mission. No more, no less.”   A few more bites of food in the silence. “I don’t like the noodles…”   “Udon.” Hana Lee corrected.   “I don’t like the udon. You want it?” The Amazon easily passed the bowl over the table, making Hana Lee envious of her long arms.   “I’m good.”   This made the Amazon narrow her eyes. “You have to eat something.” She insisted, her Amazon nature coming out, that internal knowledge that when it came to Littles they always knew what was best.   Holding firm, Hana Lee drank a little more. “I don’t like eating on missions, besides, the chow sticks are too big for me and I’m not using the ‘child sized’ sticks. They’re always pink and have Greetings Neko or have Mega Ultra Sentai on them.”   “You have to eat, we’re going to be here for three days!” She shook the bowl a bit, sending droplets of soup raining down on the table. “I’ll feeed you!” The handler offered again.   Hana Lee snatched the bowl. “I’ll eat it on one condition, you never offer to feed me again, do you understand?” The Amazon nodded, pleased with her victory.   The high tilt of the Amazon’s can told Hana Lee she was almost done with her drink. Frowning at the chow sticks held together with a pink plastic waving cartoon cat, Hana Lee despised how perfectly they fit into her hands and began to eat the luke warm noodles. A little bit ended up on her chin and like a well oiled automaton, the Amazon reached out to wipe the Little’s chin. Without looking up, Hana Lee said in a cold tone, “Leave it or I’ll stab your hand.   “Intense! I’m just trying to help…” The handler complained. She tapped her chin for a moment. “So, it’s a little awkward to call you ‘Baby’ all the time, and I’m sure you like it as much as you like calling me ‘Mommy’… What’s your real name?”   “No names.”   A huff of irritation. “Well, I’ll tell you mine, if you like?” The Amazon offered.   “You mean you don’t like me calling you ‘Mommy’?” Hana Lee shot her a pointed look. The blush on the woman’s face told her all she needed to know. “We only say things like that in public, ok? Should barely come up until we’re at the airport. It’s not a long mission, we just have to deal with it until then.”   The Amazon helpfully replied, “Well- you can call me ‘Mommy’ h-”   “No.” Hana Lee’s eyes raised to see the Amazon pouting. Sighing, “You can call me ‘H’, if you really want to.   “Oh! Then you can call me “C” for-”   “No names,” Hana Lee repeated. “Seriously, are you just out of school or something? The anonymity is in place to protect us, not just me, you too. If I get caught and end up on a torture rack you don’t want me to know your name so I can oust you.”   “But-” There was a pause. “Who would torture you? You’re just a Little girl.”   The awkward silence fell heavy on the room, besides cheerful jingle coming from the TV playing a commercial for a backpack for Amazons to carry their Littles in. “I’m not a ‘Little girl’. I’m a trained operative, like I assume you are, or had assumed you were until before this conversation. Drink your water, go back to mindlessly watching the surveillance. I’ll tag you out in an hour.”   Hana Lee started clearing off the table of what was left, chugging the rest of her beer in an attempt to cover her rage. “Here- Let me help you.”   “You’re on a mission, agent.” Hana Lee reminded her, “And its not mothering me.” C threw up her hands and went back to the laptop, water in hand.   There was a pleasant monotony to cleaning, Hana Lee appreciated. Tidying up to her felt feminine, like nesting, it was something a woman should do, not a little girl, who may clutch at her Mother’s skirt and try to help as much as she could, but in the end, it was a kind of play to the girl, an activity to preoccupy her time, to the Mother, it was serious business. Keeping the dishes clean kept the bacteria at bay, kept her family from getting sick, getting rid of trash kept the vermin from having a place to hide, a place to feed, kept them from scurrying up her children’s face and biting them, keeping the dust from coating her home freed her family from the eyes of judgment, a clean house was a clean family in the eyes of society.   This belief, this mantra, was all the justification the Little woman needed to clean. Maybe it was a thought process of a bygone era, women should do this men should do that, a relic of societal expectations, Hana Lee cared little, it was important to her. It made her feel mature. And no busy body Amazon would keep Hana Lee from feeling like a matured woman, not today, not yesterday, not tomorrow. She would abashedly stand fast in whatever kept her from being another Little rugrat glued to her TV watching hypno-toons until her Mommy came to tidy her up.   The room became dark as the night set in, C’s face turning blue as she stared at the screens, the TV playing in the background. Her cleaning done, Hana Lee retired on the couch, having retrieved a book she got at the airport. She recalled the look the attendant had given her when she set down the cover with a bloody skull with a knife protruding from the top, “Hell Hath Fury”, a novel promising titillating scenes interspersed with moments of suspense and drama. Hana Lee gravitated towards the horror section ever since she realized that a good portion of the time, they tend to out right ignore Littles, something about Amazon’s clutching their pearls at the thought of Littles being in any sort of serious danger ending in boycotts for serious scary stories unless they specifically revolve around parenthood or evil Littles killing their adopted families. Easy to avoid any scenes with diapers or play, although, Hana Lee wasn’t opposed to any stories that involved a crazed little going axcrazy on the Amazons, the only issue was they usually ended with ‘Finally she was peacefully asleep in her crib, never to move a finger against her Daddy again’.   She was a few chapters in under the lamp light, the 4th beer opened, enjoying the building of suspense between her two main characters, the TV shut off after the umpteenth commercial promising comfort in the new Kawaii Chibi Sailor Babies brand diapers. When she noticed C clutching her head again. She set her book down and gave the other agent a look of concern.   The Amazon’s face was growing red. Hana Lee looked at the empty water bottle, couldn’t be dehydration. She only had one beer, and probably was feeling it slightly, so no hangover. She ate plenty, so it probably wasn’t hunger, though she might have had some bad sushi…   “Hey!” Hana Lee cried out for C’s attention. “Hey! You good?” The handler couldn’t hear her, the headphones tight over her ears.   Cursing, the Little went over and tugged at her partner’s sleeve. Out of a daze, C gave Hana Lee a strange smile, before frowning in pain again. “Huh?” She asked when she pulled her headphones off.   C’s face wavered for a pick, acting as if she were coming out of a drunken stupor. “Huh?” She said again, a flicker of a smile when looking at Hana Lee.   “I asked if you’re good.” Hana Lee repeated herself. “You look like you’re having a migraine. I have some aspirin in my bag…” She began to offer.   Slowly, C pulled her arm away, giving a Hana Lee a look that was familiar put the agent couldn’t quite place. “I’m alright,” She assured her, a little too quickly. “I’m fine.”   The Little nodded, her face speaking volumes about her uncertainty with the statement yet offered no resistance. “I’ll take over from here, go relax for awhile. Go take a shower if you want.”   The strange familiar look grew on the face of the Amazon, “Do you-”   “I’m fine,” Something told Hana Lee she didn’t want to hear whatever suggestion her novice partner was about to make. “Just go, I’ll watch for awhile.” She sat in the seat for a few more seconds, as if she were processing new information, as still as a gargoyle. Irritation was growing in Hana Lee, but before she could voice it, the Amazon silently got up, appearing to take the Little’s suggestion and entered the bathroom.   Waiting a moment to listen for the water to start running, Hana Lee stepped away from the computer chair and rolled C’s luggage by the bathroom door, a friendly gesture. She looked over at the fridge, grabbing the last of the 6 pack, hesitantly wondering if she should save it for the Amazon, but shrugged and took it. If C, and that was a big if considering her reaction to the beverage earlier, wanted more, she could always go out and get some. It’s not like Hana Lee was a child that couldn’t be left unattended.   Making herself comfortable, Hana Lee tried on the headphones, but quickly found them too cumbersome. An image briefly appeared in her head of her with the Amazon sized gear on her head, hanging off her like a curtain, looking like a fool. Retrieving her own pair, a cacophony of sound, making it sound like a swarm of flies was buzzing around the room, filled the room briefly before she plugged it back in. No wonder the girl was getting a headache, Hana Lee thought, if she was listening to everything all at once.   Focusing on one room at a time, the sound became considerably more manageable. One by one she went through the cameras, looking for anyone important. Finding who she was looking for, she found the Prime Minister and her husband, standing and talking in the nursery. Setting her beer down, she listened in, with her elbow on the table she felt a thick pad of paper.   It seemed, at first, C had been taking carefully detailed logs of everything she had heard, dates, where X and Y would be located on said dates, logs on who was coming and going, then half way through, the details became sparse, like the agent’s attention had been else where. The log went from large boxes of texts, to one or two lines, then single words. Worst of all, the lines with single words weren’t pertinent to the job, instead, they were single, unrelated names. Each starting with ‘H’.   Hilda.   Haley.   Harley.   Hannah.   And a few more after that. Hana Lee couldn’t believe that brat, acting like she was doing something important but doing little more than playing a childish guessing game with her own name. And they said Littles were the immature ones!   Like the professional she was, Hana Lee put that to the wayside for the moment, putting the notepad to a fresh page and listened in on what the Prime Minister was talking about.   A meeting coming up next month, it seemed important, foreign ambassadors coming into the country… Hana Lee wrote down the information, only, before they could go on, that damned Little boy had stood up, or knelt up, on his hands and knees in the crib Hana Lee had nearly tumbled down into. The Prime Minister patted the Little’s head, and spun the mobile on the crib. In the headphones, she could hear the lullaby from earlier begin to play, and her eyes caught on the spinning mobile, the old biwing planes spinning above the baby’s head.   It must’ve comforted the baby because he laid down and just watched it. Listened to it.   The tap on her shoulder made Hana Lee jump. She spun around in the chair, seeing C in a fluffy white bathrobe, a towel wrapped around her hair with a stubborn strand peeking out from it. Earlier, C must have been wearing make up, her face considerably plainer now, but not in an uncomely way. “Huh?” Hana Lee said, a little like the way C had said earlier, pulling away her earphones.   “I said: Did you hear anything interesting?”   The minute caught back up to Hana Lee, though she hadn’t noticed she was lagging behind. “Huh? Yeah, they were talking about some ambassadors coming in a month. I have it written…” Hana Lee looked down at the notepad, pen in her hand, there had been a paragraph up above, but it seemed to end halfway through, after that, odd doodles covered the page, little stick figures of animals, people, a plane. Hurriedly, Hana Lee hid the paper from the Amazon’s view. “I think they’re about to say something else.”   C looked over her shoulder. “Who is?”   Looking back to the screen, Hana Lee only saw the nursery, the baby fast asleep under the mobile. “They were just there…”   “That’s ok!” C reassured the Little. “They’re probably going to sleep, it’s getting pretty late. You can use the potty, if you need to, I know I was in there for awhile. Honestly, didn’t notice until the cold water came out.”   Confusion rushed over Hana Lee. It was her turn to rub her temple. “I thought you just went in…”   Raising a hand, “Nope, wrinkled as a prune. Come on, you go potty and we can get our Pjs on.”   “No, I’m ok, you lay down, I’ll keep monitoring. Never know, the Prime Minister might have a phone call in the middle of the night.”   “You sure? You drank a lot of those cans…”   There was almost gratitude in Hana Lee when her confusion was swapped with anger. “Stop trying to get me to go on the potty! I’m a grown-up, I know when I need to go, thank you!” Hana Lin spun back around and put the headphones on.   The pretty lights bouncing on Hana Lee’s face slowly pulled away. The hotel room was pitch black save for the TV, the intro music for the anime had just begun playing again, Hana Lee tried to inch herself closer to the screen, to watch the flashing colors as the transformation where the girls go from Tweeners to Littles played right before the title card read Kawaii Chibi Sailor Babies.   Her legs were tired, she felt like had been standing in the same spot for hours. There was a long creek as the folding changing table came out. Her mind tried to catch up with itself, but as her back hit the changing table, Hana Lee realized how tired and dry her eyes felt. Just a little rest for her weary eyes, then she could figure out what’s going on.   She’s only one! Sailor Chbi!   The anime theme and the lullaby from the mobile bounced around inside Hana Lee for awhile until the slumber consumed her.   Voices. Voices in her ears and morning light hit her eyes, the clinking of tea cups on a plate and the wafting aroma of said tea. She tried to move her arms, only to find she could barely wiggle about. There was a damp feeling between her legs, but that wasn’t a her problem.   A few more futile attempts to move her arms, and Hana Lee was ready to scream, but the pacifier in her mouth she only just realized was stifled her.   The voices in the kitchen stopped, and C popped into view. “Looks like someone awake!” Hana Lee was ready to cuss her out, swear at her, demand to release whatever was binding her down, only to forget that her pacifier was still in. To her credit, she wore a scowl on her face and let out her demands with adorable harumph sounds coming from her throat.   “Let me see the Little darling!”   Hana Lee stopped in her tracks, this was a new voice. Damn it! Back to playing the pacified baby. That must be why she woke up like this. C had a surprise visitor and dressed her down to meet expectations. “Here she is, Harper.”   There was an attempt to correct her, “Haaahaaa,” was all that came out.   An elderly Yamatoan woman sat across from Hana Lee, taking nearly all of the Little’s vision as her peripherals was covered by a thick hood around her face. “Awww, she is adorable!” The woman leaned over and pinched Hana Lee’s cheek. Did social contracts mean nothing to her?! “I’m a bit surprised, though… I wasn’t expecting a Yamatoan Little. I’m surprised you’re allowed to adopt her out,” The stranger chuckled, “You know we don’t go around giving our Littles to everyone, you know!”   “Oh! Is she Yamatoan? I got her state side, I have the plane tickets right over here…”   The elderly lady shooed C away with her hands. “Never mind that, I’m not accusing you of anything! I get the impulse. I’ve ran this hotel for decades now and I’ve seen thousands like you, dear. You met a Little who’s perfect, just the right size to fill the hole in your heart, but they don’t agree.” In am exaggerated high pitch voice, “I’m too big for adoption!”   The two share a giggle. “But then, what’s a new Mommy or Daddy to do? Just accept that answer? No, we grab that wonderful Little, after all, we know best for them…”   “Yeah…” Hana Lee tried to look up at C, that answer didn’t really sound convincing, more like convinced…   The old Yamatoan reached out for her. “Let me hold the Little thing.”   Hana Lee was swung back. “No!” C said in a protective voice. “I er- Sorry, I just- waited too long for her, I can’t bear to part for even a second.”   That elicited another laugh. “Yes, yes, you say that now, just wait until every second of the day its crying and screaming and you need that one minute to yourself to reset.   “Never.” C reassured her.   “Hahaha, I believe you. How many days do you have left here?”   The reply sounded a bit sad. “Only 2, I wish I could stay more, there’s so much to see! But… Even on vacation I still have to work.”   “You can always come back for a visit, my doors will always be open for you and your Little. I hope, though, as long as you’re here, you take advantage of our procedures. You have no idea how many horror stories I’ve heard about how expensive it is. At least get a mastectomy. You know,” The woman pantomimed snipping at her own breasts. Hana Lee recoiled as much as she could in her tightly bound prison.   C let out a polite chortle. “I don’t think that’s necessary. You can’t really tell, but she’s nearly as flat as a boy anyway!” Hana Lee let out the most ‘I never!’ noise through her pacifier.   “I don’t think she seems to think so! Let me tell you, though, it’s not just about fitting them into those adorable clothes. Little girls, they get this idea in their heads, that just because they have boobies like Mommy that means they’re big. Gives them a perverse feeling of being ‘sexual’, heehee! Can you imagine! A little being sexual!”   Hana Lee was moved to a different arm, and now only saw the older woman’s arm and the tea cups on the table. “But I read we should get one of the vibrators…”   “On that, I completely agree, but that’s less about sexual gratification and more about training. Reinforcing the idea that from now on, the only pleasure she gets is when she’s in her diaper. She’ll be a lot happier in the long run. Some Littles, from what I’ve seen, after a few decades of not getting any kind of release, will hate their diapers. Whenever they get a chance they’ll run around nude! It’s cute for pictures but please, save yourself hours of cleaning up puddles and stains and teach her to stay in her diapers.”   “Oh, but you were talking about procedures?”   “Yes, yes, we have the best doctors in the world, if you want a crawler, they can fiddle with her knees, if you want your Little to be immobile there’s a special shot. I believe you can get that in your country to, but the professionals who can do that have such a long waiting list. It’s best to just get it right out of the way. It’s very damaging to their sense of security to take away walking a year or two into their new life. Makes it so they can’t trust you. Imagine! Not trusting their Mommy to know what’s best.’   C let out a long, “Hmmm…” Like she was really thinking about it. “You’ve given me a lot to think about.”   The old woman started getting up. “Yes, well, I won’t keep you. Oh, did she like any of our shows?”   “That one with the Tweeners who turn into those adorable Littles in the cute dresses.” C answered automatically. “Last night, I found her staring at it for hours.”   “Ahh, I know the one, Kawaii Chibi Sailor Babies. I have a box of toys, I’ll bring one of the rattles up. Harper will love it! That’s a good one to get the girl into, you just have to be careful, so many Little girls will go to daycare and start whacking other Littles over the head with their rattles if they see them acting too ‘grown-up’, hahaha! It’s adorable, but can lead to petty squabbles.”   “Aren’t all Little squabbles petty?”   “Haha! You’re not wrong. It was nice to meet you, Cassie, and you too Harper. See you two soon!” A confused Hana Lee heard the sound of the door close.   Around her, Hana Lee could feel the blanket come undone. The chill in the room almost made her want it back on, the only clothing she wore underneath was a diaper. As soon as the pacifier was pulled out of Hana Lee’s mouth, “What. The. Hell.” She gave C- Cassie the dirtiest look she could muster.   “What?” Cassie said nonplussed.   “Flat as a boy? Vibrators? This?” She gestured towards the Monkees that hung low between her thigh drenched with her own waste.   “Oh… Do you want me to change you?”   Hana Lee could scream. “Why did you let that weirdo into our room? Why did I get swaddled and diapered? You know it could be one or the other!”   Cassie sighed, “I’ll have you know, I called the front desk because I woke up last night because someone had pissed on the couch while watching some silly hypno-toon and I asked for a replacement. By the time I saw you, you were so out of it you left me no choice but to diaper you and put you into bed. And when the owner of the hotel came to see my new Little, of course I made you look the part, gave you a pacifier so you wouldn’t start throwing a fit if you woke up, which, by the way, I’m glad I did, I heard the noises you were making, you would’ve blown our cover for sure.”   There was strong desire to try and punch a hole in the Amazon’s logic, a very strong desire. “Yeah! Well why did you tell her your name then? Doesn’t that blow your cover?”   “No? That was the name I put on the hotel registration. It’s not my real name. Why were you watching those cartoons anyways? You know those things will rot out your brain.”   “I didn’t put them on!” Hana Lee objected. “You must have.”   C threw up her hands. “The last thing I remember doing before bed is trying to tell you were drunk and needed to go to the bathroom, but you insisted you were a ‘big girl’ and can go whenever you want, so I left you alone to watch the feed. Next thing I know, it’s the middle of the night, you’re making a puddle on the couch and whining. I didn’t know how long you were going to be mush-brained, I did the only reasonable thing I could do, diaper you and go back to sleep. Speaking of which, get changed, you smell like a rest stop bathroom.”   Hana Lee’s hands fell to her sides. “I- don’t remember putting on the TV.”   “You were drunk, who told you it was a good idea to drink 5 cans of Amazon sized beer? Obviously you staggered to the couch after nothing was going on the computer, threw on the cartoons accidentally and got sucked into it.”   The Little looked down, ashamed of herself. “Sorry…” She mumbled.   “Don’t be sorry, go put on a fresh diaper!” C hissed, pointing to the changing table.   Folding her arms, Hana Lee pouted. “I don’t wanna wear a diaper!”   “Too bad! Because my Little girl is going to get a shiny new toy from the nice hotel owner soon and she’s not going to be wearing something an unadoptable Little is going to wear.”   “Fine!” Hana Lee stomped her foot down before she could stop herself, and wandered over to the changing table. Before waddling back. “I can’t get it off…” She admitted.   Rolling her eyes, C leaned over and undid the tapes, before Hana Lee covered her privates. “Really? Modest now? Couldn’t have been modest last night when I was changing your ass? Whatever… I’m going to go back to doing our job. Let me know if you need a baba, or do you not drink anything other than beer during missions?” Fuming red, Hana Lee shuffled back towards the changing table. “Throw away your diaper too.” C reminded Hana Lee without looking away.   “I’m gonna!” Hana Lee sneered. “Just as soon as I figure this out…” The diaper goes that way, no, no that’s backwards… Can I do this standing up? Oof! That just fell right off. Maybe if I turn this way…. And there!   “I did it!” The Little proudly announced, making her way over to the desk. The Amazon didn’t look towards her, too engrossed in her work. A little deterred, a little louder, Hana Lee said, “I did it!” Damn it, what’s the point of putting this stupid thing on perfectly if you don’t get praise for it? Hana Lee roughly tugged on the Amazon’s pants.   Pulling the headphones away, C looked towards Hana Lee, half annoyed half bemused. “What’s this?”   “I did it!” Hana Lee proudly put her hands on her hips, beaming up at C, ready to be told what a good job she did.   “Yup, I can see you did it. But, did you do a good job?”   Hana Lee looked down at her diaper, maybe the tapes were a little lopsided, and one leg was sinking lower than the other, but she had tried her best. “Yes?” She asked, looking up for confirmation.   Without saying anything, C picked up Hana Lee, without questioning what she was doing, wrapped her arms around C’s neck. Hana Lee was a little confused when she was dropped on the changing table. “Why we over here?”   Simply, “I’m fixing your mess.”   “I did a good job though! I always do a good job!”   “Let’s see….” C examined the work. “Your tapes are too loose-”   The Little nearly shouted, “But I can’t take it off if its too tight!”   “That might be the point… Going on, you didn’t wipe, you’re still super sticky, I’m gonna need to scrub my arms after this.” C pointed out while demonstrating with wiping down Hana Lee’s thighs, waist and everything in between very thoroughly. “You didn’t put on oil. We don’t know how long you’re going to have to wear this, so everything we can do to stop chaffing is needed.” The Little’s lips started to tremble, regretting ever asking for C’s opinion, while the Amazon applied the baby oil to every bit of the girl’s undercarriage. “No powder, keeps away the chaffing and makes you smell nice, very important…” She said as the Little’s whole bottom was enveloped in a cloud of the powder, she hated admitting how pretty and nice it made her feel.   “And…” C pulled the diaper between Hana Lee’s legs, till it was covering up her belly button. “One…” The Amazon pulled the tape on the left side of the Little spy until it was tightened fast, “...Thing…” And the right side. This wasn’t the first time Hana Lee had to wear a diaper, but it felt different, it was so much tighter than the others, or so it seemed. Every breath she took, her tiny belly, with her abs out, would take with it the diaper, the plastic edge tickling her side.   She was set down on to the floor, her feet feeling unsteady in the bulk spreading her legs. “Hey!” Hana Lee said sharply as she saw C pick up her used diaper.   The Little walked steadily towards the Amazon, grabbing on to her pant legs. “I told you I was gonna throw it away!”   C patted Hana Lee’s head. “Don’t worry about it, I got it.”   “No, no, no! I wanna do it!” Hana Lee held out her hands, her fingers extending in and out. The Little ignored the eye rolls that accompanied the sagging padding changing hands. The thing smelled disgusting to her, Hana Lee’s nose wrinkling, she must have been wearing it for awhile. Shuddering as she tossed her old underwear into the trash   Accomplishment filled her. She looked over at C, who was busy listening to that silly surveillance footage again. Hana Lee wished she would look over at her and tell her she did a good job, like she had after Hana Lee went through the process of installing those stupid cameras. “Good baby!”The memory played out in Hana Lee’s head, it hadn’t done anything for her at the time, but recalling it now made her feel funny, bubbly.   Hana Lee spotted the dirty table, tea cups with thick lines of lipstick coating the rim, the kettle with the cooling water inside of it, empty wrappers that used to have cookies. She took the dishes and one by and dropped them in the sink, tossed the wrappers into the trash by the handful, landing on the yellowed plastic and cotton inside. Eyes darted towards the Amazon, still ignoring Hana Lee, annoying her for reasons she couldn’t quite explain.   Sighing, a feeling of restlessness coming over her, Hana Lee looked down at herself, legs uncovered except the diaper that covered her crotch and half her thighs, her chest that lay bare, rising with every breath. Why had she taken her sports bra? Shrugging away that thought, she toddled towards her luggage, heading feeling fuzzy and heavy, hoping a few more clothes would help her feel normal, distract herself from that stupid Amazon in the corner of the room.   Unzipping the bag, she started pulling out clothes and tossing them aside when they didn’t fit her mood. The jeans, leggings, and shorts were easy to discard, none of them were going to fit around her waist with the bulk around it. The shirts were another story. They would do in a pinch, there just wasn’t something right about any of them. They didn’t quite encapsulate the vibe she was going for… This kinda worked?   It was more of a nightie, all things considered, the pink slip on negligee, the sheer silk fabric that hugged her curves, the spaghetti straps that showed off her lithe shoulders, the lacy hem that… Well, right now the holes that would show off a scandalous sneak peek at her upper thighs only revealed white plastic that was already quite apparent just below the nightie like the tip of an upside down ice ber, but the effect was more or less the same. It helped her feel more womanly, grounded her.   She chased that fleeting sense of normalcy. On the side of the couch was her book from last night, right where she left it. Hana Lee gave it little thought as she climbed on top of the cushions like she had the previous night. She gave the Amazon a quick glance, almost hoping she would look over at Hana Lee and tell her how good she looked, how cute her nightie made her appear.   Ignoring this desire, Hana Lee channeled her confused feelings into getting through some of this book. A welcomed distraction. The only issue with the task is how little Hana Lee could pour herself into it. For several minutes, she tried to force her attention to the words in black ink that lay on her lap, each time she found herself at the end of a page finding she hadn’t absorbed it at all.   Must just be a boring part… The Little tried to justify herself. Maybe skip ahead a few pages… Hana Lee found herself skimming more and more, taking in less and less each time. Finally she seemed to get to an exciting passage.   ‘The skin, scaled like a serpent with claws hooked and curved like a terrible bird of prey emerged from the mattress still wet with the blood of Caroline’s wounds, leapt towards the girl’s throat…”   Hana Lee dropped the book, suddenly not feeling like reading, her goosebumps raising the fine hairs on her arm. Before she could process her feelings, the TV clicked on, a white Kitty wearing a diaper not dissimilar to the one on Hana Lee, crawling on her hands and knees towards a blue penguin and black bat. With urgency, Hana Lee snatched the remote and tried to turn the TV off. She breathed a sigh of relief when the image faded to black.   And then flickered back on. The spy tried again, watching the light dim away only to turn back on with a vengeance.   “Kutomi’s Daddy helped her pick out her outfit. Greetings Neko, did your Mommy dress you?” The penguin asked, as if the answer wasn’t obvious. There was a calming music in the background of the show that made Hana Lee feel relax and sluggish. The feeling sent spikes of anxiety in Hana Lee. Vainly, she attempted to switch the TV off again, just to watch it repeat its trick.   Hana Lee did the only thing she could think of, tell her Amazon.   C was glued to the screen, she seemed to be writing something on the notepad before her, though Hana Lee couldn’t see what she was jotting down and C wasn’t glancing at the paper. “C!” Hana Lee tried to call for her. “C!” The jingling tune the TV played caught the Little’s attention while her hands burrowed and clutched at the Amazon’s pants. Her eyes reflected the skittering bundles of color over the screen, they had started to sing, Hana Lee stared at the scene unblinking and unable or unwilling to pull away.   Sense of awareness lost on Hana Lee, she didn’t feel herself picked up and placed in the Amzaon’s lap, the fingers running through her short hair weren’t actualized in thought, though it made her purr like a kitty cat.   “Baby? Baby? Harper?” A voice called out to her, only that last word emerged Hana Lee just long enough to utter anything.   A dreamy smile, the reply coming from someone waking up, “Hana Lee…”   “Hmm?”   “M’ name’s Hana Lee…”   Now the fingers running through her hair were joined with another caressing her chin. “That’s a pretty name.” The voice mused. Hana Lee silently agreed, not straying her gaze from the screen. The hand stopped tickling her chin, and ran down her nightie. “I like this too, it’s pretty and silky but…” Hana Lee wasn’t paying attention, she bounced her bottom on the lap of the Amazon.   Pointing to the pink negligee, Hana Lee corrected, “Sexy…” That only made the Amazon scratch her chin in thought.   Suddenly, Hana Lee was on her own two feet again, slightly sinking into C’s thighs as she was carefully balanced with the Amazon’s hands under her armpits. “I think Baby needs something a little bit more appropriate if we’re going to get a visit from that nice lady, isn’t she?”   There was a nod without understanding, not fully letting in that last statement. Hana Lee pointed at the TV, nearly losing herself again in the colors and music. “The TV won’t turn off!” She said in an accusatory tone, like tattle tale telling toddler.   A look of feigned concern that Hana Lee couldn’t tell was insincere. “Oh? Let me try…” The Amazon, picking up the Little, stepped over to the couch and tried to flick off the screen, Hana Lee watching intently, when it instantly fired back up, Hana Lee hid her face into the Amazon’s collar. “Huh, well how ‘bout that…”   “Hana Lee…” The girl was sat down on the computer chair, the impulse to spin in it was great. “Hana Lee…” Hana Lee looked up expectantly, almost surprised the Amazon knew her name. She seemed to be almost testing it, getting the feel for how the words rolled off her tongue. “I think I’m going to step out for just a moment, I need you to be a big girl for me and do two things, ok?”   A determined nod came from Hana Lee, ready to accept any task. “I’d like you to watch the computer for me, let me know if you see any monkey business when I get back.” Hana Lee glanced towards the computer screen, the funny music from the TV still in the background. She wanted to see the monkeys now but only saw the flashing images of the house she was in yesterday. “And I need you to eat something for me…”   The headphones were popped out of the audio jack and Hana Lee’s were replaced, for a second, Hana Lee could hear that lullaby that haunted her in her dreams, and then that’s all there was in the world as the earphones were pressed into her ears. Hana Lee sat on her rear like a good girl and stared at the screen, nothing else in the world until eventually a bottle was pressed into her mouth, hands slowly reaching up to hold it while she stared at the screen, the image going back to the nursery, to that pretty mobile.   The bottle in her hands had a chalky aftertaste, but the cream on her tongue was glorious, rich overtones and incredibly sweet ambrosia. With each suckle sending the marvelous liquid down her throat, a thin film coated her throat that grew thicker with each swallow, like a wall of paint getting a new layer added.   There was no telling, on Hana Lee’s part how much time had passed, how long had she been sitting there. The Prime Minister had come and gone with her Little boy a few times, though fortunately, as if it knew Hana Lee was watching it, the mobile remained spinning, a fantastic carousal that demanded all of the girl’s attention.   Hands were around Hana Lee once again, pulling her free. Briefly, when her head rolled down, she saw the bottle she had been drinking from abandoned on the floor, the swallow remains on the bottom and a drop hanging threateningly from the nipple ready to fall. She couldn’t remember dropping the bottle, or drinking from it, she barely remembered it being placed in her mouth. The passing of time was a blur to her, memories were getting clumped up and cobbled together.   “Hi, Hana Lee.” Something in the way she said it, possessiveness. Not Hana Lee, her Hana Lee. That said, whatever emotions conveyed in that greeting went right over the Little’s head.   Looking up into the face of the Amazon, Hana Lee’s confusion melted away, the waves carrying it back to the sea that was Hana Lee’s mind in turmoil. There was no need to be concerned anymore. Clinging hands held C’s shirt, a feeling of neediness and dependency that Hana Lee hadn’t had in as long as she could remember suddenly dropped on her, unwilling to gain control of herself.   Pressed against C’s body, Hana Lee conformed to the bumps and grooves of the woman, head placed on the woman’s wide (to a Little) shoulders. Briefly, she saw the TV playing another rerun of the anime with Littles in sailor onesies and diapers.   “Wah wah-” Hana Lee tried to say she wanted to be near the screen, only nothing came out. The thick coat of chalky cream seemed to have an effect on her vocal cords, they were as heavy and cumbersome as the rest of her body felt. Though, that wasn’t the only effect the cream had on the girl she would soon discover.   There was a bag on top of the changing table waiting for C and Hana Lee, a bright pink package sticking out of the top. Curiously, Hana Lee tried to ask ‘What’s that?’ little more than nonsense left her mouth.   “Mommy got you pretty new diapies.” C said intuitively, or maybe she was just stating it regardless of whatever her new baby girl had tried to ask. Either way, that new word, that powerful title, immediately went to work burrowing inside of Hana Lee. Any identity other than ‘Mommy’, C, Cassie, the handler, partner, wiped out, evaporated.   A final ghost inside of Hana Lee, the light inside of her balked at this. She scrambled to made her way to the top of her own consciousness, a corpse digging its way out of her own grave as dirt flew in her face, or in this case, infantile impulses and feelings that burned where ever Mommy touched her.   Falling on to the delicate padding of the changing table, Hana Lee cooed up at her Mommy, in what was quickly becoming her new normal, ripped opened the tapes. The music and sounds from the TV, the haunting melody of the lullaby, not only telling her that this was ok but whispering that without this care life would be empty. That’s all there was now, Mommy’s Little plaything. The natural order.   Repulse filled that last speck of Hana Lee’s maturity as it discovered the formula’s final trick. Her face tightened, her body tensed and arched, she pushed out the soft mess that had made itself known with no notice. The shell that formerly was Hana Lee giggled with relief as she fell back down on the changing table, a tiny dribble spouting from her slit making a little arc in the air down to the thirsty fluff.   “Was that it?” Mommy cooed above her, rubbing the Little’s belly with a slight pressure coaxing anything else out. Hana Lee did not disappoint. A little pass of wind, then a tiny additional pile dropped from her.   Head lulling back, Hana Lee’s eyes caught on to the flashing images on the screen, and became glued to it as Mommy finished with her messy chore. In the background, she could hear Mommy coo at her, give her bright affirmations that only seeped into her conscious. Both Baby and the remnant of Hana Lee’s maturity were locked into the show and became in sync, attention only taken away from it when Mommy showed her the new Greetings Neko diapers that she would be wearing for the next day or two, until she would inevitably need a new pack from Yamatoa’s wider selection or Mommy took her back to the states where the options weren’t quite as varied.   Brief recollection made Baby smile at the image of Greetings Neko, but fell back into the important matter of watching the Kawaii Chibi Sailor Babies stop the villain of the week from making them feed themselves. Babbles excitedly cheered as the Sailors beat the villain back as Mommy taped her into a fresh diaper.   Brought over to the glowing screen and plopped on the ground, the last bastion of maturity inside Hana Lee was transfixed as the show went into another episode, squealing in rage when Mommy ripped the negligee off her head, not because she was being disrobed against her will, but because she could only barely make out the scene through the thin fabric.   Mommy showed her a couple of the outfits she had bought in their short time apart, though only the onesie that was like the star’s of Kawaii Chibi Sailor Babies really held her attention for more than a fraction of a second and finally her binge watching was interrupted by Mommy threading her arms through a beige dress with a happy octopus on the front, then she was left alone until the second bottle of formula was placed in front of the Little who took it with no heed to what had happened with the last one. The liquid mess that had quickly coursed through her and the way the formula made her speech incomprehensible was unconnected as far as the Little was concerned.   In the background, there was a knocking on the door and quick words were traded. Mommy came over to Hana Lee with something hidden behind her back right around when the bottle was mostly drained.”Mommy has a surprise for you!” She pulled a rattle from Kawaii Chibi Sailor Babies that made Hana Lee bark out joy and reach out with uncoordinated movements for her prize.   All eyes were on Mommy as she played a game of keep away with the Little, smiling at the Little’s attempts to grab the toy. Hana Lee came to then went past the verge of tears, cries and tears of frustration met with a gleeful, sadistic smile from Mommy. She would hold the rattle just out of the girl’s reach, only to pull it further away when she inched closer. The game was torture to both Baby and the Little that still screamed out inside of her.   Until the the rattle was slipped out of Mommy’s hand and into Hana Lee’s hands. Mouth agape, she shook the toy, delighting at the rattle inside. A quick few munches testing the toys durability, then a few more for good measure when the mouth feel turned out to be so good.   There was almost more tears from the girl when Mommy took it away from her and she was lifted up, placed on Mommy’s knee with one of her hands balancing Hana Lee. “Mommy’s going to show you the best way to play with your new toy.” She promised, leaning in to whisper in Hana Lee’s ear, a devious glint in her eye.   Pressing the bottom of the handle, the rattle whirred to life, the head pulsing rapidly as the beads inside the head bounced against the walls, creating the music that Hana Lee would come to associate with her ‘special play time’. Ever so slightly, Hana Lee was leaned back and the toy was shoved between her diaper and her Mommy’s knee.   Friction between Hana Lee’s mound and the cotton caused by the toy made the girl moan in surprise, she bucked her hips to the pleasure. Mommy let Hana Lee get used to the motion, her body getting into a grove while the buzzing, rattling, music from the show, sounds of contentment and excitement, all blend together into Hana Lee’s own personal symphony. Then Mommy threw in her twist.   Knee rising, the bulb of the rattle pressed further into the plastic, Hana Lee’s grinding momentarily paused in anticipation of the new trick while the vibrations pulsed closer to her wanting sex. Then, a descent. Hana Lee groaned in ecstasy when her body bounced on and off the toy, a reprisal from the pleasure then the shocking reintroduction of it. Weakly, Hana Lee humped her Mommy’s knee and the noisy wand as the leg bound up then down, repeating.   A breathy voice leaned into her ear. “It’s better if you’re wet…” Hana Lee didn’t know whether it was her caretaker’s instructions or if the messages that had been subliminally given to her had weaved a web in her brain to no longer notice the signals her body gave, either way, her diaper flooded with warmth with no input from Hana Lee.   She found it true, the saturated padding yielded more to her, the hot plush of the diaper between her and the buzzing muted the pleasure, a little, but motion of everything cascaded into Hana Lee. The inhibitions inside Hana Lee’s inner maturity bent and bowed with her body, the orgasm that began in her diaper and pulsed through her body was the final nail on the coffin of the woman that Hana Lee once was.   All that remained was a mewling Little girl, soaked and exhausted. Toy turned off and placed in the Baby’s hand to shake and enjoy the sounds of while she was left to stare into the brain rotting glow of Yamatoa’s hypnotic program.     Two days later: Mommy and her Little girl, strapped in a baby carrier on Mommy’s chest left the airport after disembarking from the plane from Yamatoa. Mommy pulling two suitcases behind her. One, holding all of Mommy’s things, though it was lighter by one laptop, left in a trash as Mommy found a new, more important mission to over take, the other, completely refilled, anything left by the adult Hana Lee once was now stocked to the brim what Harper Lee would need.   The Baby, Harper Lee, pawed at her chest, making whimpering noises in her new favorite sailor inspired onesie and the pretty blue bow wrapped around her head that told the strangers passing by she was a girl. She did not take the procedure to remove her breasts as well as the ones to take away her walking ability or the ones to alter her vocal chords leaving her mute except for the noises that Mommy called adorable. The threads that sealed her itched and scratched her, and left her confused.   Mommy hushed the Little one, taking a hand off a suit case to brush away her new child’s pawing hands. The material the baby carrier was made of too thick for the Little to get to her front, but Mommy wanted to nip that habit in the bud. In time, the girl would get used the loss of her secondary sexual characteristics, further down the line, she’d forget she ever had them in the first place, a long with the rest of Hana Lee, her memories of exciting missions becoming little more than childish daydreams.   It was going to be a long day ahead of Mommy. Her home was not yet ready for her new Little girl, her surprise souvenir from Yamatoa. There would need to be a lot of work to be done for her Little crawler to be safe and happy. Of course, Harper Lee would stay out of Mommy’s way, the DVD box set of the entirety of Kawaii Chibi Sailor Babies that sat inside one of the suitcases would see to that.   There was a buzzing in Mommy’s back pocket. Pulling out the disposable flip phone she carried for work, she saw an unlisted number on the caller id. She smiled and snapped the phone in two, tossing it into a nearby trashcan. Mommy would need a lot of things for her and Harper Lee’s new life, what’s one more?

“When you were a kid, did you ever think that you didn’t belong? Like you were dropped off at your parent’s doorstep to live an ordinary life but you’re really a Princess or something? You’re supposed to be something else, something different?’ Melody asked the bespectacled woman with the graying, frizzy hair with a bandanna keeping the chaos of her curls kept, so thick it looked like a bird could easily use it as a nest.   Almost immediately she regretted her words. Melody had planned on being skeptical about her visit to this little hippie curio store, a friend of hers had told Melody that it had solved a few of her friend’s own issues when they were discussing issues a few weeks ago, Melody had just laughed at the idea that some old store owner could wave her hand and fix problems Melody had had with her own identity, problems that years of therapist couldn’t untangle. She just couldn’t imagine some exotic tea and meditation could instantly repair her own esteem.   The elderly woman nodded, her eyes magnified by her round glasses, a plume of smoke coming out of the clove cigarette between her fingers giving her wrinkled face a more mystical appearance, she looked wavy, like there was something more behind the smoke and kind smile. “It’s common for kids to think that way.” She took a sip of the tea that Melody had politely refused just a moment ago. “Is that why you’re here? Do you still have that fantasy?”   Resisting the urge to blurt out her thoughts, Melody took a more thoughtful approach, taking in her surroundings while she thought of what to say. Behind her was the curio store, between them and the patio a curtain of colorful beads, perhaps the most colorful item in this place. In the rest, there were earthly colors everywhere, dark green and brown dried herbs in brown glass and pots, books that taught people how to tap into their chakra and see with their third eye, little stands for incense right next to shelves full of incense out on display for those who wanted to smell before grabbing a box, crystals that reflected the candles burning light that promised to cleanse your aura in a glass case and a few dangling on black cords on small jewelry stands. And, who could forget the drug paraphernalia? Right next to the door in a locked case were pipes and bongs next to sweatshirts and reggae sweaters with a weed leaf on them.   The whole place stung Melody’s nose, the stench of incense and potpourri and clove cigarettes wafting around her, in a way, it reminded her of her old bachelorette aunt’s home, though it never reeked like this, just that it was a very old lady smell. She got the feeling that her clothes would need several washings before the smell went back to normal.   “Dear?” The hippie lady asked after awhile.   “Hmm?” Melody bit her lip, her insecurity asserting dominance in her mind. She was feeling silly and stupid sitting in this place. More the latter than former. She always felt stupid, and slow.   “I asked if you still had this fantasy?” She repeated herself.   “Uh- I should go, I’m just wasting your time. Sorry! Sorry!” Even as she stood up, Melody was making herself smaller, neck retreating down like a turtle, shoulder’s hunched, arms folding in, as small and unimportant as she could to match how she felt on the inside.   “Dear, please just sit down, I want to help you.” The older woman got up, much faster than her age would imply she could be, made several quick, long strides to be next to Melody, putting a firm hand on her shoulder to lower her down to the circular table with the tea set, one teacup steaming and the other empty at Melody’s refusal, and the large black ashtray riddled with old cigarette butts.   Still insisting, “It’s ok!” Melody said, even as she allowed herself to be lowered back down. “If this is about money, I really wouldn’t mind buying some candles or something- I think I smelled a vanilla one that smelled lovely! I hate wasting people’s time.”   The old lady offered Melody another cup of tea, with second, third, and forth thoughts, her hand raised and lowered and raised again, waving away to decline it. Shrugging, “You’re not wasting my time at all dear, I like talking to people and helping them with their problems. It’s something of a-” She let the a trail on for a second, “hobby of mine.” She said with a crooked smile, finally settling on the right word. “Now, you were telling me about feeling like a cuckoo bird.”   Melody felt her hand raise to her mouth, biting the quick of her chewed nails, emanating the nervous energy of a small dog, “Oh, well… I guess when I was a kid, I thought that, but-” She trailed off for a second, gathering her thoughts. “When I got older- that feeling didn’t really go away? Not like- that I should be like some silly hero from a fantasy story, but I didn’t… belong? But in the opposite way,” Looking around towards anything that wasn’t the face of the stranger, Melody couldn’t say for certain why this was always so hard for her to say. It’s not like she hadn’t described this feeling before, she’s said it countless times, to school councilors, to therapists, to dates, to her Mom and Dad when this feeling first appeared. She’s had a lot of practice with it. “Like I’m not good enough. For this life, probably for any other. I’m not, well, good at anything.” A moment of silence, under the gaze of the hippie lady Melody felt like she was on the verge of tears. “Maybe I should’ve just been left on someone else doorstep when I was small, or probably in a gutter or dumpster.”   She hated admitting that, Melody had grown used to the empty platitudes that usually followed her explanation, but there was always the underlying feeling that it was forced, fake words that only served to make the other people feel better, because they were good people that wanted to help and make others happier, unlike Melody, who only dwelled on her own hang ups and insecurities.   Melody thoughts drifted towards her day earlier, before she had come into the store. In her classroom, standing in front of her 8th grade English literature class, trying to keep a discussion on the themes of Frankenstein coming to a screeching halt, like she always failed to do. When she was a kid, Melody’s favorite class was language arts, she adored getting absorbed into a world where girls meet their true loves, where gallant heroes saved the day, where monsters got their timely comeuppance, and wanted to spread that love to others, show kids that their was a wonderful world where they could escape their problems between the pages of a book, where they could escape to be someone else, if only for a few hours.   But, Melody had quickly discovered after college that her fantasy of showing a love of reading was still just a dream. As a teacher’s assistant, she felt like the kid’s just never listened to her, she was just in the background of another teacher’s class as decoration, someone to pass out assignments, occasionally sub for her superior. Back then, she had told herself that it was just that she was an assistant, that when she finally had her own class she’d get the respect of her students, and almost as important, herself, though the tiny voice inside her that always droned on assured her that no, that would not be the case.   And as it was, that little voice was indeed right, like it usually was, and Melody wasn’t, like she always was.   When she finally earned her own class, the only way she could, in her mind, by seniority, running out the clock until people in charge had no other choice but to throw their hands up and give her the job. At first, she had been excited, going into that room, setting up her desk, her lesson plans and curriculum ready, a happy, peppy smile on her face that she rarely got to wear, that wasn’t forced in any case, that was, until she stood up to the class introducing herself and she saw their vacant eyes staring up at her, many of them ignoring her or twisting around their desks to talk to people they actually cared about. That first moment was disheartening, though she saved face as much as she could. She knew, after that first hour what they were all thinking, whispering about her. This new teacher was awful, she sucked, she was a doormat that they could wipe their feet on. It nearly kept her from returning the next day.   Yet, she did, for months on end, that little voice in the back of her mind growing louder by the day.   The old lady in front of her in the curio shop studied Melody with concern and a thoughtful expression. “And… You think if you found where you do belong that would solve these problems?”   Melody’s posture dropped, folding her arms on the table and resting her head on them, “I dunno? Probably not? It’s not like anything else I’ve tried helps.” She looked down at the white lace table cloth that was sewed with an intricate pattern, a giant snowflake over a wooden table with burn marks seared into it. Her glum, uncertain body language told the woman she would never get a positive answer out of the girl, in any definition of the word.   “I do have a solution. Though it is rather drastic.” The hippie admitted. Melody lifted her head up, though she still didn’t look hopeful.   “Umm, well- I should probably say now,” Melody tripped over her words, “If it’s anything illegal- will show up on a drug test, I- uh, can’t really take it?”   The woman laughed at this. “No no, it’s nothing like that! One moment, please.” She got out of her spot and went digging through a dresser that was situated neatly behind her, pulling out an ornate hand mirror and putting it into Melody’s hand.   The object was very pretty, Melody had to admit, she wasn’t expecting it to be so heavy too when the cold handle was put into her hand. It was completely encased in a shiny, reflective metal, even on the back she could see her distorted reflection looking back at her, kind of like she would in a fun house mirror. Three blue gemstones were encrusted on the back, shining beautiful against the dim lights of the backroom. Melody was expecting something gaudy when she first saw it in the old woman’s hands, but this was no cheap plastic, she got the feeling that this was precious, actually made of silver.   Melody’s self deprecation didn’t lessen, though, “I appreciate it, but, if this is about affirmations or anything, they don’t really work on me.” Melody set the mirror face down on the lace.   “No, nothing like that. You said you think you belong somewhere else, right?” The woman reached out and tapped the back of the mirror with a long finger nail. “With this, you can truly find where you belong.”   Finally, a wry smile appeared on Melody’s lips. “And just how would it do that?”   “Very simply, darling. It’s magic! It’ll show you various lives you belong to, and you can just- step in, find the place where you really belong.”   Melody let out a sigh. “That’s a nice thought and all, but A: magic isn’t real; and B: it’s not that I really don’t belong, my problem isn’t really that I don’t belong, it’s that I feel like I don’t belong, in here,” She tapped on her noggin. “Besides, this thing is way, waaay too fancy and expensive for me. I don’t have the money to buy it!” She pushed the mirror back towards the woman.   The elder pushed it back in her direction. “I see your point, but it’s all a matter of perspective. You can step into new shoes and walk a mile, or however the expression goes, and really get a feel of who you are, maybe you’ll find you like it better there, and decide to stay, or you come back with a new lease on life.”   “That still leaves the whole ‘magic isn’t real’ thing,” Melody pointedly mentions.   “Well, let’s solve that argument along with the price issue. You try the mirror here, humor an old fuddy duddy like me, if it doesn’t work, go off and have a funny story with your friends about the crazy lady who believes in magic, or you don’t like what you find in there, come out and you leave without spending a dime, if you find a place you like, then money wouldn’t be an issue in any case.” The woman says with a smile. “Honestly, you can’t lose.”   “Hrrrm, well I suppose…” A hesitant hand slowly reaches for the mirror, only to pull away at the last second. “I don’t know, what if I break it?” Melody pulls her hand back to her side.   The woman gave an exasperated noise, “Please, dear, you simply worry too much, you can’t have all this indecisiveness mess with your head. I won’t charge you if you shatter the thing, you can’t, by the by, but I trust you won’t believe me at this rate.”   In a small voice, Melody agreed, “Ok.” Before picking up the mirror and looking inside it.   She takes a look at her reflection, eyes going wide when the surface seems to ripple at the movement, much like a pool of water making small waves when a stone falls into it.   “Good! Before you go in, I must warn you, try not to dawdle in a place for too long, things get wonky if you go in and leave after awhile you’ll… start to adopt features in a place. Though, maybe that’s for the best, try to find a place where you can be confident, then even if you don’t like it, you can be like the Cowardly Lion finding his courage.”   “The Cowardly Lion had his courage in him the whole time.”   “And so do you!” The old hippie smacked the table, sending tea spoon tumbling off of saucers and cigarette butts flying.   “Um, alright. How do I-?”   “Just give the mirror a little poke, you’ll see! Just remember where you came in from, you should see my little shop.”   Melody tentatively reached a hand for the silvery surface, “Oh!” The hippie exclaimed, making Melody look up with a start. “And do have some fun, dear!”   The girl returned an unsure smile and reached out for the mirror again, tapping the center of her reflection until her finger and its copy met, then merged, and the world rushed towards Melody in a flash.     Melody found herself staring at a body sized mirror, though she didn’t see her own reflection, instead she saw an almost still image of the parlor she was just sitting in, she would almost think that it was a still image, if not for the smoke coming out of the ashtray or the steam coming from a teacup. A bubble of excitement rose inside of her, the novelty of magic being real was terribly amazing to her, and for a moment, she couldn’t help but the possibilities flood her, imagining all the adventures this could. It boggled the mind.   Turning around, Melody found herself in a scarlet hall, a plush red carpet that her heels sunk into, a deep crimson ceiling with gorgeous miniature chandeliers lighting up it’s section every 5 feet, and beautiful wine colored velvet curtains in the center of which was a tall mirror similar to the silver one that had brought her here only grown to make Melody feel tiny. Then, as far as her eye could see, lines of curtains and mirrors lined the walls.   With a nervous excitement, Melody brought her fingers to her mouth and gave it a chew, marveling in the moment. The air of mystique and mystery overwhelmed, giving her a feeling of being high here, until she remembered herself, cursing, she wiped her hand on her pencil thin navy skirt, turning towards the closest mirror to her right and looking inside.   At first, there was just her, in her dark blue blazer and contrasting white blouse, her stick figure that her Grandma had always told her to plump, her auburn red hair that she kept up during school hours, then as soon as that last school bell rung she was ripping that stupid hair tie out. Her sheer giddiness overwhelmed even her own negative body image, and she admired her view among the red everywhere in the room. She really did feel like a heroine, going into portals unknown to face the mystery and danger that was beneath every foot. For the first time, in a long time, Melody’s smile was big and sincere. Then, the reflection began to change.   A violent wind blew at her from the shifting portal, an ocean air wafted around her, filling the space around Melody with the scent of salt and fish. In the center of the image in the mirror was a boat, fighting to stay upright under dark gray clouds. Melody even though she could feel the rain drops and sea foam, that is, until she realized she actually could feel them, looking down and finding her skin underneath her skin becoming dampened by the ocean. She was certain in the distance she could hear yelling.   She stepped away, maybe that one would be too much adventure for her to start with. Get her feet wet before they got soaked.   Undeterred, she stepped towards the mirror to her right, and expectantly waited for it to change, only for her face to fall to shock and immediately step to her right. That was a bloody battlefield! Literally. As soon as the image had shifted, her senses had been assaulted, the sounds of artillery shells bombarded both troops and her ears in the distance, the scent of iron and hot lead poisoned the air around her nostrils as the sight of a trench with barbed wire lining the top. Whatever waited for her out there could stay waiting as far as Melody was concerned, she wasn’t quite ready for the cure of 50 ccs of lead to fix whatever was going on in her head.   Melody stepped in front of the next mirror, hoping for something a bit, gentler, only to be pleasantly surprised by the aroma of freshly baked cookies that made her salivate. She was greeted by the image of a child’s bedroom, with dolls and blocks scattered, a little beanbag chair in the corner next to an ankle sized bookshelf, a motif of clouds decorated the blue wallpaper, a holdover from when the room was converted from full fledged nursery to bedroom. That was a bit ‘suburban’, but Melody wasn’t completely opposed. Her imagination filled with the idea of tucking her little one into bed a reading them a bedtime story, giving him or her one last cookie afterwards and insisting they don’t tell their father with a wink and a kiss on their forehead. Melody had never pictured herself in the shoes of a mother, but here, with the possibility in front of her, she couldn’t help admitting to herself that it sounded like a dream.   She reached out and tapped the surface, closing her eyes, and she felt the world whoosh around her. When she reopened them, she found herself standing in the room she just saw. Looking around, she expected to hear the pitter patter of little feet come out to greet her, or maybe a tiny body lounging in the beanbag, but no, Melody was alone. She went to peer out the window, opening it up, finding cool evening air, street lamps lighting up a cul-de-sac in front of her, front windows and bedrooms lit up.   Melody felt a shockingly sudden descent as her extra two inches of height vanished. Looking down, she found her heels gone, and confusingly, in their place a matching pair of pink bunny slippers. “Huh?” Melody looked towards the mirror that was hanging behind the closed door to the bedroom, only instead of seeing her modest adult self, there was a pudgy faced toddler staring back at her, the girl’s short auburn hair tied into a little tuft above her head, mismatched pajamas on her, a thick green sweater with Santa’s reindeer just a tad too small with her belly hanging out and a pair of bottoms that had Moana decorated up and down her legs. As a test, Melody raised her right hand, in a greeting only to find the little girl in front of her do the same thing in return at the very instance.   Damn it! She thought. I was expecting to be the Mother not get mothered! Rolling her eyes, she approached the mirror, instinctively feeling like she’d be able to return to the red hall the same way she left, only for door to pull open and be met with an unfamiliar lady, dressed in some comfortable house clothes, gray sweatpants and a maroon college sweater with a plate full of cookies in a hand and a sippy cup clenched between her forearm and abdomen. The woman resembled Melody by quite a bit, the two women could’ve been sisters in another life, they shared the same hair, eyes a bright emerald that shone, similarly too thin, though there were very slight difference that told Melody that this wasn’t a doppelganger, the nose was just slightly upturned while Melody’s was just a tiny bit hooked, a few more freckles on the stranger’s face, while Melody had a little mole on the bottom of her chin that she despised, and Melody could just barely see above the woman’s head.   The stranger seemed to address Melody’s ankles when she opened her mouth. “Melly, I told you to wait for Mommy before you get dressed for nini, silly squirrel.” She gave a teasing chastising, wagging a finger. ‘Mommy’ set her dessert and the cup of milk on the nightstand by the bed, knelt down and reached out to pull Melody’s blazer, even though she seemed to be reaching for the entirely wrong spot. “You’re a little too big for this, Melly! Look, your armsies don’t even fit.”   Melody took a look in her reflection just to get a proper reference for what was going on. Mommy was pulling on the sleeve of the Christmas sweater, showing her child it didn’t even reach her wrist.   Unsure of what to say, Melody ventured out a, “I look cute?”   That got a chortle out of the woman. “Of course you do, you’re my baby, you always look cute.”   Melody gave an indignant huff at this, “I’m not a baby!”   Mommy had to fight to keep from laughing again, the toddler in front of her folding her arms and insisting she wasn’t a baby was too precious to her. “No, of course not,” She corrected herself, “You’re my big girl! But… Not too big for Mommy kisses!” The woman leaned down and started showering the empty space near to Melody’s knees with kisses, and though space didn’t line up anywhere close to right, Melody still felt them on her face, tickling her.   She couldn’t help but giggle at the funny feeling pecks all over her. “Stop! Stooop!”   Mommy pulled away and gave a devilish grin. “’Stop’? And do what? This?” She lifted Melody’s top, revealing her smooth white belly and gave it some wet raspberries.   Melody fell on the bed while the onslaught continued, kicking her legs and waving her arms uselessly. “No, no noooooo! Stop!” Melody’s face was growing red at this point, as well as hurting from laughing so hard. “Stop, I’m going to pee!”   That made the woman pause her attack. Melody breathed a sigh of relief, relaxing with her back on the cot, until two probing fingers slid down Melody’s skirt. She let out a gasp at the invasion of her personal space. “Still dry, good girl!” Mommy pulled Melody upright from the bed by her arms and started leading her out. The hallway was brightly lit, walls painted white, small tables with picture frames and vases of flowers, Melody could see a few with ‘Mommy’ and a strange man with dark hair in several of the pictures, one of them as bride and groom grinning in a lovely green garden, another with the couple holding a tiny red blob wrapped in a pink blanket, a pink blanket Melody couldn’t help but remember she had seen on the corner of the cot in the other room, one with the two in matching black tank tops and jeans holding on to a squirming little girl dressed similarly.   Melody felt an itch on her arm, looking towards it as she gave it a thoughtless scratch, she pulled the sweater away and gave it a lite massage with her too little nails, only to give it a second glance realizing that her blazer and blouse combo was gone, in their place was the out of season sweater her reflection had been wearing. Looking down, she still saw her skirt below her, but in between was her bare midriff.   She was pulled along, sliding on her bunny slippers as Mommy confidently walked on her bare feet, a bit brave, Melody had to admit for a child she let have toys like Duplex, Lego’s big little brother. Glancing up at Mommy, Melody had to wonder if this was the world’s largest hallway or if her traveling speed was adjusted to be closer to what was deemed appropriate for someone her supposed side. Then she gave Mommy a double glance in surprise, finding that she was indeed a few inches shorter than the woman now that gave Melody a knot of anxiety in the bottom of her stomach.   The bathroom at the end of the hall was bright and large, and very clean, no makeup or errant hairbrushes everywhere, only a single pink toothbrush in a cup that gave Melody the impression this was probably ‘her’ bathroom, Mommy and Daddy (why could she suddenly picture the man’s face vividly clear as day and why did the thought of him send butterflies fluttering excitedly in her belly, oh God was she a Daddy’s girl here?!) probably had their own bathroom in their master bedroom, the only messy area was a corner by the tub with a basket full of bath toys, must be easy to keep the place tidy when the most traffic it got was a tot. Melody let out a little wheezing noise when she saw her reflection in the bathroom mirror. It did not, like the mirror in the bedroom did, show the reflection of who she was supposed to be in this reality. No, this mirror showed Melody the way she truly appeared, and much to her displeasure, the young lady looking back at her was acne scarred teenager in a childish reindeer lined too small sweater, 15 maybe even 14 years old, a face she hadn’t seen in over a decade, including the braces she wore during her mid teens aaaand- pop! The braces were gone and Melody decidedly determined that she was indeed on the better side of 14, only getting those annoying bits of metal when she turned 15.   “What’s the matter, baby?” Mommy looked down at Melody, to her, the little girl appeared to be staring at the cabinet beneath the sink. Melody looked up at her, even taller than she was a few seconds ago, wait, Melody was just shorter than she was. Mommy had just gotten the next instrument of torture out in this reality, as if her teenage face wasn’t enough (Melody swore if she ever got back to her home plane of existence, the first thing she would do is rush to her real parent’s house and burn every picture of her during those horrible years). On a fluffy blue rug sat a training potty that Mommy had pulled out in front of the colorful shower curtain covered in sea creatures.   “Go on, sweetie, show Mommy you’re a big girl!” The woman urged to the teenager.   “I uhhhhh-” Melody stared at the white plastic contraption with Disney princesses lining the bottom, the big poofy pink toiler seat on top and gulped. Mommy, out of Melody’s sight, rolled her eyes, and pointed Melody in front of the open bathroom door, and before Melody could say anything, had her Moana pajama pants (when did those get there?) lowered to her ankles and adjusted her to the potty chair by grabbing her hips and pushing her down on to the comfy padding of the potty chair that was both considerably too small for her, and yet contradictory too big.   Melody just stood there, dumbly looking at Mommy, her growing embarrassment pausing any needs her bladder might have. Her peepee had a severe case of stage fright in the sight of the stranger (though Melody’s mind was quickly flooding with images of her and Mommy, getting chased in the park by the playful woman, Mommy cutting up her favorite breakfast, pancakes with blueberries and chocolate chip even though they made little Melly a little too hyper and rambunctious for even Mommy to keep up with, splashing a laughing Mommy in her bubble baff in this very room, Melly loved her Mommy). Sighing, Mommy lowered her sweatpants, making Melody blush at the sight of the woman’s hairy vagina, and sat down.   “See? It’s okay, Melly, just let it out.” She said in an encouraging voice as a light tinkling sound filled the room as Mommy relaxed. Hearing the sound did do something to Melody, and she felt a foreign feeling from down below, looking down, she found her own urine coming out in a gush, that was where she saw the last vestige of her adult clothing, a white thong that a girlfriend had helped pick out for her when she admitted to her friend she never really felt sexy, undergo a change she got to see first hand, the sides lengthening, the core poofing out, much of it turning a pink color, the remnant of her attire turning into a fresh Pull-Up. Melody was so taken aback by her change in underwear, she didn’t notice that both her and Mommy were done with their business.   This last alteration was too much for Melody. She jumped up, forgetting to pull her trousers up and was ready to sprint back to the room, to the mirror and get out of this hell hole. She took a few steps before her sweater was grabbed by the back of her sweater’s scruff and was met with a, “Hold it lady! Where do you think you’re going?” Melody looked at Mommy, confused. Mommy sighed, “I told you, honey, you always have to wipe.” She said offering Melody a few squares of toilet paper. Melody shuddered when she found she was barely at the woman’s waist now as she gave a very unneeded demonstration of the action for Melody, blushing profusely, mimicked the woman before being instructed to drop the used wad in the real toilet, where Mommy drained the training potty into before flushing it.   “Now what do we do?” Mommy quizzed her little girl.   “We uh- wash our hands?” Melody ventured.   Mommy clapped her hands. “That’s right! That’s my girl!” The praise for knowing basic bathroom etiquette both embarrassed Melody and filled her with a strange sense of pride. A little too much pride, in fact, when she got up on the step stool to wash her hands side by side with Mommy, Melody barely gave any regard to the little girl who only just looked like she belonged in grade school. A fleeting look at the grinning child with a gap between teeth that was quickly replaced by baby tooth.   With their hands dried, to which Melody only needed a little bit of help with the towel, Mommy offered Melody a little high five and a peppy, “Good job honey!” Before picking up her girl and carrying her to her bedroom, which in a short time away, had become a huge warehouse of distractions to Melody. In the barely closed door, on the mirror that Melody had entered into this reality in, Melody saw her true body’s reflection, a grown woman in her work outfit carefully balanced on the hip of a woman that was actually shorter than her.   Melody let out an excited gasp when the plateful of sweet treats was placed in her lap. “Cookies!” The girl exclaimed, greedily grabbing one and shoving her mouth with an over sized bite. She didn’t know if Mommy just made the best cookies in existence or if her taste buds had become over tuned to the sweet flavors, but the woman knew how to bake.   “Yes, yes, we love the cookies, but you know the deal, cupcake,” Mommy reminded Melody of something she had never heard before, yet somehow knew inherently. “We don’t tell Daddy we were eating in bed.” Mommy rolled her eyes. “He can get such a stick up his big butt over it, not like he’s the one who vacuums.” She playfully complained. “Oh, and no telling Daddy I was complaining, mums the word, but you tell Mommy if Daddy says anything about Mommy. Especially if he takes you out for any special jewelry stores. Just remember, us girls gotta stick together.”   Melody gave a solemn nod at Mommy, barely listening, though she gave one word in that gave her pause. “Wha dhadhly?” She asked, spewing a mouthful of crumbs over herself.   Mommy, with her own mouth full of cookie delight, said, “Noh tahling wif-” Mommy grabbed the sippy cup and gave it a few sucks before passing it over to her girl, “Ahem, no talking with your mouth full, sugar.” Gracefully ignoring how she had forgotten that rule of thumb herself.   Taking the sippy cup, Melody drank a little bit to clear her own mouth, sharing drinks with the lady next to her felt as natural as breathing, she could remember quite a few times when Mommy shared stuff off of her own plate. “Where’s Daddy?”   “You know he works late so he can spend the day with you,” Mommy stroked Melody’s head while she spoke. “I work days, he works nights. But yeah, I miss him too.” She mournfully agreed.   Taking another bite of cookie, Melody thought carefully about things. It did feel nice being by Mommy, and she kinda really, really, really wanted to see Daddy, she could practically feel his beard tickle her face, but that was kind of the problem, wasn’t it? She was easing into this new life a little too well, too quickly, her new memories and old were reaching an equilibrium, and who knows? Maybe after they met in the middle, one would over take the other.   The few feet between her and the mirror felt like a mile long, at least, it did with Mommy’s arm around her shoulder, nestling their bodies in for a cuddle while Mommy talked idly. Melody got the feeling that this was a conversation she wasn’t really apart of, Mommy was saying things about her work, complaining about her ‘butt-head’ of a boss, coworkers, and clients she had at her law firm that had given her problems today. It was probably therapeutic for the woman, lord knows Melody wouldn’t mind having a captive audience to tell her day to from time to time, the cookies probably sweetened the deal as well, but there was probably a practical purpose to this too, Melody reasoned, talking to a child just getting comfortable with speaking would probably make their social skills sharp, Melody wandered if her original (make that real, Melody corrected herself) Mommy had ever sat down and talked about her day. Her Mom had been a busy woman when she was growing up, she was always on the phone, trying to make deals and sell property as a real estate agent. It might not be such a bad thing to get raised by a woman who took time out of her day to chat to her daughter, in a weird way, though she really wasn’t following the conversation at all, Melody felt important. It might not be too bad to get raised again by this Mommy.   She shook that idea out of her head. As nice as it was, she definitely did not want to go through growing pains again.   “Last one,” Mommy said pointing at the cookie. “Eat it so we can go get our teefies burshyied.”   Melody glanced at the lone treat on the plate, thought about the stressful day Mommy had confided in the half listening girl, and shook her head. “No thanks, you deserve it more.”   “D’awww!” The plate was taken off of Melody’s lap and she was swept up and place on Mommy’s lap, looking up into the face of the doting woman who was positively beaming with pride. “You are such a good sharer! And ‘deserving’? What a big word! I’m so proud of you!” Melody was squeezed into a hug, her face smooshed into Mommy’s chest. She was almost certainly the age this place thought she belonged by now, but that was easily ignored by the love she could feel radiating off of Mommy.   And Melly reciprocated. She really, really loved her Mommy.   “Since you’re such a good sharer, we’ll split it.” Mommy took a bite then offered it to Melody. They went back and forth for a little bit until it was the last bite.   “It your turn.” Melody told the giant.   “Hmm, no? I don’t think it is, baby.”   Insisting, “I just had one.”   “Yeah, but I’m the Mommy and Mommy is always right.”   Melody just let it go and finished it off, Mommy sighed with her little girl in her arms. “It’s not fair.” She pouted, suddenly sounding sad. “Pretty soon you’re not even going to want to get fed by me. Me! You’re own Mother! Little Melly will be off doing more important things like going to school, and dating, moving out! Moving out!” She repeated. “Promise me you’ll never move out.”   With her eyes half closed, feeling exhausted for some reason, “Pwomise.”   “That’s a legally binding verbal contract.” Mommy smugly replied.   “Wegally binding.” Melody concurred.   Kissing the top of her daughter’s head, “That’s it, you’re already picking up the lingo! You wanna be a lawyer like Mommy, right? Not some silly doctor like Daddy. We’re winners.”   Melody gave out a tired, “I teacher.”   “Ugh, a teacher?” Mommy groaned. “If you wanna get paid in pennies, sure!” Mommy had to purse her lips to keep from bursting out laughing at the tiny, adorable glare that earned her. “I suppose you just agreed to always live with me, so it’s not that big of a deal.”   Melody was dropped off on to the step stool at the sink, staring at the cute girl looking back at her, before her vision was blocked by a wet washcloth that was a little roughly used to clean her face. The pink toothbrush was put into her hand, and bubblegum flavored toothpaste was spread among it too before it got wet.   Melody gave Mommy a look, noticing her own toothbrush wasn’t in her hand. “You brush too?” She asked, innocently enough.   Mommy gave her a shrug. “My brush is in the other room, let’s just focus on you for right now.”   “You brush too.”   Mommy sighed, “Ok ok! So disagreeable, must get it from your father.” Mommy stepped away and headed towards her own room.   Finding her first opportunity to be alone, Melody dropped the toothbrush and raced back to the kid’s room, towards the mirror and her freedom of potty training. She must not have been going too quickly though, she was grabbed from behind by the disappointed woman with her toothbrush resting in her mouth.   “Baby, we have to brush you teeth, I know it’s tedious, and you won’t even have those for too long anyway, but you want to have a shiny smile like Mommy’s, don’t you?” She flashed a bright grin down at her daughter and the two were standing together in the bathroom in seconds, cleaning their mouths.   Mommy gurgled her spit out, and Melody did the same. It felt weirdly good to copy the woman, it felt right.   “Ok, short stuff,” Mommy said, dropping Melody on the cot in the bedroom after returning. “Time to get you ‘for real’ dressed.”   Melody looked down confused. “I am dressed?”   “Yes, but no. You’re growing so fast you’ll probably burst out of that sweater by morning, not to mention I got that for you when you were 2, that was like a whole year earlier. Gotta get with the times, girlfriend. Plus, you’ve worn those pants three nights in a row, honey. My girl has got to have some self respect.” Melody looked down at that last remark, forced to be entirely too aware of how she really felt about herself.   She barely said anything as the pants were ripped away from her, or the shirt, though she did put a hand in front of her flat chest that made Mommy snicker at her, but didn’t comment at the modesty. It wasn’t until Mommy pulled out a night gown and what she put above it that made Melody say anything.   “Diaper?!” Melody said in shock at the thick diaper next to her, along with the changing supplies.   Mommy began ripping the sides off the Pull-Ups on Melly, nonplussed by the reaction. “We’ve been over this, sweet cheeks, you’ll be ready for your big girl undies soon, but for right now, you just leak through your Pull-Ups,” Mommy already had the diaper under Melly before the Pull-Up was taken away, her butt falling on to the thick, pillow like cushioning. “And, you know you get messy at night anyway. You work on doing your business during the day then you and I can come to an agreement on big girl undies.”   The realization hit Melody square in the face, her years of education and growing up meant nothing here, the fact was, in the morning, little Melly was going to wake Mommy or Daddy up with poopy pants and there was nothing that she could do about it. It was too much for the poor girl, she became in mind what she was in body, a little girl, and a considerably upset one at that.   Uncontrollable tears were pouring down Melly’s face, low huffing groans coming out of her mouth. Mommy paid little mind to this, used to these little nightly tantrums her daughter made when her Pull-Ups were stripped, just did her change while mostly ignoring the tears. “Those crocodile tears won’t work on me, sister.” She said while applying the oil and powder to her girl, taping her up and lifting the kid up to pull the lavender nightgown with sheep in a bundle, little zzz’s coming from their heads, over her. “Ok, drama queen, all done, go pick out a book and we’ll get to cuddling.”   Mommy looked down at Melly, who was still in the midst of her big cry. Her maternal instincts were staring to spike, usually the mention of reading and cuddling perked Melly right out of her evening tantrum, but this was weird.   Very few thoughts were spinning inside Melly, stupid, little, too much of a baby to even keep her pants clean, stupid baby, useless, pathetic. Melly found herself in a spiral of self deprecating feelings.   “Sugar, come on, that’s enough,” Mommy said, raising Melly on to her lap and hugging her. “I know, we don’t like the diapers, but its just temporary, ok? Let’s dry those tears, and get ready for bed.   “Useless.” Melly managed to mumble out, face soaking her Mommy’s sweater.   “What?” Mommy said, utterly perplexed.   “Useless!” Melly repeated, loudly. “Dumb! Dumb stupid baby!”   It was at this point that Mommy’s concern was beginning to melt away. Samantha Barlov-McKinson was a patient woman, she had to be, because underneath her calm, cool composure was the raging heart of angry bull. Someone had taught her little bundle of joy to say or think these awful things about herself, and Samantha didn’t care if that person was some snot nose brat, she would knock them out without remorse.   “Baby- I mean, Melly, Melly, look at me,” She told the sobbing girl at her bosom, lifting her chin up to look her in the eye, “Melly, who taught you these words?” Mommy probably let a little too much of her anger show with that, though, cause that only made Melly bawl harder, pressing her face back into the safe space that was her Mommy’s sweater.   Ok, ok, Samantha thought to herself, a little tactless, change of plan: Bribery.   “Sweetie, I still have some cookies downstairs, if you tell me who told you those naughty things you can have one more.” She said in the most serene voice she could manage. When that didn’t work, “Two! Two more cookies!”   Melly just kept muttering, “Pathetic baby.”   Hearing the word ‘pathetic’ come out of her little girl’s mouth nearly drove Samantha to tears, not only hearing it, but in such a tone of despair and feeling, it really sounded like her baby really thought that about herself. She wanted to hit something. Right. Now.   Patience didn’t work, anger didn’t work, bribery had no effect, it was time to pull out the big guns. Call for backup. If that wouldn’t help Melly get out of her slump, talking to her husband would at least keep Samantha from throwing something out the window.   Samantha had her phone out of her pocket and pressed a few keys, there were his lovey dovey text messages that already did a considerable amount to calm herself down, then call button next to the name ‘Hubby’, the call was declined after the first ring. She sent out, ‘SOS’. Right away her ringtone went off, and the word ‘Hubby’ appeared in the center. She hit the button for a video call.   “Honey, what’s wrong?” Rodger got out before his ears were assaulted by the sound of his wailing child. He saw his wife holding out her arm, Melly nestled under her. “I can’t really talk right now, baby, I’m in the middle of a consultation.” He tried to explain.   Behind him, the white hair wisp of a woman asked, “Is that a baby? What’s wrong with the little darling.”   “I’m sorry, Mrs. O’Leary, will you please excuse me for just a moment?” He asked beneath his mask.   “Of course dear, but you must show me the little thing after you come back.”   “Oh, sure, sure, we have a video of her mowing into a cake, it’s adorable, show you when I come back!” He promised.   Dr. Rodger Barlov-McKinson stepped into an adjacent room, thankfully quite empty and silent, to pull of his mask and dropped into a chair. He almost didn’t want to look at the video again. He had only seen Samantha for a few seconds, but he knew that look too well, she was pissed.   “I’m sorry baby, I’m back.”   “Oh thank goodness, Rodger, I really, really need you.” Samantha said. Oh good, Rodger thought, she wasn’t mad at him.   “What’s going on?”   “Ok, so normal stuff, we had dinner, I let Melly play in her room while I made some cookies, we sat for a little while having dessert, you know, yadda yadda yadda,” Samantha’s composure was dropping, talking in an incredibly fast voice, Rodger nodded dutifully. “Brush our teeth, oh, Mellysaid shewants tobea teacherwhenshegrowsup. We’lltalkaboutthatlater, reallyadorabablebut that’snotagoodcareer-”   “Sammy, take a breath.”   Her face was growing almost as red as the little girl in her arms, and she did as she was told, still though, she said, “I am breathing!”   “Baby, I really have to get back to work.” He tried to say calmly.   “Baby. I’m getting there. Please don’t interrupt me, you know how I feel about that. Ok, ok, where was I? Alright, so I get Melly dressed and ready for bed and she starts crying, you know how she is about the big girl undies,” Rodger nodded, understanding. “Yeah, so I thought, just same old thing, like every other night, right? Wrong. She starts mumbling stuff about being ‘stupid’, and ‘dumb’, and get this, ‘pathetic’.”   “Is- I get that’s weird, but it’s probably alright, she probably doesn’t even know what they mean.”   “Rodger,” Samantha’s face dropped, “You didn’t hear it, the way she said it, it was like she really, really meant it. I swear it sounds like something you’d hear from a guy about to step off a ledge-” That only made the fretting child wail harder. Samantha motioned a hand like, ‘You see???’   “Alright, honey, we’ll- my hospital has some children’s councilors we can have Melly talk to, they don’t usually see kids Melly’s age but I’ll pull some strings.”   “And- I take tomorrow off and we go to the park and I find the little monster that’s been telling my daughter this shit and I knock that bitch’s face off.”   “No, baby, please don’t get arrested again-”   “I can get myself off, you know I can do it again!”   “Yeah but I can’t take the time off. Let’s get Melly into school before getting ourselves arrested for assaulting minors.”   “Admit that I can get the charges-”   “Problems for tomorrow!” Rodger put his foot down on that thought before his wife got too carried away, he could see Samantha was getting into a dangerous combination of enraged and challenged, which was kind of fun and sexy in a way, and which meant that given time to cool off but still be worked up, he’s probably have an exhausting homecoming waiting for him in the morning, he still had the problem at hand. “Melly!” He called out. “Melly, look at Daddy!”   Melly looked up, hearing a distant voice call out to her, looking back down. Probably wanted a different Melly. Melody couldn’t even baby right without crashing down. So stupid! How badly can someone be to mess up that default mode of every human? She was such a screw up.   “Melly, someone wants to talk to you!” Mommy said in a forcibly chipper voice.   “Scwew up.” Melly told Mommy before plunging her face back down into the comforting shirt that smelled like Mommy’s soap and cookies. Samantha waved a hand, ‘You see?!?!”   “Melly! Look, Daddy wants to talk to you.” Melly looked towards the phone the face of the strangely familiar bearded man was welcoming as the screen was brought towards her face, but something else on the screen caught her attention.   She tapped the corner of the screen where she could screen where she saw the picture of her own face. “Ugwy.” She said with profound sadness.   With the camera shaking with Samantha’s hand going wobbly with rage, Rodger knew that he had to act quick. “Daddy is kind of ugly isn’t he? But all I see is my cute Melly! Who’s my adorable little girl?” He was expecting either a quiet or enthusiastic ‘me!’ but got nothing more than wet sniffles from the tired almost-baby’s face. “Come on, where’s my happy girl? Where’d Daddy’s big girl go?” That last one got him a wiggle of the lips. That’s it.   “There’s my big girl! Melly is such a big, strong, pretty girl, yes she is!” Daddy kept insisting, pushing back against the melancholy that was Melody. “Big silly girl!” Nervously, Melly lifted a few fingers to her lips and chewed on them. A bad habit to be culled another time. For now, his baby’s poutiness was on the ropes, so he brought out his secret weapons.   In quick succession, Daddy kept making silly sounds and faces at the girl, and though Melody knew he kinda looked dumb, the sincere feeling came through all the same, finally, Melly let out a little giggle, and both parents let out their relief. “Melly, honey, Daddy’s got to go, I’ll be there to cuddle with you in the morning.” Melly gave him a bleary eyed nod. “I looove you.”   “Wub you too, Daddy.” Melly said with a mouthful of spit.   “I wub you too, Daddy,” Mommy said pulling the phone back to her face. “I’ll see you in the morning. Thank you, honey.”   “Love you more baby. Sweet dreams.”   Mommy dropped to the bed, lifting her toddler on to her chest. “What was that all about, sweet cheeks?” When that only made her kid’s lip wiggle, and knowing that super-Dad probably wouldn’t be able to answer any more calls soon, she dropped the subject. “Come on, squirt, I still owe you a bedtime story.” Melly’s eyes lit up, she even took her fingers out of her mouth to show Mommy a little smile. Mommy thought about giving Melly a change right now, she could already feel a bit of a sag coming from underneath the nightgown as Melly rested on her arm, but thought better of it. Probably best to wait until after she was fast asleep.   “Do we want Jack and Jill? Three blind mice?” Mommy mused as a finger went down the knee high bookshelf. “Give a mouse a cookie? The cow jumped over the moon?”   “Cat and hat?” Melly asked, pointing at a Dr. Seuss book.   “We kinda been reading that one for a week straight, why don’t we give it a-” The pouty face made Mommy change her mind right away. “Cat in the Hat it is!” Melly was glad, it wasn’t like she heard that book for the past week, ok, maybe she did have a few memories of Mommy pouring over the book with her, but she hasn’t had a good book read to her in decades, minus the monotone readings of her students, or the audio books she listened to in the car to and from work, all those didn’t count. They didn’t have Mommy tucking her in, laying next to her to use her arm as a pillow, or a Miss Mouse to cuddle with, or Mommy showing her the pictures, Melly didn’t even mind that the words looked like squiggly lines, that was tomorrow Melly’s problem, nor did she mind when reading time was abruptly cut short when Mommy let out a fake yawn that was supposed to make Melly get all sleepy only for it to turn into a real one, and Mommy closed her eyes and draped the book over her daughter.   Melly thought about it for a moment, ready to jump out of bed and race to the mirror and get out of dodge, but then she looked up at Mommy, snoring peacefully, and figured, when was the next time she was going to get away with this? And nuzzled the woman, who wrapped her arms around Melly unconsciously and the two lay with each other for the next few pleasant hours.   At some point in the night, Mommy had woken up long enough to turn off the light, and get under the covers with Melly, the room was lit only by the light of a small nightlight in the corner, not that Melly really needed it, not tonight anyway, everyone knew monsters in the closet or under the bed never came out when Mommies were around. Half asleep, Melly could feel a pressure in her bladder, shrugging and pulling it close to Mommy letting it loose and flooding her diaper.   Melody’s eyes shot awake. Why the hell did she do that? Shit, shit, shit! She crawled over her Mommy, wait no! That nice lady wasn’t her Mommy, that was Melly’s Mommy, and Melody was Melody not Melly. She already did enough damage here, to Melly, Mommy and Daddy (though not her Mommy and Daddy), and herself. That poor toddler will probably have to go through months of therapy given Mommy’s reaction to the whole thing.   “Melly?” Mommy lifted herself up by the elbow, wiping the sleep out of an eye with her fist. “Where are you going?” She asked with a yawn.   “Uh, potty?” Melody lied, feeling the weight of her underwear. Oh shit, did she shit herself too???   In dim light of the night light, Melody saw Mommy smile. “In the middle of the night? Good girl! Maybe we can see about those Pull-Ups after all.” She sleepily promised.   Even if it was because of a lie, Melody felt that praise warm her up, the Melly inside her reaching from the bottom of her mind. She saw Mommy get out of bed, ready to help her little girl to the potty. Melody could see how the next few minutes were going to play out, she’d get taken to the bathroom, Mommy would be disappointed that Melly was in a dirty diaper but still make her sit on the potty, then get her changed into a fresh one and it’d be warm hugs and cuddles back in bed and- why was that a bad thing?   Melody reached out for the mirror. Maybe she could whine for a sippy cup of milk and stay awake with Mommy for a few more minutes. No, no! The mirror! Mommy did say something about a cookie or two… Before Melly could talk Melody into anything else, she tapped the mirror and Melody’s consciousness was thrust back into the red hallway.   Melody sighed in relief, already feeling the Melly girl recede into her mind. What wasn’t receding as quickly as she liked, was her clothes.   Mouth wide, Melody looked down at herself, she had her chest, her hips, her flat belly all back, but the night gown had grown to fit her adult form, as did the discolored diaper that was barely covered by the pajamas. Melody swore as the change in attire started at her feet, her heels reappearing on her feet, at a mind numbing pace, her blazer and blouse reappeared on her torso, replacing the nightie, though that still left the diaper on full freaking display! Groaning, Melody looked like a baby playing dress up in her Mommy’s clothes (Mommy would’ve LOVED seeing Melly in a blazer and blouse), though the skirt that hid her modesty was barely better, as Melody could still feel the disgusting mess that her bowels and bladder had left in her underwear, until at long last, that feeling vanished too, and Melody was left in the airy comfort that was her big girl undies.   “Ok, ok, no more baby time, from now on, only going to worlds where I’m a big girl- err, gown up- Adult! Where I’m a big adult!”   As Melody approached the next mirror, she pulled away her undies that were riding up on her, not noticing she had left with a bit of a souvenir from Melly’s world, as what lay beneath her skirt was her very own, big girl sized Pull-Ups.       “No...No… No…” After an evening of being an overly emotional toddler, Melody felt it prudent to carefully vet her destination.   “Too woodsy.” She said, staring at a log cabin with a roaring bonfire. “Besides, that thing looks liable to set the whole place ablaze.” Though she had to admit to herself the crackling of the wood sounded inviting.   “Too many legs.” She passed by the zoo exhibit with boxes full spider. “Not that spiders are bad, but they’re just not my thing. I’d rather put them on a magazine and let them outside.”   “Too, dangerous,” She murmured towards the sight of a construction site. “Besides, I don’t see myself as much of a laborer. What would it be like?” Melody mused the thought over, trying it out. “Hey George, bring me a hammer!” She yelled out, only to jump back with an eek! When she heard:   “Where are ye?!” Get yelled back at her. She quickly scurried away from that view.   “Oh, now I swear that’s just the first boat I saw!” She muttered disapprovingly at the image of a fishing boat sailing in a stormy sea. Just after she stepped away from it, Melody missed the part where giant tentacles emerged from the water and wrapped around the ship.   “Hmm…” She looked thoughtfully at the image of a schoolroom. She chewed on her nail in consideration. “Hmmmmm….” It looked much nicer than her own public school, firm, newish looking desks that were a deep, pleasant looking brown that shined and had no obvious scratching, the distant sounds of just girls chattering, in fact, Melody could tell that it was an all girl’s school based on the fact alone that she couldn’t detect that awful B.O. smell that teenage boys had an awful habit of ignoring and… there was even an apple on the teacher’s desk!   “Wait… I should know better, I’ll probably end up a student or something, or a janitor. I suppose if I don’t like it I could always just turn around and come back!”   Before she could make any other decisions on the matter, Melody had her hand up against the mirror, besides, she thought, even if she was a student, at least she wasn’t in diapers!   Melody found herself in the very classroom she was just staring at, looking into the face of a girl she very much did not want to be. Melody looked a lot like the teenager she was once, only somehow much worse. Melody thought that she had a bad case of acne, but this girl’s face was covered in the stuff, instead of the colorful beads and metal that stayed in Melody’s mouth, this girl’s orthopedic eye sore covered half her face up, stuck in an awkward of of between 14-15.   “Millie, will you please take your seat?” Melody turned around to find a stern woman dressed very similarly to how she was, only her outfit was a solid black instead of blue, her dark brown hair tied back in a bun.   “But I-”   “Now! Millie!” Melody looked towards the sea of sneering older teenage girls’ faces, each one looking towards her, everyone at them looking at the decidedly younger girl that had been dropped into their midst. She could read their faces like a book, wondering why this little brat was with them, young women who were just about to go on to the academic level, Melody could see that this girl who’s body she had been dropped into had been thrown into the lion’s den at the worst time in her young life “You can fiddle with your make up after class, thank you.”   Melody felt compelled towards an empty chair, seeming to have have lost autonomy over her feet, while she made her way she heard harsh whispers:   “Not that it does her any good.”   “Needs a welding torch to do anything to her face.”   “Loser.”   “Metal mouth.”   “Fat ass.”   “Girl can’t even afford a dermatologist.”   “Did you see her legs? Talk about Sasquatch.”   “Oh my God, I’d never leave my hole if I were her.”   “She’s probably the only one who will ever see her hole.”   The cruel jeers were everywhere, it was as if her own inner monologue had been given life in the worst way in the guise of these terrible, judgmental girls, and the teacher in the front who was writing on the blackboard seemed to pay no attention to the whispers. Melody sat down, suddenly missing her Mommy. She had this funny mental image of herself as Melly sitting in the desk and Mommy storming in and smacking some of these girls around.   “Eww! She’s chewing her nails!” A harsh whisper came from behind her. Melody looked down to find her bad habit really was happening, and she hid her face, only for the metal around her face to get caught in the rough cotton uniform she was now wearing.   “Ahem.” A ruler was smacked on the desk upfront and all of the girls shot their faces towards the teacher. “Millie, if its not an inconvenience for you, would you please pay attention to my lesson?”   Melody tried to look up, only for her arm to get caught up with her, sticking to the braces. The girls around her erupted into laughter.   The glowering coming from the intense woman in the front burned Melody to her very soul. “If you cannot refrain from being a distraction, Millie, perhaps you should take your comedy routine out of my classroom!” Suggested the woman with the bun.   “But I-”   “Now, Millie.”   As a last ditch effort, Melody tried to make her way towards the mirror she had entered through, to get her out of her own personal Hell.   “The door is over there, Millie.” The teacher helpfully pointed towards the door with her ruler.   Ok, ok, Melody reassured herself, just have to wait for the end of class, then I can sneak back in-   Melody’s train of thought was interrupted by a foot that appeared in front of her, tripping her. She landed hard on her face, only for her next torment to make itself known.   “Oh. My. God! Is that a diaper?”   “It is!”   “Why is she wearing that?”   “Baby.”   “Probably pisses herself.”   Melody looked down, seeing the faces of several Princesses on the back of her padded underwear. The memories of Millie Black were already becoming entwined with Melody’s, and she could see that Millie certainly did not wear those so that means… Melody came in with those.   Jumping to her feet, at speeds that could only be described as sprinting, ran out of that room like a bat out of Hell. She slammed the door behind her, trying her best to shut out the laughter at her expense.   “Ugh!” She groaned, her hand covering her face. She probably just ruined this poor girl’s already shitty life. Looking around to cavernous hallway to see if no one was around, Melody pulled away the plaid skirt’s elastic to see that she indeed was wearing the same Pull-Ups little Melly had been dressed in, only large enough for an adult- Make that teenager, as she found her physical form was quickly matching Millie Black.   As she stared at the stupid training pants, Melody heard a voice right next to her. “Children can be so cruel, can’t they?”   Melody nearly jumped out of her, errm- Millie’s skin.   Appearing to her left was a girl that she was positive wasn’t there a second ago, short, wild blond hair, a leer that Melody wasn’t sure whether was directed at her or the world at large, a white shirt that was rolled up at the sleeves and unbuttoned in a very flattering place, a skirt similar to her own only Melody’s went below to her knees and this girl’s was cut much higher. Melody couldn’t help but feel intimidated by the girl.   The girl smiled down at Melody, standing a few inches higher than her. “You’re new.” She said with a hungry look.   Looking through Millie’s memories, Melody corrected her, “Um no, I’ve been at this school for awhile now.”   “You have, or Millie has?”   Eyes going wide as now Melody was sure this weird girl was staring right through her. She felt vulnerable, naked under this girl, felt smaller than Millie or Melly. It was truly a humbling experience.   The girl lifted her hands in an effort to appear nonthreatening, though that did little to make Melody feel better. She had just learned an important lesson, after all, that girls use their words as weapons just as well if not better that their hands. “I’m not here to mess with you, ‘Millie’.” The girl shot her a toothy smile. “In fact, I thought you might like to have some fun with me.” She said in an almost seductive voice. “Come here,” She commanded with a gesture with her index finger.   She stood in front of the clear window into the class. “Miss Crabominable. Nasty piece of work, isn’t she? Not a sympathetic bone in her body, but… maybe we can give her a little bit of empathy?”   Melody was getting uncomfortable under that devilish smile of the girl’s, though, she couldn’t help feeling like she wouldn’t mind seeing some just desserts. Plus, maybe whatever that girl was planning would mean she could sneak in and get to that mirror.   “Watch this.”   The girl waggled her fingers dramatically. Miss Crabominable clutched her stomach in surprise. From below her skirt, a stream of pee came from her spreading legs, gathering in a pool below her. Melody had a giggle behind her palm as the class again erupted in a fit of laughter. The mean teacher ended the performance with a thumb plugging her mouth and lightly nursing it.   With a chuckle that was far too mean spirited to be called anything like merry, the strange girl pushed Melody into the room. All eyes were on the pair, one hand on Melody’s shoulder as she was marched to the front of the room, towards the indisposed teacher.   “Did little Junie have a little accident?” A voice more mature than the one just speaking to Melody spoke. She looked over her shoulder and saw the girl was now a woman, looking at least 10 years older than she had a moment ago.   In a short time, Melody had accepted the existence of forces she could not fully grasp, but there was a difference between the magic she had seen in the red hall and the creature that stood behind her. The red hall seemed tricky, could even be called mischievous, but this woman- thing? Could only be called malevolent, staring into the class where the girls shuffled nervously at their desks while the blond woman surveyed them with the interest someone might survey a fruit stand when they were hungry. Her eyes glossed them over like they were ripe apples.   “Since little Junie here is quite in the mindset to be teaching anyone today, I’ll be taking over.” She turned towards the blackboard, erasing what Junie had been writing to put down her own name in large font, under which she drew a slender heart. “You may call me ‘Miss Grace’, and I specialize in life studies. Some people grow up faster, and in contrast, others slower than others, so slow, it might even be backwards. Take Junie here.” She begun to step towards the confused woman who looked to be on the verge of tears.   Melody didn’t know why she did it, but she took a step between Grace and Junie, not wanting to know what would happen to the thumb sucking woman, but knew in her heart it wouldn’t be pleasant for her. In a shaky voice, she declared, “She-she’s suffered enough. Isn’t it b-bad enough that s-she’ll never be a-able to l-look anyone in this school?”   A flash of rage filled Grace’s eyes, though her smile never faltered. She pushed Melody out of the way, on to the floor while she approached Junie, who stood in place, paralyzed by confusion and fear as Grace grabbed her. “No, no one has ever suffered enough.” She growled.   Grace grappled Miss Crabominable and brought the two to the floor, behind the teacher’s desk where Melody nor the other students could see the two. There was sounds of a struggle, hands and knees trying to scamper away, only for those hands and knees to get pulled back. There was a silence, then the sounds of a little girl crying.   The two emerged, Grace standing proud and triumphant with a girl that had to be about 10 looking out at the faces of the now much larger girls, softly crying as she saw the world now huge through tear soaked eyes.   Junie was dressed much like how Grace was early, a neat white shirt with a skirt that was a tad too short, only Junie’s had a little extra, sticking out, clear as day was a thick white diaper that almost certainly wouldn’t let the poor girl press her legs together any time soon. Junie’s chest lay flat as a board, though it appeared she hadn’t noticed that yet as her face looked around towards the room that had grown huge around her, and hands patting the front of her skirt, realization dawning on her what she now wore as underwear, her hair still tightly bound together only now in two buns on the back side of her head instead of one.   “Here,” Grace pushed the girl into Melody, Junie, not knowing who she was even holding on to, wrapped her arms around Melody, not caring who would give her comfort only that someone did. Melody, for her part, did the same, holding Junie and letting out soft hushing noises while she rubbed the inconsolable girl’s back. “Hope you’re a better babysitter than you were a teacher.” Melody didn’t have time to ponder how Grace knew that about her or how much she knew about Melody before the terror moved on to the class.   Beginning to walk up and down the rows of desks, each pair of eyes that weren’t her own were glued to Grace, not a soul of the 22 girls, not including Melody and Junie, wanted any part of what had happened to the bitchy teacher that was being held to the weird, ugly girl over by the former teacher’s desk. “We’ll start with a fun activity. Every,” Grace clapped her hands for the attention that was already squarely on her, “Pair up!”   “Go on,” She urged, “Find your friend, sit next to her,” There was a flurry of movement as the girls went into the familiar, time honored tradition of pairing up with their bestie. A few of them, not social with more that one or two others found themselves alone, in the end, four of the young ladies sat prettified to move, out of Grace’s presence or out of their own comfort zone. “That’s alright if you don’t want to participate.” Grace said in a sickly sweet voice. “If you’d rather, you can go ahead and go over to where Millie and Junie already.” She snapped her fingers and a pack of over sized Pampers appeared on the desk with a cloud of smoke, featuring an adult June Crabominable, nude except for the diaper below her, on her hands and knees and giving a drooling smile to the camera.   Without another word, the four girls grabbed on of the other hold overs and joined together.   “Good! Very good!” She praised them all. “Now, for the first life lesson, feeding a baby her bottle.” With another snap of her fingers, in front of each pair of girls was a bottle, a singular one. “Of course, it’s up to you girls to figure out who will be the baby, or if you’d like to join my lovely assistant without a discussion.”   To Grace’s surprise, one of the girls stood up. With all eyes on her, the tan skinned girl with dark hair looked around, gulping with stage fright, she gave a brave huff and said what she was going to say. “I’m not going to shove a bottle into anyone’s mouth.” Nina said, “Its obvious whatever s in the bottle is just going to do whatever you did to Crabominable, only it’ll be us doing it to them. No, I won’t be an asshole like you, even if it means I’ll be the one getting babied. I still have my pride.”   Nina was stared daggers at by Grace, not appreciating being stood up to right away, only for her expression to change suddenly. “Fine.” She gave a shrug while looking smug. “You win. Walk over to Millie who will take care of you.”   Nina rose out of her seat, head held. She only got a few steps towards the front before she found she was walking with a strange gait. Looking down, Nina saw that her legs were quivering, shaking more violently with each step. Everyone looked at the girl as each inch closer to the desk where Melody and June were at became more of a struggle. Her legs finally gave away before her transformation got worse.   Nina began to crawl, getting dirty from the class’s floor. They all watched as Nina’s hair rose to the top of her head until it was just a fuzzy little wisp, her cheeks getting chubby with baby fat, arms and legs that were toned with thin muscles becoming like fat little sausages with pudgy rolls, in her joining together and a powder blue onesie with a skirt that did little to hide her fluffy bottom. Nina stopped in her track, having completely forgotten why she was crawling this direction, it did disturb her that all these big girls were giving her weird looks, but found solace, rolling on to her back and trying to shove a blue, frilly sock into her mouth, quite successfully too.   Grace tapped a finger on Nina’s friend, Rochelle’s desk. “Be a dear and carry your partner up to the front the rest of the way. I think she got a bit distracted.” The poor girl got out of her seat sending the chair she was sitting on rocketing back with a loud screech and her desk screeching forward. “Don’t forget the bottle.” Grace offhandedly mentioned. “I think the poor dear will probably be starving. She’s a bit too young to be moving around that much.”   Rochelle grabbed the baby and took long, fast strides up to the front, behind the desk, making quick glances towards the door to the hall.   “Would anyone else like to walk to the front of the class? No?” Grace cheerily asked. “Well then, figure out who’s going to drink that baba!”   Melody watched the girls start arguing back and forth, trying to decide who’s putting that almost certainly cursed bottle around their mouth. The whole room descended into pandemonium, some screeched about promise and favors that haven’t been collected, others resorted to violence, hitting and hair pulling, trying to force the bottle in to their partner’s lips. Two girls bit the bullet, allowing the other to feed them without fight, a pair of friends and a pair of the girls who were forced to team up.   As the fighting continued, Grace came up to Melody and Junie. “And they all thought they were big girls, didn’t they? As if picking on someone weaker than them didn’t prove it enough, they just can’t help but try and be the bully if it means avoiding punishment.”   “Stop it!” Melody cried out, still holding Junie. “They’re just kids, they don’t deserve this!”   “Oww! Nina, no pulling!” Melody and Grace looked over at Rochelle and Nina, who was giggling as she tugged on her friends braid instead of drinking her own milk. When Rochelle noticed her audience, she made an alarmed noise and crawled to hide under the desk.   Wiping her eyes on Melody’s shirt, Junie stood up and stomped her foot in what she must of thought was an intimidating way. “You stop being mean to my students! This instant!” In any other circumstance, Melody would’ve thought the demanding chipmunk voice was amusing, but right now, she pulled Junie back by the bottom of her skirt. Junie swatted Melody’s hand away and stomped closer to an unamused Grace.   Junie grabbed the ruler off her desk and swatted it against her desk, a sound the girls in room had been trained to pay attention to. All eyes, including the several young women who were busy sucking on bottles looked forward, a few even sat up with their arms straight against their sides.   “You get outta my woom wight now!” Melody wanted to grab Junie and shut her up before she did anything to make matters worse, but as she watched the 10 year old dwindle down in size again, shrinking as her authoritative anger grew, she kept shoving her foot in her mouth, “Dese is my giwls! Yous can’ tawk to dem dis way!” She smacked the ruler over the side of the desk again, only instead of the loud thwack she was expecting, the there was instead the jingle of beads. Junie, now the size Melly was, looked at her hand, finding a rattle in place of the ruler.   “Excuse me, miss fussy britches!” Junie yelped as two huge hands swooped her up. “I should’ve known you couldn’t go too long without being the center of attention.” Grace held Junie by the armpit and showed her to the whole class. The little 1 and a half year old kicked her feet pathetically in front of her students, each of them watching the little one’s diaper that was increasingly becoming less concealed as the seconds wore on, her skirt raising up to become little more than decoration. “Since we all need to have a little reminder, I think I’ll hold on to Junie here, I just think the little darling will be upset if no one is looking at her!” Junie hid her face as soon as she was brought close to Grace. “Or, at least she will when she gets over her shyness.”   Stepping over to the desk, Grace tapped a few fingers on the hard mahogany surface. “Speaking of reminders, I don’t think little Nina is being a good one hidden under that.” With a poof, the desk vanished, replaced by a playpen, soft plushies and block scattered all over it with Rochelle making an eep while Nina bit her friend’s hand with gums instead of nursing.   “Aaaand, I bet a lot of you thought the girls who drank their babas were going to get the worst of it, well, maybe they will, but you’re not out of the woodwork.” Rochelle tried to inch away as Grace reached out to her with curled fingers.   Rochelle squeezed her eyes shut, holding on to Nina like a lifeline, only to forget what she was doing, not to mention feeling the weight in her arms growing heavier. The class, half of them experiencing a similar change, watched as Rochelle shrunk in her spot against the playpen, her uniform shrinking as well, until she wore just a pink t-shirt with Peppa Pig on it, her underwear the last thing on her that was ‘grown-up’ turning into a large diaper on her 2 year old body.   10 girls of the 20, each one holding on to a bottle for a friend or associate found herself the same age and same state of dress, though some wore dresses and skirts, while over got pants or overalls, each of them regressed by 16 years, a little confused, but their minds had already caught up with their body, ready to play, get picked up by their parents, or in a few cases, yawning for their overdue nap time. More than one took the half drunk bottle and started nursing on them.   “They’re just so cute when they’re not so big and tough! Everyone on the better side of puberty, will you please pick up your partner and drop her off in the playpen? Thaaaank yooou!”   The remaining teenagers each grabbed a toddler and one by one deposited them into the playpen, a few giving their old friends a pitying look as they chewed on blocks or started holding dollies.   “Just a moment, girls, before you return to your seats-” The remaining 10 and Melody stood in front, watching as the room changed into what Grace considered to be more appropriate for them. Two large, round tables with small chairs around them, walls were lined with finger paintings, a few of the girl’s flinching when they saw signatures like, ‘Luna, age 27’, ‘Tommy, age 30’, and “Carol, age 20’ beneath paintings that looked like they were done by a child a fraction of the listed aged.   Grace shooed the girls towards a seat, Grace giving Melody a pointed look. “You too, ‘Millie’, unless you’d like to skip the wait and hop into the playpen, then by all means.” Melody marched with the others and found a seat, blushing when she discovered her Pull-Up was damp when she sat her butt down.   “Now, girls,” Grace addressed the teenagers in the too small seats that had their knees lifted up in front of them. “I think for our next project, we’ll work on multitasking.” A box of crayons and a coloring page appeared in front of each of the 11 girls, and in the center of the room, right in front of the dreaded playpen, was a training potty that was eerily similar to the one Melly had been using. “You’re little snack time bottles are probably rushing through most of you right now, pretty soon, it’ll be time to go potty.” Grace strolled over to the training potty, giving it a little kick while Junie snoozed in her arms, too tired from this drama to stay up any longer.   Grace continued, “Here’s the easy part, just draw me a pretty picture, you don’t even have to stay in the lines-” One of the girls started furiously scribbling on the page, before she got a dumb look on her face and shrunk before everyone else. The rest of the 10 girls eyes went back to Grace, who had a pointed finger outstretched before the now infant girl, who had decided that coloring wasn’t as fun as sticking the wax crayon in her mouth. “Will one of you please add her to our newly formed nursery program?” She watched with a careful eye as one of the girls picked up the onesie wearing baby and dropped her off. “Need I remind you all the impatience is a sure sign of immaturity? And we should all know what happens to immature brats by now, right?”   She gave it a few seconds, “Riiiight, girls?”   In a chorus, the girls repeated, “Right!” No one wanted to be the next example.   With a smirk of self satisfaction, Grace eagerly said, “Right, what?”   “Right Miss Grace!”   “Good! As I was saying before I was rudely interrupted,” She gave a look towards the newest baby that was rolling on the floor, her diaper already bulging out of her onesie with use. “You just have to color until I say it’s time to line up for the potty. I think it goes without saying that anyone who can’t manage to stay dry is clearly not ready for her big girl panties.” The girls anxiously looked towards Grace, hands twitching, ready to go towards their respective crayons, like racers ready at the starting line.   “Go!”   Melody grabbed a crayon at random, an orange, and began to shade in the cat in a basket that laid in front of her. She was barely done with its head before the girl next to her started to quiver. Then the girl on the other side of Melody reached a hand down below and had her legs pressed tightly together. Soon, every girl at both tables had red faces doing their own versions of the potty dance.   “No!” The girl that Melody had first noticed shaking jumped out of her seat, kicking it on to its back in a desperate attempt to get to the potty chair.   An obstacle fell in the girl’s path though, Grace stepped between her and the chair. “Where are you going, baby? You’re not even finished with your puppy!” She said, pointing at the green dog at the empty spot.   “Please, please!” The girl begged, holding herself as her urgency grew the catastrophic levels. “I just- please! Don’t make me!”   “I’m not making you do anything, dear. You’re the one not able to hold it like a big girl. If you’re not ready, I’d be happy to get you ready at the chang-”   Before Grace could finish her sentence, it was already too late for the poor girl, her bladder had given way and spilling on to the soft carpet beneath her. Shame and relief danced on her face as the other girls looked on, their own issues getting worse with the sound of liquid hitting the carpet.   From the other table, another girl jumped up, holding the front of her skirt. “I didn’t even feel it! What the fuck?!”   “Aww, looks like the two of you just couldn’t cut it. Come along girls.” When neither girl stepped forward, Grace added, “If you’d rather not walk, I can make you crawlers, or worse.” With twin looks of panic on both their faces, both of the girls hurried towards the playpen, finishing their short journey as blushing 2 year olds, no longer needing a change as their skirts and underwear had become something much more absorbent by then.   Grace gave everyone else a look, “What are you waiting for? I need new pictures for my wall! Go on!”   With 8 remaining, and the time running out for more of the girls, Melody couldn’t help feeling like she had an unfair advantage, not having drunk the bottle and was already wearing training pants, ones she could feel cold and saggy by now. She had never felt so bad for not suffering. Her guilt when she saw another girl try to sneak for the potty chair, crouching down on all fours when Grace wasn’t looking and only reaching the training body when her age could only be measured in the months, was both heartbreaking and maddening. The coloring and waiting wasn’t the torture for Melody like it was for the rest of the girls, it was watching each of the girls that at the beginning of the day had a scant few months before they were officially adults, out of school and ready to take their lives into their hands, now only on the cusp of getting ready for pre-k was the best hope for many of them.   She was feeling a twisted form of survivor’s guilt, watching the crawler get dropped into the playpen, it was like watching a casket get lowered into the ground. Melody wondered if there was anything left of the girl inside, or was her body now on autopilot as her mind screamed on the inside. Either way, by the time the girl grew up again, she’d be a completely different person. If she grew up again. A terrible realization hit Melody like a bucket of cold water, she really didn’t know the extent of this crazy woman’s magic, she gave Grace a glance, who was side eyeing her with a cruel smile as she held little Junie on her shoulder, a macabre trophy, and winked at Melody.   Sweat was pouring down the other girl’s faces by this point, so many girls looking like they were ready to burst, until the lifesaver was tossed out to them. Melody was grabbed by the arm and pushed towards the training potty by Grace. “Alright, girls, line up!”   The relief on the faces of the remaining girls was palpable, until they saw Melody getting forced on to the potty before them.   “That’s not fair!” One cried out!   “She’s already wearing a diaper let me go first!” Another said, then as Grace ‘helped’ Melody’s undies down, the girl exclaimed in frustration, “She’s wet too!”   As soon as Melody was put on her throne on humiliation, Grace sauntered over to both of the young ladies with the big mouths and plugged them with pacifiers as the 6 remaining girls got into a line in front of her. One of girls with the pacifier spat out the bulb and reached for her mouth, Melody could see why, each of her teeth had gone missing when the bulb was tossed in. She tried to say something, but when only none sense babbles emerged from the back of her throat, she broke down in a screaming fit, unable or unwilling to care that she was making her own mess of the floor, and led to the playpen still yelling. The other pacified girl was just crying in futility.   “Now, we can all wait until little Millie here is done, like big girls.”   Melody, even if she didn’t have 6 pairs of eyes on her giving her way too much attention, really didn’t need to go, and the growing pressure and urgency each of the girls in line was radiating made Melody feel like the weight of the world was on her shoulder.   The girl that was standing behind the girl who had the screaming fit, smelling the pee the other girl left on the carpet below her, gave up, and started begging Grace for a diaper before she wet herself. She girl gave a strange happy smile as she was led out of line, a pleased and relieved tot all to ready to rid herself of that stress and play with the other girls.   The rest of the line, so many reaching their breaking points, looked on at Melody, some mouthing ‘please’ while other let their eyes do all the talking.   “Please, Miss Grace,” Melody looked up to the waiting ‘teacher’, “I really don’t have to go, let someone else go ahead of me!”   “Now Millie, don’t give up just yet, you haven’t even tried.”   “But-”   “Or you can join the other little girls.” Grace offered.   With all hope out, Melody pushed her body as much as she could, eyes shut in concentration, trying to get anything out, frrrrrrt-PLOP!   Melody jumped up after her way, way, waaay too public release, the next girl practically pushing her out of the way, not caring what she was sitting on. Grace at least had the good grace to make the mess Melody had left vanish before the entire room smelled like an outdoor venue portajon.   As the next girl in line made a loud splash in the too little training potty, the pressure got to the final girl in line. Dropping to her knees, no one had to guess what she was doing as she started sucking her thumb and giving in. The girl in front of her used all her willpower to keep from looking back, lest she fall prey to her base desires. By the time the girl was picked up, the gurgling 18 month old was just pleased to be held as Grace carried her to her new peers.   The next girl jumped at the training potty, not caring that she looked a fool and made record breaking time getting done, even having decency to help the final girl in line pull her skirt down before she dropped down.   The girls who had all managed to make it on time where finally led to a square carpet on the far side of the room and made to sit in a semi-circle around Grace and little Junie, who kept herself busy tugging on Grace’s collar without a care in the world.   “Congratulations, girls!’ Grace gave the 4 of them a round of applause. “You made it to the finals! I think we can officially say you’re each in the ‘potty training’ phase of your life.” With another finger snap, Melody felt her Pull-Up magically changed into a fresh one, and as each of the other girls shifted uncomfortably in their seats, she suspected that each of them were now wearing ‘big kid now’ undies. Their was a heaviness in the air, as each girl wanted to voice their displeasure, though they had learned better by now, there was nothing to be gained by being vocal. “I see we’ve learned that children are to be seen and not heard. Why, I’m proud of you all!” She gave Melody a side eye look again, “Well, most of you all. Why, I may even let one or two of you stay big enough to help babysit the others.”   “Now, who will it be?” Grace stared at a thin athletic girl with short blonde hair that looked exhausted after this whole ordeal. “Is Tracey the track star going to be running around after the little ones?” She looked towards the dark skinned girl who was doing all she could to not stare daggers at the witch, “Bethany? I believe, if I’m not mistaken, you were most voted to be a housewife in your yearbook, fancy getting an early jump on that?” Drawing her attention towards a girl with dark hair that went down to the small of her back, “Maybe it’ll be Yolanda, you’re one of the most popular girls in school, right? I’m sure the babies will love you.” Grace’s gaze finally fell on Melody. “Or is it Millie? The already proven babysitter, the girl with the suspicious amount of favoritism from yours truly,” Grace gave the baby in her arms a little rock while the other three girls shot her a glare, “Just to let you know dear, children can be a little too honest. Even more so than that class over there!”   “Hmm… Who to choose, who to choose…” Grace pretended to muse to herself, looking each girl over with considerable scrutiny. “Oh, this is just too hard! Like picking out which child to give the last cookie to.” She said, jostling the baby, Junie for her part cried out before resuming slobbering back on Grace’s shirt.   “You can always share it.” Melody muttered.   The other girls nodded earnestly at that remark, only for it to get show down by the adult right away. “No, no, that won’t do.” Grace pretended to think. “What we need is a contest! Yes, that would do.”   Grace patted the center of the group, and out appeared a stack of books. “You girls go ahead and read these text books for as long as you can. Last one remaining will get to keep her status as ‘almost a grown up’. Pretty fair deal, honestly, seeing as each of you is a sneeze away from needing Miss Grace to change your butts.”   Bethany, directly across from Grace asked, “Is- is that it?”   Tracy sighed, resting her head on her knees. “That’ll be easy.” Feeling like her nightmare was nearly over.   Yolanda and Melody looked nervously looked at the books, neither trusting this challenge.   “Oh, it won’t be that easy. Or it shouldn’t for a big kid.” Grace waved her hand, and all around the girls several toys appeared, then she beamed like she pulled out for ace in the hole.   “Umm yeah, that’ll make it much harder.” Yolanda couldn’t keep the sarcasm from creeping into her voice, poking a doll that had appeared to her right, only to jump back like the thing bit her.   “Like I said, it won’t be terribly hard if you’re as big as you say you are.” Grace got up, readjusting Junie in her arms. “Now if you’ll excuse me, there are other little ones- ooh, force of habit- little ones that need tending to. If anyone is ready to throw in the towel and join them, just let me know! Gooood luck!”   Tracy, Bethany, and Melody each reached for the pile, Yolanda gave the doll she just touched an odd look. Tracey groaned as she looked at the physics book in her hand, while Bethany gave the psychology text book she had grabbed an interested hmm, Melody nearly flinched when she saw she almost grabbed the ‘Cat in the Hat’, before grabbing the book beneath it, a book on poetry, Yolanda had grabbed the doll and put it on her lap, when Tracy, in a misguided attempt at good sportsmanship snapped her out of it, giving her a nudge. Yolanda looked up, not sure what was going on and nearly grabbed the Dr. Seuss book before shaking herself out of it and grabbing a book on history. The other 3 gave the toys around them a weary look.   Going through the book like her life depended on it, Bethany leafed through her book, looking for any passages or blurbs that would keep her attention. In an effort to keep on task, she began to read out loud, “-Impostor syndrome is not recognized by the American Psychological Health Organization-” Melody frowned at this, and Tracy gave an irritated hmmph at the distraction, desperately trying to keep her eyes glued to her pages, fighting back the yawn that was crawling up her throat. Yolanda was busy showing her dolly the pretty pictures of the men in funny costumes, giggling at their silly wigs.   There was a box that sat next to Bethany with a crank that started moving by itself, the jingly tone of ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ played from it. Bethany tried to ignore the best she could, continuing to read off descriptions of mental disorders, only to jump when a jack-the-box came popping out at her. She gave a little shriek, slamming the lid close, a fatal mistake for her part, her eyes now resting firmly on the crank that moved by itself. Melody and Tracy were no longer getting descriptions mumbled into their ear, now Bethany was idly humming along to the music coming from the box, jumping again when the jack emerged from its box, only this time she was clapping for it. When she shut it back down again, she looked at the crank, expecting it to turn by itself, when it did it, she figured she would take matters into her own hands and started cranking it, giggling all the while.   Her anxiety growing, Tracey tried to be interested in the book in her lap, knowing how much boredom and distractions would cost her. She let out a yelp when something lightly tapped her back. Looking behind her, she saw a toy police car with sirens that lit up. For a second, the spinning lights mesmerized her, getting caught up in a memory of her older brother playing with a similar toy, she would watch him pull the car back and spring forward by itself. She shook away the memory and tried to get back to her reading. Another tap on her back and Tracey schooched forward. The book was brought very close to her face, Tracey pretending like that would do her any good to ignore the silly thing. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tracey shut her eyes, reached back and threw the stupid car away from her. Only when she opened them she saw the car bounding back towards her, stopping just in front of her. Her senses taking a leave, Tracey reached down and pulled the car back, both feeling and hearing the clicking of the mechanism that propelled the car forward. When it stopped a few feet away, Tracey crawled after it, leaving the book opened and abandoned.   Melody looked at Bethany, singing misremembered lyrics to a nursery rhyme, Yolanda pointing out silly men to the doll in her lap, Tracey making ‘vroom-vroom’ noises at the toy car. It was a hollow feeling victory.   “It should’ve been you.”   “Huh?” Melody looked everywhere for the source of the voice, only to see the doll in Yolanda’s lap glaring at her with button eyes and a sewed smile.   “It should’ve be you, you nutcase. You damned all these girls to a life of pissing their pants. If you weren’t here, the Mistress wouldn’t have found this room interesting at all, she only came here because she saw some crazy woman who didn’t belong inside a body that’s not her’s. All those things you say about yourself. They’re truuue. You don’t belong anywhere. You should’ve stayed with Mommy, at least she wasn’t a full person yet,you only got Melly a couple of weeks seeing a nice lady who would give her suckers and just wanted to talk to her, for Millie you made everything so much worse, anyone who didn’t hear about Millie in Pull-Ups will definitely find out she spent the day in this school’s brand new daycare. Which is worse, if she comes out of all this a laughing stock and never able to live down the day she spent in diapers, or if she becomes a mindless toddler like the rest of these girls?”   “I…” Melody began to say something in a squeaky voice.   “Why don’t you pick up your little book, you don’t even have to pretend to read, just imagine you’re back in bed and Mommy is showing you the pictures again, wouldn’t that be better than pretending you’re a big girl?” The doll asked.   “I- am a big girl!” But the temptation was there, right in front of her, Melody felt herself reaching out to grab the book, but stopped herself.   Melody stood up and looked towards the playpen, at Grace who gave the girls inside it a wicked grin. “Grace!” She yelled out. Grace leered at her and marched towards her.   “What’s up, buttercup? You giving up? I was just about to put the other kids down for a nap, I’ll give you the first bottle if you come right now. Think about it, it’ll be all nice and warm, and you can pick out the best spot for a nap, whaddya say, Melody?”   “It’s over,” She growled her response.   “It’s- over? What, no, look at little Yolie here, still reading her book like a big girl. In fact she’s the winner, go Yolie! Yay!” Yolanda looked up and clapped at the nice tone and her name.   “Did you hear that, Yolie?” Melody asked her, she looked at Melody confused. “It’s nap time, why don’t you put your dolly down for a nap.” Nodding and smiling, Yolanda set down the book and rocked the toy back and forth in her arm, yawning while she was at it. “I think your contest is over, Grace, I won.”   “All things considered, I respectfully disagree, I think I won. I always do, that’s kind of how I play my games.”   “I bet you do.” Melody felt an anger started to burn up inside of her as she looked around at everything, the teenagers playing like they were in preschool, the girls in the playpen forced to relive their lives, that poor teacher in Grace’s arms who’s only crime was that she wanted her class to pay attention to her, something Melody could very much sympathize with. “Why me, Grace? Why them? Why any of this?”   Grace shrugged, and lied, “Because I wanted to.”   Shaking her head, Melody angrily stepped forward. “No, no way. As soon as you saw me, you knew I wasn’t me, that’s why you started all this bullshit.”   “Maybe, I just like seeing girls in diapers, did ya ever think of that. I just saw a girl too old for potty training and amped up the fun.”   “You definitely take a sick pleasure out all this,” Melody said, “But we both know there’s something more going on.”   Throwing her hands up in mock surrender, “Fiiine, you got me. I saw inside that little head of yours, and the head inside that one, by the way, if therapy really isn’t working out for you, going back to being a little girl and getting a fresh start is 100% your best bet-” “Get to the point please.”   “I was getting to there! Jeez, you’ve been spending too much time as a kid. Anyway, I like what I saw in that red place you were at. I want in. But…” Grace let the sentence hang.   Melody didn’t have much of a choice but to take the bait. “But?”   “I have to piggy back off of you to get in there. Of course, as soon as I’m there I can go around touching mirrors and spreading havoc to anywhere, everywhere, to my heart’s content.”   “Then- It seems like we’re at an impasse.” Melody sat down, satisfied.   Grace looked at Melody, baffled. “An ‘impasse’? I don’t think so, in case you haven’t noticed, I hold all the cards.”   Melody shrugged. “Not really. You need me to go over there and tap that mirror. I’m not gonna.” She grabbed the Cat in the Hat and started looking through it.   “If you don’t, I’ll make you a newborn.”   “Probably was going to do that anyway. Besides,” Melody looked up, “Didn’t you say starting over was my best bet.”   “Fiiiine,” Grace rolled her eyes. “I promise I won’t make you baby brained if you let me go with you.”   Shaking her head, Melody went on to say, “That’s not good enough. I want everyone in here to go back to the way they were before I got here.”   Grace gave an exasperated sigh. “Look, as much as I’d love to do that, I can’t. I can grow them up, but most of the girls over there will never regain the ability to talk. Spent too much time infantilized. Look at this widdle face,” She held out Junie, “Do you want miss hot cross buns here to spend the rest of her days in a mental institution instead of getting adopted by a nice family? Look, honestly, her sister wouldn’t mind taking her in, and she doesn’t have a stick up her ass, getting raised by her is a net gain for Junie here.”   Melody pointed at the three teenagers. “What about them?”   Begrudgingly, Grace admitted, “I can probably put them back to normal, if it’s that important to you.”   “’Probably’ isn’t very reassuring.”   “Ugh,” Grace massaged the bridge of her nose, “They’ll be able to walk, talk, drive, go to college, just there’s going to be a little part of them that will always want to be pampered a bit. You know, a little accident at night and asking her partner to help her into her incontinence underwear, keep a toy or two on her desk at work to fiddle with, maybe get a pacifier to suck on when she’s alone. Pretty much the best I can do.”   “Fine, go ahead.”   Grace snapped her fingers, Tracy, Bethany, and Yolanda all came out of their stupor, looking around wildly. “Ladies, Millie and I have come to an arrangement, you’re all free to leave, off you go!” The three didn’t need to be told twice and sprinted out of the room without a word.   “And what about them?” Melody pointed at the girls in the playpen.   “Them? That’s easy, they were just 18, they’ll get picked up by Mommy or Daddy, Aunt or Uncle, Grandma or Grandpa in like a couple of hours, There’s even a couple of girls at this school who, as of today earn credits in early childhood development by watching these kids, they’ll be in here when their classes are done, easy peasy. They’ll be a little confused where the teacher is, but a sub will come in tomorrow and everything will be right as rain.”   “So then…” Grace gave her a grin. “Do we have a deal?” She held out a hand.   Melody sighed, reaching out, “In spite of the fact that this is a text book case of a Faustian bargain, we have a deal.”   The two shook on it. “Wonderful! Let’s just get these girls down for a nap and then we’ll be off!”   “Wait I have to help you with that too?!”   “Sooner the better, right?”   The two of them set off to get a fresh bottle into the hands of each of the little ones and on to a mat, under a blanket. It was busy work, with a lot of the babies wanting to play with Melody’s headset more than they wanted to get laid down. Melody had to sing a lot of lullabies before each of the girls was ready and her and Grace stepped up to the mirror, the last remnant of what this classroom used to be.   “Wait, what’s going to happen to Millie when I’m gone?”   “You’re just thinking of that now? That’s the easy part, she’s just going to be the first one to watch the kids, get the feeling that the teacher didn’t show, and be really confused why she’s wearing a Pull-Up. At least it’ll be dry, right?”   Melody reached down, blushing.   “Riiiight, okay, she’ll be confused why she’s in a wet Pull-Up then, she’ll figure it out, she’s really a pretty bright girl when she doesn’t have a clinically depressed teacher running the ship.” Grace held out a hand.   Taking the outstretched hand, Melody reached out for the mirror, already regretting her decision.     Back in the red hall, Melody found the silence of the never ending room broken the shuffling of another.   “Ahhh! This is total freedom!” Grace went to and from several mirrors, looking for her first destination. “Ooooh, this one will be perfect to start my grand tour. I think there’s a couple of super heroes in it. When was the last time you saw a super hero team end up as babies? That’s just a good ol’ tale for the ages!”   “Yeah, well have fun, hope to never see you again.” Melody said, beginning to walk away.   “It’s a big place, but then so is the world and they’re always calling that small- Oh!” Grace snickered when she looked back at Melody, who was back in her regular attire, though she was all too aware of what now laid under her suit.   “What? What is it?”   “Ahh, it’s nothing, Just go be someone rich enough to afford some really good concealer, you’ll be fiiine!” Grace made no attempt to hide her laughter at Melody’s expense.   Getting the hint, Melody ran a few fingers up against her face, finding the telltale signs of acne scares all over. Swearing to herself, Melody tried to think of what to do.   “Or,” Grace added helpfully, “You can just go to a place where you’re too young to worry about that sort of thing!”   Melody continued on to another mirror, looking inside seeing an oil drill and dismissing it. “Yeah I’ll think about it.”   “Suuure. See ya around, partner.” Melody didn’t look back, but heard a telltale whoosh coming from a portal, and once again, was left alone.   Melody passed by many mirrors at this point, not spending too much time examining them before jumping inside, then leaving.   There was a gorgeous city built on the branches of skyscraper sized trees, cable cars everywhere bring the denizens to one side to another. A rich, earthy scent was everywhere, and the people were friendly, giving Melody or the body she inhabited at any rate a wave.   Her clothes were stiff and unfomfortable, made up of a leather material, around her chest she could feel tight binds that kept herself from flopping about, and the Pull-Up that she had SOMEHOW, to her dismay, kept ending up with, at least kept the scratchy leather from chaffing her too badly.   Fruit vendors with wares so exotic offered Melody slices of odd food, some so hot she had to wipe the spicy feeling off her tongue with the sleeve of her shirt. Water fell down on her in big droplets from the leaves above, and when she looked up, she was amazed to see the sky had two binary stars lighting up the heavens. The place was too incredible for Melody to put into words.   Except for the bugs, caterpillars the size of cats crawled up her arms, she saw people walking along with creatures that looked like flies the size of mastiffs on leashes. People gave her odd looks when she was weary of them, a boy even tried to tell her the praying mantis he was playing with was ‘friendly’ when it started poking at her leather shoes.   The novelty of the place wore its welcome after that and Melody found her way back to the mirror.   In the next world, Melody was overlooking a green and blue planet on some kind of space station or satellite, a room of metal and plastic that had a minimalist vibe. Anything that wasn’t being used folded into the walls, or fell apart to let the nanobots that made up the object do something else.   There were a few people around, Melody saw as she explored the empty halls, but it was too silent, everyone seemed to be off towards a timely goal and there wasn’t time for small talk. The only company that she could really have any conversation with, as one sides as it was, came from a little machine that looked like an advanced roomba that seemed to follow her everywhere, spraying some kind of solvent everywhere she walked.   The view was incredible, as she stared out one of the windows down towards the alien looking planet and the backdrop of space. She was lost in the scenery for a little while, gazing out in the vastness of space and feeling like she was the size of a flea in the grand scale of the cosmos. Melody almost felt like she could stay here for that alone, just to observe the majesty of the universe before her.   Maybe, she thought to herself, sticking a hand up against the window, she didn’t need to find a permanent world to stay on, she could just be a sightseer of the multiverse, traveling like a hitch hiker, jumping from one body to the next just to discover what all was out there. There was a romantic appeal to that, it scratched a certain itch in Melody’s mind that made her smile.   Though, the white jumpsuit she wore wasn’t the most comfortable, it had a bad habit of wedging her padded underwear up her butt. She kept having to do an embarrassed look over her shoulder to make sure no one was looking before adjusting herself.   She put a pin in this one, another place to check out again, if only to look out the window.   The last world left Melody with a feeling of zen, she didn’t need to be afraid of what she found as she explored the red hall again, walking towards another mirror in front of her, only to step back out when she saw that there was a baby girl in a cape flying around shooting lasers out of her eyes at an unseen foe. Melody promptly left that world for Grace, chiding herself.   The realm Melody explored after that she immediately smelled the ripe scent of animals and death. She was on a game trail, surrounded by yellowed grass that came up to her shoulders, standing in front of a large ATV that was painted with a savanna camo motif.   There was the sense of danger in the field on each side of Melody as she looked around, interested in what she was going to see. It would be pretty cool to see a lion or elephant in person, though she stood by the side mirror of the vehicle she came in through.   She glanced around, excited to see whatever kind of animal was out here waiting for her, only when the sound that was somewhere between a croak and a screeched did she let out a little scream and look into the mirror.   Holy fucking shit, that was a Goddamned dinosaur! She thought, clutching her chest when she was back in the red hall. She sat down against the wall, letting her heart settle back to a natural rhythm. That was a 90 lb, brightly feathered freaking raptor that was LEEPING at her and it took more than a second to catch her breath.   Then Melody winced at the thought of her host, whether she was a hunter or a scientist, definitely was not left in the best position to fend off any dinosaur attacks, leaning down to check her reflection in the mirror   Stupid, stupid, stupid! Melody told herself as she walked away, trying to forget her carelessness though the little voice in her head made that impossible.   Melody walked for a little while until a glint in a mirror caught her eye. A beautiful view of the skyline of an impressive city all around the perspective of the person in the mirror, an important looking desk with a sparse pile of files and organized black, leather folders stood on top of the desk, fancy looking chairs, more comfortable and expensive looking than any car Melody ever owned sat there, and the aroma of fresh coffee and freshly printed page in the air. Melody tapped on the mirror, if only to see what the chair she would be sitting on felt like.   And oh boy, was it good. Melody fell into the body of executive director Mrs. Miley Miller, a wrinkled face staring back at her in the compact mirror that sat on Mrs. Miller’s desk, and that body was currently sitting on the best office chair Melody had ever felt. It was like a sturdy marshmallow, and it curved in just the right places to Melody now old back. The lumbar support was unbelievable, she thought as she lounged back, inadvertently cracked something in just the right spot.   “Awww-gh!” Endorphins flitted through Melody, barely even registering how that little release let out a different kind of release in the bottom of the fluffy underwear Melody was forced to endure, though she couldn’t make herself care too much about silly matters like incontinence when- Spinning around to look out the floor to ceiling windows towards the skyline, only, she didn’t stop there. She placed two heels down and spun the chair again and again, until she got dizzy.   She got up on shaky legs, feeling a little sore after her bout of strenuous movement this body almost certainly used to on a day to day basis. Melody smoothed out the black dress with red pinstripes she wore. There was a kind of confidence and power Melody wasn’t used to she could feel from being Mrs. Miller. It was intoxicating, she could see the memories of the woman, dropping husbands in the trash as easily as someone might drain a cup in the sink, firing countless employees over her long, esteemed career, making or breaking people’s entire companies just with a yes or a no. Looking out the window, Melody felt a fear with this kind of authority at hand.   Are you sure a little loser like you should be in charge of this body?   Melody looked down, she was right, she would probably screw something up. After all, that’s what she did. With a sound of resignation, Melody turned around and headed towards the desk, towards the little compact mirror on the surface-   “Mrs. Miller!” Hayden, Miley’s secretary burst through the door, a tiny mouse of a woman in a black dress with a tacky and tasteless, at least to Melody’s eye, flower bracelet on. “The board of directors for Bay-B enterprises is ready for the mee-” Hayden’s palm flung to her face, keeping Mrs. Miller from seeing the smile that had started to form on her lips was a matter of living in her suite uptown and bedding in a gutter.   “What is it- Ms. Richards?” Melody asked after searching for the name for a second. It must have been the most difficult parsing of someone else’s memories Melody had gone through yet, there were so many nameless assistants floating around Miley’s brain it was hard to keep them straight, not to mention show little the old bag regarded them.   Hayden continued, feeling a little pleased with herself that Mrs. Miller had actually called her by her name, and that her almost slip up went unnoticed. “I- erm-”   “Spit it out, girl!” Melody spat out with venom. She felt surprised, she hadn’t meant to say it like that.   “Y-your face. We need to get someone in for m-makeup right away.”Hayden stuttered out, preparing to close her eyes at the vitriol that was about to get spewed her way from the observation.   Melody reached up, feeling the sure signs of acne that was on the wrinkled face. “Oh, yes. You better send them up. Make it quick!”   Hiding her relief, Hayden slid out the door and began making calls. It was looking to be a good day for her, Mrs. Millers wasn’t in her typical mood, even with the face thing going on.   In the office, Melody slouched down into the insanely comfortable seat. That was weird, she thought, I’m not usually that- mean. Except to yourself, her insecurities whispered back to her, but you deserve it. Right, she agreed, she deserved it.   There was little time between sitting down and a trio of makeup artists being let into the room, seemingly appearing out of thin air at Mrs. Miller’s beck and call. A man with pointed hair with square framed glasses in very fashionable attire seemed to be calling the shots to two haggard looking girls to his left and right. Melody rolled her eyes at the man, she detested fruity, flamboyant men like this- wait, why did she think that?   The man grimaced at Melody’s face, “Hilda, Gretchen, code red, pull out the big guns. We need to get this sorted right away.”   Pulling out creams and brushes, the girls in unison said, “Right away, Mr. Fletcher.”   Mr. Fletcher held his chin and carefully examined Melody, leaning his face in to get a good look at her, matters as trivial as personal space far removed. He made a clicking sound with his teeth and barked orders at his minions, “Ointment. No, the good one! Cream, Gretchen if I have to say the good one again you’re fired. Cloth.” He demanded items like a surgeon, and in turn, Melody felt like she was on an operating table.   “Is this going to take all day?” Melody snapped, glaring at the man.   Rubbing something into her skin with a gloved hand, Mr. Fletcher let out a snarky reply, “It’s going to if you don’t shut up and let me work.”   An inkling of respect emerged out the barren garden in Mrs. Miller’s esteem for people other than herself. “Remind me again why I hire rude reprobates like you?”   “Because I’m the best at what I do, duh.” Melody grabbed the compact mirror off the desk and looked at Fletcher’s handiwork, she really did have to admire the craftsmanship, not only was that dreadful acne invisible, in the matter of minutes Fletcher seemed to have lifted 20 years off of Miley’s face.   “Good, I got appointments.” She waved the man off with a hand.   As the two girls gathered up the makeup back into the carrying cases, Fletcher dropped his used gloves in the trash, “Yup, you’re not the only one. You’ll get my rush job bill in an email in about 30 to 60 minutes.”   “Miss Richards will handle it.”   “Oh? You actually know this one’s name? Color me impressed. Let’s go ladies! We have more bags to make look like Prada to get to!”   Melody breathed out as soon as she was alone. This was getting weird, she was acting way bitchier than she ever had, even on her worse days. She grabbed the compact mirror, taking a look into it, only seeing Miley scowl back at her. She was definitely ready to leave this body behind-   “Mrs. Miller!” Hayden opened the door, an arm full of folders clutched to the front of her desk. “The directors are ready in boarding room 3C on floor 52.”   Slamming a palm on the desk, Melody snapped, “Didn’t anyone ever teach you to knock?!”   In a small voice, Hayden replied, “But you told me to-”   “Don’t tell me what I said. I was there, I don’t need reminders from girls who can’t pay off their student loans without handouts.”   “Yes, ma’am.”   Without really realizing what she was doing, Melody was up and stomping towards the door. Outside the door, there was flurry of movement, phones ringing with men and women scurrying everywhere between cubicles with a tireless energy fueled by one of three coffee pots that sat by the elevator doors, it was a soulless environment, everyone except Melody and Hayden dressed identically, the only color in the whole place that wasn’t a monotone black and white was the stripes on Melody’s dress, the flower on Hayden’s wrist, and a scattering few plastic ferns that lined the walls. One of her drones ran up to her as soon as the young man saw Melody.   “Mrs. Miller, I have these forms you need to sign to finish the deal with-”   Melody strolled past him, barely acknowledging his existence. “Richards can sign it, she knows my signature.”   “W- wait, who’s Mr. Richards?” The man asked Hayden. She pointed to herself and mouthed, ‘me’.   Melody marched over to the elevator and pressed the button to go down. When the door opened up revealing a few office workers inside, she growled, “Get out, I want to be alone.”   “But this isn’t my floor!” Objected one of them.   Barring her teeth, Melody snapped again, “Out!” She commanded.   Grabbing the door before it closed, Melody gave Hayden an expecting look. “Get in.”   “Oh! But I thought you wanted to be alone.”   Rolling her eyes, Melody clarified, “You don’t count as a person.”   “O-oh…” Hayden dutifully stepped inside.   A digital display above the sliding doors told Melody, floor 103-102-101. “Can’t this stupid thing go any faster?” Melody muttered under her breath.   “N-no, I don’t think so.” Hayden replied in a timid voice.   “It’s a rhetorical question.”   “And I gave you a rhetorical answer?” Hayden flinched when she saw the look Melody gave her, as if she just psychically received the smack Melody wanted to give her.   A few minutes of heavy, uncomfortable silence later, they arrived on floor 52, though Melody could barely tell they had left floor 104, it looked practically identical, down to the fake ferns in the exact same positions and the three coffee pots next to the elevator, Melody couldn’t even really tell the difference between the men and women on the previous floor and the ones on this one. She felt like she was in urban version of an anthill, workers scurrying about to appease their queen, who in this case, Melody thought smugly, was her. Only, it wasn’t, it was Mrs. Miller, but differentiating between the two was becoming a tedious effort.   Melody confidentially forged through a maze of cubicles and copy pasted halls, effortlessly side stepping the obstacles of workers in her way and managers that wanted only a second of her consultation, though they didn’t try very hard to keep her attention.   A balding, thick man stood in front of a room with an open design, four clear windows looking into the space filled mostly by a conference table and chairs, a handful of people dressed in pristine business suits were already sitting in chairs. Next to him, a young woman with an armful of folders, thick glasses and a handbag strapped to her shoulders stood at attention, barely blinking when Melody and Hayden stepped up to them.   “Miley! You look better than the day I met” The fat man boomed when he saw the executive, holding his arms wide open.   “Bradford! You look… as good as the day I met you” The two exchanged a quick hug, the man’s hand reaching down to pinch the cheek under Mrs. Miller’s dress. The two assistants exchanged a look of disgust at the casual groping.   “Oh you little tease! How’s Susan doing?” “Passed away, I’m afraid.”   “Oh, what wonderful news! I’m sure the mistresses are pleased.”   “Just the one, at the moment, she thinks she’s about to be moving up in the world and she’s getting rid of the competition. Doing such a good job of it I might consider it. How’s Harold?” He inquired about Mr. Miller.   “Regretting the prenup, I imagine.” They exchanged a hearty laugh at this, and Bradford held open the door for the three women.   Melody took a spot on the empty side of the conference table, facing the side of a building and some well dressed men and women that Bradford took center of. In front of her, Melody observed three inconspicuous black packages.   “What’s all this about, Bradford?” Melody only addressed the man in the center of the others. “I was under the impression we were finished in finalizing the documents for the take over.”   “Ahh, yes, but the boy in the R&D department came up with some fascinating toys that I thought might pique your interest and let us reopen negotiations.”   “’New toys’?” Melody asked, confused. “Last I checked Bay-B made products for babies, I don’t see how a fancy new diaper rash cream is really going to make me reconsider.”   Bradford grinned widely, “We try to keep open to widening demographics.” He pointed towards the bag directly to his left and her right. “Go ahead and try that.”   Curious, Melody opened the bag, showing a labeless plastic can. She pulled the lid off the top and the room smelled of lavender and vanilla. “What’s this?”   “Top of the line youthening cream. The effects are miraculous and instantaneous. Go ahead, try some on.”   Melody took a fingerful of the cream and applied a dab on to the back of her left hand. Before her eyes, she could see it smoothing out the wrinkles of her hand, making the skin firm and taut while Bradford and the other directors smiled on pleased. Eyes wide at the effect a little did, Melody reached in and pulled out a good amount of the goop and started spreading it all over her hands and wrists, up to her elbows, marveling at the effects.   “T-this is incredible!’ Mrs. Miller was as close to a loss for words as she had been in decades. “I can really feel it!” She wagged her wrist back and forth. “I don’t- This wrist barely moves, the arthritis keeps me from doing much with it but I feel-”   “It feels like when you did when you were 20?” Bradford hazard a guess.   “Yes!”   Hayden looked down in amazement, watching the skin on Mrs. Miller firm in front of her. She caught the eye of the other assistant who gave her a sly smile and a wink filled with conspiracy. Hayden raised an eye at this, but knew it wasn’t her place in raising any objections.   Melody cleared her throat. “Yes, well, as impressive as it is, the paper work is still finished.” She said nonchalantly. “This is mine to keep, yes?” Bradford nodded and passed the cream to Hayden, “Make sure Fletcher gets this, he can use it the next time he touches me up.”   “That’s fine, I didn’t think that would really convince you, but my team insisted we try that road before the next. Why don’t you look inside our next gift for you?” He pointed towards the bag.   As greedily as a spoiled child on Christmas, Melody snatched the bag in the center, pulling out a small white box, and inside of that, a glass vial of amber colored liquid filled it, a bronze top with a little rubber ball on one end and a tip for the applicator. Melody looked at the vial disapprovingly. “I appreciate the thought, but I really am quite picky with my perfumes. Why don’t we see what’s in the next bag?” She asked, already reaching out for it.   “Wait! Please, at least sample it, you’ll be pleasantly surprised, I promise.”   The other girl nudged Hayden, pointing towards the far window out of the hall and started pulling blinds. An obedient girl, Hayden didn’t stop to question it as she went to the other side and doing the same.   The two young women were basically invisible to Mrs. Miller, and didn’t give it another thought on why they were doing what they were behind her. If she did, she would just think they were making a private deal that didn’t need any unwanted attention, anyway.   Shrugging, Melody pointed the tip of the vial in the direction of her wrist and gave the rubber ball a squeeze, sending a spritz of strong smelling liquid on to her skin, lifting it up to get a big whiff of it. “It’s fine, but really Bradford, if you want to change my opinion, that last bag had better have a blank check in it addressed to me- I-” Melody blinked rapidly. “I- You know- Moneyis- Just, the gifts they’re good, but…” Melody grabbed her head, her hair tangled between her finger nails. Hayden was looking towards her boss with some growing concern.   “The gifts aren’t good enough? How about this?” Bradford took out of his pocket a shiny set of keys.   “Well- a new- Did yooou gets me a new carrr?” Melody said, her words slurring, reaching out for the shiny pieces of metal.   “I’m afraid not, these are mine. I just thought, and my team agrees,” He motioned towards the people on each of his sides. “You might like to hear them jingle. Would you?”   “Nooo, thas dumb-” But her tune changed as soon as he started shaking them, and the combination of the sound they made and light they reflected truly did make them very enticing. Melody pushed her front on to the table, trying to slide on it while reaching out for the funny sounding keys, a line of drool coming out of the corner of her mouth as she pushed her heels up, standing on her tippy toes with her arm outstretched.   “Stephanie, if you would.”   “Right away, boss.” The other assistant rooted through her handbag and taking things out.   “Young lady?” Bradford addressed Hayden, who was looking at her own boss with a mixture of bewilderment and disgust.   “Umm- Y-yes?” Hayden looked up.   Bradford waved before resting it under his chin. “Sorry, I didn’t quite catch your name.”   “Richards. Hayden Richards, sir.” Her full attention was on the man, though it briefly went on the woman besides her who was putting on a pair of rubber gloves, snapping them at the wrist to ensure they were on tight.   “Hayden, do you mind if I call you Hayden?” Hayden shook her head. “Well, Hayden I’d like to offer you a promotion, executive assistant. It comes with many perks, access to your former boss’s estate, whatever financial needs you have, you’ll probably have to make yourself a room at her place, but that’s fine, I understand besides a weekly cleaning service, Miley doesn’t have many guests. Imagine that, not very popular! All that until the deal is finalized, then we can claim she had a mental breakdown, make her a ward of the state, or you can have her, if you get attached, some people do that.”   Hayden cocked a head, “And I don’t have to do what Mrs. Miller says any more?”   Bradford let out a laugh, “It’s best if you call her Miley, now. And trust me, she’ll be as demanding as ever, but-” He grabbed a ring box and flung it across the table, landing into Hayden’s hands. She opened it and saw a shiny clear pacifier ring, took it out and smiled at it. “You can always shush her with this.”   Nodding, Hayden tapped Melody on the shoulder, when she looked up, mouth agape, her open hole was plugged with the rubber bulb. Melody started contentedly sucking on it, a relaxed look falling on her face. “I think I’ll graciously accept the promotion, thank you.” Stephanie, now wearing a mask, handed Hayden a box of gloves and a mask, she immediately started putting them on.   “Excellent! Oh, by the way, how good are you at forging Miley’s signature.”   “It was the very first thing I was taught to do under her.”   “Good, why don’t you go ahead and open Miley’s last gift bag right there?”   Hayden ripped open the bag, the contents falling out on to the table. A large changing mat decorated with happy cartoon bees, a bottle of powder, some wipes, and one large, thick, twice folded diaper.   Hayden heard a snicker to her her side. Stephanie was pulling off Melody’s dress, showing the sagging training pants that lay below, Melody reflexively put a hand in front of them. “Hey boss, looks like Mrs. Miller wasn’t quite as big and bad as you thought she was. She’s still in diapers after all.”   The board members all snickered at Melody’s expense. “Looks like you were already part of our demographic after all, Miley. I had no idea!” Bradford laughed.   “Poor thing is soaked too!” Stephanie said, “Heehee, I don’t think she’s ready for potty training, do you, Hayden?”   Hayden stepped up to Melody, getting to her eye level. “You should have told me, Mrs. Miller, I would’ve given you a change. What are assistants for, we’re great at cleaning up our boss’s mess!”   Melody whimpered, having the vague impression that everyone in the room was making fun of her. She squirmed as Stephanie and Hayden helped her up on to to the table, on to the unfolded changing mat.   “Get out that cream, it’ll be better if you have to manhandle her if she’s not brittle.” Stephanie instructed Hayden. “What ever you do, that perfume stuff, don’t smell it, don’t touch it. Getting it absorbed through the skin is slower than the substance going through the nasal cavities, but it’ll still hit your brain eventually.”   Stephanie took a smear of the cream and started rubbing it into Melody’s legs, treating the job with the callousness of a professional, but Hayden was getting a lot of pleasure out of the turned table, relentlessly cooing at her.   “Miley, baby, you’re all skin and bones! As soon as Nanny Hayden gets you home we’re going to work on fattening you up. Lots of cream and cake is in your future, baby girl, look forward to it!” Hayden said, rubbing the cream on to Melody’s belly, sagging skin righting itself at her touch, the muscles and organs below rejuvenating to back when they were fully functioning. Melody whimpered as her bowels started working at full capacity, evacuating everything on to the changing mat.   Beginning to cry, Melody sat in her own poop, while Hayden softly rubbed her cheek, the ointment on the glove erasing the years off of her below the layer of make up. “Get used to it baby, I see a lot of stinky diapers ahead of you!”   Melody got the strangest massage of her life, as Stephanie and Hayden literally worked the years off of her body. Saggy tits turned into perky breasts, bags under the arms became smooth and soft, years of stress vanished on her face. By the time the pair was done, everything but Melody’s hair, which remained an ashy gray, looked like it belonged to a fresh college graduate.   “Not too shabby.” Stephanie said. “You get on one side, I’ll get the other, make the change a little easier, don’t want her getting a dirty diaper just from the mess she made on the mat.” Melody could do little to stop the girls from pulling her up, and even less to stop them from pulling her lower half up and sliding her new diaper below her. Her body worked just fine, but there was a missing link between telling her limbs what to do and her appendages. She could do little more than whimper and move her head, and every time she looked around, she was met with the eyes of strangers who were laughing at her expense.   She was taken off the table and forced back into her dress, completely exhausted from the ordeal, dropping into the chair she was just in. Her head felt heavy, Melody had to put every ounce of effort into the unfamiliar body to move her hand.   “Don’t you guys have some cute clothes? I would love to get into some onesies, maybe a few dresses. What she has on her is a little too mature for her now.” Hayden said, dreaming of future photo shoots she would enjoy with her former boss.   Bradford laughed. “Later, later. I’ll have Stephanie leave you with some catalogs.”   “This season we have a line of bug themed outfits. I have my battleaxe of a mother in law dressed as a ladybug back home. She’s adorable!” Stephanie added.   “For now,” Bradford continued, “Just focus on signing these documents and getting Miley out of here without too many people asking questions.”   “That’s the easy part, I’ll just say she got drunk in her meeting, wouldn’t be the first time I had to drive her home.”   “Perfect!”   While the room discussed Miley Miller’s future, Melody managed to get her hand into her pocket, pulling out the compact mirror, giving the cute girl in it a smile, with the last little bit of her strength, Melody tapped on the glass.   As soon as Melody stood back in the red hall, she gripped her head and let out an echoing, “Arrrrgh!” It was worse than a handover, her head was throbbing as she felt the phantom pains of whatever crazy chemical concoction had put Miley in that state of mind, and adding to that ache, was the terrible vestiges of Mrs. Miller’s bombastic personality reeling through Melody.   It felt like a bigger person had jumped into her head and stretched her out. Melody thought about what she felt in that last world. It felt like that old bag was more in control of her than she was. It was terrible, treating the people around her like, made her want to curl into a ball and hide. At least she wasn’t as bad as her.   Epiphany! Melody stared at the ceiling for a moment, as if to see the light bulb that idea made. She wasn’t as bad as Mrs. Miller, or Grace for that matter, but she honestly didn’t know if that woman was even human. She wasn’t the worst person ever. She supposed she had always known that, but really being in that awful hag’s skin really showed her that. It was funny how meeting such an awful person really put herself into perspective.   Melody was actually happy as she walked away, head still pounding, towards her next jump.     A decrepit town in the middle of the desert, the sun setting, two gun women standing, hand to their sides ready to snatch their revolvers. Melody may not have the quickest hands in her real body, but as Catastrophe Mane, she was more than fast enough to beat this upstart sheriff that had funny rules about who’s cattle belonged to who.   The sun set.   The church bell rung.   Bam! Bam! Bam!   Catastrophe Mane dropped to the dirt.   “You no good cattle wrangler ain’t got no room in the two for the two of us.” Sheriff spit her tobacco chew on to the ground holstering her revolver.   In burning agony, Melody dragged herself off the main road, towards her horse (She named him Biscuit cause he was the golden brown of a perfect roll), heaving herself on a barrel, looking into the still water she saw her reflection on, reached out with a blood covered hand and sent herself back to the red hall.   “Oooowwww!” She groaned, grabbing towards her belly where the bullets hit her. “Uggh, that was fun, but no more getting shot for awhile.” She promised herself,”And at least I didn’t end up a baby again, so I got that going for me.” Over time it had become easier to talk to herself in the endless hall, there was just something peaceful about being able to speak your mind in a place where there’s literally no one around to hear and judge you.   Melody had gone through a couple of different mirrors after her time as Mrs. Miller, never spending more than a day there, a few of the worlds she left with traits left behind by her personas. She was pretty sure after spending a day as the punk tattoo artist from Taiwan she could draw the most intricate butterflies ever, and would probably visit a tattoo parlor as soon as she was back in her world for some fresh ink and a piercing, she wondered what she would put on her virgin skin. In the Outback, she had learned that blonde boys that loved animals were peak attractiveness in men, though that may have been more of Melody’s preference than Mayday’s from down under. In a reality where she got to spend the day as a bank robber, Melody had learned to love a life of thrills and waving off the pesky consequences of the law (She wondered what her Mommy from the first world would think of that; ehh, she’d probably get pretty excited at the prospect of a challenge getting her bank robber baby off scott free).   And after several hours of being Catastrophe Mane: she knew how to ride a horse, shoot an old gun, and chew tobacco. Though, only that first one was really that appealing to Melody. God, she hoped she wouldn’t become a smoker when she went back to real life.   “Maybe- I could use somewhere a little more relaxing?” Melody thought to herself as she looked into the image of a peaceful sea. She couldn’t see herself, or who she would be, but she could hear the sounds of people playing and having a good time, the squawk of gulls in the air, scavenging for an easy meal, the smell of barbecue on a warm grill, and most of all, she noticed water lapping at the sand, inviting those on two legs to come for a dip. She reached out, and grabbed the waves.   Sun baked sand rested comfortably beneath her toes. She could already feel the warm breeze on her skin, each world made the adjusting to who she was easier. Melody felt the waves brush against her legs as she looked out towards the huge tides. Melody took a step into the water, through her reflection, before two hands grabbed her and pulled her away.   “Missy, what were you doing out there?!” Melody looked up, finding herself in the arms of her older sister Amy- wait, shit, Melody thought as she ran through her new memories, she was a baby again, this time she didn’t get the luxury of starting out in Pull-Ups. Amy trotted through the sand towards a woman in a very revealing bikini, her face shaded by sunglasses, an oversized hat, and a parasol as she lounged on the beach.   “I thought you were going to watch the baby!” Amy accused.   “Huh? Wha-?” The woman looked up. “I was.”   Amy glared at Uriel, their new stepmom, the younger woman Daddy had picked out after a messy divorce and a harrowing midlife crisis. Melody could recall the countless conversations from her perch in a highchair Amy and Mommy (but not her real Mommy, Melody had to remind herself) where the two cattily chatted about the younger woman. They called her stuck up, a gold digger, scatterbrained, and, Amy’s favorite way to describe the woman, a bitch. It was funny, Melody seemed to hear rarely use that word in many other contexts, when she did Mommy would always correct her, but not when it came to Deirdre.   “Then why did I find Missy about to try to swim?” Amy said. At 15 years old, her tone had started going from bratty adolescent to righteous anger that Melody couldn’t remember many others teenagers use so well. Especially when it came to her baby sister.   “Goood, she was just playing with her sandcastle. You’re so melodramatic. Really, sweetheart, there are more important things than watching Maggie all the time-”   In a voice layered with indignity and disbelief, “It’s Missy!” Amy corrected her.   “Whatever!” The sunglasses kept Amy from seeing the eye roll but she could feel it. “What happened to those cute boy you were playing with?” Deirdre lowered her shades to give a lecherous look at the group of teenagers in the distance, playing volleyball with no shirts on, One of them waved at Amy when he caught her looking at them. Amy face grew red and looked away quickly. “They look like a much better way to spend your morning than watching that brat. But hey, if you’re too much of a little girl to play with the boys, I’ll go over there show them the company of a real woman. Don’t worry, I’ll go tell them you said they had ‘cooties’ or something.”   Grunting a low, “Unbelievable!” Amy stomped over to her next irritation.   Melody could smell the sizzling meat on the grill as she drew nearer, Turning around, Melody could see Daddy, a tall man with salt and pepper colored hair, talking to a blue tooth headset as he flipped burgers in a pair of swim trunks that would almost certainly not get used today. Melody reached out towards the man, wanting him to hold her.   “Dad!”   “Tell Alan the bunkers account needs to be finished by Monday. No, I don’t care that he’s at his Dad’s funeral, business comes before personal-”   “Dad!”   Looking over to Amy, he whispered, “Daddy’s on the phone- Like I told him on Friday, what’s more important, losing his Dad or losing his house-Hahaha! That’s a good one.”   “Dad! Deirdre let Missy get too close to to the water.”   Pausing just a moment to look over, Dad gave her a look that barely registered. “That’s nice, dear.”   “Dad!” Melody reached out of Amy’s arms to grab the hot dog that was closest to her. Melody was pulled back and adjusted to Amy’s other arm. “No, Missy, hot, hot. Dad!”   “Hold on a second- Yes Amy, what?! What’s so important it can’t wait 5 minutes?”   “Deirdre wasn’t watching Missy and she almost went into the water.”   “So? She can swim.”   Amy rubbed her eyes, “No, Dad, she can’t, Missy can barely walk.”   “No you’re wrong, I took her to the pool awhile ago and I taught her how.”   “What? Whe- wait that was me! That was like, 13 years ago!”   Dad shook his head and pulled at a chain that went into his pocket, pulling out a thick wallet and handing Amy a few crumpled up bills, his go to move for getting her out of his hair. “Go buy the two of some ice cream and leave Daddy alone, he’s very busy.” He went back to flipping meat, “No, no it was just my kid. Huh? I don’t know, I think she’s 11. You know how they are at the age, always gotta have Daddy’s attention. Anyway, so I told Alan-”   Sighing, Amy looked down at the crisp bills in her hand and the baby in her arm. Trying to put on a brave face, she smiled at Missy. “You want some ice cream?” Melody nodded solemnly.   The two walked past some families on the beach, Amy looked on jealously towards the families with more attentive parents, heading towards a long flight of wooden steps. Putting her sandy feet on a wooden plank, Amy gave Melody a smile. “Probably for the best we get some lunch, I think Daddy was burning that food. Yes he was, yes he was!” Melody recognized this tone, it was something Mommy would often use on her- Missy. “And-” Amy added, a little sadly, “Those guys probably didn’t really like me. No one ever does.”   Melody reached out to grab her big sister’s face. “Aaaah aaaah!” She was a bit irritated at the lack of vocabulary, but hoped the message was clear, she could feel her pain.   “Yeah, ok, besides you. But you don’t count-” Melody agreed, she rarely did, “At least you listen to Sissy, right?”   “Mama!” Melody tried to add something, anything, to the conversation.   A smile slowly showed on Amy’s face. “Riiight… Mama would care, she would care a lot that no one was watching you in front of the water… You’re so smart!” She planted a little kiss on Melody’s head, grinning and chortling at having, warming up at the praise.   They got in line in front of a weathered looking stand. Melody’s mouth watered at the sight of big kids walking by licking their ice cream. Sitting up in Amy’s arm, she looked towards the line that had several people in front of the pair of sisters. This was suddenly a very important trip to Melody.   With grabby hands, Melody was pulling towards the front, straining in Amy’s grasp, trying to will the people in front of her to move. “Don’t be so squirmy, Missy.” She said, holding on to the baby slippery with sunscreen. “I don’t- Oh.”   Melody’s leg lifted up towards her chest, and a mooshy deposit fell into the back of her swim diaper. The feeling of relief her gut felt was quickly replaced by the discomfort the little amount of room the swim diaper actually gave her for the mess that sat below her seat.   “Err, that’s the last thing I needed-” Amy said to a wiggling Melody, who was about ready to voice her displeasure of the situation. “No, no, please,” Amy begged the scrunched face little girl in her arm. “Look, Missy, ice cream!” Melody turned her head, her eyes getting moist. They were indeed just about to the front of the line.   The jostling Amy gave Melody to try and keep her spirits up did little put a smile on her face, but the ice cream cone that was thrust into her quickly sticky hands made up for the moosh her bum was just smashed into.   They started making their way back to where Dad and Deidre were, though Amy would rather be anywhere else. On the way, the scoop of ice cream that laid on top of Melody’s cone came toppling off, right on to Amy’s foot. Amy made a sort of defeated noise out of her mouth and traded cones with Melody before the child could make so much as another sound. Melody was dropped on to a beach towel and allowed to enjoy her treat while her sister got out some changing supply out of a diaper bag, beginning the task of cleaning up with a wet wipe on her own foot.   Amy, while Melody was learning how to ignore the mess in her pants, had retrieved her phone out a bag and was tapping away on it. Melody had given up on her cone, leaving it half way done when the waffle got to be too hard for her little teeth and too much of a bother. Melody had put two stubby hands on Amy’s legs, looking up at her with interest when the phone started ringing.   “Hey-” A loud voice Melody sort of recognized came screaming out of the transmitter on the phone. Amy continued. “Can you please pick us up?” The voice grew softer. “I tried to, they weren’t listening. I dunno-” Melody watched as the older grew started getting more upset. “I’m sorry.” Amy looked small and vulnerable. “Over by the east pier. I have to go, Missy needs a change- Yeah, love you too.” Amy looked like she was on the verge of tears as she sat the phone on her lap and looked down at Melody, giving her a brave face.   “Come on Missy, let’s get you clean.” Melody was lifted for just a second and brought over to the center of the towel. Melody was getting too used to people airing out her goods without her consent, she miserably thought as the sun hit her where the sun don’t shine places when her swim diaper was ripped away. She couldn’t get herself to do something like try to cover herself up, she was learning that it was almost more embarrassing to try and hide herself when no one else seemed to care. A bruise to her ego when she found out that the only person who really considered what she had something to look at herself.   So Melody just laid back, licking the sweet off her fingers while her kind big sister chatted to her. “Mama will be here, soon.” Melody looked up at Amy with interest. That would be fun, Mommy would take her into the water and splash around, and then Amy could go play with the big kids and have a good time- hold on, Melody thought to herself, that didn’t sound right. Melody had never been married, and her own folks were still together, but she knew divorced couples almost never wanted to spend time around their ex spouses. And definitely did not want to spend time around the younger person who had replaced them in their ex spouse’s life.   “Ho’?” Melody tried to sit up, only to get pushed back down by a gentle, but much stronger hand as she was eased into what was certainly not a diaper meant for swimming. Melody gulped as Amy taped her up.   “That’s right! We’re going home!” Amy said, sure that would get some happy squeal out of the little girl. It didn’t though. Melody made a panicked look on her borrowed face, which was quickly wiped away by the wet wipe Amy used to clean the vanilla off her face and started moving down to her hands, arms, legs, chest- Dang, was there anywhere her silly baby body didn’t get ice cream?   She pushed her head up and looked towards the water edge, her way back, and realized her time to return would be dwindling with each second. Every second they spent here meant another second a furious Mommy would be on the road, rushing to save her children from their negligent caretakers. The few yards between Melody’s spot on the towel and the spot where she had entered into the world might as well have been the length of a football field for the good it did to her with the world’s best sister a few feet from her.   Melody got a shirt pulled over her head, and watched as Amy started pulling out a shirt to cover her own top. She took this as her chance to get away, giving Daddy and Deirdre a glance, one was yelling at someone in front of the grill as food turned charred and returned to carbon, while the other was busy ogling men who weren’t twice her age and half her net worth. Melody took off at a waddling pace, cursing the clumsy body she had jumped into, the sand giving her no purchase for good footing. Screw it! Melody got down to all fours and crawled the rest of the way there.   Shimmying her jean shorts on and putting on a pair of flip flops, Amy looked towards the towel, “Alright Missy, let’s get you- shit!” She swore as she saw her infant sister crawling towards the water. “Bad baby!” She muttered under her breath.   Melody looked over her shoulder and saw Amy closing the distance between the two in a speed walk. Inches crept by, Melody tried to quicken her pace by there was only so much she could do to get speed on the gravely ground. “Shit!” She heard Amy swear as she tripped on something. Melody hated how glad she felt watching the teenager trip on a plastic bucket, concern falling on her face as she stumbled on to her feet to resume the chase.   The sand below Melody turned damp. She could feel the most shallow waves kiss her finger tips. She was riiight there. And…   Melody saw her reflection in the water, reaching out to touch it-   “Gotcha!” Melody felt Amy’s hand go around her ankle just as she touched the surface of the water.   “Ahhh! That was a close one.” Melody sighed as she felt herself back in her own body, though she was suddenly aware that her underwear was much thicker and more crinkly than her Pull-Ups usually were. A new development, Melody feared, letting a hand explore the front of her skirt and confirming her fear that her underwear had been promoted to the next step in her stage of incontinence. Shrugging, at least she wouldn’t even have to worry about finding a bathroom, and it seemed like there were plenty of places where people wanted to change her in one way or the other anyway.   An ear piercing scream shook Melody to her core. Another shrill, “Aaaaaaiiiie!” Rocked Melody before she turned around to see a short teenager looking everywhere with fear in her eyes, her modest chest heaving under her tiny black t-shirt.   “Where am I? Who are you? What’s going on? Where’s Missy?” Melody watched as questions fell out of Amy’s mouth in a torrent, no pause in between for any answers. Her questions devolved into sobs as her hid her face between her knees, dearly hoping that by the time she pulled away she would be back in a place that made more sense.   Melody, feeling terrible for accidentally bringing the girl along, lowered herself to Amy’s level, lightly putting a hand on one of the exposed knees. “Hey, it’s going to be-”   Before Melody could say anything calming, or attempt to, a hand came flying down to karate chop her square on the dome. “Owww!” She cried out. While Amy was far from a black belt, that still hurt.   Amy jumped to her feet, standing a little shorter than Melody, rubbing her head. “HEEEELP!” Amy screamed out, her cries only answered by her own echo in the great red hall. “HEEEELP!”   “Hey, stop screaming for a second, no one can hear you-”   Evidently, this was the wrong thing to say, as Amy’s cries for help were replaced by screams of, “KIDNAPPER! I’VE BEEN KIDNAPPED!”   Steeling herself, Melody stood back and let the girl tire herself out. When no one was coming, Amy did the only thing she could think of: she ran. “W-Wait! Hold on!”Melody called out after her and chased her.   Let no one in fast paced action or suspense films fool you, running in flip flops or heels was no easy feet. And even more so when above the heels was an extra absorbent undergarment that didn’t let its wearer get a comfortable stride in. Though, admittedly, the flip flops did have one notable advantage to the heel. Amy kicked off her footwear and sprinted on ahead. “Hey! Wait!” Karma had a way of coming back to you, Melody found as she tripped on her own feet and came crashing down as Amy got some distance between them.   Cursing, Melody fought her own shoes off and scampered on to her feet, trying to grab Amy before she wandered into something dangerous. Feeling like she was away from the strange woman, Amy was in the middle of the hall, looking for some way out. Melody slowed herself to a tip toe pace, holding her hands out trying to look as nonthreatening as she could.   “Amy, I know you’re confused, but I need you to calm down.” Melody said with as much authority her short time in the education field could give her.   Standing petrified, Amy looked like a startled bunny,“HOW DO YOU KNOW MY NAME?” She demanded, slowly backing towards the wall, and towards a mirror, Melody noticed with concerned.   “Amy, I need you to listen-” She said calmly, slowly approaching the girl, “Just stop and I can expla- Damn it!” Melody didn’t know what Amy was thinking as she ran towards the mirror. Maybe she thought it was a hidden doorway, maybe she thought she could break it and use it as a weapon. But Melody doubted she had any clue that it was a doorway to another reality. Melody managed to grab Amy’s wrist before they shot into the new world.   The pair were in a cramped bathroom, the wall made out sturdy wooden planks, the bathroom attire was in a word-minimal. Melody could smell the acrid sour smell of weed covering up everything, and heard the sounds of teenagers chatting in the other room, and heavy raindrops falling on to the roof, through the loose spaces between the wall, a chilling wind ran through as it whistled through the air.   Amy, in the guise of a girl who for some reason was wearing a cheer leading skirt and a varsity jacket, sat on the side of the old tub, looking around, “W-where am I?” She asked the girl in front of her, wearing a sweater, glasses, and pants that did little to hide her humiliating underwear. “Who are- Wait, you’re Maisey? Why do I know that? And… I’m… Amber? Ugggh, my head!”   “Ok, ok, cool, listen, Amy-”   “Amber.” She corrected automatically.   “No, you’re Amy.” Melody said slowly.   Nodding, “R-right. I’m Amy… Did you see a weird old lady around here?”   “Amy I need you to l- old lady? I’m in my 20’s!”   “No Maisie, you’re 17, just like me. Am I 17?” A look of excitement fell on Amy’s face. “That’s so cool! Can I drive- Dad got me a car last year, yes!” The confusion was back, “Only, no Dad wasn’t even around for my last birthday. I- uh- what?”   “Shhhh, shhh, no more think no more remembering.” Melody grabbed Amy by the shoulder and lowered herself. “Just listen. Amy, you came in here through that mirror over there.” She pointed at the bathroom fixture. “When it did, you stopped being Amy and became Amber, I stopped being Melody and became Maisey.”   “Who’s Melody?”   “Me, I’m Melody. I was in the red hall with you, oh, and I was Missy for a bit. By the way, your Dad and Deirdre suck.”   “I know.”   Melody nodded, “I really, really hope your Mom gets full custody of you and Missy.”   “Yeah,” Amy let out a sigh. “Me too.”   “Ok, you following me so far?”   Amy shook her head. “No? None of this makes sense- If you were Missy, did you shit in line on purpose?”   “What? No! It kind of just happened- That’s not important right now. We have to get you back home.”   There was a knock on the door. Hank, a football star with perfect hair and a better smile opened the door, “Hey babe, I brought you a beer.”   Amy lit up at this. “Thaaanks babe!” She accepted the drink, before commenting, “I never had a beer before!”   Hank laughed at that. “Suuure, babe, we didn’t have drinks last weekend or anything haha!” The boy looked over at Melody, regarding her like someone who just found something unpleasant on the bottom of their shoe. “You want one too, Maisey?”He asked in a way that said he would rather her be anywhere else.   “I’m good, thanks Hank.”   “Cool, babe, you gotta check out this thing Bret and Louise found in the bedroom.” He offered her a hand.   Amy looked a little excited, though strategically drew herself back. “Oh yeah?” She asked, fluttering her eyes a bit. “In the bedroom?”   “Yeah!” Then he added in an almost bored voice. “It’s like this weird old book. Kinda looks like a face. But it’s right next to the bed.” The jock and cheerleader walked away, Hank whispering something into Amy’s voice that Melody couldn’t catch, but it made Amy giggle like a schoolgirl, which made sense, Melody thought, after all in all meaning of the word she was one.   Melody followed the two out, looking around she saw a pretty couple making out by the window, around a worn and beaten looking sofa a lanky guy with red eyes passed a dirty bong over to a pale girl wearing all black while a nerdy looking guy sat at the end looking very uncomfortable. On a coffee table, empty cans of beer strewn everywhere among little baggies filled with green herb. Melody took a look outside, seeing a vague, dark treeline behind the downpour of rain while the crackling boom of thunder roared overhead.   “Teenagers who have by no right should be associating with each other? Sex and drugs all over? A dark and stormy night in a cabin in the woods?” Melody sounded unimpressed. “Do these kids not understand horror tropes?”   The loser timidly stepped up to Melody, “H-hey Maisey,” He sneakily tried to snake a greasy arm around her shoulder. She side stepped away while frowning at him. “Y-you wanna go somewhere and t-talk?”   “I’m too old for you.” Melody said frankly.   “B-but you’re a year younger than me.”   She rolled her eyes. “Then you’re too old for me! What’s it matter? Don’t you know the virgins are the only ones who live in stuff like this?”   The goth girl looked up and helpfully added, “I’m a virgin.”   “Hell yeah girl!” Melody raised a hand up to her, the goth slowly gave her a high five. “Good job you’re not going to die!”   “Huh?”   The lights went out suddenly, and Melody was sure in a flash of lightning she would see a figure standing outside the window with a hook hand.   When the power returned, Melody grabbed the loser by the shirt. “H-hey! I like a girl who’s forward!”   “No time! Where’s Hank and Amber?”   “O-over there.” He pointed towards a closed door at the far side of the room. Melody hurried off, trying to ignore the crinkling that was coming from below her. The loser kicked an empty beer can. “Why do all the hot girls go after douchebags?”   The goth girl sighed, “Why do all the cut guys go after the bitchy bimbos?”   In front of the bedroom door, Melody gave an exasperated look at the lampshade hanging from the doorknob. “This fucking place.” She muttered as she threw it off and tried to open the lock door. After finding no luck with that she started pounding the door. “Hank! Amber! Open up!”   Hank opened up the door with his shirt off, pissed. “Do you know what a lampshade on a doorknob means?!” He demanded.   “Contrived writing?” Hank just gave Melody a look of confusion. “Nevermind, Amber! Get out here!” Amy came forward, with a giddy smile on her face, and bedsheet covered her top.   “Whaaat?” Amy asked in a teasing voice, running a hand over Hank’s pecs.   “We have to go. Now.”   Amy leaned in close. “But me and Hank are going to do it for the first time! It’s such a big night! He got the game winning touch down and now he’s gonna touch my down!” She whispered excitedly.   All at once, several things happened, the power shuttered off, leaving the cabin in the dark, a loud crash as a window broke letting the cold wind and rain in, there was a loud scream, and finally, “BREEEET NOOOO!”   Hank bellowed out, “My uncles gun is in the closet. Don’t worry Amber I’ll protect you!”   “Take me with you!” Amy called out as Melody grabbed her by the arm and pulled her through the cabin. Loud banging was everywhere. A flicker of lightning illuminated a bloody scene of Bret and the loser’s mangled bodies and the visage of a man in tattered overalls wielding a hatching and holding the head of Louise with his hook hand. It’s safe to say Maisie wouldn’t be getting her body back with dry panties as Amy and Melody screamed in terror.   Melody pulled Amy into the bathroom, shutting the door in the darkness. “Come on!” Melody held Amy in a deathgrip as she poked at the mirror. “What the fuck? This is supposed to work!”   “What’s supposed to work?” Amy asked in a shaky voice.   “The mirror portal thingy, we should be back by now… Maybe we need to see the reflections.   “Well then pull out your phone!”   “I- we don’t have phones, it’s like the 80s or 90s or something!”   “What?! Why we wouldn’t we have phones?!”   Melody groaned. “No more commentary!”   Loud banging on the door, then the distinct sound of a hatchet hacking its way through the solid door, the sounds of three teenagers screaming.   Three? “Is someone else in here?”   “It’s like me, man!” The stoner answer.   “Thank God, you have your lighter?”   Melody could hear the sounds of a grown man rocking back and forth in the tub. “Bad trip! Bad Trip!” He mumbled out.   Reaching out towards the direction of the tub in the pitch black, Melody grabbed the boy. “Give me your lighter!”   “Like fine, whatever, man! Zoinks!” Melody blindly snatched something in the dark, flipping open a zippo and lighting it, illuminating the bathroom dimly. She snatched a topless Amy and touched the mirror and…   Found themselves standing in the red room again, dressed mostly normally, though Amy now wore a varsity jacket over her black shirt. “Well, that was stupid.”   “This is all stupid.” Amy mumbled.   “Just be glad no ones seen you in a diaper yet.”   Amy looked towards the woman. “Wait, what do you mean ‘yet’?”   “Well, I mean, out of like 12 places I’ve been in, 4 of them made me a baby.” Melody scratched the back of her neck, not bothering adding that in all of them she was in either training pants or worse.   “Oh.” Amy sat down, looking lost and worried. “Sorry.”   Melody waved her hand. “Yeah, don’t worry about it, I would’ve ran away too if I was here with some ‘old lady’ without any explanation.”   “I screwed up, though. I didn’t listen to anything you said, and we almost ended up chopped up by a cliche.” Amy hid her face behind her hands. Melody could hear the girl whimpering. “I’m such an idiot! No wonder no one listens to me. I’m the worst person ever.”   Sitting down besides Amy, Melody wrapped an arm around the girl. “You’re not an idiot, some times, when you’re someone else, you hold the reigns, and other times the other person is, and it gets hard to tell when both of you want the same thing. I bet Amber really wanted to touch down in there, right?” Amy nodded. “And I bet you thought Hank was pretty cute.”   “Dude!” Amy threw out her arms. “He was stupid hot!”   “Not really my type, but you do you kid.”   Settling down, Amy rested her chin on a fist. “I was still pretty bad. Complete moron.”   “I don’t think so. Honestly, I wish I had a few students back in my world like you, kind and caring, willing to listen, even if I had to fight a little to make it happen.” Melody thought to herself, maybe they might be willing to listen a bit more if she was assertive like her life depended on it.   “Students?”   Melody shrugged, “Back where I’m from I teach kids maybe a year or two younger than you.”   “Oh… What subject?”   “Reading, writing, stuff like that.” Amy made a face. “Not your thing? What’s your favorite class?”   Amy thought for a second. “History.”   “What? You just thought there were smart phones in the 80s!”   “Phone were invented in the 17th century by American inventor Alexander Bell. They should be in the 20th century too.”   “Not smart phones! Those only got big in like the twenty tens, I think.” Melody laughed.   “Sorry.” The girl repeated. “I’m stupid.”   Melody conceded, “I’m pretty stupid about things too. But, I can be smart about somethings too. Like when someones a really cool person.”   “Oh?”   “Yeah, you’re the best big sister Missy could ever hope for, so you’re pretty good in my book.” Melody got on her feet and held a hand out for Amy. “Come on, let me show you something cool before I take you back home.”   “Did your butt just crinkle?” Amy asked, eyeing Melody’s skirt. “This isn’t going to make me a baby, is it?”   Melody blushed and led the way. “Promise, nothing bad is going to happen to you.”   The two held hands as they made their way through the hall. Occasionally Amy would peer into a mirror and look at the fleeting images and senses that would come out of it before getting led back. On the way, Melody and Amy collected their shoes, their walk now with the soundtrack of plop plop from the flip flops and tap tap of the heels. Melody stopped dead in her tracks and hid Amy behind her back when Grace came out of one of the mirrors and shot the two of them with finger guns as she headed towards the mirror across from her. “Byyye little Melly! Change ya later, Amy Alberto!” As she disappeared into the next world.   “Who was that?” Amy whispered to Melody. “Why did she know my name?”   “Trouble. If you ever see her in your world, run. Got it?” Amy silently agreed, the creepy feeling she got when she met the strange woman’s eyes would stay with her.   “Here we are!” Melody said in front of a nondescript mirror that looked identical to the rest of them.   “How do you know?”   Melody pursed her lips in thought. “I-” She let the letter trail off. ‘Not sure, I just know that this is it. Women’s intuition? 6th sense? Could be anything, but I just get the feeling, kinda know where every place I’ve been to is. Your world is in that direction, mine is over there.” She pointed two ways. “But what I want to show you is here.”   Taking Amy’s hand, Melody reached out to the mirror and found herself once again in a sleek space station over looking an alien world.   Amy took a step towards the giant window in the room, marveling at the sight of the infinite cosmos and majesty of the blue and green orb below. “Is that Earth?”   Melody was fiddling with a robot using her borrowed memories. “Huh? No, continents aren’t right- though I guess it could be so far into the future that they changed but- Just use your host’s thoughts. Who are you again?”   Amy thought about it, laughing after a second. She made her arms go angular and in her version of a robot voice, said, “This unit is designated A-13-25.”   “Beep-Boop!” Melody laughed back. “This unit is M-310- D.”   “What are you doing? Don’t you wanna watch… Everything?” Amy asked as she followed a shooting star on the horizon of the planet.   A table ascended from the floor. “Just returning the favor, you got me ice cream with someone else’s money, I’m using this body’s credits to order us lunch.” Amy looked at the table with no chairs, walking towards it a pillar rose up in front of her. She took her seat as Melody sat across from her, a hole opened in the center of the table and a platter of something that looked like sandwiches came out, the meat looked like beef, and there was some green and red stuff that resembled lettuce, tomatoes, and onion, along with two pouches with thick white straws protruding from the top.   “They look like burgers,” Melody took one and tried a bite. “They taste like burgers, but they aren’t burgers. Amy, what does A-13-25 say they are?” She quizzed.   Amy examined them. “The patty is nano infused ‘plant’ matter, the vegetables are made out of all out of the same thing, only flavored with these chemicals that make them taste like l, t, o, and the bread is bread. It’s all just wheat that’s messed to look like- all this. Pretty cool how I just know that stuff.” Amy took a bite out of her sandwich. “So, can I like take anything out of here and bring it back with me?”   Melody shook her head. “No, but if you stay somewhere long enough, it kinda, hard to describe, affects your personal image, you start to dress or look the way you think you should. Like the -ahem- acne, around my face, oh! And my hair is a bit longer after spending time as a girl with really long hair. And you think you should wear a varsity jacket.”   “Or you wear diapers.”   “Well, yeah, but I try not to think about it.”   Graciously, Amy changed the subject. “Ok, so I can’t grab one of the these little robots and bring it back to my place, become like a gazillionaire, but could I learn how to make one and bring it back.”   Nodding between bites of food, Melody said, “I think skills are transferable, but mostly if your body already knows how to do it. I never rode a horse before, and I was a terrible artist, but now I know how to ride and can do a mean butterfly tattoo.” She tried one of the pouches, finding it pleasantly like a very sweet wine slushie, even giving her a mild buzz. “I think the issue, mmm,” She tried the pouch again, Amy tried her own after seeing Melody’s reaction, and stuck out her tongue in disgust, pushing the pouch aside. “I think the problem with learning something while you’re here is two parts, the more time you spend as someone, the more you are them, and the longer you’re in the world, the way to the red hall closes. I think the most time I spent anywhere was 19 hours as a bank robber on the run from some cops.”   “You robbed a bank? Cool. How’d you do it?”   “About 3 ounces of c4 strategically around a vault door. The door itself was rock solid but the metal around the door was contracted out to a very cheap third world country and shattered like twigs with the right kind of pressure. Miranda had done her research on that bank very well, unfortunately, she got caught.”   “How’d she get caught?”   “Ummm, well- I don’t know if she got caught, but I came through the bathroom mirror of the bank so Miranda probably didn’t have a great time after I left her.”   “Hmmm…” Amy thought of her own experience in the cabin in the woods. “Did you ever sleep with anyone as someone else?”   “Miranda and this cattle wrangler, there was this post crime spree high that you have to exercise. Or maybe I do when it comes to bad boys who are down bad.”   Amy looked out the window again. There was a meteor shower falling down on the planet now, little flecks of red burning up in the atmosphere going from the size of Amy’s finger nail turning into specks of dust until they were nothing to her. “The bank robber got together with a cattle wrangler? What year was it?”   Melody, having finished her own pouch had grabbed Amy’s discarded one and drank greedily from it. “Nah, different people, I was Miranda the bank robber and Catastrophe Mane, they both had a guy for after the score.”   “Oh. Ok. What do you think is happening back home? My home? Did I just vanish while trying to grab Missy out of the water? I guess I should’ve thought about that awhile ago, but a lot happened.”   “Honestly, don’t know. It’s either, body is moving on autopilot or time stands still, but I think it’s the latter cause the images in the mirrors are always the same, you can’t jump into a reflection if there’s no body to reflect.” Melody didn’t feel the need to add that it was just a guess. “Do you wanna go back now?”   Amy thought about it for a moment. “Do you think I can try a few more places?”   “Traveling is ALWAYS better with a buddy. Couple things though, you’re still a kid, so no funny business, of any kind. We see anything super violent or rated X, I’m taking you out of there, no arguments. Agreed?”   “Fiiine.”   “Anything else?”   “Yeah, actually, if either of us ends up below 5 we’re leaving, I don’t think you wanna end up walking the red hall in pampers any more than I do.” Amy paled at the thought and nodded her head.   Melody smiled, getting up and offered and arm to Amy. She smiled and entwined their arms and were off to trapeze around the multiverse together.   Amy ignored Melody staring daggers at her while doing her best to keep her eyes off her traveling companion and on to the phone in front of her. There was a peace in the room, everyone else was asleep.   “Amy?” Melody said in a low voice.   The picture of innocence Amy asked, “Yeees?”   “I want to leave.”   “But we’re having a great time! By the way, shouldn’t you be calling me Ms. Angeline, Mia?” Amy said as she gave the little girl in front of her a satisfied smile.   Melody folded her arms and pouted adorably, Amy stifled a laugh at her, but she really was the angriest child she had ever seen. “I’m too little I wanna go!”   “You’re not too little, you’re 5 and a half, way past the below 5 mark. You’re fine. We’ll go just before Mia’s Aunt picks you up, promise.” Amy went back to playing with the phone.   “But the other kids keep on picking on me!”Whined Melody, tugging on the skirtalls that did little to hide the poofy underside of her diaper.   Amy didn’t take her eyes the phone. “Sounds to me like you’re just cranky. Give me a sec and I’ll change you and put you down for a nap.” There was a vibrating notification coming from Amy’s palm. Amy gave the message she read a lecherous look and started tapping away again.   Eyeing the preschool teacher suspiciously, Melody asked, “Who are you talking to?”   Hiding the phone on her lap, Amy let out a too quick, “No one!”   With her quick small hands, Melody snatched the phone out of Amy’s palm, backing away as she said, “Hey!” Causing a few of Melody’s snoozing peers to stir on their nap time mats.   “Nnnnn-aaau-juhjuh-ha-ta-eee- naughty?” Melody had to sound out the word, it was pretty long and Mia was making it so she had a hard time reading. “Naughty naughty? Who are you texting?” Amy tried to snatch the phone out of Melody’s hands. Scrolling up, Melody tossed the phone on the floor. “Oh-MY GOD! Amy are you seriously sexting Angeline’s boyfriend?!”   “You don’t understand, we’re in love!”   “Him and Angeline are, maybe, that doesn’t give you the right to use her body to send nudes!”   “Harry likes them. He’s taking me, I mean, Angeline out to dinner later to show her just how much he liked them!”   To an outside observer, it may have been a funny scene, watching a pint sized girl who was too big for diapers lecture her college aged teacher, but to the two of them, the experience was mortifying. To Melody, it was like noticing her students flirt in the worst way, clumsily acting how they thought adults court lovers. To Amy, it was like having her Mom and sister walk in while she was exploring less wholesome things on the computer.   “That’s it! I told you, I told you, no X-rated! We’re leaving now, and that’s final.”   Darkly, Amy said in a quiet voice. “Don’t make me do it.”   Getting serious, Melody folded her arms tightly around her little body. “Don’t!” She warned   Amy gave Melody a very serious look. “I’m gonna.”   “Don’t!!” Melody said very, very seriously.   “You’re not giving me much of a choice…I’m gonna get ya!” She suddenly said smiling, using long adult arms to grab Melody. “Coochie coo!” She said as she tickled Melody.   “Not fair! Stop! Please! I-” Melody pleaded.   Bargaining, Amy said, “Not until you say we can stay for 2 more hours!”   “Never!” Melody proclaimed through hysterical fits of giggles.   “Then Mia gets a visit from the tickle monster!”   “Nooo, I’m gonna…” A horrible smell came from the back of Melody’s pants and the two stopped in their tracks.   Amy, while pinching her nose, admitted, “Ok, we went a little too far. Come on.” She took Melody’s hand and led her towards the bathroom, while Melody covered her mouth, trying to keep her crying from waking up the kids. Amy tapped on her reflection, but when that didn’t work, sighed, heaving Melody up so both were looking in the mirror and left.   Surrounded by red everywhere, Melody wiped away the tears, able to find composure without the diarrhea in the back of her diaper. “I told you I was lactose intolerant!” When she looked back towards Amy, she was hiding a smile. “What?” She pointed down, towards Melody’s clothes, and the older woman cursed.   Instead of her usual navy blazer, matching skirt, professional white blouse, and flattering heels, she found that she was now stuck in the clothes Mia’s Mom had dressed her little girl in the morning. A pink denim skirtall that did nothing to hide the diaper below it, which in turn felt bigger and fluffier than it ever was before, a yellow shirt with Bluey on it, and completing her ensemble, frilly yellow socks and light up, velcro sneakers. Melody covered her face to hide her shame.   “Could this get any worse?”   In the distance, Melody heard a loud, “Looking good Melly!” From Grace.   Amy flinched at the voice. In the small amount of time her and Melody have been traveling together, she had seen Grace two more times, on her way to wreck havoc on some poor unsuspecting sods in another world. Each time Grace had given Amy a look, like she was undressing her with her eyes and planning something awful for the girl. Amy had listened intently to Melody’s rendition of what happened at the classroom and left the conversation with horrible visions of Grace finding her way to her school, her friends and her ending up nothing more than toddlers, maybe smaller than Missy, or the boys she had a crush on reduced to little more than nose picking kids who thought everyone of the opposite sex had cooties.   About to suggest they move on, get their minds off of Grace and clothes, Amy heard a thump behind her. Turning around, Amy saw her friend back to the floor, making a silent scream from her open mouth. “You alright Melody?”   A quiet voice answered her. “Notta big girl… Baby, justta stupid baby…”   Amy crouched down, reaching out to console her. She stopped “Stupid, stupid, stupid!”   “Melody, it’s ok, it’s not the end of the world. Just a few more baby clothes-”   That only made Melody start to really wail. “Baby, baby, baby!” She repeated over and over again. “Dumb baby!” Amy, seeing words were only making matters worse, decided the best course of action was action. With some effort, Amy hoisted Melody up, got her on her lap in the most comfortable way for the two of them, and held Melody, rubbing her back and making soft cooing noises, lightly rocking the two of them.   “Shhh, shhh, shhhh. Hmmm, hmmm…. It’s alright, it’s ok, you’re going to be ok, you’re going to be ok.”   They stayed that way for a couple of minutes, until Amy stopped feeling tears run down her neck and Melody’s baby noises teetered out. “Better?” She asked Melody pulling away but still having her on Amy’s lap. Melody, not looking Amy in the eye, gave one quick nod.   Amy shimmied herself out from underneath Melody, when she stood up noticed she wasn’t standing up by herself, took her by the hands and helped her up. She thought better of pointing out the yellow sag the girl’s diaper now sported. Chances were, Melody already knew anyways, her face pointed directly towards the ground.   They walked together, for awhile, not looking into mirrors, barely making a sound besides the occasional whimper coming out of Melody. Aimlessly, they wandered the hall. Amy didn’t worry about getting lost, she knew which way home was, even knew which way each of the worlds she had been to already were. Distance didn’t seem to matter much, she sensed if she wanted to go somewhere, she’d find it sooner rather than later.   “You wanna go there?” She pointed at an amusement park. No answer. They carried on.   “How ‘bout that one?” Amy looked at cozy looking cottage on a field. Melody didn’t even look up. They carried on.   “Here?” There was a grand castle in the mirror. Amy just heard a sigh as a response. They carried on.   “Well, Melody-” Amy wasn’t sure how to continue, she hadn’t matured to the point where she could confidentially express her own feelings, let alone how to help someone her senior process her own. It was scary, unfamiliar territory to the teen, and she wasn’t sure she even should. The silence and endless walking was a torture, however, she had to try something. “Wanna… talk about it?” She said, unsure.   “No…”   The answer was mumbled. Amy looked over to her friend and found her sucking her thumb with the hand that wasn’t in Amy’s, and before her eyes she watched Melody’s hair pull itself up and arrange itself into pigtails. Her mental state was deteriorating before Amy’s very eyes. It gave her an idea.   “I know what you need!” Amy exclaimed, trying to say it with enough energy that it would be contagious. It worked, to a certain degree, It made Melody look up at the very least.   Amy continued, “What you need is a pick me up. A little adventure that reminds you you’re an adult! And a cool one! Wait…” Amy went up and down, looking through mirrors until she found just what she was looking for. “Here!” She ran back to Melody and sprinted towards the portal.   In the image, she saw a car driving down the road, there was pop song blaring from it, and the breeze of open windows. “There it is! Road trip! Perfect for a couple of traveling buddies like us! Come on!” Amy didn’t wait for a response, grabbed Melody’s arm and thrust herself into the picture.   The open road lay ahead of them, Amy gripped the steering wheel, felt her foot delicately pressing pedal, the urge to floor it beckoning to her as the two girls came through the rear view mirror to this reality. She looked around, it was just farm country their beat up old station wagon filled to the brim with the girls’ bags and convenience store junk food, it was just her and Melody, Ana and Misty, two friends right out of school ready to go on a sight seeing trip. With no other cars in sight or behind them between the car and the golden fields that the road bordered on, Amy let the impulse strike her. Shifting the gear up, she stomped the pedal down, speeding on the pavement to no where in particular.   “Woooo!” Amy bellowed at the top of her lungs, her cry for freedom lost in the rush of air coming through the open window, bits of loose garbage in the backseat flying to the rear window. Amy’s excitement didn’t last long, coming up a hill at top speed (that a shitbox could manage) left the car and passengers in the air for precious seconds that felt like slow motion to the two girls before the 4 tires fell back to the asphalt and the suspension made a concerning groan and creek.   Amy was considerably more conscientious about her driving after that.   She let her eyes wander from the road to check out her new body, her favorite part of being someone else, a low cut v was on her yellow and white striped shirt, a little heart with an arrow on her bosom and tribal tattoos on her left upper arm, low cut jeans, she was quite satisfied with what she saw, and felt, there were piercings all over her, lips, nose, belly button, even on her tongue. She glanced at the road once more before checking on her companion. Melody looked a little more mousy than her friend, a dark brown flowy skirt that hid the poofy padding underneath from view but Amy could still see the impression of, a dark red shirt that showed her midriff tied into a knot at the side, and there was a glint of metal from her belly too, then Amy frowned, on Misty’s pretty angular face (that did have more zits than usual), in the center of her mouth, Melody was contentedly sucking on a pacifer.   Slowing down the car, Amy pulled the pacifier out of Melody’s mouth. She made a whimpering sound when the rubber was freed from her. “Hey! No baby things! You’re supposed to get into like the mind of an adult right now. Think big thoughts!”   “You don’t have to yell at me…” Melody said glumly. Amy could swear she saw the girl in the passenger seat shrink in her seat, though, she justified to herself, that could just be Melody slouching in her seat. She chose to ignore it for the moment.   The silence was filled by the top 50s of the local radio station broken up by occasional ad break that got on Amy’s nerves. She kept her eyes peeled forward, the novelty of driving waning away to the girl. The afternoon sun was beginning to drop, and Amy felt the pang of an empty stomach.   “Hey, can you grab some of those snacks back there?” She asked Melody. Bending her body out of the seat, she retrieved a bag of chips and two bottles of water. “Open mine for me, please.” A released cap was dropped in the dirty cup holder and Amy took a swig. The bag crinkled as it was opened, at least, Amy thought it was the bag, there was a lot of rustling coming from next to her.   “N’yuck- n’yuck- n’yuck…” Amy glanced over at Melody, sucking her water out of a baby bottle.   “I- Where did you even get that?! I thought that was just a regular bottle?”   Melody shrugged as she looked ahead, still sucking. Shuffling in her seat, Melody’s shirt turned into a lighter red, and Amy was certain the girl didn’t look in her 20’s now.   “Melody, I really think we should talk about this. You’re getting- you’re different, alright? I’m pretty sure we were like the same age when we got here, now you look like my baby sister, or something.”   “Baby…” Melody whimpered, looking down defeated.   Looking back towards her briefly, Amy rested a hand on Melody’s leg, she could feel the mass of Melody’s muscles get smaller. “Ok, ok, poor choice of words- You’re not a baby anything. You- You’re a teacher right? Tell me about your class. You know talk about things you thought of when you were a grown up. Did you have any boyfriends or anything?”   Melody, who now looked like someone that would fit right into her class, shuffled in her seat, her padding reminding her of her real position in life. In a squeaky voice that surprised Amy, Melody murmured, “My students all hated me. I would try to get them to do essays and they would do the bare minimum, give me AI generated muck that they didn’t proof read.”   “That’s not really hating you, that’s like just school stuff! I barely do any homework either, and I don’t hate my teachers. Except Mr. Edwards, my math teacher, he sucks.”   “No!” Amy jumped. “No, they all hate me, everyone hates me!” Melody’s inner turmoil mixed in with her out of whack hormones, an explosive combination. “No one likes me, no one listens to me! I go on dates and after 5 minutes they’re running away with something better to do!” Melody’s voice is getting high pitched with each sentence, and Amy notes that her friend must be half the age she started at. “You know how many therapists I’ve gone to that couldn’t help me? 7! That’s one for each year I’ve been out of high school! They say stupid things like ‘like yourself’, ‘be kind to yourself’, but they don’t get it! It’s not a choice! I don’t even like me, how could I expect anyone else to like me?” The 11 year old huffed her chest, her legs now dangling slightly off the ground, her chest lay flat under her bright red shirt.   Melody had broken down into tears by this point, while Amy was fighting the turmoil of her head, she had no idea what to say or do. She felt like a stupid kid out of her depths.   The car came to a screeching halt. Amy put her face in her hands a let out a hoarse sob.   Melody stopped feeling sorry for herself just long enough to look over at her companion shrink in her seat as well, getting closer to her own age. Amy burst through the door and ran off into the field, collapsing in a ball, sharp stems and rocks scratching her legs through her jeans. She stayed there for a bit, as the light of the day grew dim, after awhile, the orange and pink glow of the sky became black and blue, the road illuminated by the car.   Soon, a truck came by, a large man with a trucker hat popping his head out the window, calling out into the field. “Hey! You got some car troubles? Need help?”   Amy swallowed a choked cry, and sad, “No, I’m good, just needed- a little break, is all!”   She walked back towards the road, the man peering closely at her. “Little young to be out here driving, ain’t ya?”   Amy shrugged, “I get that a lot, baby face, I’m 24, you just wouldn’t know it by looking.”   The man shrugged, knowing how some young some women can appear. “Aight, well, I think you’re little one needs to stretch her legs too, she’s pretty fidgety.”   “Yeah… You wouldn’t happen to know where there’s a gas station around here, would you?”   “There ain’t one on this road, keep going down, you’ll come to an intersection, make a right and half a mile down you’ll see a rest stop.”   “Thanks!” Amy looked into the car, finding the passenger seat empty, looking back, she saw a miserable looking toddler harnessed in a booster seat that had appeared behind the driver side, her pink shirt and skirt fused to become a dress with her diaper sticking out, face wet with tears and mouth plugged with her thumb.   Amy crawled into the backseat with her, a slimy hand freed from her mouth, Melody reached out to Amy, wanting some comfort. Sighing, Amy released the car seat and let Melody climb on her, A twinge of fear raced through the girl, regressing younger than her age and realizing she no longer knew quite how to drive the car. Melody whimpered on top of her and Amy let out a quiet, “Let’s get out of here.” Picking up the toddler and climbing on top of the center console and tapping the mirror.   It was heartbreaking to see her body, her real one, wasn’t back to its proper age here, as she looked down at the flat chest below and thin body under the now too big varsity jacket that had remained its original size.   “I sowwy…” Amy heard coming from the 3 year old, a look of shame on her adorable face, looking down at her light up sneakers in her pink overalls.   “For what?” Amy asked leaning down to swoop her up.   Melody laid her head on Amy’s shoulder. “Making you littler too.”   Amy pondered that for a second. “No your fault I’m just a dumb kid.”   “Yous notta dumb kid! You jus’ too yung to know wha’ to do with me. I a hot mess.”   “We can be hot messes together.”   “Amy?”   “Yeah?”   “You a pretty brave girl. I neva woulda done nothin’ like dis when I was 15. I tink you’re super special.”   There was a little pause before Amy asked, “Yeah?”   “Mhmm! I tink you’re way more grown-ups than I ever was.”   Amy grew an inch, the positive reinforcement affecting her world view. “You’re too hard on yourself, what about the cabin? What about that stuff you told me about with Grace in the school? You went to a bunch of places in here and tried a bunch of new things. That was all pretty cool and grown up…”   Melody held on to Amy’s neck tight in a hug. “Maybe… maybe a wot…”   “You’re totally cool!” Amy reassured her. “I hope I’m just as awesome as you when I’m 25!” The mixture of assurance for both of them was already putting Amy close to her true age. “What can we do to… You know, get you better?”   Shaking her head, Melody let out a tired, “I don’ wanna be big no mo’, I wan’ my Mommy…”   “Huh?”   “Cawwy me dat way, p’ease…” She pointed a chubby finger in a direction, and Amy hefted her up and took her down the hall.   “Wouldn’t it be better to be an adult? You can do whatever you want, go anywhere…” Amy offered while holding her little friend as she walked.   Sighing, Melody said, “Can’ do nuthin’ when all I do is hate me… I wan’…” Amy could feel Melody start to drift off, the steady lull of the footstep making her drift off with her little head on Amy’s shoulder.   Amy jostled Melody and gave her side a poke. “Don’t pass out on me now, I still need you to tell me where we’re going!” She said in a teasing voice. “What do you want?”   Yawning, Melody said, “I tink I needa fresh start. Go tru it all again. Maybe I come out a lil happier… Stop ‘ere.”   Amy set her little friend down. “Are you sure about that? What if you forget everything? What if you can’t come back here?” She felt a little more than worried, “What if we never see each other again?”   “You’ll be ok, you a big girl, you don’ wanna be friends with a baby wike me. Go have fun, ‘plore more if you want, or go back home.” Melody gave the teenager’s legs one last hug before turning towards her last mirror. “I twy everythin’ else, I wanna twy thi’ one last thin… Bye bye Amy.”   Slowly waving her hand, Amy whispered out, “Bye bye,” Before she was left alone in the red hall.     Melly stared at her reflection in the mirror behind her bedroom door. There was no trace of the woman she was inside of it, just little Melly in her nightgown lit up by the glow of the nightlight, and a sleepy Mommy walking up to her. Melly felt herself lift up into the air, and was given a sniff and a pat on the diaper.   “Sorry, cupcake, I don’t think we were fast enough. You won’t be mad or sad if I put you in another diaper, will you?” Samantha asked Melly.   “Nuh-uh, Mommy know best.” The 3 year old quietly told her mother.   Nodding, Mommy said, “Smart girl!” She said as she laid Melly back down for a change.   Melly was a smart girl, she knew the best place to be was in her bed, cuddling with Mommy, waiting for Daddy to come home. Her time with in the red hall would fade away, after a few days, Melody would go to sleep inside of her, and her adventures and previous life would become a funny dream to Melly, something to fantasize about, someone to become, and maybe, someone to love in time. For now, Melly’s biggest concern was not finding the best mirror to jump into, or the best way to like herself, but how to convince Mommy to let her have one of the leftover cookies.

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“A good choice,” Annie took a smaller teddy bear and passed it to Kayla. “Take him and give a name,” she held the toy in her hand and waited for Kayla’s reaction. Naming the plushie definitely was embarrassing; Kayla would look like a toddler with her toy. “When you give him a name, we will go to the counter and pay,” Annie provided Kayla with an option to leave the shop quickly. However, the price to pay was high.

You are at the beginning. Stage zero. If when wearing a nappy you feel like you lose some or all feeling that you're wetting, that just means you're comfortable in your nappy and you don't stress too much about wetting it. Nappy dependency takes years. On and off wearing, even for 15 years, means that you're pretty much like every other continent DL who wears nappies, meaning, when it's convenient and not when it's necessary. If you want to obtain dependency, you start wearing 24/7 and using your nappy. You don't skip any days. You wear at all times and take your nappy bag with you wherever you go. You change in public, you tell your friends and family that you wear protection because you need to, and most importantly, you don't stop wearing when it becomes inconvenient. People who are dependent on nappies don't have a choice, so they wear during both the good and the bad times and make the most of it.