Other Fetishes

Happy New Year Mike!!!! Hugs, Freta

I had assumed that Bridget was pregnant

Happy New Year 

Gwen sighed sadly. "That's not a very nice thing to say, sweetheart, Mommy hoped you'd be grateful... but oh well. If you want to be lonely in the night you can." She tutted and took his hand again before he could react. Gwen did the same trick she pulled in the bathroom, dismissing James, ignoring him. She knew his fragile little ego was desperate for any crumb of attention.

The Next Seven Days - Part 2  Day 3 I woke to warm sunlight on my face after a night of dreamless sleep.  A hand pressed against my shoulder, giving it several firm, but gentle, nudges.  “Maddy, it’s time to get up,” Mom said. “Your tutoring is in the morning today.”  I mumbled something incomprehensible and rubbed my eyes. How had I forgotten about it?  I sat up and threw the sheets all the way down to my feet. What better way to start the morning than to demonstrate that the bed was dry?  I looked up at Mom, who was still standing at the side of my bed, with a smile on my face. The sooner she and Dad could see that I was keeping the bed dry, the sooner I would be rid of the pull-ups in my dresser.  But Mom didn’t return my smile. Her eyes had already drifted down to my midsection, widening on the way there.  My hand reached the wet spot between my legs faster than my eyes did.  The wet patch was still warm to the touch. Not much time had passed since I had peed during my sleep.  “Madelyn,” Mom said in an exasperated tone. “Why weren’t you wearing your pull-up?”  My nightgown had ridden up just enough that it was apparent from the angle Mom was looking down at me that I hadn’t been wearing any protection at all.  If the bed had been dry, I felt like I could have talked my way out of the situation, but there was no good way to explain the lack of a pull-up when waking to a wet bed.  “I forgot,” I mumbled, eyes still focused on the scene of the crime. How had I not even woken up? I should have woken up. At least then I could have dealt with the wet sheets like I had last night.  “And did you forget last night as well?” Mom asked quietly.  “I didn’t,” I insisted. “I was just tired last night.”  “You need to hurry and get in the shower,” Mom said. “We’re already running late, and you need to get all your bedding in the wash before we leave.”  With that last command, Mom was out the door, closing it behind her and leaving me alone with my thoughts.  I took a second to survey the damage. It was just as bad as last night, perhaps even worse, since this time my bladder had waited longer before releasing.  It made no sense. I had stopped taking that stupid medicine. But that had just been yesterday. Maybe it needed time to get out of my system. That was it. I would keep pressing on. It wasn’t my fault. I’d be dry at night in no time at all.  I swung my legs off the mattress, twisting to avoid further touching the pee-soaked parts of it. As my feet hit the floor, I felt a sudden ache in my right side. I lifted up my nightgown, expecting to see a bruise, but while it was sensitive to the touch, my skin color was completely normal.  The first few steps toward the hallway were a little uncomfortable as they brought with them additional small jolts of pain in the same location, but by the time hot water was pouring over me, I was feeling much better.  After showing and dressing, I rolled my laundry up into a big bundle to carry downstairs.  I had hoped that everyone but Mom would be gone for the day already. But Dad, whose turn it was to take Jackson to his summer camp, was still downstairs, as was Grace.  Jackson didn’t even notice my presence. He was too busy watching a show on a tablet propped up next to his bowl of cereal. But I didn’t have the same luck with my older sister. Her eyes shifted down to the bundle in my arms and back up to my face.  She knew.  In the rush to get out the door, I played my part just as carefully as I had the day before. Medicine was accepted without complaint, with the pills discreetly discarded once everyone was out of sight.  I really hoped that it wouldn’t take too long for my body to return to normal.  <><><>  The summer tutoring I was forced to undergo as a result of my poor grades wasn’t as boring as school, but that was an incredibly low bar to clear. It would have been so much less painful if the result of my end-of-year grades had been a simple grounding.  Most of the lessons so far had been math-related – easily my worst subject – but that was also relative. My latest report card hadn’t come back with anything better than a C-.  There were four other students in this current class. The only relief was that it wasn’t anyone that I knew, a benefit of the tutoring center being in a neighboring suburb. I think my parents had picked it mostly because it was in a location that made it easy for them to drop me off on the way to their jobs.  I struggled to pay attention as we were nearing the end of a series of lessons about basic story structures in fiction, the pen in my hand absentmindedly moving back and forth on the wide-rule notebook in front of me that had only a few lines of notes from the first few minutes of the lesson, part of a half-hearted attempt to actually pay attention rather than slip off into random daydreams.  I simply couldn’t bring myself to care, and with twenty minutes to go, I was already starting to count down the minutes – second by long second – until I would be done for the day.  One thing that was different than school was that there weren’t any bathroom passes in use. If you had to go, you just went. But with the tutoring groups a fraction of the size of my typical middle school classroom, there was actually less leeway for abusing the system to try and skip out on lessons.  For once, when my bladder started aching, I wasn’t annoyed at the sudden need to pee.  I wouldn’t have lied about needing to use the bathroom to get myself a break from the lesson, but I had no qualms about using a legitimate need to urinate as an excuse to get away for a few minutes.  Once out in the hallway, I didn’t rush to the bathrooms, shifting instead to a more leisurely pace. I followed up the bathroom visit with a long pause at the drinking fountain, more to delay my return than to quench my thirst.  “I’m not giving out any homework to do before you’re back later this week,” the tutor said upon my return, “but I want you to spend some time thinking about some of your favorite stories, whether that’s books, movies, TV shows, or even comics.”  I stared blankly at the nearly empty notebook in front of me. This wasn’t fair. I had been promised there would be no homework, and no matter what the tutor said, this sounded an awful lot like homework.  I attempted to block out the noise, determined that I wasn’t going to spend a single second thinking about these lessons once I was out of the classroom, when a familiar phrase pierced through my mental wall – Fan Fiction – and I suddenly sat upright in my seat.  “We’re going to start doing some writing for our next lesson, and we’re going to start by having you write short stories set in the same world as your favorite stories.”  I bit my lower lip, begging my cheeks not to turn red from embarrassment, as a series of images of the types of stories I had read this weekend passed through my mind.  “One of the most challenging parts of a story is coming up with your own world and setting to put it in,” the tutor said. “The benefit of fan fiction is you can focus on the technical parts of writing fictional prose without having to worry about all of the worldbuilding just yet.”  I didn’t know if I was ready to return to the world of Harry Potter just yet.  But what was I supposed to write about then?  I couldn’t recall the last time I had read – and finished – a non-Harry Potter book. I had tried several. I had never been able to get into that series about the kids of the Greek gods, which had initially seemed promising, and I had only been able to get a few chapters into The Chronicles of Narnia before putting it down in annoyance.  Well, maybe I could. I couldn’t let all this stuff about diapers keep me away forever.  There had been a handful of non-diaper-related Harry Potter stories on the fan fiction site I had visited that could be worth exploring. And an academic excuse might just be enough to win Dad over to letting me read them.  <><><>  My stomach churned uneasily as I took a seat at the dinner table. The chair grated against the floor as I pushed it back as far as I could from the table while still being able to reach my plate. It wasn’t so much that I felt like I was going to throw up as the smell of lasagna was somehow making me feel queasy.  I started with a large sip of water before catching myself and hastily setting the glass back down on the table, nearly tipping it over in the process. I needed to keep my liquids to a minimum if I wanted to give myself the best chance possible for my bedwetting to stop now that I was no longer taking those pills.  I managed to get about half of the serving of lasagna down before I simply couldn’t make myself take another bite.  My parents weren’t convinced when I told them I was done with dinner, but they also didn’t force me to eat anything more; they sent me to the kitchen to package up the leftovers just in case I got hungry again later tonight.  The need to pee hit me in the worst way right after I closed the refrigerator door.  Jackson was headed in my direction from the other end of the hallway, equidistant from the bathroom.  Then he sped up, and before I could realize that I had become a contestant in the race to get to the bathroom first, my younger brother had already won it as the bathroom door slammed shut.  Ugh. I continued my march forward, past the bathroom and toward the kitchen. I wasn’t going to let myself appear that visibly desperate. Besides. He was a boy. He’d be out in no time at all. I cringed at the thought that he probably wouldn’t even wash his hands after.  I lingered in the kitchen for almost a minute, swaying back and forth ever so slightly on the balls of my feet until I was confident that the bathroom would be empty once I returned.  The bathroom door remained shut on my arrival. Oh. He was doing that. My bladder tensed. I didn’t have time to wait that long if he was instead doing number two.  Surely the upstairs bathroom was free.  It was not. I arrived upstairs to find another door blocking my path.  Two bathrooms were usually plenty for a household of five. I couldn’t recall a time when I had been blocked from going when I was in desperate need of doing so.  I stared at the closed bathroom door for a moment. Maybe it wasn’t occupied after all. That wasn’t common. But it happened sometimes.  I tentatively rapped my knuckles on the door three times in rapid succession.  “Occupied,” came the reply from my older sister.  My feet shuffled into a crossed position all of their own accord. Time was running out.  Run downstairs and check that bathroom again? No chance. What if Jackson was still using it? My life would be so over if I wet my pants downstairs.  My squirming intensified as I slid a hand between my legs and squeezed tightly. The question was no longer whether I would wet my pants, but where I was going to be when it happened.  I had to get out of the hallway. No way was I going to leave a puddle for my older sister to step in when she finally got out of the bathroom.  Going downstairs had already been ruled out. Cleaning up an accident on my carpeted bedroom floor would be next to impossible.  The answer that hit me suddenly was as disturbingly obvious as it was humiliating. But with my desperation increasing exponentially, it was the only thing I could think of.  There was something in my drawer that could help.  The humiliation of putting on a pull-up after having sworn them off was less than the potential humiliation of having a family member discover that I had peed all over the floor in the middle of the day.  In a split second, I was in front of my dresser, hand rushing forward to grasp the handle of the drawer. I told myself I wasn’t going to open it again to do the thing I had promised myself that I was never going to do again.  Shorts and underwear dropped to the floor. On went the pull-up. Then shorts on top of it.  I heard the toilet flush as I stood with my legs crossed together. Maybe I could avoid having an accident after all.  I took a step toward the door only to hear a loud crinkle. No. I couldn’t leave just yet. I had to wait for the coast to clear.  I listened to the water running in the sink. Five seconds. Ten seconds. Twenty seconds. Why did Grace have to be so thorough with washing her hands? Another five seconds and the water was off.  By now, I was swaying back and forth like a flag caught in a hurricane.  The bathroom door creaked open a few seconds later.  “All yours, Maddy,” Grace called out.  I didn’t move a muscle. No way was I stepping out into the hallway before I could be certain that Grace was gone. I couldn’t have her knowing I was wearing a pull-up, and I had no doubt that she would notice.  But Grace’s footsteps didn’t make their way in my direction, which would have had her heading to her bedroom. Instead, they faded away until a silence arrived that told me she was at least halfway down the stairs.  I didn’t have a moment to spare. I dashed out into the hallway and into the bathroom, slamming the door behind me.  I stood in front of the toilet with my back to it. My hands grabbed the stretchy elastic of my shorts, pulling them below my waist and then releasing to let them tumble down to land in a heap by my feet.  The pull-up was next, but the instant my fingers came into contact with the waistband, my bladder gave way. I needed to go so very badly. There was no way the pull-up would avoid leaking.  The stream stopped after only a couple of seconds. But the pressure in my abdomen didn’t let up.  My body ping-ponged back and forth a half-dozen times between peeing and pausing in the preceding thirty seconds as I emptied my bladder in short but strong spurts until the tension in my inside was gone.  At least a leak at this point would be easy to clean up off the tile floor.  But the pull-up actually hadn’t leaked. Not that it would have mattered at this point.  I ripped the wet pull-up off. It wasn’t my fault. I would have made it to the toilet on time with plenty to spare had Jackson not rushed ahead of me. And if my parents had just bought a house with an adequate number of bathrooms, it wouldn’t have been a problem for Grace to be occupying the second one.  <><><>  Discarding the wet pull-up had not been an easy task, but I hadn’t dared let it stay in its hiding spot, lest anyone notice the smell.  The soaked disposable undergarment was still warm as I rolled it into a ball and hid it under my shorts as I dashed back to my bedroom.  The same trick that had worked for getting rid of the diaper the other day also worked for the pull-up, as I tossed it with the remainder of the trash from the small, barely half-full garbage can in my bedroom.  I returned to my bedroom completely bored.  I needed something – anything – to distract myself. Then I remembered the homework assignment from earlier today. I couldn’t believe that I was actually considering doing homework of my own free will. In the summer, no less.  I would just look at the normal fan fiction stories. Not ones about diapers or pull-ups or bedwetting. Nothing that would tempt me to stray from the course I had set for myself this week.  But first, I needed some examples. Perhaps Dad would let me have access to that fan fiction site if I explained that it was for educational purposes.  I found Dad in his usual post-dinner location – leaning back on his recliner in the living room, typing away on his laptop. Grace was in the room as well, sitting on the couch, watching something on her phone. She hadn’t gone to seclude herself upstairs for a night of working on one of her many art projects.  I picked away at a long fingernail on my left hand as I tried to figure out what to say.  “Hey, Dad?” I asked tepidly.  No response from him. Though, of course, Grace looked up from her phone at me for a half-second.  I raised my voice slightly. “Dad? I have a question for you.”  The second attempt got his attention, and he looked up from his laptop. “What’s your question?”  I launched into a long, meandering explanation of the homework assignment.  “… and that is why I want to be able to go on the fan fiction site,” I said a minute later. “I can learn from how other people do it.”  “I just don’t think that is a good idea,” Dad said right away.  That was so not fair. He hadn’t even taken time to think it over.  “But why?”  “It’s not just kids that write fan fiction,” Dad said. “Adults do as well, and that type of content isn’t age-appropriate, and there isn’t a way to filter it out.”  “But.”  “No buts,” Dad said, looking back down at his laptop. “You can write whatever stories you want without that.”  I knew better than to press any further. It wasn’t fair. Life would be so much easier if my parents weren’t so strict about the internet.  I retreated from the living room, my pace slowing as I neared the kitchen. My mouth was a tad dry. Something to drink would be nice.  But I caught myself as I took one step toward the cupboard to grab a glass. I’d only been off those stupid pills for a couple of days, how? It would be better if I didn’t have anything to drink.  Pleased with the willpower I had exerted, I returned to my bedroom, determined to find something to keep myself distracted until it was time for bed.  A few minutes later, I was at my desk looking blankly at the hand-me-down laptop I had gotten a couple of years ago from Grace, which I typically didn’t have much use for.  After a few clicks, I had a blank page in front of me, the mouse cursor blinking rather aggressively.  Suddenly, all the ideas that had been swirling around in my head felt like a bunch of mush. Thinking about writing had been so much easier than actually sitting down and doing it.  <><><>  Two hours – and about five hundred words – later, I had a garbled beginning of a story on the page.  I had no idea if I had done anything right. I had tried to follow the same format as some of the stories I had read on Emma’s phone during the sleepover. If and when we had another one, perhaps I would get another chance.  I nearly jumped up from the desk when my door creaked open.  “Knock, knock,” mom said.  It would have been a lot more helpful if she had said that before opening the door. At least my laptop screen wasn’t in view. The idea of someone reading what I had written was mortifying.  “What?”  “You should be getting ready for bed soon,” Mom said. “And don’t forget to put your nighttime underwear on.”  “Mom,” I hissed quietly in response.  “It’s fine,” Mom said. “Jackson is asleep, and Grace is still downstairs.”  It didn’t matter that I had wet the bed last night. Or the night before. Or the night before that. This night, I knew it was going to be different. I had been off the ADHD pills for a few days now. And, I had actually followed my parents’ instructions for once about not drinking anything after dinner.  That was probably the first thing the doctors had mentioned when I had begun my fake bedwetting earlier this summer. That would have to work, then, right? I couldn’t have to pee at night if there wasn’t anything remaining inside to come out.  Besides, I had gone to the toilet like five times already since dinner. Another wet bed was simply unimaginable at this point.  I tried to write for a few more minutes, but I couldn’t think of anything else. I blamed Mom’s interruption for getting me off track.  I didn’t do as Mom had asked. I did get up to brush my teeth, but when I returned to the bathroom, it was only to put pajama shorts over my regular underwear. The pull-ups remained out of sight in the top drawer.  I struggled to find a comfortable position after getting into bed, tossing and turning several times before winding up on my stomach.  My dry mouth was still a nuisance. Brushing my teeth had only seemed to make things worse, but a parched tongue wasn’t the only thing keeping me from falling asleep. I wanted to sleep on my right side, but couldn’t, as it ached every time I tried to lie down on it. And the headache I had battled last night seemed to have returned even stronger.  My bedroom was completely dark. I had shut the door, both to block out light coming from the far end of the hallway and to avoid having the cat sleep on my bed.  I closed my eyes the second the door inched open suddenly. I wondered if it was Mom who was checking on me. Her soft voice confirmed that theory a second later.  “Maddy, are you asleep already?”  I remained as still as I could, completely motionless under the sheets. Even though I was facing the wall, I still shut my eyes as tight as I could.  What did Mom want now?  Her footsteps traveled across the room, growing louder until she reached the foot of my bed.  A hand pressed against my shoulder and rubbed it gently.  “Maddy, are you awake? I just want to make sure you are completely ready for bed.”  I gave no response.  Her hand left my shoulder. And it sounded like she had started to walk away. Good. I was in the clear now.  Then her hand patted my bottom.  I was so startled that I rolled over to face her.  “What, Mom? I’m trying to sleep.”  “Madelyn,” she said, stretching out my name just enough for me to tell that something was off. “You aren’t wearing your pull-up.”  I would have lied had that been phrased as a question rather than a statement, which instead left me speechless.  “I forgot,” I mumbled.  “Like you forgot last night?” Mom asked. “Or are you choosing not to wear them on purpose?”  I tried to answer that I had just been distracted, but the words got stuck in my throat and came out as a garbled mess.  “If you think the nighttime underwear isn’t working well enough for you, we can get something better,” Mom said. “I talked with your doctor, and there are other products we could use.”  A week ago, that offer would have been both terrifying and exciting. Now it was just terrifying.  But it also didn’t matter. I was going to be dry in the morning anyway.  I had no idea what I was supposed to say. In all my plans for the week, I hadn’t remotely considered that this was a conversation that would ever occur.  Mom eventually filled the silence. “Why don’t you go ahead and get changed back into a pull-up. Don’t worry about leaks. If they continue, we can find something else to try.”  All I could do was nod as Mom left the room, turning on the light before she shut the door.  This time, I did as Mom asked.  That didn’t make me feel any better when I opened the top drawer and picked out a pull-up to put on. I’d sworn them off on Sunday morning. And this was now the second time since then that I’d had no choice but to put on one.  “I’m not a baby,” I muttered to myself.  The pull-up crinkled beneath my pajamas as the bed crinkled beneath me.  Day 4 The pull-up had a single job to do, and it hadn’t even managed to do it.  The wet patch on my bed was smaller than it had been the past two nights, but that would be like saying that getting a half-lump of coal for Christmas would somehow be more meaningful than receiving a whole one.  I pulled the sheets closer as a shiver ran through me, only to notice that they weren’t just damp down where the accident had occurred by my waist.  My pajama shirt and sheets were cold and clammy with sweat. I shifted over a foot to the left onto a dryer portion of the bed; rolling over still would have been too painful for my still-aching right side.  The only thing I had going for me was that I had at least woken up before Mom had come in to check on me. Still, I found myself unable to get out of bed. Leaving meant dealing with the problem. And dealing with the problem meant having Mom and Dad – and probably Grace, for that matter – find out what happened again.  This made no sense. This situation was more confusing than any algebra equation I’d been forced to try to solve in school.  I had stopped taking the pills. I hadn’t even drunk any water since the small amount I had during dinner. And I had not only wet the bed, but completely soaked through the  pull-up as well.  This was four nights in a row. The amount of excuses needed to cover for what was happening was growing into an awfully long list.  I tried to tell myself that things would be better in one more day, but that was a lie I couldn’t even get myself to believe. So much for my seven-day plan.  I couldn’t bring myself to get out of bed. I ended up lying in bed for another fifteen minutes until Mom opened my door, this time at least knocking a few seconds before she entered my bedroom. I feigned sleep until I felt her hand on my shoulder.  “Madelyn,” Mom said in exasperation as she pulled back the sheets. “Did you change before bed like I asked?”  “Yes,” I said in an annoyed tone, as I tugged my shorts down slightly to reveal the top of the pull-ups.  “Huh,” mom said, pausing for a moment. She seemed less upset now that she realized I hadn’t skipped out on the pull-ups again. “And you’re sure you didn’t have anything to drink after dinner.”  “Yes,” I insisted. “I didn’t have a single drop.”  “Why don’t you just hop in the shower, and I’ll take care of getting everything in the wash?”  I waited for a moment without saying anything further. Couldn’t Mom give me some privacy? But she remained standing by my bed.  “Mom,” I groaned.  “Right,” she said, stepping away from the bed and toward the hallway. “I’ll be back in a second to clean up.”  <><><>  I ripped the pull-up off the second the bathroom door was behind me, and then winced at the noise it had made as I belatedly realized Grace, who was doing her hair in front of the mirror on the other side of the door, would have no doubt heard that recognizable sound.  The hot shower did little to improve my mood, though it did make some of the achiness I had been feeling go away.  It was all I could do to keep from banging my head against the shower wall. I was doing everything right, wasn’t I? I was limiting my fluids, I was using the toilet before going to bed, and I had stopped with the ADHD pills.  I could still manage to drink less, as miserable as that was going to make me. But there had to be something better. But that didn’t feel sufficient, not in the light of how my pull-up had been soaked through this morning.  But that was all I could think of, so I took only a slight sip of orange juice before ever-so-carefully pouring the rest down the drain so that my parents wouldn’t suspect anything. I disposed of my ADHD pills with the same ease, glad that at least something was going right this morning.  As soon as everyone else was off to work – or in the case of my little brother, to summer camp – I had the whole house to myself. There were no therapy appointments or tutoring sessions today, and Grace was off at work again until dinner.  I tried to do some more writing in the morning, but gave up after half an hour of staring blankly at the screen, having only managed to type a single sentence that I promptly deleted.  It didn’t help that my parched mouth was proving to be a large distraction. The sip of orange juice was far less than I normally had to drink in the morning, and my mouth was protesting loudly.  I didn’t know why I was finding writing so difficult. I had a million different ideas for a Harry Potter fan fiction story running around in my head, but as great as they seemed inside my brain, they felt so very stupid once they were written down.  Instead, I allowed myself a few small sips of water before grabbing a Harry Potter book – the one I had thrown on the floor in disgust a couple of days ago – and returning to the bed.  I forced myself to read for the next couple of hours – it was that or pace up and down the stairs – but even that familiar comfort kept getting interrupted by visions of the diapered version I had read a few days before.  Giving in would be so easy. The pull-ups were right there, only a few feet away in the dressers. I would have hours to wear them uninterrupted.  I closed my eyes and bit my lip – nearly to the point of drawing blood – forcing myself to remember how I had felt during the sleepover. That could never, ever happen again. I just had to hold out until the pull-ups were gone. Everything would be easier afterward.  That was the problem. I needed to remove myself from their influence. I grabbed the book – and the next one in the series, just in case – and trudged downstairs, putting as much distance as I could between myself and potential temptation.  <><><>  I tossed the controller gently onto the carpet and lay on my back on the couch.  It was barely an hour after lunchtime. Why was I so tired?  It wasn’t like I had done anything today. I had stared at a blank text document on a computer screen for a little bit, and then I had stared at a bunch of pages full of words for a few hours before eating leftovers for lunch. That, and I used the toilet more times than I would have expected, given how little I had to drink.  The only thing I hadn’t done was my chores, and I didn’t feel all that inclined to do them.  Do my chores or close my eyes for a few seconds. The latter was the far more appealing option. I pulled my feet up to the far side of the couch and settled in. Just a few seconds. Then I would get up.  For some reason, I never dreamed during naps. I fell asleep instantaneously. I woke up the same way a couple of hours later, springing to an upright position.  Something didn’t feel right between my legs. I patted my shorts, then jerked a damp hand away. I glanced down. My shorts were unmistakably soaked through with pee.  I tapped my phone. The clock on the lock screen told me my parents could be home in as little as fifteen minutes.  There was no time to lose. No time to even begin to try to contemplate what had just taken place.  Wet clothes were stripped off and buried at the bottom of the laundry hamper. I patted myself dry with toilet paper before putting on clean clothes.  A mass of paper towels, stain remover, and air freshener was retrieved. Five minutes later, I was confident that no trace of my couch-wetting accident remained.  No sooner had I put away the cleaning supplies and discarded the used paper towels than the front door opened.  <><><>  My dad didn’t notice the accident on the couch. But he did notice that my chores hadn’t been completed.  I wished it had been Mom who had come home first. She would have just given me a brief look of disapproval before sending me off to do the chores. Instead, I got a ten-minute-long lecture from Dad about how I needed to be more responsible if I was going to be having the house to myself all day long.  The worst of it was that he just kept repeating himself after a while. I stared at his chin as he talked, not quite looking him all the way in the eye.  <><><>  The cat litter was particularly gross today. It apparently takes cats more than one brain cell to remember to cover up their messes in the litter box.  I retreated from the smell, returning only after I had plugged both of my nostrils with toilet paper. That gave me enough courage to approach the litter box. With the litter scoop in one hand and a plastic bag in the other, I squatted down next to it.  Then I started peeing. The warm liquid raced through my shorts, creating a yellow waterfall that splashed on the concrete floor between my feet.  I found myself frozen, unable to move, only able to stare down in horror at how my body had betrayed me yet again.  My mind raced for ideas on how to quickly clean up the mess before I settled on the obvious solution. I poured out a small pile of clean litter onto the puddle of urine, waited half a minute for everything to get soaked up, and then scooped it all into the bag before finishing my chore for real.  <><><>  I paced back and forth in my room at a speed that had me working up a small sweat.  I had tossed out the litter and made it to my room with my dad being completely oblivious to the accident. My wet clothes were buried at the bottom of the hamper. I’d deal with them tomorrow. But having changed into dry underwear and shorts did nothing to resolve my problems.  None of this made any sense. The nighttime accidents were bad, but at least I could try to reason with both why they were happening and take steps to prevent them.  But there was no explanation for wetting my pants in broad daylight, and without an explanation, I didn’t have any direction for how to stop it from happening again.  I paused in the middle of the bedroom. There was a sudden queasiness in my stomach. I instinctively grabbed the garbage bin beneath my desk without a moment to spare as the contents of my lunch came hurling out.  The vomiting only lasted a few seconds, but the aftertaste in my mouth was indescribably disgusting.  I raced to the bathroom sink, where I splashed water into my mouth with cupped hands, spitting it out until the last remnant of that awful taste was gone.  I was sorely tempted to drink some water after I had finished rinsing out my mouth, but I ignored that urge. There was no scenario where I could wake up tomorrow morning in a wet pull-up. I would allow myself the smallest amount to drink during dinner, but nothing else for the rest of today.  I started to laugh. I was just sick. That was all.  Everything would be fine once I got whatever I was dealing with out of my system.  I opened the medicine cabinet, scanning the contents, looking for something that might address my latest symptoms.  My parents always joked that they knew I was truly sick when I would willingly drink my medicine without complaint.  I grabbed a bottle of the strongest stuff, measured out the dark green syrup carefully, then poured out a little extra, just for good measure.  It somehow tasted even worse than the vomit, but I gulped it down anyway in a single shot.  <><><>  It was all I could do to leave the dinner table gracefully mid-meal.  I eased the chair back slowly as I excused myself from the table. I took calm, measured steps until I was out of sight.  And then I ran to the bathroom like my life depended on it, because it most certainly did.  The bad news was that I didn’t make it to the toilet on time.  The good news was that I hadn’t had hardly anything to drink since lunch and had already peed a lot – both in and not in the toilet – so I had only leaked enough to leave a quarter-sized wet patch on my black shorts.  I examined the wet spot on my shorts closely as I sat on the toilet, wincing as my bladder let out a few additional warm spurts of pee into the toilet, debating whether or not my parents or siblings would be able to notice.  I dabbed at my shorts with toilet paper for the next two minutes until I was certain that nearly all the evidence of this latest mishap was gone.  It hadn’t been more than thirty minutes since I had taken the medicine after vomiting in my bedroom garbage can. It was fine. It took time for those things to work. I was confident I would be feeling better tomorrow.  <><><>  This time, I put my pull-up on before bed without needing to be asked.  I knew Mom would check, and this option was slightly less embarrassing than the alternative of having to be told to put it on later.  I was feeling quite cold as I was changing into my pajamas, like Dad had somehow set the thermostat much lower. I was practically shivering as I stood in front of the dresser with nothing on but the pull-up.  I rummaged through my closet, pulling out pajamas normally reserved for winter months. Fuzzy pants and a matching, long-sleeved pajama shirt.  My suspicions were proven correct a few minutes later when I was standing in front of the sink with a toothbrush in my mouth. Mom peeked her head in from the hallway, gave my bottom the slightest of pats, and then walked out before I had the chance to even react. At least the pull-up was covered up much better than the previous nights, and she didn’t say anything about my pajamas.  I rolled my eyes once I was sure Mom was out of sight.  I would show her. My pull-up would be dry in the morning.  I had been extra careful tonight. I wasn’t feeling hungry, so I hadn’t eaten much, and I had made sure to do a much better job of limiting my fluids. I had even turned down ice cream later in the evening when my parents offered it for dessert.  And I had peed so many times today already.  Even now, despite my parched mouth, I refused to take even the smallest sip of water.  I hoped the medicine would kick in soon. Besides a stomach that was still queasy, my head was starting to ache again, my legs and knees felt stiff, and that on-and-off again aching in my side had returned.  After forcing a tiny bit of pee out in the toilet, I helped myself to another half-dose of the same medicine as before.  The instructions were to wait six hours between doses, but I didn’t care.  I crawled into bed a few minutes later with two extra blankets pulled on top of me in an attempt to stop the shivering. Hopefully, Dad would fix the thermostat before he went to bed. --- Links to all my stories can be found at https://abdlwriter.wordpress.com