Trading Post

Act II For ease of navigation, Act II of The Last New Start also starts at Chapter 36.     36. Our Baby’s Clothes When I reached my room, I gave a little sigh. Ffrances had laid clothes out on the bed for me, and they were just what I’d been expecting. But somehow, seeing them spread out like that made it all the more embarrassing. They were the same clothes I had worn when babysitting more than ten years before. Jeans that I might have considered stylish. I’d probably called them distressed, but in truth they were worn out. I’d been so opposed to being a vapid follower of fashion like Jenny Hollister that I’d found a completely different style without realising. I’d mistaken scruffy for edgy. It was just my good luck that I’d been attractive enough for people not to say anything. Or maybe they had said something, just not where I could hear. The T-shirt that went with those clothes was a Paramore one, much worn. Well, it wouldn’t really have been anything else. I might have listened to a dozen different bands at that age, but half my wardrobe was filled with almost identical prints. That had been my attempt to be edgy as well, and it was only looking back on it as an adult that I realised how cringeworthy I must have been as a child. Still, I was going to be older than Tess today, and the only way I could achieve that was by changing into my old clothes. They were freshly washed, at least, and smelled of Ffrances’s favourite floral fabric conditioner. She must have washed them at home, to save them from any dust that had built up while they were in storage; making sure that there was no chance of Tess seeing them before she knew what we had planned for today. I’d seen Tess’s clothes as well; they looked just like the ones in the photo we’d just been staring at, but I was sure they weren’t actually the same. Tess hadn’t grown as much as she would have liked in the intervening decade, and I thought the outfit looked quite loose on her in the photo, but there was still no way she could have fitted into toddler clothes without extreme discomfort. But when Ffrances held them out, I was sure that they weren’t quite as small as the last time I had examined them. She’d either adjusted the clothes, or remade them in something closer to my cousin’s current measurements. I changed my clothes, feeling a little strange about it. I wasn’t supposed to be getting younger today, that wasn’t the point. I was supposed to be the older cousin for a change, so I could look down at Tess a little, and tease her the same way she’d always done to me when I was younger. But persuading Ffrances to hypnotise her had been hard enough; and the only way I’d been able to get Tess to ask for it was pretending that regression was something I wanted to do as well. So I would be thirteen again, a little kid who didn’t know any better. I wasn’t enthusiastic about being young again, but as long as it gave me the chance to turn Tess into a real child I would take it. I didn’t know yet if I would make her twelve, or ten. Or if I would tell her to be even younger, an excitable six-year-old perhaps, or all the way back to being a toddler, or even a baby. Every possibility excited me, but I also knew that going too far would put her off, and there was a chance she might decide against being hypnotised again if she didn’t enjoy it. Six was probably a happy medium, small enough that there would be no doubt who was in charge, while still old enough to say what she wanted, so she didn’t feel like she was out of control. Under the rest of the clothes, I found a pair of zebra-print knee socks. I didn’t even remember those until I stretched them out, and remembered just how awesome they had seemed when they were nothing like anything my friends would wear. I felt confident and in control, proud of my individuality. Even without the suggestions that should have turned me younger, I was feeling excited. Happy enough to play along, knowing that before long my cousin would be the little one. I went down the stairs two at a time, and saw that Ffrances was waiting outside Tess’s room. And then the soon-to-be little girl came out, looking just a little embarrassed. She was wearing green dungarees, sturdy fabric that would give her great freedom of movement, with a stiff skirt-like bit that just about hid the fact that her outfit had buttons between the legs of her shorts. It would be easier for the grown-ups to change her diaper if they needed to, but I assumed she wouldn’t actually be wearing a diaper today. Ffrances had said that we would start slowly with making us younger, and I didn’t think Tess would ever have agreed if we asked her to wear a diaper right away. Still, it gave me a google to imagine my so-serious cousin dressed up like a tiny little baby. “All dressed up?” Ffrances asked, and we answered with a chorus of “Yes.” “Feeling young and cute?” We chorused our agreement again, although I wasn’t really feeling any littler. I’d watched the hypnosis without taking part, so I would just be able to play along. This was going to be so cool. “How old do you feel, Tess?” I joined in the questions, because I wanted to show how grown up I was to start with, putting myself on the same level as Ffrances. Then Tess have to think of me like a grown up, and she would do what I said when she started getting properly little. “Umm…” she mumbled. “I’m fourteen. Like we didn’t start changing yet, did we?” “No. But it’ll change soon enough,” I giggled, and then thought about the instructions I’d heard Ffrances give her. The things I needed to say, when I wanted Tess to start being younger than me. Did I just have to tell her how old she was, and how it felt? I looked at Ffrances again, wondering if she was going to show me how to do it the first time. But she didn’t seem to be doing anything. I took a deep breath, swallowed, and tried to remember how it felt to be a little bit younger. “Tess,” I said, confidently. “You’re only thirteen now. That means you’re all giggly, and you still get excited about cartoon shows and all those teddy bears you’ve got in your room.” Tess started to blush, and I couldn’t even guess what was going through her head. Did she feel herself getting little again, or did it just change without her noticing? How would I know if it had worked? “Are you?” Ffrances asked, and Tess nodded. “How old are you?” “Thirteen,” she answered, with no hesitation at all. It had worked! “I bet this is going to be loads of fun, it’s so cool!” “And you, Gabby? How old are you?” “I’m nearly thirteen,” I answered right away. “But there’s only a few months in it now. As soon as I tell her to be littler again, I’ll be the big one and then she’s got to do what I say!” “Is that fair?” “Yeah. It’s my turn to be in charge, isn’t it? I get to look after a real baby now and she can’t stop me.” “But I can, young lady. And I say you’re only allowed to make her younger once she’s had time to get used to it, and you have to stop if Tess says she’s uncomfortable. You can try to be a big girl, but you’re not allowed to be a bully.” “Sure, sure,” I shrugged, certain that I could do whatever I wanted. I had made my plans, and I knew how much fun today was going to be. Tess was already giggling, like she could see the biggest joke ever and nobody else had got it. If she did what I said so easily then there was no way she could stop me. When I realised that I started laughing too, and thinking about all the fun I was going to have. The two of us were laughing away, not paying attention to anything else around us. But there was one big difference between us: I actually had something to laugh at, and the supposed teenager was just giving up and feeling like the little kid I’d told her to be. “Well, would you two like to come and take a photo, then?” Ffrances asked, and we both managed to nod an answer. So with Ffrances in the lead we headed for the garden, where I could show her the next bit of my brilliant plan.

I wanted to give a couple of days for everybody to catch up… but I'm also impatient for the next chapter 😛 So here it is.   Act II For convenient navigation, Act II of My Cousin's Keeper can be found at Chapter 36.   36. The First Change After she got into her own room, Tess spread out her outfit on the bed. It was a one-piece thing, and it took her a little time to work out how to put it on. It seemed like an ugly skort, but with buttons around the bottom that would have been more useful when she was actually a baby. But it was longer than she thought, and she figured out that the straps at the top were supposed to be fastened over her shoulders. Her arms had been bare in the picture, but it was getting cold now so she thought it would be better to put this on over a shirt. It took some time to get everything fastened, and then she called up the front camera on her phone so she could get a look at herself. It was tight, especially around her legs, and she had to pull the straps at the top quite hard to get them to fasten, but she was surprised how well the heavy material stretched. She might not be able to do any kind of running like that, but it only pinched a little. Ffrances had been right after all. But now she had to show off her outfit, and find out if she’d gotten any smaller yet. “Oh, wow!” Ffrances had been waiting on the landing, and seemed to be enthusiastic. “You can tell you’ve grown. But it works, I think.” “I look like a baby,” Tess gave a theatrical pout.  She didn’t feel any different, but if she was anything like Gabby she knew that she might not even notice what was different. Then she glanced up the stairs and saw that Gabby was there too, looking like she was feeling the same mixture of embarrassment and excitement. Gabby had a more appropriate costume for her age; a band T-shirt and jeans, both of them almost worn through. Tess vaguely remembered her looking like that years ago; she’d been the exciting older girl, who knew things and always had the best ideas for games to play. Torn jeans and a faded band tee were her style, along with a streak of some impossibly-bright colour in her hair. The dye wasn’t the same now, but the clothes looked just like Tess remembered them. It was still different, because Tess had seen so many different fashions over the years, and had friends with all kinds of opinions on what kind of clothes should be fashionable, and how worn something had to be before it was fashionable again. But she was pretty sure that in her cousin’s case, she’d dressed that way because she liked it rather than any attempt to conform with trends. “All dressed up?” Ffrances asked, and the girls both showed a little excitement in their answers. When she asked “Feeling young and cute?” she got the same response. Tess was just a little surprised to find that it was true. She was feeling young. The remaining years of high school seeming to stretch on forever, but what really surprised her was the realisation that she didn’t care if people thought she was just a kid. She was here to play, after all, not trying to impress anyone. “How old do you feel, Tess?” Tess gave that one a lot of thought. She was pretty sure she was fourteen, but would she have noticed if she was really a year or two older? It felt like her real age, but she didn’t know how well she could trust her memories right now. She might have felt that she was a little more excited than she should have been, or that she wasn’t thinking things through as much as she normally would, but there was nothing she could put her finger on that had changed. “I’m fourteen?” she guessed. “We didn’t start changing yet, did we?” “No,” Gabby answered, and Tess immediately had to stifle a giggle when she saw Gabby leaning against the bannister, one hand on her hips and thrusting her chest forward as if she were afraid the boys wouldn’t notice it. It was very different from her normal posture, so something had changed in Gabby’s head even if she didn’t notice it. Tess couldn’t say what her cousin’s body language had been like a decade before, but she did remember her looking cool with a hand on her hip, so maybe it was an old style she was going back to. “It’ll change soon enough,” Gabby said, and Tess tried even harder not to laugh. She didn’t want to spoil the surprise before Gabby had even noticed. She looked up at Ffrances, wondering if she was almost ready to start the main event. But it was Gabby who carried on talking: “Tess, you’re only thirteen now. That means you’re all giggly, and you still get excited about cartoon shows and all those teddy bears you’ve got in your room.” Tess nodded, and smiled. Something felt different, even if she couldn’t put her finger on it. Her first instinct was to protest that she had a collection of ferrets, not teddies. But that was still a little childish, and she had enough wits about her not to mention it. She thought she was blushing, but had Gabby really just changed her? She could remember that she’d felt more serious a couple of minutes ago. Gabby had told her she was thirteen, and she knew that was true. But at the same time, she could remember how serious she was going to be when she got to fourteen, and how many worries she would have. That must be her real age, she decided. But she didn’t want to be fourteen right now, she was having more fun like this. She could put it out of her mind for a while, and be glad that all that scary stuff was more than a year away. “How old are you?” Ffrances asked, looking down at Tess with a satisfied smile on her face. Tess imagined she must be giving pretty much the same smile, quietly happy at the first hints that this was going well. She was pretty sure that it was working exactly as they planned. “Thirteen,” she answered, and gave up on trying to work out what was the right answer. She should just play along, say the one that felt right until she couldn’t tell the difference anymore. And feeling that just a number wasn’t enough of an answer, she let the words tumble out of her mouth, gushing with excitement about a new feeling that she was eager to explore. Not about being younger, just about not knowing things, and having everything change so much. That was going to be amazing. “And you, Gabby?” Ffrances asked. “How old are you?” This was going to be the big question, because nobody had told Gabby to be younger yet. “I’m nearly thirteen!” Her voice had a little excited squeak bolted onto the sentence, and she followed it up with a pout that a newly-minted teenager might think made her look a little more grown up. Tess had been the one people were looking down on for most of her memory, but she’d still seen people who did things like that, so desperate to be taken seriously. “But there’s only a few months in it now. As soon as I tell her to be littler again, I’ll be the big one and then she’s got to do what I say!” Tess couldn’t hold back the laughter any longer when she said that. She was seriously seeing Tess as the older one, and she didn’t even see that there was anything different. It was amazing, and she was sure she would have no end of fun being able to tease Gabby now. After all the tension, and all the discussion, this was really happening. She was getting exactly what she wanted. It was going to be incredible, she was sure, and the more she thought about all the things they could do this afternoon, the less she even wanted to stop the uncontrollable laughter bubbling forth.

Absolutely. When I was in a couple of years ago they flew me to hospital in the pull-up I was wearing at the time of the accident. Next thing I knew I was catheterised. That was it for a fortnight until they wanted to get me ready to go home. Then they wanted to take the catheter out. They has no nappies worthy of the name, so I asked them to wait until my wife could bring in nappies for me. The last few days either my wife or a nurse changed me - I wasn't able to change myself. I'd have had a lot of wet bed incidents if I'd tried to rely on what the hospital had. Let's hope it never happens Mikey!

$4.29 at the corner truck stop for 85.

My relief got let go.  Still win though.