Baby Talk

Like some of the others in this thread.  I was going thru a difficult divorce, but had to live in the same house (different bedroom) and some medical issues and stress got to me, and i started wetting the bed again at 45 (now 59)  within a year, i was fully incontinent.  I dont regret it, at all.   but i do wish i had some peer's to talk about it periodically.  

Maddison felt a bit embarrassed about how easily she wet herself; she was getting used to letting go in her diaper, making it easier to do so. Lying there on the changing table, Maddison didn't mind the cleanup—even though she was still quite embarrassed about the situation—because Camilla was so efficient and practiced at changing her. She just felt the cool sensation and the lavender scent of the baby powder. When Camilla asked, Maddison said, "I'll let you choose today, Mommy," adding, "and I'll let you pick out my outfit, too." Maddison was happy to be heading to college.

That would be awesome to see videos of adults using their diapers and not staged.  Like maybe out hiking in the woods in just their diapers and filling them up with a big load. I'm not sure though,  a diaper that's obviously messy may still be against the rules.  Like when the poop darkens the plastic backing.

I can understand your point. Most people can't understand psychic disabilities. Physical you can see so everyone can relate to this. So a story about someone who get diapers or more after an accident? it's ok. But someone who suffers from a psychic disabilitie? .... We are all humans and we have our need, kinks etc. For your information i have a physical disabilitie and the world was very hard to me. Because of this i have depression and a few other psychic disabilities. Would you guys say it would be discriminate, if there are a story about a human with depression who couldn't handle his live alone anymore and would treated as a baby? I thought this is a safe place for everyone with this kink or fetish? If there aren't any rules broken like pedo etc. let menile write his story with fantasy in it. Edit: you can feel free to skip this story.  I don't like a lot of storys, but it's not my story so i don't tell people what they have to write.  If is something about the website rule you can report it. Otherwise look for other storys you like or write your owb stories.

Hey everyone! Sorry for the delay this week. I promise it’s not a habit… just really bad luck. Last night, I couldn’t log in to save my life, and this had to get bumped into posting when I got back home today. And second, I helped out some family… and got poison ivy over my fingers. Not the tips… but the sides don’t feel too great. Needless to say, typing is a bit difficult. I’ve managed to do some old school finger pointing and one key at a time business… but it takes longer now to write. Hopefully this won’t last too long but the next chapter might be delayed until Friday. Now… last but not least and as usual, I hope everyone enjoys this next chapter of my story! Chapter 15: Liberty From Your Mind… Your Maturity Apparently, little bodies can produce big emotions… or at least that’s what Esther told me about my panic attack that occurred after my wet bed and newfound fears in even the simplest of things. Surging chemicals in the blood and brain are combined with situations that should never happen to any normal human. But they did to ARs and red cabin was where the bill came due it seemed to me. In here, you weren’t a stupid little baby, but it was like your head was already getting prepped for the guillotine ready to strike any day now. Yes, there could be a reprieve, and you could bounce as a silly little kid. Maybe, if you were lucky, your mind might not be a bunch of scrambled eggs, and you get off where your favorite new pastime is sticky fingers and plastic toy cars or action figures. If you were like me, Tommy, Eric, or Victor though… red cabin was a prison or an insane asylum. Yes, on some level we deserved to be here. After all, there’s only so much you can do when your height drops below just under five feet tall… and that’s a best-case scenario. Personally, I was sprouting at just a hair over four feet now and let me tell you… those precious centimeters over that line meant more to me than all the puddings at lunch. Still, despite our internment, our group were outside observers. We felt like we had been thrown in here and the key mercilessly hung just outside of our reach. It’s one thing to meet the requirements to be in here, but an entirely other thing to be mixed with those that belonged to be in here. Looking over towards Sammy, someone who now wore protection at night all the time and cuddled his bear Hubert like his life depended on it, it was hard to believe we were in the same cabin these days. Same height, maybe… but there was a difference between us. At least that’s what I told myself.   Sure, I had wet the bed and that was horrible and embarrassing, and I can’t say I wasn’t emotional… but I kept my head and the problem was just pushed aside with only one joke cracked by Victor. Otherwise, it was a physical problem… not a mental one. It would be like other people mocking you around here for glasses or a limp. It happened… but it was heavily frowned upon. It didn’t mean I dreaded the nighttime any less, but I wasn’t devastated. It was just another bad moment here… ones that were piling up every day now.   “Brian… can you speed up, man?” I asked my old friend when he stopped suddenly on the trail back to our cabin after lunch. Going double file out here, I didn’t want others to run into me just because he decided he didn’t want to walk very fast… or even at all once I asked him. “Huh?” He spun around sloppily and seemed out of it, almost like he was in a trance of sorts. “Whatcha’ talkin’ about, Miles?” I frowned… his regression seemed to be speeding faster beyond my own lately. “It’s just… you…” I made a decision to avoid the back and forth if I asked him about making a face or slowing down and now stopping… so I was more direct with what I wanted to know. “You okay there?” “Oh. Yeah, totally, Miles! I… yeah…” His words told me one thing, but he seemed so distant… causing me to stop for a moment even as he then wandered off. “You okay, Miles?” Eric then asked me after almost bumping into me now… just like I had almost done with Brian. “I…” I sighed and, knowing that I had to keep moving, kept walking and shook my head. “It’s Brian. He’s just… it’s so weird with him now. Just now, he stopped and kind of stared off into the distance… and then again when I asked him if he was okay.” “Oh… that face, huh?” Victor noted, like he knew the answers to everything now. I turned around to him, curious about what he was thinking. “What?” I needed to know. There was a pause and most shifted uncomfortably… until Eric stepped a little more forward from the pack. “He was going…” he mumbled with a sigh. “Going?” My mind threatened to break under the notion of what they were implying. “As in…?” “As in our friend was demoted to pull-ups a few days ago,” Tommy filled in the gaps for me as gently as he could. “You noticed that, right? And the times he had an accident before and after then?” I did but my brain hadn’t put it all together. Ever since the night we tried to escape, he had a few daytime accidents as well like he had in the boat with me. I thought they were just fear-induced… apparently not though. Regardless, now, they were covered and he was protected, which meant… “Wait… are you saying…?” “You witnessed him peeing,” Victor told me bluntly. “He was having an accident in his pull-ups. Not a good sign for anyone in red cabin, but… if you watch, I guarantee you’ll see I’m right when we get back to the cabin.” I tried to look at my friends for some comfort or that Victor was wrong… I didn’t find any. And getting back to the cabin, to my dismay, I saw two things that disturbed me. The first was that Josephine did in fact check on Brian, declared him wet, and then took him to the bathroom to change him out into a fresh pair… while marking the potty chart with another sad face. His lack of reaction to it all might have been disturbing at one time, but now it was just par for the course. No, the second disturbing thing I saw was on my bed… a stuffed toy blue bird. I approached the object like it was an IED ready to go off at any moment. Seeing it closer though, just sitting upright on my bed, I saw its bright blue feathers and brilliant orange chest. I could nearly picture it singing and chirping out in the early hours each day. And it looked so soft and fluffy… but it was a toy… and on my bed. “What the…?” “Josephine put it there,” Esther said, stepping up from behind me while gesturing to the foreign object before me. “She thought you could use a friend.” I frowned. “But I have friends.” I nearly gestured towards Tommy, Eric, and Victor… but they were nowhere to be seen now. She nodded, her bottom lip stretching over her teeth as she wavered with just how to handle all this. “Yes. And I know that and shame on her for saying that, but…” She paused, now fully biting her bottom lip before she stepped closer to me. “Just at night with your… incidents. She thought you could use some comfort.” She took a deep breath. “And I kind of agree…” I swore I could feel the dagger drive into the center of back and out through my heart. They say betrayal of those closest to you is the most painful… and they meant it. Sure, on some level I could see that Esther was only trying to be a good person while Josephine was either mocking or belittling me in her own way… but the suggestion that I needed a toy at night for comfort because of just some stupid accidents? I was beyond pissed. I didn’t show it though. In red cabin where your options are Mrs. Carlisle, who was fully authorized to punish you at whim; Josephine, whose idea of immaturity was anyone shorter than her; or Esther, whose kindness made you feel small but more because that’s simply what you were. Of the three, I didn’t want to alienate the one I could at least tolerate. “Yeah… whatever.” I rolled my eyes and dared not to touch the infantile object. “Just don’t expect me to cuddle with it.” And before she could say anything more, I left for the bathroom to wash my face to get ready for our work at Havenswood. But to my surprise, being the Fourth of July, work was canceled. “Oh, come on and join in on the fun, Miles!” Emma implored me, taking my hand and pulling me into town along with the rest of the cabins and staff. I groaned but let her pull me along. By now, with her soothing and intelligent words, she had guided me through numerous obstacles as I hurdled back down through the various stages of my life. When my teeth fell out and then some of my baby teeth sprouted back in their place, she was the one to offer me cool ice chips or lemonade to soothe the pain and keep me from freaking out. When I couldn’t lift a basket of food that had been harvested, she only smiled and said ‘together.’ There was never mockery… only kindness. Regardless though, we were all soon led into the heart of Havenswood. We had gone into town before but only really to offer our services as day laborers… never tourists or the like. Some of the younger, more regressed members of red cabin even whispered stories of magic and demons in town and we had to stay away from or forever be cursed. Nonsense. Most of us just assumed a place known as ‘the commune’ to outsiders, wanted their privacy. Today though, privacy seemed to be the last thing on anyone’s mind. Circling around the town square, musicians played old tunes on their banjos and harmonicas and guitars. There was a twang in the air of days long past and a sense of community here that almost seemed out of place. For most of us, coming from cities of steel and glass and concrete, it was almost a peculiar quaintness to it all, and soon, most found at least one thing they enjoyed above the rest. Victor and Tommy enjoyed the dancing, their movements more coordinated and focused than the dozens of younger-minded ARs surrounding them… like Sammy. Seeing the coos that seemed to find little separation between the two groups though, Eric and I occupied our time over by the food stands. All free… all designed to show off the various wares of the community. Fresh strawberries and blueberries… cobbler and pies. Breads and cookies. All of them lined the stalls and each member of the community eyed us with a passion to offer what they had made. Gorging on a thick slice of sweet blueberry pie, I stuck to one corner and observed everyone. After the stuffed toy I had found and Josephine’s continued belittling and now Esther’s agreement for some younger things in my life… I didn’t feel like celebrating. Sammy and Brian tried to get me to go out and dance more than a few times with them when a kid’s song was played, but I was firm and stayed put. I was a little tempted, but I saw the looks of the townsfolk. They looked greedy… like the young ARs before them were precious jewels to be collected. And their smiles… not mockery but ones you would give to a cute dog for doing a trick or a baby who said their first word. It creeped me out… but not as much as another group just behind me. Looking closely, the outfits younger and sporting teddy bears and cartoon characters or bulging around bottoms or donning pacifiers or bows in their hair… I quickly recognized the group as the local daycare. Curiously though, a few looked familiar. Nothing exact… more like an image that had blurred over time from people I swore I remembered walking around camp. Like this one girl with blonde pigtails… I swore I had seen her in blue cabin when I first got here. She tripped after weeding the front garden of one of the houses and cried for twenty minutes straight after they bandaged up her knee and then sent her down to red cabin. ‘Is that her? I thought she bounced low in red and went back to the city? But her hair… her eyes… her…’ I winced and shook my head. ‘Nah… just my mind…’ I sighed, knowing I was getting stressed again for things I couldn’t control and was now playing tricks with my mind. I then groaned heavily. ‘Great! Now I’m connecting to them so much, I think they look familiar now! Me… babies! Ugh!’ Purple cabin had volunteered at the daycare once, which is actually where Emma and I first truly bonded. She could tell I was miserable being surrounded by all the babies and reminders of what could be back then, and she plucked me out and got me to trim the weeds around the playset out back. We talked a little and she made sure I never had to go back, and where I went, she was sure to follow to ‘make sure I was always smiling.’ And like then, Emma meandered up to me once more seeing my dourer mood. “Leave it to you, Miles, to scour on such a beautiful Fourth of July.” She sighed and sat on a flowerbed wall, her head now just coming into level with mine. “You okay there?” I gestured with my plastic white fork covered in blueberry-filling over towards the younger kids and babies playing over by the playground. “Who are they?” I finally asked once I swallowed my last bite of pie. “Oh, just our kids,” she said, smiling a little as she glanced over at them. “We just have so many these days. Maybe something about a post-ARV world, I guess. I think a few of the families were reminded they wanted more babies or something.” “Oh?” My suspicions were growing. “If they’re ARs, then why aren’t we with…?” “With them? Honey… they’re just babies,” she finished for me before stepping forward with a grin plastered over her face. “Miles… we separate out you all from them because they are purely just babies and all… and you all aren’t.” She stepped forward again, her grin turning into something more playful now. “Unless… you really want to go play with them? I’m sure they could use another as they play with their stuffies and blocks.” I shook my head and backed up towards the rest of the celebrations. “No, no! I just…” I realized that I was almost insinuating on some level that some of us should have been paired with them… and that was just ridiculous. “I was just… I was just wondering!” I stammered over myself and tossed my plate and fork away before gesturing back toward the dancing. “I’m going to… dance! Yeah… dance!” I made a run for it, trying to put any distance I could from myself and the babies and other kids I had just seen. Nothing more was made of it, and before long, I was thoroughly distracted by the music and the dancing and the sheer amount of sugar coursing through me. I had indulged in pies and cobbler and certainly a fair number of cookies… at least for my current size. That was another negative, but right then, it didn’t matter. For the first time in maybe a month, I didn’t care about my height or my dwindling strength and coordination. It didn’t matter that Brian and Sammy couldn’t clap to the beat to save their lives anymore. It didn’t matter the looks we were getting from the townsfolk. We were just happy and dancing on the Fourth of July. It didn’t last long though. Coming in the middle of the week, without a bonfire, each of the cabins went about their normal off days’ routines. So, for us, that meant going out into the middle of the woods for our own campfire, dinner, and stories. But being red, our differences with the other cabins were once again thrown in our faces. “Mrs. Carlisle…” Steven greeted our current head of cabin as he halted his own black cabin members behind him. “Mr. Jankowski…” she nodded back, still keeping up her notion that each of the staff were called by their titles and not their first names. For her, even though we only knew Steven as just that… he would forever be ‘Mr. Jankowski’ now. Between him and seeing members of black cabin, all older and taller and muscular… they were men. They could leave tomorrow and just be grateful that their backs felt better and that would be it. If they were 80, they would have got 60 more years of life. Most considered that a blessing to feel young again. In contrast, though, we had received too much youth from the virus and we were now plainly the younger cabin. We weren’t yellow, but black cabin still stopped for us… just like had happened when I first got here with purple. And worse, we were the ones looked on now with fear and pity by them. Fred and some of his obvious group of friends waved at us, clearly among the nicer types… but they were the exception to the rule now it seemed. But, with them letting us pass, we were quickly able to go to our own ‘campsite.’ In truth though, being red cabin meant we no longer camped overnight. All this was purely just for an afternoon and night of fun. Sleep would be back in our cabin. According to admin, we were simply too young to stay out here in tents by ourselves anymore… regardless of our minds. My one solace in all this though was that our cabin was still split amongst the purely short or the more mentally regressed. With my mind still intact, I was put to work along with Tommy, Eric, and Victor, and while it was work, it was almost like a badge of honor. In contrast, people like Brian and Sammy were busy collecting grass and sticks and bugs as a way to be distracted with Josephine and Esther. “Miles!” Mrs. Carlisle called out. “Pay attention to what you’re doing. We need the food prepped… not dropped in the dirt.” I looked down and saw that the hot dog that I had been handling was inches away from slipping from the package and onto the ground. “Oh… sorry.” She smiled, brushing off the minor near incident. “That’s okay. Just pay attention. We should be having dinner in the next hour. And trust me… you don’t want a bunch of regressed red cabin members getting hungry out here. Between them and a bear… I might just take the bear.” “She’s right, Miles,” Tommy added. “Little kids like them are more likely to eat you if there’s no food on time and judging by the sun… we need to hurry it up.” “Fire’s almost going!” Victor called out, one of the still older members of the cabin entrusted, with proper supervision of course, to build up and then tend to the fire. “Excellent!” Mrs. Carlisle surveyed the picnic table full of vegetables, chips, hot dogs and buns, fruit, and a smattering of desserts. It was all simple but out here, a change of pace and delicious to mark the holiday. “I think all should be ready just in time for…” A faint but unmistakable singing could be heard. Mrs. Carlisle joyfully smiled and turned toward the path we had come from as well. “You hear it? Yellow cabin’s coming. Best get ready. No telling what kind of mood they’re in today.” We all nodded. Yellow cabin was synonymous with both fear and chaos. Unlike some of the other cabins though, it was more just expected of them. Even the ones that weren’t losing their minds were subject to the instincts and physicality of what basically amounted to babies. The whole camp feared them… like end-stage plague victims being shown to people who just had a persistent cough. They were the doom of this disease and the fear of this camp all wrapped up into smelly, soft, and tiny packages. With dinner on us only a little bit later, both camps converged into the area and surrounded various firepits and picnic tables. While most members stuck to their own cabins’ designated spots, some did intermingle, and everyone could see each other in the dimming light around us but the blazing fire in front of us as well. Seeing one curly blonde kid, I felt so superior. His clothing was still a khaki uniform, but it had been modified… mostly to accommodate the poor kid’s obvious diapers. Drool or slime or who knows what else covered part of his front and his pudgy fingers grabbed the chunks of fruit that had been put in front of him. And the hot dogs… each was stabbed and fed by another volunteer one at a time. Unlike red cabin, due to the high demands of ARs so young and helpless, there was a single volunteer for every two of their members. “Quit staring,” Eric said under his breath, trying to wrap his mouth quickly around the hot dog and bun with all the condiments without spilling or squirting anything out. “I…” I almost denied it, but I saw Victor, Eric, and Tommy all staring back at me. They had seen me and exactly what I had been doing. “It’s just hard not to. I know it’s one cabin down… but it’s such a huge difference between us. How can only a few years be that much of a change?” Victor sighed. “I like the thought, but I’m going to have to at least partially disagree with you there, Miles.” He skewered a red grape with his fork, a feat pretty impressive around here with eh amount of patience and coordination that took. “Some days yes… some days though? No.” Tommy patted my back. “He’s right, you know. Today they look different to you. Diapers and bottles or sippy cups and cut-up food and being fed… it’s so strange. But…” He paused and his head arced around the other campfires. “That leap might not be as big as you might have imagined…” I wanted to ask, but sadly, I quickly saw what he was referring to. While our firepit was surrounded by mid-regressed and non-regressed cabin members, other sites weren’t as untouched. One firepit to the left was mostly yellow cabin, but with one red. And looking closely, Josephine was already cutting up said red cabin member’s freshly grilled hot dog before stabbing it and blowing on the food before handing it back over to them. They were still independent on some level… but frighteningly close to yellow cabin on another. And to my chagrin, looking to our left, I saw Brian and Sammy. Mostly chatting up a storm… and seemingly too preoccupied with that to do much else… including feeding themselves. In their case, worst of all, a yellow cabin volunteer was feeding them herself. No maturity with them… no blurred lines there. Scarily of all though for me at least… at the last firepit closest to us, I saw the exact same toy that had been left on my bed. Wanted or not, that connective fiber was tightening the bond and the connection between me and yellow cabin. I felt so superior only minutes ago. Now, I felt only a single mishap away from them. Fortunately, my friends were more than willing to pull me out of my stupor, intentionally or not, and tell me a few jokes and soon take me away to clean up the various picnic tables as the less mentally regressed members of our cabin. It was a burden and a pain somedays, but we all felt it was the burden worth having to keep our minds clear and intact. As I washed a few of the dishes though near the sump, I heard a faint echo coming through the woods. Close but still somehow distant. “We're going on a bear hunt.” “We're going on a bear hunt,” more echoed back. “We're going to catch a big one,” the first called out. “We're going to catch a big one,” the group repeated back. “What a beautiful day!” the first shouted with joy. “What a beautiful day!” was once again called back, seemingly just as excited. “It’s yellow cabin,” Eric explained, coming up from behind me to pour some dirty liquid in the sump. “One of their heads of cabin… Mrs. Robin I think, always reads the story, We're Going on a Bear Hunt, to them. Call and response level stuff. Some just babble and fumble around… others seem to enjoy it.” “Always?” I questioned, still hearing the words echo off the trees. “Always,” Victor groaned. “The first few times… cool. But after over 30? I could recite that book from memory by now!” Not mentally regressed doesn’t mean we aren’t subject to other kinds of regressions. “I just… I wanna chuck it straight into the trash!” “Easy, Victor,” Tommy braced his friend before he got out of control and made a scene that he could get needlessly punished for. “Just be glad you’re not one of them and push on. Of things to be upset about around here… that’s gotta be at the bottom of the list.” Victor nodded but then grumbled as he walked away, face downcast and hands in pockets. Having early bedtimes, whether they were mentally regressed or not, yellow cabin soon left the site. To the north, we could hear the faint singing coming from blue and purple cabins at their own locations. And for the rest of red cabin… I knew that our time would be short here as well. As red, we just didn’t stay the night. And as if to confirm our night was coming to an end already, Mrs. Carlisle sat down at the at the head of the larger fire pit and began to read from a small book of local ghost stories. “The moon hung pale and crooked above Blackthorn Manor in Havenswood, when the murderous ghosts began to whisper from behind the walls, calling each visitor by name,” she whispered. “One by one, the candles guttered out, and from the shadowed halls came the soft scrape of spectral footsteps drawing ever nearer.” She paused, looked at us grimly and then slowly turned the page. Already, several of my cabinmates were visibly hooked… or terrified and holding each other or their own personal stuffed animals. “Then the nursery door creaked open by itself,” she continued, “revealing a procession of ghostly figures waiting in the darkness, their hollow eyes fixed hungrily upon the trembling guests…” Each word and syllable seemed to dance and whisper like smoke wisping around our minds and our ears. It was eerie and felt so strange compared to all my other Fourth of July’s. It was unnerving and most definitely not a celebration like usual. And for some, they couldn’t take it. Josephine and Esther tended to most well enough… but sadly, not all. “No more! No more!” Brian shrieked out in the dark, panicking fully and crying now after a few more minutes of Mrs. Carlisle reading. “Stop it! Stop it!” “It’s okay, Bri-Bri,” Josephine tried to soothe as she swooped in for comfort. She was terrible for those of us non-mentally regressed ARs, but she was more than fair and competent for the ones who, for lack of a better phrase, actually acted like babies. “It’s just a story, but…” She paused when she saw her words weren’t doing the trick tonight. “Aww… come here, pumpkin.” Brian was still sobbing and freaking out, but without a scrap of hesitation, flung himself into her arms. “Make it stop! Make it stop…” Tears ran down his cheeks and his tiny body trembled against her. Josephine sighed as she cuddled him tightly. She even alternated between patting his bottom and rubbing his back. For a moment, she seemed almost shocked and even a little saddened, but then just kept right on soothing my old friend’s frayed nerves. Unfortunately, most weren’t even slightly phased by the outburst. Ghost stories and the like frequently had received that reaction around here. Some campers even started to freak out before in blue cabin… but those were more of the rarities and they usually didn’t last for very much longer there. In red though, being scared of those blasted stories was just par for the course. It was strange how they still told them to us. I know that telling ghost stories around a campfire is classic camping and summer camp, which is basically what this place was for us ARs… but it was odd. Most of us were ten years old or younger. Even for those of us who weren’t mentally affected, we felt that we should be told about other things. Like action stories with dragons or bandits or even love stories. Maybe not fully mature, but not something to try us to get freaked out like Brian was now. But with the staff seemingly determined to continue their ghastly tales… situations like Brian’s seemed inevitable. This time though, something happened that made most more than a little uneasy. Sighing, Josephine stood up with Brian still interlocked within her arms and after a nod to Mrs. Carlisle, just simply walked away. No more words… no major actions… just walking away, Brian’s muffled whimpers fading into the darkness. Mrs. Carlisle then resumed her story like nothing had happened, performing voices and using her hands to show the terror or grizzly ways of the vengeful ghost in her story. I felt like I had just gotten whacked over my head. Brian had made a scene… but Josephine had calmed him down. ‘So why take him away like that? And what was with the head nod? Is there something I’m missing?’ I was confused… and I couldn’t hold back anymore. “What the…? Where the hell is he…?” “Shh!” Eric whacked his hand over my mouth, cutting me off entirely just as a few started to look in my direction. I had inadvertently cursed, which most understood, but it was still in the gray areas of rules around here. No punishment… but more like a warning. “Brian is fine. He’ll probably be right back.” Tommy patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about him. Just… try to enjoy the story where you can for now.” I sighed and nodded once Eric removed his hand. I didn’t like any of this, but I also knew there wasn’t much I could do about it either. Brian had been taken away and due to red cabin restrictions, we all had to wait around the campfire or else be escorted by someone older away… like Josephine had done with Brian. Fortunately… at the start of the second ghost story, Tommy tapped me on the shoulder and nodded his head for me to follow him. Curiously, as I did, he also flashed a small bit of paper to Mrs. Carlisle, and just like she had done with Josephine, gave him a curt head nod… before resuming her story like nothing had happened. Not questioning my friend though, we then left behind Eric and Victor. As soon as we were clear and headed toward the water… I couldn’t stand yet another question on my mind tonight. “Tommy… where are we going?” He kept on walking but gestured his hand back to me to follow. “No worries, man. Just keep following me. And… you’ll know it when you see it.” I was perplexed, but sure enough, less than a minute later, the cattails and trees and vines by the water parted and I saw two waiting boats. “Hey you two!” Uriah called out, bobbing up and down in his boat, accompanied by both Billy and Pedro… all looking younger but still shockingly older than me now. And in the other boat, I spied a grinning Fred. “Hey… you two get held up or something?” Tommy nodded. “Yes. And… Brian won’t be joining us tonight…” There was an oddity to his wording. I knew what he meant, but there was almost an implication with them as well… like he was trying to suggest something that I wasn’t picking up on. Uriah seemed to know though and nodded gravely. “Understood. Something to think about another night I guess…” He then dipped his paddle in the water and shoved off. “You two go in Fred’s boat and follow me. We’ve got about five minutes to get into place…” “Get into place?” I questioned as Tommy stepped into the more or less stable boat pushed against the shoreline. Everyone within earshot smiled. “Just get in the boat, Miles,” Fred instructed. “Everything will become clear soon enough.” I sighed, taking yet another thing on faith. By now, it was almost becoming second nature to me. I longed for the days that I just knew things. The rest of my life, however bleak it might have been, was knowable to me. I would retire in twenty to thirty years and then die. No children… no spouse. Lonely but predictable in all the ways I could. Now, a week from now, I could very well be in yellow cabin… or bounce and leave Camp Commune forever. I just didn’t know. To my delight though, in this instance, my surprise was a good one. Uriah and Fred soon paddled over towards a larger grouping of boats… I noticed all helmed by either black or purple cabin members on the older side of the spectrum, like Uriah. “Black cabin usually just stays inside most nights. Boring as hell,” Fred noted, dipping his paddle in the water to stop us before we hit into Uriah’s nearby boat. “But on the Fourth… we all get to take our boats and come out here or join in the town square. There, it’s just us. Out here though…” He gestured toward the other boats, and while they were helmed by the more mature members of camp, their passengers were just like us. Younger mostly… no one else from red and certainly not yellow, but all sorts from purple and blue. “Had to sign you and Tommy out though…” he then noted, a little sour. “They call it ‘sitting.’” He shuddered in revulsion. “What?” That term to someone gracing elementary school or below back in the real world only knew that term really in one way with these situations. “As in… babysitting?” “Easy, Miles,” Tommy tried to calm me, even placing his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t rock the boat or anything. It’s just a term…” It just felt so wrong to me. It was an instant delegation that I was young and needed supervision in this place. I could still perform complex calculations back in math class and I knew all my past… but it didn’t seem to matter in this case. It was insulting and I wanted to object. “But…” “Just shrug it off and try to enjoy yourself tonight, Miles,” Fred implored, quickly cutting me off before I spiraled more. “Things like this? They might not come around too much more often around here.” Nodding with a sigh, I looked back around, and resigning myself to my new status, I was still amazed and the sheer number out here and I recognized a few others that had stayed in my previous cabins. Some were still teens… and now I was six or seven, maybe eight at best. Mrs. Galen kept that type of information to herself nowadays with me and the others in red. ‘Probably to prevent anyone from freaking out,’ Eric had guessed last week. We weren’t sure, but it didn’t matter out here. Out here was calm… for about a minute more. The sky then exploded overhead. Flashes of blues and reds and yellows and green as the fireworks dazzled any onlookers. Booms and shrills of tiny but powerful explosions echoed off the mountains. The lake almost seemed like it was on fire from the sheer number of ordinances now being lobbed into the sky. According to Uriah nearby, it was the one time of year that Havenswood really splurged and connected to the outside world. Several local towns outside the area would gather on trail around the peaks. Personally, with all the monsters, I thought that was incredibly dangerous… but looking up at the sky and all the wonder displayed there before us, I couldn’t really blame them. And all that would have been amazing. It was for about five minutes… until I remembered Brian. “Miles?” Tommy asked, seeing I was no longer looking up in wonderment. “You okay? You getting seasick or something?” I shook my head. “No. It’s just… it’s Brian. I’m worried about him. And… he should be out here…” Quickly, I noticed Tommy’s expression get low, but pushing forward, I explained what happened. No one spoke and it seemed like I had just uttered a death sentence. “What?” I couldn’t stand their expressions about my friend who wasn’t even here to enjoy the fireworks still blossoming and exploding overhead. It was a sight… but I just couldn’t drop this now. “Am I missing something here?” Finally, Billy turns to me and reaches over from his boat to rub my shoulder. “I don’t think anyone is going to say this… so I will…” He sighed heavily and his face turned into a sour grimace. “Miles… Brian’s in yellow cabin now.” “He’s… what?” I tried to wrap my brain around that notion, but it just wasn’t working. We had come here together and while he had always been slightly ahead of me falling down the cabins and ages here, I was usually behind him. In a single sentence, my world had shattered and I felt the floor beneath me was suddenly about to drop. ‘If I’ve been so close to him, am I going to bounce soon… or am I going to join him instead.’ “Oh great! Now look what you’ve done!” Uriah smacked his forehead and turned to Fred. “Fred? Can you make sure to…?” Fred nodded. “Will do.” There seemed to be a hidden communication between them that I wasn’t picking up on, but the only member still in black cabin, soon pulled me closer and whispered in my ear. “Just take some deep breaths for me, Miles. Yeah… in and out… in and out…” Following his lead of his hand raising and lowering, I did and began to calm down. Nodding, Fred continued. “Brian’s been slipping for awhile now. Based on your story, I’m guessing he had another accident. Another accident plus a full breakdown over a story equals yellow cabin around here. We’ve all seen it before…” “We have?” I tried to rack my brain for when I saw that, but I couldn’t come up with anything. Fred sighed though and shook his head. “No… we have.” He gestured to the rest of the ACTS members, not including Tommy or me. “You all were somewhere else. But the rest of us saw it in front of the admin building. Little dude from red cabin had a full meltdown and wet their pants. Regardless of what they found with Mrs. Galen, they were quickly sent to yellow cabin.” I wanted to panic and to freak out more, but there was a tiny part of my rational mind still functioning at full capacity and not just running on emotion. It wasn’t much but it was enough for me to cling onto and not jump out of the boat and swim for shore to find my friend and to protest immediately. “I’m sure he’s okay,” Tommy tried to reassure me as well. “He’s right,” Fred agreed. “He’ll be fine. Might even be happy, so… don’t let him take that away from you, okay?” He then gestured towards the ongoing show in the sky overhead. “Just enjoy the fireworks tonight. Worry about Brian later. I’m sure you’ll see that everything is okay.” “I…” A large explosion of shimmers and yellow sparkles lit up the night. I sighed and knew I had to take the good where I could get it. “I’ll try…” Fred and Tommy smiled and we all stayed in the boat until the finale went off. Fifteen minutes total of booms and shimmering lights. Brian was still on my mind, but as I was encouraged, I managed to enjoy what was taking place on the holiday. Summer was running full force now and I knew I had to be grateful for the life I still had. Paddling back to the dock to hitch our boat up, I was reminded that things could have been worse. Some of the more regressed members had been taken out and several members were soaked… apparently having gotten caught in the middle of a splashing match. Several black cabin campers seemed less than pleased… a few even vowing to ‘never do it again.’ From Fred at least, he just smiled before he and Uriah stored the boats without complaint. As the group then made our way back towards the cabins, I felt several stares homing in on me. Of the entire group, despite my mental regression being almost non-existent, I was by far the shortest member of the group. Tommy was managing to hover around nine years old and everyone else was at least ten years old. For black cabin members, most were still in their 20s. So, being so small, I stood out. Now, I was the thing to be pitied. I might have cried at that notion of so much loss and being near the bottom of the proverbial totem pole around here, but I just kept thinking about what Fred had told me. ‘Everything is okay…’ It wasn’t much, but it kept my feet moving forward one step at a time. As Tommy and I made our way into red cabin though, being a little later, most were asleep. Oddly though, Mrs. Carlisle was waiting for us. Worse, she was lingering by our bunk. “You boys have a good night out on the lake?” she questioned, sitting there like she was trying to break the ice for something yet to come. “Oh, absolutely,” Tommy spoke up for the pair of us, my mind still wrapped around Brian and more importantly to me right now, what she was doing there. “I’m glad to hear that.” She smiled and turned to Tommy directly. “You go on into the bathroom and get freshened up for tonight. Laundry day tomorrow… so you’ll need to be up a little earlier.” Tommy nodded. “Yes, ma’am.” He barreled right for the bathroom, but clearing behind Mrs. Carlisle, he turned back toward me briefly and gave me a sympathetic but reassuring wave. I smiled slightly back at him, but I was starting to lose the battle of keeping my cool. Already, looking over, I could see that Brian’s nearby bunk was empty. ‘Damn… he really is in yellow cabin.’ And more disturbing, Mrs. Carlisle was now looking at me directly and with a saddened expression like she had a crushing weight she needed to offload onto me. ‘Crud. Not good… not good at all…’ “Miles…” She bent down in her chair to better look at me straight-on before taking my hands. “You are so wonderful around here. So mature and so organized and neat and…” I held up my hand. I couldn’t stand waiting any longer. I could feel her buttering me up for something bad coming my way. Maybe it was just to confirm about Brian… but her face looked weary directed toward me and not my old friend’s absence. “Just… tell me straight. I… it’s been a long night.” She winced but then sighed. “If you wish. There’s just… there’s no easy way to say this. I know I haven’t been spending much time with you lately. I try to get to know each of my cabin members pretty well but there’s just been so much change here, like with your friend Brian tonight…” She trailed off for a moment. “But I guess… well, you should know that both Josephine and Esther having been giving me daily reports on everyone… including you.” I could feel a trickle of sweat fall down my neck. The cabin was cool but from the walk to here form the docks and just my sheer nerves now, I was a nervous wreck. She then pulled out a single piece of paper. “This is a print-out of your progress here. Not much really, but…” Her finger then pointed to one column that was filled with red. Most of the others were green or varying shades of yellow. “Do you see what this says?” Quickly, I realized this was a test for me. Reading comprehension was something most never even considered losing in their lives as ARs. It wasn’t the scariest thing or most feared to lose, but it was certainly the type to suddenly sneak up on you like it had with Brian. Just following directions, he didn’t have a need to read… until we went to class one day and he wanted to know what bug he had caught was. He stared at the page blankly… his reading ability lost. Only Ms. Peachy’s intervention kept him from breaking down back then. Fortunately, though, I easily looked down and read the top of the column… even though I soon wished I hadn’t. I stared up at Mrs. Carlisle. “Bedwetting…” She flashed me with a sympathetic smile before nodding. “Yes… and if you see… you fall into a category now where I need to be concerned. And… that I need to act on.” Suddenly, I felt faint. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck! Is she moving me to yellow cabin? Please, please, no! It’s just some bedwetting. I’m still smart! I’m still me!’ I didn’t even realize I was starting to hyperventilate again tonight. First for Brian… and now for my own fate.   Vigilant as ever, however, Mrs. Carlisle sprang into action and gathered me up in her arms. “Hey… hey. Easy there…” She rubbed my back and shushed me calmly. “You’re not dropping to yellow cabin,” she noted as if she could read my mind from before once I had calmed down considerably. “Nothing like that. We just…” She paused and broke me away from her before reaching out to the bed and pulling something out from under the covers. Small and blue and crinkling. I had seen it before and dreaded it entirely… a pull-up. Mrs. Carlisle sighed. “You just need some protection at night. They’ll help you stay dry and keep you from embarrassment with your friends and help us with laundry. It’s a win-win.” She took a breath. “So… what do you say? You willing to try them for tonight?” I looked at the padded protection she was now offering me. The design was some sort of cars with faces on them… like something designed for a little kid who cared more about cartoons that keeping themselves dry. They were humiliating and every fiber in my body wanted to say ‘no,’ but I also knew that wasn’t really an option. Mrs. Carlisle had framed her question like this was a yes or a no… but I knew better. I had been in red cabin for long enough. Refusal of a solution to help you out was usually dealt by marking your non-compliance down as a part of mental regression and soon forcing you into them within the week… usually less. Right now, she was only checking my reaction. Compliance was humiliation and even on a day to celebrate freedom, I would be shackled inside a juvenile prison of sorts every night from now on. It was terrible… but I couldn’t do a thing about it. So, with a tear falling down my cheek, I could only nod in utter resignation. This was just my life now.