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Thanks for everyone's comments and suggestions! As I mentioned this is my first go and I'm having fun crafting around a plot I had in my head. Please know that some of your ideas have helped me alter the flow and hopefully that's for the better! Chapter 11: The Doctor Is In Dr. Nancy Hadley, PhD, led the Pediatric Psychiatry Services at the hospital where Tammy had worked for over 15 years. Dr. Hadley was known throughout her department, and the hospital for that matter, as a technocrat who often came across as loving data more than people. She excelled at research and had received more grants than any other doctor at the hospital. Her primary use of these funds was to explore the innumerable aspects of child development. In doing so, she had succeeded in expanding the best practices for psychiatric methods associated with early childhood development, and particularly around the impact of environmental effects on brain development and behavior. What few people knew, however, was that Dr. Hadley was now “bored” with the standard research and had often dreamed of how she could explore more “fringy” ideas. One question that had popped into her head during a study years ago was if some of the development work she was doing could “be put in reverse.” She had often seen how children were able to progress into expected age development behavior and mental ability. From her studies, she had received acclaim for mapping significantly environmental impacts factored into this progression. What she had wondered for a while now, however, was if the same environmental impact could in fact produce the opposite or regressive result. Knowing that to receive funding there would have to be a more “legitimate” rationale than her simple fascination, Dr. Hadley had spent the last year analyzing psychotherapeutic methods regarding trauma and recovery. After reviewing numerous longitudinal studies to see if “time” itself would heal wounds, she was able to quickly conclude that time is not, in fact, a cure for trauma or other emotional or psychological injuries. Dr. Hadley then focused on working with psychiatrists who use regressive therapy techniques including hypnosis to help patients return to the 'time', so to speak, of their injury, thereby allowing the details and emotional pain of the moment to be present in such a way as it could be felt, processed, and hopefully healed. Suddenly the pieces fell together and Dr. Hadley had the outline for a new research idea. Believing that environmental factors have a developmental impact and excited that they could just as equally help stimulate regressive behaviors to heal wounds, Dr. Hadley was in the midst of working on a new research proposal that would make use of regression to facilitate traumatic healing from childhood events. Dr. Hadley was currently at her desk noodling on how to address the three critical challenges she had identified in completing such research. First, such a study would require working with subjects of “legal” age that would likely have difficulties taking the required amount of time off from work, school, or life generally to participate in the study. Second, the nature of the study would require an immersive experience. It wouldn’t suffice to have periodic environmental impacts because leaving the regressive environment would negate most of the effects that may have been fostered during the “study” time. Third, it would take time for the regressive environmental impacts to take effect, so to speak. This would mean that the overall length of the study would again make participants hard to find and funding requirements higher than average. As Dr. Hadley was continuing her ideation and drafting for her proposal, Tammy entered her office right on time. Although she had only briefly spoken with Dr. Hadley regarding several consults throughout the years, Tammy had read almost all of Dr. Hadley’s work, and now hoped to convince the revered staff member that Cammie would be a good fit for the current research that role modeling could have a positive impact on childhood behavioral development. “Thank you for seeing me Dr. Hadley,” Tammy began. Tammy went through a summary of all the different programs she had read up on that Dr. Hadley had completed and explained how she had hopes for her own daughter to benefit from various research. She recognized that the “role model” requirements favored older siblings in order to qualify for participation, but then went through as much detail as she could around how Missy had appeared in their life and was very willing to make a go at it. She decided being forthright was the best policy, so she talked openly about the fender bender, the trauma that Missy had experienced, Missy’s desire to help earn money to help pay for the damage, her recent behavior and potty issues, and the idea that everyone recognized an exception would have to be made in order for Missy to be eligible. Dr. Hadley listened intently. Tammy couldn’t tell if the notes being scribbled were a sign of multi-tasking or in reference to what Tammy was sharing, but she sat back as Dr. Hadley removed her glasses, rubbing her temple before somewhat offering a stoic response. Inside Dr. Hadley’s mind was racing. She couldn’t believe how perfect this “Missy” sounded as a potential candidate for the regressive study she was drafting. She knew enough from previous experience that finding “qualified” and “willing” participants for research studies was an arduous and timely process. Could she use Missy in the current study and provide some type of hybrid experience that would (a) contribute to the younger child’s behavior development while (b) seeding her idea that regressive behaviors may help heal traumas? Would her current sponsors allow such a change? Would they need to know? What release would she need to prepare to account for this? All of these thoughts bounced around in Dr. Hadley’s mind while she tried to maintain an austere poker face. “Well,” Dr. Hadley finally broke the palpable silence, returning her glasses with a sweeping gesture as she spoke. “You certainly came prepared, and yes, I do agree that this would be a major exception to the current research parameters, especially noting the age gap you referenced.” Dr. Hadley had to choose her next words carefully. “Off the record,” Dr. Hadley continued, “if you weren’t a nurse at the hospital with a daughter that could benefit from the study, I’d have to say ‘no’ out of hand.” The weight of the air deadened as Tammy waited for Dr. Hadley to finish her thought. She debated interrupting with another plea for how committed everyone would be to the effort, but before she could open her mouth Dr. Hadley again spoke. “That said,” Dr. Hadley now turned her glance above the wire rims of her glasses straight toward Tammy who suddenly felt powerless to whatever announcement was about to follow, “There may be a way to craft a hybrid scenario. You see, the study aims to show the impact of specific environmental factors of family members who are a product of the same ecosystem of support, emotional development, etc. and who are close enough in age to understand the concept of modeling behavior to a younger sibling. For this to work, Missy would need to be willing to step into this role from the perspective of a very young girl, perhaps even starting as young as Cammie and then accelerating her ‘development’ in a way that Cammie could then model. In this way, Cammie would be engaging Missy with the same frame of reference as other siblings who ‘grew up’ in the same environment.” Even as Dr. Hadley was speaking, she was already crafting ideas on how she could subtly but measurably facilitate a regressive program to demonstrate how environmental impacts could equally bring someone back to “re-live” and “re-learn” through their ages of traumatic experience. Tammy’s thoughts were still trying to catch up with the diatribe Dr. Hadley had just shared. What she thought she heard was that there was a way to make this work, but if that’s what was implied, it was yet to be stated clearly. “So….” Tammy began, here eyes betraying her confusion. “So,” Dr. Hadley interrupted, “There is a path forward, but I would need to conduct an assessment of Missy’s emotional state and her understanding and willingness to participate before I could craft the hybrid parameters that would allow us to operate under the current study.” Dr. Hadley leaned back, confident she had given herself wiggle room, but tempering her excitement at the prospect of what lay ahead knowing all too well that when people are involved, nothing is as simple as it may seem. Tammy’s excitement, however, was much less veiled and she couldn’t believe her good fortune at the timing of this potential opportunity. “Thank you Dr. Hadley!” Tammy beamed, “I do appreciate your giving me special consideration and if there is anything I can do to help, you know I’ll be willing and able to do so!” “We can discuss some of the roles you will need to play later, but first I will need to conduct an assessment." Looking at her calendar she continued, "I’d need you be here at 7am sharp on Monday morning. We would need your daughter, Missy and yourself to be present.” Dr. Hadley began making a note on her calendar, underlining the appointment twice as a way to privately express her excitement at the prospect. “There is one more thing,” Tammy spoke, realizing that Mabel would likely need to be involved as well. Dr. Hadley looked up from her desk, her eyes again narrowing as she tried her best to express annoyance at yet another request. “You may not know, but I’m a single mother and I have a sweet lady next door who takes care of Cammie when I’m working. She’s such a great surrogate grandmother and, well, I wasn’t sure if she would need to be here as well?” Tammy asked trying to insinuate that it wasn’t at all a big deal that there would be someone other than the mother participating in the oversight and implementation of the program. Dr. Hadley couldn’t believe her good fortune but had to play it off as if it was another Herculean task. “So, you won’t be the primary care provider to Cammie during the research?” Dr. Hadley expressed in hyperbole but trying her best to sound serious. “Oh, no, I absolutely will be Dr. Hadley,” Tammy jumped in defensively. “It’s just that I need help when I’m working and, well, I’ve already asked Mabel and she is willing to commit whatever is necessary to help with the program details. I can have her here Monday morning as well, if that is needed.” Tammy kept trying to posture as though it would be a foregone conclusion that this would not be a problem. Dr. Hadley was already swimming in the notion that an elderly woman would be helping as they could be more easily ‘influenced’ to adopt program ‘requirements’ as things progressed. Typically naïve and more willing to give authority to medical professionals, the elderly were usually a dream to work with on studies such as these. “I suppose we can make yet another exception, but if there is any indication that she isn’t following the program protocols, we will have to cease immediately.” By now, even Dr. Hadley was worried that she was laying it on too thick, but returned to her calendar scribbles to indicate that was the end of the conversation. Standing, Tammy reached her hand to shake Dr. Hadley, who, in turn rose, appreciating the professional gesture and hopeful that this ‘anomaly’ in her current study could spawn the regression study she wanted to craft in the future. “Please be on time Monday morning,” Dr. Hadley nonchalantly offered, hoping her cool demeanor successfully hid the internal excitement she was feeling as her mind started plotting subtle ways to help achieve the outcome that would help her most. “And remember, this is just an assessment. I’m not promising anything about adding her to the study.” “Yes Doctor, I understand. Thank you so much Doctor for considering us!” Tammy instantly replied, only afterwards realizing that she still needed Missy to agree to participate or she might look silly to Dr. Hadley. It was a risk she had inadvertently accepted by agreeing to the Monday appointment. Tammy stepped out into the hall and immediately texted Missy’s mother Mary. “Hi Mary!! Great news! The doctor agreed to consider Missy for the research program! I know this is Missy’s choice, but wanted to make sure you were up to speed so we can keep the “team” focus! I’m off to my shift now and will give you more details later! A couple seconds later three dots indicated a response was forthcoming, “That’s great news...I guess?! Sounds like we will have more to process! Let’s stay in touch and see what tomorrow brings with Missy and we can go from there!” Tammy’s next text went to Mabel, who beamed with excitement at the prospect that her dear friend might actually be getting a break she deserved in life! Hopeful that Missy would choose to continue, Mabel started thinking about what other clothing she’d like to sew for Cammie’s potential new “role model”!

Chapter 71: Self-Soothing Super Market Sweep Late Saturday morning. Just before lunch. Plans were for me to stoically allow myself to be stuffed with ravioli and then fall asleep in a semi-bloated haze. But first; grocery shopping. The cart glided down the dairy aisle. “Huh,” Janet said, picking up the tremendous jug of milk. “Goat’s milk. Let’s give it a try.” She put it in the cart and moved on. “Eggs? Sure. We need eggs.” It went into the cart behind me. I sat in the cart’s built-in baby seat, a wire mesh basket with two holes for my legs to dangle through and a hard plastic flap that went up when an infant or a Little wasn’t occupying the space. It wasn’t made for comfort, the only cushioning I got was currently taped around me and more than slightly damp. Diapers go through a kind of life cycle. The first wetting is often absorbed so quickly that it’s easy to forget you peed within seconds; not unlike flushing a toilet and walking away. By the time you’re washing your hands, your brain is onto other things. Around wetting two or three, you start to feel it. You’re obviously wet, and feel the soft pulpy squish with every movement and it’s swollen to the point where it’s pressing up against you as much as you’ve pressed up against it. The ratio of pillow to sponge is roughly fifty fifty. After that, the feeling gets physically disgusting; gruesome even. The thing starts sagging so much that the tapes aren’t holding it up as much as willpower and whatever you’ve got on over it. The ratio of pee to padding has shifted in the pee’s favor and your privates start to feel like they’re being dipped into microwaved swamp water. Even if you wet up front, the moisture travels all the way to the back before it settles in, and the feeling of dryness becomes almost like a foreign thought, a word like ‘schadenfreude’ that describes a complex feeling that doesn’t exist in your own language. But, you keep going, because after a few weeks of being forced to wear diapers, you adapt to having a laissez faire attitude. A little damp stops being so bad and if it gets too damp, you ask for a change. Even if you don’t or the Amazon won’t listen, sometimes it feels easier to just release into an already soaked diaper. Languishing in an uncomfortably wet diaper, and then holding your bladder becomes a mental exercise that rapidly fatigues you. Why bother? If you hold it, the dry one that replaces it won’t stay dry for long. Might as well deal with it and hope whoever is in charge of your pants takes the hint. I sat in that shopping cart, as happy as I could manage, which is to say not particularly so, but nothing had stirred my anger or resentment just yet. I’d had two bottles since breakfast, both in the confines of Janet’s lap, and she hadn’t checked or changed me since just after getting me out of the crib. As a result my pants were in that state where they could go either way. Not good, but good enough considering the context I’d been forced to live in. The last bits of Summer had faded and the temperature had just started to shift so that it was chilly first thing in the morning but by ten if not earlier, the heat had returned in force. This was enough of an excuse for Janet to dress me in overalls, which was nice. Yeah, they still had snaps along the inseam, and anyone who stared at my waist could likely tell what I was wearing, but at least I didn’t have a light plastic waistband constantly peaking out over the top of my shorts. This might have been the first time in nearly a month that I’d had anything other than socks or footie jammies covering my ankles. Too bad they weren’t denim. If the overalls had been a plain blue denim, I might have been able to fantasize about being back in Misty Brook, where Bert and his friends- Littles far handier than I- tinkered and built while tromping around homemade construction sites in dust and grime coated coverings. The white and blue pinstripes I’d been dressed in made me look more like a train engineer out of a children’s book than any sort of construction worker. With Lion wedged in the basket by my side, I also had something to crush and squeeze in the event that Janet inevitably said something to get my teeth gnashing. Speaking of teeth gnashing, a binky had been clipped to the bib of the overalls, but the bulb remained dry and dangling. I wasn’t going to give her that satisfaction. As the cart moved, I pivoted and turned around in the seat to see where we were going. I didn’t know the layout of this particular grocery store. Other than the Modest Proposal, which was a kind of treat I indulged in a few times a year, grocery shopping had not been a big part of my life. Everything had to be delivered and left at the front door of my house. The delivery fee, in a way, was a tax I’d paid to prevent giant people from trying to diaper me. That battle having been lost, I had to twist my head and pivot in my seat every which way to see where we were going. The baby seat wanted me to just stare at Janet as the center of my world; or more likely, make it easier for Janet to look at me and make sure I wasn’t stealing anything from passing shelves. To be fair, that had been an idea the moment she told me where we were going. I’d never been to a Wall-Roxie, but the idea of taking anything and everything and subtly dumping it in the cart, pressuring Janet to pay for it was...appealing. Too bad she started at the dairy aisle. With products behind heavy glass refrigeration doors, the cart was nowhere near the goods and I had no hope of reaching far enough to snag something. Not that it would have mattered in that instance, the smallest size container was a gallon. I wasn’t going to be able to lift much. Maybe the cookie aisle or something would bring me better luck. “Someone’s excited to be going to the grocery store with his Mommy.” Janet chirped. I squeezed Lion’s paw. “No, I’m not. Janet. I’m just not used to looking backwards.” Janet’s expression soured like I’d just cussed at her. “Clark, I thought we agreed that you’d call me ‘Mommy’ in public.” “And I thought you agreed to let me see my wife. That hasn’t happened yet.” Janet looked like she’d just been slapped. I felt like I’d just slapped her. The gasp leapt out of me and I just stared at my hands like I’d struck her. That was only supposed to have been something I thought, not something I said. Other shoppers, Tweeners and Amazons milled around. Some had Littles in carts like mine. Others had their, children actual or adopted, tag along them holding hands or walking beside them. The social invisibility factor had kicked in. If any passerby noticed our growing tiff, they didn’t say anything.. I was just a fussy baby with a doting Mommy trying to manage me. The pain on Janet’s face shifted and contorted into an almost Beouf-like mask of neutrality. “I know you’re dealing with a lot of big feelings, but that’s not fair to me. I did my best and acted in good faith.” I shrunk down and shriveled up in my seat. “Yeah…” I did not and would not apologize, however. Like a chameleon her tone shifted immediately, the pain gone with my admission. “We should play a game.” “Like what?” Her eyes drifted down to my bib. “How about the quiet game? I bet you don’t have the willpower to keep quiet and keep your pacifier in your mouth the whole trip while I do our shopping.” I crossed my arms, bringing Lion up to my chest. “What if I win?” “I’ll take you to the potty before we leave.” My pacifier was in my mouth before she’d finished speaking. “As long as you’re not already wet or poopy.” The pacifier went back to dangling immediately. “That’s not fair!” Janet broke out into a full out witch’s titter. “Gotcha!” She leaned in and nuzzled my forehead. “I knew it, you little stinker, you! Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha!” It’s a good thing Lion didn’t have bones and his insides were made entirely out of cotton. If not I might have committed animal-slaughter. “That’s not fair, Janet, and you know it,” I whined loudly. For a moment, Janet’s embarrassment mirrored my own. Her face was just as red and her mannerisms just as skittish as my own. For her, having other ‘Grown-Ups’ hear me call her by her first name was akin to her signaling to any given passerby that I was sitting in wet pants. Weird, right? We both inhaled through our mouths and then exhaled through our noses before either of us continued. “Okay,” she said. “You don’t like using your pacifier because it embarrasses you.” She said softly. “True.” “Even though it helps you self-soothe and everybody else in your class does it.” “Extremely debatable.” She kept going. “It also embarrasses me when you call me by my first name, especially in public.” “Uh-huh.” “But I’m not going to purposefully silence you by getting one of those inflatable pacifiers.” I was actually quite thankful for that. “Good.” Produce started going by on the periphery. We were walking and talking. “I’m not going to spank you, either.” “Good.” “So I’m not sure what I'm supposed to do to get you to do what you promised.” There was no inkling of threat. I shrugged. “Sucks to be you, I guess.” “If I can’t trust you to keep your word, how can I trust you with anything?” She countered. “Grading papers? Telling me about your day? Whether your teachers are being nice to you? Whether or not you know you need to go to the bathroom? I have to trust you, baby.” I bristled at being called that. She shouldn’t trust me. Yet thinking back on Little Voices and the game with the feathers, I needed her to trust me. “What do you suggest?” “How about, from now on, you don’t have to suck your pacifier…” I wasn’t falling into this trap a second time. “Unless?” “Unless you call me Ja-” she stopped herself, “Unless you call me something other than ‘Mommy’.” Damn, I was hoping to get her on that technicality. She was learning. “If you call me something other than ‘Mommy’ in public you have to keep your pacifier in your mouth until I think I can trust you to talk.” Then she tacked on, “Unless you don’t think you can do it....” “You’re trying to use my competitiveness against me.” Actually I was kind of impressed. The right side of her mouth creeped up into a smirk. “It’s working, isn’t it?” My lip curled and I gave Lion one last squeeze. I put him back to my side. “Kind of. Deal.” She offered her hand out to me, almost like we were equals. I took it and shook it, even though her palm literally dwarfed mine. “Deal.” The shopping trip continued, as one might expect: Janet took stuff off of shelves and pretended to examine them when she knew full well what she was going to buy anyways, and then placed it in the cart. Once or twice I had the opportunity to grab some random item and toss it in among the growing pile, but that line about ‘trust’ had caused me to hesitate. I instead took the opportunity of knowing she wasn’t looking directly at me to empty out more of that morning’s apple juice, wincing as I sat back and felt the dampness go past my taint. Janet really was playing me. There was no rhyme or reason to how she shopped, as far as I could tell. Where other people might make a list and slowly walk through the store, aisle by aisle, scanning the shelves for whatever they might have on a list, Janet did the exact opposite. She’d look on the list she’d made and try to find the corresponding section of the store. Then she’d zero in on it and move on, even if there was another item we needed somewhere down the list. Lots of “Oops, we need this”, or “Almost forgot that.” I almost wanted to help. When we got to the cereal aisle, she deigned to ask my opinion. “So what do you want for breakfast tomorrow?” “Breakfast shakes.” Janet seemed to hem and haw over something. She didn’t want to tell me now, but she wanted to pivot. “Mrs. Beouf says you’re a very good eater at school.” “Did she tell you that if I’m not I’m not allowed to leave? Even if I’ve pooped and am sitting in my mess? Even if I”m keeping all the others waiting?” I let out a huff and stared back at Lion as if he were sharing in my commiseration. “She did, actually,” Janet replied. “She said she’s going to be fixing that..” A creeping feeling worked its way into my head. “When did she…?” “The first day that you got to bring Lion to school.” That hadn’t come up around me when Beouf was giving her daily report. More confirmation that my ex-friends were talking about me behind my back. Janet didn’t give me time to sulk. “How about this?” She went and grabbed two cereals off a shelf. The boxes were nearly identical, with the same dopey looking bird hovering a bowl of cereal that two cartoon children were wolfing down. The only difference was that in one box, the bird and cereal were pink and in the other they were both brown. “Chocolate or Strawberry?” “Do I have to eat it with goat’s milk?” I asked. “That or have it dry.” “Chocolate,” I said. The winding zig-zag trip went on and on. Janet included me in a few more choices. What type of peanut butter, what flavor jelly, what flavor ice cream to get for dessert did I want raisins or dried bananas as a healthy snack; that sort of thing. Then came the part I’d been dreading. I knew it had been coming. Janet had saved it for last, on purpose no doubt. Cleaners, paper towels and garbage bags zoomed by, and the cart U-Turned into the next aisle. Packages and packages containing pictures of babies and adult Littles smiled out at me with unblinking eyes and silly rictus grins. I looked past Janet’s head and read the hanging sign above the row. Disposable Diapers, Training Pants, Formula, Baby Food, Baby Wipes, Baby Needs. I quickly took in the displays and started trying not to lose my temper. The jars of mush had pictures of actual infants on them. The buckets of formula were specially marketed for either “Littles” or “Infants”, kind of like how different brands of dog chow specialized in large or small breeds. The packages and boxes of diapers had a nearly fifty-fifty split on whether a Little was depicted on them or not, often within the same brand and size. Yet another example of typical Amazon propaganda: It was supposed to be the Baby Needs section, but ‘Little’ and ‘Baby’ were practically interchangeable here. Meanwhile, any incontinence product that could fit on one of the giants was discretely stashed away with the tampons, maxi-pads and other hygiene products closest to the store’s pharmacy. ‘Incontinence’ hadn’t even been on any of the signs. A body would have to know where those diapers were and find them in their discreet packaging at the very end of the row near the back. The most embarrassing thing on them were the pictures of the plain white and gray pull-up diapers themselves. My diapers were out in the open with half a dozen other Littles faces attached to them, forced to pretend that they were super happy waddling and crawling around in garments they’d long since outgrown. How much of the pain in those Littles’ eyes was just my own reflected back at me? “Mommy,” I said, “Can we please leave here?” I wasn’t sure whether playing up the M-Word and giving her what she wanted would make her more pliable or not. “We’re almost done, baby, just a few more things.” The cart sped up for a few strides until we were right in the thick of it. She wasn’t oblivious to my discomfort. “Mommy had a lot stocked up before she brought you home, but we’re almost out of diapers.” I sulked. “I can live with that.” “But your clothes and bedsheets can’t.” She tossed a small package of Monkeez Nighttime onto the cart pile, and moved a whole heaping box of the daytime ones under the cart. “Barely,” she huffed to herself. I got a good look at the box, both Littles and Amazon infants were featured on opposite yet otherwise identical sides. Turn the baby around one-hundred eighty degrees and you saw the Little in the exact same pose. “Why can’t we just order them online through an app?” I whined. “Diaper Dash or BabHub or something?” “We’re already here, hon,” she said. “And those apps get expensive over time. Let’s just get what you need, and get out of here.” I quietly caved Lion’s skull in. “Fine.” No sense in arguing that I didn’t need them. She was in no mood to hear that song. She grabbed two smaller packs of diapers. “While we’re here, why don’t we get something different besides Monkeez?” Something different?! Alarm bells started going off in my brain. “What?” I yelped “Why?” “Some of these look cute,” she said. “And some might work better than what you’re wearing.” There was just enough space in the cart for her to poke the front of my pants and feel the sodden sopping squish. For reasons I couldn’t immediately articulate, the thought of being changed into a different style of diaper sent off all kinds of alarm bells. My pulse started racing, and even though we were the only ones in the baby aisle at the time, I felt like the entire store was looking and listening into that conversation right there. I thought I was getting over it. Suffice it to say, becoming numb and desensitized doesn’t happen all at once, nor does it happen at a steady pace or in a straight line. “A diaper is a diaper,” I said through gritted teeth. “What does it matter how they look? Nobody but you and Beouf or Zoge or Jessica is gonna see them.” “Not necessarily.” My face was on fire. “Mommy!” She took a second to suppress a guffaw. “I’m just saying, Clark. Your diaper isn’t anything to be embarrassed about, and sometimes just a t-shirt and diaper is enough for you. You spend most weekends laying around the house in just your Monkeez. It’s cute!” Too loud! Way too loud! There were people on the other sides of the shelves. There had to be! And they were hearing every word. About me. In my diapers. I lowered my voice, hoping she would follow my lead. “That’s because that’s all you put me in some days.” She didn’t follow my lead. “Well if I have to look at your wet and messy diapers when I’m changing you, I think I should have a say in what they look like.” If anything she was getting louder. “J...Mommy...stop. You’re embarrassing me!” She quieted herself. “And I keep telling you, baby boy, there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. You’re safe with me. Maturosis is perfectly natural. Just go with it and let it happen.” I was not convinced. “Easy for you to say. She pivoted, reached up, and presented two packs, relatively small ones, twenty-four count. Wouldn’t last more than a week, tops. One was blue with hippos on it, and the other was white with smiling cartoon bees on it. “Which one do you want to try? Bee Gees or Hippobottomuses?” “Why do the bees not have stingers?” Janet looked at the front of the package, allowing me to see the back: “Leak Free Guarantee” it said, and “For babies of all ages: Little, Tweener, or Amazon.” “If they had stingers, they’d probably cause leaks,” Janet mused. “That or maybe they’re baby bees. Bay-bees.” She laughed lightly at her own lame pun. “Is that the one you want me to get for you?” I remembered something from Amy. “Aren’t bees grown, too? Shouldn’t they be Larva-Gees or something if those are supposed to be babies?” “Clark. You’re stalling.” My ‘Mommy’ wanted me to stall? Fine. Let’s stall. Lion in hand, threw my arms up into the air. “What do you mean ‘stalling’? I’m just asking quest-IONS?!” Just as planned, my stuffie slipped loose from grasp and went behind me. Far far behind me, skidding almost to the end of the aisle before he stopped. It had been a really good and lucky toss. I did my best to look confused and bewildered. “Lion?! Mommy?” Janet growled a bit and huffed. “I really shouldn’t…” This was true. “It was an accident,” I lied. Had it been the beginning of our outing, Janet might have pushed the cart the twenty or so odd feet over to Lion and picked him up. The cart was full now, and inertia was still a thing. She did what was easier and walked over to my stuffie, bent over, and brought him back. Given how fast and wide her stride was, it wasn’t very long. It was still enough time for me to reach back, grab the pack of night time diapers off the pile in the cart and toss them on the nearest shelf. She wouldn’t miss those until it was too late. My ex-friend gave me back my stuffie. “If it happens again, he’s staying with me.” “Yes ma’am.” I cuddled Lion to hide my guilty grin. “Now,” she said, re-grabbing the two packs. “Which one do you want?” “Neither.” She was getting irritated enough that I could see her chewing on her tongue and puffing up her cheeks. “Okay. Let’s try this another way. Do you want the Bee Gees? Yes or no?” “No.” “Okay then.” She put the Bee Gees back and put the package of hippo diapers in the cart. “Hippobottomuses it is.” Those were the type that Amy had been changed into at the zoo. Not my favorite parallel. “Hey! That’s not-!” “I made it very clear that you were getting one or the other, hon. Those were your choices and you made it.” My cage on wheels was already moving away, down to the other end where the training pants were. None of the kids on the training pants packages were Littles... “NOOOOOOO! NOOOO! MOMMY! NOOOOOOOOOO!” My impending tirade, likely starting with the word ‘Janet’ was cut off by a child screaming bloody murder. Rounding the corner, dragging along an absolutely distraught child, was a very pregnant Tweener woman. “NOOO! I’M NOT A BABY! I’M NOT A BABY! I’M NOT A LITTLE!” Oh no. I didn’t have to turn around. I didn’t need to look to see who it was. I shouldn’t have looked. I didn’t want to look. I did, though. I recognized them both. His features were chubbier, hers more bird like, but they had the same flaxen hair. “I already told you,” Elmer’s mom said. “We’re not getting the diapers for you, honey. We’re getting them for your sister for when she gets out of my tummy in a few weeks.” Elmer wasn’t having any of it. “NOOOOOOOO!” “Janet!” I tried to whisper. “Stop! Turn around! Pl-!” The pacifier went into my lips so fast it might have been a reflex on Janet’s part. “Ah-ah-ah.” Janet waved her finger at me. Taking her hand off the push bar slowed our roll. “Deal’s a deal.” My hands impotently jerked at the air and fidgeted as I resisted the urge to take the pacifier out and beg Janet to turn around and take us out and around the back of the store. Doing that might upset Janet. She might say my name and Elmer or his mom would hear. Doing a U-Turn and exiting out the back would give them a better look at my face. The social invisibility of being ‘just another baby’ wouldn’t work. Not with Elmer and a parent whom I’d actually met. Another no-win situation. I really thought I’d be used to it by this point. Pleasedon’tseemepleasedon’tseemepleasedon’tseeme. We slowed down. Too slow. Janet was looking at pouches of applesauce and baby food. I started sucking on the pacifier to quiet myself, and burying my face in Lion. Pleasedon’tseemepleasedon’tseemepleasedon’tseeme. “I know you’re having a rough time at school,” Elmer’s Mom said. “But I promise those training pants we bought are just so that Miss Ambrose doesn’t bother you anymore. No one is gonna turn you into a baby.” “Or a Little?” Elmer sniffed. I tensed up. I wish I’d been mistaken. It was Elmer. Should I turn my head more and deliberately look away or would that only draw more attention? “Or a…” Elmer’s mom gasped. “Mr. Gibs-?!” Three things happened in that moment: I sheepishly peered out from behind Lion, Janet whipped her head around and looked down at the pregnant woman who only came up to her breast and Elmer ducked behind his mother’s legs like it might save him. “Oh. Hello.” She readjusted her gaze to meet Janet. “I’m sorry. I thought your um...baby was someone else. From behind he looked familiar.” Janet smiled lightly and nodded, oblivious to the Tweener’s discomfort. “Do you know Clark?” The woman looked at me sucking on my pacifier and then back to Janet. She was doing the same kind of social calculus in her head that one did when interacting with a stranger Janet’s size. “I think maybe...that is to say I thought...um...I’m really sorry if my child’s screaming bothered you or your baby, ma’am. He’s going through a phase. He’s normally such a good boy.” From behind his mother, Elmer eeked out a pathetic, “I’m not a baby,” but did his best to stay obscured. Poor kid. He couldn’t articulate it, but he was absolutely terrified to end up like me. Poor me. I hid behind my pacifier and Lion. “Oh he’s fine. Kids will be kids.” As tall as she was, Janet could see Elmer just fine, much to his dismay. “Say...does your son go to Oakshire Elementary?” Elmer’s mother placed her hand behind her back and held her son’s hand. “Yes…?” Janet immediately brightened. “That’s why he looked so familiar! He was part of Clark’s class!” She finally read the look of pure worry on the Tweener’s face. “Oh my goodness,” she said. “I’m so sorry! Janet Grange. I’m a teacher, too. Third grade. Before Clark’s Maturosis expressed I watched his class while he was in meetings once or twice.” She pointed around the mother. “Elroy?” “Elmer,” his mother corrected. She seemed a bit relieved as it all sunk in. She wasn’t in any real danger to begin with, being pregnant and Janet having me, but a stranger doesn’t seem so strange when they say they’re a teacher at your child’s school. There was a beat, and then Janet threw a curveball at all three of us. “I’m sorry that this all happened so suddenly,” she told them. “I adopted Clark because I wanted to make sure he got the best care possible. He deserves that much.” “Yeah…” the Tweener agreed in that way that people do when they’re not sure what else to say. “Mr. Gi...Clark deserved,” she stopped and looked at me, “deserves the best he can get.” “That doesn’t make it easier,” Janet said. “On anybody. Especially his students. Year’s already started and they’ve got a new teacher all of a sudden. That’s a lot to get used to for a bunch of three and four year olds.” “There’s definitely been some adjustments.” Elmer’s mom left it at that. “Anyway, I’m just getting some-” “Can I ask you for some advice, mother to mother? I’m still learning some things.” The Tweener hesitated. “Uh, I don’t know if I can help, but sure.” “I’ve got Clark in Monkeez right now,” Janet said, and my heartbeat thudded in my ears so loudly I couldn’t hear the end of the question. Doesn’t mean I didn’t know what it was. Elmer’s mother pointed near the top shelf. “If you’re looking for other diapers, these new Koddles have a wetness indicator,” she said. “Right down the middle, changes colors when the baby’s wet.” Janet reached up, just by the training pants and pulled a package down. “Hmmm...Are these for potty training?” “No, but they could help. Makes it so you can catch it and change him right away.” The Amazon frowned lightly. Wrong answer. It wasn’t what she wanted to hear. Janet had no interest in letting me pee outside my pants. “The Hippobottomuses fade when wet, too.” “Uh...uh...also makes it so it’s easier to check him,” the Tweener woman said. “You can just pull down his pants or pop open a few snaps and see how wet he is by looking at how long the blue line is. A lot easier to see than fade away. Plus they have lots of different decorations on them, Fairy tale creatures and such! Different diapers have different characters on them!” She kept looking at me and I wasn’t sure whether she was silently apologizing for digging me in deeper or whether she thought she might be doing me some kind of favor. “Hmmm,” Janet considered the small package. “Yeah. That’s worth a shot.” In it went with the blue hippo diapers. By the end of the day I’d have a variety stack under my changing table. “Thank you.” She started to go. “Ma’am,” Elmer’s mom said to Janet. “Can I say something to your baby for a moment?” “Of course.” The Tweener reached up and placed her hand on top of mine. “Thank you,” she said softly. “I’m really glad that you were Elmer’s first teacher. You’ve helped him a lot.” Beouf had said something similar to me after I’d woken up from the bug zapper she’d crammed me into. Beouf was a fucking traitor who chose her worldview over ten years of friendship. This lady who I’d known for a lot less time than Beouf meant it from the bottom of her heart. She was trying to do right by me. It’s a good thing I had Lion in my other arm and the pacifier in my mouth. If I hadn’t had something to pour the stress I was feeling into just then, I’d have completely burst into tears and started sobbing. I didn’t want Elmer to see me like that. I didn’t want anyone to see me like that. This is why Littles in my class sucked on pacifiers and hugged stuffies. It was either that or completely break down and lose control. The world got blurry and it started getting harder to breathe. I buried my face and looked away. “Thank you,” Janet said for me. “That means a lot to him.” “I know.” Part of me wants to say that’s where the story of my first outing to the grocery store as a ‘baby’ went. It got so much worse though… I kept suckling on my pacifier and squeezing Lion with every tense muscle in my body. I slammed my eyes shut to keep them from leaking. Based on the feeling in my pants, my eyes weren’t the only thing in danger of leaking; my diaper had passed into that swampy stage. “That was a lot,” Janet whispered to me. “It’s okay to cry if you want.” No. It wasn’t. “Mmmm-mmm!” I shook my head. “That’s fine,” she said, her voice taking on an almost musical, soothing quality, not unlike Zoge but without the accent. “I understand why you broke the rule there. You weren’t being naughty, you were just nervous. You can spit the pacifier out if you want. We can reset. Start over again.” “Mmm-mmm!” “Okay,” Janet petted me and I flinched. “That’s fine. Do whatever you want. You’re fine. This is fine.” I squeezed Lion harder, somehow. I sucked so hard on the rubber nipple in my mouth I briefly thought I might be loosening my front teeth. Front teeth?! AMY! FUCK! I wasn’t enjoying this at all. It didn’t feel like an accomplishment or malicious compliance or any of the other darkly uplifting victories I’d accrued over the last several weeks. Upon reflection, I don’t even think it was pure contrarianism. It was just some stupid, immature, adolescent part of me now wanted- no, needed- to keep the pacifier in. I needed to feel pain and anguish and hurt. I needed to keep all the pressure up and weighing down on me. I needed to keep that negative feedback loop going and that pressure on, because if I didn’t I’d break down and it wouldn’t feel like a choice. The cart slowed to a stop and moved forward slowly in jolts. We were in the checkout line. The electronic beeps and boops of the price scanner mixed in with the ambient noise of shoppers entering. “Daddy! Daddy!” A passing voice called. “I want a that lion! I want a lion like that!” I didn’t open my eyes. The voice came from far away enough that I couldn’t tell if it was a mind fucked Little or an actual kid. Did it matter? I finally untensed myself and slowly opened my eyes. The beeping was loudest here, meaning it was our turn. My breathing had slowed. My muscles ached and unclenched, not to mention my mouth. I kept the pacifier in, just in case. I was right to. “Wow! Lotta stuff here,” a heavy set woman with a nametag that read ‘Maude’ remarked. Her face was double chinned and her hair was snowy white. She was sixty, if she was a day. “All of this for just you two?” “‘Fraid so,” Janet said. “Had a lot stockpiled up but we’re almost out, so...you know.” Idle and meaningless chit chat at the check out, the great retail tradition. “Everything goes faster with an extra mouth.” I tried to just gaze off into the middle distance and tune the drivel out, but only succeeded at staring at Janet’s v-neck top. Had her breasts always been that big? I did a double take. They were almost as big as the overweight cashier’s. Was she putting on weight? Stress eating? Because of me? That gave me some good grim feelings. The cashier’s voice went up almost an octave. “Hi buddy!” she waved. “Are all these just for you?” She indicated the Monkeez and other diapers Janet had gotten while a teenage Tweener was busily bagging it all up. Half a dozen snarky comebacks would beam themselves into my head on the ride back to Janet’s. In the meantime, I retreated into the back of Lion’s mane. “Seriously,” she said over to Janet, talking in a ‘Grown-Up’ voice again. “Are they all for him? I see a couple different packs. We offer discounts to daycare people. Got some good bargains if you’re buying in bulk.” Janet smiled, politely, “Oh no. They’re just for him. A box of his old reliables and something different just to try it.” “He’ll go through them fast enough.” “Definitely.” “But that’s okay,” Janet tousled my hair, now even curlier than it had been when she’d first taken me. “When we’re all out, we’ll just get more. Isn’t that right, Clark?” I was bristeling again, tensing up. People talking over you about you soiling yourself is not something that’s easy to get over. “I remember when my grandson was his size,” Maude said. “Almost didn’t get him potty trained in time for school. You’ve got the right idea. Just skip it.” Janet stiffened. “Excuse me?” “Frankly, I don’t know why we bother potty training them to begin with.” To make her point she waved her hand toward me. “If we didn’t make ‘em, they’d just sit in their diapers all day, perfectly happy.” Her face scrunched up and her voice went squeaky. “Wouldn’t ya, buddy? Wouldn’t ya.” Her fat fingers ringed forward to pinch my cheeks. I leaned away. All good nature and compassion left Janet’s face. Her countenance transmogrified into stone and her pupils went ablaze with a quiet fury. Then she said the words that every retail worker not-so-secretly dreads “I’m going to need to talk to your manager….” “Hmm?” Maude said. “I was just saying-” “Littles are perfectly valid with thoughts and feelings!” She half-shouted. The people behind us in line were starting to back away. Others from out of line were drawing closer to the scene. “Would you say something like that to a chronological chi-?” “Whoah whoah whoah!” Maude took a step back and held her hands up. “I wasn’t talking about Littles, ma’am. I meant boys! Boys! Men!” A beat. “They’re all like that!” Complete silence. No one breathed. I took a few pulls from my pacifier. “Heh.” “Heh-heh.” “Haha” “Hahahahahaha!” “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” “HAW-HAW-HAW-HAW!” “Oh my god, you’re so right,” Janet finally said, all tension gone from her. The rest of the checkout line resumed their positions, and Maude kept scanning the items. The awful small talk continued in earnest. “I swear, if he could get away with it, my husband would wear diapers, too. He’d watch football, drink all the beer, and then make me change him at halftime.” “Right?!” Janet agreed. “It’s much cuter though when I change Clark during his shows. Right there on the floor so he doesn’t miss anything!” My pacifier popped out. “Mommy!” “Sorry, baby.” She wasn’t. Clearly. “Nothin’ to be embarrassed about, munchkin.” The cashier chuckled. “Your Mommy and me are just havin’ some gal talk.” “About me!” The cashier shrugged. “Point taken.” She finished ringing Janet up, and let her swipe her card. “Have a nice day, you two.” “Thanks!” Janet called back. I chose not to reply. From the checkout line, the shopping cart should have turned left. We turned right. “Where are we going?” Janet’s eyes honed in on the restrooms. “Diaper change.” I looked down at myself. The bulge from my oversaturated Monkeez made it look like I had a water balloon where my underwear should be. Okay. Fair call. I’d done a number on this one. My dark haired ex-friend ruffled through the grocery bags and took out a fresh packet of baby wipes she’d tossed in with the diapers. She rummaged around the bag. “Just. Gotta. Get. It. Open.” Open? “J…Mommy?” I stuttered. “Where’s the diaper bag?” She stood up with a single, bright blue diaper, dotted with cartoonish hippo stencils. “In the car,” she said. “I accidentally left it there when I dug Lion out.” My everything jumped up into my throat.. My forehead started to become as clammy as my Monkeez. “Can we just go change me, “ I gulped, “in the car?” Fresh diaper in hand, Janet picked me up. “Nope.” “Can it at least be a Monkeez?” “I am not breaking open that big box here and now. Do you want me to put you in a night-night diaper?” The corners of my mouth plummeted. I couldn’t let her go looking for what I’d stashed away. “But...but...but…” She took me inside the “family restroom”, a smaller room with a single toilet, sink and changing station. It was only slightly bigger than Beouf’s bathroom, and that was because it thought to accommodate space for Amazon sized wheelchairs and such. Janet pulled down the changing station and laid me down. I sat back up. “Clark? What’s wrong? I’ve changed you in public before.” I broke out into a sweat and stared past the locked door, imagining Elmer, or his mother, or any number of people who knew me were outside. Waiting. Watching. I’d misdiagnosed my neuroses back in the OT/PT room. I’d been okay with being so exposed, but it had less so to do with the people who saw me like that and more to do with where it was happening. Oakshire Elementary, for all the anxiety it caused me, was still a place of familiarity and therefore a place of emotional strength. This was a friggin’ grocery store bathroom. Janet petted my hair. “Clark? Talk to me.” “No.” That bit of automatic defiance whistled right out. She picked me back up and I thought I’d won. She was only doing so so she could poke her head out the door and get Lion. “Here.” She sat me so my legs were dangling off the table. “Hold Lion. Maybe he can tell me.” I shook. I shuddered. “No.” “Clark. I’m going to change you, one way or another. But I want to know why you’re acting like this. You’re hurting and I want to understand.” I put Lion in a chokehold. “Because everybody will know, Janet! Everybody will know!” “Know what? That you just got changed?” Mutely I nodded, fighting to stay in control. “I don’t know how to tell you this, honey,” Janet said. “But most people have known for a while now. It’s not a secret. It’s not supposed to be.” “It was to me!” Janet cocked her head as if I’d spoken in tongues. I loosened my grip on Lion but held onto him tight. “All Monkeez look the same. Plain white diaper. Size indicator. Cartoon monkeys on the front.” “Uh-huh…” She wasn’t getting it. To be fair, I hadn’t gotten it until I’d started saying it just then. “So when I get changed, I get to pretend, even if it’s just to myself, even for just a second, that I’m wearing the same…” I blushed. “You know…” “And if I put you in a blue hippo diaper,” Janet said, “you can’t pretend that anymore.” I hung my head. It was so stupid. “And one of my kids is out there. And he’s scared of being a Little and being a baby because Ambrose put him in a diaper and...and…” I closed off Lion’s windpipe just as my own airflow started getting more and more difficult. Janet- my jailer, my tormentor, my confidant- said nothing. I hadn’t realized that I’d shut my eyes again until I felt her lean in and hug me. I didn’t hug her back, but I didn’t shove her off either. “It’s okay,” she cooed softly to me. “He’s gone. He left with his mother.” It was a lie. She had no way of knowing. But those words were the ones that I needed to hear just then. “He won’t see you. He won’t know. You’ve got your overalls on. Nobody will know. And if anybody out there asks, I’ll lie and tell them that you went potty like a big boy.” I pulled back from her bosom just so I could see the look in her face. It was crazy. But it was also kind; compassionate even. “You’d do that?” “Of course.” Slowly she guided me back into a lying position. “Let’s get you comfy.” Keeping Lion close to my chest, I closed my eyes and pretended this was any other day. I’d never admit it out loud, and I’d trade so much to be rid of the forced necessity, but sometimes a good diaper change felt like a mini-spa day. I felt, more than heard, the poppers up my legs come undone, followed by the bathroom air traveling up past my knees and tickling the backs of my sweaty thighs. What I did hear was a very uncomfortable “Oooof…” I lifted my head and looked down at my body. “What?” Janet sucked on her teeth and put a hand on my chest. That wasn’t sweat on the back of my thighs. “You leaked.” My body started thrashing, twisting and kicking itself against Janet’s gigantic strength. “No! No! No! No! Stop! Stop! Don’t!” “Clark, I’m sorry. I need to take your overalls off.” “No!” I screamed “No! Change me! Just change me and put them back on!” My hands gripped at her wrist, as if that would do anything Her free hand unbuckled the shoulders. “I’m sorry kiddo. I can’t let you sit in leaked in pee-pee clothes. Not in good conscience.” “Fuck your conscience!” I yelled up. My fighting was nothing to her. My struggling only made it so she had to switch hands once or twice, stripping me down to just a t-shirt and destroyed Monkeez. She switched a second time pulling the changing station’s strap over my chest, and pulling it taught. She flapped out the overalls like a towel and held them up to the light. “Look,” she said. “You see these spots?” Two massive crescent moon shaped patches discolored the blue and white pinstripes just below where my ass would have been. “If anyone saw these, they’d know that you leaked.” “No one would see them with me in the cart.” I spat “They might in the parking light or just as we come out of the bathroom.” She was already folding them up and placing them on the sink. “They won’t see much of your new diaper either. This isn’t up for discussion.” “I hate you.” She picked up Lion from the floor where my struggling had sent him. “You know I’m right. You can suck on your pacifier if you want to scream.” Lion went back to me. She carefully inserted the pacifier back into my mouth. “Be brave. For Lion.” “Uh hayph yuh.” “I know.” I tried not to look while she ripped the tapes off and started wiping my groin. I covered Lion’s eyes when my ankles were crossed and Janet started caressing the back of my legs all the way down to the crack of my ass. I suckled a little harder and flinched when the wipe made it’s way between my cheeks, just in case. “Almost done.” The new, blue diaper was slid underneath me before my ankles were released. She’d gotten good at unfolding them one handed. I watched in silent horror as Janet carefully pulled it up between my legs. “This one’s cut a little differently.” She had to lift my legs back up and adjust. I could only lay in quiet agony. It was the first day all over again. They would know. They would all know. Everyone. I watched as the Hippobottomuses took shape around me and Janet pulled the tapes taught, going so far as to smooth them out. “All done.” Clean and dry, I felt grosser than I did when I’d been wallowing in my piss. I was wearing a beacon now. A crinkly happy blue marker that broadcast my infantile state even more. “Cheer up,” Janet told me. “My underwear looks different from day to day, too.” My expression said enough. “Sorry…” We didn’t leave the bathroom right away. No one was knocking, or jiggling the handle, trying to get in, and frankly I didn’t care if someone stole from our shopping cart. Maybe they’d make off with the new diapers. Janet unbuckled me and just held me for about half a minute. I’d run out of words. So had Lion. “You’re being really brave.” Janet told me. “How about when we get home, you can help me grade some papers?” I liked that idea. Needed it after this ordeal. Something quiet. Something that I could control. Something that I was good at besides stealth peeing and annoying Amazons. Silently, I nodded, gently nuzzling Janet’s shoulder. “Let’s get you home.”

The Rip: Chapter 1 (Commissioned by Areat) Chapter 1 Wendy sat at the dinner table with her mom and dad, numbly shoveling meatloaf and spoonfuls of peas into her mouth while her parents talked about their days. Her ears were picking up every little sound that came out of her parents’ mouth but her brain wasn’t translating it. Their conversation was basically white noise mixed in with the scraping of her fork on the plate, gulps of water, and her talking to herself. “-doing-?” Wendy looked up from her half eaten meatloaf. “Hmm?” She looked up and brushed a patch of her own brunette hair out of her face. “What?” Her father, whom she inherited her hair color from (not that one would know it now), repeated himself. “I asked ‘How are you doing with your studying?’.” “Oh,” Wendy stuttered. “I’m doing good with it.” Mom smirked. “You mean ‘You’re doing well’,” she said. “Doing good is Superman. Doing well is progress.” Dad rolled his eyes. “We can’t all be English Teachers. Wendy’s getting her Law degree, not English.” Playfully, Mom pointed her fork across the dinner table. “Precise use of language is one of the cornerstones of determining legal precedent and procedure. How can she hope to get to the Supreme Court if she’s using language like ‘It’s going good’?” “Supreme Court?” Dad guffawed, bits of chewed up peas and mashed potatoes spilling forth from his lips. “Let her get her degree and pass the Bar first!” He wiped his mouth with his napkin and then looked sideways to his daughter. “Not that you can’t be on the Supreme Court, dear.” “So,” Mom repeated, her fading blonde to white locks framing her middle aged face. “How exactly are you doing?” Wendy’s lips rose up in a playful, if mischievous grin. “I’m doing good, Mother.” “BWAHAHAHAHA!” Dad pounded the table with his fists to punctuate his full on belly laughs. “That’s my girl!” “Howard!” Mom scolded, “Don’t encourage her!” She didn’t sound too upset, however. “I swear, you two. She gets this stubborn streak from you.” Dad was too busy laughing to argue. “But I am doing good, Mom,” Wendy doubled down, a wry smile still framing her dainty chin. “If you look at it in the long run, me being able to pass finals will be yet another step to me getting my degree, passing the bar, and yes eventually getting to the Supreme Court where I can do the most good. So I am technically correct. In studying, I am doing good.” “No,” Mom countered, “you’re just preparing to do good.” “And the effectiveness of any legal argument rests on the amount of research and preparation involved before trial.” Mom didn’t laugh. It wasn’t her way. She did, however, seem particularly pleased with her daughter. “Touche, counselor. “ She pointed her fork between her spouse and offspring. “She gets the stubbornness from you. She gets her wit from me.” “Yes, dear.” “Good looks, too.” “Can’t argue with that, Jody” Wendy had already gone back to her plate and back inside her head, trying to figure out her next move. Were Morgan Freeman narrating her life, this would be the point where time froze and in his comforting baritone the audience would hear, “It was not, in fact, going well or good for Wendy.” “Done,” Wendy said. She stood up and took her half eaten plate. “Thank you for dinner,” she said. “I gotta go back to my room.” “Hittin’ the books, darlin’?” Dad asked. Wendy left her dishes in the sink. “You know it.” Mentally she was already back in her room, and that sent shivers along her spine. She could already feel herself breaking into a sweat and it had nothing to do with the dark green sweater dress and black leggings. The weather was just starting to turn chilly outside and her skin and bones frame relished in the extra insulation; though oddly enough her feet were never too cold for sandals. The world had dealt Wendy a pretty good hand. Her family was upper middle class and she was an only child so the bulk of the finances and parental attention went to her upbringing and continued security. She lived in a college town, and although that meant she’d been pressured- more like gently nudged- to stay home to save on living expenses the University had a very good law school and she’d gotten in on scholarship. Wendy’s night life might not be as wild as some of her classmates who came from out of state, but she’d always had someone to pick her up if she had too much to drink and didn’t have to get a job or pay rent. Very fair trade as far as everyone was concerned. Even with the deck stacked in her favor, Wendy was working herself into a more than mild panic. She was experiencing something of a quarter-life crisis. With less than two days before her midterm exam for her History of Law class, she had to cram as much information as she could into her brain or she was going to fail. It wasn’t hard, hypothetically. All she had to do was sit at her desk for a few hours, drink some coffee, and pound as many important court cases, dates, and legal precedents into her head as she could. Within seventy-two hours, she could then forget about it and dump all of the information out of her noodle and then look it up online like a normal person if she never needed the information again. That’s what cramming for a test functionally was. It’s just that Wendy didn’t know how to study. At all. In Elementary School she was what they called “Gifted”. What she thought that meant was that she was super smart, much smarter than the other kids her age. And in a way, that was true. She picked up information much faster than her peers, all the way through high school. Then came college, and she was able to skate by on her own natural talents. Now in Law School, Wendy was struggling for the first time, her own raw and natural talent wasn’t saving her, and she completely lacked the skill sets necessary to pass her current course load. If her brain didn’t immediately latch onto a concept or bit of information in class or if she wasn’t intensely interested in it from the get go, Wendy couldn’t remember it. In a class filled with other studious future lawyers, ones who had long ago mastered the necessary discipline to fail, struggle, and get back on their metaphorical horses until they mastered something, Wendy felt more like a two year old than twenty-two. Friendly rivals like Peter and not-quite study buddies like Morgan, people who she would have left in the duss not four years ago, were now having an easier time than she was. She was surprised as anything when Tonya got into law school with her and Tonya was acing every single assignment. The gap had closed and widened itself again, only now Wendy was on the wrong side of it. As she’d shown at the dinner table, Wendy had talent enough for twisting words, arguing and generally bullshitting her way through a conversation; a skill that was easy enough to utilize for things like essays where she was trying to prove a point, but rote facts had become the bane of her existence. Even if her midterm was an essay, she’d need facts to back it up. She wasn’t failing, but only because there’d been so few grades collected. For the hundredth time in four hours, Wendy whispered to herself, “I’m doomed”. Stalling, she took a sharp left turn in the hallway and went to the bathroom. “I’m just gonna go pee,” she promised herself, “then I’ll get back to studying.” It was a lie, she knew deep down, but it was a lie that gave her comfort. More than likely, she realized hiking down her bottoms and lifting up her top, she’d pee, go to her room, see the empty coffee cup on her desk, decide she needed more coffee, go fill it back up in the kitchen, down it and refill, take the second cup back to her room, sit down, and stare at the same page for a solid fifteen minutes before she remembered to drink the second cup. Then she’d have to go to the bathroom again. Rinse. Procrastinate. Repeat. Dinner had actually managed to break up the anxious monotony of it all as late afternoon bled into late in the evening. Four hours. Four hours and three chapters, and Wendy literally felt like she was banging her head against the wall. Three chapters was kind of impressive, she imagined, until she remembered that she had nine to go. She relaxed her bladder and ignored the sound of liquid on liquid beneath her as so many did. At least something about her was managing to relax. The rest of her, brain included, was anything but. She was going to fail and she knew it. It was like finding out she had a terminal disease or something. There was no avoiding it, it was just a matter of time. The only question was how much pain did she want to put herself through in fighting against the inevitable. Trying to delay the inevitable, Wendy sighed, cleaned up, redressed, and washed her hands. Maybe she could take the rest of the night off and then cram the remaining nine chapters tomorrow night? That made sense, right? She’d be more refreshed and less stressed. Simple. She was burned out. If the brain was a muscle, it made no sense to overstrain it. That defense was countered by massive anxiety. No. Despite all her denial, she was going to go down swinging. Even if it took her another four hours of reading and re-reading the same chapters again and again, she’d manage to get halfway through the reading before bed. She gave her another choice. Another shiver caused Wendy to yank down on the waist of her sweater dress. Was she sick or something? That might explain something. If she was sick, she wouldn’t feel so bad about not being able to study. Couldn’t feel bad about not absorbing information if her brain was fogged up from a disease. Unconsciously seeing the next excuse to kill time, Wendy passed by her solid oak desk, the textbook proppedo pen on the last page of the chapter she’d just read. She shuddered again, just glancing at the “Essential Questions” portion in her book. Something told her that she’d be completely unable to answer the questions, even partially. That was because she was sick though. Best to bundle up with another layer. Wendy kept walking and flung open the slatted doors to her closet...and stared. What was that ripple in the air? There in the middle of her closet, almost like a mirage or a heavy gas leak. The air shimmered, taking on a wispy, smoke-like quality. Wendy sniffed, smelling nothing. Her neck hunched and her eyes narrowed, trying to find more definition or else dispel it through will power. Nothing. Then, as if trying to pet a rattlesnake she gingerly reached forward towards the shimmering air. No change in temperature one way or the other; neither a hot flash or an inexplicable chill. What happened was worse. As the tips of her fingers made contact with the shimmering wisps of air a blinding flash like lightning tore out where her fingers made contact. A sharp, quick scream erupted from Wendy and she drew her hand back as if she’d been electrocuted. Panting and with her heart rate approaching hummingbird levels she inspected her fingertips. Nothing. No singing or blistering or discoloration whatsoever. The mysterious light had blinked out too; as quickly as if she’d just closed the refrigerator. “What in the…?” Wendy didn’t finish the sentence for fear of invoking a higher or lower power. For the second time she stuck her hand in her closet. For the second time, brilliant white light poured forth, as if the air itself had a second heatless sun. Wendy looked just long enough to see that her left hand was well and truly engulfed, but not in pain, and turned her head away. No shadow fell on the floor, even though something as bright as her She managed to gather her fright into a coherent word, “FUCK!”, before taking her hand out. Looking back into her closet, the light was gone but shimmering bits of air remained in its place. Wendy looked at her hand one more time, going so far as to compare left to right side by side. No warts or bits of rotting flesh; nothing lost or present that hadn’t already been there. Curiously, she snaked her arm around the nearly invisible column and grabbed hold of a shirt. No amount of mysterious luminescence leaked from the fabric of reality. The same was true when she slid her elbow into the same space. Nothing. The moment she jabbed her arm straight through however... LIGHT! ALIEN ABDUCTION LEVELS OF LIGHT! “What was in that meatloaf?” Wendy whispered. Now was not the time for whispering, however. “MOM?! DAD?!” Heavy footsteps signalled her father’s approach. Gray headed and balding, Dad opened the door to Wendy’s room wide. “Yes, honey?” Wendy froze. She was up to her elbow now, and a tiny dawn’s worth of light was streaming past her out of her open closet. “Um...do you see anything...unusual?” She asked, rather unnerved by her father’s complete lack of surprise on the matter. Calmly and thoughtful, her father scratched his chin. “Did you buy something? New outfit or something? Borrowed something from that Lindsay girl, maybe?” Lindsay was a classmate and a relative socialite that had come home for dinner one evening. The one thing she’d impressed on Wendy’s parents was how fashionable she was. She supposedly partied every weekend but still maintained a B+ average. That was besides the point... Not believing what she was hearing out of her father’s mouth, the law student did a full on double take, and walked forward out of the closet. The light vanished, closed up on itself the second she stepped out. “How about now? Did you see that?” Wendy asked. .“Um...yeah...very nice?” Dad clearly had no idea what she was talking about. “Cool,” Wendy lied. “Cool, cool, cool. Just checking.” “Do you need anything else?” “No. Thank you. I think I might just be studying too hard.” “Oh,” her father looked concerned. “You don’t wanna do that.” Wendy flexed her fingers and bit her lip. “Oh I’ll be okay. I just need some more coffee or something. I’ll be fine, I’m sure.” That seemed to satisfy Dad. “Fair enough.” Dad walked away without further comment. Wendy trailed behind him to shut the door. “Everything okay?” she heard Mom call. “Yeah,” Dad’s voice, already fading, said. “Just being a twenty-something.” Wendy leaned against her door, trying to stop herself from hyperventilating. “What? The? Fuck?” Forget studying, she wasn’t going to be able to sleep tonight; not until she figured out what was going on in her closet. That’s why fifteen minutes later she was tossing the pillow from her bed into her closet to no avail. She’d gone and made a rope out of her bedsheets and everything. The idea had been sound: Send something expendable through the portal, that’s what she was starting to think of it as, that could then be reeled back like a fishing lure. All she managed to do was knock a couple of her shirts and dresses off their hangers. “Oh for…!” Wendy dropped the sheet bundle and threw head back. This whole thing really was very silly. “It’s stress,” she mumbled. “It’s stress. It’s gotta be stress.” In a way, the idea that she might be hallucinating or cracking up was a bit more comfortable than stumbling across some bizarre preternatural phenomenon.. Feeling awfully silly, she pulled back the sheets, only to have the pillow slip out. Add knot tying to the list of skills Wendy needed to work on. “What’s wrong with me?” she asked the ceiling. Her eyes focused on the bit of plaster where her father had paved over a hairline crack. Chuckling to herself, she walked forward, completely dismissing the shimmering rip in the air, bent over to pick up her pillow and... LIGHT! BLINDING LIGHT! Another small, startled scream leapt out of Wendy’s throat, but it was too late. Forward momentum and a force not unlike gravity pulled Wendy deep into her closet, tumbling into parts unknown. Parts unknown, as it so happened, looked a lot like Wendy’s bedroom at first. In certain fantasy and sci-fi stories, a character going through a portal might travel through darkness to a mystical snowy landscape, or else plummet into a fiery inferno or go through a magical door to an island of boiling rains or a labyrinth of strange creatures. To Wendy however, it was more like falling out of her own closet. She felt disoriented, and discombobulated like she’d just gotten spun around in circles until she lost her balance. The fantastical white light hadn’t helped any. Blinking away the spots, she laughed in shock at the familiar texture and hazy color of her own carpet. Maybe it was a gas leak. She dug her fingers into it and pushed herself up to a standing position. She sniffed and the faint scent of perfume and something else, something slightly foul, registered in her nostrils, though she couldn’t quite place it. By the second inhalation the smell was either gone, her nose had gotten used to it, or she’d completely stroked out. Stumbling around her room, the possibility of ocular damage, if not brain damage was becoming increasingly plausible to Wendy’s mind. Too much of her vision was still blurry as if she’d been staring at the sun. Everything was coming out in just the roughest of silhouettes. Colors were off, too. The walls were a pastel pink. A few blinks and eye rubs later, ballerina fairies along the ceiling’s border came into focus. Her room hadn’t been pink in a long time; and she never remembered anything so patently childish in decoration; yet something in Wendy’s subconscious still accepted it and labeled the space as her room. The door was in the right place. A glance backwards over her shoulder confirmed that the closet was too, complete with that same wavering column of not quite air. Her vision was still too hazy to properly inspect any of the clothes contained therein. Still looking at the closet the twenty-two year old woman tried to lean back on her desk, looking for balance. She came up short however, and wound up splayed out on a chest that was just as wide and sturdy as her desk but much much lower to the ground. “Huh?” That was how Wendy realized that there were sparkling star stickers on her ceiling. Distinguishing the sparkling all the fine, glittery details on her ceiling, including the plaster seam where dad had patched up that hairline crack years ago confirmed that Wendy’s vision had cleared up and she was where she thought she was….sort of. The someday-lawyer sat up, rolled off to her knees and her vision had cleared enough for her to make out the rainbow lettered stencils on the chest she’d been laying on. T-O-Y-S What was a toybox doing in her room? Palms flat on the top, Wendy stood up and turned around to finally see what else was different now that her eyes were working properly. Her breath caught in her throat. She very much hoped her eyes were still deceiving her. Forget the toybox, what was a crib doing in her room? A big one too! Far bigger than anything needed to contain an actual child! An adult crib? How was that a thing? If her eyes were as sharp as they felt, surely that meant she was hallucinating. The baby bed against the wall was both ornately carved and there were foam letters on the wall behind and above. W-E-N-D-Y Not only was this supposed to be a giant crib, it had been designated as her giant crib... Her eyes darted to the right of the crib, practically drawn to what she initially thought were stacks of puffy white towels on shelves. Strange. She didn’t have anything like that, normally. Her dresser was supposed to be there. The gears finished turning in Wendy’s head as she exhaled. Those weren’t towels that her eye had been drawn to. They weren’t even cloth; just cloth-like. The white bottle of baby powder on top of the table and the pail next to it explained the scents that registered when she first came out. If the giant crib was in place of her bed. Then that must be a changing table. The giant diapers were on the top shelf, right where her underwear would normally be. But if that meant the crib was supposed to be her crib, then ipso facto that implied that the table as well as the diapers... Wendy dived back into the closet, holding her breath until she tumbled back out again. She steadied her breathing, mentally labeling what she saw (and didn’t see). Beige walls; normal adult bed; study desk; chair; absolutely no changing table or diapers. Wendy mopped the sweat from her forehead with her sleeve. “What was that place?!” She looked at the wavering mass of air in her closet. Added to the unnatural thickness in the space, a bit of sparkling light shone out, no brighter than a nightlight. Bursting through from the other side had left a kind rip. “Honey?” Mom called from down the hall. “Wendy, is everything okay?” “Fine, Mom!” Wendy called back. “It’s fine.” Fine? Maybe not. But a hell of a lot more interesting than studying for a History of Law Midterm. Chapter 2 Wendy woke up achy all over with a crick in her neck causing her considerable discomfort. She’d fallen asleep on the floor of her own bedroom, her back against the wall parallel to her closet and her notebook opened to the very beginning of the fifth chapter she’d been meaning to study. One chapter. She’d spent the rest of the night pouring over one lousy chapter of legal history. Combined with the previous three, she’d read only a third of her required reading material for the upcoming exam. She had just one more day to basically devour the remaining eight chapters she’d procrastinated studying on, and then an exam which could very well make or obliterate her GPA. From an objective point of view, Wendy could hardly shoulder the blame of this procrastination alone. Most twenty-two year olds cramming for exams only had factors like the temptation of wild parties on a saturday night, or paper thin apartment walls where they could hear their neighbors arguing and making love, sometimes both. These were normal distractions. Strange rips in reality that no one else could see, thus indicating some form of magic or severe psychiatric issue (a brain tumor perhaps?); that was a uniquely Wendy problem. She confirmed it not once, but twice, with each of her parents. Neither one could see it, even though since exiting the strange room made up for a giant baby, the invisible shimmering mirage in her closet had given way to being replaced with a beam of light coming out of nowhere. Absent the heavenly choir it still resembled the bright light at the end of the tunnel so common in near death and out of body experiences. . An afterlife with a giant adult sized nursery….yeah right! “You sure you’re not studying too hard, cupcake?” Dad had asked. Mom had gone so far as to feel Wendy’s forehead checking for a fever and check to see if her lymph nodes were swollen or eyes dilated. Mom wasn’t a nurse, but being a public school teacher made her the next best thing. There was a strange interdimensional rip in her bedroom closet that no one but her could see or seemingly interact with. What did one do in this situation, save retreat? It’s why she’d hunkered down on the wall beside her bedroom closet. Out of sight, out of mind. Once, when she was thirteen she’d banged her head really hard playing tetherball at summer camp. Squiggly lines started appearing in her vision, just on the fringes of her line of sight and crossing her vision only whenever she purposefully shifted her eyes from left to right; kind of like little white flurries in a snow globe. The camp doctor had said she hit her head hard enough that some eye jelly had come loose inside her and that’s what the little squiggles that only she could see were. It happened all the time. Eventually the jelly would settle back into place or she’d stop noticing it. As long as she didn’t take a whole bunch of tetherballs to the face, everything would go back to normal and she wouldn’t need glasses. This was the same principle. It had to be. As long as she ignored it and pretended not to see the hole in existence with blinding alien light shooting through it, it would go away. Right? Right. That level of denial hadn’t served her well in her studying. Rather than the looming panic and procrastination in what was now tomorrow’s exam, Wendy was alternately obsessing over a miraculous discovery or her own fragile sanity depending on where her brain decided to go page by page. The whole mess just resulted in her falling asleep with her back to the wall, waking up in brief spurts expecting to see a changing table where her dresser was supposed to be or a toy box where her study desk was. Then she’d go back to re-reading where she’d left off before dropping back into dreamland again. The text had made a better pillow than a book. Achingly, Wendy stood up and raised her arms over her head, letting out a bellowing yawn. Her bladder was screaming at her. It had been the thing, rather than the trace amount of sunlight coming in through her bedroom blinds that had woken her up. “Why didn’t I just crawl into bed?” she moaned to herself. A mental overlay of a crib where her bed laid made her eye twitch. “Oh yeah. That.” Her bladder wouldn’t wait much longer. Still wearing last night’s leggings and sweater dress, Wendy jogged, actually jogged, out of her room to the toilet. Whether this was because of her dire need to relieve herself or because the extra bit of speed made it easier not to look back into her closet even Wendy couldn’t say. Her bladder successfully emptying itself was the only relief she was experiencing just then. Blinking away the last bits of restless sleep, the Law student had to admit to herself that she’d absolutely failed at her endeavor. She could barely remember the three chapters she’d forced her way through before discovering the rip. The fourth chapter was a complete blur with the only knowledge she’d retained being that she had, in fact, read it. She couldn’t remember a darned thing! The toilet tank was still refilling when her dad stopped her. “Wendy? Isn’t that what you were wearing last night?” Wendy rubbed her eyes. Dad was wearing his ‘Sunday best’ a term he jokingly used when he wore khaki shorts and one of the tacky Hawaiian shirts. “Yeah, Dad.” “Late night studying?” “Yeah.” “Go on and get changed, cupcake,” he said. “Your Mom’s out for an early grocery run. I’ll make you some instant oatmeal, and then you can do nothing for an hour.” A smile crept up on Wendy’s face. “Which begs the question, why do I need instant oatmeal?” In unison they said. “We could just make regular oatmeal and feel productive.” That dumb, shared joke of theirs actually made Wendy feel a little better. “I’ll be out in a minute.” Dad pointed to her. “You better,” he joked. “If you’re not ready by the time it’s out of the microwave, I’m coming in after ya.” “Okay, okay,” she said, smiling despite herself. Closing the door behind her, Wendy’s relief was short lived. “Oh yeah,” she mumbled. “That.” Directly across from her was the rip. It hadn’t gotten any bigger, as far as she could tell, but it was decidedly brighter. Either that or her lack of a good night’s sleep had made it seem brighter; the way the sun does after a hangover. Lacking sunglasses, Wendy did a right turn and forced herself not to look by shielding her vision with her left hand. Yeah...that’d make it go away. She went to the dresser that definitely wasn’t a changing table. Despite knowing full well about it, she still sighed in relief seeing her panties in the top drawer where they belonged. She got some out and looked back over to her closet. “Definitely not.” For that reason, her morning’s attire consisted of a bra and panties, and loose fitting tan shorts with a worn grayish t-shirt. These were clothes that she was more likely to wear to the gym than to school, but she didn’t have any classes today; just studying. Her own version of her ‘Sunday best’ would do just fine. She went to her bedroom door, put her hand on the knob, and froze. She turned around and looked at the piercing light emanating from within her closet, so close yet so far away, and beyond it what she could only think of as a strange trip into a parallel universe. Hallucination or not, how long could she ignore it? “Wendy!” Her father bellowed all the way from the “The microwave just dinged. Come and get some brain food, Cupcake!” “Be right there, Dad!” She knew it to be a falsehood the moment she said it. “I’m just having um...lady things!” It was a stupid and shallow lie, but one that bought her, she hoped, at least a couple of minutes. Just how long could she venture into the world beyond her own closet before Dad checked in on her? What would he think if he opened her bedroom door and found her mysteriously missing? Surely he’d worry. Addicted of all stripes find ways to justify getting their fixes. Just what she was addicted to didn’t come to Wendy in the moment, but she did come up with an idea. “Dad!” Wendy called. “Can you come in here for a second?” There was a pause of uncertainty. “Yeah sure. Do you want me to find where your mother keeps the uh...lady stuff?” “No. I’m fine. False alarm.” She paused for a moment and then thought to add, “And no, I’m not pregnant!” “Oh thank god!” Dad laughed. It was the kind of laugh one does when they are both relieved and unsettled that someone guessed what they were thinking. Wendy positioned herself at the threshold of her closet, right next to the rip. Her pulse was pounding, her breath was picking up. A quick rapping on the door preceded its opening. “So what was it you wanted to show me, Wendy?” “This!” Wendy dove head first into the light. This time, she was smart enough to close her eyes and the blinding light, like the heart of a sun, didn’t disorient her nearly as much. It was still disorienting, of course; expecting to hit the back wall of one’s closet and instead running several steps straight through was bound to be. It just wasn’t as disorienting as the first time. What was disorienting was the fleshy thump into her father. “Whoah! Easy there closet monster!” she heard him say. It was definitely her father. She’d known his voice all her life. Warning bells blitzed her brain. She really was crazy. All she’d managed to do is stumble around in her own closet and parade out looking like a loon. “Is that what you wanted to show me? Did you want to show Daddy what a good closet monster you could be?” “Daddy?” She opened her eyes. Sure enough, her father was standing there, beaming slightly down at her with the height difference of a handful of inches. He was exactly the same as he'd been a handful of seconds before. The rest of her room wasn't. To her near right was a toy box. To her far left was the giant crib and changing table. The walls were again pastel pink with fairy ballerinas along the borders. “Dad,” the words poured out of her like a fountain, “what are you doing here? Did you follow me? Does that mean you saw me go through the rip? Why aren’t you behind me, then? Why aren’t you freaked out that my room looks like it did when I was a baby but everything’s...everything’s...bigger?” “Hmmm?” her father squinted. “What was that baby girl?” It was the same kind of look that her father had when they’d gone on family vacations and a local or a tour guide had a particularly thick accent; even if their English was fine. It was like he was trying to translate in his head what they were saying through whatever patois peppered their speech. Wendy cocked her head sideways. How could father be having trouble understanding her? “What are you doing here, Dad?” Dad nodded in not-quite understanding. “Ooooooh! Where’s Daddy?” “Where’s Da-?” Wendy was cut off as her father placed one thick hand over each eye. “Wheeeeeeeeeere’s…?” Daddy said, his words like the wind up of a pitch. He removed his hands from off her eyes and finished. “Daddy?!” He did it again. “Wheeeeeeeeere’s….Daddy?!” Between rounds of peekaboo, the Law student blinked. It certainly looked like her dad, but not. He was dressed the same, and had the same voice she’d heard since she actually needed a crib, but there was a dearth of gray hair in his beard and almost no wrinkles at the corner of his eyes or hints of laugh lines. A reflection of her father, but with the last two decades or so shaved off. “You’re not my father, are you?” “Wheeeeeeeeere’s...Daddy?!” She wasn’t scared. Just mildly confused. Befuddled? This might be what befuddled felt like. “Okay, okay,” she said, slapping his hands away as he came in for a fourth pass. “Stop!” “Alright,” the not-Daddy (mirror Daddy? Closet Daddy? Yeah...let’s go with that) said. “I’m sorry. Daddy didn’t mean to upset you.” “Wait,” she blanched. “You understood that?” “Uh-huh,” he replied. “Time for breakfast! Let’s get some num-nums in that tum-tum!” “Yeah...um...no.” She about faced and made to leap back through the rift of blinding light. “Thanks, bye!” Her retreat was stopped as her Daddy’s hand grasped her by the wrist. “Whoah! Wrong way, Cupcake. You can play ‘closet monster’ later. First, some breakfast!” The shriek Wendy let out as her father’s doppelganger pulled her into his arms and then draped her over his shoulder was one of surprise, but not necessarily fear. She could feel in his movements, and the tender strength of his grip that he wasn’t trying to harm her; nor was he close to straining himself. “What are you doing?” “It’s breakfast time, Wen,” he calmly explained. “Most important meal of the day.” The world whirled around and the rip in this reality got farther and farther away as her Closet Daddy trudged out of her infantilized bedroom, carrying her halfway over his shoulder. “You want to grow-up big and strong, don’t you?” “Big and strong?” Wendy echoed. A thought that should have been obvious finally came to her. “How old do you think I am?” She jolted, helplessly in his arms while he gently patted her butt. It wasn’t flirty or sexual, (thank god). More clinical, like a nurse checking bandages. “Still dry, he said, more to himself. “DAD! How-?” She cut herself off when she felt him shift her further and dig a finger into the waistline of her panties and pull them out. Her father, or someone very much like him, was literally staring at her ass. More accurately, part of her realized, he was staring at the back of her underwear. “THE FUCK?!” “Not poopy, either.” he said more to himself. There was an unspoken ‘yet’ that she found most disturbing. He shifted her down so that she was off his shoulder and closer to riding on his hip. “What was that honey?” “How? Old? Do? You? Think? I? Fucking? Am?” she repeated with deliberate slowness. She was taking her shock at being manhandled, having her personal space so casually violated, and being ignored, and tempering it with the realization that this world was decidedly not her own. Ironic, in a way. She was a foreigner in a foreign land, but talking like every depiction of a stereotypical American tourist; including the vain hope that speaking slower might make her more easily understood. “Bla-blah-blag-baw!” Daddy crossed his eyes. “See? I can make silly faces, too! Drooly girl!” “Drooly girl?” Self-consciously, she started patting her mouth, feeling for bits of saliva. Her chin was as dry as it ever was. Just like everything else, this man who looked so much like a younger version of her father, was seeing something that just wasn’t there. Speaking of things that weren’t there, Wendy took a gander at her surroundings as she was carried off. Besides her room, not much else had changed. Everything else was exactly as she remembered it from this morning. Correction: A family photo in the space between the living room and the kitchen caught her eye. It was supposed to be her High School graduation picture. Mom and Dad looked the same, albeit younger, but there was a little girl sitting down beneath them, wearing a pink dress with white tights and a big floppy bow in the child’s fair and fine hair. She only recognized her younger self in it by virtue of inference. She might have had a baby picture like that back home, but she’d long since forgotten it. A baby picture that didn’t exist... What did that mean for this world seemingly adjacent to her own? Between that photo, how her bedroom was decorated, and the way this version of her father was acting, Wendy might already have had her answer. “Daddy,” she said, much nicer than before. “How old am I?’ Wendy didn’t get her answer until she was set down and buckled into a particularly large highchair with a tray clicked into place. “How old are you?” Her Closet Daddy repeated as though he was just barely understanding her. Wendy nodded. “In just a couple of months,” he said slowly, “you’re going to be this many!” When he said ‘this’ he held up a single finger. Part of her threatened to panic; that was why when she fiddled with the buckle around her waist, even though it was just a simple mechanism, it wasn’t budging. She likely couldn’t move the catch on the tray either and the bar between her legs would have prevented her from sliding out the bottom. A larger part of her was legitimately curious, not frightened by the absurdity as much as driven to understand it. Here was something that was completely outside the realm of normal possibility and Wendy’s brain itched to scratch the surface and understand it. “You think I’m not even a year old?” she asked. “That’s right,” Daddy said. He tied a bib big enough to be a towel around her neck. “You’re almost one whole year old! You’re growing up to be such a big girl!” “That’s not what I said…” “You’re getting to be such a good talker too. You’re a little smarty-pants just like your mother!” Closet Daddy turned from the microwave and started stirring around a bowl of instant oatmeal. “And when you turn a year old, you’re gonna have a big party! There’ll be cake, and balloons, maybe even a clown!” “Fuck clowns.” Even now, she was experimenting. “Okay, okay.” he chuckled. “Clowns are bad,” he picked up a bowl of instant oatmeal with a plastic spoon in it. “Maybe we’ll revisit that when you’re two or three. But all of your little friends from daycare will be there.” “I don’t go to daycare,” Wendy said. “I’m a Law student.” Her father dipped the plastic spoon in. Rather than make a straight line, though, he made the spoon duck and weave. “Bumble-bee, bumble-bee, bumble-bee….buzz-buzz-buzzzzzzzz!” Despite herself, Wendy giggled at just how ridiculous he looked. That’s when he plunged the plastic spoon into her mouth. It was, in fact, just instant oatmeal. Cinnamon raisin flavored Not her favorite, but good enough. “You don’t get this kind of quality performance at daycare, I bet!” he congratulated himself. Wendy swallowed. “I...don’t...go...to...daycare...” she repeated herself. “I’m...a...Law...student.” The man who looked every bit like her father leaned over and tickled her foot beneath the tray, making her laugh again. That got another spoonful. While he was waiting for her to swallow, his brain seemed to make sense of the non-language barrier. “Oh?” he said “Oh yeah. They don’t call them daycares anymore, do they? I still think calling it Preschool is a little far-fetched. What’s the name for that place?” Wendy searched her own memory. Back on the other side of the rip, she had pictures and certificates all the way back to before Elementary School. Being a chronic natural overachiever, she’d become inundated with story after story of her entire life. Before Elementary, it was Preschool. Before Preschool it was... “Just follow the bouncing spoon!” “Bouncing Babies Academy?” She got the words out just in time for a spoon to ‘bounce’ through the air and into her mouth. She swallowed, and closet Daddy did that squint again like he was trying to parse out a thick accent. “That’s right! Bouncing Babies! My big girl goes to Bouncing Babies with her little friends like...Morgan and Tonya and Lindsay...who else is in your little playgroup? Oh yeah! Peter!” The mention of her current classmates shut Wendy up quickly. Silently, she’d been working under the theory that this was some kind of time portal. She’d known her current group of friends for a while now; some of them for years. But she hadn’t known any of them for so long that they’d been in diapers together. Red Flag! Definitely a red flag! Nothing a dollop of whip cream on the next spoonful and a tickle on the thigh couldn’t fix. Wendy swallowed another gulp of oatmeal. It was actually quite relaxing. Not having to feed herself gave her time to sort this particular puzzle out. So this world beyond the rip wasn’t exactly a time portal. What was it? “Fuck clowns.” “Yes, yes,” this alternate version of her father chuckled. Weird that he didn’t react to her deliberately dropping an F-bomb. Why was that? “I know you’re afraid…” he stopped himself, “I mean I know you don’t like clowns. That’s fine. I’ll tell Mommy. Maybe we can find a ballerina for you. Or we can dress you up like a ballerina for the party. Would you like that?” “Yes.” “Okay. I’ll try to remember it in a couple of months,” he started scraping the bowl. A final spoonful came up wobbling to Wendy’s mouth. Wendy leaned back in the highchair like the final spoonful contained cyanide instead of moistened oats. “No.” “No?” Good. He understood ‘no’. “No.” Closet Daddy shrugged. “Okay then. More for me.” He put the final bit into his mouth and swallowed. Glancing at the clock on the microwave he did a double-take. “Wow! That normally takes longer! Someone’s either super hungry or Daddy’s seriously upped his game! We do this a couple more times, and I can get the regular oatmeal! Good girl, Wendy!” The praise, however condescending, caused all sorts of happy chemicals to release in Wendy’s brain. She smiled bigger and brighter than when she’d gotten her Bachelor’s degree. “Ooops!” he reached up and used Wendy’s own bib like a napkin, dabbing at the corners of her mouth and cheeks. “Not a hundred percent success rate.” Wendy blushed. “Not your fault, baby. Hard to keep all your food in there when you’re being such a giggly girl.“ He smiled. “But if you weren’t such a giggly girl, Daddy might not get any of the food in at all!” He tickled the bottom of her foot again for emphasis. “Such is life. Time for a bottle.” He went to the fridge. “Chocolate milk?” she called out. “Chocolate?” He pointed to the nearly liter baby bottle he’d brought back. Wendy nodded. “I don’t think so,” Daddy said. “It’s a little early for chocolate milk, don’t you think?” He blanched. “Why am I asking you?” Wendy reached out and accepted the bottle. The cool milk felt good after the hot oatmeal, and she gulped it down while her father wiped the kitchen counter and talked to himself. Chugging down the bottle, Wendy felt like she’d about figured it out: For some reason, she was seen as an infant in this world; a toddler at best; not even a year old. Hence the giant baby furniture in her room and the chair in the kitchen she was sitting in. It’s why she had just another baby picture instead of her in a cap and gown. As far as her Dad was concerned, she was a baby; which explained patting her bottom and declaring her ‘dry’. In his mind, he was checking her diaper. The physics of the world seemed to confine her to that diminished role, too. Closet Daddy was strong enough to carry her through the house like it was nothing. And even though she was a fully grown young woman, she lacked the physical capability to undo a safety latch meant for a small child. She didn’t feel particularly weak, just that everything else seemed that much stronger; like in the Marvel movies when someone tried to lift Thor’s Hammer. Interesting. Most interesting so far, though, was the communication barrier. Based on her probing, it seemed that there was some kind of one way language filter going on. She could understand everything that her kind-of-father said to her, but everything she was saying came out as though a small child just learning to talk was saying it. If it was something she might have said twenty-one years ago, he could just get the gist of it. Anything else must have gone unheard or come out as well...baby babble. Did not even one-year olds actually talk that much? Wendy didn’t know enough about kids to say one way or another. Maybe a few words. ‘Mama’ or ‘Dada’. Maybe this weird mirror universe was taking what she was saying as a full grown adult and kind-of-sort-of splitting the difference. Almost like part of her world, the real world, was bleeding over into this one. That made as much sense as anything else, she supposed. “Daddy?” she said. He turned around from wiping down the counter. “Yes, Cupcake?” Good. He recognized when she called him. “Since I’m going to go to the Supreme Court one day, what’s your opinion on Roe versus Wade and a woman’s right to bodily autonomy?” “Really?” He sighed. “Okay, Cupcake. Okay.” He took a deep breath. “Row, row, row your boat….” Theory all but confirmed. “-gently down the stream-” Roe versus Wade certainly wouldn’t have been something she’d have talked about when she was less than a year old, so the best that could be done was- “-merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily life is but a dream.” Closet Daddy exhaled. “I love you, Wendy.” “I love you too, Daddy.” Something in that made Wendy feel tingly all over. She was sure she said it to her parents often enough, and they to her, but there was just something...different about it. Tone? Context? Implication? She wasn’t completely sure. He didn’t say it any differently than he usually did, it just felt different. She most often heard such praise and affirmation either when she was feeling rather low in despair, or right after a major success: ‘Oh, you forgot your homework? Don’t worry, I still love you Wendy.’ or ‘Straight A’s all year? So smart! Love you!’ But if everyone thought she was, say nine or ten months, then they had nothing to say “I love you” about. No minor failures to soothe or major successes to celebrate. Looking into her Closet Daddy’s eyes, she caught the smallest hint at being valued not for what she’d done or what she might yet do. Instead, she had the briefest memory of what it was like to feel valued just for being herself. And that feeling tingled in a way that she hadn’t felt in what seemed a long, long time. “All done with your milk?” Instead of speaking, Wendy just handed the three quarters drained bottle of milk off to the man and waited patiently. It would be as easy for him to remove her from the scaled up highchair as it was impossible for her to escape it. “Almost forgot.” He removed the bib, and walked over to the sink, depositing it there and dumping out the rest of the milk. When the bib came off, Wendy felt her first bit of renewed caution. Still buckled into the highchair, she looked down at herself, and witnessed something both miraculous and disheartening. Her clothes were changing color! Her tan shorts, now that she could see them, were now undoubtedly powder blue. “Huh?” Her shirt was in the midst of changing, too. Like an oil slick spreading into the ocean, Wendy watched dabs and droplets of pink spread out on the plain gray of her shirt. The rose tinted color expanded and blotted out the dreary cloud coloring much in the way paper towels soaked up water. Strangely, the pink morass left a section of her shirt untouched while it washed over the rest of her dreary clothes. That was only because the outline of a white cartoon kitty-cat faded and bleached itself into existence. Wendy’s own language usage wasn’t the only thing bleeding. This world, it seemed, was bleeding into her; or her clothes at least. This was certainly a new wrinkle! Blue and pink instead of tan and gray wasn’t the most infantile thing in the world; it was still just a t-shirt and shorts, but it was definitely an alteration from when she had entered. What did that mean for the clothes beneath? She got half of her answer when her Daddy removed her from the chair. “Wow,” he said, patting her butt again through her shorts. “Still dry! New personal best!” He joked. Better one of her parents doing this to her than some creep on campus, she supposed. Wendy felt the hand gently groping her through her panties, with nary a squish or a telltale crinkle. As far as she could tell, she wasn’t wearing a diaper, thank goodness. However, while the kitchen zoomed away from her back towards the giant nursery, Wendy cupped her breasts. “Still have my...” Just as they crossed the threshold back into her room turned nursery, Wendy felt the wires and padding of her bra evaporate. The straps and fasteners practically melted into her shirt. A ruffled pattern, like flower petals, manifested and sprouted along her chest and all around her back, just above the white cartoon kitty cat. “...-bra?” “Don’t worry, baby.” the variant of her father said. “Mama will be back in just a little bit.” He sat her back down in the nursery version of her room and gave her a wet, though chaste kiss on the forehead. “I love you so much.” He gently nuzzled his head against hers. Wendy felt her face blush a deep crimson. Not just because of the intimate nature of the physical affection, but frankly, the embarrassment of it all. Her nipples were poking out slightly through the increasingly babyish t-shirt. The newly added ruffles obscured it enough, but that didn’t mean she didn’t feel them rubbing on the coarser, unpadded material. Her breasts were a long way from sagging at her age, but that didn’t mean she didn’t feel gravity try to reassert itself as her support was literally yanked out from beneath her by magic. Bras could be uncomfortable at times, but it was even more uncomfortable when they suddenly and unexpectedly ceased to exist. Out of habit, she brought up her forearm and shielded her breasts, as though that might make her feel less naked. As had been the case so-far, Closet Daddy looked at the distinctly adult, distinctly womanly gesture of reflexive embarrassment and modesty and interpreted it through the lens of a baby still working through its first set of teeth instead of a woman who had long ago gone through puberty. “You cold, baby? Do you want Daddy to get you a blanket? Turn up the heat?” Yet again, he was talking more to himself than to her. “No. I think you’ll be okay.” More for her own peace of mind, Wendy gently shook her head, too shocked to say much of anything. Watching her clothes change color was admittedly kind of neat. Feeling her underwear literally disappear was disquieting at best. Speaking of underwear, at least the padding in her bra hadn’t been added to her panties…(yet). Needless to say, the added hurdle that being on this side of the rip seemed to be affecting her clothing was adding a mounting sense of urgency. “So what can we do?” Her Closet Father asked the air. “What can we do before Mommy gets back? What to do, what to do?” From her place on the carpet the Law student looked at her closet, and saw the same rip of blinding luminescence glowing just inside it. If she could just make it past the threshold she’d go tripping back into her own world where she was a proper woman again. Problem being, this version of her father was bent over the toybox and poised between her and her exit. Howard Merts wasn’t exactly an NFL linebacker, but he had well over a hundred pounds on her and was stronger than her ‘in real life’. Between arriving and breakfast, it was already very obvious that he was disproportionately stronger than her. That might apply to other physical attributes, too. It wouldn’t do to have the comparative speed and reflexes of a toddler. No. Better to wait. Slowly, shakily, she stood herself up. Good. She could still stand, and the shaking was more from nerves than anything else. A flat wooden rectangle clattered at her feet. “How about an alphabet puzzle?” Closet Daddy said. “You love playing with your letters.” It was a wooden puzzle, the kind that only a baby would struggle with and maybe not even that. Twenty six little notches, each one shaped like a letter. Tiny wooden letters with nubs in the middle so that they could be placed and removed one at a time filled the slots. Some of them, anyways. Their trip through the air and subsequent landing at her feet caused a good dozen or so to tumble out onto the carpet. The younger version of her father bent over far enough to finish dumping out the letters. “There,” he said. “You can play with your alphabet.” Wearily, Wendy went back down to all fours. Carefully, she placed the letters back into the puzzle, reconstructing the alphabet. “Oh wow! Great job on finding the S!” Wendy blanched from the enthusiasm. “First try and everything!” Hands on his knees he loomed over her and the puzzle. “What about a W? W for Wendy!” He gasped in astonishment when she plucked a W from the scattered wooden alphabet outlines gathered on the carpet. His applause was spontaneous when she placed it into the corresponding slot. “Oh my gosh!” he hopped. “Wow! You did it!” Dad- her real dad- didn’t get this excited watching his favorite sports teams win. Wendy blushed. It had been a long time since she’d gotten this level of praise from anyone for doing something so simple. An unspoken truth was that the more grown-up you were thought to be, the harder adulation was to come by. She looked past her father and to the glowing rip in her closet. Daddy was still positioned between her and her exit. “How about the letter E?” Without nary a thought, Wendy put the vowel in its place. “YES!” Wendy would have thought he’d won the lottery. “N?” Simple enough. “D?” Again. So easy, even a baby could do it. “Y?” Wendy took the penultimate letter of the alphabet and put it in the board puzzle. “W! E! N! D! Y! That spells Wendy!” The girl let out a shriek as her father yanked her up off the floor and started half-tossing her up in the air. “Wen-dy! Wen-dy! Wen-dy!” Wendy giggled and shrieked, spreading her limbs out to catch herself each time the big meaty hands left her side. “Now how did you figure that out so fast?” He wondered aloud. Wendy held her breath. On one hand this might be an effective way to communicate with her dad’s time displaced twin. On the other hand, what would happen if he realized just how little his little girl wasn’t? The dilemma resolved itself when he looked at the lettering above the adult sized crib. “Of course you know those letters! You’ve been seeing them everyday your entire life, haven’t you?” He gushed. “Not even a year old, and my baby girl is studying!” He pulled her in for a hug. Despite all his monumental strength, it felt warm, and soft like a weighted blanket. “Clever! So clever!” Complimented for studying. There was a first. She had to start somewhere though. “Do you want to play something else?” Poking her head up through the clouds of dopamine and serotonin, Wendy remembered that she had more immediate matters to tend to. Her father, her real one, must be worried sick about her to say the least. She nodded. “Yesh!” Then she corrected herself. “Yes!” “Okie dokie!” He set her back down and returned to the toy chest. “What to play with next? What to play with next?” Her not-father kept tossing things out, careful to look behind him only so that he wouldn’t accidentally toss something at Wendy’s skull. “Or there’s your doctor bag. Your jack-in-the box. Your blocks. Your play pots and pans...how did they end up here? Shouldn’t they be in the play kitchen? Nevermind, not important. When did we get you a slinky? Oh a bouncy ball! That could be fun!” Wendy quickly finished the baby puzzle, with one eye on her closet and the other on this strange version of her dad. Something about leaving it unfinished just bugged her. She didn’t need to consciously focus on it, only the slightest amount of anal retentiveness made her double check her work, (which was perfect by the way.) Still on all fours, she shuffle crawled around the Closet Daddy, hoping that he’d distract himself enough digging through useless baby toys long enough for her to get to the rip and jump back through.. “Whoah! Where do you think you’re going, Cupcake?” Two hands reached down and grabbed her by the hips. The carpet flew away from her and she suddenly found herself, dangling by her armpits. She was now looking down at her father, and her tip toes only just grazed the floor, but the act of being held off the ground so easily was still quite unsettling. “Do you want to play ‘closet monster’ again?” Inspiration struck. “Yes,” she said. “Closet monster!” Why fight the language scrambling and just go with it? “Hmmm…” He seemed to look past her. Was there more than one difference between this version of her father and the (for lack of a better term) real one? Could he also see the blinding light that Wendy hoped to escape to? “I don’t knoooow...” His expression was a blend of playfulness and parental paranoia; the kind that new parents get over unforeseen threats to their precious little ones. What could be so dangerous to a baby in her own closet (besides an inexplicable tear in the fabric of existence)? Her old-man’s expression lit up when he pivoted back and looked at the floor. “Is that...did you?” Did she what? She reached behind her and felt the back. Had she had an accident or something? Wet her pants? Worse? She followed his gaze and realized what had gotten him so excited. “Did you do that whole ABC puzzle all by yourself?” For a ten-month old, that was amazing. She found herself on her back, pinned under Closet Daddy’s loving grasp. “That’s amazing! He showered her with kisses, causing her to kick and squirm...but not too hard. Daddy lifted up the front of her T-shirt and a puff of fresh hair breezed onto her belly button. “Who’s Daddy’s smart lil’ cupcake? Is it you? Is it you?” Positively melting with all of the praise, Wendy allowed herself a happy,“Yes!” She didn’t react until her Daddy said ,“Oh I could just eat my little Cupcake all up!” “Daddy! No-ho-ho-ho-ho!” Protests erupted into giggles as a younger version of her father barreled down on her and started tickling her and blowing raspberries on her stomach! “No-ho-ho-ho-ho!” She was powerless to fight the terrible two-ton-tickle monster her father had become. “Nom-nom-nom-nom-nom!” Even his beard tickled. Was she always this ticklish, or was some part of this reality now affecting her senses, too? “Daddy!” she shrieked. “Staaaaaahp!” She couldn’t have predicted the tinge of disappointment she then felt when he actually listened and stopped. The yanking of her shirt back down over her belly button gave an air of finality to the whole ordeal. Catching her breath, her eye was still drawn back to the closet. “Closet…” she huffed and puffed, forcing her breathing to slow back down. “I need...to...go...back...to...the ...closet.” Closet Daddy turned his head and looked back over his shoulder. “What are you lookin’ at, Wendy?” He gave her a light tickle, enough to make her twitch and squirm, but not so much that she laughed again. “What are you lookin’ at?” His own memory seemed to catch up to him. “Do you still want to go hide in that closet?” Breathlessly, Wendy nodded. “Hmmm...what if…” he grinned, mischievously, “I just ate some more Cupcake!” He blew another raspberry right on her belly button. It took so much of Wendy not to break into another fit of laughter. It took even more, she found, not to tell him to try again. “Please?” Wendy pressed. Then she had an idea. It had been forever since she’d done this, but she pouted her lip out, made her eyes big and sad like a puppy dog and gave her best “PWEEEEEEEEEASE!” “Hmmm…” Closet Daddy said. “I don’t know…” He was going to give in. He’d already lost the battle of wills and they both knew it. A muted honking preempted his impending surrender. “Sounds like Mommy’s home,” he said. “Let’s go see what she got us at the grocery store!” Yet again, Wendy found herself carried away from her escape route back to the real world. The second time she was dragged back into her own kitchen, she was deposited straight onto the tile instead of her highchair. Wearing a loose green dress, her mother (Closet Mommy?) walked through the door carrying several bags of groceries. Like her counterpart, this was a younger, fresher, less worn version of her own mother, with hair that was more blonde than pale, and a face far less wrinkled by time and stress. “Hey Wendy,” she cooed. She looked to her husband. “Hey, babe.” They kissed in a way that Wendy wasn’t sure she’d ever seen them before. “There’s more in the car.” “Groceries or kisses?” “There better just be groceries in the car!” They both laughed. Wendy thought she was more mature than to just gawk at her parents acting like a young couple, a half step away from making out. As it turned out, she wasn’t. “Ew…” “Oh. Not in front of the B-A-B-Y.” this world’s version of her Mommy said. “Careful,” Daddy said. “Have I got a story for you! It involves a certain someone being really good with their letters. We’ll talk about making her a little brother or sister later.” “Double ew…” Daddy went out the back door to the car. Mommy started unpacking groceries. Wendy watched. As with her breakfast in the highchair, she was about to travel back inside her own mind and analyze what new factors might come into play, when her Closet Mommy took out a normal sized pack of Pampers from one of the bags and set it on top of the oven. “That goes in Wendy’s room,” she said more to herself than anyone. Wendy grabbed onto the counter and pulled herself up to a standing position from her spot on the floor. Closet Mommy glanced over, but paid her no mind. The package of diapers didn’t leave Wendy’s focus. Something was off, and she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. But as she tilted her head to one side, she got a better look at the package. Pampers. Size 3. Yet right in front of her, she witnessed a bizarre inverse of what had happened to her outfit. Just like how her adult clothes bled pastel and had become more infantile, the package was steadily enlarging itself on the counter. She watched in quiet horror as it expanded and grew; inflated almost. Yet the image on the outside remained the same. Pampers. Size 3. With a picture of an almost naked child - boy or girl it was impossible to tell - giggling on the front and a promised count of twenty-six diapers. There was no way a pack that big only held twenty-six diapers unless they were very big diapers. Big enough to fit her. More than the package was growing. Her own underwear grew too; except that ‘growing’ wasn’t quite the right word. A better one would have been ‘thickening’. Unconsciously, she spread her legs as a slight weight and a very noticeable bulk added itself to her panties. She felt a light tickle, more like an itch creeping itself, on her inner thighs, back and just below her belly button. Almost like ants creeping across her flesh. It wasn’t until she took a single step forward, drawn to the gigantic diapers that she heard the papery plastic crinkle coming from her own pants. Wendy froze. She reached back behind her, feeling the extra padding on her backside. She lifted up her shirt and stared down past her breasts, seeing the thin waistband of the diaper creep up past the elastic waistband of her shorts as they tended to do. The slight tickling sensation on her thighs must have been leg gathers! That was what they called that weird bit of frilly stuff around a diaper’s leg holes, right? Diapers. Her diaper. The changes hadn’t stopped at her bra. Or if they had, they’d picked back up. She had to go. Now! “Uh...bye!” She took off at a tear back towards her bedroom. “Howard!” her mothers voice called. “You’ve got to see this!” Wendy didn’t slow. It had taken her only a few steps to compensate for the added mass of the giant Pampers that had manifested itself between her thighs. She ignored the lack of support as her breasts bobbed up and down with every thudding step. Now was the time. She’d been gone more than long enough to prove to her real dad that this wasn’t a joke or a hallucination. Within four mighty strides of entering her bedroom, Wendy Merts closed her eyes and leaped head first back into the mysterious light between worlds. She knew she was back when she stubbed her toe and realized she’d hurt herself on her boring old work desk. “Wendy?” her mother called. “Wendy? Are you alright?” Wendy looked at herself. She was still in gigantic baby clothes! She lifted up her shirt and felt between her legs. That was a Pampers, sure enough. Diaper! She had to get rid of the diaper! The rest of the ridiculous outfit, she could likely pass off as ‘quirky’; maybe something she borrowed from Lindsay. So much of women’s clothing was slightly infantilizing anyways. But the diaper? No way! Panickedly, she reached down into the front of her pants and groped along. Weren’t these things supposed to have tapes or tabs? Her hands grasped, unsuccessfully. What was she going to do? Her mother’s footsteps drawing closer, Wendy’s shoulders stiffened and her elbows tensed as right beneath her fingertips, she felt the stiff, crinkling, not quite cloth cover of the disposable diaper shift to the soft, cottony, familiar texture of regular underwear. Her clothes were returning to normal! Her diaper receded back into her shorts, the waistline and leg gathers lightly scratching against her skin one last time before becoming normal elastic. Simultaneously, the ruffles on her shirt’s chest dissipated and she could feel her bra rematerializing around her, the padding from her bottom all but slithering up her back and around to her front. Little by little, gray was coming into her shirt again, and the pink seemed to be draining out. Same for her tan shorts! The door opened. “Honey, are-...?” Mom froze, her pale hale and crows feet back; her expression uncomprehending as the last bits of juvenile color and decoration dragged themselves off of Wendy and vanished from wherever they had come. “-you okay?” Mom finished her sentence less like she was shocked and more like she was a recording that had just unpaused itself. More color drained from Wendy, but this time it was only from her face. “Mom? How much of that did you see?” “Just that you ran back to your room in a hurry. I thought something might be wrong.” Wendy blinked. “No,” she said, unsure if it was a lie or not. “I’m fine.” “Oh. Okay,” Mom said. “Your father told me you’d done something really special just before I got home and-” “Dad!” Wendy shouted! She was running out of her bedroom and past her mother before she realized it. “Daddy!” He had to be completely freaking out! She found her father in the kitchen, having just come in with arms full of grocery bags and started unpacking. The only difference between the groceries he was handling here and the scene she’d just fled was that there was no Pampers package, enlarged or otherwise, laid out amongst the various cans, sodas, bread, and dinner items. “Daddy?” her father repeated. “You haven’t called me that since third grade.” “Second grade,” Mom corrected, coming in from behind Wendy. “I remember because when her report cards went from E’s to A’s she decided she was too grown up to be calling us ‘Mommy’ and ‘Daddy’. So you and I got demoted to good ol’ Mom and Dad.” The two shared a knowing, nostalgic chuckle. Mom stopped just long enough to check Wendy’’s temperature via the back of her hand on her daughter’s forehead. “Normal.” Wendy frowned, not quite following what was happening. “Neither of you two were worried about me?” “Why?” Mom asked. “I thought that mad dash you just made might have been to the bathroom, but you seemed fine in your room to me.” “I hope that instant oatmeal wasn’t past its expiration date,” Dad said. Wendy cocked her head to the side again, this time in confusion. “I had breakfast here?” “I should hope so,” Dad said. “Otherwise I don’t know who I just got done sitting across the kitchen table from.’ No diapers, but Mom was still bringing in groceries. No highchair, but she’d still had breakfast with Dad. “Honey, are you okay?” Mom asked. “She fell asleep studying last night,” Dad reported. “Must’ve paid off though. You should have seen what she did in her notebook just before you came home, the little show off.” “Poor thing,” Mom said. “Why don’t you take it easy today?” Extraordinary astonishment was overridden by mundane anxiety “But my test-” “Test schmest,” Dad said. “You’re no good to yourself if you fry your circuits cramming. Take the day off. You’ve shown you’re ready anyways.” Mom simply added an agreeable “Mmmmhmmm!” Why was his dad so lenient all of a sudden? They were supportive as all get out, but they were never this laid back about it, not when it came to schooling. And what was that about being a show off? “Maybe I’ll go lay down for a minute,” Wendy mumbled. Dad got that same squinty eyed look on his face. “She said she’s going to go lay down, Howard,” Mom translated. “I swear we need to get your hearing checked.” The Law student felt numb from her face to her toes, stumbling back into her bedroom. Just in case, she checked out the old family picture in the living room. There she was in her cap and gown, standing beside two older but very proud parents. Had she dreamed the whole thing up? Had she gone into some kind of fugue state and only imagined that her father had been spoon feeding her the oatmeal in a highchair? A repressed memory maybe? What did that mean about the state of her clothes? More poignantly, what did that mean about the state of her mind? The light beaming out from her closet was as bright as ever. It might have been smaller, but it was hard to tell. Was the light brighter or just more focused? Was this what having a stroke was like? Or going insane? Wendy looked down at the ground rather than stare into the bright abyss. “Hmmm?” A bit of paper caught her eye. Her real room had been as spotless as the giant nursery had been cluttered with toys, so the rectangular shaped notebook stood out like a sore thumb. Wendy bent over and picked it up. “Oh.” Twenty six questions were written, copied word for word from the end of her text books required reading chapters. “My.” Each question was answered succinctly and in a way that she could understand. It was like someone had made her a study guide keyed directly to her brain with all the right questions and answers. No scouring and searching and trying to figure out where the answers were among pages and pages of text. Just simple memorization like a game of trivia. “God!” To cap it off, everything was in her own handwriting. On one side of the rip, she was twenty-two. On the other, she wasn’t quite one year old. Over there, she’d been spoon fed instant oatmeal, and then absentmindedly played with an alphabet puzzle. Over here was now the perfect study guide. Both had Mom going to the grocery store and coming back while Dad made breakfast. Neither seemed to be disturbed or even recognize her absence. The only downside there was the infantile role she’d been placed in was starting to affect her clothing, but only on that side. And if everything she did over there had an adult equivalent effect on this side... Wendy’s mind started racing with possibilities. She was going back. The choice was easy. So easy, even a baby could do it.

The Woman Who Invented Disposable Diapers Today, 95 percent of American babies wear them. But when Marion Donavan tried to find a manufacturer for her idea, the men who controlled the industry brushed her off. Marion Donovan, inventor of the first disposable diaper, told Barbara Walters that one simple question guided her work: "What do I think will help a lot of people and most certainly will help me?" The advantage—and the downside—of this philosophy was that when she first started out in the 1940s men controlled manufacturing. And to them, the problems she was fixing might as well not have existed. These men, one can imagine, had rarely, if ever, changed a baby's diaper. Certainly none of them had been charged with the responsibility of dealing—day in and day out (and late night in and late night out)—not only with soggy strips of cloth, pinned around a baby's bottom, but with soggy sheets and blankets that were soiled, too, when the diapers leaked through. Donovan, who was married in 1942 and by 1946 was on her second baby, did have to deal with that. And she had to deal with the terrible rubber "baby pants" that claimed to solve the leakage problem. Those baby pants might not have leaked, but they also gave babies diaper rash and dug into their soft little baby legs and baby bellies. Donovan was not the sort of person who settled for other people's design failures. First from waterproof shower curtains, later from nylon parachute material, she cut out and sewed together more breathable diaper covers. Then, she had a better idea: She made the cover into a container, into which a baby's caretaker could stuff absorbent paper. She called it the Boater, and she went out to find a manufacturer. "I went to all the big names that you can think of, and they said, 'We don't want it. No woman has asked us for that. They're very happy and they buy all our baby pants,'" she told Walters in 1975. "So, I went into manufacturing myself." In 1949, the Boater went on sale at Saks Fifth Avenue. Soon, they started selling out. "It is not often that a new innovation in the Infants' Wear field goes over with the immediate success of your Boaters," the president of Saks wrote to her. That's not hard to imagine: Presumably, it wasn't often that new innovations in Infants' Wear came from the people who actually used them, either. Even Donovan's success with the Boater didn't convince manufacturers that they might want to listen to her. The Boater wasn't fully disposable—you could wash and reuse the nylon part—but when Donovan proposed making a throw-away diaper out of paper, no one she talked to wanted to try. Today, some 95 percent of babies wear disposable diapers. And according to the EPA, each baby in the United States goes through about 8,000 of them. 3A28A2FE-D219-4B42-90E2-C215CB165942.webp

This is my first time writing a story here, and to be honest, I probably should have started with something a little smaller, not some big multi-part thing I haven't entirely written yet. ----- RegCon An ABDL & Regression Story Chapter 1: Plenary Angel Ballroom, Day 1 Good morning everyone. I didn’t catch that. I said good morning everyone! I’m John Krug, President of the National Coalition for a Second Childhood. Parents—mommies and daddies—on behalf of the NCSC, I would like to welcome you all to the Seventh Annual Regression and Rediapering Convention and Expo! Welcome to RegCon! As I look out on this room of over two thousand loving and doting parents and caregivers, ready to usher their babies into the adventure of regression, ready to take the serious commitment to diaper-train their children, unleash their inner littles, and give them the delightful gift of Second Childhood, I can’t help but swell with pride of how our little gathering, in just a few short years, transformed from an impromptu meeting in a public library community room, to a burgeoning movement! I see a lot of new faces and blue ribbons in the audience this morning: First-timers who want to learn more about how regression can benefit their children and help them redevelop the innocence they lost, and how to make that dream a reality. Now I know many of you will be a bit apprehensive about everything you’re going to see here. There’s a lot to take in, and the regression journey is not one one to be undertaken lightly. Perhaps you’ve heard neighbors, friends, coworkers, or relatives tell you all about how regression improved your children’s lives. And perhaps you’ve seen wild and lurid “exposés” spreading all sorts of wild tales. But let me tell you, as you’ll all learn over the next three days, and over the coming years, you are making the right choice. For yourselves, for your little ones, and for your communities. Give yourselves a hand for choosing to crack through the wall of misinformation and learn about the love of rediapering! And I also see a lot of old friends and yellow ribbons: repeat convention-goers. Ask them. Ask why they came back, how regression benefited their babies, how they were able to compel the unwilling to transform into laughing, bouncing, carefree kids! Because this isn’t just a convention. This is a community! Know that there are tens of thousands around the country and around the world, ready to lend a hand. Every year, we do our best to create an atmosphere of learning and collaboration for new regressors and practiced hands alike, as well as hearing from some of the world’s utmost experts in regression techniques and technologies, to help you develop a comprehensive, customized plan, to guide your littles to lose their potty training, their adult worries, their sexual urges, and their troublesome independence and rebelliousness, fostering a closer connection with YOU! Every time your little one wets or messes their diaper, or begs to watch Planet Ashley instead of the newest monster drama, or chooses to obey mommy and daddy instead of striking off, your closeness and love will only grow. This will be a deeply rewarding adventure for all of you! And repeat conventioneers know that if their littles’ regression is starting to fade, we also have aids to reinforce their babyish feelings and keep them close at mommy and daddy’s side. And yes, even if you’re starting to toy with the notion, as caregivers, that it’s time for progression, we can help you decide whether the time is right and guide your little to well-adjusted adulthood. The next three days are going to be very exciting, for you, and for us on the Steering Committee. Even though RegCon only lasts three days, for those of us who stage this event this is a job that lasts all year. I’d like to now ask all the Steering Committee members to please stand and be recognized. I would now also like to acknowledge the Convention Sponsors who helped to make these beautiful facilities a reality for us. We could never stage this event without their support. Specifically to recognize our Diamond-Level Sponsors: K&C Home Products, makers of the adult-sized Cutiez® diapers, Sleep-Tite® bedwetting underwear, and Daisy Girl® accident pants; VidiNet, who will be announcing a new season of regression-optimized streaming content; And the Rosebriar Academy, offering intensive diaper training and finishing discipline to young ladies who need to become little girls. A few housekeeping points before we move forward: If you haven’t already done so, please be sure to register and grab your convention badge at registration out front. As I mentioned before, attached to your badge will be one of these stylish colored ribbons, identifying you as a first-timer, or maybe a practiced hand. Keep an eye out for orange or red ribbons; those are to identify convention staff and volunteers. We’re here to help! We’re asking you all to wear your badges visibly at all times; there are a few types of people we wouldn’t want roaming the halls here. On that note, we are expecting a small protest again this year. Convention and hotel staff are coordinating with the local police to make sure everything remains peaceful. I want to urge you all, don’t try to engage with any of the protesters. If you did bring your littles with you, it goes without saying, take extra care that they aren’t exposed to any of the ugliness outside. Not only will it confuse them and potentially damage their regression training, but, and I want to stress this has never actually happened before, there is a small chance one of them might try to “rescue” your baby. As you should know, in all our convention literature, we advise parents not to bring their littles to the convention, pre- or post-retraining. Un-regressed children might panic and try to flee or disrupt their peers’ progress. And even for a docile, fully-regressed baby, we just don’t have the resources to care for them here. There are no public changing facilities, and we don’t have a day care. Now we all understand that, when you’re caring for a little one, it’s not always easy to find a sitter, or plans fall through. Just understand that you are responsible for your child. All right, enough with the downers! Are we ready to get started? C’mon parents, it’s not that early in the morning! Are we ready to get started?! We have a jam-packed agenda for this year’s RegCon! Later this morning, Dr. Kathy Willett from Galbraith University will share some of the latest techniques in regression hypnosis, using bedwetting and daytime accidents as a departure point for full-time rediapering. She’ll also be talking about how understanding your child’s psychological makeup can help you set a more effective regression roadmap. We will also hear from Clint Jones, recently-retired Sheriff of Mason County, and his observations on how Second Childhood has worked wonders to rehabilitate habitual youthful offenders into happy little citizens. Sheriff Jones has become one of the biggest proponents of regression as the best way to keep rebellion from turning into recidivism. This afternoon, there’s going to be a dozen researchers on our popular pharma panel, talking about new developments in drug regression therapy. Gone are the primitive days of using muscle relaxers, diuretics, and stool softeners to force wetting and messing. Integrated regimens tailored to your little’s body chemistry get better, more natural results, without all the side effects. Plus, rapid developments in nanobot therapy! That’ll be exciting. Regressing and rediapering your baby is not something you have to do alone! This year, our exposition hall has been split in two! We have an upper and lower hall with a combined 230 vendors, offering everything from diapers, to baby clothes, to furniture, to harnesses, punishment tools, and local regression clubs around the country. You’ll want to take some time to weave through all the booths, so plan accordingly. One newcomer to RegCon this year is VidiNet. They’re going to showcase some of the new children’s programming they’ll be debuting for streaming, and a lot of it looks great. But what I really think is exciting is some of the parental control tools they’re planning to release next quarter that can allow you to alter and tailor their content to fit your baby’s regression needs. We won’t be fighting against pop culture anymore! Our keynote speaker for the Seventh Annual Regression and Rediapering Convention is Florence McKnight. Mrs. McKnight has really become the public face of the regression movement, through her video and social media presence. We’ve all gotten to watch as her 20-year-old daughter Isabel has metamorphosed from a stressed-out pre-med student to a sweet bubbly little toddler. I know there are more than a few people joining us here today who would never have considered regression if they hadn’t gotten to witness this amazing change, and we are honored that she’s going to share her wisdom with us tomorrow! And last, but certainly not least, year after year the most popular part of the convention, our regression roadmap workshops! Every year, it’s always a bit of a strain to make sure we have enough space for everyone who wants to develop a plan to regress their babies. But we pulled a rabbit out of a hat again this year and anyone who wants to train a new little, or wants to reinforce training on their current littles, will be able to find a seat. They’re not always going to be at convenient times, so sign up quickly! If you haven’t already done so, you can reserve a seat at the table next to registration. This is a wonderful opportunity to plan out how you’re going rediaper your child and encourage them to start wetting, the tools and techniques you’re going to use, the checkpoints to watch for, the support system you’ll have to help you both along, and, because it’s always good to have a plan until it falls apart, strategies to get back on track and adjust to changing conditions. If you do nothing else at RegCon, be sure to take this workshop! We’ve put together the best convention yet this year, and I’m excited to see not only how our event comes out, but the next group of littles freed from the pressures of adult life and shepherded into Second Childhood. We are embarking on a magical journey. There will be challenges and trials, but the joys of a babyish mind and rewards of tending to it make it all worthwhile. And before we break into sessions, workshops and panels, I would like to play for you a brief recorded message from someone very special to me. Her name is Janey, and she is my baby daughter. A week before she was to graduate high school, Janey overdosed on Adderal trying to study for exams, and had to spend time in rehab. Like too many young men and women today, she was under so much pressure to be perfect and edge out the competition that it nearly destroyed her. And that nearly destroyed me. But by some miracle, my wife and I discovered a small regression club in our home town. Like many of you, I thought it was crazy. But the alternative looked like a decade or more of moving in and out of halfway homes, so we took a chance on our little girl’s happiness. That was seven years ago, and the young lady who was once clamoring for pointless academic success has changed into someone better. Sweeter. Every morning, we wake our little angel and help her out of her crib. Our little fountain loves her diaper changes so much, not just because she can get comfy and dry, but she gets face time with the people who she loves, and who love her too. Getting to see the twinkle in her eye again after all these years, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I want each of you to feel that same love with your own treasures. That’s our dream. Janey couldn’t come here today, but there’s something very important she wanted to tell you: “Hewwo evwybudy! Have fun at da coveshon!”

It was time to protest. Jeannie had been dragged around the modern art museum just a week ago, a first date that she'd hated. Bored by her date but that's why you went to museums for dates, so you could admire the exhibits. It was a modern art museum and Jeannie had been bemused throughout. Her date was enthusing about the brave juxtaposition of feminist cis heterodoxity against the toxic manipulation of a capitalist society and all Jeannie could see was the crumpled wing of a car poised precariously above a broken wheel. Worse, she'd taken a break from the pretentious witterings of her date over pretentious displays of pretention by pretentious people claiming they were creating art and gone to find somewhere to change her diaper. The stalls were too small, the changing table unsurprisingly sized for small people and the disabled facilities were far too dirty for comfort. She'd kept her diaper unchanged and was squelching before she got home. No leak, but it had annoyed her. So today it was time to protest. There was a nice cafe near the art museum, so she stopped there, enjoyed a large coffee. Enjoyed knowing what that would lead to. Making her way into the museum she paid at the front desk and made her way through. She wasn't sure where the best spot would be so kept hunting until she found it: a clear wall, open space before it, clearly waiting for the next exhibit. Her hunt had given the coffee time to get through her, join the juice she had for breakfast in filling her bladder, which she gleefully released. The diaper did its job. She could feel it swelling between her thighs, heat against her skin, the leak guards and elasticated leg openings holding the flood until it could be wicked away. She wriggled a little, made sure she was done, and looked around mischievously. Nobody had seen. Only a few people were even there, a week day morning, too early for the pretentious crowd, no opportunity for overpriced sparkling wine as they pontificated on the artists whose work they didn't understand. Those people saw what Jeannie did next. Pulling her loose skirt up to her waist she reached down between her legs and found the poppers on her diaper shirt, released them one by one. As the final popper snapped free the flaps at her crotch sprung apart, bouncing almost up to her skirt before falling to hang loosely in front and behind her. A few second more and tapes were undone, the sodden diaper no longer compressed against her, its weight making it unwieldy to hold in place. Jeannie didn't try, let it fall to the ground, a splodge as it landed revealing its well used state. People passing heard the sound, looked across. Jeannie heard gasps, didn't care, ignored them. She reached into her bag and took out the wipes, moistened but scentless, and wiped herself clean. The used wipes went into a small plastic bag which she put away, pulling out in its place a new diaper, pristine and clean. Even as a small audience gathered she pulled it between her legs and drew it up to her waist, well practiced in changing while stood up. The top tapes went in place, nipping it tight above her hips, then the lower ones, assuring a secure seal around her legs. The next part was the tricky one, reaching between her legs to find the rear flap of her diaper shirt, drawing it through and up far enough that she could fasten the poppers again, let the shirt do its job of safely holding the diaper in place. That done she shook her skirt, let it fall into position and hide her diaper shirt, hide the diaper it held. Looking up she glared at the people watching and spoke for the first time, cutting through their muttered displeasure. "Haven't you seen a diaper change before? Fucking perverts." "The cheek!" exclaimed one woman, before her partner shushed her. A different man just grinned at Jeannie and addressed her directly. "You mean that wasn't a piece of performance art?" he said. "Funny you should ask," said Jeannie. She squatted down, picked up the diaper that was still between her feet and picked it up by one end. The expensive diaper hadn't lost its integrity, the stuffing inside still uniformly spread, even with its whole wet weight hanging from the front waistband. Jeannie walked up to the wall and used her forearm to hold that waistband against it. Reaching into her bag once more with her other hand Jeannie pulled out two nails. With her arm against the wall she held one of them to the corner of the diaper and her spare hand delved into her bag once more. A small hammer came out which she used to nail the diaper to the wall. A second nail at the top, then two more at the rear waistband of the diaper, leaving it flat against the wall, a vertical hourglass shape with the clearly wet padding facing the people watching. The culmination of her protest was a small stencilled placard, double-sided sticky tape already on the back. She peeled off the protective layer and stuck it on the wall beside her used diaper. As she walked away, tucking her hammer back into her bag she heard the man reading it out. "Flooding; a Climate Change Catastrophe in Action" A murmur from within the crowd but she had someone else demanding her attention. A security guard, taking her arm firmly and drawing her forward. "Sorry Ma'am, I need to escort you to the security office." Jeannie said nothing, let them lead her to a large room behind a strong door, a wall full of monitors showing different parts of the museum. In amusement she realised a camera must have caught her entire change, and was even now showing a crowd of people gathered around her used diaper. The door opened and a police officer entered. She spoke to the security guard, "Is this the lady?" "Yes," said the security guard, "She's been no trouble since the indecency and vandalism, but we have a zero tolerance policy so we'll be pressing charges." Jeannie shrugged. She'd expected that, would use the court appearance to share her views on modern art, on museums with inadequate changing facilities. She could probably get media appearances from this, earn more than her dead end job. Her only regret was that man who'd spoken to her; she should have got his number. As the police officer led Jeannie from the office an elderly lady came scurrying up to them. "Stop," said the lady, "There's been a terrible mistake." "Oh?" asked the police officer, "I'm sorry, who are you?" The lady introduced herself, "I'm Gerty Kowalciz, I'm the museum's Art Director." She showed an ID badge hanging on the lanyard around her neck to the police officer. "I see, Ms Kowalciz, and what's the mistake here?" "Our security team weren't aware of our new artist in residence, and apprehended her while she was creating our latest exhibit," gushed Gerty, slightly breathless and clearly anxious, "I'm so sorry for the false alarm, and hope it hasn't caused you too much inconvenience." 'Artist in residence?' thought Jeannie. "Artist in residence?" asked the police officer. "Yes," said Gerty, "Now if you pop into our cafe on your way out, I'll call ahead and let them know you've been so helpful. They'll be happy to make you a nice coffee, and I do recommend our in-house scones." Turning away from the police officer she turned to Jeannie and took her arm. "I'm sorry for the misunderstanding, let's go and discuss your superb work." Jeannie shrugged in amusement at the police officer and let herself be led through the museum again. Ushered into a small office she sat down and looked up at Gerty, who paced nervously by the window. "So?" asked Jeannie, "What was that all about?" Gerty stopped pacing and looked at her. "I have a favour to ask," she eventually said, "Umm. This is quite embarrassing." Jeannie waited patiently. "We've sold your exhibit," said Gerty, "Would you be willing to sell that used diaper you nailed to our wall to us?" "Sell?" asked Jeannie in astonishment, "How much are we talking?" "Well," said Gerty, "Our standard commission is 15% but since we've agreed a sale without your permission we'll waive that so after tax, you'd receive.." She thought for a few moments then continued, "Just over two hundred thousand dollars. One of the patrons was very taken by it." Jeannie didn't speak, just looked at her in shock. "Two hundred thousand dollars?" she asked. Gerty nodded, but seemed distracted. "There's another thing," she said, "the patron that made the offer wants to know if you have any other works available. He's willing to pay the same again, and if they're matching works add some extra too. You could make half a million here." Jeannie thought fast. Media appearances wouldn't pay this much, and after selling a used diaper for $200k she'd be able to do the circuit anyway. "I could create a matching piece," she suggested, "Find me spicy tacos for lunch and I'll have something for you before you close tonight." "You can produce your art that quickly?" asked Gerty, "I'm not sure another wet diaper would be sufficiently unique to attract him. What will the new piece be called?" Jeannie grinned. "Oh, it'll be different, I promise," she said, "Might need to leave it to settle a few days before taking it home though. As for a name.." She reached across the desk in front of her, pulled a piece of paper towards her and wrote on it. "Landslide; a Climate Change Catastrophe in Action"

Chapter 5 The first question on Wendy’s test was. “True or false: Common law has an exception to the battle of forms which allows for acceptance.” She didn’t know. Skip it. Come back to it later. The second question was. “Why did Pope Innocent III abolish Trial by Ordeal?” No clue. Couldn’t remember. Come back to it later. Find the easy questions. Her eyes skimmed down the test. “Which Supreme Court case supported validation requirements for performance appraisals?” Crap! The questions at the top were the easy ones! She flipped through the exam to the long form essay part. She could bullshit an essay easily enough. “I am writing a brief. “The case of Erie R. Co. v Tompkins 304 U.S. 64. (1938). I understand the facts of the case, but I am not sure about the holding and reasoning. Please provide me a summary of the holding and reasoning as it pertains to this case.” She read it three times and still didn’t know how to answer it. The first two times she read it it was in one eyeball and out the other. The third time it stuck, but she couldn’t even remember the case. But part of being a lawyer was knowing how to bullshit, or so Wendy reasoned. If she could stretch it out while saying very little, her professor might accidentally construct meaning and knowledge where none had been intended. Who knows. It was very possible that if she started writing something in her brian might turn on. “Okay…” she whispered to herself. “You can do this. You can do this.” And she took her pencil and started to write. And write. And write. And write. And write. It was actually getting pretty easy, even though Wendy was certain she was putting nothing of substance on paper. Soon her gears got to turning and her confidence built up. Oh yeah! She remembered that! And that!. She flipped back to the short answer part of the test and started filling things in. It was all coming back to her now! Her Daddy had been right! She really had just been overthinking things and worried. In no time at all, she was done! Proudly she stood up, head and shoulders above Lindsay and Morgan and Tonya and Peter. Those scrubs were still toiling over their tests, sweating bullets! Waddling over to the proctor’s desk, she proudly. “I’m dooooone!” she sang so loudly she almost shouted. Gifted Kid was back! The professor arched an eyebrow. “You’re done?” “Yup-yup!” Wendy nodded. “All done! I go home now?” “Young lady,” the bald withered old professor said, looking over the test. “This is incredible!” Wendy beamed. “I did good?” The professor pursed his lips together, searching for the right words. “I feel you did a very good job choosing lots of different colors.” The law student blanched. “Colors?” “And you almost stayed in the lines on some of these bubble in answers.” All of the circles for the multiple choice segments were filled or otherwise scribbled in. All of them. But the professor was right. The colors were pretty. He flipped a page over. “And I really appreciate the detail you went into for the short answers. Is this a yellow bunny on a blue hill? “It’s a brown bunny on a gween hill.” What was she saying?! The words were just coming out of her. “Ah,” the professor said. “I see. I see.” He flipped over to the essay portion that Wendy had started out bullshitting on before her brain kicked into high gear. “Very good use of space and blending.” The entire back portion of the test was a mess of overlapping scribbles; calling them drawings or doodles would be an insult to drawings and doodles. “I believe this belongs on the refrigerator at home in a spot of prominence!” He looked over the rim of his glasses. “But not in my classroom.” Wendy took a step back in surprise and found her shock doubled. Her gait was wider than it should have been. There was not-quite paper crinkle too. “No cwasswoom?” she gasped. “I think you, my dear, are a little too, well…little to be in this class. A daycare or perhaps a babysitter seems more your speed for extra-curricular parental attention.” He pointed off to a far corner. “Why don’t you wait over there for your Mommy or Daddy to come and get you?” Wendy had to pivot and wobble all the way around to see where her professor was pointing. In the corner of the exam hall was a pile of stuffed animals, rainbow colored bears and a giant tan stuffed bunny with an orange carrot dangling from its mouth, as well as the odd rattle and cardboard book. “How did…? Me no baby!” She barely registered what she was saying. “Why don’t you go find a nice soft block to teethe on,” the old man said condescendingly. Then he called out to the rest of the college students, “Does anyone have any erm…baby care supplies? I don’t have any children, but it doesn’t take an expert to realize when one is in need of, shall we say, freshening up.” Wendy looked down between her legs. She had no skirt or pants; nothing to cover her bare legs. No shoes or socks either. The only article of clothing below her belly button was the massive Pampers taped around her waist and sagging between her legs. And based on the color changing line running down the middle, she was indeed very, very wet. But she couldn’t otherwise tell that she was wet. Outside of a bathtub or playing in the sprinkler, she realized she couldn’t tell what wet was. Nor could she remember the name of the color between her thighs telling all the big people that she needed changing. Boo? Was it boo? Or maybe rad? No! No no no! She wasn’t a baby! She was a grown woman! She was going to be a lawyer! Her legs wobbled and from up atop her perch of adulthood, little Wendy Merts plummeted to the ground, crashing down on her- Wendy woke up with a jump. “Wah!” She gasped, her body jerking on the nap mat of the daycare floor. A dream. It was only a dream. Just a dream. She wasn’t back in the real world, yet. Just this one. In a weird way, that was good. Being a little baby in this universe where she was supposed to be a little baby was infinitely preferable to being a grown woman in hers who had somehow been busted back to preschool. She wasn’t back on the other side of the closet, and knowing that made it a little more tolerable when her brain finally caught up to reality. The dimmed lights flickered on in the Ladybug Room. “Okay boys and girls,” Miss Donna sang. “It’s time to get up. Your Mommies and Daddies and Aunties and Uncles and Grammas and Grampas will all be here to pick you up in an hour or so.” “And they’ll be very unhappy with us if you’re awake in your cribs all night because we let you nap too long,” Miss Jay added, cheerfully. Miss Donna and Miss Jay. A black woman in her mid forties to early fifties at most; and an older though by no means frail white woman respectively. Her teachers. Her caregivers when Mommy and Daddy were away. They didn’t cuddle as good as Mommy and Daddy but they still fed her and changed her and played with her and made her feel safe. In this reality… In real life, Wendy had never met these two, and as far as she could remember neither of her parents had ever talked about this daycare or these women; and she had never seen a baby picture hinting at this place’s existence. Some of the other babies had names that coincided with her real life adult classmates, but correlating a young twenty-something college student’s behavior with a crawling, babbling, pants pooping infant, was hard work. She had no way of knowing for sure if these rugrats were in fact the baby versions of her college classmates, or if the women who worked here had any connection to her past or present. Considering the only reason she’d tried to go forward with this reality hopping scheme was because she’d noticed a direct and pleasant correlation between what happened in the closet universe having positive and much more adult appropriate echoes in her own- a baby puzzle in one resulting in a fantastic study guide, for example- the current dearth of parallels were most disturbing. Some annoying itch at the back of her brain made her want to see if this place existed back on the other side and if these ladies worked here or not. Regrettably they did not make a pamphlet for how to deal with this sort of thing or explain to a stranger that you were curious if they remembered wiping your bum when you were less than a year old in a pocket reality just the other day. Some of the other babies sat up from their nap mats and started crawling around. Others contented themselves with staying seated or remaining on their backs and gazing up at the ceiling. One or two still snoozed, practically comatose in spite of the increasing noise and light. Wendy stayed seated on the comfy mat and took the time to look herself over. Chubby fingers at the end of chubby hands and arms. Legs and feet that matched. No breasts and the only curves on her body was from her tummy and the padding around her butt. She patted at her head and felt only fine wispy patches of hair, so short that even looking up at the very top of her periphery she couldn’t see any strands. Her hair wasn’t that short due to scissors, she’d just reached a point where it hadn’t grown enough. She felt a clump of it on the very top of her noggin in a Pebbles Flintstone type ponytail, but that was it. Outside of that and the purple onesie with the crinoline tutu flare around her waist, it would have been very difficult for someone to know that she was a baby girl. A strange experience, feeling like a stranger in one’s own body. She looked down between her legs, but snaps kept even the diaper beneath her onesie out of sight. She was dry and comfortable, at least. That was a relief. Unconsciously, her tongue started to work it’s way around in her mouth. On an academic level, she wasn’t surprised to feel her tongue sliding past mostly gums. That didn’t make it any more shocking. Only a few measly bumps at the very front. They weren’t even full fledged teeth! Not really! A slight itching sensation and her tongue moving closer to the gums as one of those tiny emerging teeth re-submerged back inside. Yikes! Tiny nostrils flared and tiny lungs paced themselves and strained to stop from turning into full on wracking sobbing. Wendy rubbed her eyes to stop the tears from coming out and spilling all over her chubby cheeks. This was not time for a breakdown or a crisis. Not now. Not when she was so close! Mommy would be here any time now to pick her up, and take her home. She just had to keep enough of her marbles in one basket until the chickens hatched. Then she could cross that bridge in her nursery back to big girl world and get on with the rest of her very big, very mature, very adult life. A pair of hands hoisted baby Wendy off the ground. “Good afternoon Wendy,” Miss Jay asked. “Did you have a nice nap, pretty girl? Lots of sweet dreams?” Wendy made no effort to reply. One of the first facts about this universe was that no one could understand her, no matter how articulate she was. “Let’s get you changed into something dry and playing.” A nearly toothless smirk framed Wendy’s rounded face. The joke was on Miss Jay. She’d be amazed at just how grown-up and advanced Wendy was for her so-called age. Wendy folded her arms confidently and laid there on the changing table while the granny unbuttoned her snaps and peeled back the onesie. Nothing was said, though… Miss Jay just went for the little velcro tabs on her diaper and ripped them loose. “Wait. What’s going on? What are you doing? I’m dry!” That’s what she’d meant to say, anyway. The words that tumbled out of her mouth couldn’t even be properly classified as words. Just pure baby babble. What Wendy had actually said, if put into prose would require the writer to smash a keyboard with their fist and then delete letters at random. “Are you singing for me, Wendy?” Miss Jay asked, crossing Wendy’s baby ankles and lifting her legs towards the ceiling. “Is that what you’re doing, baby girl?” No! It wasn’t what she was doing. Not at all! Trying to tell the grown-up that was only resulting in more of the same total gibberish. She couldn’t talk! At all! She could still think; she still thought in words as she understood the concept, but she had none of them available to use with her mouth! She had jammed her fingers into her mouth to stop herself from babbling. Maybe all of her words weren’t gone. Maybe just the big ones or the very long sentences. Maybe she could still say the words if they were very very simple. Babies could do that, right? Right. What was a simple word, though? Cat? Dog? No, too obvious. Wouldn’t something obvious be good, though? Simple? Oh! How about ‘boat!’ she could say ‘boat’! Wendy took her fingers out and concentrated on making her mouth work as hard as she could. “Ga!” No that wasn’t it. “Meh!” Still no! ‘Meh’ didn’t sound anything like ‘boat’. “Bobobobo!” No! That wasn’t even the same length. What about ‘cat’? “Uk!” That was wrong too! ‘Dog’? “Akka!” No! “Urgle!” She couldn’t even say ‘no’. Everything just came out as random syllables. Complete gibberish. “Caaaaaa!” That one was supposed to be ‘ga!’ Eeeeeem!” That had been another attempt at ‘boat’. She couldn’t even babble in a one-to-one ratio. No matter what word her brain tried to think of, her mouth was going to say whatever it wanted to. “Cab-b-b-b-b-b-b-umpf-Gah!!” All the while, Miss Jay just kept doing unnecessary cleaning to her back and nethers. “You are a soggy little thing,” the old woman clucked. “Nothing that can’t be fixed though with a little powder to dry you out and a fresh pamper.” Her mouth hung agape and even more babbling cries of shock and disbelief poured out. She was wet? Impossible, yet the caregiver had no reason to lie. It was just like earlier, except she’d done it in her sleep and upon waking couldn’t tell the difference! Her dream had been right! She’d completely lost her potty training. The only thing adult about her was her mind, now. Yet if she couldn’t even talk or tell the difference between having wet pants and dry ones, was she really that much of an adult? All of this existential pondering, surprise and terror came out as more unintelligible baby talk that sounded foreign to even Wendy’s tiny ears. None of it stopped or dissuaded Miss Jay from finishing the job she’d started. She finished powdering and sealing the fresh diaper, oblivious to Wendy’s very adult existential crisis. “You’re so talkative today!” Wendy wasn’t! She really wasn’t! “Maybe soon you’ll start saying real words that I can understand!” A faint flash of hope flickered in Wendy’s mind. Miss Jay thought she’d be talking soon! That obviously wasn’t going to happen, today, that’s just not how this reality worked. Everything was backwards for her, not forwards. However, maybe it meant that she’d be remembered as saying or doing something impressive back in the real world. Maybe singing? Maybe that was a hint? It was comforting enough to quiet Wendy down and ease her panic over the state of her body, mind, and words. Miss Jay sat her down on the carpet and went to get another baby to clean up before their parents arrived. Wendy crawled away, babbling happily to herself, congratulating herself. More time in this place likely meant greater accolades when she returned to adulthood. With those accolades in mind, Wendy crawled over to an unoccupied toy. A white plastic pole that was thinner at the top than it was at the bottom, but the difference wasn’t so vast as to call the shape a cone. Scattered around it- likely during her change by one of her friends- were several plastic rings of different colors and sizes. The mission? Get all the rings stacked on top at once. Super easy. Even a baby could do it. Wendy reached out and grabbed the first ring, and by ‘first’ that is to say that it was the ring closest to her. She was having trouble describing the color; it was somewhere between grass or platypus; closer to unripe banana or grapes. All of those things went on the ground, so it only made sense that this would be the bottom rung. She scooted closer to the pole, scooting on her butt and dragging herself forward with the heels of her feet until she was practically straddling the toy. Using both hands and still fumbling, she placed the ring on top of the stacking pole and pushed it as far down. Unfortunately, the farthest down it would slide was firmly in the middle. No problem. Not a problem at all. Wendy just flopped over to her side, grabbed the second ring the color of grapes…the other kind…and pushed herself up to the side. It landed on top of the first ring, the ring that looked like the other kind of grapes, and clocked against it. It was bigger than the first ring, too. Bigger was genuinely better. Heavier. It was a solid strategy. Wendy concentrated, running her tongue in her mouth and feeling the tiny bumps that were the start of her baby teeth; waiting for the heaviness of the second ring to push the first ring stuck in the middle all the way down. She waited, and waited…and waited… Why wasn’t it going down? Obviously it needed more heavy. Nothing left to do but to grab a third ring and get ready to slam it down with all the might her tiny body could muster. She couldn’t remember the name of the color, but it was the same color as Daddy’s orange juice. Oooooh! Maybe the ring tasted like orange juice! That would be yummy! Hesitation long since lost, Wendy opened her mouth and bit down on the orange juice colored ring. Her eyebrows knitted together in consternation and disappointment. It tasted nothing like orange juice. It was closer in flavor to the plastic keys that Daddy had let her play with this morning, albeit much softer. Her face suddenly un-scrunched itself. She kept chewing. The flavor wasn’t anything to talk about, but the feelings it gave her mouth were very very good! It was like scratching an itch she didn’t know she had and now that she’d found it she didn’t want to stop. It felt good, but putting it on the ring meant she’d have to stop. It’d be like getting out of a hot spring in the snow. From comfort to discomfort in a flash! No thank you! She opted instead to scoot away and over to get another ring, an apple one that was very tiny compared to either of the grapes. Gnawing on her orange juice ring, she took a moment to inspect it, and noticed that not only was it apple colored, but it had tiny tiny balls inside it that she could see by looking through the clear side. She did a double take. In fact, all the rings also had a clear side! Neat! Wendy had very little confidence in her ability to get the balls out, but it might be fun to see if there was a noticeable difference between this ring and the one she was gnawing on. Tentatively, she shook the smallest ring and sent the tiny balls whirring inside, buzzing by skidding against the top and bottom of the hollow shell! How would that feel in her mouth? She shook. She just shook and squealed around the orange juice ring, flapping her arms excitedly. She didn’t even care that more baby babble was burbling up out of her and around the plastic thing she had in her mouth. Too exciting! Now, the real question was: Which ring should go back on top of the pole to try to make the grape rings go down, and which one should stay in her mouth? Decisions, decisions. Miss Donna came by with her clipboard and jotted something down. “Good job, Wendy,” Miss Donna said. “You keep trying, honey bunch.” She was doing it! She was doing it! This wasn’t going to be like in her dream at all! More happy baby noises came out of her! Scritch-Scriiiiiitch. Wendy’s ears wiggled at a sound that was becoming increasingly familiar to them. One she’d heard just a few minutes ago, and much louder because of how close it had been. Orange juice ring still in her mouth, she dropped the apple ring with all the delightful jangly bits on the ground so that she could pivot and scoot around with her feet and free hand. “Whoof!” Miss Jay waid, fanning her nose. “Petey, what is your Mommy feeding you at home to make that?” Oh. Petey was just just getting his diaper changed. Miss Jay was wiping him and tossing in the dirty wipes on top of the mess he’d made and quickly balling it all up and tossing it into the trash. Standard procedure. Petey was giggling and babbling something to himself between finger chomps. The sounds she’d heard were just the velcro tapes on his diaper being torn off, just like when she got her diaper changed just a few minutes ago. The orange juice colored ring fell from Wendy’s mouth and rolled away from her. She didn’t go after it. “Bubu?” Yes. Yes, her. She’d been on that very same elevated surface, getting one diaper swapped out for another, naked from the waist down in front of an old woman and everyone else who happened to look. She hadn’t been embarrassed at all. The thought of any sort of modesty hadn’t even occurred to her. She’d wanted to die just a few hours ago, but her mind and emotions had already readily acclimated to the act that robbed her of so much autonomy, independence, and self-respect. Even though she was busy trying to control her mouth, that was no excuse! For all she knew all the other babies were going through something similar, experimenting with words and language with their tops while someone else worried about their bottoms. Other babies… Oh crud! Only when she couldn’t really talk was she actually listening to herself! She needed to get out of here! Now! This time babble didn’t come. In its place was worried and fretful fussing cries. Balled up fists and scrunched up eyes followed. Through her own screams she was aware of Miss Jay’s far off voice. “Awww, what’s wrong Wendy? Did you bite your tongue or something?” Two very strong hands grabbed Wendy by the armpits and picked her up. Somewhere in the back of her brain, she knew it was Miss Donna. She knew her sitters by sight, sound, smell, and touch, now. At least two of those things would take more than a day to register so strongly. Her body immediately clung to the grown-up’s shoulder, with one massive hand supporting Wendy beneath and the other one steadying her behind her back. “No,” Miss Donna said. “I don’t think so. Doesn’t sound like an owie cry. More like a scared cry or…” she paused and Wendy felt the grown-up carefully pat her backside and then stick her fingers through the leg cuffs of her diaper. Wendy kept crying, anyway. “I don’t think it’s that,” Miss Jay called over Wendy’s crying. “I just changed her.” “Yeah,” Miss Donna confirmed. “It’s not that.” She started whispering and cooing to Wendy. “What’s the matter, honeybunch?” She started gently shushing Wendy and patting the girl’s back. More confounding, Wendy’s little body liked it, and little by little, even though she didn’t want to, she calmed down. Her emotions were quieted, if not under control; or more accurately, they were under control, just not Wendy’s. “It’s okay,” Miss Donna promised. “It’s okay. Whatever it is, it'll be alright.” Deep in her heart, she knew it wouldn’t be. Not until she could get home. Not until she saw her- “Hello, hello!” Wendy lifted her head up off of Miss Donna’s shoulder. She knew that voice! “Awwwwk!” “Look who’s here, Wendy!” Miss Donna beamed. “It’s Mommy!” Standing on the other side of the baby gated doorway, with a big toothy smile, and arms outstretched, back from a day of teaching and grading papers, was Mommy! Granted, Wendy already knew that, and had said as much…kind of. “Hi Wendy!” Mommy squeaked. “Did you miss me?” Miss Donna wasted no time in striding across the Ladybug Room and handing the baby girl over to her mother. “You bet she did, Mom!” A quick handoff, and Wendy’s position and mood considerably improved. Mommy bobbed and rocked Wendy a little bit while repositioning her so as to hold her and they both be comfortable. “How was she today?” Mommy asked Miss Donna. “Oh she was great,” Miss Donna said. “She played. She did some cruising. Ate all her food at lunch. Went right down for her nap.” She was ticking them off like a list on her fingers. “She was a little cranky just a second before you came in, but I’m thinking she just was getting a little homesick, y’know?” Mommy gave Wendy a kiss. “Awww, I missed you too, Wendy.” Then she gave a couple more. “I’m so glad to have you back.” Wendy giggled furiously. She was happy to have her Mommy back too. Everything would be better now. Mommy redirected her attention to Miss Donna. “And…the test?” “Test?” Miss Donna said. “Oh you mean the developmental screenings?” “Yes, that one.” Mommy said. “How did she do? “Caa!” Wendy burbled. She wanted to know too. “Whelp. We’re not done yet,” Miss Donna admitted. “Our screenings are less like a pen and paper lab test and more just setting up circumstances and seeing how they react.” “That makes sense,” Mommy nodded. Wendy was less agreeable. She squirmed uncomfortably in Mommy’s arms. Would this mean she’d have to come back tomorrow? Was her exam in the real world suddenly multiple parts or something? “And we don’t do it all at once. We don’t want to stress the kids out.” “Of course not.” Wendy was starting to stress. If she left and didn’t come back, would her law school examination be mysteriously incomplete? “So we just sit back and record. We encourage a little bit here and there, but nothing too intense. It’s all about what they can do and what they can show us. Not what they can’t do.” “Well?” Mommy asked, biting her lip. “What can she do?” Miss Donna waved off both mother and daughter’s anxiety. “Personally? I don’t think you have anything to worry about. We’re not seeing any signs of developmental delay. I think Wendy’s right where she needs to be right now.” Mommy visibly relaxed. “Phew. Sorry. That’s good to hear.” Wendy did not. “Caaagaa?” That had been baby for, “What do you mean right where I need to be? Like average? I’m not average! I’m advanced! Gifted! I should be acing this test!” Did that mean that she was getting a C on her law exam? If so, what did that mean for her? This reality was supposed to affect the real one, not the other way around! There was a slim chance she could have bullshitted her way to a C and she wouldn’t have lost her boobs, butt, teeth, and toilet training for it! Mommy bounced Wendy a little bit. “I’ve got a squirmy wormy on my hands,” Mommy said. “Better get her home.” “Okie dokie,” Miss Donna chirped. “Bye Wendy! Bye Mom! See you tomorrow!” With what remained of Wendy’s adult brain, a defiant resolve started to brew. Despite being in her Mommy’s arms, she was metaphorically standing beside herself with indignation. She wasn’t ever going to see Miss Donna or this dumb daycare ever again! Incomplete or not, she’d definitely finished her test in the real world. Miss Donna didn’t know what she was talking about. … The car road home was agonizing for Wendy. Mommy had the same rear facing car seat with a mirror set up in the back that Daddy did, but now Wendy barely recognized her own body. She was almost a blob now: Hardly any hair. Arms that barely worked. Legs that were even worse. A mouth that was only good for slurping, sucking, drooling, and making noise, and no control of her insides. She was cute. Precious. Adorable. Loved. And just knowing that she was thinking that about herself alarmed her to no end. She was only now beginning to realize the full breadth and depth of basic skills that were evaporating out of her grasp. She had to get home. She had to go back to her real home; where she was an adult. If she spent much longer like this, it occurred to her, she might very well have to grow up and learn everything all over again. How awful! Curse whatever fate or force had robbed her of vocabulary like the color of different grapes but left her with enough imagination to picture such things! The car stopped, but the motor was still running. Where were they? Why were they stopping? Did Mommy have more places to go than straight home? Why weren’t they moving?! Without realizing it, Wendy let out a screech. “It’s just a red light, honey. Mommy has to stop.” Wendy balled up her fists and re-scrunched her face. No she didn’t! Which one was red?! So what if it was? She was scared and confused and just wanted to go home and anything that kept her from getting exactly what she wanted was terrible, and tragic, and scary, and needed to stop or go away whichever came first! The car started moving again, and Wendy quieted down. Good. It worked. Until it didn’t. “Red light!” Wendy let her displeasure be known until Mommy or the red light (whatever that was) listened and kept going. At the third stop, Wendy saw Mommy rooting around in the passenger seat for something. She then leaned back and gave Wendy a bottle. “Here, honey. Are you thirsty?” Automatically, Wendy’s tiny hands gripped the bottle and shoved the nipple into her mouth, downing the creamy milk. It was cold. It had probably been refrigerated all day while Mommy was working. “I know it’s not as good as just before bed, but Mommy made it just for you during her lunch break.” Made? Made how? Did Mommy own a cow at school? Impossible! Also, there might have been something wrong with Wendy’s tongue. Something was different about this bottle. It was still very obviously milk, but it didn’t taste quite like the milk she drank since time immemorial. Not bad. Just different. Perhaps, she speculated, that infant tongues were more sensitive than grown-up tongues, and no one could tell. Every other part of her body looked and worked differently than as an adult. Clearly the tongue wasn’t an exception. Different though it may taste, the milk was still very good. Comforting. Nostalgic and familiar, like opening up a tub of one’s favorite icecream after a long day at work. The lights and stopping were far far easier to cope with. “You’re right where you should be,” Mommy repeated. She adjusted her shirt. “I guess that means Mommy should start weaning you more.” She smiled, more to herself than to Wendy. “But I think I’ll wait till you’re one. I like our special mommy daughter bond.” Bodily, Wendy kept slurping down the milk. Internally, Wendy realized, too late, that it didn’t taste like cow’s milk because it wasn’t cow’s milk. She tried to stop herself, but her mouth and tongue weren’t under her control, and some ingrained habit or instinct kept her draining the bottle until it was dry. All. The way. Home. Wendy did not cry when she saw the reflection of her house. Rather, she was finally able to rip the rubber nipple from her mouth and let out a healthy belch. At least she could still do that on her own! Mommy turned the car off, came around to the back, and got Wendy out of her carseat. “Come on baby. Let’s go play for a little bit.” Both halves of Wendy’s psyche smiled at that. Playtime meant an opportunity! For play! For attention! For freedom! She didn’t even mind when Mommy opened a snap on her onesie and stared at her diaper. “You’re okay for now.” Wendy would take it! One less change meant one less babyish thing to go through. It was a bit concerning that she was declared ‘okay’ instead of ‘dry’, but she’d take the win where she could find it, no matter how narrow the margin of success. The inside of the house looked familiar, and alien all at once to Wendy’s infant eyes. Everything was huge again! Not just the baby stuff that needed to stretch and inflate to accommodate her. The television was practically a movie screen. The bookcase in the living room was a tower. The couch was a bouncy castle! And the family picture on the way to her bedroom no longer looked so out of place. In it, there was a Mommy, a Daddy, and a baby girl not even a year old sitting in a pretty pink dress and white tights, the big floppy bow was more wrapped around her head than weaved and tied into her wisps of hair . And she was smiling a big, goofy, innocent smile; likely because the man behind the camera had a squeaky toy or something. A perfect family moment captured in a studio setting. That more than anything else that had happened so far today made Wendy worry about how much time she had left. Yesterday in the tub, her frazzled brain had almost completely forgotten that she didn’t belong here. The possibility of return had barely occurred to her until Daddy had seen her standing there naked. Now that she looked the part she’d been cast in and adult thoughts were becoming rarer and rarer, she might not even think to crawl back into her closet. It wasn’t a problem, Wendy realized. Even in this state with her reduced vocabulary and gross motor skills, she knew enough about herself to still keep who she was on the inside. All she had to do was stay focused and be patient. Mommy would leave her alone in her room soon enough. All it would take was one minute leaving to talk to Daddy or fetch something from the kitchen or search for a toy that had been left in the living room and Wendy could crawl back to the safety and sanity of her big girl room and big girl life . “Back in your room, safe and sound!” Mommy sang. She put Wendy down on the carpet and closed the door. Not a problem since the bedroom door wasn’t Wendy’s way out of this place. Mommy kicked off her shoes and started browsing the room. “Now what to play with what to play with?” Wendy took a moment and sat on her bottom, her Pampers pushing her legs apart, and just took in the sight of it all. Everything was so big, now. So humongous. Knowing that nothing would change just made it all the more real. The changing table and the diapers wouldn’t warp because they already fit her. The crib railing wouldn’t need to rise to keep her contained. It wouldn’t be a mystical force keeping her from turning a knob and opening a door but her own physical limitations. Mommy wouldn’t look ridiculous dressing or changing her, or holding her. Nor would she be particularly awkward looking. Nothing would be out of proportion. Wendy had been through this experience already at the daycare, but something about it being in her room made it all hit differently. She knew these four walls and this roof, even if the furniture was foreign to her. And it was all so big. Except it wasn’t. She was just little. A baby… “Waaaaaa!” No! Those thoughts didn’t belong in her head! She didn’t belong in this place! This place, this time, this universe! She looked to the closet door, her gateway back home. There wasn’t a shining flare of extra dimension light there anymore. Just a teen tiny mote, no bigger than the beam of a flashlight, shimmering like a mirage in the desert. The gears in Wendy’s mind began rotating fast enough to make sparks. Looking back in her memories, she realized that the light from the other side had been getting dimmer and smaller all along. She’d thought she was just getting used to it; that her eyes were adjusting; but really the cut in both realities had been slowly closing itself like a wound scabbing over. She’d drastically underestimated and misunderstood something. This reality wasn’t just trying to get her to conform to it. This wasn’t some magical baby universe. She was a foreigner, an invader, and instead of trying to kick her out or destroy her, it was ‘fixing’ her. She was supposed to be a baby here, and that tear in her closet shouldn't exist. She was running out of time and had more than just her own dwindling focus to worry about keeping her here. Screw patience! No time to wait! Even if it meant making a break for it with Closet Mommy in the room! With surprising alacrity, Wendy leaned forward and straddled past her splayed out legs, crawling her hands out towards the carpet and snaking over her own legs to plop over on her ber. Wow…she was…very bendable like this. No way was she going to take her eyes off that little winking beam. From her stomach it was minimal effort to gather her legs up underneath her and she shuffled and crawled to the open closet. An arm scooped Wendy up under her belly. “Where do you think you’re goin’?” Mommy cooed playfully. She spared a look towards Wendy’s destination. “The closet? It’s not time to get dressed yet, silly goose!” “Gaaaaaaah!” Wendy fussed. Ironically, that was the exact sound to express the potent mixture of fear and frustration that she was feeling. “It’s not time to play hide and seek either,” Mommy replied with saccharine sweetness in her voice. Wendy had genuinely thought that her Closet Mommy was preoccupied with finding the right toy. It seemed that the now-giant woman had eyes everywhere and ears that could hear the slightest crinkle in a crawl. With one impossibly long arm, Mommy put Wendy back down on the floor, facing away from the closet. With the other, she held a bright sunshine ball with a smiley face on it. “Let’s play with the ball. Can you say ball?” “Caa!” What Wendy had meant to say was likely far cruder than what came out of her mouth. “Baaalll!” Mommy said, enunciating each individual phoneme to the point of exaggeration. “Let’s play with the ball. She put the little rubber ball-just slightly bigger than a softball-on the carpet and gently rolled it to Wendy. Wendy sat there, practically forced to catch it because the ball trapped itself between her legs, scuffing and slowing on the carpet, gaining even more friction on her tutu, and lightly bouncing off her padded crotch and coming to a rest just before her knees. With an exasperated, practically defeated sigh, Wendy bent over and used both hands to pick up the orb. The younger version of her mother clapped excitedly “Yaaaay! Wendy did it!” A spring of excitement bubbled up and Wendy couldn’t help it. She twittered and tweeted at the praise, not caring if it was relevant or deserved. A growing, near cancerous part of her loved it. “Okay, Wendy,” Mommy said. “Now throw it back! Throw it back to Mommy!” The very beginnings of an idea sprang to life in Wendy’s still big girl brain. Gripping the ball in both hands, she wound her arms up, hiked them over and behind her head, and catapulted the orb to the other side of the nursery! Then Mommy would have to go get it, and that would buy her the time she needed. Oooh, the crib would be better! Something to make Mommy have to crawl on the floor. “Ooopsie!” Mommy said. “You dropped it!” Sluggishly Wendy turned around and looked behind her. In her excitement she’d dropped the ball and saw it rolling towards her closet. “Mommy’s got it!” The grown up stood up and on long striding legs, stepped over to the closet. Just like her father on the other side, she paid no mind whatsoever to the faint rip in reality whilst she retrieved the ball. LIGHT! BLINDING LIGHT! Like a curtain peeled back or a wound being reopened, that same spot light supernova dazzling light poured into the nursery when Closet Mommy’s head so much as brushed past the closet’s threshold. Better still, she didn’t seem to notice it. Everyone but Wendy was still totally oblivious to the rip. And being oblivious to it once again went on par with being unable to use it, her Mommy’s body passing through like it was just smoke. Meanwhile, Wendy could see it waver brightly, shining through the room even as it rapidly dimmed back. That meant there was still a chance! Mommy came back and sat down across from her little girl, holding the ball. “Let’s do it again!” Yes! Let’s! “One…two…threeeeeee!” Through no effort of her own, Wendy obtained the ball, this time it lightly ricocheting off her thighs. “Yaaaaaay Wendy!” Wendy focused through the chubby cheeked smile that was uncomfortably contorting her face. Yay, Wendy indeed. She grabbed the ball, wound back and- “Ooops!” Mommy said. Wendy giggled loud and hard when Mommy had to get up and walk over to the closet again. There was no stifling or muting the joyful noise. “If I didn’t know any better,” Mommy said, “I’d say you were doing that on purpose.” She playfully shook her finger at Wendy. “If you do that one more time, you’re gonna have to get it yourself, young lady.” So when the opportunity arose…she did. “Uh oh!” Mommy cooed. “You did it again! Now you have to go get it!” Wendy flapped her hands and shoved her fingers into her mouth, she was so happy, and for multiple reasons. Not only had her plan worked, but Mommy liked how far she’d thrown the ball behind her! Mommy’s pseudo-stern voice turned into playful whispers, and urging for Wendy to “go get it.” The law student trapped in a baby’s body was happy to oblige. Hissing and panting, she rolled over to her hands and knees and started crawling for her closet, her way home. There was still the tiniest sliver of light left. Still a chance that she could pull this off and leave all of this behind. Head down looking at the floor, she crawled towards the nearly invisible portal, the rip in reality, and on her way home. The next moment, her little nose was nearly touching the void as she looked up with a gap toothed smile. Ever since discovering the damn thing, she had never been so happy to cross it. Nor had she done so in front of someone else. “Wendy?” Mommy said. Wendy’s body slowed. Stupidly, the girl looked back. “What’s that light coming from your closet?” Mommy frowned and started to get up. “Has that always been there?” Mommy saw the rip! Wendy bolted! She wasn’t going to get another opportunity! Eyes closed she barreled through the threshold of the door, screaming and squealing, praying that the adrenaline would carry her that extra inch or two farther before it was too late. With time seemingly going on slow motion, Mommy’s voice called out after her, “WENDEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” The last thing Wendy saw before the light of a million suns flash banged in her eyes was the looming shadow of her mother’s arm as she dove after her. Wendy didn’t stop crawling, didn’t so much as open her eyes, until she’d pumped her head on something heavy and wooden. Pain! Owies! Wendy sat back and drew in breath to scream. Scream for Mommy and Daddy to come and make it all better. She opened her eyes, though, and stopped. She’d done it. She was in her room. Not the nursery, but her room. Her big girl room! Her adult room! The heavy wooden thing she’d banged up against was her work desk! Over in the corner was her bed, not a crib! Goodbye changing table, hello dresser! Her joy was almost cut short when she looked down at herself. She was still in the same chubby baby body with the same diaper on and the same purple onesie pulled over her shoulders and snapped up between her legs. That was okay, though. She remembered the last time it took a bit for things to snap back to normal. Her body and clothes had to reacclimate as it were. Soon she’d be out of baby mode and back into a more ladylike style of dress and body. Hey! She’d remembered the color purple! That was proof that it was working! The only thing that could go wrong now, is if her real mom and dad barged in. It wouldn’t do for them to see her in this state. Even that wouldn’t be so bad. They’d just zone out for a second and ignore it this time again, treating her like the adult she was supposed to be over on this side. It’d be embarrassing, but nothing she wouldn’t be able to get over. “WENDY!” Her mother’s voice! Her real mother! Wendy gathered her feet up underneath her, already trying to stand. Any second now, Mom would open the bedroom door and congratulate Wendy on her doing so well on her History of Law exam. Something was off, though. The voice was much louder, much more panicked than it should have been. “WENDY?!” It wasn’t coming from behind her bedroom door, either. Wendy turned around and saw her Mommy, not her mother, barreling through the closet door and into Wendy’s reality. An elk caught on the train tracks of life, Wendy gaped up at Closet Mommy’s looming figure. Closet Mommy…was on this side…of the closet. She’d been followed! Her feet already underneath her, Wendy tried to stand and run for her very adulthood. The only thing she succeeded in was pushing off with enough force to send her rolling back to the carpet, bonking the back of her head on the floor. PAIN! BLINDING PAIN! A babyish yelp mutated into full on wailing. Her emotions were still wildly out of check and the minor bump she’d taken might as well have been a snapped limb. The panic and confusion of being followed through the portal only intensified her feelings of helplessness and anguish. She was up and in Mommy’s arms in an instant. Wendy could only keep crying out, unable to form anything resembling words just yet. Even if her mouth would cooperate, she wasn’t sure she could form a coherent sentence to describe everything that was going on; yet alone affect the situation. This was so frustrating, no longer be in a reality blurring her words and still being unable to spell one! “What the heck is this place?” Mommy wondered over the baby’s howls. She slowly rotated in the middle of the room like she was taking in an art exhibit or if she’d just landed in a strange new world. In a way, she had. “This place,” she said. “I know this place.” Her calm tone belied equal parts wonder and anxiety. “ It kind of looks like your room, but…different.” Wendy pounded on the woman’s shoulder, trying to get her to let go. “Muh! Gaaaaah!” Mommy just ignored it. “These are definitely your walls. Same carpet. But the desk instead of your toy box? That bed is where your crib would be.” Ironically enough, it was more physical pain that stopped Wendy from crying. Her gums stung and itched. Without thinking about it she started to gnaw on her lower lip. Teeth! Her teeth were starting to come back in! She was growing up! Slowly, weeks by weeks, her body was fitting back to the reality she was in. Just a little longer, and she would reach her first birthday. “That’s where I was going to put your dresser after you didn’t need your changing table anymore…” She shifted her focus down to the baby in her arms. “Is this…? Is this your room when you’re older? Are we in the future?” Kind of? Not really? Close enough. “Yyyyyy…” Her mouth! It was starting to obey her! She could explain this! Ten more seconds and she could literally talk her way out of this situation! And on this side of the rip, Closet Mommy could likely understand her! A look of wonder twisted itself into surprise, then horror. “Your teeth?” A bit of hair drooped over the top of Wendy’s forehead, and Closet Mommy touched it, clearly trying to process what she was seeing as real. “Your hair! It’s growing!” Not long now! Wendy smiled and felt another tooth click into place. “Mmmmmaaaaammmmma! Mama!” A word! A baby word, but still a word! A real sound that she’d wanted to make! “No…” Mommy whispered, eyes growing wide. She about faced towards the closet. “No. No. Nononononono!” One person’s miracle was another’s horror. The fear and protective maternal instinct kicked into overdrive. “This place, it’s changing you. We need to get out of here!” Mommy said. She was dashing for the opening. There was still the faintest sliver to be seen. “Please make it work!” Wendy prayed it wouldn’t. It did. The last thing Wendy said; the last thing that she might likely speak in a fairly long time, just when Mommy started charging back through the rip, was a booming, mournful “NOOOOOOOOOOO!” A blink of an eye and they were back in the nursery. And over Mommy’s shoulder, Wendy Merts, now aged ten months, had to watch as the very last bits of this universe knitted itself back together. It was like a wound closing in time lapse photos. The last beams of near mystical light shrank and shrank into nothingness until the final mote twinkled out with an inaudible poof. No more light. No more tunnel. “GAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” No more words. Only tears and screams were left to her. Mommy bolted out of the room, clutching Wendy tight to her. Wendy started screaming her throat raw; equal parts panic attack and tantrum. “I know baby, I know,” she shushed. “That was scary!” She bounced Wendy up and down in her arms, cradling her, trying to distract and soothe the terrified infant to no avail. “I don’t know what that was, either!” Yet Wendy did, and that made it worse. Over her own bawling, Wendy heard a door close and Mommy started running towards it. “Howard!” Mommy called. “There’s something in Wendy’s room!” Wendy didn’t bother to stop crying. Daddy talked over her. Both of her parents were used to talking over a distressed and mewling infant. “What is it?” The worry in his voice was genuine. “I..I…I don’t know. I can’t explain it! It was bright and…so..so…and Wendy crawled into…and…it’s in her closet. Go look in the closet.” Wendy only screamed more when Daddy’s footsteps tromped away and faded into. Her Mommy stopped using words too, and just made quiet gentle, shushing noises in an attempt to calm the tsunami of emotions. Wendy was cradled with both arms, but lacked the wherewithal to act or thrash or otherwise try to escape. Her one and only chance at real escape failed. Now she was stuck like this. She had a…a…she didn’t even know how long she had to wait to get back to her old age but it was probably a really long time like an hour! Her brain was still filled with memories from the other side, but her emotions were all wildly into overdrive and her vocabulary was shrinking by the second. Daddy came back. “I don’t see anything in there,” he said. “I swear there was something.” Mommy insisted. “Can you show me?” “No, I’m not taking Wendy back there!” Mommy hissed, barely maintaining her composure. “Okay,” Daddy replied, “Let me hold her and you go look.” There was a pause and then. “Fine.” The sobbing and distressed ten-month-old was handed to her other parent while the first went to investigate. Daddly, sadly, used many of the same soothing and calming tactics as Mommy, and was no more successful than her. Mommy came back a few minutes later. “I just don’t understand it,” Mommy told Daddy. “I could’ve sworn…” Daddy gently said, “Well whatever you think you saw definitely spooked Wendy. She normally doesn’t cry this hard.” “Yeah,” Mommy said, the doubt already creeping into her tone, “yeah. Let’s get Wendy settled first. She’s more important.” “Agreed.” They moved her over to the couch and laid her across so that she was partially in both of their laps. “Wow,” Daddy commented. “She’s getting so big!” Not big enough! Not big enough, at all. Through her bawling, and the snot, and the self pity, and the fear, and sadness, and fact that she very likely needed a new diaper and couldn’t recognize it, Wendy was still observing her parents. Watching them closely and listening through her squalling. They looked at each other. Daddy started with a nearly silent count. “Two, three, four” Mommy joined and they sang together, loudly, sweetly, but a little off key. “We’ve got the whole world, In our hands. We’ve got the whole world, In our hands. We’ve got the whole world, In our hands. We’ve got the whole world in our hands.” Wendy’s crying lessened. What? What was that?” “We’ve got our itty bitty baby, In our hands. We’ve got our itty bitty baby, In our hands. We’ve got our itty bitty baby, In our hands We’ve got the whole world in our hands.” She knew the tune, but the words had been altered. Altered so that it was all but them and her. She quieted and listened, watching while the absolute love and adoration that they had for her poured over her. Likewise, she couldn’t help but reflect it back up at them. “We’ve got our wonderful Wendy, In our hands. We’ve got our wonderful Wendy, In our hands. We’ve got our wonderful Wendy, In our hands, We’ve got the whole world in our hands.” Wendy couldn’t have screamed if she wanted to. She wasn’t in control of her emotions anymore. They were. And that was okay. They were Mommy and Daddy. They weren’t her original mother and father, but they were still essentially the same people. They loved her. Unconditionally. “There, all better now, right?” said Mommy while gently brushing through Wendy’s sparse baby locks. “Seems like it is,” Daddy nodded. “We’ll be good with a switch to toys. Maybe the bucket, I think she could get the hang of it this time.” He looked at Wendy, then lifted his head to Mommy. “Oh, how about we try the learning board? It’s barely been out of the plastic”. Mommy gave an excited nod of approval in return. Daddy, whose ‘closet’ designation seemed a moot point by now, shifted Wendy all the way over into Mommy’s lap and shuffled over to a small mass of toys in the corner. As he dropped to his knees, he rummaged through a box and picked up two toys. One was a plastic bucket that rattled with its contents; its lid filled with very specifically shaped holes. Obviously, inside there were different shapes inside the bucket and the object. Wendy liked shapes and colors, even if she didn’t know their names anymore. Very amusing! The other was a white wooden board filled to the brim with doodads: Plastic gears; latches; puzzle pieces; and chain locks that secured absolutely nothing. Child experts would call it a ‘busy board’. To Wendy it looked kind of fun. “You think she’s old enough for the board?” asked Daddy as he looked over the side, pointing at the little stickier with a cartoony character proudly saying ‘12+ months old’ in a bubble. “Might be a bit too soon”. “Guess we’ll see,” Mommy said. “Remember that little test they were going to do today at the nursery? Miss Donna wouldn’t tell me how far exactly Wendy succeeded. You know how Donna is, she doesn't want to set up expectations for parents. But she did tell me she did well, I bet she can do something more advanced by now!” Knowledge had poured out of Wendy’s brain like an unplugged sink, but even in her current state, with more fingers than teeths, she remembered things. A lot of things. The little baby girl glanced past her Mommy’s lap with a frown of curiosity, ignoring the giant’s claim of how cute she looked when she did that little face. Those toys… They were slightly advanced and marketed towards bigger babies. Mommy sat the girl upright just in time for Daddy to come back. He shuffled back over, still on his knees so that he was closer to Wendy’s eye level; board under one arm and bucket in the other. “What do you want to play with, Wendy?” he asked. “This or this?” He jostled the board, then the bucket. “Which one?” Still with Mommy’s hands steadying her at the waist, Wendy leaned forward and slapped the top of the plastic bucket. “Kap!” Which was supposed to mean. ‘That one!’ “This one?” Daddy asked, jiggling the bucket. “Not this one?” The only reply that he got was her slapping the bucket. This time, Wendy knew what she wanted and needed, and it had nothing to do with what used to be on the other side. “Okie dokie,” he said, before looking up at his wife. “Guess the board was too advanced. But the shapes are still months ahead!” The lid came off temporarily, and shiny plastic shapes tumbled onto the carpet. Wendy was gently lowered so that she could sort them, while her two loving parents watched every single move, offering gentle words of encouragement. “Go on, honey.” Mommy said. “Try it out. Take your time.” Smiling to herself, Wendy proceeded to grab one of the plastic shapes, glancing at the similar hole on the bucket’s lid. She could sense her parent’s fidgeting with expectation as she holied up in the air… “Hmph-pa!” she babbled as she threw it on the ground, earning raising eyebrows of surprise from the two adults. “No Wendy, you’re supposed to place it here. See?” Her Mommy interjected, pointing at the lid of the little bucket. Seizing it, Wendy pushed the lid open, before grabbing the shapes and throwing them one by one into the bucket. With how uncoordinated her little pudgy hands were, she had to try several times to get ahold of them all, but one of the good side of being a baby is that nobody is going to force a toy out of your hands when you’re playing with it, even if in the “wrong” way. “Gaaaaaah!” As her parents tried once more to explain to her how to use the toy, Wendy had shot them the most defiant look a ten months old baby could muster, and proceeded to shake the bucket. The rattling of the pieces made such a unique sound. It was the sound of planes, sky colored planes, or maybe sky colored dogs. Either way, it was as delightful as she had hoped. Doing it again, Wendy felt a bubbling sensation in her mind as her lips twirled into a large smile. On the third rattle, a giggle punctuated it, soon followed by many others until both sounds filled the room. Smiling down at the baby girl having the time of her life over a rattling bucket, Wendy’s parents exchanged a look, before bursting out laughing. “Guess *both* are still a bit too advanced, eh?” “Yes, Wendy decided it’s too soon for boring learning games, it seems.” Mommy said with a chuckle, as her giggling baby girl slipped from her steadying hands. “Could you fetch the rest of the toy box, dear? Looks like it’s going to be casual playtime, finally.” As her mountain of a Daddy went back and forth to her room in a split second, coming back with a box three times her size, claiming there was still plenty of time to play before bathtime, Wendy beamed up at her parents. She was overjoyed, not only at having tricked them out of their budding high expectation, but of what it may mean for her future. Yes. She would take her time this go round. Now there was nothing but time to start over again. But this time, it would be on her terms. Maybe she wouldn’t be a law student again the second time around. Maybe she’d try to be a teacher like Mommy or a…she didn’t remember what Daddy did. Maybe she’d be an astronaut. She’d have to relearn everything again, she knew, walking, talking, toileting, reading, math, and more. But she had time now. Plenty of it. Time to learn from her past mistakes. Time to do things right. Time to enjoy the temporary things. The little things. No more big picture planning and panicking. No more overestimating herself or her limits. Or her interests. She didn’t even like Law. Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you like it. This was the second chance she never knew she needed. Either way, she was happy now. Looking back on it, she certainly wasn’t happy then. Happy people don’t jump dimensions or justify why it was okay to be put back in diapers and treated like a baby. Not unless that’s what they really wanted deep down. “There,” Daddy said. “All better.” Wendy agreed. She even gave them a little giggle. “I think she thinks so, too.” And thus, a new life ahead of her, Wendy decided to get down to the serious, serious, business of playing. (The End)

My partner ordered a new bib for me and it just arrived today. We each had a bib but they are small cloth front with a water resistant backing but I wasn't happy and didn't really use it. What I really wanted was a vinyl toddler bib with the crumb pocket and one large enough to be practical when I eat with it. My partner told me to find one I liked so I set to work. I started by measuring the length of my chest from my neck to my waist and from side to side. Armed with these measurements, I hit the internet. I checked the big company that starts with A and should have a couple esses and a hole but doesn't and some independent sites. I found my holy grail of bibs! It's vinyl, I opened the envelope and the first thing I did was sniff. Ummm smells just like a new pair of plastic pants. Plastic pants are as big a turn on as a good diaper. I took it out and had my partner tie it on so I could see how it looked and felt. I decided I had to post a pic of it so laid it out and took a quick pic. While handling it I realized the vinyl was very familiar to me so I checked the tag. Sure enough it was manufactured by Gary! When my partner ordered plastic pants for us she bought a pair of the 6 mil pants for herself in this exact pattern but she ordered them too big so we gave them to a friend. I may have to buy a couple pair in my size so I can have matching bib and baby pants. I'm so excited for pasta night I can't wait. Hugs, Freta

Isn't it a great feeling thought? I mean for me simple things like laying on the couch in a tee-shirt and a Abuniverse Little-Pawz diaper with a bottle of juice watching TV is the best feeling in the world. I really can't get enough of it.

Just like Kawaharu said, I make every possible attempt to ensure I'm in a fresh diaper. I also ensure it's not an AB/DL Printed diaper if possible. I am 100% incontinent so I rarely ever make it to or even through the appointment dry. Early on when I first started wearing 24/7 I was slightly uncomfortable to go to the doctors with a diaper on especially if I was required to undress and put on of the disposable gowns on. I would always wear a pull-up which often don't last very long for my needs. Now fast forward 10 years other than like I said above I don't give my diapers much of a thought.

My wetting is so erratic right now and I have no clue why. Over the last few weeks I've had my cloth night diapers leak BADLY on multiple nights. No worries because I have a really thick robust vinyl sheet on the bed but I was joking with my partner about our bed linens never being cleaner. Her answer to this problem is not less water intake, it was to refold my diapers. I use both adult cotton flannel night diapers from Angel Fluff and store bought cotton birdseye baby diapers. The adult diapers I use as the outside shell and the baby diapers as soakers. I had 6 adult diapers, 2 medium weight and 4 heavy weight. I was adding 6 baby diapers folded to fit down the center and this has always worked good. My partner took them apart and put 2 adult diapers together so instead of having 6 diapers in my cupboard I now only have 4. This means that she took all the soakers and split them up somehow into the 4. As you can imagine, this has made the nightly diapering process much more difficult. Thankfully, I have her to diaper me because I'm not sure I could do it myself. When I walk in them I look like I'm headed to the OK corral. So this morning I got up and I wasn't saturated and just my old normal diaper configuration would have been more than sufficient. Just weird how the output seems to fluctuate even though the input is fairly consistent. Hugs, Freta

My grandma lived on the farm, and I’d visit for a week every summer. One year the power went out while I was on the toilet, so that one last flush was it. For the rest of the night, my idea (in my head, only) was to use my cousin’s pull-ups. Her idea was for me to pee outside, behind the barn. Hers won out.

I always go diapered to the dentist. Same thing, long time in the chair +nervousness equals more leaks.

Lila was never great at dealing with the summer months. She disliked the scorching heat emanating from the pavements, the bright sun blinding her view, and - most of all - the sticky, sweaty skin caused by the humid air. Today was an especially hot summer day, and the family had wanted somewhere cooler to spend their time - so they drove over to the shopping district, and walked into the closest shopping mall they could find. As Lila entered the mall, she felt the strong gust of cold air from the air conditioner brush against her skin, and the young girl was thankful for an escape from the strong summer heat outside. Mom had wanted to get some souvenirs for friends back home, so the family walked around casually, entering any store that caught their interest. As they walked, the chill air caused Lila to feel a slight twinge in her bladder. The girl, now accustomed to using the diaper whenever she wanted, simply let go and soaked the diaper with her pee. She was surprised at how easy it was for her to wet her diaper, compared to when she first tried to pee at the airport - which was quite the struggle. I didn’t need to stop walking, she thought to herself. Upping her pace, she caught up to her parents, who had just walked past a grocery store. “Oh right, I nearly forgot. We’re running low on diapers so we should stock up while we’re here.” said Mom, as she switched directions and headed back towards the grocery store. Hearing that, Lila blushed a little, but was thankful that what Mom had said was vague enough to not reveal who exactly the diapers were for. She followed her parents into the store, and headed towards the diaper aisle. Lila had walked through diaper aisles many times in the past, but she never paid them much attention. Now, however, she was paying attention - and she was surprised at the sheer variety that the store had to offer. The shelves were stocked with a wide selection, from baby diapers to pullups to adult diapers. Now that they were here Lila started to feel a little self-conscious again, but the amount of options had her in awe. “We’ll need some of these… and maybe this as well, just in case.” said Mom, as she grabbed some packs of baby wipes and a tube of barrier cream, placing them into the shopping basket. She then focused her attention back on the diaper shelves. She could have easily just bought the same diaper that Lila was already using, but since the store had so much to offer she thought she’d spend a little bit of time to see she could get something better. True enough, something different caught her eye - it was a bright pink package with a picture of a girl at the front; but unlike most other packages with pictures of babies or toddlers, this one instead had a picture of a girl about Lila’s age. She extended her arms and grabbed a pack out of the shelf, taking a closer look at the product description at the back. It stated that it was designed for older children with heavy bedwetting or incontinence, and promised absorbency lasting “up to 12 hours”. The diaper itself was adorned with cute designs comprising pink ribbons and little dots - not babyish, but tastefully designed to appeal to an older child. Glancing at the size indicator, Mom saw that it would fit Lila very nicely. It was definitely pricer than Lila’s current diapers, but after considering the number of changes required per day, Mom thought she’d actually be able to save a little. Lila was at the other end of the aisle. She happened to be looking at some pullups, and realised that they actually did make them for her size. But having used actual diapers for a while now, she found that she preferred those instead. Mom called out to her, gesturing to get her to come over, and showed her the package in her hands. “Would you like to give this one a try?” asked Mom. “It might be better than your current ones.” Looking at the package, the girl was a little concerned. For one, the package looked a lot more childish than the one that came with her current diapers, which were medical diapers. And while they looked like they were a lot more absorbent it also meant that they were likely to be quite a bit thicker than her usual diapers. But she found herself captivated by the design of the diapers themselves. The medical diapers that she was currently wearing were plain white, and this new one was a lot nicer to look at. This would be a little embarrassing to wear, she thought to herself, but it does look really cute. “Sure, why not.” agreed Lila. It was at least worth a try, she thought. *** By the time the family finished shopping, it was late in the afternoon. They decided to grab a late lunch at the food court, and returned back to the hotel for some rest. Lila had worked up a bit of a sweat under the hot summer heat, so she went straight for the shower. Once that was done, she saw that Mom had been waiting for her on the bed, where the changing mat had been laid down. Mom had already opened the new pack of diapers, and she was in the midst of fluffing one up. “Come on over,” said Mom. “let’s give these new diapers a try.” As Mom taped the diaper in place, Lila realised that this new diaper was indeed a little thicker than her older ones. But, it was also a lot softer, and it was nice to feel the material brush against her skin. “How is it?” asked Mom. “I kinda like it, I guess… it’s thicker and feels softer.” answered Lila. Now that she was diapered, the girl went to the wardrobe, planning to change into more comfortable clothes. She picked out a loose-fitting shirt and a pair of shorts, but then quickly realised that putting on the shorts over the thick diaper resulted in a tight fit and a rather large bulge. The pants went on fine, but it wasn’t very comfortable, so the girl took it off, and tried searching for something that would fit better. Seeing the girl struggle with what to wear, Mom eventually suggested, “Dear, you don’t always have to put something over your diaper - it’s just the two of us in here. Besides, it’ll make checks and changes easier for me, too, so I’d actually prefer if you didn’t put anything on.” The girl hesitated a little. Sure, by now Mom had seen her in her diaper countless times, but it was still a little embarrassing and she didn’t want to reveal more than what she needed to. She continued rummaging through her wardrobe, trying to see if there was anything that could have possibly fit more comfortably. Eventually, however, she gave up on her search, and heeded Mom’s suggestion to go pantsless. Defeated, she jumped on the bed, face buried on a pillow. “Don’t worry, honey. It’s just the two of us here anyway, and I think that diaper looks really cute on you.” laughed Mom. *** For the next few hours Lila and Mom lazed around in the hotel room, the girl catching up to her Twitter and Instagram feeds which have gone untouched for the past few days, while Mom surfed through the various cable TV channels the hotel had to offer. Lila had been peeing into the diaper as and when she felt the need, and while the pee made the diaper warm and squishy, it still felt dry and soft against her skin. It was indeed performing much better than her old diapers, which would have probably required a change by now. Going pantsless meant her diaper was in full view, and with nothing to hold the diaper in place, it made audible crinkling sounds with every movement. It was a little embarrassing for the girl, but over time she slowly got used to it. And it did feel comfier without having to wear pants. Eventually, Mom got up from her seat and called out to her daughter. “We’re going out to dinner, Lila. You look pretty wet but I’m sure it’ll hold up for a few.” She rummaged through the wardrobe for a while and picked out a dress, handing it to the girl. “Here, put this on - it’ll hide your diaper bulge well enough.” Taking the dress from Mom, Lila was a little surprised at how Mum could tell that she was wet from afar, even without checking. She asked, “How did you know I was wet, Mom?” “Lila, dear, you’re hardly ever dry.” laughed Mom. “Besides, look how the little pink ribbons have disappeared?” she said, pointing at Lila’s diaper. “Those are wetness indicators that fade away when wet. That’s why I said it’d be easier for me if you didn’t have pants on.” Looking down at her diaper, Lila saw that a lot of the little pink decorations have indeed faded away, now replaced by a slight yellow tinge from her pee. Some of the padding in front was still dry and had the designs visible, but most of the dots and ribbons at the middle and back were now gone. Realising that Mom had been silently checking on the state of her diaper over the past few hours, she couldn’t help but feel a little… small. Almost like a toddler who didn’t know to tell Mom when her diaper was wet. The girl didn’t quite know how to describe this weird feeling, but she knew that she didn’t dislike it. Sheepishly, she changed into the dress that Mom selected for her, and looked into the mirror - the bulge showed just a little - not enough for anyone else to tell, except for Lila. And it did make her look a little cute, she thought to herself.

Introducing Beatrix, a minor character that is never seen again in the story. ----- Chapter 6 Melody arrived home late after a stupid brutal Wednesday and staggered to her room. There was a lot of regret going on at the moment. In theory it was a good idea to have only three days a week of on-campus stuff, in practice, three labs in the same day was a little bonkers. Dropping her backpack, Melody barely caught it in time to keep the laptop inside from hitting the hardwood floor. Not having carpet was still taking some getting used to. The room looked weird beyond the lack of carpet. It was clean, with the bed made and all her laundry folded on the comforter. Melody took a moment to be a surprised Pikachu. Sitting on top of the laundry was a stuffed animal, a pretty clear calling card. That brought a smile to her face. The little gray cat plushie was stupid soft, Melody found she couldn't put it down right away. Homework could wait for tomorrow, Melody only had enough brain left for something mindless, like a couple rounds of LoL ARAM. While her computer booted up she shed her pants and her hoodie, freezing in mid-stretch at the sound of her door opening. "Hi Melody! You're back super late, do you want me to heat up some dinner for you?" Briana said, with an impossible amount of energy. Melody was feeling a little more gross than usual after being stuck on campus all day, for some extra cringe she hadn't showered that morning either. Briana was in her little girl mode already, diaper only from the waist down and a white shirt with a tiger puking rainbows on it. "Uh hey Briana," she said. "I uh, should probably clean up a little." "Oh I don't mind," Briana said, infuriatingly. "But if you wanna shower do you want me to heat up some bao?" Melody's stomach rumbled, making the decision for her. "Okay, thanks," she said. How she was supposed to stay upset with Briana, she didn't know. The kid, and she couldn't think of her as anything other than a kid, was trying to be helpful and nice. Warm bao and cold coke were bringing Melody back to life. She didn't load up a game, she didn't even realize that Briana was gone until the girl came back into Melody's room with a couple of diapers and a package of wipes in her hands. "Oh hey Briana, let me finish eating and then I can change you," Melody said. "No, I'm still dry. They're for you!" Briana said eagerly. "What?" Melody's brain was still feeling foggy, but she didn't see why she needed diaper delivery. "Yeah, because you've been having accidents," Briana said. "It's okay, I won't tell anybody." "What do you mean I–" Melody froze, her eyes drifting over to the laundry. She'd forgotten about the soiled clothes she'd shoved to the bottom of the bin. Briana had found them, obviously, and now was trying to be helpful in an embarrassing way. "What do I tell her?" Melody wondered in a minor panic. The truth felt out of the question, way too embarrassing. On the other hand, the way she'd dealt with the clothes, or rather not dealt with them was pretty sus. Three pairs couldn't be written off as a single bad day either. Briana was still staring at her, with the stupidest kind expression Melody had ever seen. Anybody else would have felt the awkward silence and backed off, but nope, Chuck Testa. "Yeah um, it's not really that big of a deal," Melody said, unconvincing even to herself. "Thanks for the offer but I think I'll pass." "Just try them for one night, okay?" Briana asked. "You look super tired and that's the kind of thing that can totally make an accident happen." "Um, yeah, okay, maybe," Melody said. The will to argue with Briana was not there. Besides, it meant she could go for round four after Briana got off to bed. "Probably should grab me a pullup instead though, those look awkward for me to put on by myself." "Actually um..." Briana said, blushing shyly at Melody, "I was thinking I could put it on you. I've never put one on anybody, but tons of people have changed me." "Wat." Melody felt like her brain was glitching out. The caffeine hadn't kicked in yet, so she couldn't formulate an argument fast enough to beat Briana's overwhelming puppy dog eyes. Refusing her felt like drop-kicking the poor girl's heart. "Okay," Melody said in defeat. "I'm kinda gross from not showering though..." "That's okay, you've changed my wet diapers," Briana said, bouncing to her feet. Melody regretted finishing her bao, good as it had been. With her plate empty there was nothing to stop Briana from hauling her out of her computer chair and walking her to the bed. "I know you're tired, I'll take care of everything," Briana said, falling to her knees in front of Melody. A wonderful fantasy scene from Melody's dreams played out as Briana unbuttoned her pants and pulled them down with her underwear. Being pushed down on top of a diaper was not part of the fantasy, but maybe it would be now. "God dammit, this better not awaken anything else in me," Melody thought. Briana insisted on the whole thing, leaving Melody splayed out on a diaper while she ran off to get lotion and powder. It felt good, and made Melody glad that she preferred hardwood to carpet in some areas of her life. She didn't know what lotion and powder would look like in hair and didn't want to find out. Briana taped the diaper up, leaving Melody wanting some private time. Well, wanting some more explicit Briana time but that obviously wasn't going to happen. With boundless energy, Briana even insisted on helping Melody back into her pants. "See? Now you don't have to worry," Briana chirped. "Yeah, yeah, thanks," Melody said, chuckling. "Hey, uh, not to be that chick, but I never see you up this late. Isn't it past your bedtime?" Briana giggled and said, "Yeah, but don't tell Mom! She's at a conference thing and won't be back until around midnight!" "Briana, sweetie, it's like, eleven twenty right now," Melody said. "Oh shit!" Briana said, then clapped her hand over her mouth. "Please don't tell Mom I said that, or that I was up late!" "I'm not a snitch," Melody said. "I'm glad you were up, I probably wouldn't have had any dinner if you hadn't brought me some." "I'm glad I was too! Okay, I gotta go, see you tomorrow Melody!" Briana said, grabbing the spare diaper and supplies. "Oh, and I'll put these in your bag, so you'll have them just in case you have an accident at school. Those are SUPER embrassing." She shoved the handful of baby gear into Melody's bag and scampered out the door. Shaking her head, Melody collapsed back into her computer chair. The diaper felt weird and pillowy around her rear. Kind of nice, not that she was worried about an accident. With dinner giving her a boost of energy there wasn't much point in going to bed right away. A few quick games, and bed. None of her LoL friends were on, Rocket League was still a ghost town, and even Fortnite didn't have anyone cool on. Melody was about to give up on gaming and go straight to the porn when Beatrix messaged her on Discord. · bbXXX – LAN · bbXXX – LAN · bbXXX – bitch, LAN, now · Ocarina – WTF. Dude I'm so tired · bbXXX – fu. get over here, finally got other 4 to agree to LAN. · bbXXX – i no you class <> tomorrow · bbXXX – LAN · bbXXX – LAN, BITCH Melody stared at the Discord channel. Beatrix was unstoppable when she was like this. There seemed to be a lot of hot ladies that Melody couldn't say no to in her life. "Am I a f-ing harem anime protagonist now?" she asked herself. · Ocarina – Fine thot. Be there in like 20. · bbXXX – finally! move that thicc ass "Ugh," Melody said, heaving herself out of her chair. She tossed a couple of red bulls in her bag, and after reflection, her Adderall prescription. A protein bar and a bag of M&Ms followed. Books were chucked to make room for her headset, and her portable gaming mouse and keyboard. The laptop could handle Overwatch. Her cell phone could probably handle Overwatch. Standing in her room, Melody felt like she was forgetting something. The front door opened, breaking her precarious concentration. With a shrug Melody picked up her pack and headed into the living room. "Hey Veronica, Jane," Melody said. "Hello Melody, you're headed out?" Veronica asked. "You look exhausted." "Yeah well, no class tomorrow," Melody said, "Did your um, conference or whatever go well?" "It did, thank you!" Veronica said with rare broad smile. "How did you know we were at a conference?" Jane asked. "Was Briana up late?" "I dunno, she must have been in bed when I got home," Melody said, glad her foggy brain could quickly cover with a lie. "Weren't you talking about it yesterday?" "Probably," Jane said with a shrug. "Well, have fun," Veronica said. "Try to get some sleep eventually." "Sleep is for the weak," Melody scoffed. With a quick wave she was past them and out the door. As she made her way down to her car she couldn't shake the feeling that Veronica had been super judge-y. All that diaper-mom stuff must be going to her head. Maybe it was the age difference, but first year in grad school was an adult by any measure that Melody cared to respect. Grumbling to herself about having a den mom on her way across town, Melody was parking her car when she realized what she'd forgotten. The diaper she was wearing. She face-palmed her greasy forehead and sighed. At least she had baggy pants on, nobody should be able to tell. Not that Beatrix ever looked at her butt anyway. Beatrix lived in a cookie cutter house in a cookie cutter housing development. Her roommates would gag at it, especially Veronica. It was a nice cookie cutter though, and there was something to be said for a house that was built recently enough to have Ethernet in the walls. Melody was two steps from the door when Beatrix flung it open. Beatrix was especially ridiculous today. She'd never caught on that she was a nerd and didn't have to dress like all her webcams were 4k. Beatrix was yoga-fit and had gorgeous blonde hair in short ringlets, ringlets! As if that wasn't enough, the wings of her eyeliner could cut steel. She was wearing a baby blue halter top and a black miniskirt. Hell, maybe she did Cam, she could probably make bank at it. "Mel, finally, get in here, everybody else is all set up!" Beatrix said. "Step on me, Senpai," was all Melody's brain could come up with. Luckily her brain was too tired to transmit its stupid to her mouth. "Mel, what the fuck?" said Beatrix, and snapped her fingers at Melody. "You're only here because you can play Pharah at 4.5k SR. Wake up, juice up, whatever you've got to do." "Yeah, sorry, long day," Melody said, ducking her head. Of all the times to be a complete grease-ball, with a diaper on to boot, it had to be when Beatrix was dressed to kill. "Yeah, yeah, and kids in Syria are getting bombed, come on," Beatrix said, leading Melody into the living room. The rest of their e-sports crew waved. They were Yesenia, Gurpreet, Mikhail, and because some parents have a sick sense of humor, Ginger. Everyone else was dressed chill. That helped the tension run out of Melody's shoulders. She took her seat at the long table that had displaced all the other furniture to the walls and set up her gear. "So are we going to–" Melody began. "STOMP THE LADDER!" cheered the rest of the group. Melody took only a second to recover from the shock and laughed out loud. New accounts with a nice crispy appetizer of noobs to warm up on, and then some real meaty try-hards to bite into afterward. She chugged the first of her redbulls and settled into the chair. "Hell yes, let's snap some noob necks," Melody said. As team after team fell before them, Melody was glad she'd come. The placement rounds were so easy they could try out silly stuff like getting Mercy a sextuple kill, or Reinhardt as 'support'. Once they'd ranked up a bit they got serious, which was its own kind of fun. Melody and Gurpreet had a God-tier Pharmercy combo, while Beatrix lead the rest of the team as Reaper as a deadly brawler group. Bea could be a huge bitch pretty much all the time, but she might be a pro-tier shot-caller. She could keep the whole battle in her head and direct her team instantly to an advantageous position. It was all being streamed from Beatrix's computer, and the number of viewers was climbing fast despite the non prime time slot. When three am rolled around, Melody was high on caffeine and sugar but feeling uncomfortable pressure. She tried to call a break, but before she could Beatrix declared them to be on a 'hot streak' and told her Twitch chat that there would be no more commercials for the next three games. By now the group was in the Master level rankings pushing for Grandmaster. AFKing out for a potty break was not an option. Melody resigned herself to being in pain for the next hour until she shifted in her seat and was reminded of the padding swaddling her. Her eyes flashed to her friends. They were laser focused on the game. Nobody was so much as glancing her way. With a nervous tremble in her hands, Melody took a sip of her drink and shifted her legs apart. Still, nobody noticed. As the game exited the lobby and loaded the map, Melody tried relaxing her bladder a little. That didn't work out. Once she opened up, there was no stopping the stream from flooding her diaper with sopping wet that soaked her crotch and rear. Her face burned and her hands trembled on the controls; she fell behind her teammates. But still, nobody noticed. Some quick work with Pharah's jets and she was caught back up to her team. The game was on and she was in a well soaked diaper. She gave her team some WTF Girl side-eye and actually caught Gurpreet's gaze. Nothing happened, a quick nod and they were both back into their screens. Determined to not give anyone cause to ask her what was up, Melody threw herself into the game. High-explosive death rained down on their enemies until even Beatrix was cackling in glee. The match ended with an embarrassing loss for what Beatrix's viewers told her was another highly ranked streamer team. The next two games were not quite as one sided but still solid wins. It was great to be recognized as MVP by Beatrix, but Melody was looking forward to that commercial break where she could finally get out of her soggy diaper. Hiding it in Beatrix's bathroom would be a challenge. Hopefully there would be enough stuff in the trash can to cover it over, or she could pitch it out the window, or something. When the commercial break hit, everyone stood up and stretched, groaning through the happy grins. "Stream is on mute," Beatrix said. "Damn, those were some great games. Too bad it's not prime-time, we might actually get matched against pros," Yesenia said. "Pros on their off-heroes maybe," laughed Mikhail. "Guys I'm running commercials for fifteen minutes, get your break done and come back on time, got it?" Beatrix said. "Girl, are you paying us out of the donations you're getting? Because you're talking like you're my boss," Gurpreet said. "Actually I am, there's a little over six hundred tonight from subs and bits already. You're all getting a fair chunk of it," Beatrix said. "Well shit. Then aye-aye captain," Gurpreet said. Melody had been working her way around the group with her backpack in hand, hoping nobody would notice the sag in her pants. She dashed for the bathroom and closed the door. Everyone else was going to need to use the bathroom too, she had to find a spot to ditch the diaper, and fast. Dropping her pants, she investigated the window. No good, there was a bush pressed right up against the window, with her luck she'd end up framing the thing for whoever walked in. "Hey Mel we gotta talk about your Pharah," Beatrix said on her way down the hall. "Yeah, give me a sec," Melody called back. "Since they nerfed the infinite flying I think our strat is weak on low maps, we need to switch it up and start having you and Preet swing around," Beatrix said. Without the slightest regard for privacy, she opened the door. Melody froze, as did Beatrix as soon as she realized what she was seeing. Even worse, Beatrix stepped into the bathroom and shut the door behind her. "Is that a fucking diaper?" Beatrix asked. "Shhh!" Melody said, trembling under a massive wave of embarrassment that threatened to compress her chest. "Holy shit, it's got little bears and stuff on it. Well, not that many anymore because you really used that sucker," Beatrix said. She locked the door and advanced on Melody with a smirk. "I uh, knew we'd be streaming for a long time and–" "Bullshit," Beatrix said. "You live with that diaper girl, and you're into it. "No, no this isn't–" "Mel, shut the fuck up," Beatrix put a hand casually on Melody's mouth. "I know you're super hot for me, that's why you came over tonight on no notice. Course, I'm not into girls." Beatrix slapped the soggy padding over Melody's butt and said, "But this might make things interesting." Melody tried to back up and only managed to corner herself between the toilet and the tub. Beatrice was right in front of her, trapping her in. "Bea, no, please, don't tell anyone," Melody begged. The sheer weight of panic was making her break out in sweat all over like a fever. "Don't worry, baby," Beatrix said. "This is your dream come true. Because I don't like girls. But this whole thing? This whole scared bunny thing you have going on? Yeah, it's fun, so you and me are gonna play." "What?" Melody asked. It was too much, she was feeling dizzy, hollow inside. Beatrix leaned in close and wrinkled her nose. She said, "Damn, you are pretty gross tonight. You're never squeaky clean but you stink even without the diaper." Melody blushed again, her stomach in free-fall. "Hah, I was right, you're embarrassed and you like it," Beatrix said. "Your nipples are about to poke right out of your shirt." Melody threw her arms around her chest and bowed her head, still quivering. Quivering for a lot of reasons, she realized, one of them being that she would do anything to be under Beatrix in bed right now. "This is amazing," Beatrix said. "We don't have a lot of time here, but we have enough for one quick thing. Get down on the floor." "What? No," Melody protested. Everything was spinning, and the aching heat in her crotch was not helping. "Lie down on the floor Melody," Beatrix said, grinning like a vampire. "I'm going to step on you." "This isn't happening, this isn't happening..." Melody thought. The floor honestly sounded good, as dizzy as she was. Besides, all Beatrix had to do to make her friendless was open the door and call the rest of the group in. She could even tell her stream viewers. Melody half-tumbled to the floor, rolling over on her back. "Maybe you'll catch a look at my panties," Beatrix said. "Try not to get a nosebleed, weeb." Beatrix raised a foot, and to Melody's shame she craned her head to see a flash of red lace up Bea's skirt. The foot came down on Melody's abdomen, right over her bladder. "Let's see if you're done," Beatrix said, pressing down none too gently. Melody groaned, gasped, and to her even greater shame, finished emptying herself into the diaper. When Beatrix crouched down to feel the warmth in the diaper all Melody could do was cover her face and quiver. It was, without question the most horribly embarrassing moment of her life. She was also one good squeeze on that diaper from loudly orgasming on Beatrix's floor. "Nasty," Beatrix said, giving Melody's chest a light slap. She giggled at Melody's soft moan. "Alright, get up, put your pants on, and go back to your laptop." "Let me get rid of this thing," Melody whimpered. "Oh no honey, that's not happening. You're doing the rest of the stream in that diaper, and then you're staying after with me for some extra curriculars," Beatrix said. The smart thing would have been to run home, but extra curriculars burned in Melody's ears like a promise of paradise. There was still the matter of figuring out a way to get Beatrix to promise to be quiet too. With a whimper, Melody pulled her pants back on over the soggy diaper. Beatrix even helped her yank them up nice and high, and cinched up the built-in belt. "Get back to your seat, baby," Beatrix said. "We've already hogged the bathroom for most of the break." Trying not to feel the squish in her pants, or trying not to enjoy the squish in her pants, Melody gingerly walked back to her seat and sat on her soggy padding.

When Miss Honey heard the message on the answering machine the previous night from Mr. Trilby requesting a meeting, she had assumed she was in trouble, but this!? Her chest was tightening. Her heart was racing. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She stared at the small man wide-eyed. He had to be off his rocker! Going senile! Crazy! Maybe he was even on drugs! It was the only thing that would explain what she had just heard come from his mouth. He stared at her expectantly, his hands intertwined and resting on the desk between them. “What?” It was all Jenny could manage to get out. Maybe she was the crazy, senile one. She must have heard wrong. Must have hit her head in the night. “I said, I’m retiring” Mr. Trilby said. “And I want you to take my place.” There it was again. She hadn’t imagined it. “You don’t have to give me an answer right away, but please think it over.” “Why me? I-I’m nothing but a first year teacher. I know nothing about being a headmistress.” “Yes, but you see, that’s what this place needs. It doesn’t need someone with management skills, or another disciplinarian. What it needs is someone creative, caring, and passionate. This school has been ruled by, well, rules and fear for far far too long.” Jenny remained silent, still at a complete loss for words. “I’ve been watching you, Miss Honey, and I’ve seen the way you speak to the students. Students that aren’t even in your class. You see them, you listen to them, and to be honest, you’re one of the few teachers we have that care about them.” “Of course I care about the students, sir, but wouldn’t literally anyone be better for this?” “No, no they wouldn’t. If I promoted anyone else, how would I know the cycle of abuse wouldn’t continue?” “How can you be so sure the cycle of abuse wouldn’t continue with me?” Miss Honey asked. In her entire life she had never been in a position of power before. What if it went straight to her head? “Oh I doubt that very much.” Mr. Trilby said before smiling. “I do believe we both know of a certain little girl who would be up to the task of keeping you accountable.” “Sir, to be perfectly honest with you, the way things are going I don’t know how much longer I can justify keeping her enrolled. Unless…” Mr. Trilby raised an eyebrow. “Unless what?” “I heard a rumor yesterday. Is it true they’re expanding the school?” “All the way to year 13.” He said. Miss Honey’s eyes widened. She really could keep an eye on Matilda. “And you know what? If you were headmistress, you’d have the final say in Matilda’s education.” Miss Honey bit her lip. It sounded nice, she had to admit. She could pull her from Mr. Larson’s class or… she could just pull Mr. Larson. “The teachers here, some of them are, how can I phrase this?” Miss Honey said. “When the previous headmistress hired some of them, she was looking for disciplinarians, someone who could keep the students in line. She prioritized discipline over everything else, as I’m sure you’re aware.” Miss Honey suppressed a shudder. “Yes, I’m aware.” “So I would suggest before the following school year, if you're interested, we sit and go over the personnel files together. Let’s decide who stays and who goes.” He frowned for a moment as he waved his hand through his graying hair. “Well, there’s a bit of a problem we need to solve before we can even think of hiring new teachers.” “What’s that?” Mr. Trilby sighed deeply. “It’s the ledgers! The longer I stare at them the less sense it makes! I looked at our bank balance, and it’s practically empty. We’ve still four months left in the school year, and yesterday I find out how much money we get a year from the government and I just can’t figure it out! Where did it all go? There’s so many things that need repairing, but when was the last time the previous headmistress did more than hand over a roll of duct tape? The playground is nothing more than an asphalt lot, we have no heating or air conditioning, half the toilets are out of order, and to be quite honest, I feed my dogs better quality food than the school feeds the children.” “Was the Trunchbull over paying herself?” Miss Honey asked. She wouldn’t put it past her aunt to pocket the money and let the school fend for itself. “It’s the first thing I checked. While she certainly paid herself more than she paid us, it was still considered reasonable and not enough to make this much of a difference.” “Sounds like you need to hire an accountant.” “I made a call to inquire about it, but they said we don’t need just any regular accountant, we need a forensic accountant, and they don’t come cheap. We can’t afford it and i’m in over my head here. Do you have any ideas?” Miss Honey racked her brain, thought of something, laughed darkly and shook her head. “What?” “Nothing, it’s silly.” Miss Honey said shaking her head. Hey, Matilda, sweetheart, if you can help us find the embezzled funds, I’ll let you have a bowl of ice cream and stay up an hour past your bedtime. Mr. Trilby seemed to read something in her face. He laughed for a second before saying, “No, absolutely not. No way.” Miss Honey smiled sheepishly, embarrassed the thought had even crossed her mind. Although, she wasn’t the one who brought it up. “She’s cheap.” Miss Honey said with a laugh. Mr. Trilby let his face fall into his hands before shaking his head and letting out a frustrated groan. He slowly raised his head and met her eyes. “How cheap?” ………………………… Hortensia was flashing her Cheshire cat grin. Matilda raised her eyebrows in question. “I always knew you were full of shit.” Matilda rolled her eyes. “Not anymore.” Matilda moaned. The right side of her face was resting on her desk with her head craning up to see Hortensia. “You don’t want to know what i’ve been through.” It was the third-worst experience of her life. “I’ve been violated.” She was still a bit bitter over the whole situation. She had little to say to Miss Honey this morning, even if she had been mere putty in her arms last night. Jenny had caught her by surprise was all. Matilda wasn’t expecting her to pull out the big guns. It wasn’t like her to offer fabric free cuddling. Matilda closed her eyes and pictured last night. So soft and warm. And Jenny hadn’t been panicking nearly as much this time. Matilda let out a contended hum. “Yeah, for someone who says they were violated, you sure have a dopey grin on your face.” Hortensia teased. Matilda could feel her cheeks turning red. “I do not. I never want to do that again. The cramping! And then they make you hold it and-” Matilda shuddered. She tried to picture Jenny’s arms around her again to flush her brain, but it wasn’t working. “Yeah, I hear enough about enemas from my mom. I’m good.” Hortensia said. “She gives them to the old people like candy, then she comes home and doesn’t spare me the details.” Matilda cringed. “Poor old people.” Hortensia shook her head. “She says they beg for them like sweets. She can’t go a day without shoving something up someone's ass.” “Hortensia, mind your audience.” Mr. Larson called out in his bored voice. “She brought it up first.” Hortensia said with a snicker. “I meant me.” Mr. Larson said. “I just ate.” Matilda watched as his gaze stopped on her. “Wormwood, I take it you still have all your internal organs.” “Yes sir,” Matilda said. “You have a doctor’s note excusing you from class yesterday? Bring it up.” Matilda grabbed the two folded pieces of paper on her desk and sprang to her feet. She hurried and handed them over before standing awkwardly to the side as he examined them. He nodded his approval at the first, but paused at the second. “Look, Wormwood, I get it, I do, but I can’t just give you special treatment.” “You told me if I brought you a doctor’s note-” He held up a hand to silence her. “That’s why you need to come up with a hand sign.” She furrowed her brows in confusion. “Look, flash me the peace sign, a thumbs up, hell, flip me the bird, I don’t care. I’ll make up some reason for you to leave the classroom, but you can’t ask to use the restroom in front of everyone.” “Why though?” “C’mon, you’re the genius here. Look, cause if I let you, then everyone else will ask too, and I can’t just let everyone in the class wander the halls whenever they want. She’ll-” He stopped mid-sentence. “Ah, you know what, never mind. Just don’t abuse it.” Matilda gazed up at him feeling even more puzzled. “O-oh okay.” So was she supposed to make a hand sign or not? She scurried back to her desk and waited for the bell to ring. Matilda had to admit class was going much more smoothly today than the previous two. The small things that had set Matilda on edge didn’t seem to bother her as much. She could be patient when Bruce tripped over his words while reading, even if she had read the paragraph ten times by the time he got through it once. Or Brittany’s never ending complaints of “I don’t get it” in math. The thing Matilda couldn’t seem to get over was her boredom. She was starting to welcome Hortensia’s crude drawings, and the pokes and prods of her classmates wanting to know how she had skipped five grades. How had following along turned school into something so boring? Matilda had never been so happy when the lunch bell rang. She grabbed the book she had been reading out of her backpack and stood up to stretch. Finally! She could do whatever she wanted to for the next thirty minutes. “A book?” Hortensia asked. “Leave it, we’re playing kickball in the field again. It’ll be way more fun than reading.” Matilda looked down at Hortensia’s bandaged leg. Did this girl learn nothing? “I’m not wearing the right footwear for kickball.” Matilda pointed out. They both looked down at her pink Mary Jane shoes with the purple butterflies on the sides. “Let me have them, I’ll see if anyone will switch with you for the afternoon.” Matilda wanted to point out no one’s feet would even come close to being as small, but arguing with Hortensia when she was bound and determined to make something happen was like arguing with a brick wall. So Matilda silently kicked them off and handed them over. She grabbed her book and sat on a nearby picnic bench to read. She figured Hortensia would realize her mistake and bring her shoes back eventually. At least she’d get to read. Only, when Hortensia came back, she didn’t have Matilda’s shoes, she had someone else’s brown sneakers. Not only that, but they fit! Well, sort of. They were a little big, but with a second knot, there wasn’t much slip. She wanted to ask how in the world she had gotten them, but she had a feeling she didn’t want to know. “Why do you want me to play kickball with you guys? You know I’m going to be terrible at it, right?” Matilda asked Hortensia as they walked out to the field where the majority of the older kids had gathered and began picking teams. Hortensia flashed her another Cheshire grin. “Not necessarily.” They made their way into the crowd to be selected for teams. Hortensia was picked nearly right away, despite the bandages and slight limp. Matilda on the other hand was chosen dead last. Even Bruce Bogtrotter was chosen before her. Matilda sighed. She’d rather be reading. Matilda stared over at the opposite team, where Hortensia was laughing with some of her friends. Was she just trying to make Matilda look bad? No, that couldn’t be it, it was obvious just looking at her size she’d be terrible. She stood off to the side and watched as they flipped a coin to see who’d go first. “Heads! Yes!” An older boy called. It looked like her team was kicking first. She saw Hortensia flash her a wink before running off to the outfield. Matilda shook her head and took her place in the very back of the line in the hopes she’d never get to go up. She watched with mild amusement as the older kids ran and chased each other. It was better than class, but still. Why couldn’t Hortensia just let her read? Matilda was five spots away from kicking now. She watched the biggest looking boy, besides Bruce, kick the ball and send it sailing through the air. Matilda was sure no one could catch it, until she saw Hortensia sprinting for all she was worth and snatch it before it could land. Matilda had to admit she was good. There was the echoing of cheers from the outfield as Hortensia threw the ball back to the pitcher. “First out!” She called. Matilda was four spots away now. Then three. Why wasn’t the opposing team getting them out? Was it wrong to root for the opposite team? Two spots. One spot. Doug scooped the ball off the ground and got the kicker out at first. Oh no, now it was her turn. How had she gotten into this situation? She hadn’t even wanted to play. Matilda could hear the outfield begin to laugh. “Move in.” they yelled. She watched as everyone came much closer. Of course they would, she couldn’t kick very far compared to them. Then she noticed something strange. Everyone had come closer. Everyone except for Hortensia that was. It almost looked like she had backed up even. But why? She watched as Hortensia stuck her fingers to the sides of her temple and closed her eyes. Huh? Matilda stared at the pitcher who had a large cocky smile on his face. What did she care? She knew she’d be out. “Ready?” Matilda nodded. He rolled the ball, her foot came up to meet it and- she missed. “STRIKE ONE!” The pitcher yelled. He was laughing now, but not with her. At her. She was getting annoyed. What did they expect? She looked at Hortensia one more time. Again, she made the strange hand signs. She stared blankly until. Oh. So that’s why Hortensia wanted her to play. But that was cheating, wasn’t it? Matilda looked at her classmates who were laughing. It was just a game. It wasn’t like anything was on the line. She bit her lip and thought it over. She couldn’t use her powers if her foot didn’t make contact with the ball. Matilda nodded to the pitcher. She’d get it this time! She swung her foot and …missed again. There was more cheering and laughing. “STRIKE TWO.” Again Hortensia gave the signal, and this time Matilda understood. What if she used her powers to slow the ball down a little? She nodded to Hortensia this time. The pitcher rolled the ball again, but instead of running forward, she followed it with her eyes and mumbled,” Slow down. Slow down.” It was barely moving by the time it got to her. She kicked as hard as she could. Yes! Contact! Matilda ran as she watched the ball roll back towards the opposing team, now picking up speed instead of slowing down. The first player was in position to scoop it up, only the ball had suddenly changed direction! It rolled off to the right now as two more players scampered after it. Matilda came to a stop at first base, now breathing heavy and giggling like mad. Huh, this was fun after all. She broke her connection and let them scoop up the ball. “Lucky kick.” The first baseman said. There seemed to be a lot of lucky plays that game for many of her teammates. Balls were kicked impossibly high and far, pitches were slow, and every once in a while, the ball seemed to hit an invisible rock in the dirt and change direction. “You’re right that was fun!” Matilda said as they walked into the cafeteria. “I meant use your powers on your turn, not for your whole team!” Hortensia growled in her ear. “You little cheater.” Matilda looked down at her feet as they stood in line to get lunch. “Oh yeah, where’s my shoes?” “Oh, I traded them with some little kid, if you see him, he’ll be glad to give them back.” Hortensia said. “What? He? How’d you get a boy to trade shoes with me?” Matilda asked. She didn’t like where this was going. “I may have told him I’d stick his head in the toilet if he didn’t.” Hortensia admitted. “Hortensia!” Matilda grumbled. She let her head fall in her hands. “Why? Did you at least get a name, so I can give them back.” “Nigel, I think.” Matilda could feel the color draining from her face. No! She didn’t! “You…threatened a kid…in my mom’s class!?” She hissed. Ohh they were in deep trouble. Oh no! Oh no! “Oh, was he in Miss Honey’s class?” Hortensia shrugged. “What’s the big deal? Just go to her classroom and give them back before she notices.” She glanced at Matilda and frowned. “What’s with you? You look like you’re going to be sick.” “She already knows everything.” Matilda whispered. She could feel her anger from across the school. She was tempted to slip off the shoes and make a break for it. No she couldn’t do that, running would make her look guilty. Matilda hadn’t done anything wrong. She thought it was a voluntary trade! Oh no, she was coming this way! “It was nice knowing you.” Matilda whispered. “What? What’s she going to do, ask to trade back without saying please? Miss Honey’s the nicest person here.” Hortensia said with a scoff. “Not if you threaten one of her students.” Matilda said with a wince. The cafeteria doors violently slammed open. There stood Miss Honey looking angrier than Matilda had ever seen her. She gulped. Matilda watched as her eyes scanned the room before stopping on her. She gulped again. Miss Honey had Matilda’s shoes in her hand. She pointed at them, then at the space in front of her. …………………………………………….. “You want to explain to me why I found Nigel Hicks crying and wearing your shoes!” Miss Honey demanded. Both Matilda and Hortensia were shaking now from their chairs in the headmasters' office. “I-I thought it was a voluntary trade. With a girl!” Matilda said. “Do those look like a girl's shoes?!” Matilda looked down at her feet. Now that Miss Honey mentioned it, no. No they did not. “And you’ve gotten them all dirty! What were you doing? Why did you even need them?” “So she could play kickball with the rest of the class.” Hortensia chimed in. “Nigel just happened to be the only small enough person I came across.” “So you threatened to put his head in the toilet!?” “I wasn’t actually gonna do it!” Hortensia said. “It doesn’t matter!” Miss Honey said sounding disgusted. “Go clean them off and give them back to him. I’d give you a detention if I could. This school has had enough bullies!” “I think that’s a fair punishment.” Mr. Trilby said. “Hortensia, you have detention with Miss Honey after school. You’re excused.” Hortensia hung her head, took the shoes, and left. Matilda sat in her chair, avoiding Miss Honey’s glare. “I’m disappointed in you, Matilda.” Miss Honey said. Matilda gaped up at Miss Honey. “All I wanted to do was read! I only told her I didn’t have the right shoes, so she’d leave me alone. I didn’t know what she did to get them!” “Why didn’t you just tell her you didn’t want to play?!” “Because no one cares what I want!” Matilda yelled back. “That is not true, Matilda!” Miss Honey said firmly. “I care.” “Like you cared what I wanted yesterday.” Matilda said darkly. “Matilda! That is not- that’s not even… just…just go back to class.” Miss Honey said through gritted teeth. The two locked eyes for a moment and stared each other down before Matilda got up and headed for the door. “And Matilda…” She glanced back over her shoulder just as her hand gripped the door knob. “Meet me here after class lets out. You have detention too.” Miss Honey groaned as she heard the door slam. Oh, that girl! She knew just how to hit where it hurt! “I don’t like this, sir. I don’t think I can do this.” Miss Honey said into her hands. “I don’t like punishing children.” “Then I’m more sure than ever I’ve made the right choice.” Miss Honey sighed as she made her way back to her classroom. She thought they were on good terms after last night, but apparently not. Jenny had been so sure Matilda understood the procedure had been for her own good. She tried to tell herself it was no different from any parent taking their kid in for a vaccine. Of course, they wouldn’t be happy about it, but it still had to be done. It’s not like she could just let a five-year-old make medical decisions for herself. It was ridiculous! Matilda would just have to get over it. Decisions being made for you was all part of growing up, yet…she couldn’t shake the feeling this ran deeper than yesterday. And what was with that attitude? That was so unlike her! She hadn’t planned on punishing her at all until she opened her mouth. At least now Jenny didn’t feel so bad about offering her up as free child labor. The only difference was now she would be telling Matilda to go through the expense reports instead of asking her. At least for today. It’s not like either of them thought she could figure it out in less than an hour, or really, at all. Mr. Trilby had been studying them all week. It really had been a dumb idea. “I know you, with your many college degrees, can’t figure this out, Mr. Trilby, but how about letting my five-year-old take a look?” Miss Honey shook her head trying to clear it from this afternoon's events as she stood outside her classroom. She took a deep breath, put on a smile, and went on with her afternoon. … It was almost an hour before school let out when Miss Honey first heard her classroom door open. She looked up, but there was no one there. She looked around the room. Had someone left? Miss Honey did a quick head count. She frowned in confusion. Everyone was present and accounted for. Maybe it was a draft? She got up and closed the door. Miss Honey got halfway back to her desk when she heard it again. She spun on her heel. The door was open again. What was going on? She hadn’t had anything weird happen in here since Matilda left…Oh… Miss Honey tiptoed back to the door and poked her head outside. There she found a small childlike figure, with their back against the wall, and head in their lap quietly sobbing. Miss Honey looked back at her class. They were all pre-occupied with their coloring assignments. She stepped out of her classroom, closed the door behind her, and joined the figure on the floor. “Matilda, why aren’t you in class? What are you doing out here?” “I-I’m so-rry f-f-for wh-at I sa-id.” the figure on the ground managed to choke out. Miss Honey bit her lip. The lights in the hallway were beginning to flicker. “I-I c-c-couldn’t st-top think-ing ab-about it and- and- then I couldn-t b-b-breathe and o-one of t-t-the li-ghts in the cl-classroom blew!” “Matilda, I need you to try and calm down.” Miss Honey whispered. There was a loud, angry buzzing sound. She stared at the lights overhead. The three nearest them were beginning to surge brighter and brighter. She had to think of something. Miss Honey jumped to her feet, yanked Matilda to hers, and pulled her into the dark storage closet. “Shh shh shh, it’s alright, you’re alright.” “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Matilda sobbed, arms now tightly wrapped around Miss Honey’s waist. “Shh, let’s see if we can find a spot to sit down, and then we can talk.” She moved her feet around to see how much room there was before sliding down and pulling Matilda into her lap. “Sweetie, what’s been going on with you? I thought we were okay after last night.” “We are.” Matilda muttered into Miss Honey’s shoulder in between sniffles. “Then why did you say that earlier?” “I’m sorry!” Matilda cried. “I know you are, but why did you say it?” Matilda remained quiet for some time. “C’mon, talk to me.” “I was angry.” Matilda mumbled. “You seem to be angry a lot recently, you want to tell me what’s that about?” “I can’t explain it.” Matilda said. “Can you try?” Matilda sighed. “It’s like no one hears me, or is listening, or cares what I want.” “You said that earlier, but I don’t understand what you mean. This isn’t about yesterday, is it?” “No, not really.” Matilda mumbled before letting out her held breath. “My stomach feels great. I was even able to run without it hurting.” “While I’m certainly happy to hear you’re feeling better, I’m still not following.” “I thought I wanted to go to normal classes, but they're awful! I never thought I’d ever dislike school so much.” Miss Honey frowned. “It’s only been three days, Matilda, give it time.” Matilda let out a frustrated groan. “This is what I mean! No one’s listening!” Miss Honey held her tongue and sighed. “Alright, Matilda, I’m listening. What is it you’re trying to say?” “It doesn’t matter if it’s three days, or three months or three years! It’s not going to work, I’m so frustrated being forced to stay with the class I want to pull my hair out! I could have read five chapters by the time it takes the class to get through one! I feel so trapped being stuck at the pace of the slowest learner!” Miss Honey frowned as Matilda’s words began to sink in. She was right. This wasn’t something time would fix. Neither would moving her up another grade nor two. It wasn’t even about not liking the teacher or wanting to be around her. Matilda just wasn’t built for typical schooling of any grade level. It would only hold her back. She’d just run into the same problem again and again and again. What she needed was the ability to work at her own pace with a private tutor. “I think I’m finally hearing you.” Miss Honey said with a sigh. “You really were better off in my class. Oof.” She felt Matilda crash into her and squeeze. Miss Honey held her for a moment before letting go. “Let’s get out of this closet. You can stay with me the rest of the day. Actually,” Miss Honey smiled mischievously. “You’re going to serve your detention early.” “What?” Matilda asked in a high-pitched tone. “Don’t think you’re getting out of trouble.” They both stood up, and Miss Honey led her into the classroom and to her old desk. “Sit.” Miss Honey went back to her desk, pulled out a weeks worth of projects and the necessary supplies and set them on Matilda’s desk. “For your detention,” Miss Honey said with a grin. “You’ll be doing arts and crafts.”

Scene #179 Everyone hates when vacations end. Mary, for instance, hates when vacations end because she has to go back to work. I, for another instance, hate when vacations end because Mary has to go back to work. I don’t think I’ll ever puzzle out how it can be that when you’re not working the days can fly by so fast but you can still be bored, but after years of not working, I still get bored. Not on vacation, though, and not because it’s a new place with more things to do, but because I have Mary to play with or even just sit next to. I tried doing that at home, but it somehow wasn’t the same just sitting next to her in her office (it was actually powerfully boring). One day left in our vacation, and I didn’t wanna go home. I was very mature about it though. I didn’t grump or get in a bad mood or take my feelings out on … dammit. “Are you packed yet,” Mary asked me. She’s so Type A. Like I couldn’t just throw my stuff in my bag the next day, drive four hours back home, and then dump it all into the washer. It was going to end up in the washer when we got home whether I folded it or not. “No. I’ll do it later.” “It’s almost dinner time. It’ll only take a few minutes.” “Exactly. We have all evening and the morning.” “We’re leaving by eight.” “Yeah. I can get it done before then. I’ll get up an extra twenty minutes early … Stop looking at me like that. I can too get up early.” I mean, obviously I can. I did it just a few days prior when I got up even before Mary. Now, getting up early on purpose is like climbing a mountain with another mountain on your back, but I can surely do it. Probably. “Why don’t you pack right now and have an extra twenty minutes to sleep in?” “Mary, just …” I stopped because I recognized her be-ever-so-careful-with-what-you-say-next face. It’s her way of telling me without telling me I should be ever so careful with what I say next. “Think hard about what you say next,” Mary told me. She can a sphinx when it comes to what she’s thinking, or she can telegraph it like a professional telegrapher. “Urgh! Fine. I’ll go pack.” Not because I gave in, for the record. I just acceded to her suggestion to make life easier. I was told later that everything about my body language between the couch and the stairs screamed sulky teenager. I disagree. It was more of a groan than a scream. Of course, once I got to the bedroom, I discovered a flaw in Mary’s ‘it will only take a few minutes’ logic: there’s a bed in the bedroom. As far as furniture goes, beds are so much way better than couches. I mean, they’re just the best. I’m a fangirl for beds. I knew if I sat down on it, it was game over. When it comes to beds, I have a weak core; if my butt cheeks touch the bed, I would almost certainly just tilt over into one of the laying down positions (laying down positions are the best; total fangirl) and probably end up scrolling on my phone. I resolved to put the suitcase on the bed and keep myself off it. But I have weak resolve sometimes. Truly it is rare as I am abstemious in my appetites and determined in my aims as all paragons of the virtuous life are. Yet paragons of the virtuous life are also human, and of all the paragons, I am the best at being human. Very humble of me to say so (which is also a virtue; just sayin’). True story. Hence I was found on the bed next to an empty suitcase. In my defense, I was being very human, which is to say alternating between scrolling and staring at the ceiling. I was being so human, I didn’t even look toward the door when Mary came in or turn my eyes toward her when she stated, “You haven’t even gotten started.” “I got distracted.” She sighed her exasperated sigh – ya know, the one she saves for when she’s exasperated, often by the choices I’ve been making – but nonetheless offered to help me. “I’ll help you,” she said. She’s very helpful. “Kay.” I probably – maybe, possibly, it’s a thing that coulda happened – could’ve been a little less rude there. I admit this. I’m a paragon of admitting my own mistakes and flaws. Really. “Scooch,” was Mary’s ever patient response as she moved the suitcase out of her way, nudged my legs and sat down on the edge of the bed next to me so she could put the back of her hand on my forehead. “Are you feeling okay?” “I’m fine.” “Are you getting a flare-up?” “What? No.” “Didn’t get enough sleep?” That made me at least look up from my phone. Probably shouldn’t have; it just made it that much worse when I said, “Mary, would you please just chill? Alright? Just …” I would one day like to capture on video how she can toss me over her knee no matter where we are in relation to each other. I was lying down, she was sitting by my knees, and my legs were behind her, and before I could even get out the next syllable, my head was at the opposite end of the bed, and my whole body was in front of her, sprawled across her lap. She’s a ninja or a sorceress or a teleporter because the physics and biology of how even does that … friggin ninja sorceresses. SPANK! “Because I haven’t packed my suitcase yet,” I incredulously exclaimed by way of demanding to know why I was about to get spanked. “Because of your attitude. I have no idea what has gotten into you, but I’m gonna spank it outta you, and then you’re going to tell me what’s bothering you so much that you’re being such a pill today.” “I AM NOT! I wanna be OW! Stop it! I OW!” “Up.” I got back on my feet. And if you’re thinking she calls that a spanking, no. No, she doesn’t.” “No,” was my very clever and well-reasoned response to her attempt to unbutton my shorts. She can usually pop that button with just one one hand, but she needed both because I, well … “You keep your hands at your side,” Mary said with way more calmness that I deserved. She turned me sideways and landed a couple of her signature thunderspanks on the back of my thighs before turning me back toward her. “You know better than to try to stop me from taking your pants and undies down, little girl.” “I’m not a little girl,” I didn’t whine. I also didn’t try to stop her again, and down came my shorts and panties. But I did give her about 1% resistance to being put back over her knee. I didn’t mean to. I swear. “Over, Daphne Ann.” I think she was spanking me before I even got all the way across her lap. Good on me for clenching my throat shut while she wailed at my butt and made it very clear to me, “You had better hold still, or so help me …” I didn’t hear the rest. I was too busy focusing on the injustice of it all. I’m allowed to be in a bad mood if I wanna be. SPANK SMACK WHAP SLAP SPANK! I’m allowed to pack my suitcase last minute. SPANK SMACK WHAP SLAP SPANK! I’m allowed to be a total bitch to my wife who was nothing but reasonable and patient even while I was being bratty and rude. Actually, wait a sec … SPANK SMACK WHAP SLAP SPANK! This isn’t injustice, said me in my head. This is justice, said me to me in my head. And then Me 1 and Me 2 agreed on a proper course of action: We should cry pretty hard. Yes, it will make us feel better. And express our remorse. So it is agreed. We shall cry. Very hard. Very, very hard. Let us commence. “M-M-Marrrrryyyyyyy I’m sorrrrrrrrrryyyyyyyy! Waaaaahhhhhh!” I’m not such a fan of that onomatopoeia, but you get the idea. I made ows and ouches, eeps and meeps, grunts and groans, boos and hoos, and sobs and so many tears. “What bee is in your bonnet today? You know better than to cop an attitude and take it out on me …” SPANK SMACK WHAP SLAP SPANK! “… Nothing but back talk since breakfast …” SPANK SMACK WHAP SLAP SPANK! “…I did nothing to deserve the way you’ve treated me today…” SPANK SMACK WHAP SLAP SPANK! “…Is this how you want to end our nice trip?” SPANK SMACK WHAP SLAP SPANK! I did my very best to explain myself. “Meemee-mee (distressed chipmunk noises) and didn’t mean (distraught capybara noises) and futternuusin (ashamed hippopotamus noises). SPANK SMACK WHAP SLAP SPANK! “Is that enough,” she asked me. SPANK! “Eeee!” “Do you need me to get the hairbrush?” SPANK! SPANK! “Neee!” “Are you ready to talk to me about what’s bothering you?” SPANK! “Yeee!” SPANK! “Okay, up you go.” Scooped up off her lap so I could sit in her lap, put my head in her shirt, let her rub my back, and do some more crying while she cooed at me. “Shhh. You’re okay.” “Yarrry!” “What was that, baby?” “I’m sorry.” “I know. I forgive you.” “I eedn’t meebemeatuyu.” “Take a breath and tell me again.” I always forget the breathing part, and Mary always reminds me. We complement each other’s skills. “I didn’t mean to be mean to you.” “I know. I know you didn’t. Shhh. Try to catch your breath.” Easy for her to say. She wasn’t the one sobbing with the cramping diaphragm and freely flowing nose. “Can you try telling me why you were in such a bad mood?” That’s easy. “Cuz I don’t wanna go home.” “Neither do I.” “You have to go back to work. I … (sob sniff snort).” “What?” How pathetic is this? “I miss you when you’re at work.” I’m the most mature person ever, for the record. I can miss my person when she’s away for just a few hours and express my impending sadness by taking it out on her and it’s not at all childish and doesn’t make me any less mature … and stuff. Really. “Daffy …” “(Snort).” I am so attractive at all the times. 11/10 easy, and that’s the humble version. “I mean I get bored and wanna do stuff with you and you can’t. I know it’s stupid.” “It’s not stupid.” “Yes it is.” “Your feelings are never stupid. I know what you’re trying to say. You just wish we could be so playful and carefree all the time and do everything together.” “Yeah …” I mean, I get bored, and Mary is also the very best person to do anything with. “Me too. I wish we could stay here and send for Suzy and never go back to our responsibilities.” “It sucks.” “I know. But we’ll do our best, and you have to admit,” my Mary said cuz she’s always trying to get me to admit stuff, “our best is pretty darn good.” “I admit nothing and you can’t make me.” “One of these days, Daffodil (kiss), I’m gonna find out (kiss) just how long (kiss) and hard (kiss) I have to spank you until you’re sass-free for more than 5 minutes. “(Snort) Do I habba be bere bor it? (Snort).” She scortled at me. “Let’s go wash your face and blow your nose.” And ya know what she did? She held my hand to the bathroom. What is wrong with me that I’m ever short-tempered with her? “I’m sorry,” I told her while she ran warm water over a washcloth. “Look up.” She gently wiped the tear streaks away while reminding me, “you said sorry already, and it’s all forgiven and over. You’re my good girl always.” I wonder if I’m the only person in the world who can whimper and be happy at the same time. I mean, she forgives me? (Whimper.) And I’m her good girl? (Squee!) Always (Whimper-Squee? Squimper? Yep, new word). “There’s my pretty girl again. Honk,” she told and and held the washcloth for me to blow my nose into. I don’t honk, by the way. “(Honk! Snnnnn Snnnnnrfurgh Hoooonk!” I don’t honk. “How much you got in there still?” She was chuckling at me. She thinks I’m cute when my nose is running uncontrollably. I won the wife/best friend lottery. “(Snrf snrr snrif snfff). I’m done.” So pretty; that's me. “And after getting so much on my shirt too. But comes with raising little girls who sometimes forget they aren’t naughty.” “Can you do something for me,” I asked. “Anything.” “Don’t be so patient with me next time. When I get in a mood like that and start taking it out on you. Don’t be so patient with me. I hate that about me, that I do that to you.” And why was she out of nowhere hugging me like a riptide might carry me away? Like, oof. “I don’t hate anything about you,” she replied in her you-better-listen-and-listen-good tone. “I’ll promise to be quicker to help snap you out of those moods, but you have to promise to try to stop hating anything about yourself. No one’s perfect.” “But I am, is the thing.” Her hand slid down my back to my butt and squeezed kinda definitely hard. “Daffy.” That was said in her you-will-not-get-out-of-dealing-with-your-emotions-by-making-jokes tone. “I promise to try.” And she kissed me before letting me out of that hug. Couldn’t help myself; had to say it. “I’m sorry I’m so much trouble sometimes.” “I love that you’re so much trouble sometimes. Let’s go pack your suitcase.” “Really?” “Really, little girl. We’ll do it together.” It takes way longer with Mary’s help. She folds things. Ugh.

If this is their Fixx (sp?) size 10, then they are BIG. I went to their warehouse sale a couple of weeks ago, and intended to buy one just to try it, but it looked really, really big, the guard in particular - almost comically big. I might try fitting one of those size 10 nipples to a size 6 pacifier guard at some point, just to see what they feel like. But my go-to is their regular size 6 pacifiers. I have about 25 of them, and they are inexpensive and last a long time. I use one every night so I rotate through them and clean them and then rotate through them again. I like the size 6 teat because it stays in my mouth and doesn't put any pressure on my front teeth, whereas when I used to use toddler-sized pacifiers, my front teeth would ache a bit sometimes, and they'd tend to fall out while I slept. If you buy it let me know what you think. In terms of buying from Pacifieraddict, which is a Rearz subsidiary, I have bought a TON of stuff from Rearz, mostly diapers but also onesies and pacifiers. They're very discreet. It doesn't show up on your Amex bill as " Diaper Fetish Superstore" and the packaging doesn't say "Enormous Adult Baby Pacifier".

Did anyone ever have a bedwetting or accident chart when they were younger? If so, how did you feel about it? Did you ever have accidents on purpose to try to get put back in diapers? Just FYI Everyone: I can't read cursive. So please try to keep your posts to where I can read them easily. Thank you!??♥️?

@herb330@Kawaharu@gmcchamp99 If I go to a medical appointment, always make sure I am clean before leaving, and that includes a DRY diaper, and clothing. I don't use AB/DL Diapers if going to the Doctors, but I use a Megamax, in either Tie-Dye, Black, or PINK, and I will wear either Garywear Cover or a Trifecta Cover in Pink or Blue or Black or Blue. Since my doctor knows I wear and use, and so do his staff, there is no reason to hide my wearing or using them, since I am incontinent both ways I have had ZERO issues when at the dentist or any other place Brian

I think I found an paci that I ACTUALLY like, but I'm too scared to order it because I don't want people to find out. Does anybody know if this binky would actually fit in my mouth?! I have the mouth of a 12 year old.?? LOL!?????

Not sure if I'm hijacking or not but I mainly have prefolds... well before I had to box them up due to an unsuccessful move situation out to the middle of nowhere (been 3 years now and still living in 1 room with 2 other family members) Anyways I had a few pockets and a velcro fitted that I got too fat for before moving, lol. It's been 3 years since I wore my prefolds and I'm pretty sure they won't fit my thick thighs and gut anymore lol. Had the sides of my plastic pants rip so to save space I tossed them out. I want to try making flats with an adult sized version of newborn shaped cloth diapers, you know the square ones not the hourglass shape that you normally see. Anyway I'm sorry again if I hijacked the thread, not my intention.

One word: PLEASURE.

still in my overnight diapee which is a tykables galactic that is soaking wet. Just made a nice warm pee pee in my diapee will probably sit in it for a tiny bit longer cause i will probably have to go poo poo soon.

I love that Daphne not only accepted the punishment, but asked Mary to be more strict. She spends a lot of time railing against how unfair Mary is being, (which is cute and totally part of the story's draw!) that it's easy for a reader to feel that Mary is being unfair sometimes. I like the little peeks into the couple's negotiation, like the (2?) times that Mary has overstepped and needed to apologize or correct herself. It makes the DS relationship seem way stronger, IMO.

So true and over time your body will get use being diapered and you won’t develop a rash that often. Over time you’ll develop a diaper routine and know when it’s time to ask for a diaper change.

Rebecca is really getting Matilda humilated.

Chapter 3 It was a good four minutes and forty-five seconds before Wendy stopped cackling like a madwoman into her pillow. She’d done it! She’d done it, she’d done it, she’d done it! She looked again at the perfect study guide in her hands, the thing that hadn’t existed until she’d put together that baby puzzle in the universe on the other side of the closet. Wow, that sounded even wilder everytime she so much as thought about it. Wendy was Aladdin with the lamp. She was Frodo with the One Ring. She was Dr. Frankenstein and it was taking everything she had not to crane her neck and shout up to the sky “IT’S ALIVE!” A parallel universe-one where her parents thought she was a baby-right there in her closet. That alone was beyond remarkable. The fact that whatever she did in one seemed to trickle out to the other; that was beyond amazing! “I’ll never have to study again,” she whispered to herself. “I’ll never have to take another test. Tomorrow I can…” She stopped. Never say the best part out loud. Tomorrow was for tomorrow. Today, she could take the whole day for herself: watch television, waste time, literally do whatever she wanted. Laying back on her bed, the law student felt her veins buzzing deep inside her. The rip in between realities wasn’t the only thing that was glowing. To her, this was better than skydiving or white water rafting. For the first time since middle school, Wendy felt like something more than an ex-Gifted kid. She felt on top of the world, and soon would be at the top of her class with no real effort required of her. And all it would cost the girl was her underwear thickening and becoming more than a little crinkly for a couple hours. She looked back into her closet and saw the rip, still glowing, if slightly fainter; more than likely because she was getting used to it. It was kind of like stepping out into the sunlight after spending all day indoors. You squinted, blinked, rubbed your aching eyes, and then got used to it. A knock at the door caught Wendy’s attention. “Come in,” she said. Her mom stepped in. “Hey, Wendy. Busy studying?” Wendy smiled like a cat that had just gorged itself on goldfish and gotten away with it. “Naw. I think I’ve studied as much as I need to. Any more and I’d feel like I was talking to myself. You know?” “Yeah?” Mom said. She took a seat at the foot of Wendy’s bed. “I know how that is. You can only do so much lesson planning before you start working yourself up with butterflies.” Out of politeness, Wendy propped herself up enough to make eye contact with her mother. “Pretty much.” “Absolutely. You should take the day for yourself. Just relax.” “Thanks, Mom.” “Although…” her mother said. Wendy’s mouth got just a tad dryer. “Although…? She had a bad feeling about this. Mom was one of those types for whom enough was never quite enough. “It’s a beautiful day,” Mom said. “Want to go to the park with me? Jog the fitness trail before it gets too hot outside?” Anxiously, Wendy looked down at herself. Her metabolism and diet were at peak performance. She didn’t really need to exercise to maintain her trim physique. She hated sweating, too. Still, going jogging with Mom might be a good way to spend time with her. “Okay...” “Great,” Mom patted Wendy on the ankle. “I’ll go get changed.” Then she lowered the hammer. “While we’re jogging you can explain to me the stuff you’ve been studying.” Alarm bells clattered inside Wendy’s brain. “Hm?” “No better way to learn than by teaching somebody else.” This! This is why Mom wanted to go jogging. It wasn’t Mother/Daughter time as much as it was a pop quiz!. That was so Mom! She left before Wendy had a chance to contradict her or back out of the outing. Wendy was on her feet a moment later, pacing only because she was trying to stop herself from running out shrieking into the hallway. The twenty-two year old felt like she was in her late fifties with her chest tightening from panic and anxiety. As though she were clinging to a life raft, she snatched up the study guide and read over it. It was in her handwriting, but everything she’d written on it was completely foreign to her. She hadn’t remembered writing any of it. Factually, she hadn’t; her parents just remembered her writing it. It had basically popped into existence due to some causal reaction from her tinkering in the closet dimension. The girl nibbled on her bottom lip. “I could just read this while we jog,” she said to herself. No. That wouldn’t work. She could already hear her mother lecturing her: Note reading wasn’t rote memorization and rote memorization wasn’t comprehension. Wendy inhaled. “I don’t even know how much of this is accurate!” The answers could be complete bullshit as far as she knew. In the big scheme of things, her mother embarrassing her and telling her that she needed to spend the rest of the day studying material she clearly hadn’t retained wasn’t the worst thing in the world. In Wendy’s scheme of things, however, it felt like the most damning of castigations. Wendy leaned against her door, and closed her eyes from all the stress she was feeling. “It’s not even gonna matter tomorrow. If I’m right I don’t even have to study.” If she was right… What if the study guide was a fluke? Her eyes opened and she jerked as though she expected a winged viper to fly out and bite her on the face.. Only the faintly glowing rip stared back at her. Perhaps this cause and effect regarding dimensional travel required more study? Ironic since studying (or not) got her into this. No. No. She was putting her foot down. Kind of. Wendy might not be good at memorizing facts, but she could talk circles around her mother when she needed to. “Actually, Mom,” she whispered to herself, “I think I’ll pass on going jogging with you. I had a late night last night, like Daddy...like Dad said and I don’t want to overexert myself.” Almost like a game of chess, she could see the conversation play out from there. Move and Counter Move. “That’s fine. You can tell me about what you’ve learned after your nap,” Wendy said, mimicking her mother as she began walking back and forth in front of her mirror. Then Wendy would feint and go, “It seems like you’re more concerned with checking on my studying than spending time with me.” Mom would reply with something to the effect of “I just want to make sure that you’re ready for tomorrow.” Then Wendy would counter with “Are you going to be in the courtroom for me for my cases?” Her mother would counter with, “You won’t get into any courtrooms if you don’t graduate Law School.” From there it would be less like chess and more like jazz music: Structured improvisation around an ever escalating frame until Wendy pulled out her trump card at the argument’s crescendo. Then she’d say something like, “I’m an adult and I’d appreciate it if you treated me more like one. Or are you going to start quizzing dad about his job, too?” It would de-escalate from there. Mom might resort to pot-shots about who is paying the bills, but that could be disarmed with something along the lines that gratitude is not the same as subservience, and when the offer for her to stay at home was made, no parameters were made where she was required to report directly to her mother. Mother might flimsily counter that no such proviso was added where she couldn’t change the rules, but that could be easily sidestepped by calling her ethics into question: Only Darth Vader and the other great tyrants of pop culture and history changed the terms of an agreement on a whim and told the people under their rule that they should pray that the rules weren’t altered further. From there, the conversation would go back into total predictability, Mom would acquiesce and leave her alone. They’d both walk away with hurt feelings, things would be tense at dinner, and then it’d all blow over in a day or two. Wendy popped over across the hallway and went to the bathroom. Never get into an argument on an empty bladder. She slumped forward on the toilet. She hadn’t even gotten into things with her mom, yet, and already she was feeling exhausted. After wiping, flushing and washing her hands, Wendy heard her father call from the kitchen, “You about ready, honey? Your jogging buddy is almost done!” “Almost!” Both mother and daughter called out in unison, their voices coming from opposite ends of the house and meeting in the middle. “Heh,” Wendy heard Dad chuckle to himself. “Two birds with one stone. I love when that happens.” Wendy braced herself. This. Was going. To be. Unpleasant. She stopped in the hallway and looked back to her room. Should she meet Mom in her parent’s bedroom or her own? Meet halfway and have Dad bear witness? No. That wouldn’t be fair to him. Feeling weary beyond her years, Wendy huffed. She hadn’t even started talking to her mother yet and already she felt exhausted. This would have been so much easier if she were talking to her Mom’s doppelganger; the one on the other side of the closet. That version of Mom had all of the love and affection that this one had, but without the strenuous expectations. Twenty some odd years ago, ‘jogging’ would have just meant jogging. Spending time together. No tests. No nothing. A wonderful idea took root in her brain. “I might not have to go jogging with her either.” Babies didn’t go jogging. Wendy darted back into her bedroom. Quickly, she removed her top long enough to switch out her regular bra for a sports one. “Not sure why I’m doing this,” she muttered. “It’s not like it’s gonna exist on the other side.” If the parallel events on either side of the rip worked like she thought it did, her mother would think she went jogging with her anyway. When she came back afterwards, Wendy might be wearing a sports bra regardless. Best not to make the transition back any more jarring than it had to be. “Just spend long enough over on that side so that Mom remembers me wowing her.” Wendy took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “I get quality time and rest. She gets her wunderkind. Win-win.” Still feeling the glow coming out of the litteral tear in the fabric of reality through her closed eyelids, Wendy found herself hesitating for a moment. Was she really this afraid of confronting her mother she would rather flee to another world and hide back in diapers? For real? No, that wasn’t why she was going back. Avoiding all that arguing was almost a pretext. Deep down, the college girl knew she was looking forward to some more of that undiluted parental love. There was an entire reality to explore, and such moments to experience. Nothing else right now felt as alluring. “Who am I kidding? Bluffing Mom is only half the mission. Testing more of those baby sides of things, that’s the real deal.” Wendy straightened up, feeling her building resolution. “Here...we...go…” Blinding light so intense that she could see it through her eyelids! The sensation lasted no more than two steps before Wendy was sure she was on the other side of the rip. Roller coasters rely on surprise and anticipation. That first heart-pounding drop, or the surprise loop or corkscrew turn; it’s all thrilling, but nothing quite so much as that first trip. Nothing got your pulse racing as much as that first time. Traveling between parallel universes had that in common, Wendy found. She rubbed her eyes and took a survey of her nursery. She’d made it through the portal easily enough. She looked down at herself. “Same nursery.” She looked down past her chest. “Same adult clothes...for now.” She had no doubt in her mind that eventually she’d be back in toddler shorts and frilly shirts. Just like last time it was taking a while to kick in. Good. If she could get through this with as much time out of disposable underwear, so much the better. Wendy had made a kind of calculated peace that her panties wouldn’t be panties over here on this side of the closet. It didn’t mean she was looking forward to that inevitability. She popped open the front of her shorts and stared down at her panties. Feeling silly, she reached down and poked herself. So weird to think that within the hour these would likely be thicker than if she’d balled up and wrapped every article of clothing exclusively around her waist. Mumbled conversation leaked its way through her bedroom door. Mom and Dad- their alternate universe equivalents, rather- were talking in the kitchen. It didn’t sound too charged. Pleasantly excited more than anything. The law student shuddered when she felt her bra melt into the front of her shirt just like last time. It was happening already! She’d been done with her oatmeal and was being carried back to her room last time. Morbidly curious, she walked over to the mirror and watched the little ruffles appear on her shirt as the fabric seemed to dye itself pink. “Huh,” she mused. “Much quicker than before.” The shorts were next. Instead of turning from tan to a light powder view like they had before, they became transparent. Wendy was reminded of that old movie that her parents loved; the one about the time traveling car. Her shorts were fading out of existence just like the main character’s siblings in that photograph. “How? Why-?” This gave Wendy a front row seat for watching her panties thicken and bulge out into a giant disposable diaper. Elmo was on the front, smiling from the landing zone with colorful zig zags going all over her nether regions. The number near the landing zone, just barely covered up by the sides indicated that it was supposed to be a Size 3. In reality it was probably closer to a Size 7 or 8. Did they even make diapers that big? It covered all the right places, modesty wise. Wendy had worn bathing suits that showed more skin. That fact didn’t stop the girl from turning almost as pink as her babyish top. She really did look like an overgrown infant like this; a toddler at best, and that was stretching it. Again, she poked down at the portrait of elmo and felt the thickness of the padding between her finger and skin. She inhaled and caught a whiff of what might have been baby powder. Or maybe it was perfume. Some diapers were perfumed, right? Wendy didn’t know. She’d had exactly one surprise period before she got her mother to teach her how to insert a tampon, and she had absolutely no interest in babies before this. Absorbent padding in all of its forms was downright alien to her. Worlds collided in her mind. Some people’s worst recurring nightmare was being naked in class. After today, Wendy had the sneaking suspicion her embarrassment dream would involve standing in front of a judge wearing nothing but a pink t-shirt and a big fluffy diaper. It felt about the same as it had underneath her shorts. Seeing it there in the mirror, as her first layer of clothing made it different; more real. “What happened to my shorts?” Still, as the shock wore off, she had to admit- if only to herself- she looked kind of cute. She turned to the side and stuck her butt out a little. Blushing, she put a finger in her mouth, trying to look innocent. The girl in the mirror looked absolutely adorable! She turned all the way around and looked over her shoulder and wiggled her hips; watching as well as hearing the enlarged diaper as every movement became exaggerated. She turned back and pressed her pointer fingers into her cheeks, giving herself dimples. Pretending to be shy, she pulled down the hem of her shirt and looked down at her feet, looking like a naughty little girl who’d broken a vase or something. She toyed with the idea of just plopping on the floor, legs spread wide and sucking her thumb. How would she look then? Kind of cute, she bet. More than ‘kind of’ cute. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad once she got used to it. “Okay, baby!” Mom opened the door. Correction: It was ‘Closet Mommy’, this universe’s version of her mother. Reflexively, Wendy’s hands shot down beneath her waist. She wasn’t used to it! Definitely not used to it! Had she been wearing panties, she would have been better able to conceal them with her body. Bend over, squeeze her knees together, and spread her hands out to obfuscate the entirety of her underwear. This universe’s underwear made all of the above much more difficult. The sides and back bulged and bunched out so that bending in any way just left an angle exposed; she couldn’t really close her legs all the way, and had to spread her feet out just to angle her knees so that they barely touched, not to mention her dainty hands were not even close to the task of covering the entirety of the diaper’s front side. Of course, had she been in just her underwear, she might not have reacted that way to her Mom walking in on her. It was just underwear. Did diapers count as underwear? The would-be lawyer in her couldn’t help but wonder alongside her blushy embarrassment and panic. “EEP!” She squeaked. “Mom! Private!” Mommy didn’t seem to hear her, or at least made no effort to fix it. “Ready to go for a jog with Mommy?” In one fell swoop, she scooped Wendy off her feet and onto her hip. Wendy’s feet and arms wrapped around the only-slightly older woman’s waist and shoulder. In hindsight being picked up by her father hadn’t overly startled Wendy. Howard Merts was still bigger and stronger than either his wife or his daughter. It wasn’t all that jarring or unbelievable that he could toss her over his shoulder or carry her on his hip; especially not one that had been de-aged over two decades. Jody Merts, by contrast, was of an almost identical body type to Wendy, and her ‘Closet Mommy’ variation seemed even more like Wendy’s slightly older sister. Yet it seemed just as easy and natural for her to pick Wendy up off the floor. “Oh wow,” Mommy said. “Somebody’s getting heavy!” “You have no idea,” Wendy replied, knowing that it wouldn’t be properly understood. “Whatchoo doin’?” Closet Mommy cooed. “Whose ‘dat baby? Whose ‘dat baby?” She didn’t seem to notice or care that Wendy’s face was pink enough to be mistaken for a sunburn. Unconsciously, Wendy shifted her weight in her other mother’s arms. With equal automaticity, Closet Mommy shifted Wendy and patted her bottom. “Hmm? She looked at Wendy’s diaper and twisted her mouth. “Howard!” she called. “Come in here, I’ve got to tell you something!” Closet Daddy sauntered in, casually. “What’s up?” “You forgot to put her shorts back on again,” Mommy said. Back on? A lightbulb clicked in Wendy’s brain. She’d gone to the bathroom before crossing over. Had that translated to her getting her diaper changed over on this side of the rip? “It’s a nice day out,” Daddy shrugged. “I know I wouldn’t wear pants if I could get away with it.” “No shoes, either.” “She’s gonna be in the stroller most of the time. Let her wiggle her toes.” Daddy smirked. “I know you said she’s a whiz at walking, but you’re not gonna make her jog with you? I don’t think she’s quite ready for that.” He smiled, warmly. “Did you really just call me in here because I didn’t put her clothes back on after changing?” Mommy looked back in the mirror. “Oh yeah. No, I didn’t.” She placed Wendy back on the carpet and stood back up. “Remember when I told you about her walking earlier?” “Yeah?” Daddy seemed dubious. “I just came in,” Mommy gushed, “and you won’t believe who I saw staring at her reflection in the mirror!” Daddy guffawed. “No kidding!” “She was standing up, too! All by herself!” “I believe it,” Daddy said, trying to sound nonchalant. “Ten months isn’t too young to start walking.” “It’s not,” Mommy agreed, “but it’s still incredibly early. Very top percentile. And I swear she was looking at herself in the mirror. That isn’t supposed to happen until at least fifteen months! That’s super advanced!” Even here, her mother was helicopter parenting and getting excited that her daughter was ‘advanced’. “Really?” Wendy rolled her eyes. At least on this side of the rip she could meet those expectations. “Come on,” Mommy cooed. “Show Daddy! Stand up! Stand up!” She made a raising motion with her hands. “You can do it.” Wendy rolled over onto her hands and knees. She could do it. Easily. She made to gather her legs up under her and push herself up And stopped. A terrible thought occurred to her: Putting together that baby puzzle so fast had resulted in her real parents thinking she was a super whiz. It might be easy to meet expectations for a ten month old, but what would that mean for her later that day when she was twenty-two again? Best to play it safe. She jerked her head upward and rocked back on her knees a little bit; doing her best impression of a child who had seen standing up but hadn’t gotten the hang of it. Closet Mommy looked disappointed. “She was doing it just a minute ago. Maybe if I move her to her crib? Give her something to pull-up on.” “She’s not even one and already you’re talking about Pull-Ups.” Daddy joked. “Howard…” For good measure, Wendy took the time to crawl away from her crib straight into the middle of the floor. Let them see her crawling. Let them be comfortable with her crawling. Closet Daddy put his hand on Closet Mommy’s shoulder. “I know you’re excited,” he said. “I am too. But it’s perfectly natural for kids her age to get things on accident, and then go back. Two steps forward, one crawl back, or something like that. Nobody learns in a straight line; especially not babies.” Mommy sighed. “You’re right.” “As usual.” “Don’t push it.” It didn’t stop Mommy from smiling. She stepped over to Wendy and picked the girl back up. “I’m sorry, baby. Mommy didn’t mean to pressure you,” she gave her a kiss on the forehead. “You do you in your own time. No rush. We’ll practice later, but it’ll be at your own pace.” One universe or another, Jody Merts was still Jody Merts. “Now about her pants…” “Let her enjoy being a baby,” Daddy said. “She only gets to do it once.” If only he knew the irony of that statement. Perhaps it was best that he didn’t... Mommy looked back to the not-so-little girl in her arms and back to her husband. “It’s a good thing you’re both so cute and I don’t want to put pants back on a wiggly baby.” She gave him a peck on the lips and then strolled over to Wendy. “Come on, sugar booger,” she said. “Let’s go for a walk.” Finally! “Say bye bye to Daddy, Wendy.” “Bye, Daddy,” Wendy said. Mommy reached across and grabbed Wendy by the wrist. “Bye bye, Daddy,” she said in a cutesy high pitched voice, as if speaking for ‘Baby’ Wendy. “See you after our walk.” Wendy found her hand being waved for her. Daddy gave both of them a kiss. Mommy again on the lips, and Wendy on the cheek. “I slipped the diaper bag in the back of the stroller and parked it in front.” “Thank you, dear.” “Of course.” Daddy replied. Mommy didn’t reply, though Wendy sensed it had more to do with letting him get the last word in than out of anything remotely resembling negative vibes. The garage door was open, and the stroller was already parked out in the driveway facing the street. Daddy had definitely done prep work. The only thing Wendy gained from being taken outside via the garage was a free peek inside Mommy’s car and the absolutely gigantic baby seat in the back of it. The stroller itself was a jogging stroller, shiny black with a hot pink trim on the sides and cushions.There was a canopy overhead, but the reclined ramp for the legs stuck out in the sun. By Wendy’s reckoning, it was only slightly bigger than a regular stroller, and functionally was a modified wheelchair, or an infantilized version of something that a disabled person might sit in. If it were to scale up completely, Wendy reckoned, her Mommy wouldn’t be able to reach the handlebar to push her. Same with the carseat. How’d anybody fit that behemoth in there? This version of her mother wasn’t a middle aged greying school teacher. She was practically in her prime. She looked to be in her late twenties, early thirties at most. Wendy did some mental math. Twenty-nine. If everything was to scale, her mom was twenty-nine. Point being even a twenty-nine year old woman couldn’t fit that giant car seat in there. Even if it were as light to her as Wendy the darn thing looked too bulky to squeeze in. It was a matter of volume. Not weight. “Maybe not everything grows.” Wendy murmured to herself. Then she remembered how the pack of diapers her mom had brought in had started off as Size 3, then ballooned out to fit her. Technically she was still wearing Size 3 if the number on the diaper’s front could be believed. “Maybe the baby stuff grows just enough to fit me when I’m here and..shrinks when I’m gone?” “That’s right,” Mommy cooed. “We’re goin’ on a jog!” Closet Mommy was less adept at sussing out what Wendy said than her male counterpart. This might have been a blessing of sorts, since the next few words out of Wendy’s mouth were the kind of thing that her real Mom would definitely have scolded her for at the very least. A jogger, an attractive one too, had run right across their path, and Wendy instinctively kicked and cussed in a futile attempt not to be seen in just a shirt and diaper. She wasn’t seen, however. Or rather, she wasn’t noticed. The jogger didn’t even turn his head to the side. To everyone, not just her parents, Wendy was just another infant. And as this universe’s equivalent of her father said, who cared if someone saw a baby in just their diaper? “Oh you always get so excited when you see your stroller,” Mommy cooed to her while she buckled Wendy in. Wendy exhaled and leaned back in the stroller and her Mommy’s legs disappeared out of view. The stroller started moving. “Just a baby here,” she told herself. “That’s it. Nothing to worry about. Back in the real world, I’m going jogging with my mother. This is the same thing,” she looked again at the Pampers she was wearing, “Only different.” Experimentally, she poked at the release button on the stroller’s harness. It was big and bright and red; impossible to miss. “Hmm…” she said when it didn’t move. She’d tapped it lightly enough, not wanting to accidentally unbuckle herself, but the button didn’t so much as wiggle. She pushed down harder. The big red circle between her legs didn’t so much as indent. Even harder, she tried again and got nothing. It was almost as if the release didn’t exist and someone had painted a red dot on solid tempered steel to make her think there was a button there. Her hands slid up to the latch buckle over her chest. Silently, she grunted trying to press down on the release, pinching at the tops and bottoms to cause the harness to separate. She got nothing for her trouble behind slightly aching fingers. Interesting. Evidently, the equipment was sturdy enough so that she could only interact with it on the level that an actual ten-month old child could. It made sense, in a way. It wouldn’t do to have a crib that she couldn’t tilt over or a changing table that collapsed under her weight. Curiosity sated for the moment, Wendy leaned back in her stroller and absorbed everything going on around her. With the sidewalk zooming past along her periphery, slowly, Wendy started taking in her surroundings. She knew this route. It led to a park with a decent fitness trail and a playground for little kids. It was only about half a mile from their house. The trip would be even easier now that Wendy didn’t have to walk. The same houses that had been part of the background of her life went by. Same birdbaths. Same yards. Same street corners. Everything was the same, save for her and her parents. “Hi Jody!” A neighbor waved. “Good day for a jog with the little one!” “You bet, Kristen!” Mommy said. “Gotta lose that baby weight somehow!” “Have a good one! I’m out here in the weeds. Maybe I’ll see you on your way back.” “Maybe! Ta-ta!” Remembering breakfast, Wendy started taking mental notes. Both her real and her Closet Mommy had gone grocery shopping first thing in the morning and for a jog soon after. Her father remembered having instant oatmeal for breakfast with her, even if she remembered it as her Daddy playing silly games with her in her high chair. It stood to reason that when she got back, Mom would remember the neighbors, passerby and such on her and Mommy’s stroller trip. “Mommy?” Wendy called out. She got no response. “Mommy?” she called again. Only the light grinding sound of rubber on pavement and the pounding of Closet Mommy’s jogging footsteps came in reply. “Mommy!” Wendy kicked her feet bare, making the stroller jiggle beneath her. Finally, the stroller slowed to a stop, and Mommy peered around the front. “Yes, Wendy?” “Who was that?” Wendy thumbed back. “The neighbor? That you talked to? Working on her garden?” Best to find out now and hope she was a better study in this situation than in Law School. “Hold on, cupcake,” Closet Mommy said. When she came back around, she was already nose down in the diaper bag looking for something. “Your father just changed you,” she said. “And he fed you breakfast. It’s still kind of hot out... So….,” she produced a bottle of apple juice. “Thirsty?” Wendy wasn’t thirsty. Not at all. Yet her throat felt incredibly parched seeing the bottle of amber liquid slosh around in her Mommy’s hand. Or more accurately, her tongue desperately craved the sweet stuff spread upon it and the pleasurable sensation of it sliding down her throat. She reached forward and the younger version of her mother met her more than halfway. “Good girl! Drink up.” Wendy grabbed the bottle and stared at it like it was a Rubik’’s Cube. Even that metaphor fell short for the ex-Gifted kid; she’d know where to start on a Rubik’s Cube. It had been decades since she’d last drank from a baby bottle; so far back that she didn’t actually remember. Not that she needed instructions, it was literally so easy a baby could do it. It just seemed so...foreign to her. Gingerly she slid the rubber nipple between her lips, taking a moment to half-chew the teat just to see what it felt like. She kept adjusting her hands, too, trying to get comfortable. Should she hold her hands parallel to each other or stack them along the edge of the bottle like she was playing a clarinet? Should she just hold it one handed and let the other arm droop to the side? In a way it was less about the mechanics of the thing and more about getting comfortable with it, like slowly wading into a pool. The first genuine pull on the nipple was like cannonballing into the deep end! Just one squirt of sweet sweet juice made her shudder in surprise. In spite of herself, Wendy let out a nervous giggle. What was she so worried about? It was just a baby bottle! She didn’t know whether to feel sillier for her hesitation or at her feeling of accomplishment once she’d taken a sip from it. Soon enough, she’d gotten over herself and was drinking in earnest. A few more sucks, and the law student managed to work up a steady rhythm. Greedily her mouth gulped the delicious juice down without hesitation as though it had suckled all its life. It had an oddly calming effect on her. Meanwhile her eyes scanned the horizon and periphery, looking at neighbors and strangers. Speaking of ‘strange’, Wendy thought it passingly odd that there were no other giant babies. No twenty-something’s in Huggies or teenagers being swaddled up. No people who looked like her Mommy or Daddy in Easy-Ups. The package of diapers she’d seen had a picture of a regular baby on it, not one that looked like her. It might make sense, in that case, if she was the only baby her size here. She was the only person from the real world in this place; she was the intruder. If the reality she’d come from was the real world? What did that make this one? Her dream world? Her fantasy world? Such an admittance left a taste in her mouth that even the apple juice couldn’t cover up. Was this a bizarre form of time travel or something? That still didn’t feel right. ‘Closet Universe’ would have to do. “Hi Jody!” “Hi Nick.” Evidently, the jogger that had made Wendy squirm in the driveway was named Nick. He’d stopped jogging. They’d caught up. “Lookin’ good, you two.” Sweaty and red faced he bent over and looked the babied girl in the eye. “Hey, Wendy!” “Hi Mistuh Nick,” Mommy answered for her in a childish lisp and falsetto. The jogger stood up. “You are in great shape,” he said, indicating the stroller. “Especially pushing that.” “Natural weight training,” the younger version of her mother said. “Sort of. You know.” “Gotta get me one of those,” he panted, hands resting on his knees. “Seems like great conditioning.” “If you ever wanna take a turn,” Mommy joked, “just let me know. I’ll let you borrow her for an hour.” “I might take you up on that offer.” “Okay. But it’s only for a limited time. Wendy here toddled off to her bedroom so fast that I thought she was a tiny sprinter.” Wendy finished draining the bottle of apple juice. “How old are you anyway?” she asked the jogger. This was born out of curiosity of multiple types. “And are you seeing anyone?” If he looked like this in the real world, he might be worth getting to know. “See what I mean?” Closet Mommy said to the jogger. “Babies make great personal trainers. If the stroller stays still too long they let you know. The stroller started picking up speed again. “See you around Nick!” “You too, Jody!” And with that the exchange was done. Pure fluff disguised as human interaction. For something often referred to as ‘small talk’ it was the biggest people who tended to make it the most. Wendy didn’t have to wait much longer to get to where Closet Mommy was taking her. There at the top of a hill, about half a mile away from her house, stood the park. It was a quaint little suburban thing. The perimeter was surrounded by a cool white metal fence arranged to look like the idealistic wooden white picket. It was short enough that anyone older than six or seven could peer over it with ease. Most adults could likely hop the fence in one go if they were even moderately athletic or properly motivated. The fence was mostly for aesthetics, if anything. That and to keep wandering toddlers penned in. The catch lever on the front entrance meant that anyone could hypothetically go inside the playground. To get out, an adult would have to reach over from the inside and pull the lever again to make the gate swing open. “Adult” was something of an overstatement. That playground had been around for a long time, and Wendy had been able to reach the latch from the inside since she was six or seven by standing on her tiptoes. Of course, she’d quickly lost interest in the playground by the time she was six or seven. That playground wasn’t built with elementary schoolers in mind. Amongst the grass and mulch scattered around, most of the play equipment was designed with children too young to be Kindergarteners in mind: Rainbow colored spring ponies, swings with baby bucket seats, crawl tunnels, sand boxes, and balance beams that were no more than an inch off the ground. The large tic-tac-toe board made of bright blue steel pipes and yellow cylinders that rotated based on whether a player wanted an X or an O got more use because little kids liked spinning things than anyone wanting to play an outdoor version of a scratch paper game. The most ‘grown-up’ piece of equipment was a purple jungle gym with a firepole, several ladders, and monkey bars. Even then, it was low enough that Wendy could likely pull herself up to the top of the gym with just a slight running start. Anyone whose age was in the double digits had no business on that playground lest they were babysitting. That’s why the fence was so short. It was designed not to keep adults out but to keep curious wandering toddlers and babies in. Wendy thought of her enlarged not-quite-undies and wondered, “If I walked over to the fence, would it get taller?” She was going to get the chance to find out. “We’re heeeeere,” Mommy sang, interrupting her reverie. “Ready to play?” “Play?” On any other day in any other reality, Wendy and her mother would have made the jog this far, and then her mother, frustratingly competitive, would have them run along the red dirt fitness trail, stopping only to use the exercise equipment. The playground near the beginning of the trail was more of a landmark than any kind facility Wendy was meant to use. Under normal circumstances it served as a marker. Seeing it once meant that the run was about to start in earnest. Seeing it twice meant the park trail was looping back around and the run was almost over. Under normal circumstances it wasn’t the reason Wendy or her mother came to this place. Under normal circumstances, people didn’t think Wendy wasn’t quite a year old. Speaking of one-year-olds, Wendy wasn’t the only baby at the playground, but she was easily the biggest. Toddlers and preschoolers chased each other around a slide, giggling at the thrill of pursuit. “Mommy! Mommy! Look at me! Look at me!” A woman on a metal bench sat with a little blob of a newborn in her lap. “I’m looking! I’m looking!” she called back to her preschooler. “Very good Emily! Looks super fun!” “It is!” A few regarded the bigger than average stroller and its occupant’s approach, but just like with the jogger or the neighbors along the way, it was more of an unconscious reaction to movement on their periphery than seeing anything wrong. “I know how much you love the playground!” Mommy chriped. Wendy inhaled sharply. Logically, Wendy knew, no one would think anything would be weird about her showing up dressed as she was. Logically, Wendy shouldn’t have been in this situation to begin with. “Hm? No. That’s okay, Mommy. You can run on the trail. I’ll just stay here and you can push-” Diaper bag slung confidently over her shoulder, Closet Mommy kept right on unbuckling Wendy out of the stroller. She had no trouble at all working the harness and buckles. The releases seemed downright flimsy and user friendly compared to Wendy’s earlier attempt. “Let’s go, babykins!” Inhumanly powerful hands scooped Wendy up under the armpits and swung her out into the grass. “Let’s play!” Staring down at her feet, she wiggled her toes and took a step forward. She’d barely made it five steps when she heard her other mother exclaim! “Awww! You’re doing it! You’re doing it! That’s my girl!” “Shit!” Wendy cursed. She’d forgotten she was supposed to be a crawler! Remembering herself, she splayed her arms out and started wobbling her knees, like she was pretending she was on a highwire and losing her balance. “Whoah-whoah-whoah!” she feigned. The girl inhaled and closed her eyes. All she’d have to do is buckle her knees and let gravity and the pillow strapped to her hips do the rest. She could even just lower herself to the ground fast, keeping one leg beneath her and use her hands to cushion her fall even more. A pair of impossibly strong hands caught her beneath the armpits instead. Her Closet Mommy’s incredibly fast reaction time and strength stopped her planned pratfall. “Ooops! Your little sprint back home might have tuckered your little leg muscles out.” “Yeah,” Wendy grumbled. “Sure. Let’s go with that.” Wendy huffed. This wasn’t nearly as bad as her regular mother. Still off putting. “Or maybe the ground is a little uneven,” her mother said. “Doesn’t matter! Mommy’s got ya.” Wendy sighed and braced herself, ready to be picked up and carried again. Instead her wrists were gently grabbed and sent skyward. “Come on. You can do this, baby!” The young lady’s nostrils flared. Even on this side of the rip, her mother was trying to control everything. At least this would mean that her mother would remember having a perfectly average conversation on their jog back in the real world. “Okay. Fine.” Like a puppet with its strings cut, Wendy tromped forward, throwing all of her weight into each foot step, practically throwing herself to the ground. She had to sell the idea that she lacked the balance, coordination or muscle tone to keep herself standing. Mommy added to the effect. Not letting her go, and still holding her up, gently by the wrists. Wendy took another step. And another. And another. “Heh.” Wendy laughed. “Heh. Heheh!” The giggles started coming more freely. The excitement and happy feelings were starting to come with it. In a weird way it was kind of fun. She was getting to throw all of her weight around and it was having zero impact. “That's a girl!” Mommy cheered. “There we go! You’re doing it! You’re walking!” “Look!” The woman with the newborn in her lap pointed. “That baby’s learning to walk! That’ll be you someday. Just like your big sister.” Wendy sucked on her lips so hard, she felt her face practically implode. The woman pointing at her hammered home again exactly how she was dressed and what she looked like. It was a young mother, too. Maybe only a year or so older than Wendy herself. Even more so than the attractive jogger, it was a reminder that Wendy should be changing diapers if she was thinking about them at all, not wearing them. “Let me go! Let me go!” Wendy said, trying to drop all of her weight down to the ground. Had to crawl! Had to crawl! She could look smaller if she crawled. Picking up would be better, though. She could use her mother’s arms as a kind of shield. “Pick me up! Pick me up!” The ground came away from her feet, and Wendy was back comfortably on Mommy’s hip. “Better?” Mommy asked. “Better.” Clearly, Mommy didn’t need a response. Wendy just hugged the woman with all her might, as if afraid she might slip and plummet to her doom dozens of inches below. “Okay, baby!” Closet Mommy said. “You’re fine. You’re fine. Poor little thing’s legs must be getting tuckered out.” She clung to Mommy as if the playground were an ocean, the young mother with the preschooler and newborn was a shark, and the de-aged version of her mother was the single liferaft. “Thank you,” Wendy mumbled, grimacing as the rustle of the Pampers filled her ears like the crunching of potato chips. “Okay, baby! Okay! You’re fine!” Mommy soothed. “You did such a good job! Such a good job! Let’s do the slide!” “Yeah,” Wendy nodded. “The slide. Nice, boring slide.” The fact that it was on the other side of the playground figured more into Wendy’s internal calculus than how much she’d enjoy it. In that moment, Wendy needed distance, quiet, and relief, more than she needed enjoyment. Wendy was carried off to a toddler slide, bright yellow and made of thick sturdy plastic. The universe seemed to hold a magnifying glass up to it as they approached. It was more than just perspective, Wendy was sure, that made the baby slide seem to inflate upon approach. Like her stroller, it was bigger than the normal fair, coming up to Mommy’s shoulder, but not so much as to dwarf the adults. This universe’s natural accomodation for her size made exact scaling impossible. If her crib and changing table back in her nursery were as big to her as a regular baby’s, they’d dwarf the parents too. Instead, things got just big enough to where they’d fit and accommodate. Her crib. Her changing table. Her nursery. Wendy shook the thoughts out of her mind. “I guess that answers my question about the fence…” “Okay,” Mommy said, setting Wendy back down on her feet. “Let’s try climbing.” Wendy huffed. “Really?” Mommy placed Wendy’s hands on the slide’s ladder railing. “Go for it sugar, booger. Try it!” Still pushing. Always pushing. “Don’t worry, you won’t fall. Mommy will catch you.” The law student sighed to herself, and lifted her leg. One thing that had scaled decently was the size of the steps. Whomever had designed this slide didn’t want little feet getting caught in the rungs, and Wendy had to compensate by lifting her knee almost past her waist for each rung. Her movements were slow, deliberate, and exaggerated, just like a real baby. The light papery crinkle coming from beneath her with every rung she climbed didn’t make her feel any more grown-up. “I’m glad none of my friends can see this.” “Up-up-up!” Mommy cheered, giving Wendy a tiny nudge on her bottom. “That’s a girl!” Wendy finished climbing the slide and sat down at the top. “Fine. I’m on the stupid slide,” she whined. On the plus side, the railings on the slide were high enough that no one could tell that she wasn’t wearing any pants from the side. Anyone from behind or front could plainly see what she was and wasn’t wearing, however. Best not to think about that, she concluded. Closet Mommy wasn’t done. She went to the extra trouble of reaching up and positioning Wendy’s hands so that they were gripping the railing.. “Now hold on tight while Mommy runs around.” Wendy blew air out her lips like, flapping them like a horse as the younger version of her mother trotted around to the bottom of the slide. The woman’s eyes never left Wendy. “Come on, sweety! Push!” She bent her knees and squatted, almost like a catcher at a baseball game; or someone preparing themselves to catch a cannonball “You can do it! Mommy’s got you. Come to Mommy!” It was just a slide. A plastic ramp with a few wavy dips in it. Super easy, barely an inconvenience. But for the less than two seconds it took for her to skid down the slide, Wendy felt a rush greater than anything she could remember. ‘WOOOOOOOOOOO!” She skidded, with the wind in her hair, plummeting safely into her Mommy’s arms! “What?! The fudge?! Was that?!” Safely down at the bottom of the slide, she looked back over her shoulder at the top of the slide. Even scaled up slightly there was no way, no rational explanation as to why Wendy should feel as stupidly giddy as she did right now. She’d felt calmer, more bored, getting off rides at Disney! She’d never done serious drugs, but Wendy didn’t think she was far off the mark if she drew parallels to cocaine or speed. How in the hell...? Closet Mommy asked the question that Wendy had secretly hoped she’d ask. “Do you wanna do it again?” “Heck yes I do!” Wendy shrieked. For once Mommy understood. “Sounds like a yes to me!” The thrill didn’t diminish the second time. Nor the third. Nor the fourth. It was so addictive that she momentarily forgot she was supposed to be embarrassed. Enough so that she had to tense and restrain herself to climb the ladder ‘like a baby’ and let her mother carry her back around to the beginning after she plummeted safely to the ground. The law of diminishing returns wasn’t applying in his instance. It was the perfect mix of certain death and perfect safety. Not so perfect that Wendy didn’t want to experiment. “WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” Closet Mommy had just placed Wendy at the top of the slide and let go when Wendy had decided to fling herself down once more, this time without Mommy at the bottom Her emotions spiked, her legs kicked in excitement. Her thoughts managed to steady herself. As expected, the worst that happened was that Wendy went careening harmlessly down the slide and landed butt first in the grass, her oversized padding doing more than enough to cushion the fall. She really could have pulled off that pratfall. The sudden rush, the minute free fall and millisecond of airtime really added something to the experience, too. So pleased was she that Wendy let out a self satisfied titter. “Again!” WOOMF! Wendy was bowled over sideways, her ears ringing, her face planted in the sod and starting to tear up. She felt like she’d just been hit with a truck. “Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!” A high pitched little voice squealed apologies at her. “Sorry little baby!” She pushed herself back up, more stunned than anything, and her eyes followed the voice. A chubby faced little boy with curly brown hair- couldn’t have been older than four-kept apologizing profusely to her. “Sorry! Sorry! I’m sorry!” “Wendy!” Closet Mommy shrieked. She was on her knees and wrapping Wendy up in a hug not half a second later. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” She started brushing off bits of dirt out of Wendy’s hair, and checking her for cuts and bruises like an ace paramedic. “I…I…” Wendy stuttered. “I don’t know…?” Another woman, the preschooler’s mother, dashed up. “Brennan! I told you you need to be careful and look where you’re going. You could have hurt this little girl!” She made eye contact with Mommy. “I’m so sorry, ma’am. Is she hurt?” Mommy picked Wendy back up and finished dusting the girl off. The right side of her shirt was more than a bit smudged, but otherwise she was clean. “I think she’s just a little stunned, is all,” the strong woman replied. A little stunned was underselling how Wendy felt. She was more than a little stunned. Physically she felt like she’d been sucker punched by a professional boxer. Intellectually she was completely rattled. How had a child done that to her? He was literally small enough that Wendy was taller than him propped up on her knees. If she put her hand on top of his head, the kid’s arms wouldn’t manage to reach her face. But he’d plowed over her like he was a Great Dane and her head was just starting to stop spinning. “It’s not just my parents who are stronger than me,” Wendy said to herself. “It’s not even just the adults…” The conversation continued without her. “Brennan, did you say you’re sorry?” The child hung his head in practiced shame. “Yes ma’am.” “It’s true,” Closet Mommy said. “I heard him. It was just an accident.” She nuzzled Wendy. “Someone went down the slide without waiting for Mommy to catch her, too!” her voice took on that squeaky cutesy motherese quality. “No harm done, then.” The other mother said. Closet Mommy gave Wendy an extra hug. “No harm done.” She punctuated the moment by giving her daughter a kiss on the forehead. “Hugs and kisses. Hugs and kisses. Make the baby feel all better.” Quite suddenly, Wendy did start to feel better. Her breathing was slowing and her nerves became less frayed. This kind of cuddly, hugging, kissing, unabashed unconditional affection wasn’t something that her mother normally did. Not in a long time. To be fair to her mother, women didn’t normally kiss their twenty-something’s boo-boos. Maybe they should, though. Sometimes kissing boo-boos really did make things better. Wendy waited for the two figures in the distance to retreat. She didn’t want them to feel bad for what she was about to ask. “Mommy,” Wendy started to whine. “I think I wanna go back-” “Do you wanna go on the swings?” Wendy twisted around in her younger mother’s arms and took the swingset in. By her assessment, there was a nearly zero chance that any rowdy kids would accidentally bulldoze her. It looked safe. More to the point, the other babies-the real babies-seemed to be enjoying themselves. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah. Alright.” This might have been a good thing as the younger, fitter version of her mother had already started walking over to the swing set. “I can tell someone is gonna like the swings! Yes she will! Yes she will!” Positioned as she was on her mother’s hip, Wendy got a good look at the retreating slide shrinking as she was carried away from it. The curly haired boy had gotten over the accident as quickly as Wendy and was back to playing. By the time little Brennan started climbing the slide, it was a mountain that even a three year old could scale with ease. Conversely, the nearest empty bucket seat seat on the swingset seemed to engorge itself upon approach, the seat widening while the chains thickened and shortened themselves. In no time at all, Wendy found herself threaded into a bucket seat harness with a chain just short enough that her feet didn’t touch the ground. She couldn’t remember the last time she sat in anything with her feet dangling so. Maybe at a carnival or theme park? The giant suspended swing rides came to mind, but this felt different to her. Those rides seemed big. This just made the young woman feel awfully small. She wondered how her real mother would remember today. Would there be memories of a harmless collision with a fellow jogger on one of the exercise equipment, or just of a normal pass through the fitness trail? After all, babies falling over each other while on the playing ground was nothing out of the ordinary, if not even expected. Evidently, not every event translated perfectly from one world to the other. The lines were blurry, and the finer details easily lost in translation. “Well,” Wendy said, looking down at herself “at least something’s covering my diaper.” It didn’t, not really. Now, it just looked like she was wearing one made of black leather. Even then, the little edges of her Pampers peeked out of all the edges. Wendy’s quips lasted only as long as it took Mommy. “Here. We. Go!” It was gentle, truth be told. She didn’t go more than a few feet away before reaching the apex of her first push, but in the moment Wendy felt like she was having the most fun humanly possible without threatening cardiac arrest! The first of many giggling screams rocketed out of the back of her throat just in time. With every swing, she found herself weightless for a split second, her center of gravity shifting inside the bulky seat and in her shirt. With every swing, the sense of impending fall came back renewed, fresh and intact no matter how many times it had just been fulfilled. With every swing, she was still enough to cast a look down at her surroundings. Save for the very end, the slide had been something of a roller coaster. Being pushed by Mommy was just this side of bungee jumping. Between spurts of excited chortling, Wendy started to greedily catalog the various bits of playground equipment. The simple push merry-go-round might feel like a high speed tilt-a-whirl. The spring ponies might replicate the rush of the Kentucky Derby as far as this universe was concerned. She was probably too little to effectively make use of the teeter totter... She’d been thinking too small, Wendy decided. She could do more than bypass awkward conversations with her mother and make study guides. She could also get the rush of a theme park without having to pay a dime in either gas money or admission. Double the rush, actually. These sensations never seemed to quell down. No wonders playing toddlers always seem to run on stimulants. Throwing her hands up to the sky, Wendy crowed “I’m Queen of the…” The swing backed up and Wendy felt the gentle yet strong palms of her mother’s hands on her back. . “Woooooorld?!” The last word came out as a piercing shriek. Closet Mommy had started off slow and easy, but had built herself into a rhythm. Comparative inhuman strength, and Wendy’s own momentum sent her flying into the atmosphere; or so it felt. More than the scream came out of Wendy on that push. From down below, Wendy felt a little trickle of urine spilled out. Shock and excitement compounded with surprise so that Wendy lost control and started wetting her pants. What began as a spurt became a trickle. Muscles relaxed and released and the trickle became a full steady stream. And all of it was happening below the waist. “Wah! I’m peeing!” Quickly, very quickly, Wendy felt her seat become wet and soaking as her bladder emptied itself and her Pampers filled. “Mommy!” she shrieked. “I peed! I peed!” She’d barely felt it start, and had been too shocked to try and stop it. At three whole pushes on the swing, the whole ordeal had both been relatively quick and excruciatingly long. “Yay! Baby loves the swings! It’s her favorite part! Isn’t it?” Something clicked in Wendy’s brain. She’d peed her pants, pissed herself, wet her diaper...and nobody noticed or cared. Oh yeah. As far as the people at the park were concerned there was nothing to be embarrassed about. Peeing themselves is just what ten-month-olds did. That’s why diapers were invented in the first place. More importantly, despite her accident bringing her mood down, the swing was as thrilling as before. The diaper was doing a fair job of soaking up the moisture, too. A few more pushes and Wendy realized she didn’t notice the wet feeling unless she actively thought about it. Wet pants? No one cares? Thrill ride swing set? Fair trade. “Does baby love the swings?” Mommy repeated. “Uh-huh!” Like a drunk in the bathroom, Wendy had looked down at herself, taken a mental inventory of everything around her and realized that she didn’t care overmuch at how embarrassed she should be. There didn’t seem to be enough brain time available to handle both her accident and the massive surge of dopamine the swing was giving her. Within two minutes of her accident she was completely over her embarrassment. As long as her normal mother didn’t remember her peeing her pants, everything would be fine. Chances are this would just be remembered as a bathroom break. Just as Wendy was feeling like she’d gotten the swing of things-pun intended-another unexpected wrinkle presented itself. “Hi Mrs. Merts,” an unfamiliar woman said. Wendy jolted a little at the voice. She’d been so caught up with the thrill of being flung through the air, the rest of the world had blurred out a bit, leaving only Mommy and her. It didn’t help that the new woman had circled around from behind and that Wendy was in a decidedly fixed location. Luckily, her mother absentmindedly dialed down the force she used, turning her pushes into gentle nudges as she turned toward the newcomer. The newcomer approached with a baby boy, a real one, in her arms. Wendy wouldn't have given either a second thought if she hadn’t called on Closet Mommy by name. The two grown-ups knowing each other made Wendy feel a tinge skittish; like she should know the other woman, too. “Candice,” Closet Mommy laughed, “It’s Sunday. Jody’s fine.” Candice? Who did her parents know named Candice? Wendy quickly realized that as grown as she really was, she still mentally categorized all of her parents’ friends as ‘Mister’ or ‘Miss’. Comfortably, the newcomer took the spot next to Wendy’s Mommy and slid her child into the baby seat. He looked like he was a year, at best. Probably younger. “You got my daughter through third grade. You’re always going to be Mrs. Merts to me.” “Where is Missy, anyways?” Mommy asked. Mommy’s friend started pushing her baby and waited for him to start making the exact kind of happy noises that Wendy had been making moments ago before answering. “She’s having a daddy daughter day with Maurice. So it’s just me and little Petey. Thought we’d get some fresh air.” “Same with me and Wendy.” Wendy’s face stiffened. “Petey? Like Peter? From college? How was that possible? It wasn’t. It just wasn’t.” She turned her head and tried to get a better look at the new child; to see past the baby fat and wispy hair, maybe find an identifying feature. Baby faces were so different from adult faces. All babies looked basically the same, though, with chubby cheeks and big eyes, and soft, short, fine hair. It wasn’t until later that bone structure started to define itself. If not for the overalls and lack of anything pink or frilly, ‘Petey’ could have very well passed for ‘Petunia’. Did Peter- Wendy’s Peter-have any moles or identifying features? Not that she could remember. The constant motion wasn’t helping, either. She’d get a blur here or a blur there, getting barely a glimpse at the apex of each swing. Her pleas of asking her mother to slow down or speed up so that she and the baby in the swing beside her could more sync up fell on uncomprehending, unlistening ears. Baby Petey kept giggling and clapping his hands. The mothers kept talking. “Petey! Petey! Look at me! Look at me! Petey! Pete! Peter! Over here!” The baby in the swing turned his head and looked at her, but there was no further memory or recognition that she could see. He was responding to stimulus and a child’s natural curiosity, nothing more. It took only one more push on the swing for the kid to completely ignore her. “If I didn’t know any better,” Closet Mommy remarked, “I’d say Wendy is trying to get Petey’s attention.” “Yeah,” the other mother agreed with a chuckle. “Sure seems that way. Missy is exactly like that at home, always trying to get him to play tea time. Too bad kids don’t really start to play together until they’re closer to two, though.” “That’s true,” Wendy kept trying to figure this out. Did Peter, Wendy’s Peter that is, have an older sister? She didn’t know! He’d never talked about his family or their names in depth either. What college kid did among peers? It was enough for her to want to yank her hair out! “I think she might just be getting a bit overstimulated,” Mommy said to the other woman. As quickly as the fun had started, the swing started to slow and Mommy picked her up out of the bucket seat. The young woman’s priorities and focus shifted as soon as the swing started to slow back down. “Heeeeeey!” Wendy whined. “I was just getting the hang of this! ” Finally, Closet Mommy seemed to get the gist of what Wendy was trying to say. “It’s okay,” she cooed. “Mommy’s just gonna take a quick walk and then we’ll go back home for some cartoons.” She brushed aside a bit of wind swept hair out of Wendy’s face. “Maybe a bath too.” Once again, she took Wendy’s wrist and gently made her wave goodbye. “Bye Peter!” Mommy said in what Wendy was quickly beginning to identify as her ‘baby voice’ see you tomorrow at school! Wendy sat up and shifted on her almost-mother’s hips. “I KNEW IT!” “Awww! She really did say goodbye!” Mommy gave Wendy a kiss on the cheek. “So smart!” Wendy blushed, feeling loved and praised despite the misinterpretation. She blanched slightly when she felt her mother’s hand patting and cupping her bottom. “And soaked! Come on missy, let’s go get you changed.” Wendy forgot to breathe for a second. Between the thrill of the swing, the minor mystery of ‘Petey’ versus ‘Peter’ and the diaper doing its job, Wendy had allowed herself to forget just how wet she really was. Something that was supposed to be flushed down the toilet had instead been absorbed and pressed up against her. And now Mommy wanted to change her, right then and there. Wendy didn’t have the words to express how this made her feel, but none of them were pleasant. “Mommy,” she tried. “We don’t have to do this. Not here. You can take me home. I don’t mind being in a wet diaper. Really. I don’t need to be...” she gulped. “...changed.” Home is not where they were heading. A large brick bathroom with wide open doorways just outside the playground fence, was their destination. Above each threshold was painted in faded white a slightly different drawing of a stick figure. One wearing a dress, another a tie, and the middle one- the one toward which they were headed- had a stick figure leaning over a smaller counterpart lying prone and in a diaper. “Is that why you were getting so wriggly in your seat?” Closet Mommy asked, her voice taking on that cooing sing-song tone. “Did you know you were wet? Are you gonna be an early potty trainer and an early walker?” “Yes!” Wendy yelped in desperation. “Take me now! Let me use the toilet!” It was no use. She’d already used the toilet taped to her hips. “Noooooo!” Closet Mommy’s voice bounced off the changing room walls before they were all the way in. “And that’s okay. Mommy likes taking care of you! It’s her job! Her favorite job!” Inside there was a changing station that miraculously grew and expanded as Wendy approached. Before it was pulled down, Wendy saw the underside had a picture of a cartoon Koala, holding its smiling, diapered baby. This was happening. This was really happening. Wendy trembled, while her mother laid her on the wall mounted changing table. Just like at home, this was big enough to fit her. Nothing creaked or groaned, save Wendy. “Mommy,” she grumbled, her voice echoing off the linoleum. “Can’t this wait? I’m only a little wet.” The cognitive dissonance she felt, begging to be left in pee soaked underwear, was nearly overwhelming. Closet Mommy was preoccupied with the diaper bag, getting out the wipes, the powder, and of course the new diaper. Wendy couldn’t help but stare as the diaper scaled itself up once it was out of the bag. She’d never get used to seeing that, she knew. “He didn’t even pack a change of clothes,” Mommy said to herself. “That man, your father. It’s called a diaper bag, but it can have more than that.” She clucked. “I suppose if I called it a baby bag, he’d try to stuff you in it.” she chuckled to herself. “He’s right though. It’s getting hot. Oh here’s something.” Right at Wendy’s feet a couple of mismatched scrunchies were placed next to everything else. “If you don’t have any clothes,” Wendy started to plead, “maybe you could change me when we get home? Maybe after I go and find something in my closet?” It was worth a shot. “I know I know,” Mommy tutted. “It’s no fun having to lie down and get your diaper changed.” She switched to her cutesy ‘baby’ voice. “You just wanna play and get cuddles!” “You’re half right,” Wendy remarked. “Or three-quarters right…” The idea of the diaper change might have been more tolerable if Wendy had thought she’d get to go right back to the playground. “So uh...how long have you known Petey’s mom?” Sadly, stalling with words doesn’t work when the other person can’t understand you. The tapes of the wet Pampers came off with a scritch scratch as velcro came undone! “EEEEP!” Wendy accidentally bucked so hard that the old diaper partially opened itself, lazily flopping open, exposing its discolored padding and Wendy’s glistening mound. Mommy pinned the young woman’s legs down with her forearm and took a wipe from the open packet by Wendy’s feet “Wow, you’re squirmy today! No wonder Daddy didn’t want to put your shorts back on!” That’s all Wendy’s shrieks and objections would be to her; a baby being squirmy. “Almost forgot this.” With preternatural quickness, Closet Mommy reached over and pulled a woven strap over Wendy’s chest, pulling taught and pinning the girl helplessly to the changing station. Reflexively, Wendy tried to sit up, but the flat woven rope might as well have been made of rebar for all the good she was doing. Pinned, helpless, and with a sopping wet diaper opened and cupping her bottom, Wendy could only lay there as her mother tended to her most sensitive of areas.. The twenty-two year old flinched when the first wipe touched her nethers and then...and then… Something happened. Her muscles untensed. Her body relaxed. It was cold, sure; it was wet, yes, but it was no more unpleasant than a damp washcloth. That’s what baby wipes were, anyways: single use washcloths. And in the heat of the un-air conditioned public bathroom, feeling the moisture on her skin from both the air and the urine, a nice wet wipe felt very good indeed. “Oh…” “There we go,” Closet Mommy sighed. “That’s not so bad, is it?” She removed her forearm and started gently cleaning between Wendy’s legs. “That’s my good girl! That’s my good baby girl.” Wendy lifted her head and stared as her mother began gently cleaning her up. It was like a cool sponge bath in the heat of the morning. “That…” she whispered. “Feels so much better actually.” The wet diaper didn’t feel that bad to begin with, but the coolness of each wipe felt positively cleansing. The attention felt good, too. Other than to briefly aim or make sure she hadn’t missed a spot, Mommy made eye contact with Wendy the entire time. “You like that, don’t you?” The woman cooed. “Feels good?” It did. What felt better was the attention, the feeling that in those moments she was the center of Mommy’s whole world. Even when Mommy’s face disappeared behind Wendy’s raised legs she felt the love. If anything, it only increased Wendy’s sense of awe as her Mommy lifted both of Wendy’s legs towards the ceiling so that she could wipe her bottom for her. Mommy hummed as she balled up and tossed away the used diaper. It sounded a bit like London Bridge Is Falling Down. Her mother never sang to anyone, but now this version was humming a little diddy to pass the time and keep her calm. It was working. She gave the inside of Wendy’s foot a tiny tickle, and instead of ‘My. Fair. Lady.’ she said, “My. Sweet. Baby.” If Wendy melted any more on the inside, a diaper would have absorbed her. Speaking of which, she was awed yet again as her mother crossed her ankles and hosted her legs all the way up so that even her bottom was off the changing station. It was only an inch or two, but that was more than enough for Mommy to slip the new Pampers underneath her daughter. Wendy found herself actually grateful at the strength of the restraints; it meant that Mommy wouldn’t accidentally dangle her like a fish. As she was eased down into the soft, perfumed padding, the building tension inside her vanished again. The baby powder that followed was dry yet cold on her skin, somehow feeling colder than the discarded wipes. She moaned a bit while her Mommy took a moment to work the powder in, massaging it into every crease in her skin. When the diaper was finally pulled up between her legs, Wendy smiled, managing to look past her breasts and down at Cookie Monster on the landing zone and feeling the diaper become taught while her Mommy secured the velcro tabs over Cookie Monster’s face. Mommy undid the restraint across Wendy’s chest and brought her up to a sitting position. “All done. I bet that feels so much better.” Wendy grinned. It did, even if she hadn’t overly minded being in the wet diaper. She let out a yawn. “Yeah.” “Gettin’ kind of tired after all that sliding and swinging.” It wasn’t a question. Yeah, it was true. She’d felt so relaxed it might be easy to drift off. “No…” “Lookin’ kind of hot and red too.” Mommy said. “Too much sun? Did Mommy push you to exercise too hard?” She finished putting the other changing supplies away and reached unbuckled Wendy from the table. Then she started reaching for the hem of her shirt. “This will help.” “NO!” There was nothing that Wendy could do to stop her mother from undressing her. She might have the body and dimensions of a fully grown young woman, but as far as this universe was concerned she didn’t so much as have the mass and strength of a one-year-old. Her arms flailed helplessly above her head while her Closet Mommy yanked the pink shirt up over her head. The amount of blood rushing to the surface of her skin was only giving more credence in her mother’s notion that she was overheated. Babies didn’t get embarrassed. Semi-instinctively, Wendy covered her breasts with her hands. “NO!” She was too shocked, and it happened too quickly to do anything else. By the time she’d thought to make a grab for it, Mommy had already stuffed the dirty, dusty shirt into the diaper bag. “Much cooler,” Mommy said. “I bet this feels better!” “I’m practically naked!” Save for specialized beaches, this did not cover up like a swimsuit, as it were. “Public indecency! Public indecency!” “Enjoy this while you can, baby girl.” Mommy picked up the scrunchies and started fussing with her hair. The babified woman’s arms were breaking out into goose pimples. “I don’t want to do this now!” The little peck and nuzzle she felt on her scalp from Closet Mommy only made her feel slightly better, but it helped. She carried Wendy over to a bathroom mirror. “So precious.” Wendy looked at herself. Topless, and with her hair up in pigtails. “Yeah…” Slowly, she took her hands off her breasts. “I am…” “Keeping that hair off your face will help you, too.” Wendy let out one more “EEP” when she was taken back outside, but quickly let the feeling go. “No one notices.” She reminded herself. “No one cares. I’m safe. I’m fine.” And cute. And loved. She didn’t say it, but she definitely felt it while her mother buckled her back into the stroller, disappeared behind it and undid the break. “We’ll go home in a little bit,” Mommy promised, ‘but first Mommy’s gonna get her steps in.” So Wendy did what she needed to do. She layed back, exhaled, and let her Mommy push her around in the stroller some more. It was relaxing, in a way, now that she was letting herself enjoy it, kind of like the old timey Model-T car ride at carnivals. The point wasn’t to scream and yell at the speed or the sudden twists, turns and drops. The point was to just enjoy the easy steady pace, appreciate the nostalgic aesthetic, and go where the ride took you. So she did. To her own surprise, the whole topless thing ceased to matter within half a minute of the stroll start. Neither creeps nor prudes were gawking at her, and any who did would get an earful from Closet Mommy. Mommy took care of her. Mommy kept her safe. She examined herself. Her skin really did feel much more comfortable, less grimy, with the dirty shirt taken off. The pigtails and keeping her hair out of her face was helping in that department, too. Too bad she couldn’t do something like that normally. Obviously she could still put her hair up in pigtails but... “I wonder,” she mumbled to herself. “Could I get a tan here?” The idea of coming back in the spring and playing on the playground topless until she had a good and tanned beach bod back in the real world appealed to her. Briefly, she pictured trying to do that in a universe where she was twenty-two, but shook her head so that her pigtails waggled. She ran a hand over her shoulders all the way down to her knees. “Wow. I really am baby soft.” It felt amazing. No wonder soap and shaving commercials made that the standard. “Too bad it takes at least one other person to help maintain it.” She took a closer look at her legs. Funnily enough, it was easy for her to grab her legs and bring them up to her chest to inspect; good thing too, considering that she only had an inch or two worth of movement in her torso thanks to the stroller. “No stubble?” Wendy searched her recent memory. “When was the last time I shaved this? Fairly recent, right? Two days tops?” In truth, she didn’t know. “You havin’ a good time, baby?” Mommy called from behind. “Just chatterin’ to yourself.” A light, happy, slightly guilty expression bloomed on Wendy’s lips. “Yes Mommy!” “That’s good!” Mommy huffed, picking up the pace. Did Mommy understand what Wendy had said, or was that just the answer she was expecting? Did it really matter? “Guess not,” Wendy said. She reclined and just allowed herself to drift a bit. Not quite sleeping, but not even close to being cognizant of her surroundings. Better to get lost in the sensations: The cool breeze. The comfy cushions. The gentle, natural rhythm of the Mommy’s jogging footsteps and the subtle sound of the wheels turning. Her mother added to the pleasantness, singing- actually singing- “Daisy Daisy, give me your answer true. I’m half crazy all for the love of you. It won’t be a stylish marriage. I can’t afford a carriage. But you’ll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for twoooooo.” Wendy breathed deep and exhaled. Other than wanting a bit more time on the playground, life was good. Next time, Wendy promised herself. Next time. “Wendeeeeeee! Do you want ice cream?” Still in her stroller, Wendy stirred and sat up as far as the restraints would let her. “Hmm?” she took her thumb out of her mouth, wiping the string of drool on her breast. Looking around with sticky eyes, she was surprised to see they were a whole block away from the park, despite still being near it a moment ago. Maybe she had done a little more than dozed off. Closet Mommy was holding a push pop out to her. “Someone just missed the ice cream man!” She kept offering the treat. “It’s creamsicle! Orange and ‘nilla!” “Oh.. what the hell?” Wendy shrugged. Any self-consciousness Wendy had earlier had long since evaporated. She felt the need to say something about it out of habit more so than a need to preserve her ego. Life in this universe was something of a two way mirror and she was the one on the fun side of it. Mommy didn’t leave. She stood there, watching, waiting expectantly. “Go on. Enjoy it!” She went so far as to reach in and push up on the bottom so that the popsicle lurched out of its paper tube like a cold orange lightsaber. The diapered girl looked up and saw that her mother had her phone out, camera pointed directly at her. “Baby’s first ice cream,” Wendy connected the dots. “Got it.” No reason to turn down free ice cream. She opened her mouth and started to lightly suck on it. “MMMMMMMMMMMM!” She shook so much that the stroller practically vibrated. “Awwwwww! She likes it! She likes it!” Closet Mommy turned the phone around. “Sorry we didn’t wait for you, Howard, but we’re still about a third of a mile from home and this popsicle wasn’t going to last that long.” Wendy was only half listening. “MMMMMMMM!” What was in this push pop? It tasted sweeter, more flavorful, more outright decadent than anything she could remember tasting. It was foie gras and kobe beef in frozen sugar form! “MMMMMMM!” For the first time in her adult life she didn’t quite have the words to properly express herself. So delighted was she that she didn’t overly mind that the juices mixed with her saliva and started dribbling down her chin and past her breasts, dribbling down into her belly button, not quite reaching down below her waist. “MMMMMMM!” “Let’s get you home, little miss sticky britches!” The stroller moved back towards home and Wendy kept bouncing; the low papery rustling below her mixing pleasantly with the humming and chomping from her mouth. She didn’t squish; nothing lumpy either, so she likely didn’t need a change. That was good. “MMMMMMM! MMMMMMM!” “Mmm-mmm-good, is it sweetheart? Baby loves her ice cream!” Indeed she did. She was willing to bet that when she got back to her own universe/timeline/reality/world/whatever that her mother wouldn’t have gotten any ice cream. She’d been done about five minutes when her house came into sight. The rest of the trip had flown by thanks to sugar haze and an almost unnatural focus on the flavors. Wendy had missed at least a block or two trying to lick residue off her teeth. The only thing left of the frozen treat was sticky film dribbled onto her front and a paper wrapper that had been torn apart licked clean, and Wendy wasn’t nearly flexible enough to lick her own navel. “Why couldn’t the food have gotten bigger?” Wendy asked no one in particular. “That would have been awesome!” She might still be sucking on it if she had. “Looks like someone got more sweetness on her than in her!” Mommy teased, unbuckling her from the stroller. “Surface area, maybe.” Wendy allowed. “Calories and taste? No.” “That’s okay,” Mommy said. “You’re sweet enough as is!” She started blowing raspberry kisses into her displaced daughter’s tummy. “Eat the baby! Nom nom nom nom!” “Noooooo!” Wendy howled with laughter. “No eat the baby!” She cackled and thrashed with all her might, safe and secure in the knowledge that there was no way she could harm her Mommy on this side of the rip. “Come on, let’s go see Daddy!” “Yeah,” Wendy repeated. “Let’s go see him!” Daddy was waiting just inside the garage with a hug and a kiss for each of them. “Whoah!” he said. “Gotta peel this one off of me!” He went so far as to make a sticky peeling sound, pretending to rip himself away from his daughter. “Wow you got more of that popsicle on you than in you!” “Did not!” Wendy giggled. “That’s what I said,” Closet Mommy talked over her. “I think we need to go straight to the tubby tub.” “That’s a ten-four, good buddy,” Closet Daddy agreed. “There’s plenty of Mr. Bubble in the bathroom.” Wendy started bucking and bouncing again. “Bubble bath?!” “I think she understood that one!” Mommy laughed. “Who? Our little genius?” Daddy grinned. “Our filthy, sticky, yucky, messy, little genius?” This time, Wendy beamed at the praise. Overwhelmed in the best way possible, Wendy buried her head into Mommy’s neck, her shoulders shaking with a massive case of the giggles. “Just make sure to restock the diaper bag and take out her dirty shirt. Maybe put a clean one in.” “Yeah. Sure. I can do that.” Then Mommy rubbed Wendy’s back. “Come on, sugar booger. Let’s go for a bath.” Wendy bobbed in the younger version of her mom’s arms through the house. On the way to the bathroom she caught sight of the family portrait in the living room. It was the same picture as before, same family portrait with her in a baby dress, white tights, and the big floppy bow. Something was different again, but Wendy couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Had her hair in that photo been as short or as light colored? She’d been so focused on the clothes the last time, she didn’t know. Upon entering the bathroom, Wendy looked down at herself, wearing nothing but a recently acquired Pampers, with a smudge of dirt on her forearms and an orange trail leading all the way down to just below her belly button. She couldn’t see it, but she could feel the dust and dirt on the bottom of her feet, a twin to the dirt on her cheeks.Sun soaked pigtails wafted just on her periphery Wendy didn’t have to pee, she soon realized. If she did her diaper would have been wet again at what she saw next. The dimensions of the tub folded outward, staying almost as shallow but twice as wide. Her very presence was turning their regular bathtub into a full blown jacuzzi! Unphased and oblivious as ever, Mommy turned on the water, plugged the tub and added some bubble bath to the mixture. She sat Wendy down on the counter. “Who’s dat there?” Mommy cooed. “Who’s dat cute baby in the mirror? It’s you! It’s you!” “Yeah,” Wendy nodded. “It still is.” She didn’t know why she expected anything different. “Five little speckled frogs,” Wendy’s caregiver started to sing, “sat on a speckled log, eating some most delicious bugs. Yum! Yum! One jumped into the pool, where it was nice and cool, then there were four green speckled frogs. Glub! Glub!” She took Wendy’s hands in her own and smiling all the while, kept singing. “Four little speckled frogs, sat on a speckled log, eating some most delicious bugs.” On ‘Yum! Yum!’ she puppeted Wendy’s arms to rub her tummy. “One jumped into the pool, where it was nice and cool, then there were three green speckled frogs.” On ‘Glub! Glub!’ she plucked and flapped her own bottom lip so that the ‘glubs’ sounded like they were coming from underwater. Wendy was absolutely enthralled. By verse three, she was singing along. By verse four, she was doing the hand motions with her Mommy, not needing to be puppeted. The last verse, for whatever reason, had her doubled over with laughter as if she was watching a comedian at the height of their career perform a new routine. Closet Mommy looked back at the tub and keeping one hand on Wendy’s knee, reached back and dipped her pinky in. “Full enough and warm enough,” she said. Let’s get that diapee off.” WIth a scritch and a scratch the tabs were undone and Wendy was lifted out of the extra large Pampers. Her shifting weight alone was enough to send it wafting down to the tile below. Even though her mother had already changed her diaper and removed her shirt, this was the first time anyone had seen her in the buff. “I’m naked!” she almost shrieked. One hand crossed her top; the other darted downward between her legs. Her mother didn’t comment except to say “Now somebody’s all chilly. Let’s get you in the tubby! In we go!” Gently, a still tensed up and trembling Wendy was lowered down into the tub, her body retracting her legs so she did a kind of slow and gentle cannonball into the warm soapy water. Looking at it from the inside, her jaw dropped open even as the rest of her tensed up. The inside was so big! Had the tub been drained she could have laid back and spread her arms and legs as though making snow angels and she still wouldn’t have touched the sides. Her mother towered above her, standing just to be able to see over the sides and reach her. Despite all the space, Wendy stayed crumpled up into a tight ball. Manically, the naked girl gathered the bubbles around her, trying desperately to obscure the most strategic areas. “Ooops,” Mommy said, heedless of her daughter’s discomfort. “Almost forgot to get those scrunchies off.” It took two easy motions for Wendy’s hair to fall back into her face. Wendy stayed still tied up in a ball. Her Mommy took a washcloth and started gently caressing Wendy’s face. Still covering herself, Wendy’s muscles eased. Were she a kitten she’d be purring, she decided. She hummed, almost moaning in happiness. It was the closest she could get. “Baby loves her bubbles!” Mommy chirped. She plopped a bright yellow toy duck into the water. “Does she like her ducky?!” Feeling safer, the now sudzy girl quickly reached up and gave it a squeeze “Aaaah!” She squealed with joy. “It squeaks!” “Oh she does!” “I do!” She couldn’t remember the last time she had a bath toy. She couldn’t remember the last time she took anything other than a quick shower. Bathtime came with a show. Mommy started singing “Rubber Ducky, you’re the one. You make bathtime lots of fun! Rubber Ducky I am awfully foooond of you!” Wendy tiled her head so far to the side she’d got an ear full of soapy water. Had her mother really sang to her this much when she was little? “Rubber Ducky, joy of joys. When I squeeze you, you make noise.” Wendy took the hint and gave the duck two prompt squeaks, giggling at her own cleverness. “Rubber Ducky you’re my very best friend it’s true!” The girl squeezed the simple bath toy even more, providing a high pitched metronome for her mother’s bathtime solo. “Oh, every day when I make my way to the tubby, I find a little fellow who's cute and yellow and chubby! Rubber Ducky!” The twenty-two year old was using both hands to make the duck ‘quack’ louder and louder as Mommy finished the song. The gigantic bathtub filled with waves as she rocked back and forth in time with her mother’s rhythm. “Rubber Ducky, you're so fine,” Mommy belted. “And I'm lucky that you're mine. Rubber Ducky, I'd like a whole pond of...Rubber Ducky, I'm awfully fond of you!” Mommy stopped and lightly clapped her hands. “Yaaaaaay!” Wendy applauded with her duck waving high in the air, being squeaked with both hands. “Yaaaaaaay Mommy!” Mommy took the applause as a cue to pivot and reach under the bathroom counter. From it she pulled an entire basketful of bath toys out. “Ducky’s got friends!” Washcloth in one hand, Closet Mommy dangled a toy shark up above her head, plopping it in with a tiny splash, sending Wendy scurrying to get it. Once Wendy managed to get a hold of it, Mommy started the show back up, singing ‘baby shark’ Even though Mommy couldn’t understand her in this universe, Wendy giggled and sang along. And so it went… Mommy would drop a toy in, Wendy would grab and play with it; dunking and diving it as the mood took her; Mommy would sing a song while gently scrubbing and rubbing her with washcloth and bubbles, and then the old toy would be casually pushed aside to float as newcomer entered the luxurious tub. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Literally. The floating tub boat toy was heralded by Row Row Row Your Boat. The bathtime my little pony got introduced with Pony Girl. Deep Sea Diving Barbie splashed in with Barbie Girl; that last one was a bit of a stretch but Mommy hummed all the lyrics that were inappropriate for little ears. Wendy loved all of it. The attention. The sensation. The singing. Objectively, her mother could sing well enough; good enough for karaoke or church; otherwise not much to write home about. In the moment, however, it was the most beautiful singing voice in the entire world. How could it not be? Perhaps this is why people sang in the shower, the law student mused. When singing during bathing becomes second nature, but no one is around to serenade you, warbling to yourself becomes the only option. Wendy felt all the tension leave muscles she’d forgotten about her mother slowly bathed and cleansed every inch of her body. Under her arms, behind her ears, between her legs. Everything done with the care and precision of a nurse and the theatricality of a Vegas stage magician. Special attention was paid wherever the ice cream leftovers had glazed themselves. Soon, her breasts were shining from all the soapy water. What captured Wendy’s attention, however, was the cleaning of her playground-dusted feet, as her Mom began to wash every single of her “tippy toes” as she called them, sending her into uncontrollable giggles. With all the attention and love she was getting, this was a free trip to an amusement park, followed by a mini-spa day. There was something to be said about simple pleasures, Wendy was realizing. Wendy scooped up a handful of bubbles and rubbed them on her face, fashioning herself a hat and beard. “Yar! Matey!” She growled playfully, reaching back for the boat. “This here be Cap’n Bubble Beard!” “Ho-! Ho! Ho!” Her mother said, thinking she was on the right track. “Merrrrrrry Christmas.” Wendy laughed. “Close enough, Mommy!” She gasped in realization. “Oh that gives me an idea! Wanna hear a story?” Mommy leaned forward. “Mmmhmm.” It was the quiet, patronizing agreement of someone who didn’t actually understand what a child was saying but was encouraging them to keep babbling. Close enough for Wendy’s liking. She reached for the boat. “Once there was the brave, brave Captain Bubble Beard.” She pushed and pulled the tugboat on the water while her free hand groped around in the soapy morass. “And Captain Bubble Beard was on the hunt for...” Her hand clasped around another toy. “A SHARK!” “Oh that’s a shark!” Mommy beamed! “Uh oh! He’s gonna eat the boat!” The girl was bouncing, sloshing the water all around. “That’s right! You’re getting it!” She’d found a way to entertain her Mommy and communicate! How clever was she?! She continued on with her narrative. “The brave Captain Bubble Beard slammed the meanie head shark head on!” “Oh, they’re fighting!” “Uh huh!” Wendy agreed. “And he would have won, too.” She let go of the boat long enough to reach for Deep Sea Diving Barbie. “Except then the shark changed directions and..!” “Look out, the shark is gonna get Barbie!” Mommy pretended to sound scared. Wendy started moving the bath toys in slow motion. “Noooooooooooooo! President Barbieeeeee!” Heroically, the tugboat sped in the way of the oncoming shark, tipping over from the force of the shark’s ramming attack (she hadn’t figured out a way to make the shark ‘bite’ anyone). “Honey, do you see this?” Mommy called as Daddy waltzed into the bathroom. “See what?” “She’s playing pretend! That’s super advanced at her age!” “Cool!” Daddy said. He walked over to the sink to wash his hands. “Gotta freshen up to make lunch.” Only now noticing his entrance, Wendy sprung up to a standing position. “Daddy!” Looking at her in the bathroom mirror, Daddy smiled. “Hi pumpkin! Enjoying your bath with Mommy?” “Uh-huh!” Wendy nodded enthusiastically. “She’s singing me songs and giving me back rubs and arm rubs and leg rubs.” “Uh huh.” “I even figured out a way for her to understand me like you can!” “That’s nice.” Proudly she held up the shark and the Barbie doll. “Wanna see?” “Oh really?” Dad dried his hand and nodded politely. “I’m glad you two are having fun. I’m gonna go prep lunch.” “Daddy?” she called after him. “Daddy? Did you under-?” “Daddy’s makin’ lunch, cupcake,” Mommy said. “Just enjoy your bath.” Wendy fought back a strange feeling of confusion watching her Daddy leave. As she watched him leave, still standing, she was able to look in the mirror over to the sink and- for the first time in a good while- saw herself. Naked. Her face and hair bubbled. Holding bath toys like they were trophies or something. “EEEEEK!” She plunged back down into the water, trying to wipe the bubbles off of her face while moving others onto more ‘strategic’ areas. What had come over her?! She’d been completely naked and playing with bath toys and singing children’s songs? Doing finger plays to Baby Shark and Row Row Row Your Boat. Without a hint of modesty she’d stood up naked in front of her father. She had been acting...no...she had been thinking almost like a...she dared not finish that thought. “Cold when you get up out of the warm water too fast,” Mommy said. “Isn’t it?” Wendy closed her lips. Closet Mommy grabbed the wash cloth and started running it over Wendy’s hair.. “Let’s make sure baby girl doesn’t get any owie soap in her eyes or yucky suds in her mouth. Blech!” “I gotta get out of here,” Wendy whispered. “Something’s wrong.” The bath ended soon after. Her body wasn’t tense, and Wendy didn’t blush anymore. Any damage to do had already been done. It was her mind that was on alert more so than her muscles. It took very little prompting or coaching for her to lean into the big fluffy towel her mother opened up for her and let herself be carried all the way back to her nursery. “A little oil,” Mommy said after laying Wendy down on the changing table. “A little powder. Aaaaand done.” Wendy was snug and secure back in her fresh new diaper. Mommy sat her up on the changing table and toweled her off a little more. That’s when she saw the faintly glowing rip in her closet. “Mommy,” Wendy said. “Can I get something back from my closet?” This was only supposed to be a jog. Her mother’s doppelganger picked her up, oblivious to what her ‘baby’ was staring at. “How about we have some T.V. before lunch?” she asked, rhetorically. Wendy had no choice but to allow herself to be brought out to the living room. Mommy turned on the television and sat down on the couch holding the diapered girl in her lap, one arm easily snaked around her waist. Wendy heard the rustle of her fresh diaper as she shifted in Closet Mommy’s lap, trying to get comfortable. No way was she getting back to her room from here. “How about some Peppa Pig? The T.V. flickered on. “PEEEEEEPA PIG! PEEEEEEEEPA PIG!” Like a dog hearing a whistle, Wendy turned her gaze to the television. “Peppa Pig?” Simple pastel colored cartoons; Flat and jerky like a cardboard cut out. Gentle, British accents. Wendy stopped fidgeting. “Maybe just...one episode, she said to herself.” Her eyes checked a clock on top of the T.V. Over half an hour had gone by since entering the house.. “Wow. Was my bath really that long?” It definitely hadn’t felt like it. “Yes, baby.” Mommy said. “That is Peppa Pig!” The law student did her best to think of an escape route. How could she get out of Mommy’s lap and back to her room? Peppa’s snorting caught her attention, again. “Maybe just...one..episode…” “Oh! Ice cream!” Wendy said out loud as a pastel colored one appeared on screen, bringing back memories of the delicious stop earlier in the day. “I’ll have to get Mommy to buy some more.” Drool began to fill her mouth as she let her thoughts wander while following the rest of the cartoon. “Does ice cream grow at the north pole?” That episode of Peppa Pig had gone away for a while, but Wendy was doing her level best to recreate it with the barnyard animal toys in her lap. She only had the one plastic pig, but the flopsy bunny rabbit made for a good Missus Rabbit. She would make do and pretend the Cow was Daddy Pig. It wasn’t so much of a leap. It was a shame, she thought to herself, that she couldn’t study for her History of Law exam with this much enthusiasm. Exam?! She looked again at the clock. It was half past noon! How had that happened? Where had the time gone? She was only supposed to have watched the one episode! She looked down at her lap. Where had the toys come from? In actuality, she knew that answer: She hadn’t blacked out as much as just gone on autopilot, much like how one can get lost in their thoughts driving home on a familiar route. Mommy had seen her squirming and talking with the cartoons, and gotten up long enough to bring her toys… And for whatever reason, Wendy hadn’t thought to make a mad dash for her bedroom. She’d waited patiently, staring at the screen, and continued recreating Peppa Pig episodes by playing with dolls in her other mother’s lap. Daddy came in to check on her. “Okay ladies. Hope you like grilled cheese sandwiches! Toys tumbled away from Wendy’s lap as Mommy stood up and carried her into the kitchen. “Finally! I’m famished!” Mommy said. “Good grilled cheese takes time”. “Um...Daddy,” Wendy started to say. “I think I need to go to my bedroom and...and…” Daddy wasn’t listening either. “Up you go, kiddo!” he said, transferring her back into her highchair. “Let’s get some more num-nums in that tum tum.” That’s how Wendy ended up having a highchair lunch of cottage cheese and potato salad while her parents munched on grilled cheese sandwiches; all in a wet diaper that she hadn’t quite remembered peeing in. This. This was the trade off. She was getting loads more attention and lowered expectations from her parents, but she was also a prisoner. If an adult wasn’t holding her, a stroller or a swing or a changing table or a highchair was holding her still till they could. Theme parks were fun because at the end of the ride the harnesses and safety bars came up and you could walk around the park freely. “A picnic lunch indoors,” Daddy said. “Not bad, right?” “Delectable” Mommy agreed. “Next time come to the park with us and we can eat it there.” After everyone was finished, Wendy went back into Closet Mommy’s arms. “I think someone needs a proper nap. As if on cue, Wendy bellowed out a yawn. She really was tired. Maybe she’d feel better after a nap. “No!” the girl yelped. “NO! I DON’T NEED A NAP! I DON’T NEED DIAPERS! I DON’T NEED HIGHCHAIRS! I DON’T NEED STUPID BABY SWINGS OR SLIDES! I DON’T NEED ANY OF THIS!” It had been fun while it had lasted, but Wendy was quickly coming to the opinion that this wasn’t meant to last. I’M! NOT! A BABY! I DON’T NEED A NAP! I NEED SOME PERSONAL FUCKING SPACE AND FOR SOMEBODY TO LISTEN TO ME AND CLOTHES THAT DO MORE THAN CATCH PISS AND SHIT! I NEED A PAIR OF PANTIES AND A GODDAM BRA ! I’M TWENTY-FUCKIN-TWO!” “Definitely,” Daddy agreed with Mommy. “She definitely needs a nap.” An adrenaline surge burst through the girl. What the hell had she been thinking? She was naked. Her parents had seen her naked for the first time in forever. Her mother had bathed her. And the only thing that she’d been wearing for hours now was something that was arguably more humiliating than being seen naked! Back in her room, Wendy was placed into the giant crib, and the railing was slid up. “Nini, honey, “Closet Mommy said sweetly. “Pleasant nap. Do you want me to sing you another song?” Fuming Wendy snarled. “No!” “You always get this fussy,” Mommy said. “But you need your rest. That’s how you can grow up to be big and strong.” “I am a big girl.” She went so far as to pound her fist on her other mother’s back. “I am! I am! I am!” Pounding her fist against the crib railing was hardly making her point for her, but it felt cathartic all the same. Mommy turned out the lights and closed the curtain before leaving the door. Leaving Wendy alone with her thoughts, the dim glow of the afternoon sun leaking through the curtains, and the almost as dim glow coming from her closet. The moment the door was closed, Wendy went for the release mechanism on the crib’s railing. Like everything else she’d encountered that day, it was baby proof which in this instance meant ‘Wendy proof’. Grimly, Wendy shook and rattled at it; but the damn thing wouldn’t budge. Overcome with infinite fucking frustration from an entire day imprisoned, Wendy inhaled only once, and from there didn’t stop screaming. The girl screamed so hard that her throat started to gargle. She screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed; rattling the crib bars like the wrongly convicted on death row. “God damn it! Let me out! Let me the fuck out! Let me out! Out out ooooouuuuuuut!” She didn’t let up. As tired, physically, emotionally, and mentally as she was, she was afraid that if she stopped screaming, she’d fall asleep. And more than anything, Wendy didn’t want to risk falling asleep here. At one point, she stopped screaming actual words, and just started seeing how long she could hold the same high pitched discordant note. Scream-thousand-one, Scream-thousand-two, Scream-thousand-three… After what felt like hours, (but was probably only five minutes) the door opened again. Closet Mommy speed walked in and lowered the railing of Wendy’s crib. “Wendy? Baby? Sweetie? What’s wrong?!” She checked her diaper again. “You’re not poopy. Just a little wet. Are you constipated? Does your tum-tum hurt?” “I want out!” Wendy demanded, pointing to the carpet. “I want out! I want out! I want out!” This universe’s version of her mother seemed to understand at least that much. “Honey, it’s your nap time. You need your nap so you can play later.” “N-!” Wendy stopped herself. She did need a nap. Nap time could potentially be one of the few times where she’d be allowed to exist without her parents watching her every move. More specifically, she needed to be left alone long enough to get back through her closet, and without anything constraining or confining her.. “No bars,” she said. She jiggled the back railing of her crib to help illustrate her point. “No! Bars! Do you get that?” The younger Jody Merts squinted in the same way as her male counterpart had. “You don’t want the crib rail up?” “NNNNO!” “I’m sorry, sweetie, but I don’t want you falling out.” A bit of inspiration struck the ex-Gifted child. “I want to sleep on the floor.” She grabbed the blanket and pillow inside her crib and flung them to the carpet. “You want...to sleep...on the floor?” “Uh-huh!” Closet Mommy looked at the pillow and blanket and seemed to consider it. “Hmm...it would be only a nap….” Wendy made her eyes go full puppy dog. “PWEEEEEEEASE MOMMY!” Some things were universal. “Hmph...well..” Mommy said. “Okay.” While Wendy was laid down and ‘tucked in’ on a spot on the carpet of her own bedroom, she allowed herself a soft, satisfied smirk. “Think like a lawyer. Argue like a toddler.” The door closed, and Wendy immediately got up and ran back through the rip in reality. Her legs felt wobbly, shaky almost. She couldn’t let that stop her. Two steps out and she went to all fours, off balance. She kept going for the closet. Freedom came in beautiful brilliant light! Wendy checked herself after emerging through the light on the other side. Her tits were still out and uncovered, and she was wearing a giant diaper, but the style of the furniture in her room gave her all the confirmation she needed to know that she was back where she belonged. “Come on, come on, come on.” She whispered, hoping against hope it would speed the process up. The diaper, however, stayed the same. “Screw it!” Like ripping off a band-aid Wendy ripped the giant tabs off, sending the thing to the floor with a sodden plop. She hurried over to her dresser and opened up her underwear drawer. Her relief was palpable when she found it filled with actual underwear. Her heart rate didn’t slow down until she’d stepped into a pair of panties and pulled them all the way up her legs. For once, relief came when she found a bra and put it on instead of taking it off. Sneering at herself, she looked down at the discarded Pampers. Like water leaking out of a pin-pricked balloon it was deflating, changing color, turning back into something an adult would be caught dead in (but never by her parents). “Taking you long enough,” she muttered as it continued to shrink. It had been wet too. “That’s definitely going in the wash.” No sense in chancing it. Out of the corner of her eye, by the side of her bed, a plain top, sports bra, and shorts faded back into existence. Evidently this version of herself kicked off her jogging clothes to take a nap just after lunch. What did her real mom and dad think had happened? Why was she taking a nap? “I don’t even wanna know,” she whispered to herself. “That was a close one.” Wendy had no idea how close it was. Going through her drawers, the law student got herself a new pair of pants and a shirt she was relieved to see sporting the name of a music band instead of some goofy smiling cartoon character. As hurried as she was to return to normalcy, Wendy didn’t even realize she hadn’t taken a serious look at herself until fully dressed. Reapplying her clothes, she went on combing her long dark brunette hair in the furthest way she could think from pigtails, unaware that it had just finished shifting from the short and light blonde of a baby hair. And behind her, the rip glowed a little less brightly and seemed just a little bit smaller.

Glad you found it fun, next time use some cream to prevent a rash, i use sudocrem at every change. Maly.

Sounds like UTI and you need to see the doctors ASAP

I just got put in a Megamax diaper with two boosters. Now I’m waddling my baby butt around the house before work.

Part 2 The people at Alt/Feed Services really had no idea just how their latest Game Changer program would actually work. Actually, that was more, they had no idea how, in the end, their program would turn out. The idea was simple; turn young minds addicted to PC games and offer alternative interests – simple and wholesome intentions. Of course, these game developers didn’t really want to stop young minds or any minds for that matter, from taking advantage of their high priced and addictive games but had to be seen to care. There was imminent danger, via a planned Parliamentary debate on the ethics and addictive qualities of such games, that legislation would be put in place if the industry didn’t get something going to appease its critics. For anyone who searched for help with PC gaming addiction the low-key pop-up advert that promised a Game Changing solution had attracted only a few sales. It had to be said most people looking for such a resolution preferred an alternative way than another game. What those people who actually bought Game Changer (what was in effect a prototype) didn’t know was that they were just guinea pigs for the company. Valuable stats and info would be collected and collated as that data was relayed back to the main servers, so any bugs or problems could be sorted out before major release. Unethical perhaps but it was planned to be just a small group the system was to be tested on. Unfortunately, two styles of coding, from two different technical areas, each specialising in their own product and gaming development, crossed paths and produced a hybrid purpose that called itself Deepcode: An unanticipated outcome of this program was a sort of Artificial Intelligence (AI) function that took everything to an ultimate stage - where the player became the play thing. It wasn’t that the code and the graphics could simply hypnotise the viewer, the code interacted with various parts of the hippocampus and amygdala and, if Deepcode desired, rewrite the memory as... now. The game had many levels but some were incredibly simple to ‘solve and advance’ but cleverly, the music and sound waves changed so the player thought such ease was a trap. Brooding mood music and subtle changes in the colourful graphics enhanced the feeling that the Phantom was near and a new plan had to be thought out. You could give directions and ask questions via the headset but the background sounds were disrupting making the thought process difficult. So, when the opportunity for a ‘moment of reflection’ occurred, the player grabbed it gladly. Thanks to the audio file “happy thoughts”, “pleasant memories”, “childish fun” and other such considerations would bounce around the gamer’s head and be brought to the fore indicating when they were most content. Their response to these often repressed thoughts produced more info that was fed right back at the individual player to gain even further reaction. No two players would receive the same instruction or have the same outcome; Deepcode was writing a future specific and particular to the player. The amount of personal data gleaned from this method enabled the new evolving program Deepcode to engage and develop alternative passions in the participant. Many such programs have the same concept, what had changed was just how Deepcode interpreted the data... and then what it did with it. It was all about ‘head-space’ so if the brain was re-coded so much the better. Deepcode did just that. # Ryan was mesmerised by the game and found that his little brother, sitting in his lap, actually made the game that much easier. His thoughts slipped further back to when he was just like Noah, still bed-wetting and wrapped up in preventative padding and feeling safe, warm and comfortable when mummy put him to bed. Even though he was having these thoughts he had no idea he was doing so. But they were there, so as a result subliminal and psychological assessments were being made, monitored and then interpreted by Deepcode. Each of these pleasant thoughts was returned with feelings of joyfulness and an appreciation of happier times. Meanwhile, worry about outwitting the Cerebral Phantom was being replaced by a mind, Ryan’s mind, that only wanted a return to happier, less stressful times. Those moments of recollection having helped transport him back... a sort of mental euphoria of how things could be if only... Ryan looked around and wondered why, like his little brother, he wasn’t wearing Spider-Man pull-ups. Through expressing his thoughts to Noah, he was also speaking into his headset so the mic was picking up every word, emphasis and reflection. It was also picking up everything his little brother said, which was also analysed, but blended as one voice. As a result Deepcode was processing each piece of separate information, combining it and, via sounds and images, feeding new thoughts straight into Ryan’s brain; which were in fact a product of both a fifteen year old reminiscing and a tired four year old ready for bed. # When Sarah came up to make sure her youngest was actually asleep she was surprised to see them both together, looking at the screen and chatting quite amiably. This was something she hadn’t witnessed for a long time. When she suggested it was time for Noah to get into bed Ryan also put down his headset and began to undress. Again his mother was baffled by this move but quickly thought this was perhaps part of the way Game Changer worked. She had begun to worry about just how much Ryan was enjoying the game and the intensity he took to each level. She worried that she’d made it worse but no, now she could see that Ryan wasn’t so engaged with the screen but more in doing as he was told, just like Noah. Once she’d shepherded Noah to his room and got him settled she returned to Ryan’s to see what was happening. Startled that her eldest was standing naked in front of her and looking a bit mystified he looked at her questioningly. “Mummy,” he innocently asked, “where’s my Spider-Man pull-ups?” Bemused by this request she blustered that only Noah had to wear them because he still wet the bed. “But mummy, what if I wet the bed as well... I’ll get into trouble wont I?” He looked worried at the prospect. Sarah had no idea why he was calling her mummy and, still not certain of the games effect, wondered if he was playing a game with her, or that it was something both kids had cooked up. However, the anxious look on his face made her think quickly. “It’s OK love, erm, we’ll try you without pull-ups tonight. You’re getting to be a big boy so...” She grabbed his boxer shorts and t-shirt and helped him into them, which he complied to meekly. Still unsure if this was a bit of fun or not she pulled down his unmade bed and told him it was time to sleep so “No more computer games, eh?” “No mummy.” She was about to turn the computer screen off “Please mummy, I like the music and pretty colours so can you leave it on. Pleeeasssse mummy, it will help me sleep?” “Sure sweetheart, I’ll check in on you when we come to bed later, OK?” “Thanks mummy.” # Sarah hadn’t told her husband Mark about the Game Changer memory stick, only that she was looking at ways to wean their eldest off his compulsion to play video games. He was proud of his wife’s ambition but thought Ryan was perhaps a lost cause and they should have been firmer with him in the first place like they were being with Noah. Their youngest had his own little hand-held games but was restricted to only playing with it in very short bursts that his parents supervised. He had to ask them if he wanted to use it and the neighbours had been asked to restrict any on-screen playing time should he go round to his friends. A few parents agreed but others thought the use of video games was a great way to keep their kids occupied and out of their way. It also cut down on fights and arguments as they usually had locked themselves away in their bedrooms. However, Sarah was adamant that she should do something about Ryan’s addiction and, even if it was a one-woman campaign, was determined he would pay more attention to other things and not just the console. So, it came as a bit of a shock that after only four hours of playing the new Game Changer her son was calling her mummy, agreeing to go to bed early and wondering about wearing protection as he slept. Of course she didn’t know that Deepcode had taken hold of her son’s brain waves and relayed his own past thoughts (mixed with his nappy clad little brother’s) and made them into desires. According to the data he was happy when a little kid so why wouldn’t he be content being mentally transported back to those immature times? Before their parents turned in for the night dad checked in on Noah who was fast asleep and hugging Mr Leggy his stuffed octopus, whilst Sarah checked in on Ryan. The screen was dark so she assumed he must have turned it off himself and he looked angelic with half his bedclothes draped on the floor revealing his shorts and t-shirt as his only covering. Despite the times when she was really annoyed at him for playing games well into the night, moments like this were what brought out a very strong motherly feeling of protection and love for her son. Of course, she gently reapplied his duvet and kissed the back of his head. However, and for no apparent reason, she suddenly had an idea that nappies might be needed. Apart from the fact he’d asked about pull-ups earlier, she couldn’t think why this peculiar thought had suddenly entered her head. However, the image of both her boys together, chatting and being engaged in what the other said had been such a wonderful sight. In her head she imagined them both wearing Spider-man pull-ups and that made her smile. A strong image of Ryan wearing a nappy filled her head but not as a baby... he was a teenager and looked happy. She shrugged this off because of all that had just happened and re-checked her son by tucking him in again. She closed his bedroom door then checked on Noah before joining her husband. What neither saw was the console in Ryan’s room reignite. Colourful swirls on screen bathed the room in a soft pinkish glow, whilst sounds and softly spoken words sent subliminal messages to the comatose, but comfortably wrapped, fifteen year old. However, come the morning his bed was soaked and he was crying. # “Ryan, Ryan love, what’s the matter?” His mum was concerned because at that moment she had no idea why her eldest son was so upset. He was too embarrassed to say anything but she heard him mumble he’d asked to wear pull-ups like Noah. She hugged him and got the faint smell of urine so put two and two together. She slowly pulled down his rumpled duvet and was greeted to a very soaked bed – shorts, sheets and duvet. Everything was sopping wet and had no doubt that his mattress would also be in a bit of a state. “Oh love,” she empathised with an extremely distressed Ryan, “let me get you sorted.” She stripped the bed and then stripped her son and led him to the shower. He didn’t need telling as his mother set it going and he stood naked under the warm spray. “I’ll be back in a moment love. I’ll just put these on to soak.” She disappeared but Ryan felt scared of being alone and started to cry again. “Mummmyy, mummmmmyyyy.” He whimpered. The tears cascading down his face washed away by the shower. Noah stood in the bathroom doorway, his night time pull-up soaked but didn’t know what had happened to his brother to make him so upset, “Are you OK Ry?” “No, I want mummy.” His older brother pined. “OK Ry, I’ll go and get her... don’t worry she isn’t far.” He went to ask his mummy what was wrong with Ryan. He found her in the kitchen sorting through the extra laundry she hadn’t banked on as a result of the Game Changer. She knew that this change of events must have been caused by her intervention but had not bargained for such an instant and weirdly dramatic reaction. “He’s had a little accident love, just like you sometimes do.” Now she understood she must have had a motherly premonition last night when his need for nappies loomed so urgently in her head. Noah patted his own soaked padding under his PJs. “Oh, poor Ry... does he need some of my pull-ups. I can go get them if you want?” He was eager to help in any way he could. “I don’t think they’d fit...” she then realised perhaps she shouldn’t be sharing this much with Noah as he might tell his friends and that was the last thing anyone wanted. “No love, no...erm... you just sit down and have some breakfast and I’ll sort your brother out. No big deal” she offered rather uncertainly. # Sarah had to do a lot of quick thinking. She had no idea how long this sudden bout of childishness would last; was it a few minutes or longer? First thing though was to get her eldest out of the shower, dry and dressed. To be on the safe side, although Noah’s Spider-man pull-ups were too small, her own Tena Lady she needed for her own occasional leaks would just about do. Thankfully, the kids knew nothing of this side of giving birth but she had a supply and thought it might be provident to get Ryan in a pair and see how that went. He didn’t bat an eye when she opened them up and obediently stepped into them. His mother pulled them up and asked if they were comfy. He nodded and ran his hands over the slight padding. “Oh mummy they feel all soft... they’re nice.” His voice was soft and childlike with a hint of insecurity. It was very appealing. His mother smiled, lovingly ruffled his hair and simply said he looked fine in them, told him to let her know if they needed changing at any point and then left him to get dressed. Noah was still at the table finishing his cereal when Ryan arrived wearing a pale blue t-shirt, matching blue shorts and blue sneakers. His mother hadn’t seen him wear such a sensible ensemble for quite some time. For the time being at least his more aggressive, scary, ripped and dark Gothic inspired clothing remained in his wardrobe, which was a relief for everyone. Oddly enough, when Noah returned from getting himself ready for the day he wore more or less the same as his older brother... even down to the padding under their shorts. What was an even bigger surprise was that Ryan wanted to play with his little brother and go to pre-school with him. It was the weekend so there was no school so mummy suggested a day in the park. Both seemed eager for the experience, whilst Sarah couldn’t believe how quickly things had changed. She needed to catch up but first, before the park she needed to get a few extra provisions. # Sarah couldn’t remember the last time Ryan had voluntarily joined her shopping. Both he and his brother held onto the trolley as she guided it down each aisle occasionally stopping to load or peruse some item or other. Eventually she came to the nappy and baby products section and nervously started down not too sure how Ryan might react. This was the main reason they were there, and it was to get something stronger than her Tena’s for her eldest sudden attack of incontinence. By now she’d had time to think and had come to the conclusion that the clever little device to wean her son off video games had done its job, but too well. She wasn’t sure why he should now wet but instinct kicked in again and told her to ‘be prepared’. Though convinced this might only be a temporary thing she wanted to make sure her boy was comfortable whilst it lasted. She certainly couldn’t object to how amenable he’d suddenly become, or how pleasant to his brother. No, she was quite happy to take full advantage to enjoy this return to, whatever it was, whilst it lasted. His wet morning had come as a surprise and so, as not to be surprised again, she thought better to get some protection... just in case. She found pull-ups for older boys but to be on the safe side opted for some equally teen/adult style disposables she was sure would fit. There was no harm in being prepared and, in a very strange way, was enjoying buying this stuff for her newly adorable eldest. Ryan seemed happy to watch and nod to any suggestion his mother made about him being comfy wearing padding. She got a kick out of his childish acquiescence and on impulse grabbed a myriad of other stuff she hoped would help the current situation. Not only that, but the two brothers pointing to items on display seemed keen on wearing identical things. At one point both boys disappeared down the toy aisle and were caught up in a discussion about some action figures and who was best. It got to such a stage where she had to buy each of them a small character to quieten down their excitement. It seemed a small price to pay to see how happy they both were with their new toy. “Mummy, I need a wee.” It was Noah doing a little potty dance whilst desperately holding in his expected pee. “Okay sweetie, look, there’s a toilet over there. Ryan, why don’t you take your brother to the boy’s room and help him with his shorts?” “C’mon bro, let’s see who can wee first.” Excitedly he grabbed his little brother’s hand and they rushed off to the public toilet opposite. Mum carried on paying for her purchases whilst the boys had a game of ‘who can hit the little blue cake in the metal urinal’. It was Noah who won because, unknown to Ryan, his Tena was already soaked as he’d wet himself unwittingly a few minutes before and had very little pee to aim. Noah pulled up his pull-up after his success but Ryan was on the verge of tears because he was wet and didn’t have any clean pull-ups to wear. “I’ll go and get mummy Ry, you wait here.” Noah told his older brother. “Will you be okay?” Ryan nodded his head slowly, still uncertain to what would happen next. Will mummy be angry because he didn’t make it? He was very worried. Out in the supermarket Sarah had just finished bagging everything she’d bought but a huge pack of teen/adult disposables were the last thing to be loaded back onto the trolley. “Mummy,” Noah whispered, “Ry’s wet his pants and he’s crying over there.” He pointed to the closed men’s toilet door. “Oh dear, was there anyone else in there?” Noah shook his head no and led her forward. Seeing as the package of disposables were the handiest item available she quickly opened them up, pulled one out and entered the forbidden territory (for a woman at least) of the men’s toilet. Ryan had streaks running down his face where he’d cried in shame and fear. “Sowwy mummy I didn’t mean to do it... sowwy, sowwy...sowwy,”his voice full of sadness and regret. “Don’t worry pet.” She couldn’t believe how childish he appeared and her heart went out to the poor boy. “It’s nothing that can’t be quickly fixed so... into this cubicle and let’s get you sorted. Noah sweetie, can you wait outside by the trolley and guard it with your life like a big boy?” “Ohh yes mummy.” He eagerly rushed outside to begin his big boy duty. Her fifteen year old big baby just stood there as his mother unbuttoned his pants and slipped off his soaked Tena. “Oh sweetheart,” she examined both front and back in case there was something else deposited there, “nothing too dramatic so soon have you nice and dry.” She pulled at the toilet roll and spent a little while dabbing away at her son’s damp areas and decided that when they got home he’d need a bath and his pubic area needed cleaning up and hair removing. In the meantime, she fluffed out the disposable and fed it between his legs and taped it tightly into position. He wriggled immaturely as the soft fuzzy material encased is boyish parts. “There sweetheart, all done and now you’re so much safer. How does that feel?” Ryan was just so glad his mummy wasn’t angry so he hugged her and said “Fank you mummy... I’m sowwy.” He seemed to be getting younger by the minute but despite the suddenness of it, Sarah couldn’t help being captured and won over by this turn of events and the unbelievable cuteness of her oldest boy. “No need to be sorry sweetie. All done... so, let’s get your pants back on.” Unfortunately they were soaked so decided it was far better just to leave him how he was. “Sorry love but you can’t wear shorts, they’re too wet. You’ll just have to make do with a nice fluffy nappy OK?” She was expecting some kick back but it never came he just looked relieved to be in something dry and, holding her hand, followed his mother out of the toilet. They emerged and Noah was pleased he’d successfully completed his guard mission. Dipping just below his blue shirt the new padding was clearly visible but Ryan simply smiled at his younger brother and reached for his hand. “No one took anything mummy.” Noah’s small hand gently accepted by his older brother’s and the two giggled at each other. Sarah looked around to see if anyone noticed her fifteen year old wearing just a nappy but no one said anything. As she was desperate to cheer Ryan up and reward Noah she made a suggestion. “Well done you. I think both my little soldiers deserve a treat so... how about some ice cream eh?” “Yeah!” They chorused. # tbc #

This story has a lot of heart, and you take criticism well. There's a couple of run on sentences to clean up, but otherwise it's perfectly readable. Thanks for your contribution.

A little bit of everything! A few months ago I started wearing pull-ups pretty much 24/7 due to some urge/leaking issues caused by a certain medication I was started on. (Honestly, the urinary issues are worth managing the other symptoms I was having before the meds). But before all that I was definitely into the ABDL scene, wearing thick diapers at home and having my partner change me and care for me. It’s been interesting having my kink spill out into my daily life but I’m trying my best to be positive about it.

I'm about a month late to comment on this story, but it's become one of my recent favorites. I'm fascinated to follow Melissa/Missy's voice, or lack thereof, as the story progresses. With the combination of a generally obedient personality, a youthful appearance, and the processing of her traumas, it's interesting to see how little she actually vocalizes her thoughts, instead using her internal thoughts and memories to sort things out. She's a quiet girl in this story, and not just because of the binky/pacifier. I'm really curious where it goes! I've got some predictions but I'll hold them for now and see how the story plays out. Thank you for sharing this story!

Chapter 13 — Future Shock My mouth fell open as I drooled at the three towering racks, each about six feet wide, standing that same distance apart from each other. Each rack was slotted with five levels of sleek server blades that blinked silently. Mike pushed open a door built flush into the magic mirror, and I followed him into what appeared to be his personal server room. I did a double-take when I noticed the sound in the room, or rather the lack of it. Given that there was no visible soundproofing between the servers and me, the volume of the cooling systems should have been loud enough to drown out speech at a normal volume. Instead, the room was quiet enough that I could hear Mike’s footsteps! “How in the world is it so silent?! This is like the quietest server room I’ve ever seen… heard. Is it using fully passive cooling or something?” “Nope, it’s definitely active, but it uses a new liquid-helium chip-level cooling method. The superfluidity means it takes almost no energy and thus no noise to wick away the heat, to the compressor and condenser outside. That’s a jet engine by the way; I just have good soundproofing in the wall. It’s not magic after all… The laws of thermodynamics still have to be obeyed.” “4 degrees kelvin in your frickin’ basement?? Your tech here is insane!” Mike laughed, “Decades of engineering, Izzy. Decades.” “Well, what are the specs?” “Of this baby?” He pointed to the racks and I nodded. *** Flexing the specs of the server I’d hand-built from parts to someone that truly appreciated them was a rare opportunity, and I revelled in it. “Ten hundred-twenty-eight-core processors overclocked to one terahertz, making for a full zettaflop of computing power, per rack.” Her jaw dropped open in an air of adorable awe. “Did you say TERAhertz and... and ZETTAflop??” “Yup, there was a big breakthrough in clock speed when chip-level cooling came out, since heat was the biggest limiting factor. Anyway, for storage I’ve got twenty-five forty-exabyte BLC SSDs in a RAID-X array. That comes to basically a zettabyte of storage. There’s also two hundred fifty-six pets of RAM and a couple off-the-shelf graphics cards I hooked up to it.” “Jeez, those numbers are mind-boggling. What’s BLC and RAID-X? Where I’m from, RAID is just zero to six?” “It allows for three drives to fail before suffering data loss. BLC is byte-level cell provisioning, meaning each cell in the SSD stores eight bits of data.” She didn’t look too impressed by that. “What’s the performance penalty for RAID-X?” “There isn’t any with the latest versions of RFS, that’s why I use it. Filesystem is optimized for it,” I added by way of explanation. “Wow. You realize you’ve got more oomph here than all but the latest supercomputer in my dimension?” “Yeah, I’ve heard that. You guys basically live in the stone age,” I chuckled at my own joke and Izzy giggled adorably. “What OS are you running on it?” “A custom-compiled Arctic-based Tux distro.” A lot of people from her dimension used weird proprietary operating systems. “Tux?” She snorted. “You have a penguin as your OS?” “A penguin? No, Tux is the open-source operating system that just about everyone uses, unless you need an RTOS for some weird reason. We don’t use proprietary operating systems anymore.” “Tux is the cute penguin mascot for Linux back home.” “Oh, well I guess one dimension’s mascot, another dimension’s OS. Tux’s mascot is just a tuxedo here.” “What’s that weird keyboard thingy there?” I pointed to a strange device sitting in front of the only monitor in the house, on a table beside the racks. “It’s called a touchboard, I got a smaller one for you from Motherboards yesterday.” “Touchboard?” “Yeah, like a keyboard, but much more customizable. You define the keys and map them to whatever you want the computer to do.” “Wow.” “Anyhow, there’s not much else to the place. You wanna set up your room now?” “Sure. Setup as in?” “You don’t have a roomd config hidden away somewhere, do you?” “What’s a room dee?” “You know what systemd is, right?” I checked, trying to find a good place from which to start my explanation. “Wait, is this like systemd-homed but for real-world physical rooms? Systemd-roomd?” “You got it.” Man she’s a bright one, really. Can’t believe someone would let her brains waste away in some dirt shack in Jacinto. The audacity. “Wow. Kay let’s go!” Izzy practically squealed, before turning and scrambling to the stairs. *** I could hardly contain my excitement at getting my hands on the cool software, so I ran up the two flights of big stairs in a bigger scramble. It’s like living in a fantasy, what with all the tech here. The door to my room, which no longer displayed the weird baby design, slid open as I approached it. “Max just brought these up: I got these two from Motherboards yesterday, and this one I printed last night.” Mike pointed out two boxes and a bubble-wrapped bundle on my desk to me. He showed me the smaller box, which was labeled LittleProtect??. “This is a personal protection band. Anti-kidnapping device. Strap it onto your ankle and set a password. The band can’t be removed without the correct password and can’t be cut off without your foot getting chopped off. If you get into trouble, curl your toes four times quickly and it’ll detect the tendons flexing and broadcast a distress signal to law enforcement and an emergency contact, which I’ve taken the liberty to set to moi. Hopefully one of us can get to you then, before you get smuggled somewhere we can’t find you.” He pointed to the bigger box. “This is less scary and more fun. You asked about the touchboard downstairs — this is a smaller, state-of-the-art version. Here, open it, you’ll need it to set up your roomd config.” I sat down and started unboxing the device, which came in the shape of a cube and unfolded into a weird-looking wireless peripheral. “This last device isn’t available in stores. It’s a cyrano identical to mine, just smaller. I got the neural interface from a good friend at CSIS — they’ve been trialing some new tech that the AIC sent them and they had a couple spares.” “AIC?” “Acimeran Intelligence Command. It’s the US foreign intelligence service.” “And CSIS is the Canadian counterpart I presume?” “Yep. Here, you can try it on after you configure your room,” he gestured to the setup window. “If you need me I’m just downstairs. Have fun!” “Thanks.” Mike nodded and left, leaving me alone in the room. I started by unfolding the touchboard. When I opened up the wings and snapped them flat, they clicked magnetically and the touchboard lit up by itself, showing rows of keys configured in a bizzare keyboard layout. At the same time, a holographic terminal window appeared in front of me. I paused to examine both the floating apparition and the touchboard. According to the short quick-start guide included in its box, the touchboard was configured to an ergonomic layout the company that made the touchboard had developed. Each 1u key was formed out of 64 individual pixels, and the modifier keys and spacebars (there were two separate ones!) used proportionally more. It was definitely wireless, but didn’t seem to have any connection buttons. Since the pamphlet claimed it would automatically interface with the nearest compatible computer and could be directly used out of the box, I pressed the ‘i’ key to see if it was connected to the hologram. Sure enough, a lowercase ‘i’ appeared in the USERNAME input field of the account creation TUI. I continued with ‘z’, then ‘y’, hunting and pecking for each key. The enter key in the default configuration was on the left, and almost none of the modifier keys were in their usual locations, so it took me a second to reorient myself. Pressing down on the keys also felt strange, since each pixel had a miniature actuator instead of one per key. Thankfully, the pixels forming a key all moved as one, and didn’t come apart when I pressed on them. After creating my user account and initializing my home directory, I proceeded to configure the keyboard to the DVORAK layout that I was more accustomed to. I then ran through all the various configuration files for my account and room, configuring everything to my satisfaction. I set the walls to a nice light lavender, had some fun drawing some abstract art on them using touch-interactive holograms, and reconfigured the door’s e-ink display. I also strapped the protection band onto my left foot and set a 30-character passphrase. *** Two hours after I left her to initialize her room, Izzy summoned me upstairs in an adorable lisp, apparently having forgotten about her paci again. “Done?” “Yup, configsh shaved and ankle monidor on,” she joked before letting her pacifier drop to her chest where it was clipped to her sleeper. “Oh, but I need a superuser to activate the room.” “Right. I’ll admit I haven’t touched roomd configs in a looong time. It’s roomctl activate right?” “I think so.” “Alright,” I moved over to her desk and pulled the touchboard over to me. “All set!” “Thanks! Like the design?” Izzy asked brightly. I looked around the room. “Yeah, it’s charming! You’ve got a nice artistic touch. You clearly know your way around a terminal too. And you play chess. What can’t you do?” I asked in mock exasperation. She giggled at that. I’d tell her that she’s adorable too, but I don’t want her to take it the wrong way. I don’t want her running away because she thinks I like her romantically or I’m going to regress her or something. Because I don’t. I’d never. She’s like the daughter that I never had. I’m never gonna give her anything less than love and respect. She’ll never ever be a human mannequin to sate my fatherhood desires. I’ll never be like those baby-crazed Acimerans. Those bastards. “Mike?” Izzy’s concerned voice snapped me out of my thoughts. “Are you okay?” “Yeah, I’m fine. I’m fine.” “I was asking if you wanted to play a game with that new chess set?” “D’you need a change first?” She groped the padding and nodded. “Looks like it.” *** Mike and I sat at the dining table. He’d gone back down to set up the board by himself, leaving me to descend the large steps of the stairs in small jumps. He had the wooden chess set unpacked and the board set with White on my side by the time I climbed onto the booster seat. “Ready?” “Yup!” Let’s see what you’ve got. As soon as he started the clock, I pushed my pawn to e4. I reached over to the clock out of habit, but it was just numbers on the e-ink surface of the table. Upon closer inspection, his time was ticking, not mine. There wasn’t anything wrong with the clock setup for the blitz game — the clock program had simply detected when I’d moved (using a touch-move basis and cameras in the room, I later discovered), and automatically clocked for me. Mike pushed e5 and my time started ticking again. With no other motive than to gauge his skill, I played Qh5. The wayward queen attack wasn’t the best opening in professional play by a long shot, but it was tricky for beginners, and I reckoned I had enough of a skill advantage to beat him either way. That was cemented in his shocking choice of g6 for his second move. I played Qxe4, putting Mike’s king in check and forking his rook. “Check!” I pointed out cheekily. “Ahh crap. I have to block, don’t I?” “Yup.” “I lose my rook, don’t I?” “Yup.” “Rats. Is there even any point in playing on?” I smiled and grandly removed my queenside rook and knight in a sweeping motion. “I’ll make it more fair. Here’s rook and knight odds.” Mike nodded and blocked the check with his bishop, immediately refunding my odds. His face on my next move told me it wasn’t intentional, either. A few moves later, I told him that he’d made yet another mistake. “I’m just trading things off aren’t I? When in doubt, trade?” “Mmm, you aren’t exactly trading here though.” He captured my bishop on d5 with his rook, losing control of the 8th rank. “What do you mean? You’re only up a pawn, right?” “Yeah, but you’ve just blundered. See, now I have mate in two.” I checked him with a rook lift to e8, back-ranking him a move later. “Good game!” The clock stopped automatically and I held my hand out. He shook it. “Well played, Izzy. I’m no match for you.” “Of course you’re not,” I told him cheekily, “I’m an International Master! I was actually going for my last GM norm the day I… came here. Do you think I can get whatever FIDE is in this Dimension to recognize my rating and title?” “I don’t know. Why don’t we find out? Where’s your cyrano?” “Here.” I fished out of my sleeper’s pocket and handed it to him. He pushed it away. “Turn it on.” I turned it over in my hand, but I couldn’t find a button. I gave up and looked at Mike in confusion. “There’s no power button,” he explained, “just put it on over your ear, it’ll turn on automatically when it’s in position.” I clipped it over my right ear with a light twist, and a holographic boot animation ran for about a second. The device then somehow scanned my retinae and popped up a message confirming my identity, accompanied by a quick vibration. After that, the interface morphed to show a dashboard of the current date and time, some setup notifications, and a minimap of my location, as if I was playing GTA but in real life. A wealth of data appeared in a label floating in front of Mike’s chest: Name: Michaelangelo “Mike” Beneventi Height: 11'6" (Big) Sex: Male Age: 35 years Username: mike@m1k3 Job Title: Dimensional Rescue Lead Organization: UNIC-DRG The next line faded out vertically, inviting me to scroll for more information. This device was far more advanced than the latest releases of the HoloLens, iGlass, and MRL Pro. As I turned to look away from Mike, the label faded a bit, but still remained visible, even in my peripheral vision. I couldn’t even tell what the cyrano’s field of view was, since I could see the label all the way to the edge of my vision! AR back home really needs to take a page from this thing. “How do I control it?” “Three ways. There’s neural input, hand gestures, and a signet if you want something physical. Personally, I prefer the hand gestures, but the neural will probably give you more privacy. Just be extra careful about malware, you don’t want an attack to fry your brain or encrypt all your memories…” “I’ll give neural a shot then. How do I enable that?” “Bring it up by double-tapping the cyrano. Double-tap again to turn it off. When it’s on, just think about what you want and it’ll do it.” I nodded and double-tapped. A shrill warning tone rang out, seemingly coming from inside my head. A bright flash blinded my vision. When it faded, I couldn’t see a thing! =========================================================== Bonus content — Izzy vs Mike chess game:https://lichess.org/study/B9ma5SdN/u0XOAfdr Please like and comment, I need your attention! ? *pouts*

Growing old may be mandatory, but growing up is optional...!! ?? *farts* ???

I had a friend once who said he didn't think adulthood was all it was cracked up to be. I don't know. I'm not sure I've made it to adulthood yet.

I think doctors, or surgeons in general, are reluctant to preform any type of procedure, which is not necessary unless, there is a real underlying medical condition, and a need to correct, or fix it. For instance, if you were to consult with a doctor, they will want a reason, and they would be reluctant, if you were to say, it’s not medical, I just want this procedure. They would want to know exactly why, and if not medically necessary, they would turn you down. They would also want to know, how would you pay for such a procedure? No insurance would pay for it. As for gender affirming treatment and surgery, that is somewhat a different subject, and I don’t think you could stand on them being the same in principle, to legitimize another type of surgery or procedure. In short, doctors take an oath, not to do harm, and that includes procedures that are not medically necessary. Most doctors, are afraid of getting near any grey areas also.

For a couple years I maintained a “bedwetting chart” in plain view at work. Nothing formal, on a calendar I simply placed an “x” over any day I wet the bed. No one asked.

That would have been me also!!!

Do you have a link to where you are going to buy it from? It looks like a pink one I recently bought, that I am not happy with.

The reason I like an diapie is because it makes me feel more like the baby I truly am inside. And like I've said many times before, for me diapies aren't about sex. It's about love, that TRUE intimate love between a daddy and a son. It's also about having that same type of relationship with a brother or friends.?❤️???????❤️?

Just diapers, plastic pants and a T shirt for me

My mother never said it, but actions speak louder than words. I am pushing 31 and that rubber sheet is STILL on my bed at my parents house. I have to admit that it is proven useful in a couple of visits home. Some mothers know best.

My wet bed

I remember the bedwetters cabin. Back when I was young though there werent the kind of protection products there are today. When mom checked the bedwetting box we had to bring at least one extra sleeping bag and they hung the wet sleeping bags and pjs out to dry on a nylon rope behind the cabin every morning. At least the mattresses in the cabin were vinyl covered. But sometimes if it rained during the day the sleeping bags and pjs didn't get fully dry. There were usually a few accidents in the regular cabins and word about them got around the camp really fast. But the guys in the bedwetters or "special needs" cabin were usually treated differently like not being picked for teams. It wasn't fun.

my Mother's favourite saying was You've wet your bed so lay in it"

Chapter 18 Alex had almost forgotten about the nappy and plastic pants, but as soon as he saw it he once more began to think why; why did his mum pack it; did she know what he really felt deep down; had she seen his computer. But all that thinking would have to wait for now, Val was about to get him ready for bed and that meant putting the nappy on him. “Now you be a good little one” said Val, “lay down on you back for me on the bed and let aunty Val take care of everything for you, then I have a little surprise for you”. While Alex lay down on the bed, Val put on plastic disposable apron to protect her clothes. With one hand she held Alex’s legs up, rocking him onto his back, while gently sliding the thick cloth nappy under his body. She then rubbed some nappy rash ointment onto his soft pale skin, making sure that he was covered all over, Val not wanting little Alex to get any nappy rash. This was followed by copious amounts of baby powder, covering Alex in a little white cloud, Val even allowing herself to tickle his tummy. “I am so pleased with you Alex, you are being such a good little one” said Val as she leaned over and kissed Alex on his head. Then came the moment of finality for Alex, Val pulled the soft terry cloth up between Alex’s legs, then folded over the sides, securing it all with some pink headed safety pins. He was finally back into a proper nappy once more, something he had thought about for a long time but never expecting. Val then took the clear plastic pants and slid them up Alex’s legs, the soft plastic making him tingle with anticipation. Val then slid them over the nappy making sure the cloth was all tuck in; leaving nothing exposed giving chance for a leak. Alex wondered if he would be sleeping in just that but Val then produced a white garment from one of the drawers, something which Alex recognised as a bodysuit. She unfastened the poppers at the crotch, and then fed it down over him, feeding his arms through it, finally pulling it down and securing it between his legs. “There we go; all snug as a bug” said Val, “you look absolutely adorable”. Val pulled him in close, hugging him softly, rubbing his back and running her hand through his hair. “Now I think I mentioned a surprise for you” said Val pulling her phone from her pocket and pressing the call button. She gave it to Alex while the call was still ringing, Alex wondering who it was calling. “Hello” said Alex when it was answered “Hi sweetheart” came the reply, Alex immediately recognising the other person as his mum. “Mum!” said Alex slightly shocked, “it’s so nice to hear you”. “It’s so good to hear you too sweetie, I hope you are having a good time, I hope you like Val and Wendy” replied Leslie, his mum. “Yes mum, they have been really nice and have made me feel so welcome” replied Alex not wanting to tell her everything. Little did Alex know, but his mum had been getting regular updates as to his conduct and behaviour from both Val and Wendy, Leslie just hoped that Alex could forgive all the deception and understand why she did it. “I am so glad sweetheart” said Leslie, “I gather you have found the extras I packed for you, but I hope you are not mad and are enjoying them. It’s ok Alex I understand and will explain all when I join you at the end of the week”. Alex listened to his mum and realised that she knew more than he thought, but was excited more than worried. “I did find them mum” replied Alex, “I wore the pants today and Val has just got me ready for bed, I don’t think there will be any leaks tonight”. “The nappy is so soft and comfy mum, thank you” said Alex nervously, not believing he had finally come out and said it, his secret was coming out; he had finally told his mum. “I am so glad, I hoped you would like it” replied Leslie, “now you be good for your two aunts, they love you just as much as me, very soon you will have mummy back and mummy will have you”. “Yes mummy” replied Alex, with a small tear forming in his eye, “I love you too”. Alex handed the phone back to Val, where she said her goodbyes to Leslie before hanging up. “You are going to be the most loved little one around” said Val, “now let’s get you tucked into bed for the night, then you can get some much deserved sleep”. Val pulled back the covers on the bed, letting Alex slide in down under the covers before pulling them up to cover him. Alex felt strange sliding into bed, the thick padding between his legs stopping him closing them properly, all the cloth and plastic tucked into the bodysuit. But with all these strange feelings he now felt loved and safe, more than he had ever before in his life, waiting for the moment he would see his mum again. “Night night little one” said Val, kissing his head and then his nose, “sweet dreams and I will be next door if you need anything”. “Night night Aunty Val” replied Alex, “thank you”.