Personalias

Gentle Reader, Love is not an emotion, but a state of being. Love is not like other emotions that are fleeting and predictable and more often than not a direct and measurable response to stimuli. Few people ever ponder about the nature of embarrassment. Fewer still think of themselves as “in like” with someone. No one has ever kept themselves awake at night, tossing and turning, as they wonder “do they hate me like I hate them?” There is also no one singular kind of love, either. The love for one’s God is not the same as the love for one’s country, is not the same for one’s mate, is not the same for one’s children. Yet they are all love. Some may be more intense than others, and one’s priorities might shift, but the love is still there. Love, it could be argued, is not something that goes away, either, but changes and mutates over time. Crotchety old men can still love their wives but admit that the old crones they’re married to are not the same pretty young girls that they fell in love with a lifetime ago. A divorced couple might still love each other, even though they are not right for each other as lifelong companions. If not, perhaps they never truly loved each other to begin with and only realize that now that the pressure is on and the lust is gone. That’s another thing about love: Its presence is often attributed to thoughts, deeds, and places where it simply does not exist, making it fairly unique. “I thought I feared you, but I guess I was wrong,” is not a phrase, save for perhaps satire. And most importantly, gentle reader, love makes mortals do stupid, stupid things. A war that rocked the ancient world until it was ended by a wooden horse was waged for love. A minstrel journeyed into the Underworld and defied death for love. A girl from a perfectly respectable Venetian family faked her death-ultimately resulting in the death of her betrothed and the suicide of her star-crossed beau-for love. An old puppet maker journeyed out to sea and was swallowed by a whale for love. Love is…complicated. It is with that fact in mind that I ask you to not look unkindly upon the two lovers, Jack and Jamie. After multiple orgasms at her own hands, Jamie lay lazily in her Faerie captor’s arms, not quite dozing, and quietly and dreamily contemplating her situation. The pleasure that she had felt had only been rivaled by the pain that her hotheaded husband had accidentally inflicted upon her. But this delightful sensation, this rightness of being, definitely exceeded her torment of minutes ago. (Was it minutes? She had been so thoroughly enjoying rubbing herself through the wet padding of her very infantile looking diaper that she had lost track of time.) Perhaps the vibrating wand she held in her hand was a magic wand of sorts, after all. Jack, meanwhile, cried quietly on the naughty stool in the corner. Each orgasm that rolled through Jamie’s body caused him to uncontrollably wet himself further. They were connected in that way for the time being. He was acutely aware of how many times she had reached climax pleasuring herself in her plastic underwear while resting comfortably on Madam Mathair’s lap. All things considered, the diaper was doing a marvelous job at containing Jack’s liquid- though the distinct sloshing feeling Jack felt from the back to the front of his diaper told him that he was in desperate need of a new one. Very likely, he’d need some form of hydration soon, too. Jack did not weep due to discomfort or embarrassment. He had already endured incontinence for more than twenty four hours without being particularly rattled by it beyond blushing and praying to any god that would listen that none of his friends would ever know about this. Knowing that each time his diaper grew damper was an indication that his wife was shunning him in favor rubbing herself in their captor’s arms is what caused him pain. She was mad at him. She was punishing him. So contritely, as if he had any other options, he sat there and let the nappy swell to well past saturation, shedding tears of deepest regrets. If only he had chosen not to call the Faerie’s bluff of potty punishment, this wouldn’t be happening. He could have simply chosen to use the connection and wet himself, causing this sick spell to sexually gratify his wife. Pride makes mortals do stupid things, too. “I think that’s enough for now,” Mommy Mathair waved her hands in the air, causing the sex toy to literally evaporate from Jamie’s tired grasp. “Time to get you changed into some big girl panties.” “Gah?” Jamie babbled her question up at the azure lady. “Gah?” Jack called up from the naughty stool. “Even though you wet your diaper,” Mommy Mathair explained on the way up to the nursery, “you chose to because you knew there’d be consequences if you went potty. You didn’t want to hurt Jack. That wasn’t an accident. That was a very big girl thing to do, and I’m proud of you. You deserve a reward.” Jamie felt an almost unnatural sense of accomplishment at that remark….almost unnatural. “But Jack,” the wyrd woman called back, the house carrying her words to Jack’s ears regardless of distance, “chose to fight Mommy and accidentally hurt you. He’s the one who had the accident, and now his diaper has much more pee-pee in it than yours does, doesn’t it?” Smartly, Jamie decided to retreat back into herself. She stared off into the middle distance as she was laid back on the changing table and her diaper was removed. She would give Mommy nothing to work with. Shit! Was she really thinking of this woman as “Mommy”? As a pair of panties that matched her dress slid up her hips, Jamie squirmed a bit in discomfort. They were so thin compared to her diapers. Mathair carried her into the game room that both she and her husband had been ogling as adults and set her down on the floor. Without the layer of padding that separated her rump from the rest of the room, she was acutely aware of everything that touched her backside. Was her ass always this boney? She felt almost naked by comparison, and not in the good way. A few minutes later, the Faerie came in with a frowning, but sweet smelling, Jack. “All clean,” she announced. There was an unspoken “for now,” in there, as well. “Now,” the wyrd woman with the white hair spoke, “I’m sure you two have a lot to talk about, so I’ll give you two your hour, as agreed.” She snapped her fingers and green sparks traveled from her fingers to their mouths. “Just call out my name if either of you need anything. A fresh diaper perhaps, or new panties. The potty’s over there if you need it, Jamie darling.” Jamie looked over her shoulder. “Jesus!” she shrieked, scooting back. Where had that thing come from? “If you’re lucky,” Mommy Mathair grinned maliciously, “you might cause him so much pain that he wets himself, and then you know what happens after that.” “Fuck you!” Jack shouted up at her from his spot on the floor. “You two be good now,” the azure lady ignored the comment, “Just call my name if you need anything and I’ll come.” When they were alone, or at least seemed alone, husband and wife spoke to each other, frankly, and angrily. “The hell was all that about?” Jamie demanded. “Sorry,” Jack flushed, eyes towards the floor. “Seriously,” Jamie pressed, “what the hell were you thinking?” “I didn’t know that peeing in THAT thing,” Jack pointed to the potty, ominously lurking in the background, “was gonna hurt you.” He was sorry, but he was also proud. He didn’t need to be reminded how dismally he had failed. “I figured that much,” Jamie huffed, “but you could have at least taken the safer option.” “And pissed myself?!” Jack snapped “Not like we haven’t both done it before!” Jamie countered. “But nooooo, you had to prove how big and strong you were!” “Yeah, and I messed up,” Jack half admitted, half argued. “So did you just go and revenge-masturbate on me because of it?” “You got to cum in your diaper!” Jamie accused her husband. “Yeah, on accident!” Jack defended. “And you could have made me cum in mine on purpose,” Jamie yelled, “but you decided to be an idiot instead!” “So you beat off half a dozen times in retaliation?” “She wound me up!” Jamie defended herself. “She did the same thing to you, yesterday. Remember yesterday? I’m pretty sure if you hadn’t snapped out of it, you were going to do more than give me a hug!” “But I did snap out of it!” Jack screamed. “Yeah,” Jamie paused a beat, staring daggers at her husband. “Because of me!” There was a long silence. A few uncomfortable seconds stretched out into an agonizing five minutes. Jamie, in her big girl panties, crossed her arms at her diapered husband, daring him to argue. “Just…just…whatever!” Jack finally huffed. “We’re gonna get out of here by tomorrow anyways.” He scooted around on his bottom and sat in silence with his back to Jamie. She made no reply or acknowledgement one way or the other. They finally had the opportunity to talk, and yet they entreated each other only with the sharpest of silences. The silence stretched on for another ten minutes or so, each one saying nothing other than perhaps an audible sigh of exasperation and frustration. Then, after another ten minutes, anger gave way to boredom. Jack looked up at the pinball machine by the wall. That hadn’t changed, at least. It had been what sealed the deal and made him want this house. He had signed away his adult hood for a pinball machine and hadn’t even gotten to play it yet. “I’m gonna play some pinball.” He crinkled as he stood up and waddled to the pinball machine that he had coveted. “Whoah!” Jamie exclaimed in surprise as the pinball machine came to life with its myriad of bells, whistles and flashing lights. “What?” Jack called back over his shoulder. “You’re standing!” Jamie gawked, still on the floor. “We’ve been crawling since breakfast yesterday morning!” “Huh…” Jack grunted a bit. “Honestly didn’t notice that till now.” “Do you think we couldn’t walk before?” Jamie asked. “I dunno,” Jack shrugged, still distracted by the pinball game, and still a little defensive with his wife. “Holy shit, have we been crawling this whole time for nothing?” Jamie shuddered at the thought. Was this another one of the Faerie’s tricks, or had they just assumed and taken to crawling naturally? Had they given up that simple vestige of independence of their own free will? “I just…” Jack grunted again, “kinda assumed.” His focus was still completely on the pinball table and its bouncing silver ball. Jamie tilted her head sideways in curiosity. Was Jack standing oddly? He was kind of squatting, by the looks of it. “Jack?” Jamie called out with growing concern as she rose to her feet. “Jack, what are you doing?” “Nnnnn….nothing,” Jack’s voice strained as he continued playing. “Jack, what are you doing?” Jamie repeated. “Look at me, honey.” Jack ignored her, still playing with the damnable machine. Jamie’s pleas were greeted only with the sound of balls hitting bells and bumpers. “JACK!” “Hnnnn…just a minute.” Jack called back over his shoulder. “Something’s wrong. This thing’s…hnnnng…stuck. Gotta get it… out.” “JACK!” Jamie shrieked. But it was too late. Jamie was soon doubled over on the floor, cumming in her panties full force and convulsing as every neuron in her system buzzed with complete and utter sexual release. Oh God, is this what it felt like when he did that in his pants? If and when she did the same, his dick would likely fall off from exhaustion, Jamie reckoned. “Oh God, Jamie!” Jack whirled around as his wife fell to the floor. “What happened?” he cried out. “What happ-“ he stopped and took stock of himself. “Oh…!” “Yeah…” Jamie panted. They both blushed, though for very different reasons. “So…what…what do I do, now?” Jack asked. “Like…should we wait for the hour to be up…or…?” “No,” Jamie shook her head. “You should definitely get a new diaper.” “Okay,” Jack broke off eye contact, feeling embarrassed at what had just happened. “Mathair,” Jack called out. “Mathair, I need…I need to be changed.” Nothing. “Mathair?” Jamie echoed her husband’s reluctant tone. “We need you. Please. Jack needs you.” They both shared a knowing look and sighed in defeat. They knew what to do. “MOMMY!” They cried out, albeit reluctantly. “Yes, my darlings?” the Faerie seemed to appear from thin air as her form crossed the threshold of the game room. “Can I help you?” Jack shuffled up to the blue lady, grimacing as even the very act of walking made him feel unclean. “Will you change my diaper?” Jack grumbled. “What was that, baby boy?” Mommy Mathair leaned in, her smile evident “I didn’t quite hear you.” “Mommy,” Jack sighed, “will you change my diaper, please?” The wyrd woman’s violet eyes sparkled with mischievous delight. “Why Jack,” she positively gushed. “I would love to. Let’s go change my big boy’s diaper, shall we?” The contradiction of “big boy” and “diaper” caused Jack to cringe. The Faerie walked away, holding her hand out for Jack to take. “Come come, now, darling. Or do you want me to carry you?” “I’ll walk,” Jack sulked, following their captor to go get cleaned up. Jamie sat on the floor in stunned silence. What was happening them? What was happening to their bond? Their cunning? Their independence? She had actually been proud of herself when Mathair had called her a “big girl”, but it had been in the same condescending tone that Jack had just been addressed with moments ago. Jack had been nowhere near acting like a “big boy”. But mothers often called their babies “big” anyways. In hindsight, rubbing a good half a dozen cummies out, didn’t make her any more of a big girl, either, she realized. Holy shit, had she just infantilized the concept of an orgasm? The Faerie wasn’t supposed to be able to affect their minds this deeply. She had managed to stir up body chemistry, but never free will. Had she found a loophole in their contest of wills, or did Jack and Jamie really just have these tendencies already lying in wait inside themselves? Was some strange facet of fate against them all along? Was this meant to be? Jamie pondered all of this as she absent mindedly dabbed at her panties. They were quite wet, and the smell of her own sexual juices, while not unpleasant- everyone liked the smell of their own brand- was still disturbing to her. She was beginning to like this, she realized to her dismay. She got to be safe and protected and naughty and a little bit sexy too. And with the magics surrounding this house, no one would ever know that she ever felt this way. It was the perfectly kept secret. She was developing a fetish, the cold rational part of her brain realized. They both were, very likely. As much as he might loathe to admit it, some intimate part of Jamie knew that Jack was excited at how he was being treated. He struggled, naturally, but from the way he held himself and blushed, he liked being taken down a notch, too. She still loved Jack, she knew, but the nature of this contest wasn’t a matter of did she love her husband or not. The stated rules of the contest were “who did she love more?”. What was stronger, the feelings they had for each other or the passions they were experiencing at the hands of this mad goddess? And she worried about Jack, now, not as a lover, but as a friend, and perhaps even the way one might be worried for…a little brother. Emotionally and cognitively speaking, he’d been to the brink more times than she had. But her own doubt in him might be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Jack had been motivated by anger and his emotions, more often, that was true, but was he the one having doubts? Was she really the weak link here? Just then, the T.V. in the game room buzzed to life. Jamie whipped her head around toward the screen and sucked in her breath at what she saw. Mommy Mathair loomed over Jack on the changing table. His fire engine red shortalls were unbuttoned at the legs and crotch and bunched up above his bellybutton. She was just finishing pulling a new diaper taught between his legs and fastening it around his waist. One tape, and then the other. Jamie saw a wisp of baby powder puff up from the inside of the diaper onto Jack’s bellybutton as Mathair finished diapering him. “All clean!” the blue Faerie beamed, giving Jack’s padded crotch a playful little pat. “There now, I bet you feel sooooo much better with a nice clean diaper on, don’t you Jack, darling?” She lingered with her hand still caressing the front of the diaper. “Oooh, someone definitely feels better.” “Just…just…button up my pants and take me back to my wife.” Jack stuttered. A playfully mischievous smirk came to the Fae lady’s lips. Jamie recognized that look. Jamie had given that look to Jack any number of times. That was her look, not the Faerie’s. “Stay away from him, you bitch,” Jamie hissed at the television set. “She’s busy getting ready to go potty,” Mommy Mathair told Jack. “Probably doing a little dance and debating whether or not to pay you back for your little oopsie. Her bladder is filling up.” Mathair paused, dramatically. “That’s why you’re getting an erection, isn’t it? I mean, it makes sense. She’s getting ready to wet, so you’re getting ready to cum. Or does my big stwong man like going potty in his diaper wike a widdle baby boy? Does he wike getting his diaper changed?” “Shut! Up!” Jack growled through gritted teeth. “It’s okay, honey. It can be our little secret.” The Fae whispered. “I don’t judge. Mommy never judges. Let me help you.” Jack eyed his captor wearily. “If you orgasm in your diaper, she wets her panties.” Mathair leaned in with a hushed, conspiratorial whisper. Still, Jamie could hear it from the television. “On one hand, maybe she thinks that she lost control and had an accident. In which case you’re off the hook. On the other hand, maybe she finds out about this and suspects you forced her to. But that’s not so bad, is it? You know she loves you, and the potty in that room is just agonizing her to no end. So, you take the matter out of her hands. You take temptation to get even with you and the guilt that would later cause and take it off the table. Besides,” she added, giving Jack’s cock a firm squeeze through the diaper. “By my count, she’s had at least seven orgasms, six of them self-inflicted. You’ve only had the one. That’s not fair is it? She’ll understand.” “I love her.” Jack declared to the demon woman with white hair. “I’m not asking you not to love her,” Mathair countered. “I’m asking you to make cummies in your diaper, for me. Just once. You’ll be out of here tomorrow night at the rate you’re going. So what does it matter what you do in the here and now? That,” she pressed on, “and if she has an accident in her pants again, I’ll practically have to put her back in diapers. You’ll both be little babies again. You’ll be on equal footing.” Jack sighed. And looked around the nursery as though someone else might be watching him. Someone was, but he didn’t seem to realize it. “Just once,” he said. “Once is all I’ll need.” “NOOOOOOOO!” Jamie screamed. “JACK, NO! DON’T LISTEN TO HER!” But the house was not on Jamie’s side. No sounds would reach the nursery that Mathair did not wish to reach the nursery. Through the television, Jack’s groans and the crinkling of his diaper as the wyrd woman massaged and rubbed at his crotch could be heard as clear as anything. Jamie ran to the playroom’s threshold and was met with a door slamming in her face. “NO!” she wailed, first pounding on the wooden door and then clawing at it like a cat. Meanwhile, Jack groaned and wriggled on the table. “It’s okay, baby boy.” Mathair’s voice soothingly whispered to Jamie’s husband. “Suck your thumb if you want to. No one’s looking.” Jack’s eyes closed and he slipped his thumb in his mouth and began sucking it. Jamie saw this and couldn’t believe her eyes. Why was this happening?! Why now?! They should be winning! “It’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re stressed.” Mathair cooed. “It’s okay. It’s what you’re supposed to do. You’re stressed, so relieve it. But this is good stress, isn’t it?” she kept on. “This isn’t bad is it? My darling baby boy is just all…wound…up!” “Nonononononono!” Jamie screamed in earnest as she felt her bladder welling up inside of her. All too soon, the dam broke, and Jack let out a satisfied sigh of relief. “Good baby!” the Mommy praised her overgrown baby boy. “Good making cummies in your diaper. Now let’s give Mommy a hug.” Jack sat up, thumb still in his mouth, and hugged her as she rubbed his back. His shortalls still bunched up above his waist, and his diaper on full display, he seemed completely content as Mathair patted his bum again and whispered “Good job, now let’s get you buttoned back up.” Jamie was much less content. The warm liquid rushing out of her and into her panties caused her to gasp involuntarily. Rather than pooling and being absorbed into the core, as she had quickly become accustomed to; the pee soaked through the thin, already wet, cotton barrier of her underpants and gushed down her legs. A million tiny fingers tickled the inside of her thighs, leaving a foul smelling residue. A pool formed and underneath her feet. This was a plague of unclean. The cold air of the world outside her clothes almost immediately began drying and cooling the disgusting bodily fluid she had drenched herself. Already, the ammonia was becoming stale and uncomfortable. Already, she was shivering. Jamie hated to admit it, but a wet diaper was infinitely preferable to pissy panties. The T.V. blinked off as Mathair brought in an ashamed looking but (mostly) clean Jack. “Oh dear!” Madam Mathair shrieked when she took Jamie’s visage in. “Jamie! And here I could have sworn you were a big girl! You could have easily made it to the potty.” The worst part was, the slender Faerie sounded genuine when she spoke, as if she didn’t know that she had caused this. “It’s back to diapers for you, young lady,” Mathair pronounced as she set Jack down so she could scoop his wife up in her arms. “I knew you weren’t ready for panties without protection. Come now, darling, let’s get you cleaned up and in a fresh one.” As his wife was scooped up in the slender Faerie’s arms and carried off to be redressed in more infantile underwear, Jack sat on the floor, in his not quite fresh diaper, baking with guilt. He couldn’t help it. That witch had a hold of him. She had put something in him that he was powerless to resist. He was the weak link in this contest of wills, and he knew it. Oh god, what would happen if at the third day, some part of him genuinely liked…liked…this more than his own freedom, or his wife? He could deny it of course, but that wouldn’t make it any less true. Who knew? The Faerie probably had some magical way of ferreting out the truth, and even if he lied, he’d be caught…he’d be caught…and spanked…and made to walk around in nothing but a dia-STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP IT! While Jack wrestled with himself, Jamie was being cleaned- very slowly- by her jailer. Wordlessly, Mommy Mathair dragged the cold baby wipes across her legs, while still leaving her in the soaked cotton underwear. Warm and sticky had gone to cold and clammy in a matter of moments. The panties did nothing to pull the moisture away from her bare skin. She was hyper aware of the moisture at all times. It was a little like sitting in a wet bathing suit with no towel in sight and no refreshing shower in her future. She was beginning to itch, she realized, biting her lip. They weren’t talking, but Mathair was telling her something all the same: “Diapers aren’t the worst.” As if to drive her point home, the blue Faerie took out a fresh diaper and slid it under Jamie’s bottom, without first removing her wet panties. Mathair made a move to pull the diaper up, and Jamie sucked in her breath. “Something wrong, darling?” Mathair asked. “Aren’t you going to…y’know?” Jamie glanced at her wet cotton panties. “Ah, we’re talking now, are we?” Mathair smirked. “I said I was going to put you in a fresh diaper. I didn’t say I was going to take your panties off, did I?” “But…but…but…” the young woman reached for the words. “You said you’d clean me up, and I’m not clean yet. Mathair’s smirk was replaced by a furrowed brow. “Yes…I suppose I did say that. Clever girl,” she snorted, though it didn’t sound at all like a compliment. Nimble but strong fingers ripped open the sides of Jamie’s panties as if they were paper and pulp instead of cotton fiber and Jamie was quickly cleaned up with more expertly wielded wipes. Then, the Faerie did the unthinkable and took out another matching pair of panties. “What are you doing?” Jamie blurted as Mathair moved to work Jamie’s feet through the holes. “I’m putting clean panties on you, dear. That way, you can still be a big girl and go potty if you want, but if you have an accident, it won’t ruin any nice clean floors. I think you’re much more mature than Jack, and deserve a second chance, don’t you?” Jamie remembered the T.V. in the game room. Likely this temptation was being broadcast into the playroom while Jack watched in scornful disbelief. Mathair was trying to drive a wedge between them, or drive it deeper as it were. “Even if you have another accident, the panties will help you learn.” Jamie was suddenly reminded of a barely recalled period from her childhood. When she had been potty trained, her mother hadn’t just put her in Pull-Ups or some other form of diaper disguised as training pants. She had worn big girl panties underneath. When she had had that inevitable “accident” the diaper had contained the accident, while the wet panties clung to her skin, making her uncomfortable, and gave her incentive to pay attention to her bladder. The fact of the matter was, diapers were designed to be comfortable when wet. Panties were not. “Um…no thank you.” Jamie blushed. “Are you saying you’d rather be in a diaper instead of big girl panties?” Mathair cocked an eyebrow. “…Yeah…” Jamie nodded. She wasn’t going to be sitting on that dreadful potty, if it hurt Jack. So peeing herself (among other things) was the only option left to her. But if she was going to be going in her pants anyways, there was no sense in being uncomfortable, was there? She was willing to stow her pride while ensuring that she was at least slightly comfortable. She was a pragmatist, not a martyr. “That’s probably for the best.” Mathair agreed, dropping the panties out of sight, and likely out of existence. “You’ll need to get used to it, anyways.” She fastened the large baby diaper up properly between Jamie’s legs. “You’ll be wearing these for a long time.” “You’re not going to win.” Jamie stated with all the dignity she could muster. “I didn’t say I was,” Mathair stated matter-of-factly, giving a slight shrug. “Then wh-?“ Jamie started. “Just a moment, darling,” Mathair cut her off. “If I’m going to have this conversation with you, I’d rather we be looking each other in the eye. Jamie was pulled into the sitting position and quickly scooped up by the Faerie. But instead of being trotted back into the game room with her husband, Jamie found herself placed gently on the nursery floor. Stranger still, the wyrd woman who had placed her there was now joining her on the floor, her legs easing to her right side as she leaned to the left. She looked relaxed, and vaguely seductive; like a jazz singer at a speakeasy laying on the piano while she crooned. Her proportions were just so off though, that she resembled Jessica Rabbit more than any actual starlet. She stared at Jamie, looking her in the eyes, coolly measuring her up. Jamie was suddenly very aware that she didn’t have a diaper cover on and that her dress was doing a poor job at concealing her padded underpants. Maybe it was the strangeness of this whole situation suddenly bubbling over, or the way Mathair was looking at her- the Faerie’s expression had changed from careful condescension to something resembling sincerity- but Jamie was suddenly very self-conscious. She wiggled a bit, her bottom crinkling as she fought against the urge to try and sit cross legged so she could have just that little bit of modesty. It’d be better than sitting splay legged on the floor, anyways. “Don’t bother, darling,” Mathair prompted. “It’s just us, and you’re more clothed now than you were when I carried you in here.” Mathair closed her eyes and inhaled, as if she were repulsed by what she was about to say. “So…real talk.” She finally said. “No pretenses. No me being your Mommy or you trying not to be my baby girl. Let’s be real.” “Fine.” Jamie crossed her arms, still on guard. “I still love my husband, and he still loves me. Even if we’re enjoying this on some level, we’re not going to pick you over each other.” “That’s fair,” the blue lady nodded. “And that might be true. But as our game stands now, you’re going to still need to get used to wearing diapers.” Jamie stared at the Faerie. She knew she was being baited, but she couldn’t resist. The urge to know was too great. “Why?” “I said that I’d give you your freedom, Jamie,” Mathair told her. “I never said anything about turning you back to normal.” Jamie’s eyes widened in disbelief. “But…that’s not…” the words refused to leave her mouth. “Did you think that I would undo the spells that I cast on you?” Mathair tilted her head in slight incredulity. “That’s not something I agreed to.” “But…we’ll be…we’ll be out!” Jamie blurted. She was shaking. A rock had been dropped into the pit of her stomach. “And?” Mathair asked. “What’s your point? Does a heart stent automatically go away once you’re free of the hospital? Does the cancer? I’ve altered your and Jack’s bodies and by the end of tomorrow, you will be free and kicked out into the open world; completely incontinent, unable to speak properly, and virtually unable to provide or feed for yourselves.” She paused for a moment to let that sink in. “If you’re lucky, maybe they’ll put you in a group home together. But I suspect you’ll both just be institutionalized in separate wards. Though it will be amusing I suspect when one of you suddenly has an orgasm apropos of nothing while the other one soils their diapers in a more conventional fashion miles away. Also,” she added as an afterthought, pointing to the baby birds on Jamie’s diaper, “you’re diapers won’t be as cute, but I think that’s a relatively minor concern, don’t you?” “But the stories…” Jamie reached, “the rules…!” “Have not been and won’t be violated,” Madam Mathair corrected. “Really, your best option is to give up and surrender. I’ll at least take care of you and treat you with love and tenderness. Any enjoyment that you feel at being treated this way will be kept secret from the world and you and Jack can have all of the nice and naughty fun that either of you could ever want for the rest of your lives.” “You’re…” Jamie was shaking, tears starting to blur her vision. “You’re a terrible person.” “Technically,” Mathair replied dryly, “I’m not a person. Not in the sense you’re thinking.” “You’re a monster.” Jamie growled. “Yes I am.” Mathair affirmed. “But I can be a monster that is good to you, like a mother, or well… monstrous.” A wry smile played across the Fae woman’s face. “I guess you might say that I’m momstrous.” Jamie held herself upright. She stopped herself from shaking. Then, clear as a bell, voice unwavering, she said “We’re going to destroy you. Then we’ll be truly free.” Jack sat alone in the game room, contemplating what he had just done, what had just been done to him, and was desperately trying to think of what he would do. Like so many little boys led around by their cocks, he felt like a different, more clear-headed man after “blowing his load”. Like so many men with a guilty conscience, his consciousness was a mix of hard truths diluted with heavy rationalization. Had he wanted what had just happened to happen? No at first; then yes. Had he enjoyed it? Again, no at first; then yes. Was he being manipulated some way, be it magic or mundane? That was a big yes! Was he embarrassed? Humiliated even? Of course he was. Was it his fault? He couldn’t answer that. He couldn’t even make himself answer that question. Everything in his big, alpha male driven ego said it had to be. He couldn’t be the victim. He just couldn’t be weak. He had either just been assaulted, or seduced. He had either become emasculated or he had just cheated on his wife. Neither one was palatable. And then the truth- not the facts, perhaps- but the truth finally hit him. He had to find a way out of this mess. He had to save himself and Jamie. But how? What to do? What to do? This was all his fault. All of it! He had wanted to get this house. He had wanted to sign on the dotted line. He had lost control not once, not twice, but three times; each time becoming more selfish, more short-sighted, and more infantile. And a growing part of him liked it! If they ever got out of this hole that he had dug for them, Jamie would surely leave him. He had glimpsed her briefly in the eyes as she had been carted off to be re-diapered by the Faerie, likely seduced herself, and had seen the utter shock and disappointment lingering in her eyes. Those weren’t “I pissed my pants” eyes. Those were “How could you?” eyes. Jamie knew what had happened. Somehow she knew. Jack didn’t know how she knew, but that was irrelevant at this point, wasn’t it? If he lost, they’d be together forever, stuck as this mad goddess’s wet little playthings. If he won, she would surely leave him for a man who was less impulsive and idiotic; and infinitely more faithful. The idea that he had on some level been unfaithful was the hardest and most bitter pill to swallow. He expected that he would wet himself any moment now as Jamie climaxed as he recently had. Her infidelity would be justified with his own. Or even worse, Jamie’s willpower would eclipse his own, and they’d be both bone dry when they were reunited. He might have agonized himself into a gibbering wreck, gentle reader, had some outside force not intervened. Perhaps the old house wanted to make the game more interesting. Perhaps the Lords of Fate and Hearth intervened in some way; they sometimes do that, like spoiled children screaming “Get to the good stuff!” Regardless of the “why” something did happen, and it happened not with a bang, but a “THUMP”. Jack was startled from his reverie by a loud, solid “THUMP”. Still on his hands and knees, he pivoted around looking for the source. Had the potty chair suddenly come alive? Was it going to force him to sit on it and cause Jamie even more pain? What new plot was Mathair up to? Hadn’t she done enough? He looked towards the bookshelf, the source of the sound, and saw a thick, blue leather bound tome. Crinkling with every movement, he crawled over to the book. He could have walked, he supposed, but something about crawling felt appropriate, stealthy even, despite the rustling sound to the contrary. The book had no title on its azure cover, but it did have golden insect wings stenciled into the cover. They were ornate, and of masterful craftsmanship, but were thin and slender, more like gossamer dragonfly wings, than the fat and flat butterfly wings. Even the little veins in the wings were etched into the metal stencil. Moreover, something about it looked old and well read. There were cracks along the spine where the book had been opened up and the same pages had been read again and again. The tome even had a peculiar smell to it. It did not smell of dusty paper and mothballs as some form of common knowledge archetype suggested ancient tomes must, but of baby powder. Jack looked up at the bookcase of what was supposed to be Jamie’s library. Sure enough, there was an empty space near the top that was roughly the size of the book in front of him. Not bothering to stand up, he reached for a book on the bottom shelf and withdrew it. Instead of reading it, though, Jack laid it atop the first book. The second paperback book, one of Jamie’s trashy romance novels was a little over half the size in terms of length and height, and nowhere near as thick. Jack had decent special awareness; enough to guess that the shelves were all roughly equivalent in size. But a tome this large shouldn’t be able to fit on the bookcase at all. Perhaps it could be prominently displayed on the very top, but that seemed unlikely. Placing the second book back on the bottom shelf, Jack gazed down at this book, this leather bounder, insect winged, blue skinned book that smelled of baby powder. Something magical was happening again. Something wanted him to read this. It was time for a leap of faith. With unsure, anticipating, even trembling hands. Jack opened the book and began to read. It said this: “Gentle reader, You likely know the story of how a little wooden boy was brought to life to grant an old man’s wish to be a father. This is not his story. This is the story of the Faerie that granted that old man’s wish and turned that little wooden boy into a terrible, mischievous, real child. The Fae are not human creatures, and rarely, if even, share the same goals and motivations as mortals. Yet the blue Faerie granted the old man’s wish as best as she could. Why then, gentle reader, would one of the Kindly Ones grant a clock making codger’s fanciful wish? Was she obligated to due to some strange custom of wishing on a star? No. The answer is much simpler. For a brief momen of time, a relative flicker of an instant, Mathair of the Fae, the Mother with no children of her own, felt a kinship with the old man.” But this isn’t the old man’s story. It is not the story of the little wooden boy who killed crickets and turned into a jackass before being swallowed by a whale. This is the blue Faerie’s story. This is Mathair’s Story.” Jack’s eyes widened in recognition. He read on: “The Faerie, long a giver of pregnancies and miracle births to women in want of children, felt a kind of kinship to the clock maker. Like herself, he too could not have children of his own, yet desperately wanted one. She had lived vicariously through so many women thought to be old or barren being rewarded with their own child to nurture, but had been jealous of them as well. The old man, though, was someone she could relate to. Just like her, he had no way of truly giving life to something, but could only imitate it. But, as Faeries are apt to do, she was able to harness his dreams and fantasies and bring give them life in a cold and rational world. She lived through the old man and his little wooden boy in a way she had never lived through any of the crones, old maids, and if rumors are to be believed, a virgin or two. All before the old man had at least been meant on some level to give life and have children of their own. The old man was more like her. In helping him, she was helping an aspect of herself. And for a time, she was satisfied. But satisfaction turned to jealousy. Why couldn’t she? The reason, she knew, was simple. More powerful than a Djinn, she could bring both dreams and nightmares to life, regardless of a mortal’s intent or what they “wished”. But, as Fae she needed mortals for that creative spark and inspiration. She needed mortal imagination. All she needed was someone who would on some level imagine her having a child, and she could harness that to become the mother she was meant to be. And so, the wyrd woman with the azure skin took the name “Mathair”, a derivative of an old Fae word meaning “Mother”, she went in explora-“ Boring. Useless. Where was her weakness? How was Jack going to destroy her and get her freedom? He skimmed and skipped a few pages. The book had gone from a story to a very cut and dry narrative that left none of the details out. It was like reading those really boring parts of the Bible; the parts that read: “And so and so begat so and so who begat so and so who went to this place and married so and so who bore him three sons and the first child went off and made a house of straw and the second one went to another country and made a house of sticks and the third one stayed home in the house of brick and married a woman who bore him nothing but daughters whose names were blah de blah dee teedly tum.” Finally, Jack came to a part that caught his eye. “And then she found a new world, and with it a new perspective. Mortals were selfish ultimately. They cared nothing for the Fae except for what benefits they might provide or what wrath they might invoke. They were selfish and would never even consider her needs for a child. Some of them were ready to war with their kings over a little thing like taxes and tribute. They were themselves, children in a sense. Mathair would become mother not of some homunculi like the old clock maker’s wooden boy, but of a human. Granted, taking human children had long since been forbidden, but there was a loophole. All she would need to do would be to find a grown human that desired on some level to be a child again.” Jack scoffed at that. There was no way. He and Jamie might have been reluctantly enjoying this most strange of experiences, despite their intentions, but he refused to believe that there was any initial desire to be harnessed. He and Jamie had been trying to become adults, not escape it. “Or someone who dreaded being a child again. That would work just as well, and the end result would be the same.” Phew! That must be it. Jack sighed and kept reading: “But she would not come to her little darlings. They would come to her, and seek her out. And so like the witch of the black forest and her gingerbread house, Madam Mathair changed her form to something more pleasing and called out across the Aether so that her surrogate children would find her in the woodlands. They would be lured in. Without knowing it they would agree to her terms. And like it or not, they would be loved and cared for and coddled forever after. But Mathair paid a heavy price for finding her loophole to her forever children. She would be a prisoner, too. Trapped in the same spot for all time. No longer would she wander the night sky waiting for a wish to empower her. Never again would the lovers and dreamers of the world smile at her presence. Instead, all but those who heard her silent siren song would know to stay away, lest they become her newest charges. And finally, in the transformation she invoked upon herself, in twisting her capabilities and physical form so that she might finally realize her true nature as the Lords of Fate and Hearth intended she incurred a terrible weakness upon herself. Though she would never die on her own, she might be destroyed by those whom she welcomed and coddled as her babies. It was ironic really, the old witch of the black forest would laugh if she knew…” And so he read on and on and on, and when he found the part that he was looking for Jack grinned with childish delight and closed the book in triumph. He was the boy who had just gotten a peek at his Christmas presents…or perhaps more appropriately, the boy who found the walkthrough of his favorite video game that he could never beat. If only he had turned to the back of the book and read the words that you’re reading now… “Did destroying the so called Wicked Queen, wake Snow White from her curse?” Mathair asked Jamie. “Did destroying my sister in her dragon form wake Sleeping Beauty? Does killing the snake remove its venom?” “No,” Jamie shrunk down a bit. “You seem to be under the impression that if you kill the spell caster, you stop the spell. That for some reason my conscious effort is required to keep you in a state of perpetual infancy.” Mathair stood up to her full height. “The only thing that requires any effort on my part, conscious or otherwise, is keeping you here in this house and caring for your needs. The only thing killing me will do is get rid of the house and cast you two baby lovebirds out into a world that is ill equipped to care for you and keep you together.” “We still have our true lo-“ Jamie began to object. “Don’t bother thinking true love will do anything other than make your lives more bearable together or more painful separated.” Mommy Mathair interrupted. “Did you know that Briar Rose was awakened from her slumber, not by a kiss, but by being impregnated in her sleep and giving birth?” “That’s a lie!” Jamie shouted indignantly. “It’s the truth,” Mommy Mathair told her like a parent telling her child that Santa doesn’t exist. She picked Jamie back up and sat her back up on the changing table, still looking her in the eye. They were speaking as equals no longer. “True love as a breaker of spells is just something the peasants made up because love was the one thing they had in abundance. It made them feel safe. Besides,” Mathair gave Jamie a conspiratorial wink, “even if the nicer stories were true, wasn’t it always true love’s first kiss that ended the spell? And you two were married before you became my babies. So even if you do have true love, your first kiss was long ago. Otherwise you’d be out of here by now. Think about that when I take you back into the game room.” “I…I…I…” Jamie stopped talking. She had all of her words back, but none of them were doing her any good. “Be reasonable, darling.” Mommy Mathair stroked Jamie’s soft blonde hair. “Be smart. It’s your best quality. Surrender yourself to me, and Jack will follow, and I will take care of both of you. I’ll let you talk for an hour every day, and keep you safe and comfortable and well fed and entertained happily ever after. You might not have proper sex, but I’ll make sure that you’re…gratified. You’ll love it.” Jamie mutely shook her head. “The story is already written in the stars,” the wyrd woman whispered. “The Lords of Fate and Hearth have already decided that you two will be cursed. How badly off you are is really the only thing up to you.” Jamie stayed silent. She did nothing but stare off into the middle distance. “Oh, not this again!” Mathair threw her head back in exasperation, her white hair flapping as she did so like a curtain in the wind. “Such a stubborn little girl, you are!” Mathair shook her head. “Don’t talk to me, then. Just listen. Your hour is almost up. I’m going to take your words back from you in just a little bit. But for you, I’ll let you keep three of them. ‘I. Give. Up.’ You’ll always be able to say those words.” “Say them,” she offered Jamie in a hushed, soothing whisper, “Say them anytime and all will be forgiven and your torment will end. No more worries, no more problems that can’t be fixed with a cuddle, a toy, some num nums or a clean diaper.” Jamie gave the wyrd woman nothing. “Or don’t.” the Fae lady said curtly. “Let your pride be your downfall.” Jamie was picked up and carried out of the nursery. Before entering the game room to be reunited with Jack, Jamie felt her rump patted and squeezed and felt a bit of a breeze blow down the back of her diaper as the waistband was pulled back. “Not yet,” Mathair chuckled. “But soon. A few hours, perhaps. Maybe tomorrow morning. And once I’m done cleaning you up and changing Jack, I doubt he’ll ever want to be with you again in the old fashioned way. Then where will your true love be?” Jamie shook with rage at that idea: Of being replaced by a diaper. Jamie was carried the rest of the way back to the game room, a sense of desperation whirling around inside her. She looked to Jack who had the dopiest grin on his face. If he was aware of how bad things were, of how dire their straits really were, he didn’t show it. Idiot. “Not much time left, darlings,” Mommy Mathair announced before placing Jamie down in front of her husband. “I’ll be back in a minute or so. Use it wisely.” “Honey!” Jack whispered, his voice tinged with manic and victorious excitement, as he crawled towards his wife. “I know how to get her! I know how to-!“ Jamie cut him off with a kiss. She pressed her body against her husband’s, pushing him to the ground and mounting him, her padding rubbing against his. She kissed him again and rolled over, pulling him on top of her so that she could wrap her legs around his hips while her tongue danced with his. She closed her eyes and grabbed the back of Jack’s head, moaning with passion. Any minute now, their love would break the spell. They’d be potty trained, they’d be immune from the Faerie’s power, they’d be normal. They’d be normal. They’d be normal. Please God Almighty let them be normal. Jack did not respond in kind. Maybe it was the sheer bulk of the padding between them so he couldn’t really feel it. Maybe he just hadn’t fully registered what was happening. Maybe something had happened to him while he had been alone but for whatever reason, but he did not grind back with her. His tongue did not dance with hers as much as it stood in place and was danced around. He even pushed her away from him. “I know how to beat her, I know how to win!” Jack broke off the kiss, all but screaming “I know! Just listen. All we have to do is blargle drab mawmaw!” “Times up, darlings!” Mommy Mathair appeared again. “Time to finger paint!” “Blah!” Jamie cursed as their words shot back out of their mouths in jade zigzags through the air. This was going to be harder than either of them thought.

<Neural Uplink Reconnected In Real Time.> Apologies for the interruption. It’s hard to concentrate when I’m…I lost concentration. Let’s leave it at that. I feel ridiculous, and I don’t just mean my current state of dress and social standing (or lack thereof). I’m not sure if anyone will ever find a way to view this, yet alone believe in its veracity. I feel like I’m screaming into the void, throwing bottled messages into black holes and hoping there’s someone on the other side to read them. Perhaps this entire endeavor is really more of an exercise in catharsis than it is an attempt at preservation for posterity’s sake. Perhaps one day I’ll be vindicated. Perhaps not. Perhaps I am Ozymandias, commanding you to look upon my works and tremble, yet as with Ramses II, there’s nothing left to witness. Where was I? Oh yes. <Memory Sequence Resume Uploading. August 16th, 2017 11:28 P.M.> The sky was empty in the park that late, late night. The stars shone up above us. The grass beneath us was beginning to brown and crunched beneath our feet as we tried to find our personal “perfect spot”. Off in the distance, streetlights changed color, managing the relatively low amount of traffic this hour in the tiny college town; the odd pair of headlights shining in the distance. Come last call and closing time at the bars, the streets behind us would be busy and aglow, but for the moment. Julia and I hadn’t been seeking an audience that night. Only complete cartoon characters seek an audience when success is not guaranteed. Geography means relatively little when you’re thinking fifth dimensionally, but Julia and I had always been artists just as much as we were scientists; rituals and quirks and superstitions had to be observed and accounted for just as much as quantifiable factors. The summer drought had not been kind to the park as the leaves on the hedges and strategically placed trees had begun to shrivel. Budget cuts at the city level meant that the sprinklers dug into the ground were being used sparingly at best. The foliage practically screamed out for water, but my eyes were on the stars. Likewise, Julia and I seemed as shriveled and worn down as the local shrubbery. We had both spent the better part of the last eight hours working like fiends, both of us possessed of purpose. I was still wearing my comfortable pink dress and white lab coat, but they were covered with a sheen of sweat, my blonde hair fraying at the ends, and my eyes requiring distinct concentration to remain more than half-open at any given time. Julia, meanwhile, had taken down her raven colored pigtails, leaving her hair to dangle in her face bedraggled. Her vintage Nirvana shirt dabbed with sweat, and her sneakers scuffed, she looked every bit as tired and worn down as I felt. It may have been our own looming mortality- in the form of an approaching thirtieth birthday- that drove us to the recklessness of our “youth”, but neither of us were quite willing to put this thing, or ourselves, to bed. We were marathon runners with the finish line in sight. Time for one last sprint. < Memory Upload Disconnected> <Neural Uplink Reconnected In Real Time.> I have the distinct feeling that even if things hadn’t ended so disastrously, people reading that last recollection of mine- of thirty years being “old” in my mind- might still have a chuckle at my expense. <Memory Sequence Resume Uploading. August 16th, 2017> “That was fast,” Julia grunted as she laid down her end of the chroniton container. From the outside, the container structurally resembled an old milk can: big, cylindrical with a handle on either side; cumbersome at best. Aesthetically, it could have used some polish too, but I’ve always preferred function over form. The inner workings of the device are what won me my Nobel Prize. Suffice it to say, most people wouldn’t be able to understand it. < Memory Upload Disconnected> <Neural Uplink Reconnected In Real Time.> If you’re viewing this and it helps, just think of it as a black hole in a jar that specifically sucks up bits of time. I’m not even really sure how I stumbled upon the necessary equations; everything just sort of fell into place one afternoon years ago. When the same kind of rush- the sensation of the pieces of a puzzle just fitting together- came upon me as I was finishing up the guidance systems for the chrono-drill, I took it as a kind of sign. Something bigger than myself was once again guiding my hand. This is easily my own cognitive dissonance trying to work itself out and soothe my shattered ego, I realize. It’s hard for things to be my fault if forces beyond my control were spurring me onward. As Jean-Paul Sartre might say, I’m acting in bad faith by denying my own choices were my own. Ironic that one of my goals was to overcome Sartre’s limitations of finitude. Infinite time means infinite choices. But this is meant to be a recollection, not a philosophy course. <Memory Sequence Resume Uploading. August 16th, 2017> I looked at Julia, my eyebrow arching with incredulity. “When I say I’m going to finish building a chrono-drill, I mean it.” That was fast! The nerve! Julia knew full well that I had been working on this project for over a year. It had only been in the fevered hours following our lunch that I had managed to piece together and construct the guidance system of the chrono-drill. Without it, the machine would at best fail to enter the fifth dimension and at worst plow endlessly into it, collecting chronotons from much further back than was necessary or desirable. A yawn escaped Julia. It blended like music with the singing of the crickets and frogs. “Couldn’t this have waited till tomorrow?” she asked. “Make some more preparations?” Dr. Julia Lanksy: the eternal devil’s advocate. “I’m not sure I could sleep.” I admitted to her. The moments and hours and days before a big experiment were Christmas Eve to me, and I was the child who could never quite get into sleep. “Would we have waited before we were world renowned pillars of the scientific community?” I baited my friend. Julia looked at our sun baked surroundings, the hunger of the plants evident even in the starlight. The fateful night when we were giving the chronoton container its first test run was doubtlessly playing in front of her eyes just like it was flashing before mine. Finally, it clicked. “Ooooooh, getting back to our roots are we? I never figured you for the sentimental type, Elisa.” “I’m not…” I conceded. “usually.” I sniffed the air, feeling distinctly uncomfortable. (Emotionally that is. Physically, I was adequate despite my fatigued state.) “Also,” I added, “the weather is right according to satellite feeds.” “Why would a drill into the fifth dimension be dependent on the weather?” Julia wondered, purposefully leaving me my opening. “It isn’t,” I told my colleague. “I just felt like seeing the stars.” I looked down at the miracle I had made in my hands; the chrono-drill. Despite its name, it was more akin to a bowling ball in shape and surface area, yet infinitely lighter. Its quicksilver-like sheen was made of a special alloy that gleamed in the moonlight yet somehow reflected nothing. A vampire would have had a better chance of spotting its reflection. I felt like a bit of a vampire, actually; about to suck the life’s blood from reality itself. Julia’s tittering laughter brought be back to my senses. “Fair enough,” she said. “I guess Frankenstein kinda botched the whole dark and stormy night vibe for us mad scientist types.” She looked back up at the stars and then glanced at her phone. “Just for grins, you wanna wait till midnight?” “It’s been empirically proven that midnight has been overdone.” My friend snorted laughter. “By whom?” “By me.” Julia, my intellectual equal and possessor of multiple doctorates, who dressed like a slob, ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, while chugging milk like a kindergartener, closed her eyes and shook her head at me. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a tiny pill bottle. “If you’re going to launch that thing any time soon, just pop one of these, first,” she said. Her nimble fingers popped opened the bottle and produced a capsule the same sickly grayish-green tint as the substance in her petri dish from that afternoon. “Couldn’t hurt,” she told me, slipping one into my open palm. “Might help.” I pinched the tiny pill between my thumb and forefinger, just barely glimpsing it in the darkness. “You’ve already condensed it into a consumable pill form?” “What?” Now it was Julia’s turn to act affronted. “You can make a magic ball that launches into time itself, but I can’t whip up a miracle cure for neurological regression? You’re not the only miracle worker around here, Elisa.” She slid another pill into her hand and placed it in her mouth before tilting her head back and swallowing. “Point taken,” I conceded. “I hate taking pills dry, though.” The thing went down like a rock, scraping my esophagus every inch of its journey to my stomach. Dreadful. This was saying nothing of the taste. Jonas Salk was at least smart enough to put his vaccine in a sugar pill. Granted, Jonas Salk only made a vaccine for polio, but... Julia coughed a bit as she swallowed her own bitter pill, pounding her chest. “Probably best if they enter your system without water,” she rasped. “The fluoride in the water might render these babies inert if they haven’t made themselves at home for all I know.” “You don’t know?!” My own rasping and temporarily scratchy throat made my surprise seem that much more jarring. I had meant for it to come out ever so playful, but the hurt look on Julia’s face made it clear that the statement had come across as a rebuke. “I haven’t perfected it yet, Elisa,” she frowned, her voice returning to her. “Maybe if someone had let me run a few more tests- maybe wait a couple of days-they might have been able to swallow their pill with some water.” A chasm widened between us in the silence that followed. Julia wasn’t normally confrontational, but both of us were particularly protective of our work and our talents. Neither of us did particularly well with criticism. Then the thought occurred to me. “If you didn’t know I was going to try to activate the chrono-drill,” I asked, “then why did you already have your miracle cure in pill form?” “When did I say I didn’t know?” The rift was healed, just like that. I was the one being ribbed. The twinkle in Julia’s eyes left no doubt. “You know me too all too well,” I chuckled. “I must be getting predictable in my old age.” I sighed deeply. “Ready to launch?” A simple nod indicated my friends consent. Time to get things rolling. I closed my eyes and brought the silver orb to my lips. The DNA authenticator and scanners confirmed that it was I who was holding the chrono-drill and that I had a pulse. A slight whirring from inside the ball became the gentlest hum inside my own grey matter. “<Neural Uplink Established>” It wasn’t as if there was another voice inside my head. Nothing so direct or intrusive a sensation. No. It was more akin to having a thought that I knew wasn’t exactly my own; similar to extreme intoxication I supposed. “<Input Destination>” my own Frankenstein requested. How far to go back, though? Potentially, I could send it deep enough into a sea of chronotons, but how far back was far back enough? Then my own bit of personal poetry from that afternoon came back to me. “Yesterday,” I whispered to my miracle machine. I would collect and give the world chronotons from August 15th, 2017. I would give the world a never ending yesterday. Both hands heaving, I tossed the chrono-drill into the air, the propulsion systems kicking as soon as the internal gyroscope realized it was airborne, propelling it up into the sky further and faster than any human being would be able to lob it. As the quicksilver sphere ascended into the heavens, glowing an electric blue as it soared higher and higher, Julia thought to ask, “So how do you steer it?” “Theta waves,” I replied. “Ah.” < Memory Upload Disconnected> <Neural Uplink Reconnected In Real Time.> For the uninitiated, Theta waves are brainwaves. Hypothetically- well, not in my case- theta waves radiate outward instead of just bouncing around in the brain and can be recorded and transmitted, much like radio waves and wi-fi signals. I found a way for a machine to read my mind and to put time in a bottle, and still I wasn’t satisfied. Hubris, thy name is Elisa Briggs. <Memory Sequence Resume Uploading. August 16th, 2017> Looking over to Julia while my greatest triumph rose higher and higher, I said “I thought we used up the last of the uranium.” My colleague giggled. “I went and got some more.” This clearly required some additional explanation. Uranium wasn’t something that you could send a graduate student out to get at the corner drugstore. “From whom?” I asked. Again, Julia giggled. “You ever seen Back to the Future?” “No.” “Neither had the people who gave me the uranium.” Whatever Julia had done, I felt that I’d have a headache about it later, but for the time being, I let her have her little jokes. The chrono-drill ascended into the atmosphere, glowing brilliantly before vanishing in a flash of neon azure light. A final twinkle before diving into the fifth dimension. “How will we know it’s working?” Julia asked. I looked over to my exhausted and punchy friend. “The same way we’ll know the first time,” I said. “The meter on the side of the chonoton container should start registering as soon as chronotons enter it. The drill will eject them out here, and the container will collect them. The two of us stared at the chroniton container, waiting for it to fill up. Waiting. And waiting. And waiting. It couldn’t have been more than a minute, but from my perspective it was more unnerving than waiting for water to boil. In the silence and anticipation a thought must have crossed Julia’s mind. “Theta waves?” she said. Only two words, but there was a hint of fear in those words. “What of them?” “You’re steering the chrono-drill with your mind?” she asked. “It’s more like I’m inputting commands,” I replied. “Just perfected the entire system today.” Julia frowned. “And you’re not worried about having something capable of burrowing into time itself connected to your brain ...why?” “You think I’ll use it unwisely?” I asked. “No, what happens if you go into a coma or go senile or something?” I couldn’t help but laugh. “I’ve had that failsafe worked out since day one,” I assured her. “In the event that my theta waves drastically change, the chrono-drill will automatically go idle.” “No drunk drilling?” The relief in Julia’s voice was palpable. “No drunk drilling,” I promised. The pleasant and steady beeping of the chronoton container coming to life ended the tension. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. Both of us gasped. “It’s working.” I don’t remember which of us said that, but it was said. “<Guidance System Operational.>” The chrono-drill’s system informed my brain. That was odd. I’d already brought it online. In my arrogance, I didn’t think much of it. BEEP-BEEP. BEEP-BEEP. BEEP-BEEP. BEEP-BEEP. The worry returned to Julia’s voice. “It’s speeding up.” “It’s filling faster,” I said. I waved off her complaint. “How many more chronotons could there be in yesterday?” Julia asked. “Should it really be filling that fast?” BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP. “Elisa….?” Now I was feeling anxious. “The container has a virtually infinite storage capacity. It shouldn’t matter if there’s virtually infinite chronotons from moment to moment..” “<Input Guidance System.>” My eyes widened at that. Something was wrong. Something was extremely wrong. The meter on the chronoton container was filling and filling fast. It was well past the half-way mark. The last time we had used it, we’d used less than a percent of a percent of its full hypothetical capacity. Even those relatively few chronotons were enough to experiment with for years. BEEEEP-BEEEEP-BEEEEP-BEEEEP! The container began glowing the same hue of electric blue that the chrono-drill had been. It was pulsing erratically- a heart clogged up with fat, about to go into cardiac arrest. Julia was stepping back from the container as if it were a bomb. “Elisa…?!” Any other experiment I would have scolded her, told her to trust in the calculations and stand her ground; but my feet were shuffling away the same as hers. This wasn’t supposed to be happening. This wasn’t supposed to be happening! My breath caught in my throat, but I managed to shout out at the top of my lungs and focus every bit of my will towards one goal. “ABORT! ABORT! ABORT! SHUT DOWN!” Next came the reply I’d been dreading from deep inside my own thoughts: “<File Not Found>” BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP! “ELIS-!” Eleven thirty-nine. That was when the sky exploded. The ground shook. The air vibrated. The world itself was convulsing. We were ants in a jar and a toddler had just knocked our little world off the dresser and onto the ground. Yet no sound uttered. The universe was turned on mute. The stars were blocked out by a brilliant, azure, glowing sky. Tears in the very fabric of reality formed above our heads, eclipsing the moon and bathing of us in neon blue luminescence. And all I could do was lay there, stunned, shocked and all but seizing on the ground next to my best friend as she did the same. My phone must have fallen out of my pocket, because I had just managed to glance it as I writhed on the grass. I saw it change over to eleven forty. The sky exploded; and the world ended at eleven thirty-nine. My gaze shot upward. The bright blue energy was in the atmosphere, but it wasn’t staying there. Chronotons. Pure time spilling out of the sky like special little snowflakes, ready to infect us, drifting down to seal our fates forever. My breath quickened and sound came back to the world. Sirens blared and cars crashed. Screams of pain and panic rang out into the night air. I’d doomed us all; my own pitiful mewling screams mixed in with the cacophony. For a full half a minute, it rained time down upon us. I don’t know if it was fear, or a side effect the chronotons themselves, but I distinctly remember the sensation of my bladder emptying as the first electric blue droplet fell onto me, infusing the moment that it carried with it into my very being. No urine spilled out into the ground, however. No such luck. Instead my liquid shock was quickly absorbed by my panties. My underwear grew thicker around my hips as I soiled myself in pure terror. The wetness in my crotch spread over me, front to back, as my panties soaked it all up like a sponge, growing heavy with the weight. It was like a maxi pad had materialized inside my panties in time for a particularly heavy flow, but if the rats were any indication, I knew I would never have a reproductive cycle ever again, and more peculiar- I definitely wasn’t wearing panties any more. The comfortable black flats I’d been wearing all day evaporated into the ether, as did my lab coat. My black rimmed glasses dyed themselves lavender and stretched around my head, rooting themselves with a strap that I hadn’t needed to secure them in a very, very long time. My pink dress became softer, and frillier, trimming itself with white lace as it shortened itself, drawing itself up my thighs and stopping just past my hips. A particular red-headed mermaid stenciled herself in across the front. Gone was my comfortable yet flattering work ensemble, replaced by a child’s nightie made for someone my size. Like a lost memory, my motor control began to return to me; the adrenaline and sheer panic I was feeling helping me to ignore the feeling of my own bodily waste sloshing around in my underwear. I was too exhausted to even walk- yet alone fully appreciate what was happening around me- to fully register that I felt the squish and heard the muted crinkle as I dragged myself over to Julia. Likewise, Julia was changing too. Her hair had somehow put itself back up into pig tails, and all that was left of her retro-trendy Nirvana t-shirt was now a giant lavender sleepshirt with Dora the Explorer on the front. Her jeans had become soft, baggy pajama bottoms, but not so baggy as to completely conceal the slight padded bulge between her legs. From the tears in her eyes and the way her hands were clumsily pawing and probing her crotch, I could tell Julia’s undergarments had similarly rearranged themselves. She wasn’t dealing with it as well as I was. Yet, from the way she looked at me, and mouthed the word “help” it was evident that both of us still had that spark of intelligence and awareness. We weren’t mentally regressing with our environment. In the distance, the cries of panic and terror had mutated into something else entirely. Mewling wails of “Mommy!” and “Daddy!” and just the incoherent wailing of scared children carried out in the deep timbres of post pubescence were added to the night. Car horns and sirens transformed to the high pitched beeping of bicycle horns and the ironically cheery chirping of handlebar bells. More cars began flooding the streets, and older, more ragged shouts of “Where’s my baby?” joined the fray, drowning out the crickets and the frogs. How was this happening? Chronotons were supposed to physically preserve, not rearrange and alter. Nothing in our research had even hinted at Julia and I dressed as toddlers. Julia sat up and began shaking her head, as if this were all a bad dream and all she had to do was wake up. We were already awake though. That was the problem. Not knowing what else to do, I took the only action that seemed reasonable given the pandemonium I had caused. I hugged Julia, there on the ground, holding my best friend as we screamed together. My eyes slammed shut, and like the little girls we found ourselves dressed as, we cried out to whomever would hear us. “Elisa?”, came a questioning, familiar voice from behind me. I knew that voice. I could never forget that voice. I’d heard it all my life. “Is that you Elisa? Elisa what are you doing out here?!” The sound of footsteps crushing dried dying grass beneath their feet became louder with the voice. “Elisa! What are you doing out of bed?!” “Mommy?” The word came tumbling unbidden out past my lips. I found myself ripped away from Julia, torn from my best friend, crying, as I looked into the face of my…of my…”Mommy?” “George! Harriet! Get over here! I found them!” my mother called back over her shoulder. “Come on! Let’s get them home!” Then my mother, hair mostly gray from decades of stress looked at me and whispered, “It’s okay, sweetie. Mommy’s here. Mommy found you. Let’s get you home and back in bed. We’ll sort this all out in the morning.” <Memory Upload Complete> (To be continued....)

There will be more. This is a commission piece and the commissioner is letting me post chapters as soon as their written.

<Neural Uplink Established.> <Uploading Memory. August 18th 10:15 A.M.> I sat at the art table in daycare, doing my best to color in between the lines. The thick orange crayon felt cumbersome and unwieldy in my hands. Each stroke was laborious and imprecise; no two strokes precisely lining up with each other, no matter how intent I was or how meticulous my technique. A chasm of white separated each grainy orange line. The “work” that my teacher had given me was extremely frustrating- my coloring was more of a barely controlled scribble- but it served my purposes. I was still collecting data, even if it was data concerning my current physical limitations and the lingering psychological side effects of the recent fallout from my previous experiment. Besides, the chicken wasn’t going to color itself. A cry from a familiar voice made me look up from my “work”. Red faced and snot gushing out of her nose, Julia was being led to the daycare’s bathroom. I looked back down to the cartoon sketch of a now mostly orange barnyard fowl, averting my eyes to give my colleague some measure, some tiny scrap of dignity. She had likely just urinated in her pants, despite there being no outward visible indicator that I could see. Correction: the pink Pull-Up in the teacher’s free hand as she led Julia to the bathroom confirmed my hypothesis. Unable to control her bladder properly, or her emotions, she was being led to get changed into a fresh pair of what passed for underpants. The giggling twenty-something getting his bottom wiped on the nearby changing table as another adult slipped his soiled Huggies out from under him was a stark reminder that things could be much worse for us. A sudden flash of doubt caused me to look to the left and the right, making sure the coast was clear before I peeked under the hem of my own hot-pink skirt. The “fade when wet” designs on my crotch were still bright and clear. A sigh of relief escaped me, involuntarily as I smoothed out my skirt. How queer it was, in this new status quo, that I was expected to occasionally soil myself yet still maintain a semblance of modesty. How had it come to this, I wondered, as I heard my friend’s wails of protest echo off the bathroom walls. “I’M NOT A BABY! LET GO OF ME! STOP! PLEEEEAAASE! STOP! NOOOOO!” < Memory Upload Disconnected> <Neural Uplink Reconnected In Real Time.> …change the world for the better: that’s all I wanted. To do the impossible; to overcome the limitations of mortality and by extension, morality: was that so much to ask? Apparently, it was. I wanted to save humanity from itself by taking away the biggest hindrance to its own development- maybe even save the planet in the process. Actually, I might have accomplished that one, but the jury is still a bit hung regarding the final outcome. I managed to make this colossal blunder- which I hope I can at least staunch the metaphorical blood flow of- because of my own particular knowledge base combined with my hubris in believing that I could reshape the world into my image. In hindsight, the old adage is true: knowledge and wisdom aren’t necessarily the same thing. I played God; turns out it’s significantly harder than the religious texts might lead one to believe. Shit. I didn’t introduce myself. Sloppy. Sloppy. Always start off entries of this nature by introducing yourself and including the date and time. Maybe the chronotons are affecting me on a much subtler level than originally expected. My name is Elisa Briggs. The date is August 21st. Time? I’m not certain; I can’t see a proper time piece. Based on the position of the sun outside of my window, I’m going to assume 2 P.M. local standard time. Just after nap time in the daycare. To be precise, it’s Dr. Elisa Briggs, PhD., though I don’t know how much meaning that title has anymore. As far as I know my entire life up to this point has been erased. My research in the field of quantum physics, dissertations on time distortion, and the discovery of chronotons have most likely vanished from every conceivable scientific record. Before this disaster happened, a twenty-nine-year-old Nobel Prize winning physicist would be considered remarkable, but still relatively obscure outside of the scientific community; “Bit of Trivia” information at most. After what I’ve accomplished- what I’ve done- the idea would most likely be absurd; complete tabloid fodder. Ironically enough, the image of a twenty-something male at a daycare getting their dirty diaper changed likely won’t seem out of place to anyone who manages to intercept this communique, but the thought that I might be in Pull-Ups at not quite thirty would seem fairly dubious. Assuming anyone receives this, you might find what I’m about to relate here preposterous. Given my current station, I might be considered an unreliable narrator, at best. I promise you that at present I have eidetic memory and that while there is most certainly bias in my narration- as there is always some amount of bias in such recounting of qualitative data and I lack the proper emotional distance at this time to be completely free from bias- the events I am about to relate are accurate in that they’ve happened as described. Now that I’m sure that the Neural Link is online and connected to the proper equipment and is transmitting appropriately, I can start from the relative beginning of this objectively dreadful misadventure. Whether this will be looked at as a piece of fiction or whether it shall spark the proper thorough scientific investigation and review that it deserves remains to be seen (and I will likely not be cognizant enough to know the outcome either way), I feel it’s important for me to give what relevant data that I am still able to contribute while I am still capable of giving it. As Mommy…as my mother told me when I was five and conducting my first science experiment, “Deep breath…start at the beginning.” <Memory Sequence Uploading. August 16th 9:00 A.M.> I walked into the main laboratory at the Institute for Chrono-Research and Innovation, precisely at 9:00 A.M., as always. Being late for work at a scientific facility dedicated to the study of the flow and manipulation of time would not only be inefficient, but it would be almost dreadfully, and intolerably ironic. While I normally don’t take stock of my day-to-day attire, on this particular day I was wearing a faded and comfortable pink dress, its hem coming down well past my knees, along with an equally worn in and comfortable pair of black flats. Of course, there was also my white lab coat. If not for the attire that I would end up wearing very shortly afterwards, none of this information would even particularly noteworthy or require explanation. “Scientist Wears Clothes and Lab Coat” is not particularly groundbreaking news. “Good morning Dr. Briggs,” the secretary at the front greeted me. < Memory Upload Disconnected> <Neural Uplink Reconnected In Real Time.> I want to say that her name was Helen, but despite my superb, near photographic memory, I still require a modicum of effort in order memorize something. People’s names just aren’t something that I typically have…had…have the time for. It’s a shortcoming of mine, I admit, but even if I was more of a “people person”, it wouldn’t have prevented what happened that day, so I don’t see much point in waxing philosophical about the matter. <Memory Sequence Resume Uploading. August 16th, 2017> I returned the courtesy. “Good morning,” I replied as I walked past her towards the confines and safety of my laboratory, my fingers already twiddling at the volumes of jump drives I kept on my key ring. I was so close to success that I tasted it with my morning wheat toast. “Dr. Lanksy is already in the lab,” the secretary called after me. “Of course she is,” I replied, not bothering to look back. “Julia is always early.” The hiss of the doors to my lab opening was a familiar and comforting sound to me; as important to my daily ritual as the first cup of hot coffee is to others’ routine. < Memory Upload Disconnected> <Neural Uplink Reconnected In Real Time.> Routine is…was…is important to me. Yes, I’m aware of the cosmic irony of a quantum physicist specializing in time liking structure and routine. A tiny, cynical part of my grey matter whispers me even now that I’m not so much upset at my current situation for subverting the natural order and breaking the laws of physics, possibly dooming the entire planet, but that I’ve thrown off my own routine. <Memory Sequence Resume Uploading. August 16th, 2017> Alerted to my presence at the sound of the vacuum seal in the lab doors breaking, Julia turned around to greet me. Wearing jeans, sneakers, and a Nirvana T-shirt, she favored me with a toothy smile as we made eye contact, her black hair done up in pigtails and swishing from side to side as she turned her head. “Morning!” she chirped at me. “Morning,” I replied while I walked over to my computer console, inserting the first jump drive and uploading the data specs and calculations that I had gone over the night before. < Memory Upload Disconnected> <Neural Uplink Reconnected In Real Time.> Dr. Julia Lanksy: like me, she was…is…was a genius. Only a few months my junior and she had accomplished just as much if not more in the fields of microbiology and nanotechnology than I had in chronal and quantum physics. Also, she was much more of a “people person” than I was; many of her innovations in her field are just as much a matter of premonition and intuition as hard science. Julia Lanksy was…is one of the few people on this Earth that I genuinely respect and feel some form of affection for outside of my immediate family. Were one of us a man, our resulting offspring would be intellectual giants among ants. <Memory Sequence Resume Uploading. August 16th, 2017> Julia went over to the rats’ cage, using my prompt arrival as an environmental cue to feed them. We all have our rituals, and even individuals as brilliant and myself and Julia aren’t immune to Pavlovian responses. “Don’t forget to say hello to Ethel and Lucy,” she said gesturing to the main cage where our prize test subjects resided. Speaking of Pavlovian responses… I removed my glasses and pretended to clean them on my lab coat while I looked at the ceiling and rolled my eyes. “Hello, Ethel,” I intoned. “Hello, Lucy.” The glasses found their way back onto my face as I joined Julia by the cages. “How are they?” I asked. “Same as always,” Julia reported, filling Ethel’s food bowl. Ethel broke off from Lucy and greedily consumed the seeds and pellets presented her. Lucy curled up in a ball, her eyes still closed, waiting for Ethel to return. I looked to Julia. “When was the last time you took their vitals?” “Just this morning.” Now it was Julia’s turn to roll her eyes. “It’s just like I do every day. They’re fine,” she told me. “No change. No change in years.” < Memory Upload Disconnected> <Neural Uplink Reconnected In Real Time.> Ethel and Lucy were the results of our first experiment involving chronotons. What are chronotons? How to explain this without giving the full dissertation…? Everything in existence, every atom in the universe- living and nonliving- radiates a kind of energy that ripples throughout time and space just through the act of being. This energy interacts with nearly everything it touches and then washes away into the cosmos nearly imperceptibly; dissipating into a theoretical other dimension beyond time and space; a fifth dimension if you will. It is directly correlated and connected to processes of growth, decay, radioactive half-lives, aging, and the phenomenon commonly referred to as “time”. The smallest unit of this nearly imperceptible energy radiating throughout existence is what I refer to as a “chronoton”. It’s not the most original moniker, I realize, but it’s descriptive enough for my purposes. Each individual chronoton is as unique as the nano second it came into existence. Just as you are not now who you were, precisely, from day to day and year to year, so too are the chronotons that radiate from you and everything around you. As a universe, we are drowning in time, with each chronoton being even more unique than the proverbial “special snowflake”. Every chronoton that comes off you takes a little piece of you with it, who and what you were in that exact moment in time, with it, through a hypothetical fifth dimension where a kind of quantum fossil record of all of creation is recorded. I believe that Julia summed it up best when we did the late night talk show circuit that one time: Every moment of existence is recorded by existence itself, with chronotons being like the individual frames of a security camera, timestamped for posterity. The fifth dimension which exists beyond time and space is the database where all of that footage goes. To be able to view this fifth dimension is to be able to see the history of the universe; to witness the big bang. To be able to traverse this fifth dimension among the seemingly endless sea of chronotons would likely result in what science fiction writers refer to as “time travel.” To reclaim the chronotons that had traveled imperceptibly into the fifth dimension, to dip a bucket into the well of eternity and pull out the water below the surface; that’s where Dr. Lanksy and myself had focused our efforts. Lucy and Ethel were six and seven years old, respectively; extremely old for rats; downright ancient. Yet their vital signs and physiology were akin to a two-year-old and a one-year-old rat; neither one aging in the five years since they had been directly exposed to chronotons that Julia and I had managed to scrounge a year before that. In trying to understand the nature and flow of time, my colleague and I believed we had stumbled upon a veritable fountain of youth. <Memory Sequence Resume Uploading. August 16th, 2017> If we were successful this day, all of humanity would be like Ethel and Lucy. Ethel finished gorging herself on breakfast and then waddled over to Lucy and began to nurse her grown offspring the same way she had every day for the last five years. I looked over to Julia, continuing our morning ritual of discussing the state of our time altered lab rats. “Their neurological scans?” My partner shrugged nonchalantly. “Unchanged. Neither show any sign of neurological deterioration, and Lucy is still effectively a rat-pup in a doe’s body. < Memory Upload Disconnected> <Neural Uplink Reconnected In Real Time.> A slight clarification: We weren’t trying to cause humanity to be just like Ethel and Lucy. Once harvested from the fifth dimension, chronotons seemed to have two primary effects. The most significant effect being a preservation against the ravages of time. Bacteria, plants, rats: Once irradiated with chronotons that were effectively “from the past”-, a few major significant changes occurred in biology. Aging and decay halted almost completely. So too did reproduction. With death through pure attrition eliminated as a possibility, organisms so exposed became reproductively inert; no need of continuing the species. An unforeseen side effect that we didn’t discover until we began testing the effects of chronal radiation on more complex lifeforms such as rats is the neural and psychological reaction to chronotons. Ethel and Lucy may have been fully grown rats when we had exposed them to the chronal radiation, but the chronotons we had managed to collect had been over year old when we had exposed them to it. The rats had been exposed to concentrated time from when Lucy was a baby and Ethel was still nursing. Immediately they had reverted to their roles from that time of their lives, despite biologically being well beyond such things. The hands of time could be stalled, it seemed, if not completely turned back, but that didn’t stop the mind and instincts from turning back the clock. Ethel’s body quickly began producing milk again for her “adult baby” daughter soon after, and the roles of mother and newborn had been abandoned for going on five years; an eternity in rat time. Likewise, Lucy’s body seemed only to be able to fully digest Ethel’s milk. To extend the earlier “camera footage archive” metaphor, Ethel and Lucy had been full grown rats, but we had overlain previous footage over their beings. Not only did the physical picture freeze in place, but their minds rewound to the moment when the “footage” was taken. <Memory Sequence Resume Uploading. August 16th, 2017> “Excellent,” I nodded. “What about Laverne and Shirley?” We proceeded to the next cage over. Two completely normal rats scampered and played in their cage. Julia looked at the compiled data. “Two normal, healthy, grown and growing rats aging normally, even though they were exposed to the same chronotons that have kept my marigolds in full bloom all year.” She nodded her approval to me. “Chronotons react at different frequencies based on what they came from. Rat chronotons and marigold chronotons are distinct enough that they can be separated and will be effective on one organism but rendered inert on a non-compatible organism. Looks like your theory holds up. Good work, Doctor.” “Thank you, Doctor,” I continued our little in-joke of referring to ourselves by our titles when congratulating each other. “I’m glad the failsafe filter I designed performed within parameters.” Julia giggled. “Oh, it did Doctor. Of course…” she added with a twinkle in her eye. “If it weren’t for my ability to find, identify, and precisely map the correlation between chronotons and specific species, your filter wouldn’t be worth much and your theory would have no concrete data.” “Duly noted, Doctor,” I sighed, going back to my figures and calculations. “I’ll be certain to make note of your part when I publish the study results.” “Thank you, Doctor.” Julia chuckled to herself before going back to her work and allowing me to continue with mine. I spent the rest of the morning finishing my latest little contribution to mankind’s betterment. Julia is one of the few people I would consider a friend, but we each did our best work in silence, and so we did. Every now and then Julia would lean over my shoulder, and ask me how I was doing, nattering at me briefly while some compound of hers was synthesizing or growing into a petri dish. Julia may have been my intellectual equal, but my own comparative discipline and focus dwarfed hers. I’d long suspected that she suffered from undiagnosed attention hyperactivity deficit disorder, which she was able to function without the need of intervention due to her superior information processing skills. My colleague simply didn’t need to pay close attention to most things. <Fast Forwarding Memory. August 16th 2:35 P.M.> At a little after noon, Julia’s incessant taps on my shoulder finally caused me to lose my train of thought. “Come on, Elisa,” she nagged, rather like a child, “let’s take a break. You know you balance your quantum equations better when your blood sugar is up.” I shrugged her off. “I’m almost done.” “That’s what you said when I bugged you a few hours ago,” she insisted. I looked up at the clock on the wall. I stood corrected; the time was closer to three than it was noon. I’d almost skipped lunch. Standing up from my desk, I stretched my arms, realizing the dull ache in my neck for the first time. “I suppose you’re right,” I admitted. Julia sat down at the sparse little table in the center of our controlled chaos where we took our meals together. Eating our sandwiches and making light conversation about our progress was another part of our daily routine. It was less time consuming and infinitely more stimulating than leaving the lab and going out to lunch. She removed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, still cold, from a thermal controlled lunch bag along with a thermos of milk and a snack sized portion of Cheetos. It was only then that I realized I had left my usual lunch of a chicken caesar salad in its Tupperware container in my refrigerator at home. “Shit.” I was raised to detest cursing, my mother and father raising me to believe that when someone swears their brain has run out of more clever or eloquent words to describe their frustration. I completely agreed with them. It’s just that sometimes I did run out of more clever and eloquent words to describe my level of frustration. “Halvsies?” Julia offered me a slice of what amounted to gooey bean paste and grape flavored gelatin smashed together between two slices of bread. Better than starving. My frequent collaborator was right, too, I did tend to do better work when I wasn’t hungry. As juvenile as Julia seemed and acted at times, more often than not, she was the one taking care of me instead of the other way around. We ate in amicable silence, Julia offering me her cheese flavored corn meal when I finished my half of the sandwich. “How’s your work progressing?” she asked before taking a swig of milk from her thermos. I sat there, watching Julia tilt her head back as she gulped down her lactose laden liquid. In waiting to have her full attention, I must have been staring a bit. She smiled self-consciously and motioned her thermos towards me as a way of offering. I held up the palm of my hand and shook my head in polite refusal. “I think the chrono-drill could be finished by the end of the day,” I reported. “I’ve almost worked out the kinks in the fifth dimensional tunneling mechanism and the neurological theta wave receivers.” “So you’ll be able to harvest chronotons from further back than the day you collected them?” At the time, that’s the most we had managed. They didn’t become chronotons from “the past” as it were until “today” became “yesterday”. It was very limiting. “Precisely.” My friend and colleague finished off her remaining milk with one long draught. “Why?” she asked me when she had finished. Her question struck me as odd, and it must have shown on my face, judging by the confused look on hers. “What do you mean why?” “We already have the capability of capturing individual chronotons, storing them, and preserving them,” she recounted our past breakthroughs from years past. “If we needed to freeze someone or something in time, we could just collect some chronotons, wait a day, and sprinkle them on something to keep it literally as good as yesterday.” “You mean,” I clarified, “besides the fact that we would regularly require the energy equivalent of a nuclear missile every time that we tried to harness a chronoton in the present before it enters the fifth dimension?” Even with my eidetic memory, I still couldn’t remember how many times we had gone over the need for a permanent and renewable source of chronotons. Julia just sat there for a moment, her curiosity satisfied. Ever glib, she tilted her head to the side and replied with “Yeah, besides that.” “If my theories are correct- and they have been so far,” I continued talking shop, “the chrono- drill will solve that problem for us. It will drill into the fifth dimension, not terribly far of course, and then funnel out chronotons for harvest.” “Yeah, yeah, I know the dream,” Julia said as she began to pack her thermos back into her lunch bag. (I was even so kind as to not ask my companion why she needed me to repeat it so often if she knew.) “Tunnel into time, and have a literal wellspring of chronotons that we can collect in the present, and since the past is always happening, we’ll have ourselves a never-ending supply. A kind of muse suddenly inspiring me, I sat up a little straighter. “A never ending yesterday,” I enunciated. “You should have been a poet,” Julia said as she fluttered her eyes, playfully mocking me. “Thank you, Doctor,” I told her, invoking our little in-joke. She scoffed. “Hey, it wasn’t that poetic….Doctor.” I became a lady of the long-ago aristocracy at high tea. I held my head high, and spoke snootily through my nose, “I will still take the compliment.” We made eye contact briefly and had a rare shared giggle between the two of us. “Just one thing,” Julia spoke up after we had both stopped snorting. “What happens if this time well you’re planning to build…umm…leaks? Imagine if every crop and food source in the world stopped aging, growing and reproducing. We’d all starve to death.” I stood up and walked over to the device my colleague had shown me earlier. “That’s where you come in, Julia. The chronoton filter will specifically root out and distribute chronotons that will interact with human beings. Worst case scenario, we have several billion immortals on the planet.” “Several billion of those immortals will be severely pissed that their children are never going to grow up.” Julia commented, rising from her own chair and joining me back by the rat cages. I indicated Lucy and Ethel. “If the rats are any indication, they probably won’t notice.” Mother and daughter had been going through the same routine- a process that normally only lasts four weeks- for the past three years. “Yeah,” Julia acknowledged my point before playing devil’s advocate, “but isn’t that still kind of shitty? Being stuck wiping ass forever? Or what if you’re the one stuck in diapers for all eternity?” Now it was my turn to shrug. “So what if little Timmy will never learn to walk and little Suzy will never be old enough to toilet train? Immortality is still immortality. I can’t imagine that immortality as the most adored and cared for social class on the planet would be all that worrisome.” It was a bit cut-throat, I’ll admit, but I never was much of a people person. “We’d face no repercussions,” I continued, “and all of the childcare product companies would likely pay any and all of our legal bills.” “Olympians get put on boxes of Wheaties. If we somehow made everyone on Earth immortal, we’d end up on boxes of Huggies.” Julia tittered at her own joke. My (not so) inner contrarian spoke up. “Assuming anyone realized,” I reminded her. “As near as we can tell, Lucy and Ethel can’t differentiate.” “Actually,” Julia beamed, “I think I’ve about worked out a solution to that. Ever read Brain On Fire?” I hadn’t, but I was aware of the subject matter. “Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis,” I recited. “Auto-immune disease that causes the body’s immune system to attack the brain, often resulting in psychosis, coma, and death. What of it?” Julia half-jogged, half-dashed to her own section of the lab and brought back with her a petri dish. There was thin, grayish-green film coating the inside. “I used the disease to engineer an inverse; a neurological protectant. If my calculations are right, and they usually are,” my colleague through my own words back at me with a wink, “this could be the key to preventing neurological regression across the board.” In general, I was rarely impressed; but more often than not, Julia Lansky was the one to do it. “Did you…” I found myself stuttering in disbelief. “did you just invent a cure for Alzheimer’s?” “Among other things,” Julia smiled before running back and placing her anti-disease in a proper and sterile storage unit. “All tests so far indicate that chronotons don’t negatively impact their performance, either,” she half-yelled as she jogged back to me from across the lab. “So they’ve got that going for them, too.” Her pigtails flopped around slightly as she turned again to face the rat cages. “If we had given these to Lucy and Ethel before exposing them, we might just have two incredibly fit rats instead of an adult rat pup and an eternally nursing doe.” There was more than a hint of pity in her voice. Best not dwell on the downside and sacrifices of science too long. “Well done, Doctor,” I said. “Thank you, Doctor,” Julia snapped out of her pity for the two immortal rodents in our care. “Point being is that if we find a way to distribute this, it will still be possible to have eternal five-year-olds who can learn and advance themselves mentally, even if chronotons make it so they never grow another inch.” “It looks like we might just get our faces on the cover of a Huggies box,” I joked. Julia shook her head. “It’s not perfected yet. These little buggers are still highly susceptible to antibiotics. Medicine for a minor ear infection could wipe them all out. These things can barely withstand a Flintstone’s chewable vitamin, they’re so fragile.” “Still,” I encouraged her, “progress is progress. Now if you excuse me, I have a time drill to build.”

@Cute_Kitten Thank you for the analysis. You listed off pretty much everything I was going for. Thank you for your in depth analysis. @ppbenn Hee-hee-hee! What can I say? I'm fan of the classics.

One flew over the coo'coo's next, but in diapers. That's basically what I was trying for. Good to know it worked. Thanks for your patience.

This was written as a short “Snapshot Story” for Guilyn. I hope he likes it. Maybe I can one day come back to this and expand upon it. Here's the tumblr link. http://cushypen.tumblr.com/ “Fuck my life,” Megan said to herself. Actually, it was more like “Fu mu lahf,” but she had meant to say “fuck my life.” It’s just that it was just particularly hard to enunciate “fuck my life” when there was a big rubber tit strapped into your mouth. It had all started a few months ago when she had tried to throw that brick through that Mega-Mart sliding glass door. She had been there with all of her college friends. They had been protesting the unethical outsourcing of sweatshop labor of the corporation’s products and how Mega-Mart refused to pay its entry level employees a decent salary. At least she thought that’s what they were protesting. It was kind of a last minute “Hey we’re going, wanna come?” type thing. But, somehow, she had ended up at the front of the crowd, and there had been the brick by her feet. Maybe it was the chanting and the yelling. Maybe it was the picket signs behind her or the knowledge that a faceless conglomerate that was practically made of money could easily afford to replace one little sliding glass door window. Maybe her brain had just turned off. Whatever the reason, there had been a nearby stack of bricks. Maybe someone had brought them for the exact purpose in which they were used; maybe protest throwing bricks were a thing. Maybe they were accidentally left out there by the nearby home improvement store. Maybe there was funnier third option that her medication addled brain couldn’t come up with in hindsight. The only thing that was a definite was that Megan had grabbed a brick and had been the first one to toss a brick. The sliding glass door had (surprise surprise) slid out of the way and the brick had careened harmlessly onto smooth tile floor of the Mega-Mart. Emboldened by her act of rebellion, several others had grabbed bricks and sent them sailing through non-mobile plates of glass. Then came the glass bottles. Then came the flaming ones. Then came what local news and Facebook described as a “protest-turned-riot”. It wasn’t until approximately thirty-six hours later that the end of Megan’s life as she knew it came. Everyone else had worn masks. Most of them had come to do a little more than just protest. Meanwhile, Megan had been caught on security tape and her face had been blasted all over the internet. The police found her. She’d been taken to jail. The case hadn’t looked good for her. Even though she’d had a spotless record beforehand, the judge and the jury was decidedly not sympathetic. In a last ditch effort, she pleaded insanity. Her defense argued that because of her upbringing she was not prepared to resist the pressures of mob mentality and that she didn’t fully understand the consequences or the ramifications of her actions. In short, they argued that she was “depraved on account of being deprived.” Sending her to prison wouldn’t help rehabilitate her. She would likely just get more embroiled in the various cliques and gangs of a prison- the ones that everyone knew about but nobody talked about and become a victim again to the throngs of gang members, drug dealers, and ne’er do wells that were already confined behind prison walls. She had gotten mixed up with a bad crowd, and the solution wasn’t to put her with a worse one. She needed to be rehabilitated; wasn’t that the point of correctional facilities? Unfortunately for Megan, the judge had agreed. And instead of sentencing her to prison, Megan had been sentenced here: The Dr. John P. Leon Center for Regressive Therapies. Megan hadn’t been here even a week, and she knew this place was nuttier than squirrel poo. Half nursery, half insane asylum, the Center supposedly focused on “Regression Therapy” so that people could get in touch with their “purest selves” and push past the “toxic identity issues and negative self-concepts” that the world had pushed on them during their development or some other such psychobabble bullshit. In practice, that appeared to mean torturing her, drugging her, confining her, and gaslighting her until she was too insane to realize that she was a young adult. Within minutes of arriving she had been manhandled onto a table, stripped of her clothes, gagged, and diapered. She had fought of course, but the orderlies and nurses that cooed and fawned over her as they took her temperature rectally assured her that she was far from their first “squirmy little baby.” Now, not even a week later, she sat in a corner of common room trying not to cry as she stared out at the freak show that her life had become. Sitting was about the only thing she could do at the moment due to the bizarre straightjacket they had put her in. It was pastel pink and wrapped between her legs with little snaps at the crotch, like a onesie, but it was still a straightjacket. Her long, almost luxurious hair had been all but shaved completely off, so that the custom pink bunny ear hood could fit comfortably over her head. This hood did a good job of obscuring the giant pacifier gag that was strapped behind her head. When she looked in the mirror this morning, she looked less like a lunatic and more like a giant baby that had been swaddled with her legs poking out. Then again, outside of this institution, that would have meant she looked like a lunatic. As she looked around the common area, its walls decorated with characters from mother goose, she took note of the other kids. Inmates she reminded herself. Inmates. They weren’t kids. They definitely weren’t other kids, because that would mean that she counted herself among them. And she certainly wasn’t one of them. The room was filled with men and women, all of them dressed childishly, some only in diapers, playing as if they were children. A woman in a pink dress cuddled up with a giant teddy bear, gently petting its soft fur while dozing in the sunlight; her diaper occasionally being on display as she shifted or rolled over. Two middle aged men, both in shortalls, were playing a game of Candy Land with all the seriousness of a game of chess. A few, clad only in diapers with little cartoon pictures on the front, amused themselves simply by moving around the room. They’d run, or hop, or roll, or crawl- whatever seemed to amuse them in the moment- to one area, look around, and then seemed to just wander off; either confused, forgetful, or satisfied that some unfathomable goal had been met. There was a dull look in their eyes too, like maybe not all of the lights were on upstairs. Megan found herself wondering if these waddling zombies were the people who had taken to the “therapy” too well, or if they were the ones that hadn’t taken to it well enough. Megan hoped it was her imagination, but she thought she saw scars along some of their foreheads. In the middle of the playroom- the common room….the common room- an intense and hyperactive game of duck-duck-goose was well underway. The orderlies, all big, burly men looking ridiculous in scrubs decorated in baby rattles and diaper pins, watched with measured interest. Earlier that week, one of them had offered to read Megan a story; all she’d have to do is sit in his lap while he read it. She had vigorously shaken her head. “You’ll come around and sit in Mr. Sammy’s lap for story time,” he chuckled darkly. “They all do, eventually.” Currently, Mr. Sammy was among the orderlies watching the others, and the fact that his interest wasn’t directed towards her made Megan incredibly grateful. The sound of bare feet clumsily slapping against worn carpet was further muffled by the soundtrack: A constant barrage of kiddie songs- “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”, “Row, Row, Row, Your Boat,”, “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt”, the classics- was piped into the room at all hours. It wasn’t any better in her own private cell where they strapped her down into an adult sized crib; completely negating the point of a crib. There, lullabies were played for her to fall asleep to and the more paranoid part of her mind wondered if it was more than just “Rock-a-Bye Baby” her subconscious was being exposed to. The whole common room smelled faintly of used diapers and baby powder, but Megan had gone smell-blind to the stuff well into her second day. The only time she could really smell it was when she was dragged over to the changing table in the far end of the corner. It didn’t matter how clean you kept things or how odor absorbent the diapers or the garbage bags claimed to be; when you had that much human waste concentrated in one space for a long enough period of time, something lingered. Speaking of human waste, Megan had to pee yet again. The only time she wasn’t gagged at present was when they were making her eat or drink something. They still wouldn’t free her hands, so bottle feeding and spoon feeding was the only way she could get any kind of nourishment. More than likely, no small amount of sedatives, laxatives, diuretics and other methods of chemical mind fuckery were mixed in with the juice and the pureed fruit flavored gunk. A nurse had oh-so-playfully mentioned during Megan’s first bottle feeding that bad babies who wouldn’t eat got feeding tubes shoved up their noses and down their throats instead and had their food and medicine directly pumped into their stomachs so that they wouldn’t go hungry. Those bad babies got needles poked into their skin and IV bags hooked up to make sure they wouldn’t get dehydrated. Those bad babies had to lay in their cribs, alone, all day so that the delicate machinery of the feeding pump and IV bags didn’t need to be constantly disconnected and reconnected. Those bad babies were made to wear super thick diapers that only needed to be changed once a day since they wouldn’t be walking around anyway. And they’d stay like that until they became good babies. She wasn’t a bad baby, was she? Megan most certainly wasn’t one of those. Maybe the aimless shamblers who just wandered around the room had been “bad babies” once. Just walking around in a normal diaper would be paradise compared to being strapped down to a mattress and constantly force fed while you laid in your own filth. Normal?! Megan chided herself again for thinking that there was anything “normal” about her attire. None of the diapers were “normal”. Adults that needed them wore diapers that were plain and white, maybe some other plain flat color. They often had wetness indicators that faded or changed colors when wet. Then again, they weren’t diapers in that case, they were “incontinence briefs.” The thing wrapped around Megan’s hips wasn’t an “incontinence brief”; it was a diaper. It had pictures of cartoon animals decorating them, and the surest and easiest way to tell she needed changing was to violate her personal space and squeeze between her legs, just like the first time she was a baby. Distracted by the discomfort and urgency of her bladder, Megan didn’t even catch the subconscious slip. She had more pressing things to worry about than to monitor her own thoughts, and the nurses and orderlies wouldn’t let her use the potty anyways; so it was best to just get it over with. She closed her eyes, bit down on the rubber nipple lodged between her lips, and let out a fresh warm stream into her diaper. It was either her second or third wetting in that diaper, she couldn’t remember. She’d already lost count of how many diapers she’d been changed into since coming here. Now, it was getting almost pointless to keep track how many times she’d degraded herself. Soon enough, she speculated grimly, she might not even notice when her diaper went from dry to wet. How weird would that be? “You’re peeing, aren’t you?” a voice roused Megan. Megan opened her eyes and saw a man in his late twenties in baby blue pajamas, the diaper bulge obvious even if you didn’t see the waistband peeking out of the pants. Megan didn’t respond to his question other than blushing and looking away. “Hey, it’s no big deal,” the man said. “We all do it. I’m wet right now, too.” Megan still refused to meet his gaze. Everyone here was crazy in one form or another. You didn’t get to be sane by hanging around crazy people. “I only noticed,” he went on, “because it looked like you were well…trying. Sorry, didn’t mean to embarrass you.” Megan shifted a little as her diaper finished absorbing her latest so-called “accident”. She’d need to be changed soon, like as not if she wanted to avoid a diaper rash. That meant finding one of the orderlies to check and change her. Too often, they’d refuse to do so on the ridiculous grounds that “babies didn’t know when they needed to be changed”, and they would change her later. She prayed Mr. Sammy wouldn’t be the one to do it. “Fu mu lahg” she muttered to herself, ignoring the overgrown toddler in front of her. “About a month,” the diapered man said to her. “That’s about how long they’re gonna keep you in that straight jacket.” That got Megan’s attention. She made eye contact with him, his brown eyes staring into her green. She couldn’t talk because of the damn gag in her mouth but she pleaded with him to go on with her eyes. “It’s how they break you down,” he whispered to her. “They restrict your movement and your speech, and they let you isolate yourself. Make sure you’re bored to tears and feeling powerless, so that when they finally let you loose, playing kiddie games seems like the time of your life. By then you’re so used to going in your pants and getting your diaper changed that you barely notice it.” Megan nodded. Yeah. That’s right. This was how their system worked. That totally made sense. “Then, it’s just one more compromising of yourself after another,” the man explained, “until all the baby shit they have going on here is normal and routine, and if you even think to bring it up, they use the fact that you’ve been doing it for weeks or months or years against you with some crazy Alice and Wonderland backwards fucked up logic, till you don’t even question it anymore.” Tears were coming to Megan’s eyes. Finally! A kindred spirit! Someone who could help her keep her sanity in this place! Maybe someone who could help her escape some day in the far off future! “I just came by to tell you,” he said, “to be strong. Their bullshit isn’t nearly as effective if you know what they’re trying to do.” Megan nodded her head so fast that it felt like it might fall off the hinges of her neck. “Are you strong enough to survive in this place?” he asked. Again, Megan nodded with such enthusiasm that the world shook. “Good,” the man nodded, more slowly and sure of himself. He was sizing her up. “Don’t let them break you, kid. They’re never gonna break me. I’m stronger than they think. I know how old I really am. I’m two.” Megan’s heart sank into her diaper. A shadow appeared over both them of them and Megan looked up from her spot on the floor into the bald head and menacing grin of Mr. Sammy. “Looks like we got a couple of tots who could use a change,” Mr. Sammy said before reaching down and giving each of their padded crotches a squeeze. Megan involuntarily let out an extra squirt when the big man’s mitts touched her. “Thought so,” Mr. Sammy grinned as he reached down and scooped up Megan into her arms. Megan, powerless to resist, quivered in his grasp. “Come on, Richie,” Mr. Sammy motioned with his head to the changing table, “Help me change the baby girl here. You can be my big boy helper and hand me the supplies while I clean her up. Then I’ll change you.” “Yay!” the man in pajamas- Richie- shouted with earnest enthusiasm. “I’m a helper!” He ran ahead of them to the changing table where he was already pulling out a fresh diaper for Megan to be changed into. “And after that,” Mr. Sammy whispered to Megan. “We’ll have a little story time. Just you and me.” “Fu mu lahf” indeed.

Even though I personally identify with the "babies" of my stories and my own Mommy is nothing short of sweet and nurturing to me, I've always liked writing villains. Mommy Mathair might be one of my favorites so far.

Send abu an email saying as such. Get your friends to do the same. Who knows, maybe there's enough of us to get them to consider it.

I'd like to think I'm fairly empathetic and patient. The thing is, this individual's behavior would likely continue regardless. Because it has. I block them, they find and message me on another site, claiming to want to start over. First Fetlife: Blocked. Then they find me on DD. Ignore. Then they went to my dA page.

(Sorry. The "Keep Up The Good Work" compliment, while appreciated, caused me to misunderstand.) Thank you very much for the praise; I'm glad you like how the story is unfolding for you.

Gentle Reader, It was Ivan Pavlov that first noticed that his dogs began drooling every time a bell rang, regardless if he brought them food. Their brains and bodies, not their conscious minds, had learned that the chiming of the bell above Pavlov’s kennel door heralded nourishment and their bodies reacted to it. Classical conditioning, they called it. B.F. Skinner took it a step further and formulated and formalized the theories of operant conditioning, behaviorism, and reinforcement. He was once quoted as saying, “I did not direct my life. I didn’t design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me.” These men were among the most brilliant minds of their respective generations and it took mankind close to two thousand years after the birth of the Christ child to realize the fundamental existential truth that Madam Mathair of the Faerie had known her entire existence: There is no such thing as free will. Everything you are and do is a result of factors that are outside of your control that shape your conscious and unconscious thought. The Lords of Fate and Hearth wanted their stories told a certain way, and if you were a character in their stories, you really had very little say, ultimately about where you ended up. The only benefit that a heightened sense of awareness and advanced cognition gave you, is you could sometimes see the strings pulling you and controlling your actions. But what good was it, really, if the train could see the tracks? There’s so little that is in our control. Jack and Jamie had no control, gentle reader. They were unable to control their tongues well enough to speak, save when Mommy Mathair allowed it. They were unable to control their bladders at all. They could not feed themselves. They could not dress themselves. They had no true independence that any society would value. They had no control over their bodies, yet suffered the delusion that they might yet control their own destinies and avoid becoming Mommy Mathair’s next generation of lovely little darling babes. They believed, through the benefit of some delusion called “true love”, that they gave each other strength. They held each other sacred above all else. They had endured the myriad of temptations and pleasures that the wyrd woman had offered and forced upon them because of each other. As long as one could endure, the other could endure. They were Pluto and Charon; constantly rotating around each other in a kind of dance around an invisible center point that only each other saw. They were the last thing each other saw as they closed their eyes from the previous night, and the first thing each other saw as they awoke in their cribs on the second morning; bodies refreshed and diapers wet. They dreamed of each other, and only each other. It was almost as if they had never broken eye contact at all. “Good morning, my little darlings,” the strange blue woman glided into the room the very second they were both awake. “Did you sleep well?” As had been their strategy for much of the previous day, the two lovers barely acknowledged their jailer. The wyrd woman didn’t seem to mind as much, this time, however. Instead, the cribs merely trotted over to the large changing table. They were unnerved by the jaunty tune she hummed while her fingers nimbly changed their diapers. Jack even managed a blush as her pale blue digits wiped away his morning wood. Both of them squirmed as the Faerie went about the business of cleaning them and then slathering on a strange, almost greenish cream on their genitals and anus. This was new, but just as the day before, they stared into each other’s eyes for comfort, not even needing words. In forty-eight hours they’d be free. “Your new Mommy has a special day planned for you,” the Faerie announced in the sing-song tone reserved the true children. “You’re going to get to pretend to be a big boy and a big girl for a little bit today.” Jack’s eyebrows arched in curiosity. Had they won already? Not likely. This must be some new way meant to entice them; to have them embrace the blue lady with the gossamer wings instead of each other. He’d have to be on guard, and perhaps, he thought devilishly, look for the opportunity to throw this defiantly into her face. Jamie’s eyes narrowed. Nothing this thing offered could be good or as it seemed. Faeries were tricksters at their core. But what trick could she be possibly pulling? What deception yet loomed? “Don’t be too excited, dearies,” Mommy Mathair taunted as the animate highchairs came and collected them. “You’ll still be wearing diapers. Mommy’s just going to test you. Perhaps you’re bigger than you seem to Mommy. But she’ll tell you all about it after breakfast.” Other than the near instinctual mewling over the delicious food and the release of tension with the soothing milk, there was no talk during what passed for breakfast. For the young husband and wife, it wasn’t a matter of choice; they had none. Their captor, meanwhile contented herself with feeding them via enchanted spoons that served them their delicious slop with the slightest twitches of her wrists. And did she ever seem content, Jamie noted. When the meal was done, and both her charges were full to the belly, the Faerie directed the lovers’ attention towards the floor beneath them. Like a zit forming from the linoleum, a solid opaque bubble rose up from the ground, warping and shaping like tumor. Then, with a sickening squelch, the floor gave birth to a distinct, and separate form. Laying in front of the couple was a large plastic bowl. Its color was the same almost sickening pastel pea green hue as the paste that was slathered onto their posteriors. It had no proper backing to it, but the rim was wide enough to sit on comfortably, not unlike a toilet seat. There were two white circles with black dots near one end that looked vaguely liked eyes, and a pinkish reddish line at the other end approximated a smile. In another era, before indoor plumbing and with slightly different materials, this might be considered a chamber pot. But to the two infantilized millennials, it was quite clear what it was to be called today. “This, my darlings,” the Faerie gestured to the plastic bowl, “is a potty. It’s what big kids use when they have to go pee-pee and poo-poo, instead of their diapers” Jack instinctively rolled his eyes and grumbled at this demeaning display. “Now, I see you rolling your eyes, Jack” the white haired wyrd woman shook her finger at him, “but if you’re going to be a big boy you’re going to have to use the potty. I know it’s scary not using your diapers, and I know how much you’ve enjoyed them,” she teased throwing a suggestive glance towards his crotch. “But if I’m going to send my darling babies out into the world, I have to know you’re ready to use the potty.” “I bet you won’t even use the potty once, you big baby,” she condescendingly tousled Jack’s hair. Jack’s lips drew back in a disgusted snarl. “Abbba!” Jamie warned, gaining Jack’s attention. Jack immediately reined in his emotions and steeled himself against the Faerie’s tauntings. “I beg your pardon, Jamie darling?” Mathair turned her attention to the calmer of the two. Jamie immediately shut her mouth and averted her gaze. Unconsciously, her eyes darted towards her waist towards her diaper. “Go on, use your words,” she coaxed. Jamie bit into her tongue. She knew she had none. The promise of urinating in someplace other than her pants was likely a red herring, Jamie consoled herself. A trick of psychology, most likely. Step one, promise them access to a simple adult activity. Step two, set them up to fail, make them question their own capabilities. Make them doubt their own maturity and whether or not they truly are babies on the inside or some such nonsense. Step three, hammer it home and make being an eternal infant the most attractive and seemingly logical option. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see where this was going. Yesterday, Mathair had taken the half-step of simply enticing them to stay in the cradle till their graves. Today, Jamie realized, would be the real war. “Ah yes,” Madam Mathair smiled, as if reading Jamie’s mind. “There is that little matter of your control, isn’t there? It wouldn’t be fair if I offered you potty training and did not give you any actual control, would it? Bad form. Bad form, indeed.” The Fae took an unneeded breath, drinking in the moment. “Therefore,” she continued, “I will be leveling the playing field a bit. I’m giving each just enough control so that you can consciously, but decisively make a choice. You will be able to use the potty like a big boy and girl, or make uh-ohs in your diapees. Now, isn’t that nice of me?” Jack sucked in his breath and cast an anxious glance towards his wife. “What’s her game?” He asked without asking. “Some trick,” she answered wordlessly. “Be ready.” “Okay.” “I love you.” “I love you, too.” This silent communication, using the barest of glances and wordless gestures and nods, did not go unnoticed. Then they both turned their gaze towards the plastic pot and the floor, waiting to be released so whatever circus the Faerie had planned could get underway. “Oh, before I forget,” Madam Mathair interrupted their train of thought. “Since you’re going to be treated like a big boy and big girl, I think you each should dress the part. That caught the couple off guard. For the last twenty-four hours, only the crinkling plastic prison wrapped around their nether regions had clothed them. Modesty had all but been discarded as they helplessly wet themselves and babbled reassurances to each other. “Little ladies first,” Mathair grinned, picking up Jamie out of her high chair. “Let’s go get my big girl dressed for the day.” As Jamie was carried upstairs to their infantile bedroom, Jack was left to sit and wait in his highchair. Awkwardly, he reached down past the tray- it let him this time, thank goodness- and gave the front of his crotch an experimental squeeze. Yesterday he hadn’t thought much about his diaper. He had freedom to secure and infantile madness and mindsets to stave off. If he was going to wet himself, he was going to wet himself. What went on in his diaper had literally been the least of his problems. Now, in the back of his mind, he was ever so slightly nervous. Now, he had the potential to fail. He shook his head at that. It was some trick of the house’s magic causing him to feel suddenly so off center. This was no different at its core than the other machinations of the past twenty-four hours. Just as before, Mathair would start strong, and then the wyrd woman would just peter out, lacking the originality of human creativity or the persistence of the human heart. He didn’t need his wife to tell him this was some kind of manipulation to make him abandon adulthood in trade for some safer, cuddlier, less responsible, more care free life. Hold up. He couldn’t have come up with those thoughts on his own. Right? Right. Right? Then Jack shuddered again as he realized he had been thinking of the diaper he wore as “his”. This manipulation might be far more subtle than he realized. Nervously, instinctively, Jack glanced over to Jamie so that he might refocus himself. Her calm, reassuring eyes was all he needed. Jamie wasn’t there, though. She was getting dressed by Mathair, and Jack had only the house and his own, suddenly errant thoughts to keep him company for the time being. It was only then that the first of Mathair’s subtle manipulations became evident to Jack. “Gaaaa booo!” Jack yelled as he angrily slammed his high chair’s feeding tray. The words “That bitch” were unavailable to him for the time being. So “Gaaaa booo!” would have to do. “Oh I think you’ll look just adorable in this little outfit,” Mathair cooed as she pulled the light blue baby doll dress over Jamie’s head, working her little girl’s arms into the sleeves. The top of the dress didn’t completely conceal the diaper she had on, still dry for the time being, and Jamie knew that was on purpose. “Let’s not forget these,” the blue woman held up a matching diaper cover with white ruffles on the bottom that matched the lace trimming on her new dress’s collar and sleeves. “They’re not proper big girl panties, I know, but then again, you’re not a proper big girl till you’ve used the potty, have you?” she cooed. “I don’t think you’ll be going potty today though.” Jamie didn’t bother to respond and just allowed herself to be laid back as the diaper cover was slid up her legs and secured around her waist. She was in rag doll mode and passively resisting while keeping her mental guard up. Gandhi would have been proud. Gandhi wore a diaper, too, Jamie mused. Not really, but that was the joke. Then again, Gandhi only had to deal with British Imperialists, not magical creatures that weren’t supposed to really exist in this day and age. Jamie was tugged into a sitting position, and suppressed a shudder as the vile thing that played at being a mother put matching blue ribbons in her luxurious blond hair, tying them up into pig tails. “Oh yes, Jamie, one more thing about the potty,” said the blue woman with the purple eyes as she shifted Jamie onto her hip. “Big girls deserve to know the whole truth. If you go potty like a big girl…” And then she whispered the rest into Jamie’s ear. Jamie’s eyes went wide with dread. Jack’s eyes bugged out in surprise as his wife was carried back into his line of sight. Somehow, with the ribbons and childish dress and, not to mention the frilly panties covering the diaper, Mathair had managed to make Jamie seem even more childish than the previous day when she had been nude save for her diaper. An adult in a diaper was still just an adult in a diaper, regardless of the childish decorations on the front. Psychologically, it could be written off, or blocked out. But with the rest of the ensemble, Jamie became that much more committed and cemented in the role. It didn’t matter that Jamie hadn’t made the commitment herself. Jack couldn’t help but stare. The blue woman with the violet eyes sat Jamie down on the rainbow colored play mat in front of the television. “Wait here, darling. I have to get your brother dressed for the day,” Mathair patted the young woman on the head, before straightening out her pigtails. Both husband and wife visibly bristled at the implication that they were siblings. “Had the Miller’s been siblings?” they each thought in turn. “Probably not.” Mathair’s wings buzzed a little bit as she stood back up. She held out her hand, and from Jamie’s abandoned highchair tray, her pacifier zipped into the Faerie’s outstretched hand like a certain laser sword traveling to a magical space monk. Then, with a flourish befitting a stage magician, Mathair withdrew a bit of pink ribbon with a clip that attached itself to the rubber soother. Delicately, she clipped the pacifier onto Jamie’s waiting dress. “Now you be good, dear. We’ll start your potty training once Jack is all dressed. Won’t that be lovely?” Jamie sat on the mat while her husband was carted off, likely to be dressed in an outfit just as toddlerish as her own. Perhaps a faux sailor suit or some other such nonsense. As Mathair’s footsteps clicked upstairs- a queer affectation meant to make Jamie feel like she was alone she knew; the Faerie could glide across the room soundlessly if she so desired- Jamie saw something pea green in the corner of her eye. It was the oversized child’s potty, now directly behind her and just on the periphery of the play mat. She stared at the thing in revulsion. She shouldn’t have been surprised that the thing had moved from where it had been birthed on the kitchen floor. Everything about this house moved when it was convenient for its mad goddess. Everything flew, or trotted, or scooted as Mathair required it to. Jamie suspected that even the diapers they wore, if they didn’t just materialize where they were needed, would flap over from the changing table in the nursery like bats and unfold themselves neatly beneath Jack and Jamie’s waiting rumps if the Faerie had so wished it. Everything went according to Mathair’s wishes. The animate furniture was little more to Mathair than a child’s imaginary friend or dolls, Jamie realized. It could be fun for a time, but at the end of the day you were really just talking to yourself, weren’t you? Mathair needed the human interaction; something that she couldn’t fully control to keep it interesting, lest she go completely mad. Making the couples she had imprisoned eternal infants was just how she justified keeping her human pets close by. Perhaps this Faerie was more emotionally a child than the mother she pretended to be. But that didn’t matter right now. She could philosophize the wyrd woman’s motives after this trial was over and she was free. Now, she was alone…with the potty. What was particularly unnerving about the potty, though, was that Jamie hadn’t noticed it before or heard it move. Everything other piece of baby furniture had the decency to make a sound of some sort, announcing its presence, proclaiming its unnatural “life”. Even the floating spoons that fed them the ambrosial mush from the hovering baby food jars had a quiet humming sound that you could only really hear when you were completely silent: Like the buzz of fluorescent lights, or central air conditioning. You couldn’t even really hear it when you were swallowing the delicious blue goop, but if you concentrated between gulps, you could at least hear something. The potty, though, just seemed to appear behind her, like the creepy doll in every bad horror movie. Whether it glided there or teleported, Jamie couldn’t be sure. It just wasn’t there when she was placed down on the mat, and now it was. She thought about what Mathair had hissed into her ear before being carried back and rested on the mat. This was going to be an attempt at training, alright, but not potty training. What would she do when the time came? Would she and Jack accept the consequences of going to the potty, or for the first time would purposefully choose to debase herself? Which was the more “adult” thing to do? She didn’t know. She didn’t know, but the potty lurked behind her, asking her. “What will you do?” She couldn’t make this decision alone. She needed Jack for this. She needed his consent, with or without words. And right now she was alone…with the potty, its dull lifeless eyes on the rim somehow being able to stare into her even though they were logically pointed straight up at the sealing, just waiting for a bare ass to smother them and blind them. Jamie did the only thing she could and turned her back to the infernal chamber pot, turning her attention to the powered down television set in front of her. With nothing else to do, and still with the feeling of being watched, she popped her pacifier into her mouth and inspected herself. The diaper she wore still crinkled as she shifted her weight on the mat and examined herself. It was a shame really. It was almost an “out of sight out of mind” thing. Except it wasn’t. Thanks to the light perfume of the baby powder, the constant crinkling at the slightest movement, and the comfortable padding spreading her legs apart and cushioning her bottom, not to mention the obvious bulge from beneath her ruffled panties, the diaper was never completely out of Jamie’s mind. She was just as babyish now as she had been the day before. Still…the dress was cute, she admitted to herself. Simple and not too flashy, but just a little bit of lace to accentuate it. If she didn’t have to worry about constantly flashing her panties every time she moved, she might have worn something similar in public. She blushed at the thought of strangers seeing her underwear every time she bent over or sat down. Actually, with the thickness of the diaper she was wearing, most people would see her underwear even if she was standing perfectly straight. The matching ruffled panties helped a bit though, she admitted. They vaguely reminded her of the matching panties and short skirts that cheerleaders wore. One Halloween, she had dressed up as the “sexy cheerleader”, and it about drove Jack crazy with lust. Really though, Jamie considered herself more of a quiet bookworm than the wild and crazy girl. In college she had preferred the quiet evening home with close friends instead of the loud party with strangers. On paper, she and Jack shouldn’t have clicked nearly as much as they did. It really was a miracle that she had decided to get dragged along to that party where she met her future husband. Perhaps they had been fated to be together after all. She mused over her outfit and increasingly became pleased with it the more she thought of it. It was a little silly, but it wasn’t bad, really. She crinkled as she moved to her knees so she could look lift the back of her dress up and inspect the back of her baby panties. Not bad. Not bad at all. Why didn’t grown women’s underwear have more frills? It was kind of neat. The little flourishes and ruffles on her outfit, now that she thought about it actually, made her feel more delicate and pretty; more feminine; more of a girly girl in a good way. Her outfit still wasn’t complete, though. Her feet were still bare. Maybe some matching socks with frills around the ankles and some black Mary Jane leather shoes. That could work and compliment the outfit nicely. She smiled behind her pacifier at this thought. Maybe she’d look into finding clothes like this once their freedom had been secured. From the way that he stared when the Faerie carried her out, Jack was clearly impressed with how she looked. She might not ever wear these things in public, but in the comfort of her own home…she stopped herself right there. Where were these thoughts coming from? Bile rose up in Jamie’s throat. These weren’t her own thoughts. They couldn’t be. They just couldn’t be. Was her will being manipulated so that she liked this? The other strange alien thoughts had come immediately after some sort of stimuli, and they resembled more the mind’s incessant ramblings and fleeting fantasies while drunk or high. This…this felt natural and logical…this line of thought felt…right; and that’s what made it so wrong. Had the blue Faerie found a loophole? She didn’t have some kind of predisposition to these thoughts, did she? Was that why she and Jack had been chosen as Mathair’s latest victims? Almost instinctively, she looked around for Jack. She longed to see his eyes and draw strength from him as he drew restraint from her. Jack was still nowhere to be found. How long had she been left alone to think? She felt what might have been phantom pains from her bladder, and glanced nervously at the potty just on the edge of the play mat. What would she do if she suddenly needed to pee? What should she do? Was this part of Mathair’s plans? Was she stalling getting Jack dressed so that the element of choice and consent were taken from the couple when it came time for Jamie to decide? Or was Jack allowing himself to be coaxed and baited by the blue Faerie and struggling futilely so that she had a reason to dawdle and let her perverted version of nature take its course? Either one was likely. Very likely, in fact. Jamie spit out her pacifier in disgust before proclaiming, “Gaaaa booo!” “Oh this is just so cute,” Madam Mathair held up a large pair of fire engine shortalls in front of Jack. “Don’t you agree, Jack?” Jack sat upright on the changing table, wearing nothing but a dark blue t-shirt and his diaper, arms crossed and staring daggers at his captor. “Oh look,” the wyrd woman pressed on, pointing to some snap buttons along the inseam. “How clever! These little snaps will make it so that I can change your diaper without having to take your clothes off.” She pinched his cheek and cooed condescendingly, “That way you can look like a big strong, pants wearing man until it’s time to change you. That’s even better than how Jamie’s dressed,” she taunted. “I’ll still get to…I mean have to take her panties off before I can have my fun with her.” It took everything Jack had in him not to leap and attack Mathair like a rabid animal, right then and there. How dare she?! “Or if you wanted, to,” Mathair baited Jack, as she turned the shortalls over in her hands, “I could dress you up in something a little less manly.” Fire engine red turned to light pink as the Faerie twisted and rung the garment in her hand and took the shape of a dress. “You can even have matching panties,” she offered, “with lace and little ruffles and everything. I could always have two baby girls.” Jack couldn’t help but flinch in alarm at the prospect. His pride not allowing him to remain sullen but stoic as he had managed to up until this point. “No?” she asked. Jack shook his head, vigorously. “Fine,” she sighed. “Back to pretend big-boy pants it is.” She shook the pink dress out like she was shaking out a blanket and folded and wrinkled back into a large pair of red shortalls. Jack let himself sigh in relief. He hated how helpless he felt right then. He was supposed to be the strong one, the aggressive one, the provider and protector; and all of this baby shit was anathema to every part of that identity. He wasn’t supposed to need diapers, or enjoy playing with baby toys, or being spoon fed. Even if the enjoyment was being magically forced on him, he was supposed to be strong enough to resist it. It was Jamie who kept him strong, he knew. Jamie who was helping him build up his emotional walls and defenses. He was strong for her. He always had been. Deep down he wanted to be weak, in some way. He wanted to ride the highs and lows of his emotions, however they came to him. He wanted to enjoy the pampering and physical and emotional stimulus being given to him. He wanted to get drunk off of irresponsibility. But that was weakness, his ego told him, and now was not the time for weakness. Perhaps later. He wanted to attack his tormentor who kept him in diapers and cribs and was now dressing him and his wife like a couple of two year olds. He wanted to give in to those seemingly manly emotions of blood lust and vengeance and anger; but that lack of control, as manly as it might seem, was little more than a very large temper tantrum to the likes of their tormentor. Even anger, as empowering as it might seem, was a weakness in this house. Yesterday, Jamie’s strategy of emotional distance from their jailer coupled with emotional support from each other had proved the superior one. So, with or without her- a paradoxical thought indeed- he would stay the course. He would be a man, not a child, and see this gambit through to the best of his ability. He would be there for his wife and provide in any and every way he could. He was a man. Not a baby. “It’s so sweet how you’re still pretending to be a big boy,” Mathair cooed as she fastened the garment over him, each snap around his legs and nether regions going off like a gunshot in his ears. “If you were a big boy, you wouldn’t have been married and living off your old Mommy and Daddy’s charity. You could’ve at least gotten an apartment or something.” That last comment stung. Even as he had justified it to himself due to economic stressors, Jack always had felt like less of a man for not having his own place for him and Jamie. Deep down, that insecurity that had begun to sound to him more and more like a fundamental truth, was what had made Jack leap into this trap and drag Jamie into it with him. “Well, we’ll see how much of a big boy you are,” Mommy Mathair chuckled as she finished dressing Jack up. “I predict that you won’t even have the guts to use the potty unless I place you on it myself. You’re a fun little boy, Jack, and I look forward to being your mommy, but you’re not a risk taker, darling. Just do yourself a favor and go in your pants when the opportunity presents itself.” Jack just stared defiantly at her, refusing to break eye contact. Whatever game was playing this day, she wouldn’t win. She didn’t win first day, and he wouldn’t give her the second. Then the third would come, and he’d get to forget this whole mess ever happened. “Oh yes, Jack, one more thing about the potty,” said the blue woman with the purple eyes as she shifted Jack onto her hip. “Big boys deserve to know the whole truth. If you go potty like a big boy…” And then she whispered the rest into Jack’s ear. Jack’s blood boiled with anger. The gauntlet was thrown and the challenge accepted. “Here we are,” the blue Faerie announced as she came down the stairs, Jack on her hip. She placed him down next to Jamie and the two took a moment to take each other in. Somehow, he too felt more infantile than before in this new garb. Men, if they were cocky and confident might walk around clad in nothing but a diaper, and still retain their machismo. Little boys and babies were dressed in bright red toddler shortalls. Jack was instantly uncomfortable. Worse yet, as he moved around, and shifted on the play mat for those first few awkward seconds, he noticed that all of his discomfort was psychological in nature. Everything about the outfit was amazingly comfortable. It was roomy in all the right places and felt sturdy, yet gentle. This was a play outfit, meant to be run around and even rolled around in. He briefly imagined himself playing football in this outfit, and the only thing that caused him pause was imagining his friends pointing and laughing at him. In his mind’s eye, his friends all mocked him, pointed and laughed at his crotch as he realized that even in his mind’s eye, his crotch was beneath the outfit; the tell-tale bulge of his diaper noticeable even under the extra clothing. With no pacifier within his reach to seek comfort, Jack fought the urge to pop his thumb in his mouth and contented himself to sucking on his teeth. Jamie stared at Jack, still blushing, and felt a heat within herself. She didn’t see Jack like this often. He seemed exposed, and vulnerable. It was cute, and kind of attractive, actually. It was like the sweet guy, the teddy bear, the goofy little kid underneath the sweat, adrenaline, and raw energy had finally been exposed. Jamie liked what she saw, and smiled. Jack was too caught up in himself to notice the awestruck look in Jamie’s eyes. Jamie, for her part, still looked beautiful to him. She could make anything, even a dress like the one she wore, look sexy, without even intentionally trying. She had always been the pretty girl that didn’t know how pretty she really was. Jack loved that about her, but took it for granted, caught up in his own self-esteem issues. Mommy Mathair’s jabs at his lack of courage, about his inability to be a “big boy” and truthfully provide for his wife echoed between his ears. He had expected to be tormented about some magically induced inability to piss in a pot, but not his real life failure to move out of his parents’ house. How had she even known that? What eldritch forces gave her that knowledge? Could she read minds? She smiled, bashfully. He blushed, shamefully. For the first time since they had woken up in diapers yesterday, they were too caught up in their own thoughts to be properly in sync with each other. “Now before we begin your first attempts at potty training,” Mommy Mathair broke their concentration, “I have to check to see if you’re wet. No sense in potty training you if you’re already wet.” In truth, this was hardly necessary. Even when their bladders were as weak as actual infants, they were still able to distinguish between wet and dry, and all three of them knew. Still, their diapers were checked. The Faerie gave both their crotches and their bottoms a squeeze, and stuck her fingers in the leggings of their diapers to check for wetness. Jamie had the back of her dress hiked up so that the wyrd woman could pull back the waistband of her panties and diaper and look inside. Nimble azure fingers popped open Jack’s crotch snaps and reach inside his diaper, before being sealed up again. “Still clean,” Mommy Mathair grinned down at them. “We’re off to a good start, my little darlings.” The words were not spoken as such, but message and the intent was clear: Their clothes were but a formality; an illusion. They still had no privacy, no control but for what their jailer allowed them. “Now, I know you two are both confused about how to use the potty, because you’re so little,” The Faerie spoke down to them, “So I found a little video to help explain it so that you can understand it.” She gave them each one last condescending pinch on their cheeks and then glided behind them as the T.V. turned itself on. Jack and Jamie craned their necks up from their seats on the floor to watch the latest torture that the azure lady with the white hair had concocted for them. It was a cartoon, apparently. The two dimensional setting was a child’s nursery. There was a plain white crib, and a window with a light blue sky was behind the crib, and not much else. A flat, cartoon monkey wearing a diaper jerkily wobbled out onto the center of the screen. Jack and Jamie stared, confused and bemused. Blue’s Clues had better production value than this. What in the hell did the Fae woman plan to accomplish with this nonsense? “Bibbo is a baby,” a deep, masculine voice from off screen narrated. “Bibbo’s Mommy loves him as a baby and takes care of his every need.” A slightly larger, poorly animated monkey in a pink skirt hobbled onto the screen. The “Mommy” figure, obviously. “This is the way it has always been,” the narrator continued. Jack and Jamie watched in complete silence, their faces masks of confusion, as for several minutes, the cartoon mother went through a poorly animated pantomime of generic baby tasks. The baby monkey was spoon fed, bottle fed, burped, and changed, all of it done in animation that was shaky and sketchy. There were no spoken words, only a generic mellow bass line with a cheery xylophone accompaniment “BUT,” the narrator’s voice interrupted as the Mommy Monkey finished diapering her baby. “Bibbo’s Mommy has arbitrarily decided that she doesn’t love Bibbo enough to baby him anymore. He is no longer a treasure to his mommy, but an investment for the future. He must now begin a several decade’s long indoctrination into society called growing up, and the first step in this indoctrination is called POTTY TRAINING!” The last two words blared across the screen in enormous, yellow letters as the narrator’s voice was amplified and deepened into a menacing bellow. The Mother Monkey ripped off the diaper that ‘Baby Bibbo’ was wearing, causing the cartoon monkey’s smile to turn upside down. “From now on,” the narrator continued while his mother callously slapped her animated son off the changing table and onto the pastel carpeted floor, “he will be shunned for a behavior that he has been led to believe is considered normal and natural for him since the day he was born.” “Rather than relieve himself, stress free, into an absorbent and comfortable undergarment that only he is wearing,” the narrator rambled on as the mother brought a suspiciously familiar looking green training potty onto screen, “Bibbo is going to be potty trained. This means he is going to be taught to piss and shit into a communal bowl where he will be exposed to the bacteria and stink left behind by other people’s excrement.” The mother put the little monkey onto the training potty, and the monkey began to cry, while the mother monkey crossed her arms and smiled. “Also, Bibbo is going to simultaneously learn shame and embarrassment about his body. It’s wrong now for people to see his genitals.” The little monkey looked down at himself and his cheeks blushed bright pink. “But, he can only wear a single thin layer of cloth to obscure them, maybe two if he’s lucky.” Underwear was quickly pasted onto the animated cub. Bright blue question marks appeared above his head. “But don’t worry, Bibbo,” the narrator spoke, “You won’t have any more diaper changes, but there’ll be plenty of other changes coming your way. You’ll be losing your crib, too.” Instantly, the crib in the background vanished in a puff of smoke. “Also, in the near future, say goodbye to your high chair, your car seat and your stroller.” All three items slid into view before “poofing” off screen in a cloud of poorly animated smoke. “Basically all of your worldly possessions and comforts are going to be taken away from you; all so that you can be a little more convenient to the people who decided that you should be born in the first place!” “Eventually, they’ll try to kick you out,” the background slid out from behind the little monkey and was quickly replaced with a gray and dingy city street. Jack and Jamie couldn’t help but feel a little sad as it began cartoon raining on the little fur ball. “Unless, of course, you’re a total loser who won’t survive without them,” The background shifted to an eerily familiar basement bedroom. Now, a gray haired Mommy Monkey stared at Baby Bibbo, her brow furrowed in disapproval. “Then they’ll take reluctant pity on you and shelter you while secretly hoping you leave them alone. The novelty of parenting has completely worn off.” “And all of these changes to things you enjoy and have known all your life, start with potty training,” the narrator concluded. “So, boys and girls? Who’s ready to go potty?” The words ‘THE END’ in the same disgusting yellow font appeared on screen before the television turned off. Jack and Jamie each looked each other in the eye and both thought the same thing: “What the fuck?!” What was this supposed to do? Make them scared of using the bathroom? Make them fear growing up? This ancient being that had captured and coerced them had mastered sensory and emotion altering magic and masked it with storytelling, and plush animals, rocking horses, and simple rattles; but she couldn’t make a damn cartoon. Jack and Jamie looked at themselves and each other, each taking mental stock of their emotions and faculties. There was nothing different. No pleasant memories of infancy or random thoughts about how much easier it was before potty training; no deeply repressed memories of their toddler years or accidents in public; no particular distaste for the act of not pissing or shitting one’s self. Every other activity that they had experienced had been with the intent and affect to influence them. This cartoon, which couldn’t have been longer than fifteen minutes total, did nothing to them. But really, the movie did the one thing it was supposed to do, kill time. Jamie was suddenly aware of an all at once familiar yet already half-forgotten sensation- the need to actively relieve herself. Her bladder felt stiff and ached like a bad back that had spent the last day in bed. She was filling up quickly. Like a bizarre kind of muscle memory, her body behaved like she was two and a half again. She climbed up to her knees and hunched over, her hands pressing against her crotch. “Uh oh!” Mommy Mathair exclaimed immediately, “Looks like someone is doing the potty dance.” She smiled, wickedly. “Jamie, darling, do you need to go potty?” Nervously, Jamie turned around and eyed the green plastic chamber pot on the floor in front of her. She bit her lip, and stiffened her neck to prevent herself from nodding an enthusiastic “Yes please!”. She wanted to go potty, she needed to. She craved it right then more than anything she could remember craving, and any second now, she would burst and wet herself if she didn’t act quickly. “Just remember, big girls have to live with the consequence,” the blue woman hissed, sweetly. It was a not so gentle reminder of words whispered into her ear after she had finished being dressed. Jack turned to Jamie, now sucking nervously on her pacifier, and made eye contact once more. Once more, they communicated with a few key gestures, body posture and looking into each other’s souls through the windows of their eyes. “You know what she means, right?” Jamie asked “Yeah.” Jack nodded “What do you think I should do?” “Your call.” “I…I can’t.” Jamie’s eyes became teary. “That’s fine. I won’t judge you.” Jack consoled her. “I love you.” “I love you too.” Jack scooted around so that his back was to his wife and closed her eyes. It was all the privacy he could give her. Jamie didn’t close her eyes so much as blink before the dam of her bladder finally let loose with what dignity she still had and she flooded her awaiting diaper; the warm wet liquid hugging up against her skin, greeting her, loving her. Tears flowed down her cheeks as she wet herself. Knowing that she had another option made it worse, even if she knew the alternative would have been unbearable for her. Her mind reeling, but her body quivering with the most primal of pleasure, she let out an audible “Ahhhh” even as she shuddered in disgust and cried. “Awww,” Mathair all but crooned. “It wooks wike widdle Jamie wasn’t a big girl, after all, was she? You didn’t want to potty after all, did you? No you didn’t! No you didn’t” Jamie for her part, quietly rolled into a ball and cried as the Fae woman taunted her. Jack wanted to be angry. He really did. His blood wanted to boil over into blind rage. Rationally, he wanted to abandon rationality completely and rise up against he and his wife’s tormentor. But something was happening to him. A familiar heat rose up inside him right as Jamie was wetting herself. His breathing picked up and blood rushed back to his penis as though each little red drop in his veins was racing to that singular point. He tingled inside, oh how he tingled! He throbbed and ached as every part of him that mattered to him cried out for release! Muscles tensed and pressure surged. He was climbing the mountain and peaking at breakneck speed. For an instant, Jack was a male lion, all adrenaline and testosterone, all heat and lust, all man. Within seconds of his wife wetting her diaper, Jack was already convulsing on the floor in the greatest, most intense orgasm he had ever experienced in his life. Jamie might have been the one who chose to wet herself right then, but both of their diapers were filling up- hers with urine, his with cum. “Oh, did I forget to mention that?” Mathair broke their reverie- hers of misery and his of ecstasy. “The diaper cream I put on you two this morning when I changed you prevents and soothes rashes, but it also has neat temporary side effect. When one of you uses your diaper like a baby, the other uses it like a grown-up” She smiled, all teeth, purple eyes gleaming with manic delight as the two cradled themselves. “I didn’t want that to affect your decision on whether you used the potty, though, darlings…till now anyways.” The wyrd woman glided over and gently rubbed Jamie’s shoulder. “Maybe I was wrong about you, Jamie. Maybe you are a big girl. After all, I think you just gave Jack the time of his life. Then again, maybe widdle Jack just doesn’t have the big boy stamina he thinks he does,” she snickered. “So that’s how this round is played, my darlings.” Mathair went on as Jack pushed himself back into a sitting position, embarrassed and glistening with a light sweat. “But now the real question is this: what will Jack do? Will he return the favor and wet himself so that Jamie can get a different kind of wet? Or will he try to be a big boy and use the potty, consequences be damned?” she looked Jack right in the eye, daring him. On cue, Jack felt his bladder filling up. Whether this was coincidence or the blue devil with the gossamer wings was speeding things along, it didn’t matter. The gauntlet had been thrown down. Challenge accepted. She was staring Jack in the face. He wanted to spit right in her eye, but he had a better idea. “Don’t do it!” Jamie’s eyes begged from across the mat. “I’ve got this, don’t worry,” Jack silently assured her. “Please! Don’t! For me!” “I’ve got to do this. I’m sorry.” Jack stood up. He ripped open the crotch snaps on his shortalls and hiked them up above his waist. With one hand, he was suddenly able to undo the tapes on his diaper and let it fall to the ground like a dead leaf in autumn. Then, dick dangling in the air, he frog marched over to the waiting potty and pissed. The sound of urine hitting plastic was instantly drowned out by a blood curdling scream. Jack had been expecting pain for this transgression, immense pain, in fact; mind numbing pain, even. But he had expecting his own pain. Instead, as his bladder emptied into the plastic bowl, the sound of his wife screaming echoed throughout the house. “AAAAAOOOOOOOW!” Jamie howled out in pain, writhing on the ground in complete agony. Her face scrunched up as if she were being tortured with red hot pokers. Her insides felt as if an ice cold sickle were rooting around inside of her. Her scream cut off abruptly as the pain refused to abide and she ran out of air with which to scream. Jamie’s lungs shook impotently, pleading for air that she was unable to draw in. Jack just stared, dumbly, confused, pissing into the air. Gentle reader, Faeries are renowned tricksters, but not due to their ability to tell a lie. Far from it, most Faeries are terrible at telling falsehoods and tend to watch their words very carefully. It’s difficult to lie when almost anything you say can become reality. Falsehoods don’t remain so when the Lords of Fate and Hearth make every intended white lie become a bitter black truth. But, Faeries are masterful at the art of lying through omission. As she dressed Jamie for the day, Mathair had whispered to her, “If you go potty like a big girl, Jack will experience the most intense pain imaginable.” When she was done dressing Jack as his toddler self, she amended her statement to the more ambiguous, but no less truthful, “If you go potty like a big boy, you will be punished.” As Jack finished emptying his bladder into the plastic bowl, he realized that this was his punishment. The Faerie scooped up Jamie in an instant and began. Jamie was not crying. She was beyond tears Instinctively, Jamie leaned into Mathair, clinging to her breasts for comfort as the pain began to subside. “Jamie! Jamie!” Mommy Mathair cried, sounding every bit as startled and panicked as a real mother. “Are you okay dear? Please be okay! I am honestly surprised,” she rocked Jamie in her arms. “I had thought that Jack would have chosen to please you instead of spiting me. I wanted you to enjoy this, I really did! I am so sorry, my darling. That was wrong of me. I will never do that to you again. Never. I promise!” Alien pink tears splashed onto Jamie’s face from above, numbing the pain Jamie felt completely. “Ba..buh..gaa…” Jack muttered incoherently as an invisible force laid him back down on the mat his diaper was slid back underneath him and refastened itself. Even if his speech hadn’t been robbed from him, Jack was so flabbergasted that he likely wouldn’t have been able to talk. “Jack!” the Fae woman barked. “Naughty stool! Now!” Jack felt the very floorboards grab and drag him to the corner. There might not have been a naughty stool before Mommy Mathair had spoken those words, but it existed now, and it waited for Jack in the corner of the room. Jack found himself, confined to the stool, his spine rigid with his bum stuck to the stool like flypaper. His back was turned away from the scene he had inadvertently created; unable to even silently apologize to his wife. “I am so sorry that happened, darling.” Mathair gazed deeply into Jamie’s eyes. “Even I can’t control certain magics when they’re set into motion.” Jamie sniffled, but found herself nodding her understanding. Jack had always had a temper, and had finally let it get the best of his judgement. The rational part of her brain knew this was some kind of Faerie trick. Jack never would knowingly hurt her. But her anger and pain wouldn’t allow her to excuse him so easily. He had a perfectly safe alternative that they could have both enjoyed. He was an idiot when it came to his pride: Quick to rush in, quick to anger, quick to act but reluctant to think. The act of cumming had made him even stupider, in hindsight. She still loved him, she knew, but right then she had lost a little respect for him. “Here’s an idea,” Madam Mathair suggested. “You deserve a treat, dear. A big girl treat. And since he didn’t give it to you, why don’t you give it to yourself?” Much like a certain godmother on the night of the ball, the blue woman clapped her hands together, and as she separated them, she produced a wand. This wand, however was not magic, but battery powered. It did not sparkle, but it did buzz. It did not shoot mystical beams of enchantment but it could take it’s user off to a land of enchantment, if only in their imagination. She offered the instrument out to Jamie, and greedily, she took it. Jack, still confined to the corner, heard the buzz from the wand and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. While his wife moaned and masturbated, he felt little spurts of pee fill his diaper. As she became wetter and wetter, so did Jack. As Jamie convulsed in pleasure on the floor, moaning to herself, her brain already making the unconscious connection between her wet diaper and her intense building orgasm- not unlike Pavlov’s dogs and their infernal bell- Madam Mathair smiled. The real blow had been struck. The crack in their wall of resistance had been formed.

Little Shao. Let me just say that Long Rifle has been a big influence on my work. Yeah, I got issues. But while rare, Happy Endings are never off the table for me. Fuzzy Bunny. Thank you. I appreciate it. FYI, this was written for Cushypen last year. Once a chapter has been up on that site for a full year, I then can take it off site and post it on the fridge for all to see. (To make a metaphor)

If so, good for him.

What is with the obsession for finding out how many of us are out there that some people have? I've never seen one of these things go well at all. Here's the simplest, truest answer, and it varies from person to person: If you know enough people who are abdl's/littles/caregivers etc and interact with them in a meaningful way that makes you happy, there's "enough" out there. If not, there's "not enough", but more and likely there is, you just need to find them and build a relationship with them.