Personalias

Yeah. Uploading on patreon got away from me. I make sure that patreon is only 30 chapters ahead on this one. So I posted these 3 all at once to keep that distance.

Chapter 70: Little Voices: Games Grown-Ups Play I sulked in Janet’s lap at that night’s Little Voices meeting; still brooding and stewing over what went wrong with Beouf. Beouf gushed over how ‘well’ things had gone that day, and said how much of a joy it was to have Lion in the class with me. Beouf was happy, and that meant I couldn’t be. I felt like a chess player going over a game in my head to see where I made the wrong move. Where had the gap in my defense been? Had I not attacked hard enough? Had I jumped in too quickly? I felt like the comedic relief in my own story. I wasn’t some idiot who didn’t know he’d been manipulated. I’d been just with it enough to realize I was being manipulated, but not enough to fix it back. I was Sheriff of Nottingham, instead of his bumbling henchmen. I knew just how screwed I was and I hated that I couldn’t figure out how to unscrew it. What had I done wrong back there? In between replaying the events with Lion, I couldn’t help but overhear the other Little Voices members and their Littles talking and interacting with each other. “Yes, we had a scare with her the other day,” one Amazon said to another. “I don’t know how it happened, but one of the drawers in the kitchen was open and batteries were scattered everywhere. They were right next to her playpen. I almost ran her to the emergency room. Not sure how the baby proofing got undone, but we’ve ordered some stronger ones.” She looked down at the Little by her feet. The doll was wearing a matching denim jumper. The Doll had a doll. “It’s that darn cat.” “This is why we never had pets in my family,” the other Amazon said. “far too much work.” I suppressed a bitter laugh. Changing diapers for decades was fine, but litterboxes were crossing a line? “Plus some of them are just so...small...I’d be afraid to hurt one or step on it. Or something.” Typical. “Yes,” the first agreed, “but the cat came with her, and they’re so adorable together. Especially snuggled up. It’s just so precious, almost makes it worth it. Although I don’t think we’ll get another one.” The Little in the jumper took exception to this. “WHAT?!?!?!” “Don’t worry, Bea, Kit-Kat isn’t going anywhere.” Bored, I listened in on conversations elsewhere. “You know that coffee shop, a town or so over, that we encouraged everyone to avoid because of their um... ‘special’ items?” A Daddy with sandy blonde hair arched his eyebrow. “Yeah, ‘Le Grande Bebe Cafe’, right? With the spiked chocolate milk?” “Right. That one. Same place where they have the Amazon with Maturosis working full time.” “Are you sure she has Maturosis and just isn’t parading around in a diaper or something? Using it as an excuse to dress like a baby in public?” I must have been punchy because of how hard I laughed at that. If I was the Sheriff, these were my henchmen. I was in a room where a bunch of pots were calling kettles ‘black’. Janet looked down at me. “Something funny, giggly boy?” Her smile took mine away. Her light hug stole my laughter but at least let me listen. “Not sure. I’ve heard rumors, but…” the woman shook her head. “Getting off topic. We won’t have to worry about them slipping anything into people’s drinks without asking. New store policy. Less innuendo. Someone had to take their Little to the emergency room for dehydration. Didn’t know what was meant by ‘special’ chocolate milk.” “Oh my god!” Mentally, I disengaged. There was far too much to take in there, and the cult meeting proper hadn’t even started. Another pair of ladies took a seat next to Janet. “How did the date go last night?” “Oh it was going really well, until we started talking about kids and how to look after Littles.” “Let me guess,” the first hen covered her Little’s ears. “H-Y-P-N-O?” “Yep, and kept going on about how good that place was.” Ironically, both of them joined me in an unconscious shudder. “Oh my gosh, that’s ridiculous.” “I tried to talk to him, see if he was open minded, but I could barely get a word in edgewise. Honestly I think he may have seen one of those videos.” They both laughed. As if high and mighty Amazons could be hypnotized. How absurd! I rolled my eyes. Of course they weren’t hypnotized. Why rely on hypnotism when they’d already broken themselves with nice comfortable propaganda and feigned empathy? “Well I’m sorry it didn’t work out, but you know I hear Mark is single.” My ears started burning. Mark. Stupid, plain, milquetoast, Mark with his thick rimmed glasses and mess of black curly hair. I could never have gotten away with hair like that back before Janet started toddlerizing me. He was the only Amazon without a Little prisoner of his own. Even with a week between sightings, I still felt my hackles rise up at seeing him. The only thing worse than an Amazon who’d adopted was one who hadn’t yet but wanted to. I looked up at Janet only to realize that she wasn’t checking on me. Her eyes were also drifting across the circle of chairs, over to Mark casually chatting up two other husbandless- but not Littleless- giantesses. “It’s about that time,” the balding meeting leader said. “Weeeeeeee’re-” “-All together again, We’re here! We’re here! We’re all together again, We’re here! We’re here! And who knows when, We’ll be all together again, Singing we’re all together again, We’re heeeeere!” The opening hymn was always the same. Set the tone, set the mood, set the expectations. It’s how indoctrination worked best. “It looks like we have some new visitors with us this evening,” Baldy said. “Please, introduce yourselves.” “Hi,” a red-haired Amazon said. “I’m Lois.” “HI LOIS!” She bobbed a Little man with dark black hair who was absolutely quivering in her arms. He was terrified. Traumatized. “This is Bradley.” “HI BRADLEY!” “I LIKE TO PEE MY PANTS!” The new guy shouted at the top of his lungs. No one laughed. No one said a thing. New guy’s declaration about him pissing himself rang out to a near vacuum. What’s more, he sounded excited, but not happy about it. He wasn’t celebrating his unpotty trained state, but calling out a safeword. “I LIKE TO PEE MY PANTS!” He was begging. Pleading. A couple of the other Littles exchanged worried, but knowing looks. Cindy, the pink-haired older little whom I’d ruined last week whispered two words to Baldy’s Little. I didn’t need to read lips to guess what she said. “I just adopted Bradley,” his keeper, Lois, said sheepishly. “Money got kind of tight, and so I wanted to enroll him in a public school instead of a private daycare. But there’s a waiting list at Oakshire, and the only other accredited Maturosis and Developmental Plateau unit in the area was...” She gulped. “DO IT CAUSE MOMMY SAID SO!” Tears were leaking out of the poor guy’s eyes, and he didn’t blink. Not once. “I didn’t do my research,” the newcomer said. “I only looked on their website. The staff seemed very nice and professional.” Mark put his hand on her shoulder, and nodded solemnly, not saying anything. Fuck Mark. “I did some more digging when Bradley started…” “I’M A GOOD BABY! POTTY BAD! CUP BAD!” She looked like she was about to cry. “that.” “How long was he in there?” Her answer came out just above a whisper. “Two weeks.” Two weeks? I heard my heartbeat in my ears. That? All of that? Happened in two weeks. There was a brief rumble from the gathered. “I don’t know why the school board doesn’t shut them down.” “Lobbyists at higher levels. Governor. Misinformation.” “Those kinds of ‘therapies’ have a lot more standing...for now.” “What about bugging them?” “Illegal. Won’t hold up in court. Can’t record without consent.” The newcomer drew her Little into a sobbing hug. “I just wanted him to be happy...” The bald cult leader stood up and quieted everyone down. “The important part is you got him out of there and we’re all here to help you. Both of you.” “Abso-fuckin’-lutely.” One of the men said. “Carl! The children!” Amy Madra snapped out of whateverself-induced. “FUCK!” She seemed more amused than anything “Fuck-fuck-fuck!” Helena pushed a pacifier into her lips. Amy kept happily swearing with the bulb in her mouth. No one heard the words, but that didn’t stop her cadence. “MMMMMMMMMM! Mmm-mmm-mmm.” Helena shushed her, but that only got her to lower the volume. “Whelp,” someone joked. “Guess Carl isn’t watching the babies during the second half.” That lowered the tension. Even the Littles who were still with it enough to get the joke laughed. Two weeks. I was almost breathless. I felt Janet hug me again, tighter than before and around the chest like she was afraid I might slip away into nothingness. I could hear her heartbeat, feel it through her chest like a jackhammer. I looked up and saw her looking down at me. She kissed me on the forehead and whispered down to me. “I love you. I love you so much.” There was fear there; guilt too; and I knew why. “I’M NOT A BIG BOY! I’M NOT! I’M NOT! I’M NOT! I’M NOOOOOOOT!” Bradley sobbed into his Mommy’s shoulder. Two weeks. That poor bastard had been at New Beginnings for just two weeks and he was shouting words at the top of his lungs that didn’t sound like they belonged to him. “I’M! JUST! A! BAAAA-A-A-A-BEEEEEEE!” It was almost a relief when he started sucking his thumb and stopped saying real words. Two weeks. That’s all it had taken to wreck this guy. Cut the crying and add a pull-string into his back and he would have been perfect for an Amazon. Janet’s grip on me only got tighter. For once, I leaned into and returned it, and wrapped my arms upward over hers, pulling them down to me like a harness on a roller coaster. He could have gotten into Beouf’s class. Beouf would have broken him, sure. But not like that. The worst part of my day had been carrying around my stuffie, agitated that using him as a loophole to cuss wasn’t getting Zoge to clutch her at her pearls enough. Except he couldn’t have gotten into Beouf’s class. Waiting list. And I’d snatched up the last spot. We’d snatched up the last spot. It’s a weird feeling. Feeling privileged and doomed at the same time. Looking at someone and having survivor’s guilt, even though you too, are a dead man. Feeling a shared sense of guilt with your captor: If there’s a single word to encapsulate that feeling I don’t know it. The meeting got way off track. No silly songs or lap bounces tonight. It was all about people sharing resources with Lois so she could ‘fix’ Bradley. Talks of ‘deprogramming software’ that was hard to find but obtainable ‘if you knew where to look' and ‘specialists’. I heard Dr. Milton’s, my so-called pediatrician, name dropped. Someone mentioned grants and charities that could at least help fund getting him into a regular daycare. Regular by their standards at least. Part of me, a very small part, wanted to help. I bit my tongue sitting in Janet’s lap, almost fantasizing about martyring myself by offering myself up and offering my spot in Beouf’s. I wasn’t gonna do it. Not really. There were a million reasons not to speak up, the fact that I didn’t have an actual say in where Janet put me during the day being one of them. Opportunities for vengeance was another. What the A.L.L. might think of me was a distant but present factor. Mostly, though, I was just scared. Janet wouldn’t send me to New Beginnings, but I still wanted, no, needed the familiarity of my own personal hellscape that I’d been adapting to. The meeting would have dragged on longer than that, had the other Littles not had their routines already driven into them. “Looks like the tots are getting restless,” someone said. “Let’s get them off to the nursery and we’ll finish talking here. Let them play.” “NOOOOOOO!” “It’s okay. Bradley can stay with his Mommy.” Janet reached into my diaper bag. “Don’t forget Lion.” I took it and went to get in line, only to freeze when fresh air hit the rack of my ass. It was practically second nature by now. “Just checking. You’re good.” I got sent away with a pat on the butt. If Lion had had bones his ribs would have broken in my grip. I waddled up with Lion in my arms straight to the Amazon on guard duty that night. “Put me in a crib, please.” “Are you tired, Clark?” Stupidly, I looked down at my shirt or on Lion, wondering if there was a nametag or something. It’s weird when someone knows your name and you don’t know theirs. Not that I wanted to know her name. “No,” I replied to the sandy haired woman who walked her Little on a toddler leash. “I just want to be alone.” “Are you sure?” She asked. “We’re going to play Feather Wand in a few minutes.” She said it loud enough so excited murmurs rippled around the holding pen. “Yeah. I’m sure.” “Okay dokie. Do you need a change?” My eyes darted to the single changing table out in the open. No bathroom. Everyone could see. “No thank you.” I brought up Lion to just beneath my eyes to hide the rosiness that was coming out of my cheeks.. “My Mommy just checked me a minute ago.” “Oh yeah,” the guard said. “That’s right.” She picked me up and dumped me in the crib in the back. “Thank you for being polite, too.” “You’re wel-...” I stopped myself and silently cursed. She didn’t notice. The lady unleashed her prisoner and dug through her diaper bag. “Look what I got!” She brandished two feathers that were so perfectly black and white and proportioned that they just had to be synthetic. “Who’s ready to play Feather Wand?” All around the room, Little hands shot up like a Kindergarten class. “Me me me me me!” The lone Amazon seemed singularly enchanted. “Wonderful! Just remember the rules. Black feather makes things heavy. White feather makes things light. Black feather and white feather can cancel each other out,” she paused and grinned, “but I don’t think anyone’s going to bother doing that.” More knowing laughter. “And how many times do you get to use a feather?” “Three times!” “And then you-?” “Give someone else a turn!” “That’s right!” The sandy haired woman clapped her hands together. “I think tonight, we should start with...Kylie for the heavy wand,” she gave the black feather to a Little girl who’d been dozing in her Daddy’s lap the week prior. “Aaaaand Paul will start with the light feather.” The older man who had been talking blocks the way Burt Braun talked construction, got it. “Mommy!” The Little woman in the toddler leash whined. “Prudence...” That was enough to put a stop to it. “We play Feather Wand enough at home. Give someone else a chance.” The others, oddly enough dispersed and spread out of the room, but instead of looking at the holders of the wand, they started breaking out blocks and balls and other toys like the game wasn’t happening at all. Curious. Very curious. “Ready?” Prudence’s Mommy called. “Ready!” The two Littles holding feathers said. “Then one...two...th..oh wait!” The Amazon said. “Don’t forget kids. These wands don’t work on clothes! So you can’t make somebody’s shoes heavy and stick them in place.” A few of the girls raised their hands to ask a question. “And you can’t make somebody’s skirt or shirt go up.” The hands went down. “Okay. One...two...three!” And then they just started playing quietly. Blocks were being stacked. Dolls were broken out and played with. The two with the feathers? They didn’t blast off or run around. They just walked around the playroom, like pool sharks lining up their shots. No one else was paying attention to me, but this was so bizarre that I felt the need to exclaim something. I caught sight of Amy crawling around. I might have been able to wave her over and ask what was going on. Nope. Wasn’t gonna happen. I looked at Lion. Close enough. “The fuck?” I whispered to no one but him. This must be why actual children developed imaginary friends: Sometimes the world didn’t make sense and no one was around to just listen. About a minute into it, the real game started in earnest. The girl with the black feather walked up to a girl combing her dolly’s hair with a tiny brush. “Heavy-One!” The girl with the hairbrush let out a yelp of surprise and dropped the pink plastic brush to the floor like it was a brick made of dwarf star matter. “What?! Oh no! Clementine’s comb is soooo heavy!” She pinched it between her thumb and forefingers and pretended to tug, grunting and groaning. “Grrrr! How am I supposed to comb her hair now?” Black feather giggled and skipped off. I kept my focus on the girl with the dolly to see if she’d break character or get distracted. Quite the opposite as it turned out. Unable- more like not allowed- to pick up the hair brush, she turned the doll upside down and started rubbing its head against the brush, humming happily. “Light-One!” Block boy used the feather on his mate, and now the guy was up on his toes holding an orange brick up over his head by the very tips of his fingers.. “Whoaaah! Whoooooah!” The guy was acting like the piece of plastic was a hot air balloon threatening to tug him away. “Must! Get! Block! Back on top...of tower! Reggie! Cindy! Help!” Almost breaking, the three pantomimed forcing the block back to the top like they were pressing on a giant spring. As soon as the other two backed off, block boy’s buddy was back on his toes. “I am not sitting on that,” Reggie laughed. “I know,” Pink Hair said. “What if we build the tower up high! It’s lighter up in the air anyways so it should say!” “Yeah! That might work.” From the safety of the nursery’s rent-a-crib, I nodded. I was beginning to understand the appeal of the game; from both sides. The people with the feathers were empowered to create problems, and everyone else had to creatively solve them. No winners. No losers. Just an improvisation game. It looked kind of fu- “Hey Clark!” Amy smushed her face up against the bars. I scooted to the very back of the crib. She couldn’t walk properly, her underwear crinkled, she was the only face that regularly registered to me in this place, and I had a wall to my back and still she managed to sneak up on me. “How you doin’ did you have a good week in Mrs. Beouf’s class I know the week’s not over yet but we haven’t seen each other and Friday doesn’t really count if you think about it I’ve been meaning to ask you about a ceeeeertain purple-” “Yes yes yes,” I snapped, cutting her off. “Yes. I saw your stupid octopus. I saw Jessennia.” Amy stopped, but only for a beat. “Oh yeah? When?” I leaned to the side. Amy had pulled herself up to a standing position and was just barely blocking my view of the game. “This morning.” “Aaaaaand? Did he say anything about me?” This nutter. This fucking Full Native nutter. “No. He’s playing with Ivy now. She calls him Akka.” Amy rolled her eyes and sighed. “Oh Ivy,” she said. “I do not miss her very much. Did you tell her she was wrong and that his name is Jessennia and he talks with an Albienese accent, you know I bit Ivy once but she didn’t bleed or anything but I warned her not to take the grilled cheese I’d put down the front of my diaper that I was saving for later cuz I didn’t have any pockets and even though it had gluten in it and I wasn’t s’posed to eat it we had picture day that afternoon.” It took me about five seconds to process that particular stream of consciousness. “You bit Ivy?” “Uh-huh.” I smirked. “Is that how you lost your front teeth?” The brightness and curiosity left Amy’s eyes and she sunk down. “No.” I felt a pang in my gut. I had crossed a line. I had guessed it might be there. I knew I was crossing it. Didn’t stop me from doing it. DIdn’t stop me from regretting it as soon as I did. I didn’t apologize, either. “Mommy, catch!” A green rubber ball sailed into the lone Amazon’s arms. The tip of a black feather brushed it. “HEAVY-THREE!” The Amazon dropped like a stone, arms first onto the floor. She practically belly flopped! “Oh no!” She said like the lead in a B-Movie, “This ball is sooooo heavy! And my hand is trapped under it! Oh wooooe is me!” “We’ll help!” The call went out. Two or three other prisoners started playing the game of trying to move it off of the lady’s hand. For extra emphasis, the Little Voices cultist kept it in her vice-like grip making the Littles have to really work to move it. I jumped up and looked over the railing so I could see over Amy’s head. “She’s playing?! “ I yelped. “Why is she playing?!” Amazons didn’t play baby games! They forced Littles to play them and watched while feeling smug about themselves! “Why wouldn’t she play?” Amy looked back over her shoulder. “Prudence’s Mommy likes playing with Littles. Most Grown-Ups do.” I plopped back down, suddenly more interested in what Amy had to say. “What are you talking about?” “That’s why Mrs. Beouf does it? Playing with us is like...her job or something.” I glared at her to no effect. “You know sometimes I think they invented movie theaters so Grown-Ups would have an excuse to watch the fun stuff cuz it lets them pretend they’re doing it for us streaming services are really hurting their access to real art these days, ya know?” “Beouf plays games to mess with us,” I replied. “Playing games, even these, just for fun, would be...be…considered...?” Damn it I didn’t have a better word for it. “Immature?” “Yeah,” I huffed. Completely straight faced Amy peered through the bar and said “What’s more Grown-Up than playing with Littles?” My face was getting hot, and this time it had nothing to do with embarrassment. “Maybe paying a dentist to replace the gap in your teeth?” That’s what I should have said. That’s what I wanted to say. That pang in my gut came back when I started to say it, though, and so I stopped. Instead, I asked. “Why do you call them that? Grown-Ups? You’re smarter than that.” “Thank you.” “Not my point,” I pressed. “Why do you keep calling them Grown-Ups? Why talk like that? It’s stupid.” “No, it’s not, it’s complete zoological sense.” “We’re all adults. Janet is two years younger than me.” “Yeah, but we’re not Grown-Ups, like them,” Amy said. “Never will be, and that’s okay.” The Amazons really got her good. I didn’t have anything to add, so she just piled on more nonsense. “Some adult tadpoles are called toads. Some adult tadpoles are called frogs. But you don’t call a frog a toad or they’d get very upset.” I tried to piece it all together. “So a Grown-Up, to you, is just…?” “A word for an adult Amazon.” She shrugged. “I’m a Little, not an Amazon, so I’m an adult, but not a Grown-Up. Adult just means you’re done growin’. That’s it. Calling them Grown-Up makes it less confusing.” She smirked. “Imagine if you just walked around calling all physically mature creatures ‘adults’.” She stopped and squeaked laughter. “Can you just imagine the signs at the zoo? Adult, adult, adult, adult, adult.” Just when I thought I’d seen the bottom of the crazy barrel. “Is this why Beouf looked so freaked when I brought up the octopus’s-” “ Jessennia.” “-righ, when I brought up Jessennia’s name?” “Hmmm?” I repeated myself. “She looked kind of scared when I called Jessennia by his name. Why?” Amy twisted her mouth and squinted. “I dunno. She used to look like that all the time.” She paused. “She was fun. I kinda miss her. Say hi to her for me?” “Yeah,” I said. “Sure.” I wasn’t lying. A potential silver bullet was a potential silver bullet. “I like your lion,” Amy said, pointing to the stuffie in my arms. I don’t know when I started holding him again, or if I properly stopped. “What’s his name?” “Lion.” “That’s a good name. He looks like a Lion.” I allowed myself a smile. “I know, right?” I exhaled and relaxed a bit. I really needed to lighten- “Light-One!” A white feather snuck it’s way between the bars of the crib and tickled Lion. Amy talking to me had drawn some attention and a feather had exchanged hands again. Pinned to the floor by a rubber ball, the sandy haired giantess called out, “Prudence, Clark doesn’t want to-” “WAAAAAAAAH!” I screamed, chucking Lion so hard that he bumped the ceiling and thudded on the floor. “How in the-?” I said. “How’d you do that?!” Prudence giggled so hard she doubled over. Amy squeaked through her nose so loudly she sounded like a guinea pig. “Hurry! Pin it down! Before it floats again!” A couple of guys dog piled onto Lion like they were heroes throwing themselves onto a grenade. “Ooooooh,” Prudence’s Mommy groaned, finally releasing the ‘heavy’ ball from her grip. She stood up and continued the show of flexing her arm and shaking it’d just been released from a vice or something. “Clark, does that mean you want to get out of the crib? Do you wanna come out and play?” Ever the trouble maker, I was seeing potential. Not for now, but for later. When the time was right. “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah. I think I will.”

Chapter 69: Lionize In terms of class and therapy, most of the week was unremarkable. Just like with work, confinement, conditioning, and resisting said confinement and conditioning take on a kind of daily grind. Things aren’t ‘fine’, but you might say they were if nothing of note happened. Even torture can become unremarkable after a few weeks. The time in the classroom with Beouf. After the shakeup involving Ambrose and an actual factual crying child, Beouf doubled down to try and recondition us and stabilize emotions. I caught the barest mutterings of her complaining to Zoge about “disrupting routines”. Beouf still casually complained about work, she just made sure to do it more quietly and in coded language when she knew I was around. The other Littles seemed off for a day or two afterwards as well. A four year old had been traumatized right in front of them and bawled about how he wasn’t one of us. That had shattered more than one illusion. It’s hard to pretend the plastic bowl on your head is a helmet when you’re standing in front of a real suit of armor. It’s hard to think of yourself as a baby when an actual child is freaking out right in front of you. It’s hard to imagine yourself and believe that you’re cute and cuddly and adorable and everything is right with the world in a soft pastel palette when someone looks at your situation and cries in sharing it. Elmer’s justified freak out disrupted more than just the center schedule that day. I’m getting off track, though. The room’s routine went back to normal, relatively speaking, even if there was still this lingering underlying tension. Therapy was ‘fine’, too. It was downright boring compared to the week before. I was separated from my peers for both Occupational and Physical Therapy for one on one sessions. Physical therapy was me being forced to crawl up stairs and balance on a platform swing, (thankfully with my clothes on). Nothing to talk about. Occupational Therapy was picking beads out of extremely stiff and sticky putty. Great stuff for developing fine motor strength, if the stuff wasn’t practically cement to Little digits. Great. Another thing that I needed help with! The stuff was so thick that it rivaled the tapes on diapers. I could tell that Sosa was enjoying watching me struggle, but she kept her mouth shut about it beyond asking if I wanted help every now and then. She didn’t give me much to work with, so I decided to mirror the relative emotional distance. Sosa also stayed off of her phone. Sosa also looked tired. Really tired. Bags under her eyes that rivaled my own. She didn’t crinkle like me, and her pants were neither puffier nor baggier to hide any extra padding, but she was definitely off. Someone had been staying up late. Someone had been having trouble sleeping. Fighting with their partner maybe? Arguments about pets perhaps? I didn’t dare ask. I’d wrapped Winters around my finger and lit the fuse. If Sosa knew about my involvement, she’d likely snuff it right out. The strength of that particular sabotage was in my marks not knowing that I was trying to sabotage them. Fitting considering how Sosa operated with Littles. In a weird way it made me appreciate her relative finesse compared to some of her peers. But no, I didn’t give into temptation to rub it in. I asked neither one about the other. I mentioned nothing about dogs or birds or phones or anything that would so much as sprinkle salt into any wounds I’d created. Maybe later. Not this week. I was quit proud of my restraint. That’s how Sosa and Winters went. With Skinner, I was beginning to think I’d get to miss out on a week with her. Skinner didn’t come to Beouf’s room to collect anyone. Not me. Not the A.L.L. Not the regs. I was beginning to wonder if she was sick, except that I caught fleeting glances of her around campus during transition times. It did my ego good to think that I’d already broken her enough that she’d skip a week. Being one-on-one with Sosa and Winters limited me to a degree; being alone in a room with Skinner would have empowered me. Skinner was the type that I could just demolish if I was alone in a room. Being one-on-one with Skinner was also a lot less likely, I reminded myself. Skinner had a larger caseload on campus than either of the other therapists. There were a lot more kids in Oakshire who had speech impediments or language delays than kids with fine motor delays or muscular dystrophy. Getting a single student, even if it was me, to herself when she had mountains upon mountains of kids to work with was a luxury she didn’t have. Right alongside my ego, my paranoia was whispering in the back of me. Ambrose had been a sharp reminder that I didn’t have to see them for the giants to be doing awful things. If she wasn’t seeing her regular caseloads. What was she doing? Prepping a counter attack, evidently. Changing up the routine. Trying to catch us off guard. It was just after morning whole group instruction when Skinner came in through the front door. “Hello, hello! Ready for some speech?” Ivy perked up immediately and raised her hand in the air. “Me too? Me too?” “Yes, Ivy,” Skinner said. “You too.” Even Tommy and Sandra Lynn threw her shady glances. Ivy didn’t go to therapy sessions. She’d pretty much ‘graduated’ Beouf’s program and was being kept as professional courtesy to Zoge. That same professional courtesy would keep me trapped there, too, thanks to Janet. Zoge quickly beat feet back to the nap room. Beouf got up from the floor circle and jogged to her classroom closet. Both came back with their arms full of stuffed animals. Questions and exclamations bubbled out of everyone’s mouth and tripped over each other into a discorganized babbling, but the general consensus was ‘What’s going on? What are we doing?” Skinner took the time to sit down where Beouf had been reading us a propaganda story moments ago. “We’re going to try doing something different, and hopefully kinda fun.” She said. “Instead of taking you all the way to the speech room, I’m pushing in here and will teach you all at once. Then, if Mrs. B. and Mrs.Zoge like it and you’re really good, it’s something they can do with you, too.” “Everyone gets a stuffie,” Beouf said. “If you like your stuffie, you can use it next time. If not, you can get another one. But no whining right now. You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit. Make good choices.” I braced myself and got ready to dig my fingernails into my forearms. There was no telling what was inside these monstrosities. Bells that assaulted the senses? Hypnotic songs when you squeezed? Pheromones maybe? Were pheromones really a thing? I didn’t know. Best not to discount the possibility. That’s how they got you. “Clark,” Zoge cooed. “Your Mommy made sure to get this to us just after the buses came in.” She placed Lion right into my lap. The dumb stuffed animal had been smuggled from the edge of my crib and into the classroom. “Awwww!” Billy mocked. “Gibson’s Mommy bwought him his own stuffie from home!” I felt my ears go hot. “Got a problem with that?” Billy stiffened. “Nope. Just sayin’.” Billy got a penguin shoved into his arms. I started turning Lion around and examining him: Dangling him. Shaking him. Squeezing him. Sniffing in. Nope. Nothing different. Still my Lion. “What are you doing?” asked Shauna. “Checking for traps,” I said. Shauna thought for a second, then said, “Good idea,” and started copying me. “Before we continue,” Skinner said. “Why doesn’t everybody share what their new friends’ names are?” “I don’t know,” Jesse said. It was a protest and a pout as much as anything else. “Just listen,” Skinner said. “That’s what we’re doing today. We’re gonna listen to each other using our new friends.” Every Little with so much as two brain cells to rub together looked like Skinner had just peeled her own lips off. Ivy nodded thoughtfully. What kind of pop-psychology hokum was this? Puppet therapy? Really?! And here I was thinking that Maturosis was the dumbest crackpot pseudoscience bullshit I’d be forced to participate in during my thirty-two years of life. Sage on the stage that she was, Skinner took our collective silence as a cue to demonstrate. “Watch. I’ll do it.” She took a stuffed lamb and put it to her ear. “Oh? Oh. Okay. I’ll tell them.” She put the lamb back down in her lap. “Everyone. This is Velma.” “Hi Velma!” Ivy, of course. Chances were she’d done this sort of thing before. “And Velma wanted me to tell you that she’s really happy to be doing this and she has soooooo much to say and she’s ready to listen, too.” Skinner looked among us expectantly. “What’s everybody else’s name?” No one made a move or opened their mouths. Some of us decided now would be a good time to suck on a pacifier. “Go on. What’s their name? All you have to do is listen.” Sandra Lynn broke first. “Clip Clop.” She held up the patchwork horse that looked so worn it might have actually rivaled her in age. Then Shauna held up her panda. “Pam.” And so it went like dominoes crashing down on themselves.. “Chomper” “Rex, I guess.” “Jason.” “Miss Ella Bella. Ella for short.” “Mookie.” “I’m thinking this is Hansen.” Ivy held her stuffie in a death grip, wrapping it around herself like it was a boa or a blanket. It was a purple stuffed octopus that had a top hat and monocle. “This is Akko,” she said. Wrong. She was wrong. She gave the dumb fake animal the wrong dumb fake name. “What’s your lion’s name, Clark?” “Hm?” I said. “Oh. Uh...Lion.” “Yes,” Skinner said. “I know that it’s a lion. But what’s his name?” “His name,” I repeated more firmly, “is Lion.” “Pffft…” Chaz laughed into his teddy bear. He saw where I was going with this, or thought he did. “Are you sure his name is Lion?” Skinner asked. “Maybe he’s a Walter? Or a Randal? Maybe his name was-?” I held out my finger. “I’m sorry to interrupt you, Miss Skinner, but I’m trying to listen to my friend, over here.” I held the stuffie closer to my ear. “What’s that, Lion? You’re feeling invalidated that this stranger who sold you into slavery is now going so far as to suggest other names for you? She’s invalidating your identity? Your heritage? Your very sense of self? Wow, we have something in co-” “Okay, okay, Clark,” Skinner interrupted. “You’re right. He’s your lion. He belongs to you. You can name him Lion.” “I didn’t name him Lion,” I said. “That’s just his name. I listened.” I’d like to think that in the distant future, there will be a word that has evolved and bastardized itself but still has roots traceable back to ‘Clark Gibson’ and that it will have a singular meaning that roughly translates to ‘malicious compliance’. “Okay, Clark.” Skinner bunched. “You and Lion have a very good point. I’m sorry.” “Why are you apologizing to me?” Skinner bent over and made a little bow. “I’m sorry, Lion.” Everyone else giggled. Skinner blushed. She sat back up to her full height. “What Clark was doing was very good, though, boys and girls. He listened to Lion, told me how Lion was feeling, and spoke up for him while not being rude about it.” “Mmmm...hmmm…” I looked up. I hadn’t realized that Beouf was standing right behind me, quietly tapping her foot. “Not overly rude.” I gave my best ‘I’m just a baby’ smile to my ex-mentor. She wasn’t buying it, shaking her head and closing her eyes. I didn’t very much care. “So what do we do now?” Mandy asked. “Let’s practice,” Skinner said. “We can all try taking turns listening to our Speech Buddies. And if there’s anything we want to say for them, or they want to say for us, they can. Just make sure to be clear who’s saying what.” I exhaled. Someone had to say it. “This is fucking stupid.” “Clark Grange!” I tensed up. That was literally the sternest I’d ever heard Zoge speak to anyone, and she did it saying my kinda-sorta-name. “It wasn’t me!” I said, pointing to the stuffed king of the jungle. “It was Lion. Honest! I was quoting him!” “Maybe Lion should take a breather, then,” Skinner said. I shot her a challenging look, daring her to take my stuffie away from me when she’d insisted I get it. She broke eye contact first. Beouf knelt down and gently placed her hand on my shoulder. “No,” she said. “No. Let Lion stay, Miss Skinner. Lion’s not a part of our class and isn’t subject to the same rules. Lion’s a Grown-Up and should know to phrase things better around babies, but he’s free to speak his mind.” “Did you…?” I was shaking with anticipation. “Did you…?” Chaz saw the opening. “The rules don’t apply to the stuffies!” “Mookie says we should get changed more often,” Mandy shouted. “She says that even though Sandra Lynn is only wet, she can smell Sandra’s pee pee pants two spaces away.” Mandy softened and leaned back. “No offense.” “That’s okay,” Sandra Lynn said. “You didn’t say it, Mookie did. And she’s right.” “Chomper thinks its dumb that we have to eat all our food at breakfast and lunch.” Tommy said, wagging his alligator. “We’re not gonna get any bigger or stronger. If we’re not hungry we’re not hungry, and I...I mean he...I mean he says...grr...it’s hard to do stuff when you got a tummy ache.” “Wow, that’s some big feelings,” Skinner replied, on scripts “Velma thinks-” “Velma had her turn,” I said. “So did Lion.” “Lion’s not talking. I am. And I’m trying to listen to everybody else.” Skinner looked to Beouf like a drowning woman looks at a lifeguard. The lifeguard seemed unphased to the plight. “The books are boring and never change, Jason says. It’s why nobody ever reads them and just stares off to space or poops during reading time.” “Pam wants to go out to play first thing in the morning when it’s cooler and fewer people can see us. That or be allowed to strip if it’s too hot.” And on it went. “Rex wonders why we gotta sit in our mess if it happens in the cafeteria? Every bathroom here has changing tables. Would it be that hard to pack a damn diaper bag with some spares and put it on the fucking cart” Billy held out his dinosaur like he was trying not to associate with it. “I’m quoting. I’m quoting! He’s right though…” And it kept going. “Sometimes Clip Clop thinks that Mrs. B. and Mrs. Zoge are just going through the motions. That’s why we have nap time, even though our bodies don’t really need naps. Also Clark snores.” And going. “Hansen told me to tell you that this place is like a cage,” Chaz said. “We go to this school because it’s the same building, but we’re not a part of it. We don’t do anything with the others and are just shut away here most of the time. We’re display pieces. Freaks. Just look at how that one kid acted when he got dragged here.” And going. “Ella wants a less demeaning verb for this Bee-Ess. ‘condition’,” Annie said. “I’m not ‘suffering’ from Maturosis. I’m not ‘afflicted’ with it. I don’t even really have it.” I sucked in my breath. Now, Beouf would lower the boom. She didn’t and Annie kept rambling. “How am I supposed to be a baby to you and a victim of some kind of disease? Ella wants to know. Is it some weird attempt at love, or is it an excuse not to listen to me? If you think I’m just a child, then why use words and terminology like something is wrong with me? Amazons talk to me like I’m a toddler but use language to describe me like I’m a...a…” “A leper?” I suggested. “Yeah,” she pointed at my stuffie. “What the lion said.” “Lion.” “Right. Lion.” Peppered throughout there was plenty of, ‘cock’, ‘shit’, ‘motherfucker’, ‘twatwaffle’, ‘asshole’, ‘dingus’, and whatnot followed by smirking naughty grins and blaming it on the stuffed animal that such and such was translating for. I honestly expected Beouf or Zoge to slam on the breaks; to talk down to us; to stop our momentum or turn our language around on us. After every curse word or complaint or criticism, I waited for them to take away the stuffies or demean us or discredit us. It never came. By the time it was over, Beouf and Skinner were hurriedly jotting things down on notepads. Skinner stopped performing whatever schtick and just directed traffic and conversation. She started pointing to us in turn for our stuffed animals to air our collective and individual grievances. “The activities suck.” “The rules don’t make sense.” “Give us some kind of fuckin’ choice. We have literally none in our lives.” For a solid thirty minutes, all we did was bitch at them. “What’s that Akko? Akko wants to know why people aren’t allowed to kiss or hug or touch each other without permission, but we have to hold hands everyday when walking in line. That’s very hypocritical.” Billy let out a low whistle. “Damn, Ivy.” He shook. “Rex said! Rex said! Not me!” “What do you want us to do about it?” Skinner asked after everyone had said her piece. “You’re supposed to be the adults,” I spat. “You hold way more cards than we do. Figure something out.” I inhaled. “And I said that. Not Lion. You don’t want me to quote what he said.” The Speech Therapist stood up and dusted herself off. “I actually think this was very productive. Would it be okay if they brought their stuffies to speech from now on?” The question wasn’t directed at us. Beouf looked vaguely thoughtful. “I think that might be a good idea. Is it okay if we used them in the classroom, too?’ “By all means!” Skinner looked delighted that some idea of hers had an application of some sort. The three Amazons huddled up and started mumbling to each other. Likewise, my own peers started to gravitate towards me. “Clark. Way to go, dude.” Tommy patted me on the back. “That was pretty cool.” Jesse added. “You should’ve seen Gibson last week,” Billy smirked. “Grade A shit. You had to be there.” Annie pointed to the ground. “You dropped Rex.” “Oh sh-!” My foul mouthed friend went over and retrieved his dinosaur. “Gotta keep this guy on me to uh...translate.” I put Lion down by my feet. “Yeah…” “Clark?” Chaz poked me in the knee. “What’s wrong?” “Nothing.” I didn’t mean it. Not one bit. I’d subverted the Amazons’ expectations and turned their game on them just like i’d wanted to. It was a victory. Classic Clark. Vintage Gibson. It didn’t feel like one, though. They weren’t angry enough. They weren’t distressed. They weren’t folding or lashing out to stuff us back into the neat little boxes they’d made for us. Their hypocrisy wasn’t laid bare for all to see. I’d won. It just didn’t feel anything like a victory. Not at all. It just felt like I’d been allowed to whine and bitch and moan for half an hour. And all my friends were loving it. Chaz handed Lion back up to me. Without thinking about it, I accepted the stuffie. All of my friends had found a renewed interest in stuffed animals. “Akko says, ‘Domo’,” Ivy said. “That means ‘thank you’.” I huffed. “I know what domo means, Ivy.” I felt my anger rising. “And that octopus doesn’t speak Yamatoan. He’s Albienese.” Irrational frustration was building. “Don’t you see the top hat and the monocle?!” Poor Ivy. “And his name isn’t Akko!” I shouted. “It’s Jessennia!” Ivy positively deflated. She didn’t cry. She didn’t stomp. She didn’t whine. Just a bit of the happiness of being included leaked out of her face right before she slinked off. “Oh. Sorry. I didn’t...I didn’t know…” Beouf turned around and looked back at me, seeming more than a little disturbed. I’d worked with Melony Beouf for ten years. She was unflappable. I’d already cussed her out and hit every pain point I’d known she might have from her personal and professional life and she remained completely unphased. She’d shoved me into a glass tube and fried every hair follicle off my body as I screamed myself hoarse and went right back to cooing at me while I passed out. She enrolled me in her class and gave me away like a decade of camaraderie had never happened. Something about what I’d just said to Ivy had piqued her interest. More than ‘piqued’; it bothered her. Immensely. For some reason, Melony Beouf looked shaken. And I had no clue why.

Chapter 68: A Crying Shame Potty training isn’t natural. For anyone. Little, Tweener, or Amazon: learning how to use the toilet is a skill that is taught, complete with procedure as well as etiquette. Same with things like knowing how to swim or eat with silverware. No, I’m not saying that if left to their own devices, people will pee and poop themselves for the entirety of their natural lives. Bladder and bowel control strengthens with age and increases with natural practice and time. In that regard, it’s just like walking. Barring a medical condition, most people will learn how to do it on their own and at about the same pace as everybody else. Potty training is more than walking, I’d argue. It’s a precise set of skills and social norms that are practiced and mastered to the point of it becoming second nature so that we consciously forget that much of the act and attitudes surrounding are societal constructs rather than a physical need. Back when I was a preschool teacher, a big part of my job was potty training kids. I’d teach letters and shapes and numbers and sight words and some basic Math along with Science and Social Studies. I did all of that. I also did a lot of potty training. A lot. Most of my students knew how to write their names before Kindergarten. Most could count and do basic addition. Most knew all of their letter names and sounds. Most. But all of them, without exception, were potty trained by the time they left me. I’m not an expert- I’m not sure you can be an expert at such a thing- but I’ve got experience to inform my opinions. The kid who wets their pants and goes on about their day until an adult changes them or forces them to change definitely isn’t potty trained. Neither, I’d argue, is the kid who feels the need to go, then yanks down his pants and pees right on the floor. Yeah, he didn’t pee in his pants, and he purposefully undressed himself enough to keep his clothes clean, but being potty trained isn’t the same thing as being continent. Potty training also involves concepts like hygiene, shame, and autonomy. It’s procedures, like ‘Go into the special room and empty yourself’ and ‘clean up when you’re done’. It’s also attitudes like ‘Don’t let anybody but the most trusted and intimate people in your life see you naked or even in your underwear’ and ‘Don’t talk about it beyond expressing the need to go to explain why you’re walking away’. It’s a skillset, but part of that skillset is social etiquette. I’d go so far to argue that a person isn’t really potty trained, as far as society is concerned, until it’s so natural to them that nobody would think to ask if they were potty trained. Potty training is complete when obeying social norms regarding the bathroom appears natural. The process, attitudes, and expectations have become so ingrained into society that most people consider it less a skill and more of something that naturally develops of its own accord. It’s why small children can be carted around in nothing but diapers and be checked and changed openly; but if they’re potty trained, the underwear stays under and concealed. Modesty has officially become a thing. The diaper taped to somebody’s hips is a giant flag to everyone that a given child doesn’t have the autonomy, hygiene, or sense of shame to care for themselves or be embarrassed that they can’t care for themselves. And throughout history, Amazons have somehow used all of these unspoken assumptions to make it so people smaller than them were also viewed as children and not deserving or in possession of autonomy, hygiene, or shame. In a completely fucked up way, Little and Tweeners are never potty trained, because the giants never stop asking us if we are. And because it’s seen as a developmental milestone, instead of a skill, nothing less than pure perfection will ever be enough for them. If Amazons treated sports like they treated potty training, a single missed pass or fumbled football would result in that player being fired and banned from the sport. A missed free throw or layup would ruin your chances at making it into the Hall of Fame. Accidentally swallowing a gulp of pool water would earn you floaty wings for life. You get the idea. If you’re reading this, it’s more than likely that you’ve seen it happen to someone. On my first day as a student in Beouf’s class, Billy had told me that he wasn’t incontinent, just ‘unpotty trained’. This was right after he’d shit his pants at breakfast and then chowed down with gusto. I didn’t understand then. By the middle of my third week, I was beginning to understand. Ivy and I were at an ‘independent work’ station during centers. “Come on, Clark,” she poked me in the arm. “It’s your turn.” She pointed to the towering mishmash of shining metal. Common sense said it shouldn’t be as tall as it was, the way it leaned and zig zagged at random angles made it look like it should have come crashing down long ago. Amazon technology and common sense rarely intersect in the big scheme of things. This monstrosity had a magnetic field or something keeping it up and giving the stink eye to gravity. Tired as I almost always was, I dragged the flat of my palm over the left side of my face and groaned. “Come on Ivy. What’s the point? We both know that as soon as I move a piece anywhere, the whole shape is gonna shift and change again.” Come to think of it, magnetism probably wasn’t it. Not thirty seconds ago the top of the tower was pointed at the ground, but I could easily take a piece from the middle and put it on the bottom and there’d be hardly any resistance. Tiny robots maybe? “You’re just not good at it,” Ivy teased. Annoyed, I huffed. “You’re not any better.”. “Uh-huh!” Ivy said, dramatically. “I’m super good at this. You’re just as bad as I am good so we balance out to a happy medium.” Whatever Ivy was before Zoge plucked her up and mindfucked her back into the cradle, she’d retained a fearsome competitive streak. That was the point of Beouf’s program, though, wasn’t it? Mindfuck and condition the Littles just enough so that they seemed more like ‘baby’ versions of themselves instead of dolls with a set of trained behaviors. Like potty training, we were being trained to have certain behaviors and attitudes to the point where it was second nature to us. Unfortunately for me, I had that same competitive streak in common with Ivy. “Okay,” I said. “Bet.” “Bet?” she echoed like she’d never heard the word before. “You be in charge. Tell me what move to make. I’ll do it. Then you do your move. Then you tell me what to do again.” The girl looked at me; mystified. “I”d...I’d get to be in charge?” My teacher senses started tingling. My foot was dangling over a landmine of sorts. It was like my rookie year when I told a bunch of smart ass four year olds to ‘hop on over’. With both children and adults convinced that they’re children, the use of language is very important; even with ‘good kids’. “You’d tell me what pieces to take and where to put them. That’s it.” “And...and you’d listen?” Ivy’s mouth was agape. You’d think I’d just offered her a treasure chest or a life saving operation. “Yeeeeah…?” I almost felt sorry for her. I didn’t, but I almost did. “Ivy? Are you okay?” “Nobody ever…” She grabbed her pacifier from the clip and gave it a few suckles. She breathed in and out through her nose. After about ten seconds she spit it out. “Okay. Let’s do it! Let’s bet. Take the zig zaggy piece over there and put it over-” I waved my hands in front of her face to stop her. “That’s not the bet! That’s not what bet means!” Ivy stopped. She looked confused but let me explain. “The bet is I follow your directions, and if the puzzle collapses, then...then…” Crap! “Then what?” I had no idea in that moment. They say go big or go home, but my home was ashes so…. “Then you’ll have to do what I say for a center!” Brilliant! A blank check! “Okay!” the twisted Little said. “But if it’s good, I get a kiss. A Grown-Up one!” I swallowed and exhaled. Ivy hadn’t yet outgrown her bout of puppy love with me, and was still fixated on me being some kind of expert on ‘adultness’ or whatever. I don’t think she ‘like-liked’ me or felt any particular sexual attraction towards me. I just happened to intersect at all the right crossroads between ‘peer’ and ‘adult’ for her. I was a fascination. I was a phase. No guts, no glory. “Okay.” I said. “Sure.” If I started making out with her in the middle of the room, that would definitely get two or three Amazons riled up by the end of the day. Might make my real friends jealous that I’d pulled it off, too. Would it really be so bad to lose? “Yeah. Let’s do this. What do you want me to do first?” The Full Native Little pointed in the middle of the spire. “Take that zig zaggy piece there.” She got up from the hard plastic seat and stood up on her tippy toes and reached her hands well above her head. “And put it riiiiiiight here.” Standing up with her arms over her head and leaning forward, Ivy’s underwear could be seen at a glance. Had it been actual underwear, it might have been embarrassing for her. It wasn’t actual underwear. As such, it was no more scandalous or humiliating for her or anyone present than her red pinafore dress. No one within thirty feet of her had any expectation for her to have shame or autonomy of any sort. I took the piece she’d pointed to and stood up. “Okay. Like this?” I stretched with one hand and pulled down on the black t-shirt I’d been dressed in, not wanting anyone to see the waistband of my own disposable undergarment. I wasn’t nearly as unpotty trained as Ivy was. “A little more to the left. No, the other left! No, the other-other left!” “That’s where I was putting it the first time!” “It doesn’t count if you mess it up on purpose!” I stood on my toes and let go of the back of my shirt. Fuck it. No one would care. “I’m.. Not!” I placed it exactly where Ivy said to. The tower shifted and contracted, becoming oblong and almost spherical. One move had made it almost resemble an egg. Ivy grabbed a triangle piece. “My turn.” She waddled around the table and placed it near the back, out of sight. The structure contracted again, taking on the shape of a smooth river stone, the kind perfect for skipping rocks. “Okay. One more move!” She waddled back around and pointed to something that I thought was a paperclip. “Put this down here, and we can make a fishy.” This I had to see. I plucked the paper slip sticking out of the oblong sphere and placed it near the base. A low humming noise sounded in my ears, and the bits of scraps shifted and twisted and turned themselves. It went back to an egg, but didn’t stay that way. From out of the egg, came a metal wire fish, bursting out and turning fragmented bits of shell into fins. Ivy started singing as the fish formed, the completed part wiggling slightly as it shifted giving the appearance of swimming. “Liiiiiittle shark, do-do, do-do-do-do!” Little shark, do-do, do-do-do-do! Little shark!” “How did you...?” I asked, scratching my head. “We did it!” Ivy threw her hands up and started bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Yay!” “How did you do that?” “Huh?” Ivy said. “I don’t know. I’m just good at it. Wanna see how to make a horse?” Kinda. “Not really.” “Can I get my Grown-Up kiss?” She didn’t wait for me to answer; just puckered her lips and started maneuvering towards me. Kissing Ivy Zoge, as it turned out, was a bit like jumping off the high dive. It was hypothetically harmless, something I could talk about with confidence to no end, and something that I absolutely dreaded now that it was a very real possibility. Thank goodness, I’m good under pressure most days. “Okay.” I smirked. I raised my hand and called out. “Mrs. Zoge! Mrs. Zoge!” Ivy stumbled to a stop and put her pacifier in her mouth. Her Mommy wound her way out from behind the workstation she’d been supervising. “Yes, Clark? What’s wrong?” “Ivy said she wanted a Grown-Up kiss. Can she have one?” Zoge looked at the metal fish kept aloft on the table by a single strand of metal. “Since she’s playing nice, yes she can.” She bent over and gave a big sloppy kiss on Ivy’s cheeks. “Mwah! Mwah!” Ivy’s eyes never left me. “I love you, Ivy” She ruffled my hair. “I love you, too, Clark.” I raised my hand again. “Mrs. Zoge! Mrs. Zoge!” “Yes, Clark?” “Am I a Grown-Up?” “No, Clark,” Zoge replied.. “You’re a baby.” No irritation whatsoever. To her I was a silly child asking a silly question. To me, I was a lawyer preparing my defense. “I see…” I smiled back at Ivy. “Thank you for clearing that up, ma’am.” “You’re welcome, baby.” Before she left, she lifted up the back of Ivy’s dress and pulled back my waistband. Each of our diapers got a squeeze in front. “You’re both soggy, but you’ll make it till lunch.” It was true. I’d peed at least twice since being changed after breakfast. My diaper was so absorbent that I’d almost forgotten about the first time until I’d started the second time just after snack break. I’d almost forgotten the second time, except when I stood up and felt the slight sag or squeezed my thighs together and felt the solid mass of wet padding pushing back. The rest of the time, it was pretty easy to tune out. Diapers were becoming just another piece of clothing in so many ways. Neither did I flinch or cringe or tense up when Zoge was checking me. After nearly three weeks someone like Zoge sticking her hand down my pants or making any sort of comment on them had no emotional effect on me; at least not embarrassment. That’s how unpotty training started for me. These people had checked and changed and remarked on what was happening in my diapers to the point where I was almost numb to it. You can only watch your reflection get changed so many times before the impact is lost. By the beginning of that month, it was just something that happened, same as lunch, or walking to and from class. I peed and pooped my pants because I wasn’t given any other choice. I learned to get comfortable in a wet diaper and go about my day in one because I didn’t have any other choice. I more or less ignored teachers and other Amazons being fascinated by my crinkling underwear and wiping my butt for me because no alternative was allowed. Amazons don’t need hypnosis or surgery to make Littles use their diapers. They just need to put Littles in them, not give them an out, and reinforce the new behaviors, etiquette, and social expectations. In that respect, unpotty training isn’t so unlike its inverse. Personally, I suspect that’s how they did it before they figured out hypnosis and faster forms of forcing Littles into being their dolls. After that they just got lazy and impatient. To be clear, I wasn’t even close to completely unpotty trained. A full diaper was still easier to sleep in than a full bladder or cramping bowels, but I wasn’t a bed wetter. Barring some of the circumstances described in previous chapters, I tended to try and wait till I had some measure of privacy to mess. Peeing was done in circumstances where I wasn’t the center of attention. I still held onto that control and need for privacy. I still felt my pulse quicken when someone who wasn’t taller than me saw my cartoonish plastic backed padding. My bladder and bowels hadn’t been completely busted, but the shame and anxiety I felt with Janet slipping her fingers past the leak guards or Beouf plopping me down on a table had pretty much evaporated. I wasn’t bothered at all when Zoge looked to see if I’d soiled myself, and proclaimed me soggy. For just a second though, I realized that I wasn’t bothered. That bothered me. “You cheated,” Ivy said to me, looking like a cat that had been petted the wrong way. “I wanted a kiss from you.” I crossed my arms and smirked. “Am I a Grown-Up?” “No…” Far be it from Ivy to contradict her Mommy. “Then how can I give you a Grown-Up kiss?” Ivy’s nose wrinkled and she looked like she was going to say something, but I managed to sneak in. “You said you wanted a Grown-Up kiss. You didn’t say that it had to be from me.” Like I said: With both children and adults convinced that they’re children the use of language is very important. “You tricked me.” Baiting Ivy was almost as fun as baiting an Amazon. It wasn’t, really, but it almost was. “Yeah. Too bad. What are you gonna do? Throw a tantrum? That’ll just get us sent over there,” I thumbed over to the back door. Ivy got one of her deer in the headlights gaze and looked at the door leading to my old classroom. “No we won’t,” she said. “Maybe you won’t go, but-” “Nobody’s gonna go over there anymore.” “What are you talking about?” I asked. “People go over there all the time.” “Not since you got here.” I made to deny it, but she was right. In three weeks, no one, not even me, had been sent out of the room for punishment. I’d been parked on the naughty stool plenty of times (though objectively speaking, not as many times as I’d deserved it). Not once had I been sent to my own room for timeout. No one else had either. “Why?” That question was not directed at Ivy. Didn’t mean she lacked an answer. “I heard my Mommy talkin’ to Mrs. B. on the phone, but she made me promise not to tattle.” She had her hands behind her back and was grinning like a toddler who’d peeked at her birthday presents. I puffed my cheeks out. “What’s it gonna ta-?” “Kiss me.” She was already puckering up. At this point she didn’t even want the kiss as much as she wanted the win. “On the forehead.” “On the lips.” “On the cheek. Final offer.” “Deal.” I looked to the left. I looked to the right. I looked in front and behind. No one was watching. A side benefit of being paired with the class’s biggest snitch. I gave Ivy the lightest, daintiest, little peck on the cheek possible. “Mwah. There.” “Gibson! Noice!” If he’d been closer I would have broken Billy’s jaw. In turns, everyone looked at me, then Ivy, then Billy, before collectively shrugging and ignoring us. Beouf and Zoge each had a suspicious eye on me, but otherwise weren’t saying or doing anything yet. “Just tell me,” I hissed. “Why isn’t Beouf sending anybody else over there?” Maybe a condescending, know-it-all Little really was a secret prerequisite of the program. Ivy leaned in close. “When you were gone, Billy got sent to the new teacher’s room. He came back crying real bad.” “Yeah, yeah,” I whispered. “I know.” “My Mommy and Mrs. Boeuf talked on the phone. They said-” A crack of thunder blasted through the room when the backdoor swung open and battered the wall. I jumped. The high pitched, completely terrified wail that followed drew me in. Standing in the doorway, with a diapered Little under her arm like he was a sack of potatoes, broad shouldered and scowling, was Miss Ambrose. Her hair was done up in a terrible beehive. Her white blouse was fastened with tiny faux pearls embedded in the buttons and bits of lace were embroidered at the wrist and collar. Her skirt, dark and black, stopped past the ankles concealing her feet. If not for her thundering, monstrous strides, she might have seemed to glide across the floor because you couldn’t see her tremendous feet. Had she not been so ogreish and terrifying, she might have looked funny. She didn’t look funny, however. Not at all. She was a sneering, scowling monster, the kind that Little parents used when describing Amazons to scare their children into behaving. Like the Big Bad Wolf, she was a kind of wild animal with only the thinnest veneer of decency. And like Little Red Riding Hood everyone else played along more out of fear and politeness rather than naivety. “Sorry to interrupt, Mrs. Beouf,” she boomed, “but I’m calling in that favor. I need to use your classroom for a time out!” “Noooooooo!” The Little wailed. “Noooooo! I’m not a baby! Not a baby!” Without warning, Ambrose thundered in. My head swiveled. Who was that? How had one of us gotten into my old classroom? They were getting a high five after this was over. “NOOOOO!” Too late, it hit me. It wasn’t one of us. That wasn’t a Little. That was a child. A real one. One of my kids! Stripped down to nothing but a diaper, Elmer, my Tweener student from last year, sobbed pathetically while draped under Ambrose’s right arm. “I’m! Not! A….. Nooooooooo!” “Someone doesn’t want to be a big boy and go potty when he’s told to like all the other big boys and girls!” Ambrose said. Beouf stood up. “I’m sorry Miss Ambrose but-” Ambrose talked over Beouf. “Then someone got all antsy when I put them in a diaper just in case!” She kept walking in like she owned the place, making a beeline for the bathroom. “But big boys don’t have to worry about wearing a diaper. They can hold it in, can’t they?” Elmer’s response can’t be quoted as much as described as the wailing gibberish of a devastated and panicking four year old. “Miss Ambrose, you’re interrupt-” “Then someone couldn’t hold it in and wouldn’t wait like a big boy to be taken to the potty. Someone had an accident! Big boys don’t have accidents.” The door to the bathroom was always open. Everyone in the room jumped again when Ambrose slammed it shut. Ivy was shaking. “They said they’d help her with time out if she helped them,” she whispered to me. “After Billy, they hoped she’d just forget.” I’d figured it out. Elmer- one of the nicest, sweetest and brightest kids I’d ever taught- was completely potty trained. Last year, he just quietly went whenever he needed to. Sometimes I’d give him the opportunity and he’d take it or leave it, but the kid knew how to listen to his body and didn’t abuse the courtesy. Ambrose was having the students take scheduled potty breaks and diapered him because he’d opted out. Then, this ogre, this Amazon’s Amazon, stalled things until the kid’s bladder gave out and was in the process of humiliating him even further. “Don’t close your eyes! Look what you did! That’s what the mirror’s for!” Even with the door closed, we heard every word. No one else was talking, and the only thing louder than Elmer’s screams was my replacement’s admonitions. “NOOOO!” The sounds of tapes being ripped off the landing zone ignited a redoubling of Elmer’s cries. All of us trapped in diapers winced and looked down at our waists. It had been much later in life, but we’d all gone through what was happening to Elmer. Hopefully in the kid’s case, it wasn’t permanent. Beouf and Zoge stared at each other, paralyzed. Beouf was clenching her fists and starting to maneuver out from her kidney table, but based on her body language, she was obviously hesitating. She was angry, but more than that she was confused. No one talked like that to Melony Beouf, not even Brollish. She looked like a dog might if a cat ever managed to bark at it. Zoge was starting to walk around the room and give empty but comforting pats on the head and shoulders to anyone who would accept it. She started whispering kind, reassuring words in Yamatoan. Me? I was going to kill this bitch. I was going to waddle up to the bathroom, wait for her to open the door, scale the changing table, leap over her shoulder and rip her goddamn fucking throat out with my fucking teeth! I’d clamp down on her mother fucking jugular and pierce her fucking rhino hide until I was drenched in her bastard blood. I was going to be the first Little ever convicted of homicide on an Amazon. They’d have to invent new words for what I wanted to do to her. Nobody fucked with my kids. And, adopted or not, Elmer was still one of my kids. Ivy saw the murder in my face. “Clark! Don’t! Just let the Grown-Ups handle it!” “NOOOOO! I’LL BE GOOD! I’LL BE GOOOOOOOOD!” “Too late for that.” I ignored her and walked right on by. I was jerked to a stop as she hugged me around the shoulders. “Clark! Please!” Ivy whispered. Fuck that sellout. I couldn’t break her freakish iron grip, but Ivy wasn’t quick enough to stop me from slipping out. I dropped all of my body weight to the floor, hunched my shoulders forward and scrambled on all fours away from her and towards the bathroom. When Ambrose came out I was going to trip her up like a cat and then do a cannonball on to the back of her motherfucking skull. I’d stomp until something cracked. A body piled on my legs. I looked back and saw Chaz. “Clark,” he said. “Stop!” “Let me go,” I told Chaz, “or I’m going to kick you in the head.” It was strange how clearly I was able to enunciate threats just then. “I’m gooooOOOOOOD!” Chaz tightened his grip on my knees in time with Elmer’s shrieks. “Fuck you, dude. I’m not letting you.” Annie came and sat down in front of me, blocking my view of the bathroom door. “Ha-ha! Just Littles playing silly games! Nothing to see here. Right?” She gave me a worried look. “Right?” Billy was pawing at Beouf, trying to distract so she didn’t see the scuffle. Completely unnecessary. Her eyes were as glued to the bathroom door as my own. Nonetheless, my crew was running interference...on me. Ivy was saying something in Yamatoan to Zoge. My friends and Ivy were doing everything they could to stop me and protect me from myself. Them seeming to agree that I was being stupid was enough to wake me up from my own particular brand of crazy. I should have been proud. The bathroom door slammed open. Annie and Chaz scattered. I’d made it up to Beouf’s desk so I got a good view of Elmer being carried out, and still bawling. “If you want to act like a Little,” Ambros said. “Why don’t you spend some time with them? Do you want that?” “NoooooOOOOO!” She put Elmer down in the reading area on a bean bag. “I’ll be right back, Mrs. Beouf. Promise. Five minutes.” Elmer found enough of his words to plead to Ambrose’s retreating back. “I’ll be good! I’ll be gooooooood! I’ll go potty when you tell me to! I’ll go potty when you tell me tooooooo!” The door thundered closed behind Ambrose. Beouf and Zoge made eye contact with one another. “Go,” her assistant said. An instant later and Beouf was out of the room. I got up off the floor. I started heading to the reading center. I was going to talk to Elmer. I was going to comfort my kid. I could do this. It would be easy and it was something I was good at. With longer legs and nothing to throw off her stride, Zoge beat me to the punch. “It’s okay, dear,” Mrs. Zoge said to the boy, kneeling and stroking his hair. “You’re not in trouble. You didn’t do anything wrong. This is all just a big misunderstanding. You’ll see. Sometimes even Grown-Ups make mistakes.” Muffled noise came from the space between mine and Beouf’s rooms. Beouf and Ambrose were definitely exchanging words. The doors were thick enough and Elmer was loud enough to where I couldn’t make out exactly what was being said, but neither of them sounded particularly happy based on the tones. I didn’t care about that. I just wanted to help my kid. I was going to nudge Zoge aside and show her how it was really done. What came out of poor Elmer’s blubbering innocent mouth turned my blood cold and stopped me dead. “I’m not a Liiiiiiiittle!” he sobbed. Zoge sighed and rubbed his back. “I know. You’re not. You’re very big. You’re a very big boy.” “I can go potty! I’m a big boy! I can grow up! I’m! Not! A! Little! I’m BIG! I’m bi-i-i-i-i-ig!” Elmer caught sight of me, looked down at the diaper he’d been trapped into, and devolved into further incomprehensible bawling. Try as she might, Zoge couldn’t console the boy. She could only hold him in her lap and gently whisper sweet nothings to him while his body racked itself with shame and humiliation. Shame. So much shame. Ashamed for looking like me. Not a Little. He could grow up. Elmer. One of the sweetest and brightest kids I’d ever taught. One of mine... I...I...I...I... I changed course. The door to the Nap Room was left open a crack. Someone must have seen me slip in. It was impossible not to. No one called out to me. No one came in to check on me or tried to drag me out. Or comfort me. Good. It made it easier for me to pop a pacifier in my mouth and scream into a pillow.

I think the thing that's most interesting is the information this chapter gives us on multiple levels. Mrs. Hopper is a candy. That pen thingy shouldn't have worked on her if she wasn't, which is why it was a surprise when it did. That means that a candy is some kind of inherent trait, not something you're turned into. Like the diaper and regression thing presented in all 3 Academy stories thus far, yes, that is something you're turned into. But "big dumb diaper baby" and "candy" are not inherently synonymous. All regressees in these stories are candies, but not all candies are regressies. Another important thing to note is that the brother and sister were abducted and regressed at some point, and the fact that they were brother and sister was missed. Meaning they were likely snatched at different times and locations, and besides possibly minor "disappearing" techniques (as in I'mma disappear you they'll never find you), the fact that they were brother and sister outside of town went unnoticed. That hints that whatever makes people a "candy" isn't genetic; or at least not genetic enough for people to have their family trees and dna scoured by top secret regressing agency. The fact that the men in black, agent smith type characters didn't show up until candies started the (what they thought was completely made up) rumor that as they forget the outside world the outside world forgets them, is also noteworthy. Finally, the in-fighting between the adults and the vibes of "my baby!" and genuine concern from the parental figures indicates a level of sincerity as opposed to performance that hasn't been present in the other Academy works thus far. Whatever the Academy folks are selling, the parental characters are buying and they genuinely love the big babies. (Though Genuine might be up for debate depending on how much of the truth the caregivers know. Loving someone who has been turned into a giant baby against their will and loving them BECAUSE they're a giant baby and working to ensure that they stay that way or get more babyish is pretty messed up...and theirs textual evidence to support the latter.)

Chapter 67: Tough Questions “No! Maxine!” Sosa screamed there on the carpet of the OT/PT room. “Don’t! We don’t have to keep the bird! I swear!” She back crawled to the corner, trembling at the sight of her infuriated lover. Winters held the diaper in hand, unfolding it before her cowaring girlfriend. It wasn’t a ‘true’ diaper; not like the one I was trapped in. There were no ‘adorable’ decorations so that whoever ended up wiping Sosa’s ass on a day to day basis got to associate it with cartoon characters. The tapes weren’t likely enough to overcome the Sosa’s strength, either. Conditioning, psychological torture, and societal pressure would have to be the primary thing to keep Sosa wearing it. That and maybe duct tape... “I’m sorry, Jazzie. It’s too late for that.” Winters pronounced judgement. “Clearly you can’t handle big girl responsibilities anymore. You must have some Little in your family tree. Your Maturosis has clearly expressed itself.” “Why would you...?” Sosa shrieked. “Why would you say that? I’m an adult! A big girl” “Big girls don’t poop their panties.” Sosa rolled over onto all fours, in complete shock as she patted her muddy backside, having been completely unaware that she’d soiled herself. I paused the fantasy. Now how in the heck was I going to get training chocolates or any other kind of poison slipped into her food to make it happen? She freely ate the gelatin when she was putting Littles through their paces. Maybe I could find a way to spike it? With what, though? Annoyed at myself, I reset the stuffies back to their starting positions on the floor. Winters was the big clunky elephant. Sosa was being played by the panther. Lion stayed flopped over on his side, representing me and my fantasy as the ultimate string puller. Gingerly, I refolded the Monkeez I’d snatched from off the changing table, and placed it in the stuffed pachiderm’s lap. “How do I get you,” I whispered and twitched at the diaper Janet had left on the coffee table, “to put that...on her…?” It was a nice daydream, but one that I couldn’t yet write a satisfying conclusion to. Most of the melodrama, especially the dialogue, remained firmly inside my skull, but it helped me to visualize the blocking. However I was going to do this, it’d have to be perfect. I leaned out and looked into the kitchen through the living room doorway. Janet had sequestered herself with over a week’s worth of papers and worksheets to grade in various subjects. She was falling behind. Another thing about being a new Mommy that she was coming to regret was that entertaining me was cutting into her time grading papers. She’d half done it to herself, trying to get a reaction, almost any reaction, out of me that just wasn’t coming. As a result, she was buckling down and catching herself up and I was being given some much needed benign neglect. Such neglect allowed me to relish past victories and envision what might yet happen. Part jouska, part strategizing, part revenge porn, it was my brain’s way of working through hypothetical future encounters and how I might inflict more mischief and hurt. If I’d been a master thief, I would have commissioned an exact replica of where my crime would take place. If I’d been an old time detective I might have used a cork board, photos, yarn, and a strict timetable of events as best as I could predict and understand them. I was a captured and adopted Little. I made do with stuffies and plastic bins to pass the time. To me it was less like playing pretend and more like arranging pieces on a chess board or staging a play; a tragedy preferably. Using this technique, I’d already come up with half a dozen ways to get Skinner’s goat, and I might have dreamed up one or two curveballs for Zoge. Sosa and Winters though…? I was both immensely proud that I’d started that ticking pipe bomb and utterly disappointed that I very likely wouldn’t get to see the shrapnel fly when it went off. A large yawn bubbled up and came out of me and I let out a massive cat-like stretch. Not quite eleven in the morning and I was dozing on my feet . Boredom can make a man sleepy. So can the drain and strain of making captors miserable. I’d spent most every night declaring my hatred for Janet over the baby monitor. At least a thousand times before I’d shut up and try to sleep. “I hate you, Janet. I hate you, Janet. I hate you, Janet.” Always calm. Always level. I wasn’t going to give her my rage; nothing that could be written off as a tantrum. I wanted her to feel my resentment and anger like cold icepicks into her eardrums. I wanted to keep her up at night. That was part of the ‘new Mommy’ experience, right? If not, I was going to make it one. “I hate you, Janet. I hate you, Janet. I hate you, Janet.” I kept this ritual going throughout the night. Before I’d let myself close my eyes, I’d say it a thousand times to the baby monitor before laying my head back down. If I had a nightmare and woke up, or I had to pee or whatever, that meant a thousand more ‘Hate Janets’ before I could get rest. It was very likely I was getting more sleep in Beouf’s cribs than in my own. Beouf wouldn’t have stood for that particular flavor of nonsense, and there’d be enough snitches to immediately single me out assuming she somehow didn’t recognize my voice. Beouf wasn’t above group punishment, either. It would have been hard to keep allies if Beouf and Zoge rained down as hard as they had for Why Day. So I used the afternoons to recoup the energy used to antagonize and inspire others. That and I was legitimately tired. With Janet and the baby monitor, I had more options. I could pretend to be asleep when I heard her approaching footsteps or just look up and stare at her, unspeaking. A ghost that she only heard when her back was turned. Kind of like that one cartoon with the singing frog. Problem was Janet never came. Which was weird. I’d seen her half of the baby monitor here and there. Toting me around the house, I caught sight of it more than once over the last couple of weeks. It’d be by her seat in the living room after dinner. Once or twice when she’d almost forgotten something heading out the door, she’d doubled back into her bedroom with me in her arms. Her half of the one way walky talky was right by the nightstand. It was on. Every time. Why wasn’t she reacting, then? There was no way that she was turning it off and then turning it back on. Not with that kind of consistency. Why wasn’t she coming when I taunted her, then? She couldn’t be that patient, could she? “If you want to hate me forever,” she’d promised, “you have that right. That won’t change a thing about how I feel about you.” Bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. Not even Beouf was that patient. She was sleeping soundly, too, as near as I could tell. Only one of us was developing bags under their eyes or yawning when not fueled by spite and adrenaline. Much like with Winters and Sosa, I felt like I was missing something; a piece to the puzzle, some bit of data that was going over my head or that I was taking for granted. “This is both a great safety tool, and a great educational tool,” Skinner had promised at the shower. What was that about? Was I being mindfucked somehow? More reason to avoid sleep. Quietly, I laughed to myself. Wouldn’t it have been just awful if she’d gotten the sending and receiving ends mixed up? The thing in my room didn’t have any speakers that I could see, and I didn’t hear any tossing or turning or snoring flood into the nursery in the middle of the night. So that perfectly mundane explanation was unlikely. Funny, but unlikely. “Muffet Littles will be back, after a word from our sponsors!” The Television announced. Inwardly I groaned. I tolerated the television being on, only because it further obscured my activities. “I’m growing up, I do the potty dance I don’t pee-pee in my pants” An inaudible growl scratched the back of my throat. The diaper commercials on Amazon programming had a fifty-fifty chance for having an actual baby or a Little as the lead. The training pants always had a real toddler “Your growing child is finally mastering potty training,” the voice over announcer said. “But because accidents happen, new Easy-Ons can be taken off like real underwear, but protect like a diaper. And because Roam wasn’t built in a day, they’ve got easy open sides to help clean up the messiest accidents.” An Amazon wets their pants and it was an accident. Anyone smaller and it was by design. I was shaking my head in disgust before I even knew it. “Daddy Yay! I’ll be big someday!” It always came down to size, didn’t it? From behind me, Janet reached out and switched the T.V. off. “I think that’s enough cartoons for now.” I tensed up. I hadn’t noticed her come in. “A nice quiet weekend at home and vegging out in front of the T.V. aren’t the same thing.” Without further comment she laid me down on the carpet and started unbuttoning my onesie. I wasn’t that wet, but it’s hard to stay dry when you have to chug three bottles of apple juice just to look busy enough to be left alone. I rolled my head to the side away from the T.V. and saw the wipes, powder and fresh diaper Janet was about to change me into. She must have seen it in the elephant stuffie’s lap and gotten ideas. No fussing or crying from me. I laid there and took it. Ankles in the air, cold wipes. The whole nine yards. I would give her nothing to work with. On the bright side, being changed on the floor was still better than being tied down to a matted table; doubly so compared to Beouf’s bathroom where my own infantilized reflection taunted me through the whole process. “You’re not that wet,” she said, stating the obvious. “But a dry diaper still feels oodles better than a wet one.” I fought back the urge to scream, or quip, or argue. I wasn’t going to give her anything to work with. I took a deep breath, ignored the perfume coming from her or the soft scent of the baby powder she was putting on my bottom. “Much better,” she said, taping up the Monkeez and snapping onesie back up. She wasn’t done though. Grabbing my hips, she started rocking me to the left and right and began chanting. “You roll it, You roll it, You roll it, You roll it,” Each ‘roll’ signaled a change in direction. Left. Right. Left. Right. I held my breath and tensed my stomach for what was coming next. “And-then-you-put-the-rai-sins-in.” Every syllable of the last line, she poked a different spot in my abdomen. I was her ball of dough, and her tickling pokes and prods were her adding ‘special ingredients’. It was one of the songs she’d acquired at that Little Voices meeting. Raisins. Chocolate chips. Walnuts. Infinite potential variations and repeats. Infinite verses. Thankfully, Janet stuck to the one. My jaw unclenched and I exhaled. It tickled like crazy, but I was committed to reinforcing as little of her crazy as I could manage. My silence was rewarded from the hint of disappointment I was able to glean from her fading smile. In the long run, Little Voices might be good for me. How rewarding would it be, over time, for Janet to see all those giggling Natives who’d long since been broken and then wonder why oh why couldn’t her Little love it like they did? To be clear, I didn’t expect her to reach the correct conclusion about me and my ‘Maturosis’. I expected her to suffer an existential crisis concerning the nature of her fitness as a Mommy. It was terrible, dark, vengeful thoughts like that helped me get back to sleep in the dark of the night after I’d woken up and been forced to evacuate my bladder or bowels into the padded seat inside my pajamas. “Do you want to help me throw your diaper away?” she asked. She grabbed the wet, balled up Monkeez. and held it out for me, almost like she was offering me a chance to play with it. I sat up and made my face blank. If I didn’t have to speak to Janet, I wasn’t going to. She held the putrid piss soaked plastic firm. “Yes or no?” So much for silence. “No.” I made my voice as hard and clipped as possible. Janet was up to something. What, I wasn’t sure, but she was up to something. The gears were definitely turning. “Alrighty then,” Janet said. She stood up and took the diaper with her back to the pail in the nursery. With fast, powerful strides it didn’t take more than fifteen seconds for her to come back. I hadn’t moved from my spot on the floor. She was definitely up to something. I braced myself for a long morning. My ex-friend poured hand sanitizer into her palms and rubbed them together. She held it down to my eye level, close enough that I could see it, but still out of reach. “Do you want some hand sanitizer?” I gave nothing. She might as well have been speaking to me in Yamatoan. Her hand did not budge. Her voice did not waver. “Do you want some hand sanitizer?” She asked. “Yes or no?” I made no move. “Yes or no?” “Yes.” She preempted my stillness by grabbing my hands and squirting the sterilizing fluid into my hands and forcing them to rub together. The cool feeling of the alcohol evaporating up to my wrists contrasted with the heat burning in my ears. I hadn’t immediately considered the game of limiting my answers to yes or no but still remaining motionless- that could have been funny- and by the time it happened Janet had literally forced my hand. So much for that. Janet finished washing my hands for me and picked up the powder and the wipes from off the floor. She looked backwards into the kitchen and whispered something to herself. Then she looked.down to me. Then back to the kitchen. Then down to me. The wheels in her head were turning. Huh. So that’s what it looked like from the outside. Ten seconds later two hardback books thumped on the carpet. She went to the kitchen and returned with an enormous stack of papers. Her long peacock colored skirt pooled around her legs as she sat down cross legged on the floor in front of me. I tensed my body, preparing myself to be scooped up and deposited in the nest between her legs. One of the books took that spot, instead. “Do you want to help me grade papers?” I said nothing, same as before. In this instance, my insides weren’t steeled with spite and petulance. They felt like jelly that had been stirred by confusion. Grading papers? It was arguably the most adult task I’d been offered in over a fortnight. No. Fuck that. It was definitely the most adult task I’d been offered in over a fornight. “Do you want to help me grade papers?” Janet repeated. “Yes or no?” “Why?” She was already digging out a red tipped felt pen, that bitch. “Because I think it’s important that we spend quality time together. Even if it’s not big and flashy like a trip to the zoo. That and it’s something I know you’re good at, so I thought you might enjoy it.” Fuck me. Fuck me sideways. “But I’m a…” I stopped and gritted my teeth. “But you think I’m a baby.” “Yes,” she admitted. “It’s like your pediatrician said: A thirty-two year old baby. I’m not a doctor but I think thirty-two is old enough to grade some spelling tests.” She peeled off some loose leaf sheets from the stack and set it on the second book she’d tossed. “The word family is silent letters.” “What if I refuse?” My captor seemed thoughtful, but not overly concerned. “Then I’ll grade them all by myself. You can go back to playing with Lion and your other stuffie friends or whatever it was you were doing before I came in. Or do something different, I just wanted to give you the choice.” “I...I…” Papers. Grading papers. Never in a million years did I think I’d miss grading papers. Janet held out the grading pen. “Do you want to help me grade papers?” She didn’t even call herself ‘Mommy’ and I had been the one to bring up the b-word. I had next to no fresh fuel to stoke my anger. On top of all that, this was as close to how we’d been that school year before as I was likely to get. I missed that time. I had so little else. “Yes or no?” I took the pen from her and waddled over to the stack. “Yes.” “Well, alright then.” Sitting down on my knees I started organizing the stack to my liking. I mentally designated the papers I placed to my right as the pile I needed to grade, I’d use the book as a hard surface, and I’d shuffle them to the left after grading. Simple but effective. I took the first test, slapped it down on the textbook… And inhaled… A lot can happen in a single breath. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted in that moment to do something just awful: I could scribble on the tests. I could grade them wrong on purpose. I could tear them all up in a flurry of confetti and toss them in the air. I exhaled… I wasn’t going to do that. Besides pragmatic matters like knowing I wouldn’t get to pull such a stunt twice and it might be used to justify even worse treatment, I still had a tiny bit of compassion left in me. These papers represented kids to me. They weren’t my students, but they were just kids all the same; dumb, stupid, silly, innocent kids. Amazon or not, why would I try to hurt or mess with the hard work of a bunch of eight year olds? I took one more breath to center myself. All of that, and Jeremy Merriwether was in fourth grade now. So what was the point? I tuned out the world, and started grading. I began marking down the misspelled words, providing the correct spelling next to them where needed, then wrote the total correct as both a fraction and a percentage. I finished each one down at the bottom right corner and put my initials in cursive. ‘C.G.’ No reason. It just felt right. On matters of right and wrong, about five papers in, I realized how wrong I was. These were my kids. A former student is always their teacher’s pupil, even after they’ve long since outgrown. I couldn’t remember their exact faces in my mind’s eye-they were likely a lot slimmer and a lot taller than they’d been four to five years prior. It’s still super hard to spend a one to two years with a kid, constantly shouting, calling, and praising their names and not have those memories stored back somewhere in your brain. I slowed my grading and read each test, appreciating the names that I recognized, and tried to pull back images and memories from long ago and gossip around campus. Penelope always did have good handwriting. Very detail oriented, that one. Huh. Someone had taught Lydia M (not to be confused with Lydia Z) how to spell! I wished I could take credit for that, but I couldn’t. Somebody must have worked wonders on her with sight words or something. How was Torrence Thomas still writing his name with lower case “t’s”? He knew how to capitalize letters. He had to be doing it on purpose now. A quick scan of his paper revealed that he had capitalized the first letter in every word. Every word but ‘tomb’ . That cheeky little shit! Princeton’s test came pre-marked. Someone had circled select letters in pencil but not a word was misspelled. In the right hand corner where I would have put my initials, in miniscule print read: “See back for joke.” I flipped it over. In the boy’s jagged, sloppy handwriting was written: “If you take the W in ansWer, the H in gHost, the extra A in aArdvark, and the t in casTle; you could make WHAT but no one would hear it because all the letters are SILENT!” An actual, factual, stupidly mirthful grin etched itself beneath my nose and I pivoted on the floor to tell Janet. “Hey Ja-!” Oh no! What was I doing?! For a few precious moments I had forgotten where I was. For a bare handful of minutes I’d allowed myself to tune out my bare legs or how thick my underwear was; how it technically wasn’t even underwear and my shirt wasn’t really a shirt. I’d let myself forget that my classroom wasn’t my classroom and that Janet wasn’t my coworker. Joking and showing off what bits of cute stupidity and even more adorable cleverness was something that teachers did with each other. For just a few minutes, I’d allowed myself to pretend I was still a teacher. The fantasy was more intoxicating to me than the fantasy of escape; more gratifying than a thousand tiny revenge plays enacted by stuffed animals. Waking up from that daydream felt like running face first into a brick wall. “Yes?” Janet asked, oblivious to the pain I’d just caused myself. “Nothing,” I lied. I pivoted back and started staring down at the stack of papers. I should have torn them all up and tossed them to the ceiling. Then Janet would never dare tempt me with this again. I didn’t. “Are you sure?” Janet asked. She had that cossetting look in her eye. If I didn’t say the right thing, I would end up in her lap. I wanted to be left alone. I needed to use her own preconceptions against her. I reached out towards my stuffed cellmate. “Lion.” I said. “Give me Lion.” “You want Lion?” “Yes.” With her longer reach it was nothing for Janet to lean over pick up the leo and hand it to over. “Here you go. Anything else?” I bowed my head and pretended to be preoccupied with Lion, positioning him, just so, propping him up so that he’d be guarding the front of my makeshift work surface. Having no bones he’d be a slumped over drunken guard, but a guard nonetheless. “No.” “Are you sure?” “I’m. Fine.Janet.” I slammed my eyes shut and did my best to steady myself. I couldn’t let her see me like this. I couldn’t let her see me so close to breaking down. If I was going to cry, it’d be on my terms and no one else’s. It would be because I’d decided to be a jackass and scream at the world, not because I was overwhelmed by anything in particular. “Why do you call me that?” she asked. My eyes opened. “Why do you call me Janet?” Finally. Something to use to sharpen myself; steel myself from more complex thoughts. Something to be angry at! “What do you mean?” I said. “We’re alone. There’s no pressure or expectation that I talk about you in a certain way. That was the deal. Or did that deal only apply to my first day in Beouf’s?” “It’s still valid,” Janet said. “But why do you call me that? Why ‘Janet’?” I raised my eyebrow in challenge. I sure as hell wasn’t calling her ‘Mommy’. “What would you prefer?” She held out the palm of her hand as a soft, non-threatening gesture. “Nothing,” she said. “Janet’s fine. It’s just...why ‘Janet’?” I had no idea what she was talking about and it must have shown. “Like, unless you’re really mad and saying their whole name, you tend to call Amazons by our last names. Why am I ‘Janet’?” My temples started to buzz. Was that true? I hadn’t consciously noticed before. I’d called her Grange before, hadn’t I? When we first met? “No...?” “Like, I think you sometimes used to call Forrest ‘Raine’, but this feels different.” It did. It was. “No…?” “Why is that?” Inside my own mind, I felt like the walls were closing in. I was naked. Vulnerable. “Because you used to be my friend.” It didn’t have the effect I was aiming for. “Mrs. Beouf used to be your friend, too. You always called her Beouf.” A little glass tube was being constructed around me and a giant hand was shoving me back down all over again. “I don’t...I mean...I didn’t...I don’t…” Reaching in and taking away my wedding ring. “No…?” “It’s fine. I like it. I like ‘Mommy’ better,” she blushed, “but calling me ‘Janet’ is fine, too.” My tongue was a desert. “Okay…” I stopped talking again. I finished grading the spelling test, then accepted some basic algebra worksheets from her. The weekend seemed even longer after that.

Chapter 28: Meanwhile, On the Sky Turtle! Katlynn screamed as she fell through the darkness of the cave! She’d thought she was right on Tommy’s heels when she saw his name written in electric blue algae. If he was, he was probably dead, just like she was. Why the hell had she walked into the clock? Why hadn’t she woken Mom up? She didn’t know. She probably never would know, now. All she did know was that she’d been stirred from her dream by the old clock in the living room going off. BONG! BONG! BONG! It didn’t chime that often, she could have sworn; certainly not that loudly. But when she woke up, she felt compelled to check on Tommy to make sure he was okay. Twin or not, he needed more care and consideration than she did; it’s just how it was, how it always had been. The loud noise of the clock could have sent him into a panic attack. Yet he wasn’t in his bed. The front and back doors were still locked, and her and Mom’s keys were still on the hooks, (of course Tommy didn’t have his own keys). The only thing out of place was how the front panel to that old grandfather clock was now wide open. Leave it to Tommy to want to play hide and seek (and wreck one of Mom’s antiques) in the middle of the night. Katlynn didn’t find Tommy, though. She found a strange and spooky pathway through a dark cave. It was like a certain blonde Victorian girl crawling through a hole, with Tommy as the White Rabbit. Only there wasn’t the pleasantly slow fall so that she could wave goodbye to her cat. It’s surprising what goes through one’s brain when they’re plummeting to their doom. “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!” If someone were far off enough, it might not sound like a poor girl shrieking at her imminent death as much as a random bird screeching as it flew overhead. She was usually more eloquent than this, but “EEEEEEEEEEEEK!” comes out much faster and more efficiently than “Dear God I’m going to die, please forgive me, save me save me save me, I want this to be a dream but I’m so certain that, it’s real I don’t want to die I don’t want to die!” Her fall lasted less than a second before a strange cushioned feeling,like falling into a safety net, or more accurately; an inflatable crash pad. Her straight drop turned into a skidding roll as she clattered into a soft clutter. Balls?! Balls?! Why was she surrounded by balls? She’d somehow stumbled out of a Guillermo Del Toro film and into the playplace at McDonald’s. Katlynn didn’t swim as much as she jump, climbed to the edge. She was grateful when a friendly hand reached down to help pull her up; a bit afraid, too, but mostly grateful. “Katlynn?” a familiar voice asked. “You’re...early…?” On her knees Katlynn looked up from the grass, and found a familiar face. “Cameron?” No. Not quite Cameron. The face was the same, but this girl’s hair was longer; Cameron never needed to tie anything back. Her dress was infinitely less revealing than anything Cameron might wear, too. Cameron liked shorts that showed off her legs and shirts that showed off her boobs. The bonnet was definitely not something Cameron would be wearing outside of Halloween (and Cameron normally wore less clothes for a costume, not more). The girl in front of her wore something that could best be described as Ren Faire cosplay. She wore a long flowing gown; the kind where the skirt would have to be hiked up in order to run. And although the bust of the dress accentuated the breasts with ruffles, the girl’s flesh was completely obfuscated. Oh and then there was the pointy ears. “Cameron?” the elven women said. “My name is Theodosia.” She helped Katlynn to her feet. “Now come along. If we dally much longer, your pre-punctuality shall be for naught.” The woman with Cameron’s face turned around and started walking away. Her tone wasn’t forceful, but it had an air of authority about it; like a doting teacher. Her accent seemed different from a moment ago, too. When Katlynn had been looking down at the grass, she could’ve sworn that Cameron was there beside her. Now her voice was different. Her voice more nasally, her syllables more clipped. Pseudo-English. It sounded like Cameron doing an impression- or slipping into character- than how her schoolmate normally talked. Emotionally off balance, Katlynn ran after Cameron’s doppelganger. “Cameron! Wait!” “I already told you, silly girl,” The lady with Cameron’s voice said. “I’m Theodosia. Now let’s go. We don’t want to be late for tea.” She turned to go. The tiny field-the ball pit oasis as it were- quickly ended at a near perfect tree-line. It was less of a forest and more of a garden. It lacked that beautiful chaos so often found in nature. “Late for tea?” Katlynn echoed, feeling stupid. Then something clicked. Tea? Late? Falling? Fancy dress and snooty English accents? This seemed like something out of a certain Disney cartoon. Katlynn took a moment to examine herself and sure enough her own clothing had changed. White tights. Black Mary Janes. The dress was a light, almost salmon colored pink, but otherwise it was an identical style and cut to the iconic Alice. “Am I dreaming?” Cameron’s clone stopped and tittered behind her hand. “Dreaming?” she said. “Dreaming? Dear girl, do you really think that you’d tumble down a ramp into a ball pit only to find out that you’re late for tea in a dream?” “Yeah…?” Again, Theodosia as she called herself, giggled through her nose, mouth obscured. “And I suppose you came to that tunnel that was...what…?...Under your bed?” “A clock, actually,” Katlynn volunteered. The prim and proper woman took Katlyn’s hand in her own. “And you still think this is a dream?” “Yeah…?” “If you insist, dear.” Theodosia’s tone was cheerfully condescending. She continued walking, leading Katlynn along. “If you insist.” In perfect step with each other, the pair walked into the too-perfect forest. “Why do you have Cameron’s face?” “Why does it matter?’ Theodosia replied. “If this is a dream like you think it is, perhaps it is the only face you can imagine for me.” Katlynn couldn’t argue with that, logic. “Okay. Fair enough.” A sharp right turn caused the girl to yelp as they came to a second clearing. A quiet little party was already in progress. It was much tamer than Katlynn would have expected; perhaps because she lacked the manic imagination to really create something worthy of Lewis Carrol. The table was perfectly round, for starters, not an absurdly long rectangle All the cups and pots in perfect order. There was no funny man with a giant hat or a talking rabbit; and Katlynn suspected there would be no mouse hidden in any of the pots. In place of the Mad Hatter and March Hare were two of Katlynn’s friends; two of the very few she counted on. “Jenny? Margo?” Like her, they both wore a variant of the ol’ Alice getup. Over white tights, Jenny wore a sunflower yellow, with a matching bow, and Margo wore a vibrant leaf green dress with a white apron covering. Margo’s brownish-red hair was put up in pigtails, making her look even more toddlerish than the dress alone might accomplish. Like the so-called Theodosia, their ears were also pointy like those lame aliens from Star Trek. The girls giggled at their names, but otherwise said nothing. “Katlynn,” Theodosia said. “This is Adora, and Ambrosia.” She gestured to Jenny and Margo respectively. “We’ll be having a lovely tea party, today. Please do join us.” It was a command phrased as an invitation. “Please, Katlynn! Pleeeease!” The other two were practically bouncing; the bodies of eighteen year olds doing puppy dog eyes and pouty lips. If peer pressure could be cut with a juvenile guilt trip and turned into a person, this is what it might look like. They spoke with the same clipped not-quite British accent. She shrugged. Seeing as this was a dream, Katlynn figured that she might as well go along with it. She took her seat in a matching pink wooden chair and scooted herself up roughly to the table. Adora and Ambrosia, as they were called, had their own matching yellow and green chairs. There was no matching one for the more elaborately dressed girl. That was odd come to think of it. Comparatively, Jenny and Margo’s dream-twins seemed so much more simply dressed than Cameron’s. Theodosia seemed more mature, more authoritative as a result. “Where’s yours?” she asked Theodosia, with not a matching violet chair to be seen. A thin smile spread across Theodosia’s lips. “I’m the hostess, dear. It’d be rude of me to be seated before my guests are served. Don’t you know the first thing about tea-parties?” Something about that unnerved Katlynn, but rather real or imagined, she really didn’t know the first thing about tea-parties. This was a dream anyways, so her brain was just making up the rules as she went along. “I guess not.” Picking up the pristine white teapot, the pointy eared Cameron went and poured steaming brown tea into dainty cups. “Thank you, Miss Theodosia,” Jenny/Adora said. “You’re very welcome, Adora,” Theodosia replied. “Thank you, Miss Theodosia,” Margo/Ambrosia nodded her head demurely. “You’re quite welcome, Ambrosia.” The tea entered Katlynn’s cup. She looked at it and squinted. She could have sworn that the cup had been made of some kind of fancy fine china a second ago. But the stuff had lost some of its luster with the tea. As the cup was filled, it seemed more and more to be made of sturdy but altogether cheap plastic. “Ahem…” Katlynn looked up to the Victorian school-marm version of Cameron. “Oh, sorry. Thank you, Miss Theodosia.” “You’re welcome, little Katlynn.” Katlynn took no notice at being called ‘little”. She was short. That last growth spurt her pediatrician had promised just before high school had never come. Holy crud, had she not been to the doctor since middle school? A quick sip and then Katlynn’s face scrunched up in revulsion. Being from Scrumpton, Georgia, Katlynn had never had tea that wasn’t sugared into oblivion and chilled to near arctic temperature. Even the three times she’d had hot tea for a sore throat, there’d been so much honey stirred in that an entire hive could have supped. This? This was just hot leaf water. It was like someone had taken lawn clippings and turned it into a broth. The other tea drinkers seemed just as off put. Pointy elf ears wiggled and shuddered as dainty lips swallowed the vile stuff. “Oh dear,” Theodosia said, setting down the tea pot. “Perhaps I made it too strong.” “Yes please!” All three girls responded, putting their cups down. Theodosia picked up a sugar bowl and started spooning the powdery white stuff in. “Three scoops a piece and no more.” Cameron’s twin said in her snooty accent. “You three are sweet enough, otherwise.” Gingerly, Katlynn took a sip. Better. Not good, but better. “Would anyone like milk?” Three hands went skyward. Such a weird dream. She definitely wouldn’t be telling Jenny or Margo about this. Cameron wasn’t anywhere in the ballpark of a possibility. “Would you like Mother’s Milk or Maiden’s Milk?” Theodosia asked Katlynn. While not a straight A student, Katlynn knew enough to blanche at being offered Mother’s Milk. “Is Mother’s Milk what I think it is?” “That depends,” Theodosia smiled coyly, “what do you think it is?” Not by coincidence, Katlynn felt, Cameron’s elf-twin chose that moment to adjust her breasts. Also not by coincidence, Katlynn caught a glimpse of her friend’s breasts and realized just how big they were! Pointy ears and longer more done up hair weren’t the only differences between real Cameron and dream Cameron. A hot blush flared up on Katlynn’s face. “Maiden’s Milk, please.” Just a splash of milky white stuff dripped out of the saucer, transforming the dark brown water into a creamy tan color. The other guests got Maiden’s milk. “Drink up before it gets cold, dears.” “Heee-heeee!” Ambrosia giggled, her pigtails bobbing as she did. “It tickles all the way down!” “All the way through,” the fancier dressed woman corrected. Straw haired Adora giggled too as she set her cup down on the table. A shudder rocketed through Katlynn and she let out a full fledged guffaw as she felt her ribs being tickled from the inside out! She almost dropped the plastic tea cup, as she reflexively hugged her ribs, trying to block invisible fingers that wouldn’t let up, to no avail. It was good in a way. “More?” the hostess offered. “Yes please,” Katlynn slid her cup closer. “Good girl.” Tea, sugar, and milk were served in short order. The others were getting their seconds, too. This was a perfectly pleasant dream, once she got used to the weirdness of seeing her classmates in fantasy garb. She wondered absentmindedly as she took her next sip if she’d wake up giggling. On a more serious note, she worried if she might accidentally wake up wet. Mom would be very cross if she did. “What kind of example are you setting for your brother?” she might say, even though Tommy hadn’t woke up in dry pants since...ever. A wave of delightful tickles went so far up Katlynn’s spine -starting at the soles of her feet- she had to slam her eyes short to stem the happy tears. When she opened them, she put her empty cup down and looked to the side so she could wipe her eyes. When she did, however, something caught her eye. “What are those?” she said, pointing to the three vehicles parked at the edge of the clearing. Vehicles was a poor word to describe them, but they were the only vocabulary that Katlynn had at her disposal. They were roughly the size of a thin, single bed, but elevated above the ground like a hospital gurney. The wheels were gigantic however, with fancy spokes, and the surrounding rim almost made it look like a crib. At the foot of the bed was a bar for pushing, and a kind of convertible roof lay at the head. Quickly, Katlynn looked to the elf variant of Cameron and back to the wheeled beds. Something clicked. Strollers. They looked like those old timey strollers that babies used to ride in. Stroller wasn’t the right word; carriage? Yeah. Carriage. At the edge of the tea party’s clearing were three very big baby carriages. And just like their dresses and chairs, they were pink, yellow, and green, but not a violet one in sight. “Excuse me,” Katlynn spoke up. “What are those?” All three of the pointy eared dream people looked to where Katlynn was pointing. “The Prams?” Theodosia said. A breeze blew across Katlynn’s bare legs, causing her to shiver a bit. “They’re for taking us home,” the elf-girl in the yellow dress said. “And naps!” green-dress and pigtails added. Yellow dress giggled, adding to the banter with even more of a fake British accent. “And nappy changes!” “Usually in that order. Nap and then nappy change.” “Or nappy change, then nap, then nappy change again!” Katlynn couldn’t tell if it was the elf girls’ laughter, the elf woman’s approving smile, or the breeze on her legs that made her shiver, but shiver she did. Bare legs? Katlynn looked down at her legs to see her white tights receding. It was as if they were melting, but going up her legs instead of dripping down. “What the-?” was all she managed to get say before the ground dropped beneath her. She was shrinking! No, not quite. Instead the chair she was in was growing taller. Katlyn’s hands were on the edge of the seat, getting ready to slide herself off of the extending chair when - THWAP! A tray slammed over from above her, sounding like a giant mousetrap, and leaving Katlynn trapped with her arms pinned to her sides. The other girls at the table got similar treatment, though their arms weren’t pinned down. More importantly, as their white tights vanished up their dresses, they seemed more than pleased. “It tickles!” “All the way through,” Elf Cameron said. The tray obscuring her view, Katlynn couldn’t be one hundred percent sure of what was happening to her clothes, but a few of the other girls gave her an idea. The tights were rising up, merging with their underwear, as the legs of the chairs elongated above the tiny tea table. Katlynn’s underwear was changing too, her panties were getting thicker by the second. She heard a crinkle as she squirmed in the seat. Again, she couldn’t help but flash back to middle school before she had switched to tampons. The thing about panties was that unless one was specifically thinking about them, they didn’t feel the thin modesty-protecting garment. This, though? Katlynn felt it. How could she not? Her thighs were being separated. She was sitting what felt like half an inch taller. If what she was feeling wasn’t any clue as to what she was wearing, looking at the other elf girls confirmed what she was wearing. She knew their panties were thickening as well, because the hems of their dresses were shortening; shortening so much that they probably couldn’t be honestly be referred to as dresses. Even though the trays and angles obfuscated them a bit, there was no mistaking what the other girls were wearing as anything other than big puffy white diapers; like something a toddler might wear. She was wearing a diaper, too, Katlynn had to admit. And judging by the other guests’ dresses, hers just barely covered the top of her own nappy. Two elven thumbs went into elven mouths as a final round of girlish giggles rang out. “Pheee-pheee!” The poor girl barely had time to process as another round of tickles hid her insides. “Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! STAAAAAAHP!” She cried out. But it wouldn’t. The tickling was in her armpits. “Heeee-heee! STAAAAAHP!” She was crying again. Then her ribs. “NOOOO-O-O-O! STAAAAAHP!” Her howls of laughter. Then her tummy, creeping down to her thighs. IT TICKLES ALL THE WAY THROUGH. That’s when the highschool senior’s bladder let loose. Even though the tickling continued, Katlynn stopped laughing, such was her shock. Her mouth agape, and her breath fast and shallow, she was keenly aware as her bladder spasmed and released its contents into her diaper. One time, she couldn’t quite remember when, Katlynn sat down on a park bench just after a rain. She hadn’t seen the puddle, but felt it as it spread across her pants, soaking her; subtle at first but then blossoming into full wetness. Her current experience wasn’t all too dissimilar. Her diaper was soaking up her accident almost as quickly as she was releasing it, with a growing warmth blooming beneath her and then subsiding into a subtle, muted squish. Was this how Tommy felt whenever he had an accident in his Pull-Ups? To make matters of worse, either the feeding tray that restrained her had widened, or Katlynn had lost just a few pounds. Her freedom of movement was still non-existent, however. Like a snake a kind of harness had slithered around her chest, keeping her back pinned to the seat, and a bib had manifested just over her breasts. Wanting to scream, but too humiliated to vocalize, Katlynn’s body took over. Her lips retreated inward and she placed her thumb between them, biting down to distract herself, and giving her digit the occasional suck when the emotions threatened to become too much. Stuck in a highchair, wearing baby clothes, sucking on her thumb, sitting in a wet diaper. This was just a step below what Tommy went through almost every day. If whatever weird genetic condition that expressed itself in Tommy had been passed down to her, this is how she could have ended up. This is what this nightmare (and that’s what it was) was about. This is what was essentially her twin’s life- being treated like a baby even though by all rights he should be an adult. The only difference is Katlynn was smart enough to be embarrassed by it. She’d treat him better when she woke up from this, she promised herself. This was a literal wakeup call Her nightmare wasn’t over yet. While she’d finished peeing herself, Nightmare Cameron was replacing the other baby-elves’ thumbs with bottles. Katlynn was next. “This will help you sleep until you get to Nanny’s.” Her lips suckled on the rubber nipple and as the ice cold contents entered her mouth, Katlynn’s tongue danced with delight! This was the most delicious thing she’d ever tasted. The phrase ‘an orgasm in your mouth’ to describe particularly delicious flavors had always seemed crude to her, but here it seemed apt. Theodosia or Cameron or whatever the elf’s name was, saw the look of intense delight in Katlynn’s eyes and seemed pleased. She nodded. “Good girl. This will help you sleep until you get to Nanny’s.” Yes. That would be a good way to end this dream. Swallow the milk. Orgasm in her diaper. Then go to sleep. Then wake up in her own bed. But before she swallowed that first gulp, Katlynn had the most disturbing thought of all: What if this wasn’t a dream? This stuff might taste amazing, but that might just make it amazing tasting poison. As Theodosia turned her back to check on other babies with familiar faces, Katlynn started to grunt and make gulping sounds, all while letting the milk dribble out the corners of her mouth. She was all suck, but no swallow. Hopefully, her captor wouldn’t notice and once or twice, Katlynn dared to turn her head to the side and spit. She only had to worry about the pointy eared woman who wasn’t wearing diapers. The other two seemed like they were in la-la land. While she worked at her deception, Tommy’s twin was treated to a show of watching Margo/Ambrosia, with her green dress and ginger pigtails being unstrapped from her seat, tray removed from the table, and limp form draped over the now slightly larger woman’s frame and have her back patted. “That’s right, Ambrosia “ Theodosia cooed. “Take one for the team. We can turn you back after this. Though Malacus knows I’ll tease you about it.” The elf-baby hybrid with Margo’s face let out a mighty belch and sighed contentedly. “Good girl.” Katlynn almost did an involuntary spit take as she watched what was essentially Cameron pull open the back of what was essentially Margo’s diaper and take a look down inside. Holy shit! Had she pooped herself? Had Katlynn? All of a sudden, the young lady felt as if her own potty training was very much in question. Katlynn kept watching, leerily, as the green carriage piloted itself over, and a pointy eared Cameron laid her green dressed charge down in it. “Let’s change you, you soggy thing.” A chorus of cringe inducing giggles filled the air as Katlynn watched a not quite adult get their diaper changed right in front of her. The fresh Huggies and wipes came from a bag just underneath the carriage. The used diaper was tossed carelessly into the woods. Next was a not-quite Jenny, dressed in yellow and gurgling nonsense. Katlynn wasn’t exactly experienced in babysitting, but the sag in the back of Adora’s diaper signaled what would be found inside before the elf-sitter peaked inside. “This suits you, Adora. It really does.” While the second diaper change was going on, Katlynn very subtly, very carefully unscrewed the lid and watered the nearest patch of grass behind her highchair. She could do that much at least. Finally it was her turn. As she was draped over the elf’s shoulder, having her back patted, she listened to horrible and confusing things. “Terribly sorry about this, Katlynn.” The not-Cameron cooed. She gave Katlyn a few firm pats on the back. “Truth be told, we were considering letting you go, keeping the family legacy going as it were. At the very least, we were going to save you for last; ease you into it like your brother.” What about Tommy?! “But we miscalibrated the clock and woke you up by mistake, and here we are,” she continued. “It would have been fun to drag this out, actually. We do love the Wonderland tropes. Carrol was so much more fanciful than Lewis or Tolkien. It would be nice to play the refined madam instead of some femme fatale. Ugh. Boy stuff. They’re all better off in nappies if you ask me.” The pats were coming faster and harder now. There was a bit of a bobbing gait to her walk. She was growing impatient. Katlynn quickly sucked air into her gut and let out a little burp. It was a trick she’d learned back in grade school and had stopped doing when the girls kept thinking it gross and the boys stopped being impressed. “Good girl.” Ever cunning, Kaitlynn didn’t flinch or shudder as she felt her diaper pulled back and inspected; she didn’t recoil as her padded backside was given a gentle pat. “Just wet.” The girl was bone still as she was laid down in her own personal carriage. What she wasn’t was bone dry. “Still, you’ll sleep better if you have a fresh nappy on.” Don’t think about it don’t think, about it don’t think about it. Katlynn tried to not think about the sound of the tapes being ripped open. But the velcro scritching sounded like fireworks in her ears. She tried not to think of how loose and disgusting the once snug undergarment now felt. But now the used diaper was little more than a wet rag on her privates. Desperately, she prayed for strength so that she wouldn’t fixate on how casually this monster with Cameron’s face was violating her with baby wipes, all while humming a jaunty tune. Whatever higher power there was didn’t hear her as every stroke and caress felt like a breach of intimacy. There’s a strange vulnerability of being half naked in front of someone. Frankly. Cameron didn’t like it. She didn’t have to wait or feel vulnerable long. When the monster pivoted to toss away the wet diaper, Katlynn made her move. With a heave, she rolled over and began dragging the carriage with her. A few strides later, she was rocketing downhill. In Katlynn Dean’s hand, this wasn’t a baby buggy, it was a land sled! “Katlynn!” Cameron’s voice called out after her. “Come back! You’re too close to the edge of the shell!” Shell? What shel-? For the second time that day, Katlynn Dean found herself plummeting to her death. The second plummet, however, lacked any kind of safety ramp, or ball pit. It was also considerably longer. “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” Given her velocity and state of panic, it was much easier to scream than to ponder aloud, “Oh my god I’m going to die; I’m too young to die; I’m going to die half naked from running away from a diaper change; I’m too old to die half naked from running away from a diaper change; and is that a giant flying turtle above me?!” It can’t be guessed exactly how long it took for Katlynn to regain consciousness. What is known, is that she did regain consciousness, very much alive, and with an absolutely trashed baby buggy beneath her. “They don’t build ‘em like this anymore…” She shifted, and painfully pulled herself to her feet. “Where am I?” she wondered, before realizing she didn’t want anyone answering that question. To the naked eye, it would seem that a too-perfect forest had been replaced by a too-perfect hunting field. Wide open plains, with only the occasional bush for modesty. A quick dig through the wreckage found only diapers, all in her size. It was still better than than Donald Ducking it or going full Eve, Katlynn supposed. Trippiest. Nightmare. Ever. Unfolding one of the diapers, Katlynn found herself staring at it like a grandmaster stares at a chess board...only she had next to no clue how to play chess. Finally, she decided to wing it, laying down on the ground. No wonder babies needed help putting these things on. This really was a two person job. “I really hope my bed isn’t wet.” She grunted as she awkwardly yanked it up over her crotch and fiddled with the tapes. Standing up, Katlynn knew something didn’t feel right. Her cheeks were hanging out the back. “Ugh,” Katlynn moaned. “Don’t tell me I put the darn thing on backwards!” The sound of hoofbeats, and Katlynn’s brain went on high alert. Like a frightened squirrel she darted for the nearest bush and closed her eyes as the gallop slowed to a standstill. “Halt! Who goes there?!” The man on the horse called out. Katlynn remained silent. Again, there was something familiar about the voice. It was strong, and masculine, but oddly confident...which made it seem foreign. No faux British accent at least. “I know thou art here, interloper. I sensed you all the way from the River Bank!” Again. Katlynn was as still as she could manage. She couldn’t manage enough. “I see you trembling from behind that shrub!” the mounted man called out. “Come out now, or I’ll run you down.” Somehow, Katlynn sensed that he wasn’t bluffing. Maybe it was just that mowing people over with a horse wasn’t something that people normally bluffed about. Wearing nothing but a half-dress and a backwards diaper, Katlynn emerged and connected a face to the voice threatening her. If she hadn’t already released her bladder at the tea party, then her Huggies would most certainly be wet, now. “Katlynn?” It wasn’t a man on a horse, but a half man, half horse that was looking down at her. And the man part of the horse was arguably the last man she would’ve guessed. “Mr. Jordan?”

Chapter 66: In Search of Silver Bullets As a general rule, I don’t believe in karma; not the pop-culture version, anyhow. I don’t believe that people who do good in the world are rewarded so that despite their suffering they’ll see a net positive and that people who do bad are punished despite their prosperity so that they’ll experience a net negative. The world wouldn’t be like it is if that were the case. I don’t think there’s a balancing force to the universe that puts people where they need or deserve to be; not in this life, anyways. Standing there in the OT/PT Therapy Room naked save for a clean diaper; alone save for Maxine Winters; I believed in one thing: Amazons talked to each other. The double whammy my crew and I had pulled on Skinner and Sosa had made its way to the Physical Therapist through the usual watercooler gossip chain. “I think I’m going to work with Clark one-on-one today,” she’d said cheerily enough. Damn. No chance to be a ‘bad influence’. No big deal. I could present my findings on the best ways to mess with Winters to the others at the old oak tree on the playground. Beouf and company could only keep me from the other Leaguers for so long. Notes could be passed. Secrets could be whispered. Even broken Littles like Ivy and nearly totalled headcases like Sandra Lynn and Tommy unconsciously observed an ‘Us and Them’ mentality. An extra wrinkle was thrown in when Winters started undressing me the moment the door was closed behind us. The world turned neon green when she yanked my shirt up over my head. My arms were all caught up in the sleeves when she yanked down my shorts. “Why are you-?” Shoes and socks went off, shorts followed. I finished taking off my shirt and was given a ‘good job!’ for my troubles. “You could have given me a little warning, Maxine.” I muttered, searching for even a tiny glint of that outrage I’d seen when I invoked Sosa’s first name. Not so much as a twinkle of anger. So much for that being her weakness. Internally, I sighed. If life had meant for it to be easy for me, I’d have been born taller. The dig had been worth a shot. “Sorry Clark,” she said. “We’re going to do some crawling today and I didn’t want you to get your nice clothes all dirty.” She put my clothes on the same chair that Sosa had occupied before. Bullshit. There was nothing inherently ‘nice’ about a neon green toddler t-shirt and shiny black soccer shorts with an elastic waistband. Almost all clothing that Amazons made with Littles in mind was meant to be crawled and rolled around in. The floor might have a dust bunny or two, but the custodial staff did it’s job. Eat off it? No. Crawl around for a couple of minutes? Sure. Winters just wanted to see me in my diaper. Whether by Janet, Beouf, Zoge, or just intuition from the baby shower, Winters knew how I felt about being seen in my plastic backed padding. The joke was on her: Amazons saw my diaper all the time. I had become all but numb to it. The icy cold grip of paralyzing fear and embarrassment only came over me when a friend or an actual child saw me in that state. I no longer had any Amazon friends. My skin was pale, and no hint of blush anywhere on it. “Alright,” I said. “So what are we gonna do?” “We’re gonna practice reciprocal crawling.” I was about to try and pick apart her rationale in some form or another when she preempted me. “Crawling can strengthen your shoulders, arms, and back, and makes your wrists, fingers, and ankles more flexible.” Damn. She beat me to it. She’d said this kind of schpiel to I-don’t-know how many Amazon parents at I.E.P. meetings when either she or Sosa brought up crawling. “Shifting between crawling and sitting works your core, abdominal muscles, and hips, and is good for posture,” she kept on prattling. “And learning to shift your focus from the floor to other objects in the room is good for visual tracking and hand eye coordination and rocking on all fours is an excellent source of sensory stimulation for some.” I lightly chewed on my bottom lip. On some level, I appreciated that she was at least talking somewhat clinically to me. On the other hand, like so many other Typical Amazon scenarios, she was using real science to mask a completely different goal. She just wanted me to get used to crawling around on the floor. “That’s why we’re gonna work on crawling. And I promise,” she smiled at me. “You’ll be able to do it.” So much for that respect. Sosa and Winters communicating after hours: confirmed. Winters indicated the rest of the space. “We’re going to do a kind of hide and seek scavenger hunt. I’ve hidden rubber ducks all around the room in different nooks and crannies. Find them all and you’ll get a special prize.” I did a quick scan. Under a low table where my preschoolers no doubt used to do cut and paste activities with Sosa , I saw a tiny yellow rubber duck that would fit neatly into the palm of my hand. Like an egg hunt, a few were always in the open; chum in the water to entice the kiddies to find the rest. “How many ducks?” “Ten.” I chewed on my lip some more. “Any of them hidden? Ballpit? Drawers?” “Of course they’re hidden,” Winters said, kindly enough. “But nothing is in a spot where you can’t reach or where you’re not allowed. I don’t want you to get in trouble.” That made one of us. This could still have been another bit of gaslighting, I thought. ‘Keep looking baby Clark, you’ll find that tenth ducky’, when really there were only nine but meanwhile I’d been forced to crawl on the carpet for close to half an hour. “What if I don’t find them?” I asked, looking up at Sosa. Sosa looked back down at me. “I think you’ll find them. Most Littles are good at this game.” “But what if I don’t?” Amazons were like stage magicians. What they didn’t say was often just as important as what they did. “Will you show me where you hid them if I run out of time?” Winters chuckled. “You’ll be fine, Clark.” I stared at her, unblinking and resolute. “Okay.” she sighed. “Yes. I’ll show you if you can’t find them. No giving up, though. Most Littles are really good at this game.” “Like Ivy?” I prodded. “Like your friend, Chaz.” Accidentally, I scowled. Obviously, Chaz was good at this game. When Amazons fuck up your equilibrium to the point where crawling is your only option, you get good at seeing the world from a crawler’s eye view. If Chaz was getting good at this game, it was a bad thing for him. I pushed that bit of contempt for my youngest pupil back into my subconscious, and looked for any other loopholes that might be exploited. “Do I have to carry them all at once?” I pictured myself having to drag around half a dozen baby duck toys in the crook of one arm, constantly dropping them. The therapist pointed to a bright yellow plastic bucket. “Nope. When you find a duck, you just drop it in there and keep looking for more.” Damn. For what it was, this seemed fair. Too fair. I had to be missing something. There had to be something to entice me or frustrate me or desensitize me so that crawling seemed like a better or more natural habit than it was. “What happens if I cheat?” I asked. “Like what happens if I get up and walk or something?” “No prize,” Winters said simply. “You don’t put the ducks back or in new hiding places so I have to start all over again?” That seemed like a good way to keep me on the floor. Like a horse, Winters’s lips flapped, pushing air through them in an almost laugh. “Nope. I’ll just give you another chance or find something else for you to do. Simple as that. I’m not gonna crawl around to hide them all over again because you’re feeling cheeky, mister.” She’d definitely been talking to Sosa. Heh. Maxine Winters crawling around on the floor. There’s something I would’ve liked to see. Something that if it was brought attention to in the right way, might suitably get under her skin. Yeah… maybe...could be fun. “”Recyclical crawling?” I purposely mispronounced the word and put on my best ‘confused kid’ face. “Wussat?” “Just a fancy word for crawling and taking turns with your arms and legs,” she explained. “Left leg, right arm, right leg, left arm. That kind of thing.” I dropped to my hands and knees. “Like this?” I pretended to ask. I pushed my arms ahead and then hop-dragged my feet behind me. I moved like a cross between a slug and a chimp. This was on purpose. “No no no,” Winters told me. “You’ve got to alternate.” “Altercate?” “Alternate. Take turns with your hands and legs. Hand turn. Leg turn. Hand turn. Leg turn.” I did the exact same thing that I had done before. I looked like a gorilla with two bum legs. Now though, I parroted her oversimplified explanation. “Hand turn. Leg turn. Hand turn. Leg turn.” To some people, there is nothing more frustrating than trying to teach or explain something and getting the sense that the other person just isn’t getting it. I’m one of those people. So was Winters. We can smell our own. It’s how I knew she’d be an easy crack. The lack of other Littles around made pride a non-factor. It was a good thing that the movement allowed me to have my back turned or my head down. If not, Winters might have seen the damn near maniacal grin that was peeking through my facade. “No, kiddo, not like that. You have to move your arms and legs one at a time.” She didn’t even notice it, not consciously, but she was already coming closer to the ground. Closer to my level. “One at a time? One? At? A? Time?” Again. I did the exact same thing, only now I did it with an incredible deliberate slowness. “One. At. A. Time.” Maxine was on her knees and looking at me the way a mechanic might look at a smoking jalopy. I kept my face blank and did my best to imitate the same kind of passive innocence that so many actual children did when they were trying to be a brat and get away with it. The difference between brattiness and jackassery is chronological age. I was too old to be a brat; didn’t mean I wasn’t having fun acting like a jackass. An electronic ping from her pocket seemed to stir something in her brain. “If Miss Sosa was here, we could work your arms and legs together. Show you kinesthetically” Her eyes wandered over to the door. “Maybe I could borrow Miss Tracy…” Shit! She wasn’t taking the bait! Course correct! Course correct! “Can you show me what I’m doing wrong? Mrs. B says I’m more of a visual learner.” The inside of my tongue tasted like turned milk just from saying it. “Please?” Another ping from her pocket. “Good idea.” Wow. ‘Please’ really was a magic word. She got down to her knees and took a few shuffling scoots up beside me. Funny how she didn’t have to strip down to her granny panties and show off her pasty white skin and big butt. “Watch me closely.” She got another ping, and wrinkled her nose. She got back up to her knees long enough to reach into her pocket and look at the phone. “Not now,” she muttered, sounding irritated. Stupidly; carelessly; oh so fucking typically; she placed the phone on the edge of the ballpit and my eyes dilated like a junkie who had just seen his next fix. I’d already gotten her down on her hands and knees. I was just a few precious seconds away from getting her to crawl. What if...just what if...I could film it? Okay. No. That was a stupid idea. A power fantasy within a power fantasy. I didn’t have my crew there to run interference and there was no way that I was fast enough to snatch it, figure out her password, film her crawling around on the ground like a six month old, and then post it anywhere meaningful. She was literally just doing her job; it’s not like she couldn’t explain. I’d just be the ‘naughty baby’ that played with the camera. I was going to be the ‘naughty baby’ no matter what. The real question was how could I make it hurt. Her willingness to humor me was a weakness. How to exploit it? “I’m gonna stand up…” I said. “So I can get a better look.” “That’s fair,” Winters said. “You watching, bud?” I nodded. “Mmmhmmm…” Winters started properly crawling, slowly and deliberately, one limb then the other, like a dinosaur that was so heavy it had to keep three feet down to support its weight. I inched over to the ballpit. I didn’t know what I was going to do with the phone, but I’d figure something out. “When I say ‘reciprocal crawling’, I mean this type of crawling. Normal everyday crawling.” Notice how she didn’t say ‘like a baby’? She didn’t want me to make that connection, knowing that I’d resist. It really is all about what they don’t say... “Oooooh,” I said. “Crawling! Regular good old fashioned crawling!” I slapped my forehead. “Duh! Do I have to do it that slow?” The therapist rotated into a seating position. “No, sir. You can go as fast or as slow as you’re comfortable with and at your own pace.” Sir. Huh. Even then, hearing it felt kind of good. She was willing to participate too. In a lot of ways, Winters’s act was what Sosa and Skinner had been trying to achieve. “So what am I supposed to do?” I stalled. “Exactly?” The lady started to roll back over. “You’re supposed to…” she stopped and went back to facing me in a seated position. “You’re trolling me, aren’t you?” “Kinda…” “You knew exactly what I was talking about all along.” I took a step back, towards her phone. My lips retreated inside my mouth. “Maybe…” “You’re trying to trick me into doing all the hard work for you.” A nervous giggle from me “No…?” “Clark…” Coyly, I shrugged. “Okay. Ya got me.” She laughed through her nose. “They said you’d been acting up and getting tricksy.” Was I surprised that Maxine Winters had talked to Chandra Skinner or Jasmine Sosa, or Beouf? No, not at all. Was I relieved that even now my acts of malice were being written off as childish pranks? For once, yes, absolutely. Sometimes the difference between crazy and stupid is a degree of success. So I was going to let her be stupid and assume the best of me instead of antagonizing her directly and driving her crazy right away. “Can you show me?” I faux begged. “Just once?” I pinched my thumb and forefinger together and inched closer back towards the pit. “With the duck under the table right there?” Good naturedly, Winters rolled her eyes. “Fine. Points for cunning.” She rolled over onto all fours and crawled to the most obvious duck she’d hidden. “You crawl over. Like this.” I had my back up against the ballpit. “You grab the ducky, like this.” She palmed the toy. “Do they squeak?” “No,” she said. “But…” She crawled over to the bucket. “When you drop it in the bucket, this happens.” DING! My world started spinning in the best way possible. “Heeeeeee!” What a rush! It was like the jingling wrist rattle Renner had tried to pawn off on me, or the one given in stuffed animals in the courthouse, or the music from Sosa’s puzzle boxes, but on steroids. I stumbled back and accidentally knocked the cell phone into the ballpit. It was like getting tickled and spun around all at the same time. For all of half a second my guard came down and I felt positively fucking giddy despite myself. “There’s a false bottom and a sensor,” she explained. “When you add weight to it, it makes a happy little ringing noise.” I picked myself back up to my feet. “You like that, huh?” “Yeah….” I gasped. “Wait. NO!” DING! I didn’t have time to catch my breath before she dropped it in again. The world started spinning and I couldn’t help but laugh as I crumbled down to my knees and lowered to my hands to keep balance long enough for the world to stop spinning. Panting like I’d just survived a seven story drop, I felt my bladder empty into the front of my diaper. The unnatural combination of adrenaline, pleasure, and disorientation rocketing from zero to sixty had been enough to where I’d had an accident. A real one, too. Damn. I was planning to keep dry until at least after lunch to see if I could with all of the bottle feedings and juice breaks. A new realization hit me. Chaz had been good at this game. Maybe too good. There was a reason he was the only crawler in class. Amy might have been good at it too. MistuhGwiffun talked about this stuff and the drunken pleasurable sensation, but maybe there were long term side effects from too much use. In the back of my mind, I realized how this could be addictive; up until the point where there was literally no walking away from it. Poor Chaz. “Clark?” Winters cut in as I caught my breath. “You okay, baby?” I was inhaling through my nose and exhaling through my mouth to get it together. I stood up. “Did you wet your diaper?” Damn. No pants to hide the sudden swell or the sag, or the slight off-white discoloration. “Do you want me to take you back to your class for a change?” Inwardly I was fuming. Another no-win question being added to the pile of my life. I’d either be a compliant ‘good baby’ and paraded around in just my wet diaper, or give them an excuse to say that I was comfortable in my wet Monkeez. “No,” I huffed. “I’m okay. I’ll get changed. After this.” My decision came down to the phone and the opportunities it might yet provide. No chance I’d get changed, brought back, and get a chance to fuck with Winters’s phone. She’d miss having it. “Are you sure?” “Yeah.” “Alrighty then. Get crawlin’, buddy.” Wasting no time, I swung my leg over the side and tumbled into the ballpit, clattering around as rainbow hued globules buried on top of me. “Clark? What are you doing?” “Looking for the duck you might have hid!” I called back. I twisted myself and groped around until my hand clasped on the bulky rectangular device. “Why would I put a ducky in there if it wasn’t some place I thought you could reach by crawling?” I looked at the screen. Score of scores! She’d forgotten to lock it! “Um...this is our first session together? Maybe you didn’t know where I could and couldn’t crawl yet?” She had a new text message. “Clark,” her voice took on a playful warning tone. “Are you stalling and trying to play?” I opened the text message and skimmed: ❤️ Jazzie ❤️ Just saw the time realize who youre probably with nvm ttyl ❤️ Jazzie? With hearts on either side? “Clark? Are you stalling?” Quickly I scrolled back and saw: ❤️ Jazzie ❤️ - Eggs - Kale - Celery - Waffle Mix - Toilet Paper - Dog food - Bird seed - Bloody Mary Mix The biggest dumbest grin planted itself on my mug. I was not the world’s greatest detective. I didn’t need to be to figure out that Sosa and Winters were more than just co-workers, or that there was more than one reason Sosa bristled at being called ‘Jazzie’. Holy shit, this was a potential goldmine! “Clark?” “Huh?” Crap. I’d gotten distracted. “Uh..maybe.” I heard Winters huff. “Fine, but only because I’m in a good mood. Two minutes, then you’re back out and finding the other ducks for me. No more stalling.” “Yes ma’am.” I wanted to giggle. I wanted to cackle. Probably could have and gotten away with it. As far as she knew I was getting away with something, too. But I had to work quickly. It might not take two minutes for her to miss her phone. I started scrolling through to see if there was anything I could use. Dirty talk or pictures to forward somewhere scandalous. Anything embarrassing. Anything at all. Nothing at first glance. What I did find was: ❤️ Jazzie ❤️ Gotta take my phone to the shop Screen cracked I’ll get everything but the pet food. Sorry babe. How’d that happen? CG Will tell you more when i get home Why??? Ah. That makes sense. What? The food!! We are not getting a bird. Come on You take care of the dog ill take care of the bird We’ll talk about this at home. Trouble in paradise! Nice! What to do with this, though? I could taunt her about it? ‘Ha-ha! You work with your girlfriend! Aaaand you’re arguing! Jazzie and Maxie sitting in a tree…’ Nah. I could send an interesting text. A ‘fuck you bitch’ or a less vulgar ‘I told you not to bother me at work’. Perhaps an anxiety inducing ‘We need to talk’. That probably wouldn’t work either. Any strife I might sew with a random texts could easily be written off with ‘Oh, the baby got a hold of it’. Damn. What was I supposed to do with this gorgeous bit of gossip and how could I use it? Sosa and Winters were dating, living together even. Maybe married and just kept their last names. More importantly, they were having some kind of tiff. How to exploit that? What could I say to turn that against them? The sad truth was, that I couldn’t turn that against them. Me and Cassie had our share of fights, but any attack on her would have been like an attack on me, no matter how much we’d fought the night before. Love was funny like that. Sometimes Love is ‘never having to say you’re sorry’. Other times, it’s ‘nobody fucks with her but-’ I had an idea. I’d been searching for silver bullets to use against Winters. What I’d found, instead, was a cache of golden landmines. Time for me to lay some. I popped my head up above the ballpit. Winters was turned ninety degrees and staring at the second hand of the nearby clock. Softly, I put the phone back on the very edge. “Okay. Bored now.” “It’s not even two minutes.” Winters turned and looked at me. I swung my leg over and allowed myself to tumble back out onto the floor. “I know. Bored now. Let’s look for ducks.” She brightened. “Well, alright then!” I started crawling around on the floor, playing two games at once. The first game was finding ducks, the game my ex-colleague wanted me to play. The second game was waiting long enough to plant a few ideas and not have it seem suspicious. One-Mississippi. Two-Mississippi The heck was a ‘Missississippi’ anyways? Some long forgotten unit of time that just fit the meter, no doubt. It turned out I was closer than I thought by diving into the ballpit. One of the ducks had been artfully placed on the other side. “Good job!” Winters clapped lightly as I crawled back around to the yellow bucket. I crawled to the bucket and gently, very gently, lowered the rubber duck down into the bottom next to its twin. DING! “HAAAAAAAA!” I rolled over on my back, wanting to claw my eyes out to stop from grinning. Two seconds later, I was back on all fours. I rocked back and forth slightly, testing my balance. I wasn’t going to be a crawler by the end of this, but smokers didn’t develop emphysema after just one pack. Better to avoid it altogether. “Keep going. That’s two.” Thirty-four-Mississippi. Thirty-five-Mississippi. Grumbling, I started going for the one underneath the platform swing. I doubled back to the bucket. I reached to the rim and tilted it over. I held my breath waiting for Winters to right it or instruct me to. She merely observed. Slowly, I put the duck down on the side. Nothing. No dings. No complaints. Thank goodness. I pretended that I didn’t see the one underneath the trampoline until I got to a Hundred-Mississippi. That was about as long as I was willing to wait. “Miss Winters?” “Yes?” “What’s a good way to get what you want?” “I think I’d start with saying things like ‘please’ and ‘thank you’.” Typical. “Yeah,” I said. “But what if you really really want something, and they won’t let you have it?” “Grown-Ups know what’s best,” Winters said. “So if your Mommy’s not giving you something you want, there’s probably a good reason for it.” Not quite there yet. “I know, but…” “But what?” “I’m not thinking about my Janet...I mean my Mommy.” I wasn’t thinking about Janet at all, but a good way to sell a lie is to use the target’s expectations against them. Amazons weren’t the only magicians. Predictably, Winters countered that with. “Same goes for Mrs. B, kiddo.” “Not talking about her either,” I said. “Any Grown-Up.” I shifted onto my diaper and did my best to ignore the wet squish just barely under my butt. “Like what if it’s not a Grown-Up though?” I clarified. “Or like, someone who’s just as much of a Grown-Up as you are?” Take the hint, Winters. Take the hint! “Like a friend?” she asked. “Yeah” I pretended to be lost in thought for a moment, when I was really just thinking about anything other than the text I’d just seen. “Then you’d have to talk with your friend and try to convince them to give you what you want.” “What if they won’t listen to me?” I asked. “Then I guess you don’t get what you want.” My frown was a toddler's pantomime. “How is that fair?” “Life isn’t fair, bud.” More to herself she added. “Especially for Grown-Ups…” “Yeah?” My crawling back to the bucket gave me more proximity to her. “How is life not fair for Grown-Ups?” I plopped the duck in the tipped over bucket and saw a companion in the shade of the platform swing. Then I noticed that a waste basket wasn’t quite straight. “I was a Grown-Up. Seemed pretty fair then. Now I gotta beg and beg and beg just to get a good stuffie from one of the other kids at Janet’s...I mean Mommy’s….Little Voices meeting.” A gamble, perhaps, but half-truths of where I’d been and what I’d done were meant to put her mind at ease. “Do you have a Grown-Up who can come help you work things out between you and your Little friend?” She thought she was setting me up for a one-two punch. Quite the opposite by my counting. “Yeah…?” “Grown-Ups don’t have that.” I took the duck from beneath the trash can. “Oh...good point.” I doubled back and made sure she hadn’t put one inside the can either. She had. Clever. “So what do you do?” “Are you stalling again?” Two ducks made their way to their resting place without setting off the bell.. “No. See?” “Good. Keep going.” “What do Grown-Ups even argue about?” I did my best to sound mildly curious, but not wholly interested. Had I been any other size and not dressed as I was, such a question would seem absurd concerning my age. Feeding into her crazy was greasing the wheels I hoped, and getting her to let her guard down. I was already moving, playing two games at once. Of course she’d hidden a duck under the desk. Tiredly, the PT sighed. “Lots of things.” I was an adult trying to sound like a child trying to sound like an adult. Had to reel her in without looking like I was doing it. “Like what kind of paint to get at the paint store or something?” “Like... pets.” YES! Jackpot! Duck number seven joined the flock and I felt the kind of giddiness that I could conceal. “Pets?” “Yes. Keep looking.” I started crawling aimlessly. It was mattering less and less if I found those last three props. “I like pets. What’s there to argue about pets?” Even from as far away as I was I could practically hear the annoyed exhale blow out from Winters’s nostrils. “I’ve got a friend who wants to get a pet bird.” “What kind of bird?” I asked. “A Rocaw.” “That’s a type of parrot, right?” “Right.” I’m not sure how a three foot green feathered monstrosity that could bite off the hand of a Little was in the same ballpark as a parrot, but to most Amazons I was in the same ballpark as a child not yet ready for potty training. “I used to have a buddy who was a zookeeper. They said that parrots lived a long time and didn’t stop screaming. Kinda like big feathery toddlers that you don’t get to dress up or take anywhere and they smell funny.” Amy’s random batshit that weekend might just pay dividends. I’d have to thank her except no I wouldn’t. “Yup…Pretty much.” Winter’s sentences were becoming clipped. Her mouth was drawn into a tight thin line. Just thinking about this was drawing back unpleasant memories of conflicts not yet resolved. And with any luck, they wouldn’t be. I stumbled into duck number eight in the corner where I should have seen it earlier. “So just don’t get it. Right?” “It’s more complicated than that.” “How so?” “Because my friend thinks they really wants one and I don’t.” I crawled back, deposited it and kept going. “Why not?” “Because my friend wants the bird now, but I’m going to have to be the one to clean up after it and smell it and listen to its squawks and pick up the food for it when my friend is busy. I just want a Cerbernard.” I froze and looked up at her. “The big dog breed? With three heads?” I pretended that dogs big enough for me to saddle and ride were the most exciting things in the world. “They don’t actually have three heads,” Miss Winters told me. “but yes.” “I like dogs.” Not really. They’re big slobbery brutes and yappy annoying things that can’t be bothered or taught to even poop in a box. But my mark liked dogs, so I liked dogs, too. “Me too.” Winters nodded. “If I get a pet, I want one that won’t poop all over the place and isn’t squawking all the time.” She looked over by the door. How about that? I’d somehow missed rubber duck number nine by the door. Sucker was giving me hints! “And if you and your friend can’t both get pets because you’re sharing money or something so you have to decide which pet is best?” “It’s not that. It’s more complicated. Of course it was. Even a thirty-two year old child would know that. “Like what?” “Hmm...how to put this?” She fiddled with her fingers and tugged at her ear. “Good things don’t cancel out bad things. Even if I got my Cerbernard and my friend got their Rocaw, that wouldn’t cancel the things I don’t like about having a Rocaw around.” “Oooooh.” I pretended that the lightbulb had just clicked. “It’s like getting two flavors of ice cream in the same bowl and you and your friend gotta eat both of them. Just because they really like their flavor and are okay with your flavor, doesn’t mean that you wanna eat their flavor.” There were several other real life instances in which the good didn’t cancel out the bad - for example when financial and physical needs are at the cost of dignity and freedom- but this was better for the character I was portraying. “Exactly,” Winters said. “So no ice cream for anybody.” “Why not just get separate bowls? I mean...don’t go over to your friend’s house?” Friend’s house. Yeah. As if I didn’t get it. As if a baby couldn’t get it. “My friend and I..” She stopped herself. “It’s complicated. Let’s just say it’s complicated.” “And you don’t have a Grown-Up to help settle it.” “Unfortunately.” “That sucks.” I said. “It does.” I saw my opening. Time to plant my ticking time bomb. “Too bad you can’t decide who's more of a Grown-Up.” My ex-colleague blinked in confusion. “What?” “You know,” I said nonchalantly. “Figure out who’s the most mature or the most Grown-Up or whatever. You or your friend? Who makes more money? Or who does the most chores? Or pays more taxes? Grown-Up stuff. Who’s the boss? Who’s in charge?” Amazons: Adults should be mature and speak to each other respectfully and as equals. Also Amazons: I have more power over you and am going to wield that power like a sledgehammer. “It doesn’t work like that, sweetie.” “Why not?” ”It...it...huh…” Winters paused, frowned, and then said. “From the mouths…” Seed planted. Fuse lit. Pick your metaphor. I’d just primed two people whom I’d considered decent work buddies for a fight in the near future and at least one of them had no idea that fight was coming. Neither of them would suspect me. Damn that felt good. I patted the lump tucked into the right cuff of the Amazon’s pants. “Found it!” Ha! Knew there was a trick there, too! “Good job!” Winters said. I stood up and applauded with her like I’d just won something. I had, in a way. “Your knees are looking a little red. Wanna get those shorts back on?” “Sure.” She snatched up my pile of clothes and started to redress me, starting with popping open the shorts and allowing me to step in. It felt a little weird, I’ll admit, getting the shorts back on and being wet. Muscle and sensory memory almost demanded that I be changed. “Shirt too. Good job! Socks and shoes.” “Thank you,” I said. The giant looked at her phone, completely unaware of everything that had gone on. “Still got some time. Do you want to go back in the ball pit?” “No thanks. How about the trampoline?” Approximately ten minutes later, I was being handed over to Zoge. “He’s soaked.” she said. “I don’t know how else he’s been for everybody else but he was a perfect angel for me. I even gave him a sticker.” She poked the ‘Great Job!’ she’d slapped on my chest. Pretty shitty prize. The A.L.L. looked at me like I’d betrayed them and gone over to the dark side. I just winked and put my finger to my lips while Beouf carted me to the bathroom, and they got enough of the hint to be relieved. I’d share what happened later that afternoon. Maybe not the whole thing. They might blab if they knew Winters and Sosa were ‘friends’, but I could teach a lesson about quietly stringing along Amazons and playing to their crazy so that they make themselves vulnerable without getting mad. All in all, an excellent session, I’d say. Very therapeutic.

Kudos to you on creating an anthology series that both does variation on a basic theme yet seems to give hints at a wider world beyond the confines of each plot, as well as making each protagonist character have defining traits from another that makes them seem like more than place holders for stuff to happen to them. Your patrons are very lucky.

Chapter 5 Wally was having a relatively easy first week at Daycare. He crawled around on the floor in his socks and onesies, lightly crinkling with every movement of his back half and lightly jingling with every motion from his front. He barely noticed the sound of the rattle anymore unless he was consciously ringing it. It was just another component in the soundtrack of his life. The rattle gave him a constant light buzz that never completely went away. The sensation was akin to constantly sipping on fine wines and beer throughout the day; never quite drunk but never stone cold sober. That, in part, made the whole of his day range from bearable to pleasant. Diaper changes, lap games, story time, naps, feedings and the like were all part of the daily norm for him now, too. Wally lacked control of his bladder, bowels, bathing habits, bottle contents, or bedtime. After a certain point, he realized he didn’t mind so much. Being a baby was only bad if you thought you were supposed to be a big kid and Wally had officially outgrown any need or hope of thinking of himself in those terms. Upon reflection, Wally wondered why anyone would want to be a big kid. He’d lived his life in fear and now that fear was gone. Now he could just lay back and let everything happen. Who cared if he peed his pants? No one at home or daycare, that was for sure. “Please!” Marjorie begged. “Don’t make me drink that! That’s gonna make me poop!” The Amazon caregiver looked down at the Tweener condescendingly. “If you mean it’s going to keep you from getting constipated, then yes, dear, it will.” Defiantly, quite pathetically actually, the ex-daycare worker slapped both hands over her mouth. From his position on the floor, Wally lifted up his wrist and shook the sunflower rattle as hard as he could. The loud noise going off at ground zero made the Little boy burst into fits of giggles so hard that he fell over laughing and thrashing in hysterical fits as every pleasure center of his brain lit up simultaneously. He’d just taken a double shot of hundred proof whiskey straight to his brain. He may or may not have wet himself again. Being already wet it was harder to tell. It was easy enough for the Tweener to tell, however. She let out a muffled giggled and gasped as her own diaper flooded. Her hands shot down below her waist, past the yellow dress that barely covered the landing zone on her diaper. Tweener’s still had enough strength to take their diapers off so she wasn’t being trusted with any garment that might cover it up until she was a good baby. “No!” She shrieked. “Not agai-!” That was enough of an opening for the bottle of delicious num-nums to make it into Marjorie’s mouth. The real Grown-Up pulled her in and held her by the chin with one hand to make. “That’s right. Good baby. Drink it all up.” Wally caught the Tweener lightly crying as she was scooped up and carried over to one of the rockers to finish her ba-ba. He was happier now that he’d given up on being a Grown-Up. She would be too. In his own way, Wally was just doing his part by hurrying it along. In just a couple of weeks, she’d get used to her diapers and need them as much as any of the other babies. She might never be a crawler because she was only half-Little but a toddler was still a baby. Yet another crinkle signaled approach. Wally turned his head and saw another Little crawling up to him. Her auburn hair was done up in pigtails. In lieu of lipstick her mouth was stained red with juice. Someone had been trusted with a sippy cup that they weren’t quite ready for, developmentally speaking. Like him, she was in a onesie, hers rose colored compared to his sky blue. She had a bit of a tummy and the curves of her face were rounding out, but Wally was developing a similar physique. Hard to get that cardio in when you were carried over half the time and crawling the rest of it Based on the swelling beneath her onesie, she was probably soaking too. “I’m glad it was Marjorie instead of one of the other Tweener Grown-Ups,” she said. Wally almost melted hearing her voice. So soothing and expressive, like she was genuinely happy for the struggling Tweener. They’d all struggled at one point or another, he supposed. “Why?” Wally asked. “Was she a meanie or somethin’?” He doubted that, based on his short time knowing Marjorie as an adult, but it was hard to tell, sometimes. He used to think his Mommy was mean or crazy when really she’d just wanted to help him after his accident. The reverse could very well be true. “Naw.” The girl’s pigtails flopped in her face when she shook her head. “She was just really bad at changing me. Always missed spots. Forgot to use powder. I got a really bad rash my first week here. It made my Daddy super worried.” “Oh.” Wally replied. “At least now she’s getting people to take care of her the right way now.” “Exactly.” It was so weird. He almost sounded like an Ama-...like a Grown-Up. That’s what Little kids did though; they copied what their Mommies and Daddies said, even if they didn’t really understand it. In a way he’d been doing it all along. Marjorie was still trying to cover herself, as if anyone cared about her underwear beyond checking if she needed a fresh diaper. Becoming something of an expert at it himself, Wally guessed that she’d be good to go until at least before nap time. Maybe even through nap time, but the Grown-Ups hardly put them down without a clean diaper on their butts. “But,” the girl spoke up, “Marjorie was really good at making up stories and playing pretend games. So maybe we can play house once she gets used to being a baby.” “NOOOOOOOO!” Marjorie wailed. “I DON’T NEED TO BE-” A long belch thundered out from her. “That’d be neat.” Wally chuckled. “Might be a while, though.” “Took me a while, too,” his new friend said. “But she’ll get there. We all do.” There was something vaguely familiar about her that Wally couldn’t quite put his finger on. It had the same feeling of half-remembered nostalgia, but it had nothing to do with the smell of baby powder barely masking the wet padding. Most of his new friends at daycare that week smelled like that at one point or another. No. This nostalgia was coming from a completely different part of Wally’s brain, but he was feeling too self-conscious to come out and ask what he was wondering. “Wanna play cup ball?” The girl asked. The tension immediately dissipated. “Sure!” Then he realized something. “What’s cup ball?” “It’s a game I invented. Here,” she said. “I’ll show you.” Together they crawled to the other end of the play floor and started to play a game of rolling a red rubber ball into a tipped over plastic cup; bonus points if the ball hit the cup with enough force to make it stand straight up. It was a fairly straightforward game, simple enough for babies like them to enjoy but it still required a measure of coordination and skill. It was very unlikely that the girl had invented it either, but he let her take the credit for it. Once he’d gotten the hang of it and was working on shots from father back, the conversation turned to what Wally supposed most Littles in this place talked about at one point or another. “How’d you learn that you were really a baby?” the girl asked. “I had an accident in my big boy pants,” he admitted. “Right in front of my Mommy. I was playing with a baby toy and I got so excited I went potty where big boys aren’t supposed to. So she took my big boy pants away and adopted me.” He patted between his legs and heard a satisfying report from both the thud and the jingling from his wrist. The girl laughed, either because she was just as susceptible to the rattle or because she liked his story. Both? Maybe both. “Lucky,” she said. “Lucky how?” “Lucky that your Mommy was there right when you had an accident.” “Oh,” Wally frowned. “Yeah. What about you?” “My Daddy knew that I was a baby just by looking at me. I didn’t have an accident in my panties, but that’s because Daddy knew best and put me in a diaper before it could happen.” The smallest hint of a grimace flickered on her face. “Then I started having accidents. Cept that they weren’t really accidents.” “Cuz babies like us are supposed to use their diapers?” “Yeah.” Her gaze went from him to the sunflower strapped to his wrist. “Yeah…” “He must be really smart,” Wally supposed, partly oblivious. “He is.” Deep inside himself, Wally knew they were both lying to themselves and each other. But that lie gave comfort. Better and easier to just accept things as they were and let the Grown-Ups’ narrative stick. Wally came up with his own smart idea. “What if we made this more challenging? Took some blocks and made some obstacles.” “Obstacles?” The girl repeated. “Yeah. Like archways to shoot through. Maybe we could make ramps or something?” “Like mini-golf?” “Yeah!” “I love that idea! Mini-golf was the last thing that I did bef-...” She cut herself off. “Nevermind. It’s been a while.” Wally sought for the right words “How long have you uh been adopted?” “Not long. A couple months. You?” “About the same. Not even.” It was surprisingly easy to talk to her, Wally was finding. That was another fun thing about being a baby; you could more or less say what you were thinking as long as you were polite about it. Making friends as an adult was always so hard. Babies could just crawl right up and ask each other if they wanted to play. “So…more cup ball?” “Yeah!” The girl pushed herself up to her knees, wobbling off balance for a second so that she could clap in excitement. Their game would have to wait, however. One of the daycare workers bent over and snaked an arm around each of them. “Come along, Little Ones. Time for lunch.” “Can we play after?” Wally asked despite knowing the answer. It didn’t take long to get used to the schedule. The woman chuckled. “No, Wally,” she said. “Then it’ll be time for naps. But after your nap you can play.” Each was seated in a highchair next to one another. It was harder to tell when they were both crawling, but Wally’s new playmate sat a few inches taller than him. She might have had a bit of Tweener in her family tree. Lunch consisted of a jar of strained peas washed down with a helping of yummy peaches and some chocolate pudding for dessert. Both fully grown babies accepted their ba-bas. “That’s right, Wally. Drink it all down. It’ll keep you from getting constipated and help you grow up big and strong. Good girl, Hilda!” A bit of the ‘milk’ leaked out of Wally’s mouth. “Hildy?” One of the last adult things Walter had gotten to do was go on a date with another Little; a lady named Hilda. Could it be? How had he not noticed before? How had he not connected the dots? Had she? The two both ended back up on the Grown-Up Amazon’s hip and on their way to the changing tables. “Ladies first,” the daycare worker said, plopping Wally down on the floor. He crawled up to the changing table and used it to pull up to a standing position and steady himself. “Hmm?” The Amazon said, popping open the snaps between Hildy’s legs. “Wait your turn, Wally.” Feebly, Wally reached out and handed the Grown-Up a fresh diaper from the nearest shelf. “Oh? You’re helping? Okie dokie!” The hollow jingle jangle from his wrist rattle still made him smile, but a bit of hope colored his expression beyond the delighted tipsy feeling. With an Amazon between them as well as several feet of table separating them vertically, Wally knew his new friend couldn’t really see him, but thought he saw her head turn and try to crane over when she heard the jingling noise. He felt a connection, some bit of kismet, beyond just being another kid at this daycare. He felt something else too, something that Little boys got from time to time, but only big boys were allowed to act on. It didn’t stop it from happening. Wally turned his head away, blushing, watching the other babies pick up the toys before naptime. He might have been a baby now and overcome with curiosity and longing besides, but he was still a gentleman. A side benefit to being last to be fed and cleaned up was being last to pick up toys. At least he wasn’t having to put anything away. “All done.” Hildy was lowered down to the floor and Wally was lifted up off it. “Almost time for nap Hildy.” “Can I help, too?” Hildy sounded eager. A reluctant sigh, followed by a kindly smile. “Sure, dear. Hand me that diaper.” Another Grown-Up, this one a Tweener, half-jogged to the table. “Can I get some help with Marjorie? She’s being um…fussy about getting her diaper changed.” “I QUIT! I QUIT! I QUIT! HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO SAY? YOU CAN’T PUT ME UP FOR ADOPTION BECAUSE I QUIT!.” It sounded like she was in full tantrum mode. The Amazon rolled her eyes. “Fine, fine. Just let me get Wally and Hildy sorted out.” She unsnapped the poppers on his onesie and opened Wally’s diaper. “Oh! Somebody likes this!” It had less to do with that than remembering a certain game of mini-golf…but it was nothing that a cold baby wipe couldn’t take care of. Just like Mommy, the daycare lady didn’t miss a spot. She used lots of powder too. The cool dryness and the smell made Wally feel babyish enough to not get quite so excited after he was sat down on the floor. “Go to your nap mats, kids,” they were told. Each got a light pat on their bottom to speed them along. “Marjorie! You’re only making it harder on yourself!” She was right, Wally knew. No point in resisting, really. It was only a matter of time before one’s inner-child was teased out of them and brought to the forefront. The pair of Littles found a couple of mats laid out next to each other and laid on them. Wally felt himself start to blush. “I think I might have a confession,” he said. “Yeah,” Hildy agreed. “Me too.” “Me first,” Wally said. “I think we used to date.” He immediately felt like choking on his words. “I mean we went on a date. I wanted to date you more. But…I guess you were here. Or on your way here. I hope…?” He let the last part linger, hoping he hadn’t screwed up. How oddly adult… Hildy blushed. “Yeah. I remember you. It’s why I crawled up to you. I liked it. I liked you. Just…you know. I had more important things going on.” There was a moment of silence more and then, “I’m really glad to see you again. Even if it’s just like this. It’s good to have friends I knew from before. Makes me feel better.” The relief was palpable. Wally felt like a ghost that had just settled unfinished business. Part of him could move on, now. “Is that what you wanted to tell me?” Hildy looked away. “I used to have a rattle just like that,” she said just above a whisper. The rest came tumbling out. “My Daddy gave it to me as a present, but I was still being naughty and got him to make it too loose. I ditched it in a park.” It was a miracle that Wally’s diaper remained clean and dry after hearing that. “This is the rattle I found when I had my accident.” “I figured,” Hildy admitted. “You told me you lived around there.” She paused. “My Daddy just bought me another one. And another. And another. Now I’m a baby. You are too.” She looked like she was ready to start crying. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know another Little would pick it up.” Wally leaned forward and draped his arm over his new friend. “What for?” he asked. “I’m a baby, too.” A disturbing thought intruded upon his thoughts. “You don’t want it back, do you?” Meekly she averted her eyes. “No. I’ve got plenty.” “Me too,” Wally said. “But this one’s my favorite.” “You can keep it, then.” “Thanks.” He leaned over, and just before the Grown-Ups turned off the lights signalling nap time, Wally gave her the innocent peck on the cheek that he’d wanted to give her when they both still thought they were Grown-Ups. “Thanks for everything.” She smiled, not quite so sad now, and cuddled up next to them. Their mats were right next to each other and no Grown-Up would bother them as long as they lied still and kept quiet. It’s not like either of them could get their clothes off to do anything. “I’m glad it was you who found it.” “Me too.” Together at last. Wally had started this whole crazy journey hoping for a second date with a beautiful Little girl. Now he was going to get as many dates as he wanted. It didn’t matter to him that they’d all be playdates under the watchful eye of his Mommy or her Daddy or another Grown-Up. As Wally closed his eyes, he let out the faintest smile of contentment; this one having nothing to do with the jingling coming from his wrist. (The End)

Chapter 65: Little Voices: Not Okay I’d never before been to the Oakshire Community Center. It wasn’t because it was a known Amazon hangout or anything; everything in Oakshire was a known Amazon hangout. Almost every space in Oakshire, if not the entire world, was built with Amazon customs, dimensions, and desires in mind. Amazon was treated as the default. Everything that wasn’t Amazon was the variation. I’d just never been. The O.C.C. could have been a historic city landmark or open only a year or two as part of some city betterment program that I missed. Prior to my adoption, it could have been the place to be on a Thursday night, or it could have been a dump coasting off of taxpayer money and generous donations. I had had my community, and this wasn’t it. I only knew two things about the Oakshire Community Center. It could be reached, in part, by taking the bus, and it hosted the local budding chapter of Little Voices. I don’t know what I expected that night when Janet took me through the thick double doors and flashed her brand new membership card at the Center’s check in counter. It wasn’t the heavy bouncing of basketballs and the squeak of sneakers in the gymnasium. It wasn’t the electronic 8-bit booping of old-ass arcade, pinball machines, and fighting games that were only in 3-D instead of Virtual Reality scrambled with the muffled swearing as teenagers tried to win at foosball. It certainly wasn’t the chanting affirmation from not-quite-closed-enough doors going, “Today I am an alcoholic. Tomorrow will be no different. My alcoholism lives within me now and forever. I must never forget what I am…” The door opened and Janet slipped us inside the reserved room with the Little Voices poster unfurled over it. The tables in the room had already been folded and shoved to the periphery with a mish-mash of low-backed steel and plastic chairs forming a circle in the center. Purses, backpacks and diaper bags were slung lazily over the backs or put neatly to their occupants sides, and the steady churning rumble of childish squeals mixed with polite conversation stopped for all of three seconds as the not quite two dozen giant faces paused long enough to regard us before going back to whatever it was they were doing. And in those faces I saw... That’s when I realized… The assembled group of tyrannical crazies were… Kind of boring all things considered. Honestly, it was stupid of me to expect it, but when one reads about Little Voices, and sees the commercials and propaganda, one expects a certain level of pomp and grandiosity: figures in dark hooded robes, burning incense candles over a pentagram, the chanting in a long dead tongue. I at least expected something like the conservative haircuts and white button up shirts with black ties and matching slacks that were the hallmark of half a dozen cults or cult-like political groups. As the door closed behind us, I didn’t get that impression, but something so much worse instead. The Little Voices meeting was just made up of...people? They were still baby crazy Amazons, obviously, but just...people. Helena Madra and her Little Native Amy were there, obviously. Amy leaned back, cradled in her Mommy’s arms, nursed from a bottle of milk with her eyes closed, looking somehow more immature than I remembered in the dark pink footie pajamas. Someone was going straight into the crib as soon as they got home. But I also remember seeing a balding man with glasses and a thin sweater, with a Little boy sitting shyly at his feet, occasionally hugging the man’s shins when he wasn’t bouncing a teddy bear in his lap. I remember there being a girl with blue highlights bouncing a diapered woman with pink bangs on her knee. Every time the Amazon stopped, the Little would whine behind her pacifier and look up with puppy dog eyes. This got her another thirty to forty more seconds of bouncing. Pink Hair had to be old enough to be Blue Hair’s mother. Somewhere in the back of my brain, I remembered my sister-in-law jokingly asking ‘who was really in charge’ when my nephew was first born. A couple, a Tweener and her giant husband in their forties, checked their fake son’s diaper and then passed him between them for a round of giggly hugs. A dark-skinned woman in a loose fitting dress took tablets away from the man and woman sitting at her feet and mumbled something about not wanting too much screen time. The ‘twins’- dressed in nearly identical outfits of the same teal and pink, save for the fact that one had a skirt and the other had shorts- frowned for a moment and started playing rock-paper-scissors with each other instead. Oh god...what if they’d known each other before this life? What if I was staring at an ex-married couple? I chased that thought away and unfocused my vision, just taking in the whole room. By virtue of my size, paranoia, and profession, I’ve always been something of a people watcher. In ten years of teaching I’d had to attend an uncountable number of I.E.P. meetings and parent teacher conferences (with Tracy or someone bigger acting as a buffer just in case). Close behind that number was all of the times accidentally eavesdropping on colleagues complaining and complimenting about parents in the lull before faculty meetings began: ‘Too involved’; ‘not involved enough’; ‘obviously doing their child’s homework’; ‘makes delicious cupcakes’; ‘finally a parent who disciplines at home’. I’d also attended dozens of quasi-mandatory after-school functions like school carnivals, fundraisers, and open houses. The names get lost to the march of time and piles of paperwork, but patterns emerge. There’s the parents who only show up to school functions if there’s free pizza or a giveaway of some kind. There’s the parents who volunteer at every opportunity to the point where I’ve had to remind myself that they don’t actually get paid to work at Oakshire Elementary. And obviously, there were the involved parents who still quite obviously have lives of their own, and the overworked parents that were just doing their best. There were the parents carrying babies on their hips or pushing them in strollers, real babies, and I’d feel a surge of relief because that felt like at least another two or three years before their crazy clock would reset. There were Amazons with Littles who I’d feel tremendous pity for and then relief, because better them than me. To her credit, for lack of a better term, I couldn’t always tell which parent with a second grader had their newest forever-one-year-old in Beouf’s class, but I could almost always tell which Amazons hadn’t even tried. There was always a guarded, almost angry and definitely cruel glint in that so-called parent’s eyes; a prison guard looking for an excuse to abuse and humiliate. People who Raine Forrest or Brollish would have gotten along fine with, or even approved of. Point being, that like I’ve said before, Amazons can be charming, friendly, helpful, absolutely wonderful people provided you weren’t a Little and around them when their particular brand of crazy went off. I’d seen awful tyrants bullying people smaller than them into playing a part. Yet I’d also seen plenty of parents, actual parents, who were good, well meaning people wanting what was best for the actual children in their lives. And as much as I despised it, the gathered Amazons demonstrated more and more of the positive behaviors I’d heard about through gossip, or seen from afar during an open house, or witnessed first hand at conferences and I.E.P. meetings when a student of mine had a younger sibling and the mother or father couldn’t get a sitter. For all intents and purposes, the roles were all represented: mothers and fathers making time after work and connections for future playdates. Kids by turns clinging to their parents or commingling on the floor in the center. It was almost disturbingly normal. There was even the slight boredom and anticipation for the start of a routine from people of all sizes in the reserved room. Stowed in Janet’s lap, my eyes and ears picked up snippets of conversation as over a dozen social interactions and relationships played themselves out before order was called. “Can I have a cookie?” A Little aked. “Not right now,” their warden replied patiently. “Can I have a cookie?” “No, sweetie.” “Now?” “No cookies till after the meeting. Ask me one more time and it’ll be no cookies at all.” An over dramatic gasp. “Ever…?” A cheeky smile. “Yes…” It was a lie and both knew it. “Nuh-uh!” “Just try it and find out.” A pouty lip and a sheepish blush “No, thank you.” I’d seen that kind of scene play out plenty of times; the only difference was the ‘kid’ hadn’t needed a laser bath to prevent them from shaving. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have seen nature and not conditioned artifice. I did know better. “Evening, Carl,” A childless man with a five o’clock shadow and slightly rumpled business attire leaned over and asked the silver fox sitting next to Janet. Damn, it would have been nice to have some stubble. “Hullo, Frank,” the silver-haired man replied. “How’s work?” “Good enough. Good enough. Say, where’s Joanie?” “She’s with her Papa Don over in the KidZone.” “Oh, that’s good! Last time she was looking kinda restless.” Turned out Mr. Five-O’Clock-Shadow wasn’t ‘childless’ at all. “Daddy! Daddy! Upsie-downsies!” a Little girl in a rainbow polka dotted dress crinkled up from the middle of the floor. “You want upsie-downsies?” Shadow asked. “Can you wait, sweetcake? Daddy’s talking to a friend.” The Little whined quietly and started moving her foot around the floor like she could stir it. “Sorry, you were saying?” “Oh just the challenges of being a modern parent,” Silver went on. “You know how some kids are,” the man’s voice went a little higher. ‘Daddy...it’s called Little Voices, not Tweener Voices. I’m tired of hanging out with all the babies!” He stopped the impression. “So Don’s watching her play while me and Kylie come here.” The Little girl who must have been Kylie stretched and leaned back into her Daddy’s lap. “Joanie’s such a good big sister.” Shadow mused. Silver nodded, sagely. “She is. Which is why she deserves some of her own fun.” “Different expressions of Maturosis. Different needs.” “Mmmm-hmmm.” “Hold on a second, Carl,” Shadow scooped the Little in the polka dot dress up. “Someone here needs upsie-downsies.” He then casually dangled her by her ankles like a fish, and her giggles turned into squeals while her too loose dress folded and fell right off of her. “Whelp, that’s what I get for putting her in that dress.” Other than to acknowledge the squeak, nobody so much as blinked. “How’s Donald been, will you two be taking turns with Kylie and Joanie, or am I only gonna get to talk sports via messenger from now on?” Parents talking and multitasking while kids played around them and begged for attention. Rough housing and playing and cuddling ensue while more mature conversations continue. If I hadn’t known any better… But I did… “Ms. Hopkins at Daycare said Angie gets two gold stars for putting away all the blocks, but she didn’t even help.” A Little man older than me said to a friend on the floor loud enough for me to overhear. “It’s only ‘cause she was a Helper before and used to bring people to the daycare” I held my breath. What were these idiots doing saying our codewords in front of the giants? No one seemed to notice, though. “She’s not even a good stacker at blocks, she can only go four high before they fall over!” “Blocks are really fun,” his companion agreed. “but I don’t like having to put them away. They should invent self-putting-away blocks.” “That’ll never happen. The Grown-Ups will put themselves out of a job if they go that far..” They both laughed and high-fived one another. Two daycare residents in shortalls talking about blocks and teacher’s pets with the same serious fervor, whimsy, and knowing weariness that Beouf and I used to talk like just before school. If I hadn’t known any better… But I did… I knew exactly what was going on. Natives. I was surrounded by Littles who had gone Full Native and completely bought into the propaganda. They’d been broken to the point where they now saw in themselves and their captors exactly what their captors wanted to see. It was enough to want to vomit up perfectly serviceable chicken nuggets. Come to think of it, I kind of wanted to do that anyway. The bald man sitting directly across the circle from Janet looked at his phone. “Alright folks, it’s about that time. Weeeeeeeeee’re-” The room sprang into chorus and my pants rustled beneath me while Janet grabbed me by the wrists and bobbed me on her lap. “-All together again, We’re here! We’re here! We’re all together again, We’re here! We’re here! And who knows when, We’ll be all together again, Singing we’re all together again, We’re heeeeere!” Littles who had been talking about cartoons and daycare politics by the proverbial water cooler rushed to empty laps with arms outstretched like they’d found the winning lottery ticket in their non-existent pockets. Their captors didn’t stop singing, just smiled wider and brought them up. The second verse was the same as the first. So was the third. It was about that time that I sorely wished Janet had sprung for a sitter again. I would have preferred another round of hide and seek with booze foul enough to double as gasoline to this. From the looks on literally everyone else’s faces, I was in the minority. It was a small mercy that Janet released my wrists and chose to hug me instead of forcing me to clap for this inane idiocy. “So now that we’re all together again,” the balding Amazon said. “We have some new, and new-ish, faces. Please, introduce yourself.” Janet spoke first. “Hi. I’m Janet.” “HI JANET!” The circle shouted and smiled at us. There. There was that cult feeling I’d been expecting; oddly refreshing in a way. “And this is Clark.” “HI CLARK!” “I came here last week on the recommendation of his teacher. Made some friends.” Helena waved at Janet. Amy waved at me. I felt my blood pressure rise. “I liked what I saw and heard, and I like you all and wanted to participate more. So...yeah. We’re back.” A quiet, knowing laughter came in reply. “Clark,” the group leader said. “Is there anything you’d like to say?” Caught in a train’s headlightsI There were things I wanted to say, all right, but for my own long term health I merely mouthed “no”. “He’s going through something of a shy phase,” Janet said. “Kind of withdrawn.” As far as she would admit to herself, that was the truth. I’d said next to nothing to her beyond robotic answers or requests. “His teacher and some of the therapists say...” she stopped herself and gave me another hug from behind. “You know what, I’ll get into that after lap time.” “Thank you, Janet. Next?” Blue Hair stood up and dangled the pink-haired Little by the armpits. “Hi guys. I’m um...Cindy.” “HI CINDY!” “And you already know Mary, I’m guessing.” “HI MARY!” Pink Hair blushed and giggled like she was in on some grand joke; the veteran getting introduced like she was the new guy. Blue Hair kept talking. “Um...Mary’s my sis--” “You’re younger.” Pink Hair interrupted, wearing a Cheshire grin. “Ugh...fine. I’m Mary’s big, but younger, and much, much, more mature sister.” By way of reply Pink Hair tilted her head back and stuck her tongue out. Blue Hair mirrored the act, briefly. “My Mom and Dad are on vacation and I’m babysitting till they get back.” “Mommy and Daddy don’t want Sissy getting preggers or adoptin’ ‘fore she’s ready!” A comically serious expression came over Blue Hair. “It’s working…” The assembly barked laughter and gave a smattering of applause as Blue Hair sat down and plopped her ‘sister’ in her lap. “One more?” At mine and Janet’s three-o’clock, a tall, skinny, and oddly Littleless man with glasses and curly dark brown hair stood up. “Hello, everyone. I’m Mark.” “HI MARK!” “I don’t have a Little, yet” He paused for gasps and questions. None came. He continued. “I moved here for work, and I’m looking to adopt a Little, start a family and start giving someone who needs it my love and care. But I want to do it right. Little Voices is pretty big where I’m from so when I found out Oakshire had started a chapter, I signed up.” The maternal monsters in the room might have been part bobblehead. Don’t ask me why, but I immediately hated Mark. I held back a full blown snarl and stared at him long after he sat down and the group leader picked up the proceedings. “So for our newbies, the way a meeting typically works is first we do about fifteen to twenty minutes of Lap Time with our babies. We teach them and one another fun little games and songs and chants to do whenever or wherever might be appropriate and fun. It might be during a change, or tubby time, or in the car, or bed time, or just when they’re sitting in our laps like this at home.” “Two little men in a flying saucer…!” “Amy. Shush, baby.” Amy finished the bottle and then lodged two fingers in the gap between her remaining teeth. The man leading went on like he didn’t even notice Amy’s blurting. He probably didn’t. “Then we spend the rest of the time swapping stories, teaching tricks, sharing successes, supporting one another, and reviewing the literature while our Little Ones play in the nursery down the hall.” Reviewing the literature? I stood corrected. This was totally a cult and I was the only one who hadn’t bought in. I was the only Adult Little in a room full of Beouf, Zoge, and Ivy clones. Closing my eyes, I breathed deep and exhaled. This. Was Going. To Be. Annoying. I wasn’t going to win this one. Not even a draw. This was going to be so annoying. I didn’t have my posse and was hopelessly outnumbered by people who were more like Amy than like Chaz. If I fought this, I was going to lose worse than usual. This was going to be so damn annoying! I wasn’t going to grin. I would, however, manage to bear it. Doing any kind of satisfying damage here would take time.. It was just a matter of remaining quiet and looking for individual or group pain points to apply pressure to, just like with Sosa I didn’t know any of these people half as well as I thought I’d known Sosa. This would take time. I considered it a practice run for Beouf. As is the case with so many rituals in life, I don’t accurately recall that first round of ‘Lap Time’ exercises. Unlike Beouf’s Circle Time, it wasn’t the same musical pablum every visit. More like hymns- there wasn’t a predictable rotation as much as there was a steady list of favorites that were experimented with, expanded upon, or shrank depending on any given curator’s preferences until there was a kind of communal repertoire that could be drawn upon. 1...2...3...Baby’s on my Knee. Sweet Potatoes in the Pot Boom Chicka Boom. Miss Mary Mack. The list went and goes on... Patterned call and response songs that required no thought but lots of volume. Littles being used as props and puppets and delighting in it. That sort of thing. I sat in silence, contributing nothing; not even physical resistance. “Whose turn is it to watch the nursery?” someone asked when it was done. The Amazon husband with the Tweener wife raised his hand. “I’ll do it!” “Howard likes playing in the nursery almost as much as the kids,” his wife joked. Someone added, “As long as none of us has to change him.” More proof in the form of laughter that the giants didn’t really consider smaller folk as equals. Much like Beouf’s class, we held hands and walked out of the reserved room and to the Community Center’s nursery. Janet stayed behind but several other giants accompanied us; carrying crawlers and making sure stragglers didn’t fall behind or distractables didn’t wander off. As near as I could tell, I was the only potential runner. Neither links in my chain had a grip anywhere near resembling Ivy’s. The nursery was slightly bigger than Beouf’s room but lacked most of the classroom amenities: No bathroom. No sink. No projector or whiteboard. Only two cribs pushed up against a wall. A changing table out in the open against another wall. No high chairs or food storage or prep areas. No crafts. No tables or chairs save for a single rocker. Based on the sign outside the door, the nursery attendant was only on duty four days a week with a shift that ended at five pm. In short, it wasn’t supposed to be a daycare or classroom; just a short term sitting service while parents worked out or attended a meeting. Wasting no time, I let go of my link in the chain and found the nicest, darkest corner to brood in. My plan was simple. Do my time. Don’t talk to anybody I didn’t have to. Go home and dream up ways to torment pseudo-science spewing teachers when the ratio of sane to mindfucked Little was slightly more in my favor. So simple even a baby could do it. It wasn’t quite six minutes in before Amy Madra found me and crawled up. “Hiya Clark!” I copied what I’d been doing with Janet. I looked past Amy, gritted my jaw, and said nothing. “How are you liking it how’s Jessinia are you feeling better you started acting reeeeal weeeird at the zoo last time did you eat something funny oh! maybe you’re gluten free like me you really need to tell your mommy if you are it’s really super important I really hope they’ll teach us some uppey throwy songs where our mommies and daddies toss us in the air but just a lil bit I don’t like heights does Jessinia miss me why do you think he still has his fancy accent after all these years living abroad does he still have his fanciful accent?” I did nothing. I was going to ignore her and eventually she’d get bored and go away. That had been the plan. “Oh, sorry,” Amy said. “ Forgot you’re still new and not used to talking efficient. Let me slow down. Howwwwwww issssss Jessinniaaaaa? Purple Octopussss? Pip-piiiiiip? Cheeeeeriooooo?” I gave her nothing. Amy had the mind of a child and like any child, if I ignored her long enough she might increase the behavior before it went extinct, but eventually she’d stop. A small gasp came from her. “Oh, no,” she covered her mouth. “You’re in a corner, does that mean you’re in time out I didn’t see you do anything bad and there’s no naughty stool or some Little in a cheap suit wagging his finger in this room so it’s hard to tell if you’re in trouble or not am I gonna get in trouble for talking to you while you’re in time out or did you put yourself in time out ‘cause I thought you did a really good job for a beginner so you don’t need to feel bad.” Time out? Fuck it. If it meant that the crawling gap toothed nutter would leave me alone I’d let her think that. “Oh wait, are you pooping?” “WHAT?!” I accidentally blurted out. That was a mistake. “No! I’m not-!” “If you are,” she verbally overran me, “I think that corner over there is better, it’s the least interesting corner and most people don’t look over there if you’re trying to do that thing where you hide and pretend you’re sitting on the potty while you poop. Kinda like that spot with the bookcase in Mrs. Beouf’s room….? Do new kids like you still do that before they’re finally unpotty trained?” The sound of plastic ripping lured my eyes over to the changing table, presently in use for all who cared to see. I looked down and shielded my eyes, accidentally making eye contact with Amy in the process. “Hmmm?” she had to rotate to glance back over her shoulder. “Oh yeah, I guess you wouldn’t be too used to seeing that cause of Beouf’s room, either, huh? It’s okay, bud. You’ll get there.” If the living embodiment of my own worst case scenario knew how much that sentiment disturbed me she didn’t show it. A new voice decided it’d be a good time to just ruin my day. “Hey Amy!” Yet another strange Little waddled up to the corner. Like Amy, the outfit his Amazon had dressed him in indicated that he likely.was being put straight into a crib after his Mommy or Daddy finished the cult meeting. The only difference being the grippies on the soles of his feet served a useful purpose for him. I couldn’t quite place him, or his unnaturally white hair. Too many unfamiliar faces, not enough time and they all had the same basic fucking brain so what was the point? “You’re Clark, right? I’m-” “I really don’t care right now.” I interrupted. He went almost as pale as his hair. “Clark’s a new kid,” Amy said as if that explained anything. Evidently, it did. “Ooooooh,” the intruder said. “That’s why he’s in the corner. I didn’t see a Grown-Up put him in time out.” “Oh yeah, right, that’s not Caleb’s Daddy’s style.” Amy looked relieved. “I hadn’t thought of it like that. See Clark? You’re not in trouble.” Despite myself I looked over at the giant with messy hair and an untucked shirt. Whoever he’d been changing was clean and off the table and far enough away from it that I couldn’t pick them out of the overcrowded nursery. ‘Howard’ was squirting sanitizer on his hands before starting to blow up a balloon. “Do you think he’s pooping or pouting?” The ghost boy asked Amy. “I think he’s just pouting. He does that. Like a lot. Hasn’t even told me about Jessinnia.” They were just as damned and diapered as me, but talked over me like they were the devils. Janet and Beouf I could tolerate, for some reason. This was a straw that was close to breaking my back. I cleared my throat. The guy who’d had way too much peroxide dumped on his dome looked at me. “Oh. Yeah. Rude. Sorry. My bad. I’m-” “I don’t care,” I repeated. “Just go away. Please.” My breath was starting to become shallow; labored. If they wouldn’t listen to me, my mind decided, my body would scream at them. “Consent is key…” Amy crawled away. “Okay. That’s fair. But can I just say something?” This latest mosquito I was about to swat didn’t give me a chance to answer. “It’s going to be okay. I’ve been adopted for almost two and a half years and it gets better. Your Mommy is here because she wants to fix herself and the other Grown-Ups are all here to help her. It’s going to be okay.” He walked away before I could curse him out. I shook as if he’d just invoked a voodoo ritual on me. ‘It’s going to be okay.’ Okay. It was going to be okay. My chest hurt and my throat tightened up with that kind, gentle, condescending reassurance. None of this was okay. None of it was supposed to be okay. Perhaps I was having a heart attack just then. Wouldn’t that have been wonderful? Like a Robo-Nanny, I imagined my vision going into black and white, and little boxes framing potential targets in the classroom. Mission Objective: Make Things Not Okay. The lone supervisor had finished blowing up his balloon. “Keepy Uppies!” he announced. He sent that bit of thin rubber and carbon dioxide into the air. “Don’t let it touch the ground!” Mindfucked Littles chased the balloon’s warbling trajectory, smacking it over and over again. “Don’t let it land! Don’t let it land! Gotta get to a billion!” There was no teamwork involved, just scrambling and the wild thrashing of arms sending the balloon up and around in a chaotic, nigh unpredictable arc. If they’d been smart and gentle, two to three of them could have controlled the trajectory and barely moved, instead of sending the thing wafting like a leaf on the wind. These weren’t smart Littles. Not anymore. I came out of the corner. Target Acquired. “I got it!” I yelled. “I got it!” The red balloon, bigger than my head, tumbled down. Down, down, down, towards my outstretched and waiting arms. “I got it!” I sidestepped out of the way at the last second. The balloon nestled itself on the floor. “Awwww….” came a chorus of disappointed Natives. “Not even close to a record.” “You have to keep it up,” someone said. “That’s why it’s called Keepy Uppies!” I’d keep it up, all right. If the throng hadn’t picked up the balloon and sent it back up I might have jumped on it. No matter. There were other things I could do. Time for some A.L.L.-style harsh truths. I found Pink Hair. I walked up to her and told her, “Your fake sister is taking care of you because your fake parents are regretting adoption now that they’re getting old. That’s why they left you here.” “Hey…!” I walked away, not looking at her reaction. I did my best not to smile at the tremble of her voice. The girl who’d been given the trout treatment had her polka dot dress back on when I came up. “Everyone saw your tits when that stranger dangled you upside down.” Then for added salt I shoved in a “Thank you.” “What?!” Unlike earlier, she covered her chest with the palms of her hands. I found the two guys who were complaining about blocks and a supervisor playing favorites. Unsurprisingly, both of them were stacking plastic cubes with letters molded into them, congratulating each other on getting six whole blocks high. It was fun kicking them down. “HEY!” They shouted at me, still seated on the floor. “What was that fo-?” “Blocks are stupid and you only care about them because you’ve lost everything else of value in your lives.” The barest hint of a smirk found its way to me. “MR. CALEB’S DADDY! MR. CALEB’S DADDY-!” “Won’t be long now,” I whispered to myself. I marched up to Amy. “You look ridiculous with those missing teeth, you wasted years of your life because you wanted to work in a zoo and you lost your freedom and identity because of it.” Amy looked like the insult didn’t register. She was so far gone it might not have. “Oh, yeah,” she said. “I know. What’s your point? Oh wait! Do you feel like talking now because you still haven’t told me about a ceeeeertain octopus and-” I didn’t get to hear the rest of her ramblings. “I think someone should be by themselves,” the Amazon Daddy told me as he lifted me off the floor. “Must be overstimulated, or just got a case of the grumps.” No one else talked to me for the rest of the time. Janet found me stashed in the crib. Alone. Like I’d wanted to be. “Oh Clark,” she sighed. “What am I gonna do with you, bubba?”

Chapter 4 Wally laid in his big boy bed, clutching his special rattle to his chest. It had almost doomed him, even though for his entire life he’d been convinced that it would protect him and keep the Amazons from taking him from Mother and Father and treating him like a baby forever. His relatively iron bladder had saved him. Being so young had probably played a role too, he’d heard his parents saying behind the closed door. Being at an age where even the Amazon kids could still have accidents or play with stuffies or nibble on their fingers had played a factor. If he’d been even a tiny bit older, -first or second grade- being caught with that rattle in his backpack might have been worse. When Amazons decided a Little was a baby, there wasn’t much more to be done about it. “What’s so wrong with being a baby?” he whispered to himself. Diapers were yucky, sure, but the bottles didn’t look so bad; they were like the sippy cups he still used sometimes. Snuggles and hugs were nice, too, and Wally loved it when adults called him ‘cute’. People called babies cute all the time; and that was even when they’d gone pee-pee or poo-poo in their pants. Would it really be so bad being a baby? Wally clutched his rattle to his chest. He couldn’t remember being a baby. He supposed it must be awful, that’s why people- especially Littles- stopped being babies as soon as possible. That was why being turned back into one was one of the worst things a Little could imagine. Wally wasn’t going to turn back into a baby. The only way was forward. Always forward; never backwards; never resting. “I’m sorry,” Wally whispered to his security object. “I’m so sorry. I can’t love you anymore. I have to be big.” ********************************************************************************************* The pre-dawn light hit Wally’s eyelids, waking him. Had that been a dream or a memory? Wally suspected the former even if it felt like the latter. Memories from that far back might as well be dreams; they certainly weren’t accurate recollections of what happened. The feelings from the dream were real, though. Feelings always were. He’d been so sure of how the world worked back then and in the course of a day he’d found out different. History was repeating itself more and more. Just like in those good old days, he laid in his bed and raised his hand up so that he could gaze desperately at the sunflower wrist rattle. Like long ago, he felt ‘safe’ just looking at it. Depending on one’s standards, Wally had been ‘safe’, for a month now. He was safe in that his world had become utterly routine and predictable and that all of his physical needs were met. For example, in just a few minutes, his Mommy- already up impossibly early- would come in and change his diaper, and feed him breakfast. He needed a diaper change, too. There was no doubt about it. Not that he could feel it from the inside; the Koddles Dry-Nites he was wearing did a fantastic job of wicking away wetness and had enough room in the back to comfortably contain messes. As a diaper, it was really top notch. He’d have to reach his hand between his legs and press or squeeze his thighs together to really get a feel for it. None of that was really necessary. Wally knew he’d gone in his sleep, the same way he’d known that he kept breathing after he closed his eyes. Wally was all but incontinent now, and much like breathing he only felt it when he made a deliberate attempt to control it. Just like the baby he was being treated like, he needed his diapers now. Maybe the baby food Mommy fed him was being drugged to damage his bladder and bowel control. Maybe the cartoons he watched in Mommy’s lap were subtly hypnotizing him. The rattle. It was probably the rattle. Wally was an addict, not stupid. It obviously did so much more than just make him giggle and give him that sweet sweet rush like a beer that one never quite got a tolerance for. It was wrecking him, absolutely wrecking him. It was also the thing that made him happiest. How could he refuse himself a bit of happiness? “I shouldn’t,” he whispered, looking at the rattle. “I really shouldn’t.” He did anyway. The ting-a-ling sound pulled his lips back into a smile while in a fit and he spasmed happily on the mattress, infantilily kicking his legs in the air for no particular reason other than it felt good to stretch and move around in his crib. Mommy took that as her cue to enter. “Good morning, baby Wally!” she sang out, flinging the door open. “Morning Mommy,” Wally said with a yawn. He was already feeling that self-medicating buzz kick in. The jingly jangling sound was a balm to his brain, like a beer that he could never build up tolerance too. Calling the woman who’d kidnapped him ‘Mommy’ was but a minor concession for it. “Did you have a good sleep?” Mommy asked him as she lifted him out of the crib and carried him over to the changing table. “Mmm-hmm,” he lied. All of this was just part of the routine, by now. “We’ve got a big day today.” Mommy said. Wally made sure to time his next shake of the rattle in time with the adhesive tapes being ripped off the front of his diaper. “I’m going to have to take that away.” That made Wally gasp more than the feeling of fresh air on his groin or the wet wipes that followed. He’d gotten used to those. “Mmmmmm…!” His fists balled up and shook impotently. Mommy didn’t like it when he screamed or threw a tantrum. “Just so I can wash it!” Mommy said. “That thing is starting to get filthy.” She didn’t even pause as she balled up the used diaper and unfolded its replacement. “Especially,” she added, “since you started crawling around.” The rattle had done that too. Shake it a few times, and you’re liable to have an accident. Keep going and you can kiss your potty training goodbye. Go beyond that and you were reduced to a crawler. Wally’s legs weren’t weak by Little standards but something had happened to his inner ear so that he couldn’t balance for anything. A flat plane might as well be a high wire act. The only time the flats of his feet touched the ground were if he had something to steady himself with like a piece of furniture or if Mommy put him in his walker. Seeing his distress, she let out a good natured chuckle. “I’ll get you a couple more,” she promised. “We can rotate them out. Take turns. Maybe get you a couple that don’t look like a flower. Like an elephant, or a tiger or something. Wouldn’t that be cute?” It would. It really would. The tiniest bit of self loathing creeped into his psyche. Oh to be the him of a month ago and have the iron will and hope from before. Oh to be an adult and to do more than just idly ponder escape or rescue. Mommy put the new diaper on him and carried him out to his highchair. Escape to what, though? Constant worrying? Anxiety that he was going to be caught. The worry that any personal connection he might make would be snatched up and taken away forever? The worst had already happened, hadn’t it? Everything that he’d feared had already come true. He couldn’t walk. He couldn’t keep his pants clean. All the snaps and tapes and buckle made it so he needed help getting dressed. He hadn’t bathed or fed himself in weeks. No one in their right minds would consider him anything other than a baby. So…why not? “Whatcha thinkin’ about?” Mommy asked. She tied a bib around his neck and opened a jar of baby food. “Nothin’,” he lied. “Just thinking baby thoughts?” Mommy asked. She unsnapped the rattle from his wrist and put it off to the side, just out of reach. He knew it was coming. It wouldn’t do to get his favorite thing dirty. It still made him scrunch up his face like a constipated toddler. Looking at his consternation only made the giantess giggle. Wally ate his baby food as fast as he could and chugged the bottle that followed. Doing so made sure that he’d get his beloved rattle back, the panacea to all of the pain that he’d kind of brought. “We’ve got an exciting day,” Mommy teased. “My maternity leave is almost up and I have to go back to work. That means I’m gonna enroll you in daycare! Isn’t that fun?” As a habit, Wally started shaking his wrist, even though the rattle hadn’t been attached. He knew this day would come. “Will I get to keep my rattle?” he asked. “Of course,” Mommy chirped. “Why wouldn’t they let you bring in your favorite toy?” That made him feel a tad better. ********************************************************************************** The daycare was pretty standard fare as far as Wally could be able to tell. Not that he’d been to one, before, but as far as pastel padded prisons went it was about what he’d expected. “Here’s the changing tables,” a Tweener whose name tag read ‘Marjorie’ said. “They’re out in the open,” Mommy noted. “Interesting.” It was true. Four thick oaken platforms were placed end to end along the far walls. It was less private than even the changing station in a public restroom. Every kid in the wide open play floor would only have to look up from their toys or pop-up books, or silly games to see someone on their back with their diaper open and their legs up. None of the other kids really did, though. All were too engrossed in whatever they were doing. Wally noticed a Little girl press her hand between her legs and blush while looking over her shoulder before going to joining in a pick-up game of Simon Says. Another Little boy was so engrossed in making a castle out of cardboard bricks that he didn’t notice the Amazon creeping up behind him and pulling back his diaper to look down inside. He started audibly whining while being taken over to the changing table. “It’s a matter of efficiency, ma’am,” Marjorie said. “Let the babies play, change them when they need it, and then get them right back to playing, or transition them to lunch or naptime or what have you.” “I want my blocks!” The Little boy screamed. “Blocks! Blocks! Blocks!” The grown baby was loud and adamant, but his caregiver spoke softly that Wally could only hear the gentle tone, but not the specific words. She spun a mounted mobile and the boy’s screams turned into giggles and some light jingling made its way to Wally’s ears. Marjorie’s mouth twitched, nervously. “Efficient?” Mommy asked. “Is that why I don’t see any cubbies for extra clothes or diapers?” The Tweener nodded appreciatively. “Very perceptive ma’am,” she said, as if reading from a script. “All our kids wear Monkeez here as a matter of policy. That way we can just lay them down on any table, check the size, grab the right one, and get to work. Same with replacement clothes. We’ve got extra onesies and t-shirts for any accidents. It’s all included as part of the service.” Right on cue, the Amazon and Little on the far changing table showed how well it worked. She didn’t even need to take her eyes off him, being able to find the correct diaper just by feeling for the right size stack. “Monkeez,” Mommy noted. “Aren’t those the diapers that come in almost all sizes?” Marjorie nodded. “Yes ma’am. That’s why we prefer them.” “Don’t they have sizes small enough for…” Mommy chose her worse carefully. “Very very small and young Littles?” It wouldn’t do to call them ‘baby’ Littles, since Wally was technically a baby, too. “Yes ma’am.” “Tweeners too?” Wally scanned the room. There were no babies big enough to be considered ‘Tweener’, a few bulky or brawny Littles that could have pulled it off with some elevator shoes, but that was it. The only Tweeners were the handful working there, including their tour guide. Their tour guide noticeably stiffened. “Hypothetically, yes,” she said. “We don’t have any Tweener charges at the moment, but if we did, we’ve got a stack that would fit the adorable baby just fine.” Wally barely registered the nervousness creeping into their guide’s tone. His attention was instead drawn to a cluster of play mats on the floor, all with the same delightful and dangling toys like he had at home. He wriggled in his Mommy’s arms, almost as if he thought he might stretch his arms fifty feet and be able to bring himself across the room. All he got for his behavior was a gentle pat on his backside and slight shushing noise. An unexpected bonus of being treated like a baby was that empathy was not a major requirement on his part. The worst thing possible had already happened to him, so what did he care if one of the big people got uncomfortable by one of the bigger people? He had other things to worry about. It was almost like when he really was a kid. He’d come around to it in a weird way, but it was the same end result. Meanwhile Mommy and the Marjorie had gone over the rest of the tour: A kitchen with highchairs, a television room, and so on. There was no place to sleep, instead the Littles had to clean up their toys and staff would lay out nap mats and turn out the lights. Nothing too surprising. Wally’s eyes never strayed far from the toys. It was the longest time he could remember where he wasn’t actively thinking of shaking his wrist. “So what do you think?” The Tweener asked Mommy. “I think this could work,” she said. “What do you think baby?” “Um…Ah…” Wally said. Now he was being asked? Now? Other than to ask the state of his pants or maybe (maybe) the fullness of his belly, the giantess had never asked Wally anything. “Oh he’s just shy,” Mommy said. The relief he felt was immense when she spoke for him. “I think he’ll like it. Sign us up.” “Great! I just need to check one more thing,” Marjorie said. She reached up and over. “I need to do a quick diagnostic assessment with him. To see what kind of level he’s on.” Reluctantly, Mommy handed him over. “Okay…be careful” “Of course.” Wally was taken back past the colorful and pleasant decorations into what could only be a back office. Plain white floors. Fluorescent lights. A desk with a computer. In a strange way, Wally was almost reminded of his setup back home…his real home…when he was an adult. “Can you walk?” The Tweener asked. She turned around and locked the door. “No,” Wally said. “I’m just a…I’m…I’m too Little…” Even admitting that felt like a struggle. “That sucks,” Marjorie said. Waly held his breath. People didn’t talk to him like that anymore. For the first time in nearly a month, Wally was getting the feeling that he was being talked to instead of talked at. “I’m sorry she did that to you.” He blinked in confusion. This was completely unexpected. “Wha…wha?” “Look,” Marjorie lowered her voice. “You’re Walter right? Walter Klammer?” Hearing his full, actual, adult name was like a bucket of ice being dumped over his head. “Yeah….” “I can’t tell you everything right now, but I’m going to get you out of here.” Walter felt gobsmacked. “You are?” How did she know his name? Why was she telling him this? “I am,” she nodded. “Your file came in with registration. You haven’t been captive very long. I can tell that there’s still a chance to save you.” Walter started tearing up. These were words he’d wanted to hear, that he’d been waiting to hear for a small eternity. “Yeah?” “Yeah,” The Tweener affirmed. “You’re going to get to grow up again.” Wally felt his jaw clench “Grow up?” “Yeah,” she said. “It’ll take a while, and lots of work, but we’re going to undo the damage that monster did to you.” He’d be an adult again. “Mommy?” For some reason he didn’t like hearing Mommy called a monster out loud. She really had been rather nice all things considered. “Yeah,” Marjorie said. “We’ll start by potty training you. You might have accidents at first, but you’ll figure out how to clean up after yourself.” Wally pictured himself wetting his pants with a dark stain spreading and then running down his legs. It’d be just like the first time…with no one to change him or coo at him or tickle him. “We’ll get you a cane so you can balance and re-learn how to walk.” Him with a cane would just make him look ‘old’ instead of ‘grown-up’. Honestly, it was easier to crawl. It’s not like he could reach most things, anyways. “You’ll be able to do things like go to work, cook for yourself, go wherever you want.” With nowhere to go and no one to look out for him. He’d just be alone and scared that another Mommy would come along and adopt him again if that was even a thing. Did he really want to spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder? The first half was bad enough. Was using a playpen for its intended purpose really that bad in retrospect? Marjorie reached for the rattle. “People will treat you like an adult instead of making you play with-” “Don’t!” Wally shrieked! “No!” He clutched the sunflower to his chest like it was his own baby. “Please!” “It’s just a rattle,” the Tweener said. “Only babies play with rattles.” Her hand loomed closer. “Here, let me help.” “I’m a baby!” Wally yelped. “Baby needs his rattle!” She cocked an eyebrow. “What was that?” “I’m a baby! I don’t want to grow up!” The tears were flowing freely now. “I want my rattle!” For emphasis he shook it, and saw the Tweener wince. His giggles came out closer to hysterical sobs even as he felt the relief like morphine kicking in. He shook the rattle again and again and again. He already couldn’t walk. Maybe if he shook it hard and long enough he’d stop being a crawler, then they wouldn’t take him. Then he’d be safe. Safe with Mommy. The Tweener crossed her arms and smirked. “Good baby.” She patted him on the top of his head. “You passed.” The baby stopped. “Passed?” Marjorie bent over and picked him up. Wally noticed she had flesh colored earplugs in. “Yup. Just wanted to check and make sure you were really a baby.” Wally blushed. A fakeout. He should have known. Only a baby would have fallen for such a transparent trick, even for a second. Good thing he was a baby. “That and…” she patted his bottom. “Nope. No lumps. A little wet, but still good. You’ll have to try the changing table tomorrow on your first day.” Just as quick, if not quicker, the daycare worker carried Wally back out to the noisy and colorful playroom. Mommy waited, looking apprehensive. “So…?” “He’s fine,” the Tweener said. “He said he wanted to be a baby and stay with his Mommy.” That wasn’t quite how it went, but close enough. Mommy looked absolutely over the moon. “I knew it!” She leaned over and hooked her baby underneath the armpits. “Give Mommy some sugar! Mwah mwah mwah mwah mwah mwwwwah!” The battle was finally over and Wally had finally given in and lost. He closed his eyes and smiled as Mommy nuzzled him and gave him a million tiny pecks. For the first time in a long time he felt safe. No more struggle. No more fretting. No more worrying about going on dates. As for friends, he had an entire daycare full of them potentially, all guaranteed to have at least a couple things in common with him. Mommy’s ‘mwah’ mixed with the jingling of his rattle and his giggles. He even heard Miss Marjorie giggle a little bit as she let him go and he made his way completely onto Mommy’s hip. “Awwww!” she said. “I love seeing…” she cut herself off with a gasp. Wally looked down and had an Amazon’s-Eye-View of a dark patch spreading and dripping down the Tweener’s legs. Her smile turned into a frightened scowl. The girl reached for her ear, feeling for something that wasn’t there. Helpfully, Wally pointed the spot on the floor where her earplug had fallen out. In his joyful thrashing he must have accidentally jostled it loose or something. “Oh no, one of the Amazons,” -one of the real adults- said. “Marjorie? Again?!” “It-it…it was..my ear plug fell out. The new baby’s rattle…and the mobile…and just…” The soon to be ex-tour guide didn’t look all that confident in herself. There was only so much confidence one could muster with wet pants and an unpadded bottom. So this is what it looked like from the outside. “I hear those silly baby toys all day too, and I don’t have accidents like that. I just think someone’s Maturosis is expressing itself and they don’t want to admit it.” “But-but-but…” “Come on baby girl,” the Amazon said. She grabbed the Tweener by the wrist. “Let’s get you sorted out.” Wally giggled, looking over Mommy’s shoulder. He might be laying on that changing table tomorrow, but Marjorie was getting to try it out right now. Just as advertised, the daycare workers were able to spring right into action, easily bending over to get a Tweener sized diaper on the bottom shelf while another co-worker stripped her wet clothes off of her. She didn’t put up much of a fight. What would have been the point? They’d made up their mind for her. Maybe she’d get to have a fun toy to play with now, too. “Probably for the best,” Mommy sighed. “With Tweener’s it’s a fifty-fifty shot at best.” Wally agreed, not feeling the least bit guilty. He gave the rattle one more shake, giggling all the while.

Chapter 64: Puzzling Assessments I stood in the OT/PT room with my gang of Little rabble rousers. As stated previously, school therapists, all school therapists, have hectic schedules on multiple campuses and are stretched thin for resources and time. That was good for me. That was why my first session with both Skinner in the Speech Language Therapy room and now Sosa in the Occupational Therapy/Physical Therapy room was specifically with the three other inmates that I had won over to my way of thinking; my disciples. That was also good. Maxine Winters wasn’t there, either. There was enough overlap in their schedules and caseloads that they’d often work with the same students in their shared room. There was also just enough bureaucratic chaos from I.E.P. meetings and the like that they were just as likely to alternate using the space any given week rather than cohabitating it. Four Littles. One Amazon. Not the best ratio, but better than having two Amazons to keep my eyes and ears open for. I needed to teach my new friends all at once without having to manage the interference of other ‘Grown-Ups’ or broken Littles. Like any good educator, I’d planned my first set of lessons with the second and third sets already in mind. Know your curriculum. Know your schedule. Know your students. Know your calendar. Anticipate common hurdles along the way. For example, the erratic nature of the therapies and a good working relationship with Beouf had made it so that Skinner, Sosa, and Winters could cherry pick who they wanted to work with Ala Carte. “Sorry to interrupt, but can I borrow Annie, Chaz, Billy, aaaaand...Clark?” Nothing in our I.E.P’s said a particular group of students had to be together for therapy. Technically a Kindergartener and a Fifth Grader could be put in the same session. Legally, there was nothing stopping me from having to sit next to Jeremy Merriwether if he suddenly developed a lisp that Skinner had wanted to rid him of and pass on to me. (Yikes, I hoped that was only hypothetical and not possible). Point being, as long as the minutes and boxes were ticked for the services promised, the ‘How’, ‘When’, and ‘With Whom’ were all extremely flexible. This week me and the other members of the A.L.L. had been grouped together. Next week we might not be so lucky. Probably wouldn’t be. That meant I had to coach my crew so that they wouldn’t break without me. I was the ‘new kid’. I was becoming the ‘trouble maker’. Amazons were crazy, not stupid. I had to work quickly. They were inadvertently giving me the opportunity to practice and pass on my craft. That was good. That’s where the good news ended. The OT/PT room, while still having the bare, undecorated walls of the Speech Room, was filled to the gills with equipment: Trampolines, platform swings, a closet full of Amazon gadgets and gizmos on the level of that fold out obstacle course I’d been ‘gifted’ with. It even had a ball pit. That’s right, there’s something supposedly therapeutic about ball pits; not even from a ‘how do we mind fuck Littles?’ standpoint. This place was like a tiny indoor playground. It set me on edge, but to my three comrades it was low hanging and tempting fruit. ‘Be good and you can bounce on the trampoline or swim in the ball pit’ would be a lot more tempting than ‘if you get done playing this board game I’ll let you play with the old dollhouse’. It was Sosa, too. Sosa was good at classroom management. Very good at classroom management. From the way she’d interacted with my preschoolers over the years, I’d long held the opinion that she would have made a good teacher had she chosen a different degree. Through transitive deduction, that put her much closer to Beouf on the difficulty scale. Why couldn’t it have been Winters? I just knew I could totally crack Winters. Finally, the OT/PT room was directly next to my old classroom. It was a small mercy that we walked all the way around instead of cutting through the building. The question was was it a deliberate mercy or one built of habit? From what tiny bits of information I’d gathered of Ambrose I couldn’t imagine her objecting to a waddling parade of Littles cutting through my room. Yes, my room. Never hers. It was the kind of thing that would remind the actual children what they weren’t and the shortest adults what they were beneath. If pushed too far, would Sosa snap and send me to time out in the closest classroom? All of that was racing through my brain as Sosa unloaded the big colorful pastel boxes sculpted out of thick plastic and the edges frayed and jigsawed together at the seams. They were big, clumsy and cumbersome; but not terribly heavy looking. Each side was longer than my arm. I could likely lift one,I thought, but if I tried for two, the second box would completely block my line of sight and risk tumbling off. I wouldn’t have been able to get my arms all the way around it if I tried to hug it. So typical: Light enough that even a Little could hoist them; bulky enough to make it so they shouldn’t; and cutesy enough to make it so they wouldn’t want to if they had any kind of ego left. Somehow this was intended to make people like me feel childish while ‘playing’ with it. That was the only explanation I could fathom for the color scheme. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple; all pastel hues. It was the kind of tripe that Pediatric and Adopted Little-centric companies tended to love. There was a black leather cuffed hole with a rubbery black covering on the red side and opposite purple side of each device.. Part mystery sensory box, part pharmacy blood pressure machine, and part jigsaw box? It’s function, if any, completely eluded me. I bit my lip and dug my fingers into my thighs to hide the anxiety welling up inside of me. I wrinkled my nose and shot a warning look at Annie. She dropped her pacifier and left it dangling from her collar. Going into this experience, I was at a complete loss. No information that any of my students brought back or that Sosa had reported to me when I was a teacher rang any bells for these tacky things. I’d seen ‘the birdy says tweet’ coming from miles away. Oversized pastel colored cubes was an unanticipated fork in the road. Occupational therapy was supposed to help with fine motor skills like handwriting, typing, tracing, using scissors, and fastening buttons on clothes. My preschoolers would come back with tracing pages and bits of construction paper they’d cut out and glued together or beads they’d strung along on some yarn. OT was supposed to help with the basic life skills that were so prevalent and frequent in early academics. Those exact skills were what Amazon snaps, tapes, and seat buckles sought to stymie. Amazons didn’t want us taking off our diapers; there was no way they wanted us to be able to fasten non-snap buttons or hold a pencil. A chilling thought: What if I’d never heard of or seen these devices because they were exclusively for Littles? What if inside the rainbow gadget boxes was some sort of finger mangling device, or some chemical that soaked through the skin to cause unnaturally severe arthritis or numbed the digits into uselessness? I might stick my hands inside the hole and get jabbed enough to make them swell up into uselessness or something. The other members of the A.L.L. were kind enough to dispel my fear. “This one?” Chaz groaned, “I hate this one!” “Me too!” Annie whined. “Same.” Billy said. I could have slapped all three of them just there. Why give Sosa the ammo to use against them in case she hadn’t picked up on their distaste? Nevertheless, their reaction was one of annoyance, not fear. That made sense, I assured myself. The “Maturosis and Developmental Plateau” method favored gaslighting, conditioning, and circular logic over the more brazen approaches. Loudly, I cleared my throat. The others shuffled, became a tad more alert and came to a kind of loose attention. They remembered themselves and our gameplan. We’d frustrate the Amazons by playing by our rules, not theirs. Speaking of which: Time to probe for weaknesses. “How does this work?” Just like with Skinner, I made a point to turn and look at Billy. I caught Billy’s eyes looking up and over my shoulder. “Go ahead, Mr. Billy,” Sosa chirped. “Show what you know.” Directly behind me, Sosa’s eyes were placid pools of brown in a sea of dark tan skin beneath a crop of hair darker than even Janet’s. Sosa’s almost pleasantly plump face showed no signs of either aggravation or anticipation; merely quiet patience. Damn. Damn, damn, damn! At her heart, Skinner had been a ‘Sage on the Stage’. All eyes had to be on her and the lesson had to be about her. Sosa was going for a ‘Guide on the Side’ method and didn’t mind if we ‘taught’ each other. The victory with Skinner and those last fifteen minutes of celebration had made Billy cocky and confused. Skinner wasn’t Sosa. I could almost see the gears turning in the poor boy’s head. Should he remain silent or address me? Which would least play into the crazy? “Um...I don’t know…?” Fuck. “That’s okay,” Sosa said. “You’ll get it.” She was gentle, yet clinical. Practiced to the point where it was hard to tell if it was second nature. Skinner still saw me as an old colleague. Sosa was talking like I was just a new baby. Like I said; just this side of Beouf. “Miss Annie, would you like to try?” Annie looked like she was on the verge of panicking and clammed up. Silence had been our go to. “That’s okay. Mr. Chaz?” Chaz stared straight ahead. This wasn’t their first time with Sosa. They knew she was tougher. “Mr. Clark? Would you like to guess?” Sosa’s job wasn’t modifying language and vocabulary. It really didn’t matter if we talked or not. I exhaled and played it cool. “Why don’t you explain it to me, Miss Sosa?” It was important to not show fear. Sosa took a spot on the floor, and crossed her legs and positioned one of the strange puzzle boxes in her lap.. “I call this a game, but it’s really more of a diagnostic. We do them every month or so, just to see where you kids are.” I didn’t need to look behind me to sense the rest of my friends tense up at being called ‘kids’. “All you have to do is put your hands in the holes. One in the red side and one in the purple side.”” She did so, sticking her hands through the two holes and past the black curtain coverings, making it a kind of unruly, blocky muff. A high pitched beep of an electric sensor followed by a slight whirring and wheezing noise was heard. “Then the cuff closes. Don’t worry it doesn’t hurt.” As if to demonstrate she tugged at the cuff. Her arms and elbows moved and tugged back out. It turned out that the cuff had more qualities of rubber and elastic than leather. She moved and tugged, and the seal around her wrists stayed with her. The black rubbery stuff turned inside out and resisted movement when she pulled at it. She gave three exaggerated tugs, showing that even with her giant strength she wouldn’t be able to remove her hands completely from the box. By the same measure, she pulled the box closer to her and plunged up to past forearms. “Then..” she paused. Theatrically, she cocked her head to one side then the other. “Inside each box, there’s a release mechanism. You just got to fiddle with the mechanism aaaaaand….!” The box vibrated mechanically. From hidden speakers somewhere in the puzzle’s confines, a “TA-DA!” sound played. Miss Sosa grinned and removed her arms.from the cuffs and gave her wrists and fingers a quick shake. A second after her hands were free, the box started rolling forward by itself in measured amounts. It rotated, stopped, and twisted, the seams of each box coming apart and unfolding; new compartments coming to life, growing, expanding, and building on each other while somewhere in the mass of plastic and lightweight steel, electronic dance music played. Within twenty seconds where there had been a box large enough for a Little to curl up and hide in now there was a Little sized robot doing stiffly choreographed dance moves. “Okay,” I heard Billy mumble. “That part is kinda cool.” Admittedly, it was impressive. Amazon engineering was second to none. I felt a strange rush from the music, too. I felt my resting, calculating scowl relax a bit. I chomped down on my own tongue to toughen up. Something in the speakers operated on a similar wavelength to those damn pleasure rattles like the one Renner had tried to pawn off on me or that Beouf sometimes passed out before naps. The Maturosis cult preferred gaslighting over chemical and physical alteration. It didn’t necessarily abandon it altogether. A certain giggling savant missing her front teeth confirmed that part. Thinking about Amy steadied me enough to not be further lulled. Half a minute later, the impossible folding of parts resumed again and where an ornate toy had been dancing now sat a bulky but colorful puzzle box. “Any questions?” Passive disrespect hadn’t worked. Maybe some logical disassembling might do the trick and pull at Sosa’s threads. First, the setup. I snorted. “I can appreciate the isolation of skills by using a box so we supposedly have to use our fine motor skills and just our fine motor skills.” I pretended to look thoughtful, even though I already knew what I was going to say. Time to take the shot. “But it’s a trick. It’s like those seatbelts or child locks. Little hands won’t budge it.” Grimly, Billy shook his head. “Naw, Gibson. It ain’t like that.” “Would you like to see?” Sosa asked. I was being challenged. An Amazon challenge meant the game was rigged somehow. It was still unwise to outright refuse the invitation. Cautiously, I inched forward, keeping my eyes on Sosa as if she might just reach out and snatch me up. She didn’t. Gently, she took my hand and guided it through the first cuff. I heard the beep and the whirring and hissing as a cuff quickly and snuggly closed in along my forearm. I had thought it would be less snug since it had just accommodated Sosa up to her elbows. I also thought it would be tighter; cut off circulation. Both assumptions were false. It wasn’t unlike the feeling of a new diaper in that it was stiff but flexible. Noticeable upon application and removal, but increasingly easy to acclimate to and tune out if you allowed it. “Reach in deeper.” I did, with the barrier letting me and folding with me like a glove. “Feel the lever?” My hand clasped around a kind of rod. I felt ridges and gaps in it like buttons or piano keys. “Yeah? Are there supposed to be buttons?” Sosa brightened. “That’s right! If you get really good at it you can program the dance the robot does by pressing the keys in a special order!” A quick glance back to my classmates and I saw the wrinkling of noses and curling of lips. Something Sosa had just said had left a bad taste in their collective mouths. I wiggled my fingers on the rod inside the box and felt the buttons clack beneath my fingers. There was one on the back for my thumb, too. “So, why isn’t dancing?” “You gotta do both levers at the same time,” Chaz said. “Both?” Without prompting I reached in deeper, nearly up to my shoulder. Past the first rod was a second one. With the back of my fingertips I guessed that it was practically a mirror to the one I had just grasped. The only problem was I couldn't reach it. If I stretched my hand, if I strained I could graze one massive joystick with my thumb and the other just barely with my pinky. “Oh. Both.” “Yup.” Chaz already looked defeated. What had Sosa done to this poor guy? It wasn’t long before she did it to me. “Let’s use both hands.” Sosa pivoted the box around and slipped my left arm into the complimentary hole. A beep, a whir and hiss later, I was effectively hugging the box and handcuffed to it. Sosa left me to struggle and experiment while she slid the wrists of my companions into equally torturous contraptions. The limitations were immediate and obvious. I could push and pull the box. I could lift the box. It was deceptively light. I could stand up or get down to my knees on the carpet. It would be uncomfortable, but I could hypothetically muscle the box up enough so that I could sit down and put it in my lap. Were I more flexible, I might have been able to nestle in between my legs. What I couldn’t do was lift the box over my head; less a matter of weight and more the size and fixed points on my wrists at either side. Obviously, I couldn’t fully remove either of my hands. Try as I might, it didn’t take a minute to realize that I wouldn’t be able to touch both levers at the same time. I had to pivot and stretch to reach the left side, and in doing so I had to pivot and twist my right arm away. Were I an Amazon or even a Tweener my arm span would have been long enough to do something about it. As a Little, though? Asking me to grip both levers firmly enough to press some keys was like asking a fish to climb a tree. “How’s the game work?” I asked, loudly. “What happens if I make the box turn into a robot again?” Sosa walked back around to address me. “You’ll be ready for the next stage of O.T.” Just like before, just like Beouf, Sosa was professional; inscrutable. I couldn’t tell if she genuinely believed I could do this stupid task or not and I hated it. None of Raine’s predatory glint or Brollish’s coldness or Zoge’s doting condescension. It almost gave me a deadly kind of false hope. Almost. An impossible task. An offered reward. What was I missing? A punishment? “What if I don’t?” “We’ll keep working on it,” Sosa said simply. “And if you need help, just ask. We’ll stop,I’ll get you out and you can spend the rest of our session playing in the ballpit or the swing or the trampoline. Whatever you want.” Her voice went up a tick. Was she lying about something or just condescending to me? “I quit,” Billy said. I started to rotate my prison around and shoot him a dirty look. I didn’t get a chance. “Sorry, Gibson. This sucks.” Sosa took her phone out of her pocket. “Not yet, Billy. The diagnostic criteria says you have to try first.” Billy clonked his head down on the bulky hollow seeming plastic. “Fine,” she sighed. “Set a timer?” “Already on it Mr. Billy.” Sosa showed a countdown app she’d pulled up. “Let’s try... seven minutes. Then you can go play.” I witnessed an equally desponded Annie and Chaz gaze at the phone timer as if it were a light in the darkness.. This treatment had already broken them, somehow. Solving the puzzle wasn’t the point for me, I reminded myself. Getting under Sosa’s skin was. “Hey Billy,” I called over. “Wanna play bumper cars?” Billy perked up immediately. “Heck yeah!” Like two charging bucks we hunched over, and pushed our boxes into a run. Colliding with a loud ‘KA-THUNK!’ Billy and I bumped back a step from each other and did it again. KA-THUNK! KA-THUNK! KA-THUNK! I’d thought that Sosa would say something, anything, before the first ram. Or that she’d wince or look concerned at me and Billy acting like a couple of frat boy jackasses ramming shopping carts together. No such luck. She wasn’t worried about the equipment. Amazon technology really was peerless. I wouldn’t be surprised if the thing encasing my forearms could handle an elephant standing on it. I was already panting by the fifth KA-THUNK. Billy was pushing me back, getting more into the competition than the actual objective of annoying Sosa. “Careful, Billy,” Sosa said. “You don’t want to hurt Clark.” Billy pulled back. “Oh. Sorry, dude. Got a little too into it.” Sosa answered for me. “That’s okay. We just gotta be careful with our friends.” Damn! This wasn’t working. How did we rob the narrative from someone who didn’t seem to care? A quick ping from her pocket and Sosa started texting on her phone. Maybe there was some chink in her armor that I could exploit. I started breathing harder. I must have been getting out of shape. The boxes were relatively light, but light and weightless weren’t the same thing. Still awkward as all get out to move in them. I certainly wasn’t getting any younger. “Who’re you texting, Miss Sosa?” I asked, panting a little. Sosa barely looked up. “Just Miss Winters.” That tracked, co-workers swapping notes and what not. It wasn’t much to go on, but, “Isn’t that not allowed? Texting on your phone during student contact time, I mean?” “Probably not. But you’re all engaged with the diagnostic and this’ll only take a minute.” She finished, pocketed her phone and looked down. “Oh, you’re breaking into a sweat, Mr. Clark.” She grabbed a massive handful of tissues from a box nearby and started dabbing my forehead. “Here, let me help.” “Thanks,” I said out of habit. “You're welcome.” I immediately regretted my thanks. Sosa didn’t notice. Something wasn’t right. I was still missing something. “Miss Annie,” Sosa walked over. “Do you want your pacifier?” “No, thank you.” Annie said. She looked guilty, embarrassed, and more than a tiny bit uncomfortable. I did my best to give her a look of solidarity, like I thought she was making the right choice. Littles sucking on pacifiers wasn’t a good look if we were going to frustrate and refute our status. Instead of returning the look, she puffed out her cheeks and frowned. “Mr. Chaz, do you want a treat?” On his knees, Chaz nodded, stuck out his tongue and accepted the chalky candy. “Mr. Billy?” Something wasn’t clicking and it had nothing to do with the levers. Those were a lost cause, a dash of common sense would immediately prove that. Despite common sense I wriggled and shifted a little more. Tried to feel around the insides of the box. Perhaps the levers were a kind of red herring and there was another closer release. They were a red herring alright, but it had nothing to do with an alternate means of escape. There was no escape. What was I missing, I wondered. Amazon mind fuckery and Amazon crazy was a bit like a magic trick; anything that the magician drew your attention to was with purpose. Everything that they wanted you to see was to make it so you’d accidentally or implicitly discount, ignore, or miss something they didn’t want you to see. What wasn’t I supposed to see with this? There was no point to the levers. Correction: There was a point to the levers but the point wasn’t to pull them. What, though? Why would an OT with the mission to make Little’s less likely to use fine motor movements just trap our hands in a box? How was this any different or more practical than just stuffing our hands in thick fingerless mittens? What? Was? I? Missing? The timer on Sosa’s phone went off. “Okay, Billy. Do you want to keep trying?” “No, Ma’am. Let me out.” Billy didn’t even seem embarrassed by it. “Okie dokie.” Sosa placed the flat of her hand on the top side of the box. “Let. Me. Help.” She groaned slightly, pressing down on the top of the box. A panel clicked, and Billy’s hands were released from the cuffs inside the box. The release on the outside of the box was definitely something that only a giant could hope to move. The box started vibrating and rolling forward. The same “TA-DA’ sound effect played, and just like before, the box warped and clicked and folded and changed into a thing of wonder. The music coming from the dancing automaton’s hidden speakers seemed louder, felt happier. I was breathing through my mouth before I knew it. Annie, Billy, and Chaz were frozen, too. The music stopped, and the droid folded back up into a simple looking box. Billy wasted no more time and climbed into the ballpit, having to throw one leg over the side like he was mounting a pony. “I guess I know what Billy wants,” Sosa, chuckled. “How about you? Are you guys good?” “Wait a second!” I interrupted. “Why did Billy’s box do the dance and the song? He didn’t reach the levers!” I could feel my own face twisting into a petulant scowl. I felt confused and bitter; angry because there were more rules to this game than I was understanding. Despite myself, I knew I sounded jealous. Sosa was so nonchalant as to be infuriating. “That’s okay. He tried.” She walked over to a mini-fridge that could have held a couple days worth of Little sized meals. “No he didn’t!” I yelled. “He specifically said he didn’t!” Billy was too busy burying himself in rainbow colored globules to care much about me. Worst. Accomplice. Ever. Sosa shrugged and took out a gelatin cup. “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “The box gets opened and the song gets played. Does anyone else want out?” I summoned all of the charisma I could and tried to psychically persuade Chaz and Annie to stay strong. We couldn’t let Sosa win. “No thanks,” Chaz said. “I’m good.” Annie huffed and stared invisible daggers towards Billy in the ballpit. “I’m fine.” She cringed and I thought I heard her mumble something like, “Doesn’t matter anyway.” Green gelatin wobbled past full tan lips. “That’s fine,” Sosa said. “Just let me know and I’ll help you out.” More than just the mechanism in Billy’s puzzle box clicked right then. “Guys,” I said. “We gotta tough it out. We’re being tricked!” I didn’t have time or a subtle way of conveying this message. “Just because you’re having trouble with the diagnostic doesn’t make it a trick,’ Sosa said, stirring the green goop with a fresh plastic spoon. “You want some, Billy?” “No!” I shouted over her. “She just said it. She’s trying to train you to accept help and not take care of yourself! We get the reward if she unlocks the boxes, too. The test isn’t really unlock the box to get the reward, it’s the sooner we give up the sooner we get rewarded!” Chaz and Annie exchanged looks, almost dubious. “There’s nothing wrong with getting some help if you need it,” Sosa replied calmly. “Yeah, Clark,” Billy wiped his mouth with the back of his newly freed hand. “If it’s the sooner you give up the sooner you get rewarded, why’d I have to wait?” This is why Sosa let us talk. We could be used against each other. I slammed my forehead dramatically into the plastic box. It was the closest I could come to dragging the palm of my hand over my face.. “Because it lets her set the rules, doofus. She’s literally just spoon fed you! You didn’t even reach out or ask to take the spoon and feed yourself. Chaz just got hand fed candy! She’s literally babying us and covering it up with words like diagnostic or adding Mr. and Miss to our names!” A blob of green juice that used to be refrigerated dessert shot out of Annie’s mouth and onto the carpet. Sosa had been so confident that she hadn’t even stopped during my accusation. There it was, though! That guilty glint of recognition from Sosa..The magician caught in her reflection. The addict caught getting her fix, the cosseting fiend! “I also helped wipe your sweaty forehead too, after you and Billy were done playing childish games. Was I babying you, then or did you just need help?” “I didn’t ask for you to touch me! You just got up in my space!” Inside the box my hands were white knuckled fists. “So you boys trying to break my things by playing bumper cars: Not childish?” Mentally, I stepped back. Had to tip her more off balance “Not the point.” “What was the point, Mr. Clark?” She put her hands on her hips. “The point is you shouldn’t be touching people without their consent.” It was a weak offense, considering that they were legally empowered to touch my genitals as long as there was a wipe or gloves between their skin and mine, but it was all I had. “Pretty sure Billy asked for help, and Chaz opened his mouth.” Sosa was regaining her composure. “I didn’t ask for you to drag tissues across my face or forehead.” The OT opened her mouth to reply and then stopped herself. I saw all the haughty Amazon indignation flow out of her with a single exhalation. “Fair enough.” she said. “I’m sorry, Clark. I won’t touch you again without your consent unless it’s an emergency.” “I”m not going to ask for help.” “Me neither.” Chaz said. “Your candy sucks, too.” Annie didn’t say anything, instead sucking on her lips and grimacing. Sosa became unflappable. “That’s your choice.” Sitting down in a chair she said. “Keep trying to solve the puzzle. Our sessions are thirty minutes. If you can’t figure it out by then, I’ll let you out and take you back to class. Billy, you can keep playing. Mr. Clark, Miss Annie, Mr. Chazz, if you change your mind, just let me know.” She took out her phone and started texting again. Billy didn’t play, though. He stayed in the ballpit, sure enough, but now he looked particularly ashamed. We all just stood there in the OT room; quietly looking at each other; unsure of what to talk about; silenced and flustered and frustrated. Sosa kept looking at her phone. At least she’d stopped trying to spoon feed us. She didn’t look mad, but she didn’t look terribly happy, either. Neither did we. Was this a draw? It didn’t feel like it was a draw. Stupidly, I spent the next several minutes subtly trying to reach the catches. Evidently, I wasn’t subtle enough. “What are you doing, man?” Chaz questioned me. “You just said that we couldn’t win. Why are you still trying?” “Story of my life.” “Sorry guys…” It was Annie. Plastic balls rattled in the pit as Billy leaned over and out. “For what, babe?” Then he twitched and pinched his nose. “Aw, oh man! Agh!” I’d been subtly squirming and wincing and quietly twisting for several minutes. So had Annie. I’d been trying to do the impossible. Annie had been dealing with something more inevitable. So that’s why her breathing had slowed and her face had stopped scrunching up. Her hands still encased, she bobbed her shoulders. “My bad.” She seemed embarrassed, but not nearly as self-conscious as she should be. By the look of things, it was like she’d just let out a particularly large belch in a crowded elevator. By the smell of things she wouldn’t want to sit down any time soon. “Aren’t you going to get changed?” She seemed relatively comfortable standing in her own filth. We’d torn Tommy apart for the same thing. Her top lip upturned a bit. “Can’t. Stuck. Also, O.T.” My eyebrow arched. “Can’t Sosa change you?” Beouf and Zoge could sometimes be stingy on the wet changes,but they at least had the decency to not purposefully let us stew in our own feces. Sosa stood back up and lightly slipped her phone back in her pocket. It wouldn’t be there long. “Do you see any diapers or wipes here, Mr. Clark? This isn’t the Little’s room or Pre-K. And it’s Miss Sosa, thank you very much.” So much to unpack in those few short sentences. What hit me more deeply was a pattern I hadn’t recognized. Places like the cafeteria, therapy rooms and other ‘all-ages’ locations made it so that we’d have less choice to even beg for changing. We’d just have to get used to it. Annie looked plenty used to it, as it stood. “Do you want her to get a rash?” I asked the Amazon. “We’ve got about ten minutes to go. She’s not going to get a rash in that time.” She was right, and I wished I didn’t know that she was right. “She can handle some poopy pants.” “I don’t know if I can.” Chaz whispered a touch too loud. He was the least mobile, but it was obvious he was trying to put distance between himself and Annie’s backside. I didn’t budge. Chaz saw me not moving and stopped himself. “Nevermind.” “Dang,” Billy said, still pinching his nose. “What did you eat?” Idiot. Calling Annie annoyed at her boyfriend was like calling Janet a bit too friendly with me. “You poop right next to me at least three times a week,” she snapped. “I don’t want to hear it.” Billy let go of his nose and leaned back sinking deeper into the pit. He was up to his neck in more than just plastic, now. “Sorry, Miss Annie,” Sosa said, sounding so reasonable as to be exhausting. “I don’t have anyone here to watch the boys while I change you. I could take you all through Mrs. Ambrose’s room, get you changed, and then we could finish the last five minutes or so back in your classroom, but we can’t take the diagnostic cubes with us.” I set my jaw. “Nope.” There was no chance I was going to let myself be dragged through the corpse of my old classroom. I wasn’t about to watch Tracy school marmed up and it’d be a hot day on the mountaintop before I willingly let any of my students see me in a wet diaper. Sosa seemed passive, but I could tell she was enjoying this, trying to play us off each other. “Billy’s already done for the day. You three just need to let me know when you’re done.” “Clark,” Chaz said. He didn’t say anything else. I could tell he was torn between comfort and opportunity and facing off against a sense of peer pressure and solidarity. “No,” Annie spoke up. “I’m not done.” A slight tensing in her face and a muffled pop from behind her signalled that she wasn’t just talking about running out the clock. “It’s fine. I’ll wait.” She craned her neck towards Sosa. “I don’t need help.” I gained a new level of respect for the woman right there. Sosa took her seat and her phone. “Suit yourself, Annie.” “I will, Sosa.” “It’s Miss Sosa.” Annie stood up a little straighter. Chaz hugged the puzzle box and heaved himself to a standing position. Rising from the dead, Billy sat up in the ball pit and crawled back over the side. Me? I got the biggest, dumbest, craziest smile on my mug as collectively we all realized the same thing. I turned my big dumb pastel paperweight around so that I could look directly at my ex-colleague. “What is...Jasmine?” “Holy crap!” Chaz lit up.. “Her first name’s Jasmine?” “Jasmine Sosa,” Annie tried the name out. “I like it. It’s a good name. Jasmine. Jasmine Sosa. Jasmine.” Sosa stiffened to our muffled snickering. “I would appreciate it if you would call me by my proper name.” Sosa was still seated, but now seemed infinitely more tense. This? This was her weakness? This was the chink in her emotional armor? I’d gotten so used to calling co-workers by their last name out of courtesy and caution that I hadn’t considered it. Some people just got a bug up their shorts when ‘babies’ or ‘children’ or Littles, basically anyone they considered socially inferior got too familiar. And thank the Adult Little League’s lucky stars, Jasmine Sosa- Jazzie, the Jazzmeister, All-That-Jazz, The Sosanator, Sosarino, Big Mama S - was one of them. Finally out of the ball pit, Billy leaned on Annie’s cube. “Right. Sorry. Our bad. Miss Jasmine. Better?” “Billy....” Chaz lowered his head and tone, mockingly. “Jazzie…” Wanna know how I know Amazons can’t fire mind bullets? Stuff like this. I let out half a cackle and was looking at the ceiling before I realized. I laughed so hard my throat started tickling me and my laughter turned into coughs. “Sorry. Sorry!” I panted. “Sorry!” I’d have covered my mouth but somebody put a big clonky cage on my hands!” And just like that the tension was leaving, (us anyways). We didn’t need strange music or dancing robots to laugh and smile. “Miss Annie, Mr. Billy, Mr. Chaz. You’re being very disrespectful!” Some adults try to use titles like Mr. and Miss to invoke a sense of responsibility or respect in children. It can work...on actual children. “How are we being disrespectful?” Annie feigned like a pro. “You’re calling us by our first names, why can’t we call you by yours?” “It’s not appropriate.” Four voices rose up in unison. “Whyyyyy?” Oh, what the hell! Sometimes you’ve got to go with the classics. “Children aren’t supposed to call adults by their first names. It’s how I was raised.” She was close to popping. One of us just had to squeeze. Annie went for a kill shot. “Well, Jasmine, ma’am, we were raised to grow up, get jobs, and do everything you take for granted, but that didn’t work out, did it?” I leaned back in surprise and admiration. The sass! Balancing the act by adding in ‘ma’am’! If ‘Big Baiting’ had been a sport she could make it to the pros with a performance like this! I shouldn’t have been surprised considering how she and Billy had double teamed me at that first breakfast. Speaking of which, Sosa was so ruffled up that she’d forgotten that one of us was completely unhindered. Billy was slowly going in for a coup de grace. Chaz hopped up for the assist. “I think I’m about ready to quit. Do you mind helping me out, Miss Jasmine?” Sosa stayed seated in her chair. “I’m not helping you with anything until you give me the respect I deserve as your Occupational Therapist.” Her eyes were unblinking, and her facial features controlled, but her attention was squarely on Chaz. “We’re just respecting you like you respect us, ma’am. You call us by our first names, we call you by yours.” The giantess puffed air out of her nostrils. “Alright,” she said haughtily. “That’s fair. Miss Ellis-Vermont. Mr. Dunnet. Mr. Grange.” I held my breath lest I scream. It hurt- it physically hurt- hearing Janet’s last name as my own. It didn’t take a genius to know those weren’t the others’ actual last names either. From the smug look on Sosa’s face, she could tell she’d hit a nerve. “Mr. Ogden.” Billy’s disappearance was finally noticed. Amazing that he could be that stealthy while crinkling. “Where’s Bill-?” “YOU MISSED A SPOT MISS SOSA!” A Little fist with far too much tissue paper shot up and got in Miss Sosa’s personal space. ‘HERE LET ME GET THAT FOR YOU! I’M HELPING! I’M HELPING! HELPING IS GOOD! RIGHT?!” Even sitting, the height difference between Sosa and Billy was enough that she was in no real danger of being struck. Billy was far enough away and reaching out so that there was no momentum or force. The fistfull paper hankies dangled tauntingly close past Sosa’s lips “HELPING IS GOOOOOOD!” At some point in his life, Billy had definitely had a sibling that he’d played ‘I’m not touching you!’ with. Not touching only goes so far. “Let me help you with your phone!” It was just sitting on her lap, in far easier reach than her lips. What happened next wasn’t anything, more bad than bad luck really. Billy had meant to grab the phone, not knock it out of her lap. Not send it skidding and spinning on the floor. It was an accident. What I did next wasn’t. The puzzle box was more bulky than heavy. The kind of clumsy that was easily lifted but slowly weighed on you as the minutes passed by. I didn’t need to pick it up for very long; just long enough for momentum to send the phone underneath. “CLARK! DON’T!” “Bumper cars!” I threw as much of my body weight into the swing as I could. Every Little bit helps. KA-THUNK! Everyone but Sosa froze. Her arm jetted out and grabbed Billy by the wrist. “Put. The tissues. Down.” “OW! YOU’RE HURTING ME! YOU’RE HURTING ME!” Calmy. Slowly. Deliberately. Sosa let him go. “You and I both know that’s a lie.” “OW! OW! OW!” Billy’s performance wasn’t working nearly as good as mine with Skinner. Sosa wasn’t Skinner. “Lift. The Box. Up.” Heat was radiating off her, but her countenance was completely, precisely controlled I did. I lifted the box and pivoted with my hips so that I could see the damage I’d done. I’d gone too far, but I wasn’t sure how far that was. It was an Amazon grade cell phone that had been half-assed stomped on by a Little with a box. I could still read the text Sosa had been working on just fine.. - Eggs - Kale - Celery - Waffle Mix - Toilet Paper - Dog food - Bird seed - Bloody Mary Mix She’d been gaslighting us while working on a shopping list. All my force had only managed to put the tiniest crack in the screen. An easy fix, if annoying inconvenience. We were silent while Sosa picked the phone up and examined the damage we’d done. She didn’t look upset. I’d wished she did. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t write you all up.” She waited just long enough for her words to sink in. Billy forgot to feign a hurt wrist. “Do you know what happens to Littles who get too many referrals?” The temperature in the classroom dropped to freezing. It was a bluff. Had to be. Except it probably wasn’t. . I pretended that the ridiculous monstrosity I was trapped in was a kind of podium in a courtroom serial drama, even if I couldn’t stand up straight and keep it on the floor at the same time. “On what grounds?” “Disrespect. Defiance. Thievery. Destruction of Property” The lack of anger in Sosa was actually frightening. I’d rather talk down a hothead than an ice queen. “Miss Sosa, I’d like to level with you.” I didn’t wait for permission but it was a good sign that I wasn’t being cut off. “That’s not the best idea. You know as well as I do that Littles aren’t held to the same standard as even Kindergarteners. We could all show up topless next week and still wouldn’t be in violation of the dress code.” “You just purposefully broke my phone. The rules still apply, Clark. You were a teacher.” There! I had my in! My credibility! I kept my voice level. Reasonable. Responsible. Adult. I pretended that I was still, legally, Mr. Gibson. I pretended that my pants weren’t peed in or that within twenty minutes give or take I’d be eating corn dog nuggets out of a highchair for lunch followed by an afternoon nap. “Yeah,” I said. “And you and I both know that you shouldn’t have had your phone out. And I didn’t really break it. You’d do more damage if you stepped on it. Not even Brollish would take you seriously. Billy could have walked up, climbed on your lap, and slapped you in the face, and chances are he’d get off with a warning, and you’d get sent to some kind of de-escalation training refresher about not putting your face in slapping range.” I couldn’t tell if Billy was excited or afraid of what I’d just said. “Not that Billy would do that, mind you. But you’re the adult here.” Deep breath. Time to bring it home. “Unless we’re a danger or major regular disruption to other students, this is time out and a stern note home at best. Unless you really really exaggerate what we just did and leave out the parts where you were letting us roughhouse and getting the wrong idea...” I swallowed. I had her. I knew I had her before she opened her mouth back up. “If it helps I’ll go to time out. Just leave out the other guys. I’m sorry.” “Clark, that’s very…” “Mature?” Annie piped up. “Insightful,” Sosa said. She stood up, rubbed her temples. “Alright. I’m sorry for losing my temper. You’ve got about five minutes left to try and figure the puzzle out. Then we’ll go back to class. Just...don’t push it. Deal?” “Deal.” We all said. It was kind of a draw, decidedly less successful than our recent session working Skinner over, but it felt like a win all the same. When Annie, Chaz, and I were taken out of our puzzle boxes, they didn’t dance or play music that sent our endorphins racing. More things were going on that Sosa wasn’t telling us. At least we took the long way around the building instead of cutting through my old room. Sosa carried Chaz and he was making the most of it for both himself and us. “Miss Jasmine?” “No.” “Miss J?” “No.” “Miss S.?” “You know how to say Miss Sosa. You’re not that Little.” “Hey, Clark,” Annie whispered to me in the walkway back to class. “How much of what you said at the end was true? About us slapping teachers and stuff?” My heart was still thundering from the performance. “I honestly have no idea,” I confessed. “I just spat out everything about discipline that I knew from teaching three year olds, stuff I think I remembered Beouf complaining about, and stuff that sounded good in my head.” “You were just bullshitting?” Billy behind me said. I blushed. “I mean...kinda.” “You had me going so hard,” Billy gushed. “It’s a good thing for Beouf that Clark isn’t taller,” Annie said back to us. “Why?” “He could probably do her job better than her.” I’m still not sure how I feel about that particular compliment.

Every time you remind a writer that they have an unfinished work you want to see, you delay the release of an update by at least a year

These are valid. The world is getting rougher, and people have a right to put down a freestory that they find unpleasant to read. I'm also going to vouch for the author here. He's been plugging away at this for some time, now. With regards to Roe v. Wade, that's just a very sad coincidence. I read this chapter in particular weeks to months before that development. He's been tinkering with it for a while. The bleak world of this story is WB taking certain elements from the real world and using it to be descriptive not prescriptive. As in "if our timeline veered towards HandMaid's Tale, here's a way it could happen and what it might look like." At no point have I interpreted this piece as to mean 'this is where we're headed unless..." If I had to say there was a thesis to this awful fictional world, I'd say that it's that throughout history religion has been weaponized and mixed with government as a way to create and maintain control so that powerful can rule the weak, and that the words and deeds of dead people are often given new context and meaning and mythologies as a way to push an agenda in the present that the dead cannot refute. But that's my personal take, I'll let the author speak to his beliefs himself. More to the point, I will 100% vouch that @WBDaddy is writing his own story based on what he feels would be the most exciting twists and unpleasant dystopian turns and while he's working on putting it all together to make something that can be 'appreciated' in the same way that someone might appreciate a good horror story. And even though, artistically speaking, it would be okay to turn on the news every night, look at what's going in the world and be like "I'm stealing bits of this for my story," that's not what he's doing here. He's not pulling a South Park and putting in the buzz words of the week to stay topical. Anyways, that's just a thought.

Everything is done with a purpose. Everything has consequences and reasons. Everything is a potential exploration. Multiple threads of plot that get picked up dropped off and woven with each other. Trust me. Enjoy the ride.

Thanks. I feel like this should be part of my Pastel Mirror stuff.

I watched that movie so many times in College.

You got the reference! Yes!

James went into the office, his light blue shirt, neatly buttoned up, yet untucked from his tan slacks. Business casual meant ‘dressed up but lazy’. It was kind of his look. The only reason he wore loafers was because there were no laces to tie. On his way over to his cubicle he stopped by Jen’s desk. “Hey Jen.” The receptionist in her purple sweater looked up from her desk. “ Hey James.” Her very smile lit up James’s world. It’s why he stopped by her desk every morning before sitting down at his own. James was to Jen’s left. The watercooler was to Jen’s right. That’s why James always took so many water breaks. Townville Business Inc wasn’t the most exciting place to work. Quite the opposite. Some days James felt like his life was on an endless loop, a kind of kafkaesque torture of mentally running in place. If there was a hell, it might look a lot like Townville Business Inc. Internally, James winced at his own assessment. Hell? No. Maybe Limbo, but not Hell. Surely, Hell would be more exciting than this...this...place. Generally speaking, James came in to work fifteen minutes late. His alarm clock would go off at nine even though that’s when work started. A benefit to having a house so close to work was he could stay up late and sleep in, zoning irregularities be damned. He’d come in the side door so that Mitchell, his manager, couldn’t see him, and talk to Jen. After that, he’d sort of just sit down at his desk and space out for about an hour. Space out: A wonderful activity where James would just sort of sit at his desk and stare at his computer. He wasn’t actually working, but from far enough away it would look like he was working. He’d usually do it for an hour after lunch, too. In a given week, James probably only did fifteen minutes of real actual work. During those fifteen minutes, James would speak to clients about quantities...type of copier paper...whether Townville Business Inc could supply it to them...pay for it...and James had just accidentally bored himself even thinking about the job. Hell couldn’t be this boring. The only thing keeping James from leaving was he wouldn’t know what to do with all the random information he’d acquired over time. Information such as the tonnage of manilla folders and Jen’s favorite yogurt flavor being mixed berry. “JAMES!” A bony hurricane in a yellow button up shirt, red tie, and glasses came storming up to James. “Oh hey, Ike, what’s up?” Jame’s co-worker held up a baby bottle; a fairly large one too. It looked big enough to where a body would need two hands to hold it, but it was definitely a baby bottle. Some kind of novelty one, James guessed. “What?! Is?! This?” “That would be a baby bottle, Ike,” James said. He flashed a smarmy lackadaisical smile “Not everyone breastfeeds their children, you realize.” “Despite the proven health and developmental benefits to breastfeeding,I’m well aware, James.” Ike said. “What was this doing waiting for me inside my desk?” James cocked an eyebrow. “I’m guessing it was waiting for you…?” “Yes, but why was it there?” James turned his head slightly and looked past his co-worker and gave the wall a most cynical and confused look. James was the only one who did that, but no one ever seemed to comment on it. Sometimes to make his life a little less boring, he pretended he was on camera. “I guess whoever put it there for you didn’t want you to get hungry, Ike.” Ike was already fuming. His buttons were so easy to press that some days James felt like he had cheat codes to Ike’s brain. “I do not drink from bottles!” “Oh? So you still breastfeed? I haven’t seen your mother...ever...so you must fast till you get home.” James turned his attention to Jen. “Is that why he’s always so cranky all the time? He’s just hangry?” Leaning against Jen’s desk, James added, “You’re not you when you’re hungry, dude.” “I DO NOT BREASTFEED!” “Then why is that ba-ba so full?” “You want me to prove that I don’t breast feed?!” “I do. I really do.” Ike started twisting at the cap, but to no avail. The rubber nipple would not budge. Child proof cap. That thought was amusing enough for James to throw another cynical smirk at the wall just behind Ike. Eventually, Ike gave up and started chugging back the bottle of milk. “Are you happy now, James?” A stream of white dribbled down Ike’s chin. “You have no idea…” Still chugging, Ike trudged back to his desk with the bottle of milk. “Okay,” James whispered. “For real, I have no idea what that was about or how it got there.” Jen’s eyes lit up and she covered her mouth. “Really? I thought that was you for sure!” “No. No clue. I just couldn’t resist.” Tormenting Ike was another thing that helped James pass the time. It was one of the few joys in the man’s life. There was an idea: Maybe this was hell, but James was some kind of minor demon, meant to flirt with Jen and psychologically torture Ike. James had done plenty of nonsense just to get Ike’s goat in the past. If he dedicated anything to this job, it was that, further cementing the demon theory that was just starting to brew. He’d booby trapped Ike’s desk with confetti and glitter bombs, put his favorite stapler in gelatin, and removed all of the screws from his chair so that it collapsed the moment Ike sat down. One time, he realized that Ike’s muscle memory was so precise that just moving everything in the office two steps to the left threw him off. A big baby bottle was kind of out of left field, however. Not James style whatsoever. “Okay, we have to talk about this.” Jen stood up from her desk. “I have theories. But first I gotta go to the little girl’s room.” “Yeah, yeah. Sure.” James went back to his desk and watched Jen get up from hers. It was kind of perverted, we liked the view as she disappeared into the restroom. A real case of hating to see her leave, but loving to watch her walk away. The wait wasn’t long. No sooner had she gone through the bathroom door did she come out again. “Huh…” That was quick. Too quick. He went back over to her desk. Jen seemed equally disquieted. “Um, nevermind,” she said, sounding confused, “I guess I don’t have to go potty.” “Oooookay,” James said. “Potty? I think Ike might be getting to you” Admittedly, the toddlerish word sounded cute as anything coming out of Jen’s mouth, but James was decidedly biased. Jen looked very uncomfortable. “Maybe?” She shifted uncomfortably and held her stomach. James’s ears twitched and he looked around. Was someone opening a bag of M&M’s or rustling a grocery bag or something? “Reverse psychology, do you think?” “Maybe….” James went back to his desk and settled down for a good old fashioned round of spacing out. Adjacent to him, Ike was still chugging down the big baby bottle, his eyes ablaze like he was proving a point or something. Whatever. Ike could hold a grudge indefinitely, but his attention span only lasted about twenty two minutes on average. By the time James finished spacing out, Ike will have been done with the bottle and doing enough work for both of them. “Staff meeting, everyone!” James looked up from his computer. Standing in the doorway to the meeting room, was, of course, Mitchell. Mitchell was arguably one of the fewer people less productive than James. On an average day James only interfered with his own productivity (Ike didn’t really count). Mitchell, however, made everyone less productive with an endless stream of side projects and in-jokes that only Mitchell ever found funny. With no more than a few grumbles, everyone got up and shuffled off to another one of Mitchell’s mind numbing presentations. Dang. Right as James was looking forward to spacing out. “Done!” Ike slammed the bottle down with authority. “In your face, James! I don’t breastfeed!” “Yup, Ike.” James shrugged. “Ya got me. Let’s go.” James joined the small crowd and sat down in the back row while Mitchell prepared himself for another bit of mindless drivel. “Alright everybody,” Mitchel clapped his hands together, “I just wanted to make everyone aware that there are going to be some upcoming changes.” “Is anyone getting fired?” Stan asked. “No. Corporate is hiring new people, actually. Specialists, some might say.” Stan opened up his newspaper. “Then I don’t care.” Stan could give James a run for his money in terms of laziness. The older, balding, black man gave zero fucks about this job and did nothing to hide it. At least James had his hobbies. Stan had elevated napping while seated to an art form. “There are some modifications coming to life, and I just wanted everyone to be prepared for them. I think we’re going to have a...have a lot of fun with them. This could be a brand new start for us.” “What sort of changes can we expect?” Ike asked, suck up that he was. “More importantly what is the chain of command going to be. Will the assistant regional manager- “The assistant to the regional manager…” “-have any authority over these new hires?” “No, Ike. And here’s why.” James rolled his eyes. He hadn’t gotten in his usual space out time. Stan for all his brazenness had the right idea. Time to check out. Mitchell’s words oozed together into a kind of gibberish. “Nooboo chika om za gleb! Mik, mak, maka, lik dominips: Nooboo clops om jigga om meshka nooboo clops, nooboo gronk, wui caba nooboo. Oh feebee lay. Flutz ty roo!” James only knew that Mitchell was done talking because he clapped his hands and looked at everyone expectantly. He got up and shuffled out. Unsurprisingly Stan had fallen asleep and Mitchell was doing nothing about it. Funnily enough, someone had managed to wedge a big pacifier between his lips. Stan was even sucking lightly on it. Out of pity, James nudged Stan awake. “Hm?” Stan said, rubbing his eyes. He took the pacifier out of his mouth and looked at it briefly. “Huh? Oh yeah. Back to work.” For the third time that day, James stared at an otherwise unoccupied wall. That was weird. “Time to get a soda.” James walked past the copier and into the break room. Rather than go to the vending machine, he went straight to the office fridge. Ike kept a seemingly endless supply of sodas that he never labeled or kept track of. It was a wonder he didn’t, to be honest. James opened the door, bent over and... “That’s...new.” Ike’s soda cans were still there, but right next to them were even more baby bottles, all filled to the brim and ready to drink. James did a double take and looked back over his shoulder to see if anyone was watching him. Was this one of Ike’s random and weird attempts at a prank? They never worked, but they were entertaining to turn in on themselves. His hand hovered over the cans for just a second longer until his elbow swerved and he picked up one of the baby bottles instead. “Huh?” Before James could say anything else, he sat down on the floor, legs splayed out in front of him like a toddler and started suckling right then and there on the rubber nipple. The door swung open. “Aha!” Ike said, pointing down. “I knew it was you!” James couldn’t reply. His mouth was on autopilot, sucking down the delicious yummy milk and guzzling it down as fast as he could. Delicious? Yummy? Talk about intrusive thoughts. “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull, but Mitchell’s going to hear about this!” James was able to stop drinking long enough to twist Ike’s words some more. “Hear about what?” James asked. “Am I...am I stealing your….your….?” Crud what was the word he wanted. “Your... ba-ba?” Darn it! He’d already used that one? James hated repeating jokes in the same day. Why couldn’t he think of another word for...for...ba-ba? Yet another choice he couldn’t explain. Almost like he didn’t have any other choice...or any other words for… Ba? Ba-ba? Ike came to the rescue, giving James someone to focus on besides his own limited vocabulary. “Those are NOT my ba-bas!” “Oh yeah,” James said. “That’s right. You breastfeed.” “I do NOT breastfeed, James!” Ike stiffened as two fingers hooked into the back of his waistband. Behind him was a strange, and very tall woman clad in a stereotypical french maid’s uniform. Despite the subservient attire, she seemed very confident and powerful. Being seven foot tall could do that to a person. “Not yet,” was all she said. Jame’s rival coworker spun around on his heel. “Do you mind, ma’am?!” Evidently, she didn’t. The maid turned around and leaned out the door. “I found two more!” “Okay!” An identical voice came back. “Are they potty trained?” James started drinking faster so he could stand up. He couldn’t drink a ba-ba and walk at the same time. Nor could he stop drinking once he’d started. “Hard to tell!” The giant lady in black called back. “I don’t think they’re dressed appropriately if that’s what you’re asking.” “Give it time!” “Okay!” Ike wasn’t having any of this. “Mitchell!” he yelled. “Mitchell!” He stormed past the big woman and started going right for Mitchell’s office. The big woman paid Ike no further mind. Instead, she glided over to James. “Here. Let me help.” James remained perfectly still as the seven footer picked him up as though he were as light as a soap bubble and sat down in a rocking chair by the refrigerator. When had that rocking chair gotten there? James wiped the thought from his mind, instead focusing on getting the bottle out of his mouth. The only way to do that, however, was to finish it. The big woman rubbed his back and made cooing nonsense sounds while she gently rocked him. James finished the bottle. “Good job,” the maid said. “Very good job!” She picked James up off of her lap and set him on his feet. “Uh...thank you?” This was not what James was having in mind. “Okay. All done. Go play.” The office drone didn’t need much more encouragement than that to slink off. “MITCHELL!” Ike was on the border of a panic attack. “WHAT ARE YOU WEARING?” Dressed sailor whites, including the funny hat, Mitch was being carried on the maid’s hip. “Oh relax, Ike,” their manager scoffed. “You’re so uptight. This is new! It’s hip! Hip...get it? That’s what she said.” “You look like an imbecile, Mitchell!” Ike said. On most days, this would be a massive case of the pot calling the kettle black. Today was obviously an exception. James cocked an eyebrow. How did the maid…? He looked back into the break room. The maid who had just finished bottle feeding him still sat idly on her rocking chair. “Oh…” It wasn’t just the voice that had been identical. “Twins. Neat?” When he looked back, he saw Ike snatching a pacifier out of the second maid’s outstretched hand. “I’ll have you know, Mitchell, that I’m accepting this binky, but under extreme protest!” Amidst the absurdity James slid over to Jen. “Hey,” he whispered. “What’s going on?” “I’m not sure…” Jen said, just as flabbergasted at the bizarre scene as James. “Was this what Mitchell was talking about?” James shrugged. “I don’t...NO!” Jen’s clothing had switched out. Her purple sweater had become a purple jumper dress, accented with a bow on top of her head. That part had been strange enough. What had really startled the office worker was how his not-so-secret crush’s dress was so short; short enough that he could see the bottom of what could only be a diaper poking out. The look of intense concentration on Jen’s face was equally disturbing. Somewhere in the back of his mind he connected the dots and realized what she was doing. “Jen, are you...are you pooping?” “Yeah,” Jen said, her face turning red with strain and embarrassment. “I already wet my diaper. Now I’m making a messy.” “Why?” Jen grunted and the sounds of muffled farts preceded her answer. “Because I was never potty trained…?” To hear her say it, Jen was just as surprised as James was. She sat back down in her chair, wincing as her mess no doubt spread around in her baby panties. James blanched, but for whatever reason, perhaps years of malaise setting in, he couldn’t exactly bring himself to be disgusted. It just wasn’t in him. All the same, he still had concern and curiosity. “Aren’t you gonna do something about that? Get...changed?” The secretary shrugged. “Can’t,” she said. “Don’t know how. Will you change me?” James gulped and leaned back. Change her? Change her diaper? Like a baby? As much as he’d wanted to get into Jen’s panties, changing. More importantly however… “I...can’t…? I don’t know how…?” Wow. Was he really that much of a guy that he didn’t even know how to change a diaper? One of the maids came up. “Someone made a stinky!” she said, fanning her hand in front of her nose. James tensed up and remained statue still while the giant woman looked down the back of his slacks. “Oh! No diaper, yet. Can’t be you.” “Yet?” James asked, “What do you mean, ‘yet’?” The seven foot ignored James and quickly wound her way over to Jen. “Ooo!” She exclaimed, patting the back of Jen’s diaper. “I found a stinky baby! Let’s get the baby changed!” James watched helplessly as his crush was picked up and carried on the maid’s hip out from behind her desk. Her dress rode up so that if James had somehow missed the adult sized diaper she was wearing before. “Jen?! What’s going on?!” “I..” Jen stammered. “I don’t know. I think I’m getting my diaper changed...?” She was laid down on a large adult sized changing table right where the copier used to be. While her dress was hiked all the way up past her belly button, the first of two strange questions came to James: Why wasn’t she doing more to stop this? The maid cooed and babbled to Jen as she undid the tapes on Jen’s diaper. She effortlessly lifted the secretary’s legs up by the ankles and started wiping the mess off her bottom. “Such a cutie stinky patootie!” One-handedly she finished wiping Jen, balled up the old diaper and tossed it into the diaper genie right next to it. No looking or anything. Had he not been so disturbed, James might have made a Globetrotters quip. “Let’s have the baby smell as cute as she looks,” the maid kept cooing while slipping a new diaper beneath Jen’s bottom and powdering it. Through all of this, Jen sucked her thumb and babbled happily. James could literally make out the contented smile behind that thumb as the fresh diaper was yanked up and taped snugly on. “Muff beffuh.” Why wasn’t she fighting this? Jen shouldn’t be laying placidly on a vinyl mat getting her butt wiped and powdered. She should be kicking and screaming! She wasn’t a baby! She should be trying to stop this! Someone should be trying to stop this! That’s when the second question came to him. Why wasn’t he? James looked down at his own sneakered feet. They were rooted, unmoving to the floor. Sneakered? He did a massive double take. Somehow, beneath his denim shortalls, instead of his loafers, were bright yellow sneakers with red laces; practically clown shoes! Freshly diapered, Jen was carried back to her playpen at the front of...the…? Why was he wearing shortalls?! James raced through his recent memory. He didn’t remember dressing himself like this. A more shocking realization came to him: He couldn’t remember how to dress himself. The salesman waddled over to Jen’s playpen, where he’d been sure there was a desk not two seconds ago. “Jen,” he said. “Something weird’s going on.” He didn’t hear the crinkle coming from beneath his pants, nor did he notice his own toddlerish gait thanks to his own mounting panic. “Yeah,” Jen said. “I know. It’s like...it’s like...hold on.” She crawled over to a plastic rotary phone- a bright red receiver on a smiling white base- “Hello, Babville Daycare, how may I direct your call?” “Jen!” James shouted, “that’s a toy!” “I know! But it’s so much fun to play pretend!” Jen dropped the plastic receiver and gasped. “Oh my gosh, you’re right. What’s going on? Why can’t I go potty?” James leaned over the railing of the playpen. “I don’t know. Probably the same reason I can’t say ba-ba.” “Ba-ba?” James grunted in frustration. “I mean ‘ba-ba’!” He smacked his forehead. He couldn’t even say the adult word anymore. “You know what I mean.” Jen tried a few phrases out, and while she did not stutter, her face grimaced and flinched with each infantile substitute. “I don’t know how to go potty. I pee-pee and poopy in my diapee.” Her shoulders slumped and she started sucking on her thumb. “Jen!” Jen yanked the offending digit out of her mouth so fast it was a wonder her front teeth didn’t come flying across the office. “James,” she almost cried. “Why is our office turning into a daycare?” When James looked around, ‘turning’ was the wrong tense. The building where they spend most every day of their lives had become a full on nursery. Computers had been replaced with rainbow glockenspiels and jack in the boxes. Cribs lined the walls, and the restrooms seemed to have faded out of existence entirely. Toy boxes and piles of stuffed animals littered the periphery. “If this place is a daycare,” James said aloud. “What does that make us?” Jen looked like she knew the answer but was too afraid to say it out loud. “Look at Stan…” Stan was nodded off, like usual, but now he was clad in just a diaper and held aloft in a bouncer where his cubicle used to be. “Mitchel?” Their boss was being laid down on the changing table, his sailor shorts, around his ankles and his diaper swollen and sagging. “Someone left me a present!” The giant maid cooed. “That’s what she said!” Mitchel got a pacifier shoved between his lips. “That’s enough out of you Mister Mush Tush.” Obediently, Mitchel started suckling on it. James kind of wished someone had thought of that earlier. Over in the back corner, Angie from accounting seemed to be having a delightfully prissy time holding a fake tea party in a pink little bo peep outfit. James assumed she was diapered simply because there was no way anyone would be able to get to the potty on time with all of those petticoats on. Potty?! Poopy! Now he was doing it too! Poopy?! Darn it, he couldn’t even swear correctly! Time to do something about this. “Excuse me,” James said, raising his hand. “Miss? Miss Maid lady? Either of you?” He saw that there were three of them now. “Any of you?” One of them stopped and addressed the toddlerized James. “Nanny. Call me Nanny.” “Yeah, I am super not comfortable with calling you that. What’s going on?” The giant woman took James by the hand. “We’re just making some modifications,” she said. “Reorganizing things. Making this place look more like a daycare.” “This isn’t a daycare, though.” “Isn’t it?” Just off in the distance, Ike had switched to a yellow onesie, and he was busy suckling at the teat of a fourth giant woman in a French maid’s outfit. “James!” he screamed as he was being shifted onto the other breast. “This proves nothing! This doesn’t count! You don’t win!” “Wish I could forget that….” He looked back to the Nanny...the Nanny...no not the Nanny, the Nanny...darn it! James looked back over to the Nanny. “Nanny, you gotta believe me, it’s not normally like this around here.” “I know.” James cocked an eyebrow. “You do?” “Of course silly. We’re much bigger than you. That’s why we’re coming in to help.” “How is this…?” James winced as he felt a familiar and comforting heat enter the front of his shortalls. He was going pee-pee in his diapee. Like a good baby. Not enough to cry about it, though. “I’m sorry. How is this helping, exactly?” Nanny picked James up and carried him over to a high chair. James liked being carried. “Do you really want to work and stare at a boring computer screen all day, bubby?” “No, but I don’t exactly want to be a dumb baby, either.” She buckled James in and clicked the tray in place. From literally out of nowhere she grabbed a jar of green baby food. “Oh you’re not a dumb baby. Dumb babies are no fun. We’re not hurting you, just modifying things to make them better. For everyone.” James couldn’t argue with that. Literally. Some part of his brain was preventing him from interrupting. “Such a good baby.” The praise made him feel the same way that he did when Jen smiled at him. Better, even. “This isn’t Townville anymore. This is Babville. And it’s not a business office. It’s a daycare. And you’re not an adult, you’re a baby. Understand?” “But…” James looked at himself. “I look like an adult.” “Not to me, you don’t. Not on the inside. Where it counts.” James was about to try and ask a question, when instead he leaned forward and started pushing last night’s dinner into the seat of his pants. He’d poopied and pee-peed right in his diapee. Just like Jen. And oddly enough, he found the sensation neither terribly embarrassing, nor all that unpleasant. On an academic level, James knew that he should be embarrassed, more than embarrassed he should be absolutely mortified. But as he settled back down into his high chair and opened his mouth for another spoonful of delicious baby food, smushing the mush around both ends, he found he wasn’t. He was also...never potty trained…? How had that never happened? He knew words like ‘embarrassed’ and ‘mortified’, but he’d suddenly never been potty trained. It was almost like the part of him that had been potty trained and enjoyed doing adult things like drinking or making whoopee, had been copied and pasted over. All the same, he was still mostly the same old James. Even now, stewing in a very wet and messy diaper, he was formulating ways to mess with Ike...maybe could somehow make Ike think he was potty trained? Put his binky in gelatin? He’d have to work on that one “See?” the Nanny smiled at him. “You’re a baby. Now and forever. It doesn’t matter how big you’ve gotten.” “What happens next?” James wondered, filled with awe. “Well,” the Nanny waved her hand in front of her nose. “First, I think I’m gonna change somebody’s stinky pants.” Stinky pants? Really? James remained quiet, but he looked to an unoccupied wall and gave it a knowing look. “Then,” the Nanny said. “I think I’ll put you down in a playpen. Maybe with some more toys, and you and Jen-Jen can play until naptime. And before you know it, it’ll be time to go home, and you can have a bath and eat din-dins and sleep in your crib.” James sighed. “Okay,” he said. “Sounds good. Oddly enough, it sounds really good.” And that was that as far as James was concerned: Diapee change. Then playtime with Jen. A nice nap. Then home where Mommy0a woman he hadn’t met yet instantly knew she’s look exactly like a Nanny but with a red dress- would pick him up and take him in his stroller back home. ****************************************************************************** Robbie couldn’t stop playing one-handed. He kept rubbing the front of his PeekABUs with one hand while clicking on the screen with the other. Oh! It looked like one of them was pooping! Another one was breastfeeding! Oh, one of the girl’s was crying because she spilled tea on herself! It was so cute when they cried! It was cute when they giggled and cooed too. And they still sounded like themselves! That was so awesome. If the mod had just substituted in baby sound effects and patched them onto the adult models, it would have taken Robbie right out of it. But no. Somehow, somebody had managed to get everything, even the sound effects, just right, so it sounded like the adult voice actors were cooing and giggling and baby babbling. How was it any different than Townlish, the fake not-a-language the game’s characters normally used? Robbie couldn’t quite explain, but he could tell the difference. Robbie hadn’t known what to expect when he’d downloaded this mod, but he hadn’t expected this level of detail. Townville was easily the most sophisticated Life Simulator on the market. This “Babville” mod was easily on par with the original code, if not better. It reinforced Robbie’s belief that there were more than a few ABDL’s in the gaming industry these days. It was the only logical explanation! The only complaint, if he had to give one, was that the new caregiver models kind of all looked the same. Robbie could customize their color palette and maybe change their dress, but that was about it. It would have been nice to have giant Daddy NPC’s, too, and he said as much in the comment thread, but he made sure to heap oodles and oodles of praise for the rest of it. He’d been a fan of Townville, and the various hijinks and pop culture references the original programmers had put in, but he wasn’t going to be playing the vanilla version any more. After Babville, there was no comparison. No comparison at all. Maybe, he hoped idly, there'd be a V.R. mod someday so he could go and experience it himself. Watching the animation play out, Robbie sighed enviously as another character got their diaper changed and put down in the playpen. No censor bars either...hot damn! How had he not noticed that? He looked at the potty bars for two of the girls, and frowned that neither was close to having another accident. Robbie could wait. He’d be playing this game a loooooong time. If only those little collections of pixels knew how lucky they were.

Chapter 3: The days and weeks that followed for Walter were less and less like a normal ebb and flow and more like a highlight reel of his worst possible fears. ************************************************************************************* Walter craned his neck as though doing so might cause his head to roll off the back of his shoulders. Grimly, he mused that he might yet be so lucky. “Open wide for the oatmeal!” Sarah said. “Open wide for Mommy!” The captured Little did not protest that Sarah was not his ‘Mommy’. Both because in a real and very legally binding sense she was, and also because the last time he tried to refute her, he got a mouth full of prune laced oatmeal. “Mmmm. Mmmm.” “Someone’s a fussy baby,” she cooed at him, not the least bit deterred by his refusal. “But you’ll be a lot fussier if you can’t poop. Now open up. It’s nummy!” In a demonstration, Sarah grabbed a separate spoon and dipped it into the oatmeal. “See? Mommy likes it!” She took a spoonful and put it into her mouth. “See?” She winced. “Mommy made sure to stir in extra...extra...brown sugar. Mmmmm….so...much...sugar.” The giants’ distaste for sweets was inversely proportional to their love for spice. That combined with his ex-neighbors flinching grimace, made Walter start to laugh. Wouldn’t it be funny, Walter thought, if macho Amazon dudebros munched on candy canes and pixie sticks the same way that some Littles did with spicy chicken nuggets? The idea of a bunch of burly giants and giantesses having to psych themselves for the culinary flex of putting a sugar cube on their tongue like it was a ghost pepper was almost as absurd as a grown man sitting in a high chair. The laugh wasn’t very big; Walter technically didn’t even open his mouth, but he let his guard down. His jaw unclenched just enough so that Sarah could take the opening and slide the rubber tipped spoon past his lips. Much of the glob ended up smeared on his mouth and chin but enough made it inside. “Noooooo!” He pounded on the tray. Sarah just took that as an invitation to shovel more into Walter’s mouth. Hunger beat humiliation and he swallowed the mushy stuff. “See?” Sarah said. “It’s not so bad!” She took another spoonful of the goop, the Amazonian equivalent of cutting themselves shaving so that the baby wouldn’t be afraid of their first haircut. Of course it wasn’t “so bad” for her. When that mush worked its way through her system, it wouldn’t end up in the back of her pants. Technically, it’d only end up in the back of Walter’s pants if he was allowed to wear pants. His Mommy hadn’t covered his diaper in even a onesie since finalizing the adoption. Presently he was in nothing but the Koddles he’d been changed into and a bib. “I just want to go home,” Walter said as evenly as he could. He wasn’t sure if using the bib would be more or less babyish, so his mouth remained coated with soggy oats. “You are home, baby cakes.” Sarah gave him another spoonful. What was the point? He accepted it and swallowed. “Finish your breaky. I don’t want you getting constipated.” If Amazons were as freaked out about changing diapers as Littles were about wearing them, Walter might have taken solace at the idea of dropping a load. If Amazons were as freaked out about changing diapers as Littles were about wearing them, Walter might not be stuck in this situation. “If you’re really good for Mommy, Wally,” Sarah said. “I’ll let you play with your rattle.” “I don’t want my rattle!” Walter almost drew blood from biting down on his tongue. “It’s not my rattle! How many times do I have to tell you that?” . “Awww, it’s not Wally’s rattle? He doesn’t like his widdle sunflower rattle anymore?” “It’s. Not. Mine. I just found it.” He found it. And then she’d found him. That’s why he wanted to bite his own tongue out. “And I suppose this isn’t your diaper.” She poked him beneath the feeding try. “Or your bib. Or your highchair. Or your oatmeal” Walter was about to try to retort...or at least spit oatmeal in Sarah’s face. “Or your footsie!” He swallowed and barely suppressed a giggle. “Or your widdle toes!” That tickled! “Or your legs! Your tummy! Or your armpits!” She started tickling him, scurrying her fingers along his tender hairless flesh, causing him to wriggle and tense up, laughing despite himself. “Cootchie-cootchie-cootchie-cootchie-coo!” Thankfully, he didn’t wet or mess just then. Doing something so disgracefully infantile when he was trying his level best to be miserable and serious would have been too much for Walter. “But okay. No rattle for Wally.” Good. Great. Awesome. Wow. Walter thought all of those things, but felt none of them. There was no sense of relief. Just the intense thirst and a sense of sad regret that an alcoholic feels after turning down a drink. He should hate that stupid rattle. He did. Yet he felt that he would miss it, too. **************************************************************************************** A few nights later… Contrary to how it looked from the outside, the Little was not trying to cause a big enough ruckus to bring down his Mommy’s wrath upon him. His nursery was close enough to her bedroom that he didn’t really need a baby monitor, after all. Sarah, he’d learned the hard way, wasn’t above spanking, either... Walter wasn’t trying to break anything or fracture his skull or even be a massive pain in his Mommy’s ass. None of that was on his mind.. What Walter was trying to do, oddly enough, was go to sleep. Two days prior he’d tried grey rocking- deliberately to be boring so that he could be ignored. He didn’t move and did his best to not react; staring off into the middle distance while his Mommy fawned over him and tried to entice him and coo over him. Tickle him. Tease him. Humiliate him. Break him. It had no effect on Sarah. Her resolve was strong. “Does Wally want his nini rattle?” She dangled it over him in his crib. Tauntingly. Temptingly. “No!” She gave it a little jingle. He accidentally gave her a Little giggle. She left. He slept. Yesterday, he took a more reactive approach. He didn’t watch any cartoons. When the television came on, Walter’s eyes would slam shut and his hands would clap over his ears and hum tunelessly. That hadn’t bothered his tormentor, either. “Does Wally want his nini rattle?” Again, she dangled it like he was a kitten and the thing that had doomed him were a ball of yarn. She taunted him. She tempted him. “No!” She gave it a little jingle. He gave her a Little giggle. She left. He slept. Today, (or was it yesterday, now?) he tore out a page from a book she’d been trying to read to him; something about being a ‘brat’ or a ‘baby’. It had been more Amazon propaganda to delegitimize his mistreatment. “Brats get smacked tushies!” No, his Mommy hadn’t been quoting from the book there. No jingle. No giggle. Just a sore bottom. She left. Silence. And now, without the bell in that stupid sunflower, Walter was having the damndest time passing out. Passing out! It was the part of the day he looked forward to as soon as he woke up. Only in unconsciousness could he escape this pastel hell. Only in his dreams was he not being treated like a toddler. He closed his eyes, and started counting sheep to himself. And then? Then he heard the damn jingling of the bell. It was a drop of liquor on his tongue. It was the equivalent of barely a needle’s prick or a whiff of smoke in an opium den. It was...it was...heavenly. Walter opened his eyes, no Mommy dangling the wrist rattle over him. No jingling. Nothing. Was he imagining it? How messed up would that have been? He couldn’t stop thinking about it. Where had she hidden it? Where had it gone? He’d refused, outright refused to wear it during the day. Where was it now? He wasn’t going to shake it, but just knowing where it was, was...was...important? Yeah. It would be good to know where it was. An intrusive thought: Was he...was he going through withdrawal? Was that what this was like? Was he jonesing over a friggin’ rattle? “Sleep,” he whispered. “I need sleep.” In the land of the sandman, he didn’t crinkle when he walked. But after a whole day, multiple days, of doing nothing but conserving physical energy and bottling things up to the point of exploding, Walter couldn’t make himself rest. He was fully charged. Overloaded. Jonesing “I need to…” he whispered to himself. “I need to...I need to….fuck!” He was kind of right. He needed that release of tension. That pulse pounding crescendo and that weary and tired, if relaxed, denouement.. Lying down on the mattress, Walter found out the hard (or not so hard) way that masturbation wasn’t going to work. Still not allowed blankets, Walter was more dressed in bed than he was most mornings. He could barely feel himself through the mittened pajamas and the thick, dry padding. He rubbed harder, trying to ignore the hot sweat he was building, or the crinkling of his imprisoned posterior. Tried to forget that to an Amazon he more closely resembled a two year old than an adult. He tried to forget that it had been well over a week since anything had come out of him hadn’t been deposited directly in his pants. Tried not to think about how even if he managed to cum, that would just end up in his Koddles. It...wasn’t...working… He started to go harder. He planted his bootied feet and started to thrust his hips and provide himself leverage from both ends; really grind into himself. It felt like he was humping a pillow. One that had cartoons on it. Nope. This wasn’t happening. How anyone could maintain any kind of arousal (pleasurable arousal) in a place like this was completely beyond Walter. Oh to dream the impossible dream. Walter threw his head back and exhaled, pounding the mattress with his entire body. That’s when he heard the little jingle. Ever so faint, and muffled to boot. It was a drop of blood in the ocean. Walter was a shark. His eyes opened up. He rolled over and picked up the single pillow he was left with. His heart fluttered when he heard the muffled sound coming from it. Not under! But inside it! He didn’t know how Mommy had managed to hide it there, or when she slipped it out before bed each night, but that’s where she’d hidden it. AND SHE’D FORGOTTEN IT! Walter dug into the case and felt around, his hands clasping the rounded triangles that were the sunflower’s petals. His pulse quickened, and he started panting as he pulled out the dreadful thing. His very skin danced, and his feet started lightly kicking the air. “No…” he whispered. “No. Not gonna…” Even as he said it, he started to strap the thing to his wrist. His rattle. Just like old times when he was safe in his crib with no Amazons coming to take him or snatch him away from his Mommy and Daddy... Just one shake. Just one tiny shake and he’d get some of that pent up frustration, some of that anxiety, some of that existential crisis, out of his system. Then he could sleep. Then he could rest. Then he could be a happy big boy in slumberland. He held it in his hand. “One…” He took a deep breath. “Two…” He held it… “Three!” And shook! It was not one shake. It was not a small one either. When the first clinging bell came out, Walter felt his entire body spasm with joy. From his forehead, down to the balls of his feet every part of him...well...there was a reason this toy was called a rattle. To call the high pitched burbling noises that came out of Wally’s mouth “laughter” would be the result of charity. A seizure! Wally was having a seizure...and loving it! A happy seizure! That’s what this was. A happy seizure. After so long with only a hint of happiness before bedtime he was accidentally overdosing! Wonderful! The wonder was cut short, not by his Mommy, or any outside interference, but by yet another shortcoming of his own body. Spasming fingers made for a loose grip. Flailing arms and legs, made for loose grips and hard pitches. There was a reason the rattle came with a wrist band. Wally finally caught his breath when the sunflower slipped out of his grasp and sailed in between the bars, clinking and clattering to the floor. His pulse slowed with his breathing and his eyelids started to droop. It wasn’t cumming. Not quite. But it was good enough. Walter closed his eyes, dreamed most pleasant dreams, and woke up wet. When he came to, his Mommy was strapping the rattle back on his rest. “Good morning, my baby bed wetter!” she whispered sweetly to him. “I’m glad you got that naughtiness out of your system.” That was weird. How’d she know he’d wet the bed? He’d needed changing first thing in the morning before. But he’d never done it in his sleep. “Just give it a shake,” Mommy said, moving his forearm for him. “Like this!” *********************************************************************************** Another day.. “And the piggy goes oink oink, the cow goes moo” the stupid cartoon howled. “The doggy goes bow-wow how about you? Everybody sing-a-along with Farmer Brown!” Laying on a blanket in the middle of the living room, Walter did not open up his eyes. He certainly didn’t sing along. Every Little knew about hypnotic toons. The fact that he’d never heard of “Farmer Brown’s Barnyard Sing-A-Long” didn’t help his paranoia, either. Littles who got regressed, didn’t talk much. Laying back and not watching was his only defense, and it was far from foolproof. Just listening to it was dangerous. It’s not like Amazons couldn’t weaponize sound. The rattle was proof of that. Walter tried to block out the songs by humming old melodies to himself...old melodies that inevitably sounded way too much like what was playing on the screen. But Walter didn’t dare plug his ears. He kept his arms flat on the floor and moved as little as possible, afraid of what sounds might tinkle out. Even the slightest jingle from his wrist might send him into fits...the best possible fits. NO! STOP IT! Thinking about the addictive torture device strapped to his arm was like a toothache before bed. He didn’t think about it until he did, and then he just couldn’t stop. “Oh Wally,” Mommy cooed. “I’ve got a present for you.” He felt the giantess’s shadow loom over him. “Open your eyes.” “No…thank you…” Walter remembered his manners at the last moment. She must have realized what he was afraid of. The channel on the T.V. changed to something decidedly less animated. “You should know John, that I’m not really Marsha! I’m...her evil twin!” Cheesy organ music punctuated the sentence. “Well I’m not really John. I’m...his evil twin!” Even more organ music. Oddly enough, Walter was getting more tempted to use the rattle than when he was listening to Farmer Brown… NO! STOP! JUST STOP! Walter shut the temptation out of his brain by opening his eyes. Mommy...Sarah that is...still loomed over him, but she was the thing hovering closest to his face. Between him and his captor, tiny barn yard stuffies- pigs, cows, and dogs- hung just out of reach. A portable mobile. The blanket he’d been laying on had just been converted into a play mat. “Do you like it?” No. No he did not. “Go ahead, Wally,” She urged. “Try it!” With one hand, the one that didn’t rattle, Wally reached up. The cow was just close enough to where he could bat at it. Tentatively, he poked at it, holding his breath. Nothing. Nothing happened. No sound. No jingling. No mind warping ringing. Walter exhaled and smiled despite himself. “Awww!” Mommy said to herself. “He likes it! He really likes it!” She was practically bouncing. “I knew this would fit your emerging developmental plateau! The crazy woman had mistaken his relief for pleasure. She leaned over and booped him on the nose. “Now, my baby boy can play here on the floor, and Mommy can watch her shows! It’s win-win!” There was nothing more to be discussed, as far as she was concerned. Walter rolled his eyes and arched his back enough to watch her take a spot on the couch. Her gaze was instantly glued to the screen. Spread out on the center of the floor as he was, there was no way Walter would be able to get away from under his Mommy’s watch. At least he wouldn’t have to listen to children’s songs so dumb that it could literally make him dumber. At least his captor wasn’t constantly hovering over him. At least he could find another way to entertain himself. Slowly, like molasses, Walter switched hands. He put his free hand down on the floor and raised the other one down. His eyes never left the sunflower buttoned around his wrist. This could be a fun challenge. Move slowly enough so that it didn’t ring and if it did... NO! He was making excuses and he knew it. He was making justifications. Lying to himself. He wanted to fail. He’d already failed. In full frustration and anger at himself, Walter slammed his fist back down to the carpet. That’s all it took to send jingling up his spine. Pleasantly, he found that the mobile was wide and low enough so that he could kick at the stuffed animals as well as bat at them. How nice! Full sensory engagement! He reached up again and batted at a doggy, vaguely imagining that the dinging sounds coming from just beneath his palm were coming from the dog instead. “Cow goes ding ding, Piggy goes ding-a-ling. Doggy goes dingy ding, how about you?” That’s how the lyrics in Wally’s head went. The only thing that stopped his play for the rest of that morning was his Mommy changing his diaper, which was odd, because he only vaguely remembered when he’d decided to go pee-pee. Decided? Had he actually decided that? Wally...Walter was having trouble remembering if he had. The only thing he remembered was a feeling of relief that he wouldn’t have to stop playing. “This is gonna be the last time,” Walter promised himself. “Last time.” ********************************************************************************* And another… “So Monica said to Angela and Angela said to Nancy…” Mommy droned on. Walter was on her hip just outside in the parking lot to their apartment complex. Some giant friend of hers that he knew nothing about had called to them-to Mommy really-and stopped to talk. They were good enough friends, apparently, for Mommy to stop and talk for upwards of ten minutes, but not enough to invite inside the apartment. As the two Amazons gabbed to each other about friends and acquaintances and gossip, Walter did what he’d learned to do best when the big people started chatting: He rolled his eyes, sighed, and zoned out. Furtively, he looked down at his wrist. He’d had a pretty good day so far and had only used it a couple times. Not even ten times had he used it and sent raw pleasure surging into his brain stem. That was pretty good, right? Right. He’d been really good. “Why’s he looking like that?” Mommy’s friend asked. Mommy shifted him on her hip and slipped two fingers into his diaper. “He just peed,” Mommy said as if she were describing the weather. “Oh,” her friend said. “Do you need to go change him?” “No,” Mommy said. “Wally’s not potty trained at all. Sometimes I think he likes being wet more than being dry, the widdle faucet!” Wally’s blood ran cold. He’d peed? He’d wet his diaper? Without realizing it? How had that happened? Why had that happened? When? Wally wanted to cry; to scream; to claw his eyes out in anguish! Mommy bounced him on her hip and he heard the little tinkling sound for the trouble. He looked down at his arm. Maybe under ten times wasn’t enough today…

Chapter 63: Speech Therapy The Adult Little League, aka ‘The A.L.L.’ sat in stunted wooden chairs, looking up at Chandra Skinner, Speech and Language Pathologist. Giving my new group of friends and fellow inmates such a stupid, pretentious name practically out of a comic book didn’t help reinforce the idea that we weren’t kids, but it helped improve morale. Plenty of movements, organizations, street gangs, and secret societies had pretentious names when you thought about it: ‘Little Voices’ was a dumb name since it didn’t really listen to us. Littles invoking the name of ‘Mistuh Gwiffin’ as a way of reclaiming the slanderous movie about three Littles in a trenchcoat was equally stupid. So why not ‘The Adult Little League’? Also, yeah, the name was kind of growing on me. Chandra Skinner’s Speech Therapy Room was, honestly, the most ‘adult’ classroom I’d been allowed to be in since my fall from grace. There were kiddie toys, like in Beouf’s room; a dollhouse that might have been older than me and some action figures she’d inherited from the Lost and Found. These were bits of incentives, bribes and half-assed rewards for children that merited them or needed a distraction for five minutes before transitioning back to class. -‘Susie’s done but Johnny needs extra work so let Susie play with the dolls.’ -‘Johnny needs more work, but that practice isn’t going to come in the five minutes remaining so go ahead and fuck around with the action figures.’ -‘Susie and Johnny are being complete shits so I’ll try bribing them with the promise of playtime if they do this redundant activity with me.’ That kind of thing. Other than those handful of trinkets, everything was fairly functional and academic. No cribs or gates or walkers or bouncers either. Even Janet had installed a gate in her closet and plopped a tiny playpen by her desk for after school. Skinner’s workspace had two small rectangular tables, a dwarfish wooden one for the shorter ‘students’ from Beouf’s room through second grade and a raised one for the bigger third through fifth graders. White brick walls were sparsely decorated and hadn’t been given a new paint job that Summer. There were no alphabet borders or reminders about shapes and colors; just a few posters with exaggerated faces and close ups on the lips and teeth, demonstrating mouth formations to produce certain sounds. A cavernous walk-in closet housed boxes of educational board games and manipulatives that no one would ever play with if someone wasn’t forcing them to. Teaching a skill via a game makes neither the game nor the skill inherently fun; it just gives a start and end point as well as a victory condition for when the torturous learning will be over. The light gray carpet was well vacuumed and rough, but if you squinted you could see the well worn path of the ancient T.V. cart when Skinner would slide it in and out for viewing videos. That was it as far as Skinner’s room went. The fact that Skinner was the Speech and Language Pathologist for the entire school - several schools in Oakshire, actually- meant that aesthetics had to take a back seat to pragmatics. Couldn’t make anything too babyish or infantile, lest the delicate sensibilities of almost Middle Schoolers be offended. Skinner probably didn’t have the time or energy to further customize the room. Therapists, especially speech therapists, are overworked with massive caseloads and are responsible for working with every teacher on a given campus to try and schedule the least disruptive time to take a student away for therapy. Most every teacher sees them as second class educators taking their pupils away from valuable academic instruction just to get rid of that pesky lisp or practice language mechanics such as memory or using basic positional language and following multi-step directions. A lifetime ago, or two weeks prior, I sympathized with Chandra Skinner. Not so much anymore. The fact that I was starting my ‘Therapy’ sessions with Skinner first was another unexpected blessing. Sosa and Winters shared a room that was right next door to my old classroom and part of the adjacent pod of classrooms. Another Amazon was always within shouting distance or a handful of giant strides away. Skinner’s room, by coincidence, was all by its lonesome with no connecting doors whatsoever. She was technically back to back with the I.E.P. Meeting Room, but even an Amazon couldn’t plow straight through a brick wall. Also, Skinner was generally the nicest of the therapists and had a habit of accidentally letting even my students try and walk all over her. She was a real pushover that meant well, but didn’t have a disciplinarian bone in her entire body. And by a cosmic blunder that I couldn’t have planned better myself, my new cadre of cohorts; my friends; my gang; my clique; my ‘League’ were all in the same session together. Chaz, Billy, Annie, and I were all there together. No one else. Ivy, being a perfect Little Angel, didn’t get any therapies. We weren’t trapped in there with Skinner. She was trapped in here with us. Skinner was the one who so ‘helpfully’ tried to silence me by shoving Lion into my arms. Ironic. Fitting. I wasn’t talking, and looking at her as if she were a dainty gazelle. She wanted my silence? Fine. She was getting it as her first course. That had been the game plan. Be quiet. Wait for an opening. Then take the ball and run as far as we could with it. We made sure to sit on the edge of our seats so that our feet could be flat on the floor.No dangling. All except Chaz who had to sit all the way back with a harness, ‘just in case’ he lost his balance and fell over; no doubt the handiwork of another ‘therapy’. Chaz compensated by crossing his arms over his chest, trying to seem as attentive yet unimpressed as the rest of us. The speech therapist was holding up flashcards; animal ones; something originally meant to teach kindergarteners and younger. “What does a cow say?” she asked. I stared at her. Just stared. I might as well have been a castle guard; practically catatonic. Nervously, Annie and Billy glanced at me before continuing their own quiet game. “Oh?” the Amazon said. “You don’t know?” That was bait that I refused to take. She brushed her curly gray brown hair off of her shoulders; a nervous tick, perhaps. “The cow says ‘mooooo’. You try!” I could see her blink, and her eyes twitch slightly; like she was counting; giving us time to process her command. We gave her nothing. “Mooooo…” She pulled down on her bright yellow t-shirt. Another nervous tick. “That’s okay. We’ll try another one.” Nothing was worse to a speech therapist than people who wouldn’t talk. She picked up another card off the stack. “What does a horsey say, guys?” We just stared back with dead shark eyes. “Come on!” she almost begged. “Billy, Annie, you two got this one last week. What does the horsey say?” Out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of the two reaching under the table to hold hands. The desire, the almost conditioned response to ‘behave’ was already deeply ingrained in them. We were playing with fire and we knew it. Even a low flame like Skinner could burn us if we weren’t smart about it. I had to fight the urge to ask a question; to try and force Skinner to justify her current treatment of us, and try to find a logic in there. That course of action would only stall at best; reinforce her Amazon crazy at worst. We couldn’t give her the chance to control the narrative; not even for a second. It was very likely she knew about Why Day, too. No reason to believe that Beouf hadn’t gabbed about it to give the other ‘Grown-Ups’ a warning that her class was becoming more prone to acting up. “Neigh, neigh!” It was Skinner again, trying to ‘teach’ us to play along. “A horsey says ‘neigh’!” She wanted us to use dumb, childish words like ‘horsey’, and ‘doggy’ and ‘kitty cat’ and ‘birdy’. Birdy? Birdy! That was it! Right on cue, we got a laminated sketch of a robin. “What does a birdy say?” The others remained mute. They were waiting on me. They wouldn’t have to wait much longer. I did my best to seem thoughtful, yet serious. I had to lure Skinner in without making it seem like a trap. “Annie?” she coaxed. “Chaz? Billy?” She caught my faux introspective expression. “Clark? Do you know?” She seemed genuinely curious; as if she’d wondered how far her former co-worker had fallen. “Yes.” I kept my voice even and flat. I was going to start the attack, but it was going to be clear that I wasn’t taking this, or her, seriously. “Caw-caw.” Playing dumb wasn’t the maneuver here. It was time to play smart. My friends let out a surprised bit of muted, nervous, laughter. Their lips stayed closed, laughing through their nose and then slammed on the brakes the second their own involuntary response registered to them. Their eyes were wide open and heads pointed directly at me. My own eyelids lowered to half mast. I was a cat playing with my food. “Awww,” Skinner said, now less nervous that someone was actually interacting with her. “Close, buddy. But it’s not ‘caw-caw’. The birdy goes ‘tweet-tweet’.” Time to see if I could use my old skills for destruction instead of self-preservation. “Actually,” I said. “The crow is a bird. ‘Caw-caw’ is a valid response.” My voice was still even and perfectly flat; darn near contemptuous. Skinner flipped the card around and arched an eyebrow, like she’d forgotten what picture we were being shown. I doubt she even had a crow picture. She tapped the illustration of the robin. “But that’s not what this birdy says.” “Your exact phrasing was ‘What does a bird say?’.” I corrected her. “Not ‘the’. A crow is a bird.” Chaz was the next to work up his nerve. He leaned forward in his seat harness and looked at me. “Actually, she said, ‘What does a birdy say?’,” he chimed in. “Not ‘bird’.” I did a full on left pivot in my seat, looking directly at my younger buddy. “Good point. I appreciate the input. We are aiming for precision, after all.” My expression and tone immediately softened as if I were talking to an enlightened and welcomed colleague. “Excuse-” “Hey, Clark,” Billy tapped me on the shoulder. I immediately slid one-hundred eighty degrees around to look him in the eye. I even smiled as he asked, “Isn’t it weird that Miss Skinner is like, ‘What does the birdy say?’, and she expects a ‘tweet-tweet', but not like...like…’What does the mammal say?’?” New life entered me. “Y’know, Billy, that’s a good point, sir. Miss Skinner doesn’t have that same standard for other broad categories of animal.” “Excuse me-” Annie waved her hand for attention and I pointed over her prison beau’s shoulder. “Yes, Annie?” We all turned as a row to look at her. “Maybe it’s because birds all look similar,” she offered. “Two wings, two feet, beaks, feathers, eggs. But you’re right. A chicken goes cluck and it’s a bird. Owls hoot and they’re birds.” “Hey-!” I piled on. “Yeah. How weird is it that Miss Skinner is ascribing a single universal behavior to a broad variety of animals based on some surface level similarities? It’s...it’s…” I snapped my fingers theatrically looking for the right word. Chaz beat me to it. “TYPICAL!” He shouted. “IT’S TYPICAL!” I jumped out of my steat and spun around just so I could give the son of a bitch the biggest hardest high five of my life. Yes! I had taught him well! Never before had I felt like such a good teacher and role model! I turned around and high fived the other two who were openly cackling and slapping their bare thighs. “I love it!” Annie squealed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about but I love it!” “Me too!” Billy stood up and slapped me in the palm. “EXCUSE ME!” Miss Skinner boomed. Correction. She didn’t boom. She just raised her voice. Janet boomed. Beouf could boom if she wanted to. Zoge didn’t boom, but she had this quiet way of undercutting someone with a glance and a few quiet words so that a body could feel impossibly small and helpless. When Skinner did it, it was less the command of an angry classroom goddess and more an exasperated if entitled plea. Maybe it was because she was shorter than Beouf and Janet that it had this effect. She was taller than a Tweener, but not by much. Zoge likely had some Tweener ancestry too, come to think of it. That might be why she wasn’t much of a shouter. I’m getting off track, though. Skinner’s shout demanded respect instead of commanding it. The worst she could do was give a bad report to head warden Beouf. Even that degree of separation was emboldening. We didn’t snap to attention. Billy and I didn’t immediately scramble back into our seats like frightened mice. We silenced ourselves and sat back down; even went so far as to fold our hands together: but there was such a deliberateness about it as to be challenging. “Yes, ma’am?” I said, very calmly. “You were saying?” “You were being very rude,” she scolded. Sure, when Amazons talked about me like I wasn’t there, it was them reporting to each other. When I did the same, it was ‘rude’. Turnabout is unfair play when you’re part of the upper class. Unblinking, I stared the Amazon down and leaned forward, keeping my hands folded. “I was only conferring with my classmates about the nature of onomatopoeias as they relate to vertebrate taxonomy. I’m sorry we didn’t include you, ma’am.” I forced the muscles in my face to slacken and put on airs of innocence and contrition, but my eyes remained as fierce as ever. “Onomatopoeias?” Chaz interrupted. “What’s that?” I didn’t break eye contact with the SLP, but I did cock my head to the left. “Language used to describe sounds,” I said to Chaz. “‘Chirp’, ‘roar’, ‘neigh’, ‘moo’. That kind of thing. Not just for animals. Choo-choo for a train. A crack of thunder. That kind of thing.” “Oh yeah,” Billy said. “I think that was mentioned in middle or high school.” Him and Chaz no longer sounded performative; just genuinely more interested in what I had to say than Skinner. That made it worse for her. “Annie’s raising her hand.” “Yes Annie?” Skinner asked. Annie waited for me to jerk my head in her direction. ”I just wanted to say that it’s kind of weird that Miss Skinner is using words like ‘say’ when it’d be more accurate to say things like ‘What sound does a bird make?’.” “Good point, Ann-” “EXCUSE ME!” A collective sigh and we turned our focus back on the biggest woman in the room. She didn’t seem so big just then. Skinner simmered for a moment, her nose wrinkling and her bottom lip pouting out. “Do I need to tell Mrs. Beouf that you’re acting up, Clark?” I didn’t hesitate. “If you think that’s for the best, but I don’t understand what offense I’ve committed.” “You know very well Clark Gib…!” A look of panic crossed her features as she censored herself. “Clark Grange!” I knew it! On some level she looked at me and saw the adult she’d spent a decade teaching actual toddlers with. That meant the others did. That was something I could use in the here and now. “Could you describe the undesirable behavior or antecedent that precipitated said behavior?” I’ve always been capable of breaking out the kind of fancy words that professionals like to differentiate themselves from lay people. It just rarely served my purposes to seem more ‘professional’ than ‘approachable’ where Amazons were concerned. Rubbing salt in an insecure Amazon’s ego was decidedly in service to my purposes. She tugged at her shirt some more and sat up straighter, as if being even taller than us was going to cow us by this point. “I’m trying to lead this exercise and you’re being very disrespectful. You’re not a teacher, anymore, Little Boy.” If she expected me to be hurt, she was about to be disappointed. “I’m sorry,” I said, maintaining my veneer of sincerity. “Go ahead. What does the birdy say, Miss Skinner?” “Tweet-tweet.” “Thank you for the clarification as to your expectations, ma’am.” Naturally, smoothly, I reached across the tiny wooden table and picked the top flashcard off the stack as if it was my job to. At the school level, most infractions that get caught do so because the kid is acting like they’re doing something wrong; something about body language and tone gives away the fact that they know they’re doing wrong and it sends up unconscious signals to everyone else. “Now, what does the piggy piggy say?” My comrades almost lost it. Billy and Annie were burying their heads in the arms on the wooden table, their shoulders bobbing up and down. Chaz held his stomach and unconsciously was pawing at a suddenly soaked diaper as more than laughter leaked out of him. Skinner realized too late what I’d just done. “Clark…” “I’m sorry,” I said, somehow managing to keep a straight face. “I believe the response you’re looking for is ‘oink-oink.” Boldly, I leaned over and reached for the top of the stack. “How about-?” thwick…. It didn’t hurt. It wasn’t even a full slap. I barely registered it, myself. My eyes noticed the lightning quick blur of her hand more than my skin picked up on the light nip at the very top of my knuckles. “Cut that out!” Skinner quickly scooped up her flash cards and piled them into her lap. “Clark!” Annie picked her head up and gasped overdramatically. She hadn’t seen but she’d heard enough. “Did Miss Skinner just hit you?!” Yes! Technically, she did! “OW!” I clasped my right hand to my chest like I was nursing a broken arm. “YOU HIT ME?!” I yelled. “WHY DID YOU HIT ME?!” The walls of the school building were so thick that there was no way anyone in a neighboring room could hear me. At most, even if I screamed my loudest, the art teacher next door might hear my muted shrieks and be able to recognize my voice. But Skinner’s domain was so sparse that my words echoed off the white brick walls as if they were a thousand tiny accusations all at once. “BEATING STUDENTS ISN’T IN THE SCHOOL’S CODE OF CONDUCT! DEFINITELY NOT WITH THE EXPRESS WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE PARENT OR LEGAL GUARDIAN!” The Amazon’s hands spasmed as she wrestled with herself, wondering what to say or do to fix the situation I’d just put her in. She knew I was bullshitting. I knew I was bullshitting. I knew she knew. She had barely grazed me and I was out of line messing with her materials. No reasonable administrator or parent would give her so much as a metaphorical slap on the wrist for such an act. How fortunate it was that Amazons weren’t always known for being reasonable even with each other. “I’M TELLING!” “You’re not hurt,” Skinner tried to sound less concerned than she was and failed. She looked at the clock on the wall, chewing on her tongue and trying to keep calm. “I need to jot some notes down right quick,” she said. “Why don’t you kids play a little bit?” Still cradling my hand as though it had been run through farming equipment, I stood up out of my chair. “My Individual Education Plan and the Plan of Care that you wrote up mandates that I’m supposed to receive thirty minutes a week of Language Therapy a week. There’s fifteen minutes left, Miss Skinner!” This was almost easier than Raine. The Speech Language Pathologist got back up and walked over to the larger table where she kept her laptop. “I won’t tell if you won’t.” The four of us basked in our victory, quietly fist bumping each other. “We are so screwed,” Chaz whispered, “If she tells on us.” “Nope,” I hissed back. “Not really. We’ll be chewed out. I’ve been chewed out before.” With the adrenaline wearing off, Billy was feeling less brave. “Yeah, but you haven’t gotten time out. Not the heavy duty kind in your...you know.” I leaned back and put my hands behind my head like I was relaxing. “One thing at a time, Billy boy,” I said. “One thing at a time. Enjoy the victories where we can.” “Little victories,” my star pupil Chaz echoed. The others, I knew, wouldn’t be so easy. But oh it would be fun trying.

Way to derail the discussion with your personal opinion that is irrelevant to the point being made AND yuck my yum needlessly. Major sarcastic good job and slow clap. The principle stays the same. I read those 90's Animorph books to my 3rd graders one year, and they didn't get the 90's references about Entertainment Tonight and certain brands. They definitely didn't get "hanging out at the mall". But they loved the story of kids fighting an alien invasion. That went through. I'm not a fan of Tolkien, myself. But his work is "timeless", not because he wrote it in old timey fantastical language or whatever, but because he has a passion and a skill that shines through that his fandom finds appealing.

No. I read old kid's books from the 90's and they're VERY 90's but the stories are still dope. Stephen King doesn't know how to write a modern teenager for anything, but the elements that are "Stephen King" are still solid and entertaining. Tell a story that you love and write it well and your enthusiasm and love for the art will be contagious to the point that newer readers will look past the references and phrasing they don't get and will go to the heart of what you're writing.

Glad to see this back! Really love the world building you're putting in here and exploration of systems and sociology.